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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2004 55(2):287-300; doi:10.1093/bjps/55.2.287
© 2004 by British Society for the Philosophy of Science
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Empirical Adequacy and Ramsification

Jeffrey Ketland

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, jjk32{at}cam.ac.uk

Structural realism has been proposed as an epistemological position interpolating between realism and sceptical anti-realism about scientific theories. The structural realist who accepts a scientific theory {Theta} thinks that {Theta} is empirically correct, and furthermore is a realist about the ‘structural content’ of {Theta}. But what exactly is ‘structural content’? One proposal is that the ‘structural content’ of a scientific theory may be associated with its Ramsey sentence R({Theta}). However, Demopoulos and Friedman have argued, using ideas drawn from Newman's earlier criticism of Russell's structuralism, that this move fails to achieve an interesting intermediate position between realism and anti-realism. Rather, R({Theta}) adds little content beyond the instrumentalistically acceptable claim that the theory {Theta} is empirically adequate. Here, I formulate carefully the crucial claim of Demopoulos and Friedman, and show that the Ramsey sentence R({Theta}) is true just in case {Theta} possesses a full model which is empirically correct and satisfies a certain cardinality condition on its theoretical domain. This suggests that structural realism is not a position significantly different from the anti-realism it attempts to distinguish itself from.

  1. Introduction
  2. Technical framework
  3. Ramsification
  4. Empirical adequacy
  5. Ramsification {approx} empirical adequacy + cardinality constraint
  6. Conclusion


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