The instrumentalist’s new clothes

Philosophy of Science 78 (5):1200-1211 (2011)
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Abstract

This paper develops a new version of instrumentalism, in light of progress in the realism debate in recent decades, and thereby defends the view that instrumentalism remains a viable philosophical position on science. The key idea is that talk of unobservable objects should be taken literally only when those objects are assigned properties (or described in terms of analogies involving things) with which we are experientially (or otherwise) acquainted. This is derivative from the instrumentalist tradition in so far as the distinction between unobservable and observable is taken to have significance with respect to meaning.

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Darrell P. Rowbottom
Lingnan University

References found in this work

Vagueness.Timothy Williamson - 1994 - New York: Routledge.
Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 2008 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive.John Stuart Mill - 1843 - New York and London,: University of Toronto Press. Edited by J. Robson.

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