So‐called nudge policies utilize insights from behavioral science to achieve policy outcomes. Nudge policies try to improve people's decisions by changing the ways options are presented to them, rather than changing the options themselves or incentivizing or coercing people. Nudging has been met with great enthusiasm but also fierce criticism. This paper provides an overview of the debate on the ethics of nudging to date. After outlining arguments in favor of nudging, we first discuss different objections that all revolve around (...) the worry that nudging vitiates personal autonomy. We split up this worry into different dimensions of autonomy, such as freedom of choice, volitional autonomy, rational agency, and freedom as nondomination. We next discuss worries that nudging is manipulative, violates human dignity, and prevents more important structural reform. Throughout, we will present responses that proponents of nudging can muster. On the whole, we conclude that the objections fail to establish that the nudge program as a whole should be rejected. At the same time, they give us important guidance when moving towards an ethical assessment of nudges on a case‐by‐case basis. Towards the end, we provide some possible ways forward in debates around the ethics of nudging. (shrink)

Andreas Stokke presents a comprehensive study of lying and insincere language use. He investigates how lying relates to other forms of insincerity and explores the kinds of attitudes that go with insincere uses of language. -/- Part I develops an account of insincerity as a linguistic phenomenon. Stokke provides a detailed theory of the distinction between lying and speaking insincerely, and accounts for the relationship between lying and deceiving. A novel framework of assertion underpins the analysis of various kinds (...) of insincere speech, including false implicature and forms of misleading with presuppositions, prosodic focus, and semantic incompleteness. -/- Part II sets out the relationship between what is communicated and the speaker's attitudes. Stokke develops the view of insincerity as a shallow phenomenon that is dependent on conscious attitudes rather than deeper motivations. The various of ways of speaking while being indifferent toward what one communicates are covered, and the phenomenon of 'bullshitting' is distinguished from lying and other forms of insincerity. Finally, an account of insincere uses of interrogative, imperative, and exclamative utterances is also given. (shrink)

The wishes of registered organ donors are regularly set aside when family members object to donation. This genuine overruling of the wishes of the deceased raises difficult ethical questions. A successful argument for providing the family with a veto must (a) provide reason to disregard the wishes of the dead, and (b) establish why the family should be allowed to decide. One branch of justification seeks to reconcile the family veto with important ideas about respecting property rights, preserving autonomy, and (...) preventing harm. These arguments are ultimately unsuccessful. Another branch of arguments is consequentialist, pointing out the negative consequences of removing the veto. Whether construed as concerning family distress or as a potential drop in the organs available, these arguments are unsuccessful; the first fails to recognize the tremendous distress associated with waiting for an organ, while the second has little supporting evidence. A final section considers and rejects whether combining some of the arguments just examined could justify the family veto. We should thus remove the family veto in organ donation. (shrink)

Glauben und unser Begriff von ihm stehen seit wenigstens hundert Jahren mit im Zentrum der theoretischen Philosophie. Glauben im weitesten Sinn: jederlei Art des Fürwahrhaltens. Die Frage, was es ist und welchen Begriff wir davon haben, war und bleibt ein Thema insbesondere auch der Erkenntnistheorie, der Philosophie des Geistes und der Ontologie. Welche Auskünfte bietet die Philosophie heute darüber, was das Glauben ist? Wie gut sind sie? Inwieweit lassen sie sich aus dem Begriff begründen, den wir vom Glauben haben? Was (...) für ein Begriff ist das eigentlich? Können wir Wissen vom Glauben haben, wenigstens vom eigenen? Solchen Fragen geht dieser Essay nach, oft ohne definitive Antwort. Es ist eher der Versuch, erkennbar werden zu lassen, weshalb die Erwartung, es gebe solche Antworten, keinen guten philosophischen Grund hat. Und daß dies kein Grund ist, die Wirklichkeit des Glaubens in Frage zu ziehen. (shrink)

My paper consists of three chapters. The first chapter deals with the concept of Nietzsche’s usage of “immanence;” I will be tracing his usage of this term. My second point is a more general one. I would like to focus on the question as to whether it is possible for Nietzsche to have a strong concept of immanence, particularly when we recall that Nietzsche clearly formulates his strong opposition to all ideas of transcendence. Might any immanence at all be retained (...) here? The third chapter contains an in-depth examination of two sections of Beyond Good and Evil, Sections 3 and 6. I think we are able to note some important aspects in these passages as we seek to understand whether Nietzsche has any kind of idea or concept of immanence. (shrink)

The inapplicability of variations on theory reduction in the context of genetics and their irrelevance to ongoing research has led to an anti-reductionist consensus in philosophy of biology. One response to this situation is to focus on forms of reductive explanation that better correspond to actual scientific reasoning (e.g. part–whole relations). Working from this perspective, we explore three different aspects (intrinsicality, fundamentality, and temporality) that arise from distinct facets of reductive explanation: composition and causation. Concentrating on these aspects generates new (...) forms of reductive explanation and conditions for their success or failure in biology and other sciences. This analysis is illustrated using the case of protein folding in molecular biology, which demonstrates its applicability and relevance, as well as illuminating the complexity of reductive reasoning in a specific biological context. (shrink)

