Structural realism and Davidson

Structural realism is an attempt to balance the competing demands of the No Miracles Argument and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction. In this paper I trace the development of the structuralist idea through the work of one of its leading advocates, John Worrall. I suggest that properly thought through what the structuralist is offering or should be offering is not an account of how to divide up a theory into two parts--structure and ontology--but (perhaps surprisingly) a certain kind of theory of meaning--semantic holism. I explain how a version of structural realism can be developed using Davidson's theory of meaning and some advantages this has over the Ramsey-sentence version of structuralism. Keywords Realism

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: SYNTHESE
• Authors: Jack Ritchie
• Keywords: Pessimistic Meta-induction, Semantic Holism, Structural Realism, SYNTHESE 2008