Some eliminativists have predicted that a developed neuroscience will eradicate the principles and theoretical kinds (belief, desire, etc.) implicit in our ordinary practices of mental state attribution. Prevailing defenses of common-sense psychology infer its basic integrity from its familiarity and instrumental success in everyday social commerce. Such common-sense defenses charge that eliminativist arguments are self-defeating in their folk psychological appeal to the belief that eliminativism is true. I argue that eliminativism is untouched by this simple charge of inconsistency, and introduce (...) a different dialectical strategy for arguing against the eliminativist. In keeping with the naturalistic trend in the sociology and philosophy of science, I show that neuroscientists routinely rely on folk psychological procedures of intentional state attribution in applying epistemically reliable standards of scientific evaluation. These scientific contexts place ordinary procedures of attribution under greater stress, producing evidence of folk psychological success that is less equivocal than the evidence in mundane settings. Therefore, the dependence of science on folk psychology, when combined with an independently plausible explanatory constraint on reduction and an independently motivated notion of theoretical stress, allows us to reconstitute the charge of (neurophilic) eliminativist inconsistency in a more sophisticated form. (shrink)

Joseph Almog pointed out that Kripkean causal chains not only exist for names, but for all linguistic items (Almog 1984: 482). Based on this, he argues that the role of such chains is the presemantic one of assigning a linguistic meaning to the use of a name (1984: 484). This view is consistent with any number of theories about what such a linguistic meaning could be, and hence with very different views about the semantic reference of names. He concludes that (...) the causal theory is ‘rather trivial’ (1984: 487). In this paper I argue that Almog is correct to hold that the causal theory is trivial, but, contra Almog, argue that the triviality of the existence of causal chains is not a matter of such chains having a presemantic role in assigning linguistic meanings to utterances. Instead, such triviality is due to the fact that the causal theory reflects no more than a truism about the epistemology of convention acquisition. (shrink)

One of the objections against the thesis of underdetermination of theories by observations is that it is unintelligible. Any two empirically equivalent theories — so the argument goes—are in principle intertranslatable, hence cannot count as rivals in any non-trivial sense. Against that objection, this paper shows that empirically equivalent theories may contain theoretical sentences that are not intertranslatable. Examples are drawn from a related discussion about incommensurability that shows that theoretical non-intertranslatability is possible.

Both descriptivism and the causal theory of reference fail to account for the meaning of theoretical terms in a way consistent with scientific realism. Faced with this problem, hybrid theories of reference have been developed. They combine features of both descriptivism and the causal theory and seek to capture the advantages of each. In this work, we critically analyze two strategies to articulate hybrid theories of reference in the face of the problem of the meaning of theoretical terms. They are (...) exemplified by the proposals of Psillos and Kitcher. We argue that neither of these strategies is successful in articulating the descriptive and causal elements in a genuine hybrid theory of reference that satisfies the standards of scientific realism. (shrink)

In recent years, two-dimensional (2D) semantics has been used to develop a broadly descriptivist approach to meaning that seeks to accommodate externalists’ counterexamples to traditional descriptivism. The 2D possible worlds framework can be used to capture a speaker’s implicit dispositions to identify the reference of her words on the basis of empirical information about her actual environment. Proponents of 2D semantics argue that this aspect of linguistic understanding plays the core theoretical role of meanings: 2D semantics allows us to specify (...) a reference-fixing criterion implicit mastery of which constitutes semantic competence a particular meaning. (shrink)

The paper clarifies what is at stake in the theory/antitheory debate in ethics and articulates the distinctive core of the method of reflective equilibrium which distinguishes it from a generic coherence constraint. I call this distinctive core 'maieutic reflection'. The paper then argues that if she accepts constructivist views in metaethics, a proponent of the method of reflective equilibrium will be committed to the existence of a moral theory.

