Abstract
Earlier philosophers who analyzed the role of fundamental theories in physics generally assigned linguistic analysis a preliminary role. Quine and Sellars each developed methodologies for proceeding from an ordinary language framework to a final unifying framework based on anticipations of the structure ultimate theories should have. The assumption was that only the final framework supplies the true ontology. Reactions against their syntactic conception of theories led to a semantic conception of theories. The emphasis on individual theories led to interpretation through models with no role for linguistic analysis. However, linguistic considerations are indispensable when one analyzes the normal functioning of experimental and theoretical physics. Ordinary language implicitly contains various inference-supporting structures that were gradually modified in the protracted development of the language of physics. Here we consider two such structures, categorization and the metaphorical extension of terms to new contexts. We also draw on Davidson’s semantics.
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If it is true that there are but two kinds of people in the world—the logical positivists and the god-damned English professors—then I suppose that I am a logical positivist.
Clark Glymour, Theory and Evidence
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Notes
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Salmon’s (1979), survey article forcefully presents the reasons why such informal semantic analyses are needed prior to any formal reconstruction. Even Patrick Suppes (1979), dean of formal reconstructionists, cautions against excessive reliance on formalistic approaches to the interpretation of science (Ibid., pp. 16–27).
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Sellars developed this in (1963b, pp. 1–40).
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Sellars basic treatments of material rules of inference are in his “Some Reflections on Language Games”, Sellars (1963c, pp. 321–358, 1958, 1962); “Counterfactuals, Dispositions, and the Causal Modalities”; and “Time and the World Order” which treats the relation between ‘thing frameworks’ and ‘event frameworks’ and argues the conceptual priority of the former. Brown (2006, chap. 5) presents a systematic revision of the types of inferences treated.
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Mackinnon, E. (2012). A Philosophical Overview. In: Interpreting Physics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 289. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2369-6_1
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