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Structural realism and Davidson

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Abstract

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.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

    Jack Ritchie

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  1. Jack Ritchie
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Correspondence to Jack Ritchie.

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Ritchie, J. Structural realism and Davidson. Synthese 162, 85–100 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9171-z

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