Abstract
The origins of the ‘incommensurability problem’ and its central aspect, the ‘meaning variance thesis’ are traced to the successive collapse of several distinctions maintained by the standard empiricist account of meaning in scientific theories. The crucial distinction is that between a conceptual structure and a theory. The ‘thesis’ and the ‘problem’ follow from critiques of this distinction by Duhem, Quine and Feyerabend. It is maintained that, rather than revealing the ‘problem’, the arguments leading to it simply show the inadequacy of the reductionist theory of meaning. The genuine remaining problem is that of the development of a new theory of meaning in science.
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This paper was written while I was Visiting Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Leiden and the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden.
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Nersessian, N.J. Why is ‘incommensurability’ a problem?. Acta Biotheor 31, 205–218 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02627650
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02627650