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Reply to Belot, Elgin, and Horsten

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Notes

  1. I should emphasize that this is a small part of Okruhlik’s argument. She offers considerable support for her larger conclusion that “the element that coordinates mathematical structures with phenomena must be part of the scientific theory, not something added from outside” (ibid. 689). But that must wait for another occasion.

  2. Horsten submits that Putnam and Kripke sketched “how we, in our social and linguistic practice, fix the reference of certain terms…without wheeling in metaphysical machinery.” Perhaps so, and perhaps the ‘social theory of reference’ can stand on its own feet. But we can’t be seeing entirely eye to eye about this, because of the disagreement about the possibility of a purely empiricist structuralism.

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  1. Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, 94132, USA

    Bas C. van Fraassen

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  1. Bas C. van Fraassen
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van Fraassen, B.C. Reply to Belot, Elgin, and Horsten. Philos Stud 150, 461–472 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9549-5

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