The doctrine of eliminative materialism holds that belief-desire psychology is massively referentially disconnected. We claim, however, that it is not at all obvious what it means to be referentially (dis)connected. The two major accounts of reference both lead to serious difficulties for eliminativism: it seems that elimination is either impossible or omnipresent. We explore the idea that reference fixation is a much more local, partial, and context-dependent process than was supposed by the classical accounts. This pragmatic view suggests that elimination (...) is not the prime model for understanding the complex relations between the mind and brain sciences, and that we have little ground for concluding that in general psychological kinds do not exist. We suggest that reference changes are better seen as continuous rather than completely eliminative. (shrink)

This paper considers the issue of translation failure between theories from the perspective of a modified causal theory of reference. It is argued that translation failure between theories is in fact a consequence of such a modified causal theory of reference. The paper attempts to show what is right about the incommensurability thesis from the perspective of such a theory of reference. Since relations of co-reference may obtain between theories in the absence of translation, incomparability of content does not follow (...) from failure of translation. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of how it is possible to understand the language of an incommensurable theory. The aim is to defend the idea of translation failure against the objection that it incoherently precludes understanding.

The paper explores the relativistic implications of the thesis of incommensurability. A semantic form of incommensurability due to semantic variation between theories is distinguished from a methodological form due to variation in methodological standards between theories. Two responses to the thesis of semantic incommensurability are dealt with: the first challenges the idea of untranslatability to which semantic incommensurability gives rise; the second holds that relations of referential continuity eliminate semantic incommensurability. It is then argued that methodological incommensurability poses little risk (...) to the rationality or objectivity of science. For rational theory choice need neither be dictated by an algorithm nor governed by a binding set of rules. The upshot of the discussion is deflationary. There is little prospect for a relativistic conception of science based on inflated claims about the incommensurability of scientific theories. (shrink)

Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation has puzzled the philosophical community for several decades. It is unquestionably among the best known and most disputed theses in contemporary philosophy. Quine’s classical argument for the indeterminacy thesis, in his seminal work Word and Object, has even been described by Putnam as “what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories” (Putnam, 1975a: p. 159).

This Introduction has two foci: the first is a discussion of the motivation for and the aims of the 2014 conference on New Thinking about Scientific Realism in Cape Town South Africa, and the second is a brief contextualization of the contributed articles in this special issue of Synthese in the framework of the conference. Each focus is discussed in a separate section.

One of the central debates in the philosophy of language is that between defenders of the causal-historical and descriptivist theories of reference. Most philosophers involved in the debate support one or the other of the theories. Building on recent experimental work in semantics, we argue that there is a sense in which both theories are correct. In particular, we defend the view that natural kind terms can sometimes take on a causal-historical reading and at other times take on a descriptivist (...) reading. The meaning will shift depending on the conversational setting. The theoretical view has roots in work by Kitcher. We present some original experiments that support the thesis. (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach’s position in the debate over scientific realism is remarkable. On the one hand, he endorsed the programmatic premises of logical empiricism; on the other, he explicitly employed a realist approach to conceptions such as reference, causality, and inference to the best explanation. How could that work out? It will be shown in the present paper that in Reichenbach’s view scientific realism is not, as frequently assumed, opposed to logical empiricism but rather to logical positivism. A distinction without a (...) difference? Not at all, at least for Reichenbach. As is well known, his particular—probabilistic—variant of logical empiricism was intended to circumvent what he considered the shortcomings of the Vienna Circle’s verificationist approach to the language of science. In Experience and Prediction, Reichenbach became most explicit in this regard. However, I shall argue that his position remained notoriously unstable in the end. It oscillated between a full-fledged scientific realist reading and an eminently pragmatist reading. Nevertheless, Reichenbach’s contribution proved instrumental in preparing subsequent efforts at reconciling logical empiricism and scientific realism. (shrink)

Mario Gómez-Torrente is a fundamental contribution to the issue of reference and especially of reference fixing. In this article I will focus on some questions addressed in it, especially on the relationships between some components of Kripke’s, Putnam’s and Gómez-Torrente’s theories of reference fixing as well as on the relevance of descriptions for those theories; I will then make some observations about Gómez-Torrente’s view of the reference-fixing conventions.

