Elgin on Lewis’s Putnam’s Paradox

Journal of Philosophy 94 (2):85-93 (1997)
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Abstract

In "Unnatural Science"(1) Catherine Elgin examines the dilemma which David Lewis sees posed by Putnam's model-theoretic argument against realism. One horn of the dilemma commits us to seeing truth as something all too easily come by, a virtue to be attributed to any theory meeting relatively minimal conditions of adequacy. The other horn commits us to "anti-nominalism", some version of the ancient doctrine that language must "carve nature at the joints": that there are natural kinds or classes which alone qualify as referents (extensions) for our predicates. Elgin offers a searching critique of Lewis' response (accepting the second horn) and an illuminating defence of its contrary: "we cannot construe (mere) truth as the end of scientific inquiry. Not ... because truth is too hard to come by, but because it is too easy" (p. 301)

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Bas C. Van Fraassen
San Francisco State University

Citations of this work

Putnam’s Model-Theoretic Argument Reconstructed.Igor Douven - 1999 - Journal of Philosophy 96 (9):479-490.
A note on global descriptivism and Putnam's model-theoretic argument.Igor Douven - 1999 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (3):342 – 348.
A realistic look at Putnam's argument against realism.Vadim Batitsky - 2000 - Foundations of Science 5 (3):299-321.
Reply to Belot, Elgin, and Horsten. [REVIEW]Bas C. van Fraassen - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 150 (3):461 - 472.

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