Lutz, Sebastian (2017) Newman’s Objection is Dead; Long Live Newman’s Objection! [Preprint]

Preview

Text lutz-newmans_objection.pdf Download (292kB) | Preview

Abstract

There are two ways of reading Newman’s objection to Russell’s structuralism. One assumes that according to Russell, our knowledge of a theory about the external world is captured by an existential generalization on all non-logical symbols of the theory. Under this reading, our knowledge amounts to a cardinality claim. Another reading assumes that our knowledge singles out a structure in Russell’s (and Newman’s) sense: a model theoretic structure that is determined up to isomorphism. Under this reading, our knowledge is far from trivial, for it amounts to knowledge of the structure of the relations between objects, but not their identity. Newman’s objection is then but an expression of structural realism. Since therefore the content of theories is described by classes of structures closed under isomorphism, the most natural description of a theory in structural realism is syntactic.

---

Export/Citation:

EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL

Social Networking:

Share |

---

Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Lutz, Sebastian sebastian.lutz@gmx.net 0000-0003-4274-4174
Keywords:	structural realism, ontic structural realism, epistemic structural realism, Ramsey sentence, Newman objection, abstraction, isomorphism, adverbial theory of perception, model theoretic argument
Subjects:	General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Logical Positivism/Logical Empiricism General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism General Issues > Structure of Theories General Issues > Theory/Observation
Depositing User:	Sebastian Lutz
Date Deposited:	04 May 2017 22:53
Last Modified:	04 May 2017 22:53
Item ID:	13018
Subjects:	General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Logical Positivism/Logical Empiricism General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism General Issues > Structure of Theories General Issues > Theory/Observation
Date:	May 2017
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/13018

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item