Idealist Heresies in Philosophy of Science: Cassirer, Carnap, and Kuhn. As common wisdom has it, philosophy of science in the analytic tradition and idealist philosophy are incompatible. Usually, not much effort is spent for explaining what is to be understood by idealism. Rather, it is taken for granted that idealism is an obsolete and unscientific philosophical account. In this paper it is argued that this thesis needs some qualification. Taking Carnap and Kuhn as paradigmatic examples of positivist and postpositivist philosophies (...) of science it is shown that these accounts share important features with Cassirer's idealist philosophy of science developed in the first half of this century. As it turns out, often Cassirer is more modern than those classical philosophers of (post)posivitist philosophy of science. For instance, Quine's criticism against Carnap's empiricist philosophy of science launched in Two Dogmas of Empiricism is anticipated by Cassirer for several decades. (shrink)

Abstract Taking the integrated viewpoints of causal theory of reference, cognitive science and the notion of correspondence principles from physics, this paper addresses the problems of creativity, the nature of visual imagery and the manner in which science progresses.

It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such 'arguments from reference.' Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross-cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture (Machery et al. 2004). We argue that accommodating this variation within a theory of reference undermines arguments from reference.

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. The language dependence is a natural feature—to some extent—but it is also believed to be a fatal problem, because, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial (...) in a suitably chosen language. But, this trivialization argument is typically either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. This paper shows that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved. In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that—whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences—the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. This explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. In order to reveal a cultural bias in the scientists’ assessment, one should explicitly identify different characterizations of simplicity of the assumptions that lead to different theory selections. General arguments are not sufficient. (shrink)

This article disputes the common view that social science explanations depend on discovery of lawlike generalizations from which descriptions of social outcomes can be derived. It distinguishes between governing and phenomenal regularities, and argues that social regularities are phenomenal rather than governing. In place of nomological deductive arguments, the article maintains that social explanations depend on the discovery of causal mechanisms underlying various social processes. The metaphysical correlate of this argument is that there are no social kinds: types of social (...) entities that share a common casual constitution giving rise to strong regularities of behavior. The article turns next to a consideration of the character of social causation and argues for a microfoundational interpretation of social causation: social causal powers are embodied in the constraints and opportunities that institutions present to individual agents. Finally, it is noted that these arguments have consequences for the credibility of social predictions: it is argued that predictions in social science are generally unreliable. (shrink)

Inferencjalizm semantyczny Roberta B. Brandoma jest ważną i nową teorią znaczenia we współczesnej, analitycznej filozofii języka. Wyłożona została w bardzo obszerny sposób w monografii pt. Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment. Jest to teoria jednocześnie pragmatyczna, normatywna, holistyczna i dyskursywna. Stanowisko Brandoma jest z jednej strony gloryfikowane, natomiast z drugiej strony wzbudza kontrowersje. Powstaje zatem metafilozoficzne pytanie: Jak ocenić wkład tej teorii w filozofię języka? Inferencjalizm akcentuje wnioskowania materialne, askrypcje de re i użycie wyrażeń deiktycznych. Są to kategorie (...) „wertykalne”, akcentujące „związek” z rzeczywistością. Brandom jednak kładzie nacisk także na anaforyczną koncepcję referencji i prawdy. To czyni jego podejście wartościowym, anaforyczne bowiem rozumienie referencji i prawdy dostarcza dodatkowego objaśnienia użycia słów „odnosi się” i „ jest prawdziwe”. Ale kategorie te są „horyzontalne”. Brandom dostrzega problem nabywania empirycznego znaczenia przez wyrażenia inicjujące łańcuchy anaforyczne i proponuje — jako próbę rozwiązania problemu — zmodyfikowanie inferencjalizmu semantycznego przez poszerzenie go o epistemologią rewizyjną i fallibilistyczną. Dodatkowo wspomaga on swoją teorię przez pragmatykę normatywną, aplikującą kategorię asercji, uprawnienia, różnorodnych zobowiązań, czy „zdobywania punktów”. Wydaje się jednak, że wciąż brakuje pojęcia prawdziwości mocniejszego niż to zaproponowane w koncepcji anaforycznej — pojęcie prawdy, wyrażone przy użyciu relacji korespondencji między językiem a rzeczywistością. Idea korespondencji ma tę wadę, że trudno jest ją satysfakcjonująco zdefiniować. Ważną jednak zaletą takiej relacji jest to, że jest ona relacją „język–rzeczywistość”, a nie tylko anaforyczną relacją „język–język”. Postawiony zarzut nie dyskwalifikuje inferencjalizmu. Wyraża on jedynie ogólno-epistemologiczną trudność z definicją prawdy. Natomiast doniosłością inferencjalizmu jest to, że próbuje on łączyć różne elementy, a przez to — w bardziej adekwatny sposób — objaśnić czym jest znaczenie i wyjaśnić, jak wyrażenia je nabywają. (shrink)

