Models and the Semantic View

Philosophy of Science 73 (5):524-535 (2006)
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Abstract

I begin by distinguishing two notions of model, the notion of a truth-making structure and the notion of a mathematical model (in one specific sense). I then argue that although the models of the semantic view have often been taken to be both truth-making structures and mathematical models, this is in part due to a failure to distinguish between two ways of truth-making; in fact, the talk of truth-making is best excised from the view altogether. The result is a version of the semantic view which is better supported by the direct evidence offered for it, better equipped to achieve its avowed aims, and, I think, closer to the intentions of the original proponents of the view in many ways, despite some of their own declarations to the contrary.

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Citations of this work

The strategy of model-based science.Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (5):725-740.
The Mental States of Persons and their Brains.Tim Crane - 2015 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 76:253-270.
Realism and its representational vehicles.Steven French - 2017 - Synthese 194 (9):3311-3326.

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References found in this work

Laws and symmetry.Bas C. van Fraassen - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The aim and structure of physical theory.Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem - 1954 - Princeton,: Princeton University Press.
The scientific image.C. Van Fraassen Bas - 1980 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The Scientific Image.William Demopoulos & Bas C. van Fraassen - 1982 - Philosophical Review 91 (4):603.

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