The semantic conception and the structuralist view of theories A critique of Suppe’s criticisms.pdfVIP

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 600–607 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in History and Philosophy of Science journal homepage: /locate/shpsa Discussion The semantic conception and the structuralist view of theories: A critique of Suppe’s criticisms Pablo Lorenzano ? National University of Quilmes (UNQ)/National Scienti?c and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina article info Article history: Received 25 March 2013 Received in revised form 14 August 2013 Keywords: Semantic conception of theories Structuralist view of theories Semantic family Frederick Suppe Joseph D. Sneed Thomas S. Kuhn abstract Different conceptions of scienti?c theories, such as the state spaces approach of Bas van Fraassen, the phase spaces approach of Frederick Suppe, the set-theoretical approach of Patrick Suppes, and the structuralist view of Joseph Sneed et al. are usually put together into one big family. In addition, the de?nite article is normally used, and thus we speak of the semantic conception (view or approach) of theories and of its different approaches (variants or versions). However, in The Semantic Conception of Theories and Scienti?c Realism (Urban and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), starting from certain remarks already made in ‘‘Theory Structure’’ (in P. Asquith and H. Kyburg (Eds.), Current Research in Philosophy of Science, East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, 1979, pp. 317–338), Frederick Suppe excludes the structuralist view as well as other ‘‘European’’ versions from the semantic conception of theories. In this paper I will critically examine the reasons put forward by Suppe for this decision and, later, I will provide a general characterization of the semantic family and of the structuralist view of theories in such a way as to justify the inclusion of the structuralist view (as well as other ‘‘European’’ versions) as a member of this family. ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. When citing