The question of the role of theory in the determination of reference of theoretical terms continues to be a controversial one. In the present paper I assess a number of responses to this question (including variations on David Lewis’s appeal to Ramsification), before describing an alternative, epistemically oriented account of the reference-determination of such terms. The paper concludes by discussing some implications of the account for our understanding of both realism and such competitors of realism as constructive empiricism.

The attempt to define life has gained new momentum in the wake of novel fields such as synthetic biology, astrobiology, and artificial life. In a series of articles, Cleland, Chyba, and Machery claim that definitions of life seek to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for applying the concept of life—something that such definitions cannot, and should not do. We argue that this criticism is largely unwarranted. Cleland, Chyba, and Machery approach definitions of life as classifying devices, thereby neglecting their other (...) epistemic roles. We identify within the discussions of the nature and origin of life three other types of definitions: theoretical, transdisciplinary, and diagnostic definitions. The primary aim of these definitions is not to distinguish life from nonlife, although they can also be used for classificatory purposes. We focus on the definitions of life within the budding field of astrobiology, paying particular attention to transdisciplinary definitions, and diagnostic definitions in the search for biosignatures from other planets. (shrink)

The article deals with problems of incommensurability and meaning change in thecontext of scientific dynamics. Its main topic is a proposal made by Putnam basedon his version of the principle of charity. It is shown that this proposal does not workas a general principle for the understanding of theory change, for it leads in some cases to an unconvincing interpretation of now discarded theories and is even uncharitable. So it could be polemically described as a kind of defamation ('üle Nachrede') (...) of these theories. This will be demonstrated in two case studies. The first one sketches the development of economic value theory, while the second deals with the development of the concept of probability. (shrink)

Naturalized metaphysics aims to establish justified metaphysical claims, where metaphysics is meant to carry its usual significance, while avoiding the traditional methods of metaphysics—a priori reasoning, conceptual analysis, intuitions, and common sense—which naturalized metaphysics argues are not epistemically probative. After offering an explication of what it means to do metaphysics, this paper argues that naturalized metaphysics, at the outset, is hospitable to doing metaphysics. The underdetermination of metaphysics by science, however, changes the picture. Naturalized metaphysics has to break this underdetermination, (...) but the criticism of the traditional methods of metaphysics leaves no resources with which to do so. Naturalized metaphysics must therefore be more restrictive than originally intended to ensure that some metaphysical features avoid underdetermination. In this restrictive naturalized metaphysics, however, metaphysicians are only left the task of surveying the opinions of scientists which, it is argued, does not qualify as doing metaphysics. Thus, to fulfill its promise to save metaphysics, naturalized metaphysics displaces the metaphysician. Furthermore, the attempt to re-employ them via the principle of naturalistic closure is argued to fail. Metaphysicians should therefore not be happier with naturalized metaphysics than they are with the more explicitly eliminative trends in contemporary metametaphysics, such as neo-Carnapian deflationism, despite the promise of naturalized metaphysics, likely to Carnap’s dismay, to deliver justified claims about ultimate reality. (shrink)

In scientific explanations, the explanans theory is sometimes incommensurable with the explanandum empirical data. How is this possible, especially when the explanation is deductive in nature? This paper attempts to solve the puzzle without relying on any particular theory of reference. For us, it is rather obvious that the geometric idea of projection plays a key role in Keplers explanation of Tycho Brahes empirical data. We discover that a similar mechanism operates in theoretic explanations in general. In short, all theoretic (...) explanations are projective explanations. If so, there should be no logical reason why explanans theories cannot be incommensurable with explanandum data. For illustration, we analyse Einsteins explanation of the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment in some detail. (shrink)

‘Naturalized’ philosophers of mind regularly appeal to the empirical psychological literature in support of the ‘theory-theory’ account of the natural epistemology of mental state ascription (to self and others). It is argued that such appeals are not philosophically neutral, but in fact presuppose the theory-theory account of mental state ascription. It is suggested that a possible explanation of the popularity of the theory-theory account is that it is generally assumed that alternative accounts in terms of introspection (and simulation) presuppose a (...) discredited ‘inner ostensive definition’ account of the meaning of mental state terms. However, the inner ostensive definition account is not the only alternative to the theory-theory account of the meaning of mental state terms, and commitment to a theory-theory account of the meaning of mental state terms does not mandate commitment to a theory-theory account of the epistemology of mental state ascription. (shrink)

Matheus Valente presents a number of examples designed to show that my theory of reference fixing for demonstratives violates the desideratum that demonstrative thoughts should be transparent to speakers. In this note I argue that the alleged desideratum is not really such and defend my theory against other criticisms made by Valente.

Near the end of the last century, some legal philosophers adapted the so called causal theories of reference to solve internal problems in legal theory. Among those philosophers, Nicos Stavropoulos adjusted Hilary Putnam’s semantic externalism claiming it as a better philosophical view than legal positivism defended by Herbert Hart. According to him, what determines the correct application of a legal rule must be determined by the objects themselves. In that case, what determines the reference of legal terms is an issue (...) to be solved by the best theory developed. However, this is not the case necessarily: Hart’s model can reach to the same conclusions as an externalist adjustment of law. Furthermore, the epistemic criteria required by Putnam to deal with value judgements are also acceptable in a positivist model. This paper presents the central thesis of Putnam’s semantic externalism, with Stavropoulos adaptations to law, and defends that Hart’s approach to deal with legal rules and Putnam’s approach to deal with language rules can converge. (shrink)

We begin by highlighting some points related to Kuhn’s later thoughts on the incommensurability thesis and then show to what extent the standard version of the thesis given by the structuralist metatheory allows us to capture Kuhn’s ideas. Our main aim is to establish what constitutes the basis of comparability between incommensurable theories, even in cases of incommensurability with respect to theoretical and non-theoretical terms. We propose that comparability between incommensurable theories requires some connection between their respective ontologies that can (...) be captured by means of an ontological non-reductive relation. At this point, the structuralist notion of “echeloned partial substructure” may be of help. When the incommensurability is very drastic, the existence of ontological connections between the theories involved may only be evident by common terms of their non-characteristic vocabularies. So, this notion of non-characteristic vocabulary becomes relevant in our proposal. (shrink)

The Preface Paradox has led many philosophers to believe that, if it isassumed that high probability is necessary for rational acceptability, the principleaccording to which rational acceptability is closed under conjunction (CP)must be abandoned. In this paper we argue that the paradox is far less damaging to CP than is generally believed. We describe how, given certain plausibleassumptions, in a large class of cases in which CP seems to lead tocontradiction, it does not do so after all. A restricted version (...) of CP canthus be maintained. (shrink)

The Lottery Paradox and the Preface Paradox both involve the thesis that high probability is sufficient for rational acceptability. The standard solution to these paradoxes denies that rational acceptability is deductively closed. This solution has a number of untoward consequences. The present paper suggests that a better solution to the paradoxes is to replace the thesis that high probability suffices for rational acceptability with a somewhat stricter thesis. This avoids the untoward consequences of the standard solution. The new solution will (...) be defended against a seemingly obvious objection. 1 The paradoxes of rational acceptability 2 The standard solution 3 A new solution to the paradoxes 4 Basic assumptions 5 The new solution defended 6 Conclusion 7 Appendix. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering wants analytic philosophy to be centered around the assessment and improvement of philosophical concepts. But contemporary debates about conceptual engineering do not engage much with the vast literature on conceptual change that exists in philosophy of science. In this article, I argue that an adequate appreciation of the history of philosophy of science can contribute to discussions about conceptual engineering. Specifically, I show that the evolution of debates over scientific conceptual change arguably demonstrates that, contrary to what is (...) commonly assumed in the literature about conceptual engineering, conceptual change is possible within an externalist metasemantics and that any adequate theory of conceptual change should be metasemantically plastic. (shrink)

It is often thought that questions of reference are crucial in assessing scientific realism, construed as the view that successful theories are at least approximately true descriptions of the unobservable; realism is justified only if terms in empirically successful theories generally refer to genuinely existing entities or properties. In this paper this view is questioned. First, it is argued that there are good reasons to think that questions of realism are largely decided by convention and carry no epistemic significance. An (...) alternative conception of realism is then proposed, which focuses on the Ramsey sentences of scientific theories, constructed in the manner of David Lewis's 'How to define theoretical terms'. It is argued that because the Ramsey sentence of a theory preserves the epistemically significant part of the theory's content without generating commitments to any particular conclusions about reference, the realism issue is better addressed by asking whether Ramsey sentences of theories, rather than the theories themselves, are approximately true. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the idea that, throughout the history of science, there are some cases of theory change that would show how science develops with no referential continuity. For this purpose, I analyze Psillos’ proposal of a theory of reference used to account for referential continuity in conceptual transitions. This kind of continuity is requested by Psillos —as by other philosophers— in his defense of scientific realism. By means of a historical case, the theory of germplasm of (...) August Weismann, I intend to demonstrate that Psillos’ demand for reference continuity can be found to be inadequate. DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n3p335. (shrink)

This paper explores three important interrelated themes in Putnam’s philosophy: language, meaning, and the context-sensitivity of “truth-evaluable content.” It shows how Putnam’s own version of semantic externalism is able to steer a middle course between an internalism about meaning that requires a “language of thought” (or “mentalese”) and a mind-independent realism about meaning that requires Platonic objects (or other such “abstract entities”), while doing justice to how ascriptions of meaning are causally related to the objective world. The following account is (...) able to allow for the primacy of language over thought while ensuring that the content of thought is partially fixed by the external world. The emphasis in Putnam’s later writings on the “context sensitivity” of meaning are often construed as marking a major departure from his earlier thought. It is here argued that such an interpretation involves a misunderstanding both of the commitments of Putnam’s original form of semantic externalism and of the implications of the version of context sensitivity he embraces. (shrink)

After a critical discussion of Putnam's early work on the analytic–synthetic distinction, this article discusses seven contributions that Putnam has made to the philosophy of language. These contributions are (1) to understanding the role of definitions in science and in ordinary discourse; (2) to recognizing the role of stereotypes in explaining meaning; (3) to acknowledging the minimal role of explicative understanding in having linguistic competence with natural kind words; (4) to distinguishing sharply between identifying natural kinds and determining their more (...) fundamental natures; (5) to exploring a division of linguistic labour – a role for social interaction in determining reference, especially of natural kind terms; (6) to establishing a broadly unified causal account of the reference of ordinary natural kind terms and scientific physical magnitude terms; and (7) to reviving a conception of scientific language that allows for trans-theoretical reference and one sort of trans-theoretical meaning. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the case of the discovery of complex numbers by Girolamo Cardano. Cardano acquires the concepts of (specific) complex numbers, complex addition, and complex multiplication. His understanding of these concepts is incomplete. I show that his acquisition of these concepts cannot be explained on the basis of Christopher Peacocke’s Conceptual Role Theory of concept possession. I argue that Strong Conceptual Role Theories that are committed to specifying a set of transitions that is both necessary and sufficient (...) for possession of mathematical concepts will always face counterexamples of the kind illustrated by Cardano. I close by suggesting that we should rely more heavily on resources of Anti-Individualism as a framework for understanding the acquisition and possession of concepts of abstract subject matters. (shrink)

The discussion presents a framework of concepts that is intended to account for the rationality of semantic change and variation, suggesting that each scientific concept consists of three components of content: 1) reference, 2) inferential role, and 3) the epistemic goal pursued with the concept’s use. I argue that in the course of history a concept can change in any of these components, and that change in the concept’s inferential role and reference can be accounted for as being rational relative (...) to the third component, the concept’s epistemic goal. This framework is illustrated and defended by application to the history of the gene concept. It is explained how the molecular gene concept grew rationally out of the classical gene concept despite a change in reference, and why the use and reference of the contemporary molecular gene concept may legitimately vary from context to context. (shrink)