Cognitive science is experiencing a pragmatic turn away from the traditional representation-centered framework toward a view that focuses on understanding cognition as "enactive." This enactive view holds that cognition does not produce models of the world but rather subserves action as it is grounded in sensorimotor skills. In this volume, experts from cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, robotics, and philosophy of mind assess the foundations and implications of a novel action-oriented view of cognition. Their contributions and supporting experimental evidence show that (...) an enactive approach to cognitive science enables strong conceptual advances, and the chapters explore key concepts for this new model of cognition. The contributors discuss the implications of an enactive approach for cognitive development; action-oriented models of cognitive processing; action-oriented understandings of consciousness and experience; and the accompanying paradigm shifts in the fields of philosophy, brain science, robotics, and psychology. ContributorsMoshe Bar, Lawrence W. Barsalov, Olaf Blanke, Jeannette Bohg, Martin V. Butz, Peter F. Dominey, Andreas K. Engel, Judith M. Ford, Karl J. Friston, Chris D. Frith, Shaun Gallagher, Antonia Hamilton, Tobias Heed, Cecilia Heyes, Elisabeth Hill, Matej Hoffmann, Jakob Hohwy, Bernhard Hommel, Atsushi Iriki, Pierre Jacob, Henrik Jörntell, Jürgen Jost, James Kilner, Günther Knoblich, Peter König, Danica Kragic, Miriam Kyselo, Alexander Maye, Marek McGann, Richard Menary, Thomas Metzinger, Ezequiel Morsella, Saskia Nagel, Kevin J. O'Regan, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Giovanni Pezzulo, Tony J. Prescott, Wolfgang Prinz, Friedemann Pulvermüller, Robert Rupert, Marti Sanchez-Fibla, Andrew Schwartz, Anil K. Seth, Vicky Southgate, Antonella Tramacere, John K. Tsotsos, Paul F. M. J. Verschure, Gabriella Vigliocco, Gottfried Vosgerau. (shrink)

I explore the limits of corporate responsibility standards – for example Social Accountability 8000 (SA 8000), the Global Reporting Initiative, the Fair Labor Association workplace code – by looking at these initiatives through Derrida's aporias of justice as set out in 'Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority"'. Based on a discussion of SA 8000, I uncover the unavoidable aporias that are associated with the use of this standard. I contribute to the literature on corporate responsibility standards in general (...) and SA 8000 in particular by showing (a) that attempts to standardise corporate responsibility can only be successful insofar as we recognise that compliance with SA 8000's rules requires a 'fresh judgement' every time they are applied, (b) that SA 8000 should not be pushed down the supply chain as such coercion does not require a truly responsible decision by suppliers and eventually leads to moral mediocrity and (c) that the necessarily time-consuming reflections about the singular contexts within which SA 8000 is applied challenge the urgent need for implementing this standard. I discuss the implications of my analysis of SA 8000 for corporate responsibility standards in general. (shrink)

Many of our endeavors -- be it personal or communal, technological or artistic -- aim at eradicating all traces of dissatisfaction from our daily lives. They seek to cure us of our discontent in order to deliver us a fuller and flourishing existence. But what if ubiquitous pleasure and instant fulfilment make our lives worse, not better? What if discontent isn't an obstacle to the good life but one of its essential ingredients? In Propelled, Andreas Elpidorou makes a lively (...) case for the value of discontent and illustrates how boredom, frustration, and anticipation are good for us. Weaving together stories from sources as wide-ranging as classical literature, social and cognitive psychology, philosophy, art, and video games, Elpidorou shows that these psychological states aren't unpleasant accidents of our lives. Rather, they illuminate our desires and expectations, inform us when we find ourselves stuck in unpleasant and unfulfilling situations, and motivate us to furnish our lives with meaning, interest, and value. Boredom, frustration, and anticipation aren't obstacles to our goals--they are our guides, propelling us into lives that are truly our own. (shrink)

This article explores how neutralisation can explain people's lack of commitment to buying Fair Trade products, even when they identify FT as an ethical concern. It examines the theoretical tenets of neutralisation theory and critically assesses its applicability to the purchase of FT products. Exploratory research provides illustrative examples of neutralisation techniques being used in the FT consumer context. A conceptual framework and research propositions delineate the role of neutralisation in explaining the attitude-behaviour discrepancies evident in relation to consumers' FT (...) purchase behaviour, providing direction for further research that will generate new knowledge of consumers' FT purchase behaviour and other aspects of ethical consumer behaviour. (shrink)

You were one of the noblest, the most genuine people, who have ever walked this earth. And though both friend and foe know this, I don't think it unwarranted to verbally bear witness to it before your grave. For we know the world, we know Spinoza's fate. For the world could lay shadows around Nietzsche's memory as well. And therefore I conclude with the words: Peace to your ashes! Holy be thy name to all those to come!1The only historical person (...) Peter Gast puts in relation to his much-revered master in these closing words of the funeral oration he delivered in front of Friedrich Nietzsche's open grave in Röcken on August 28, 1900, is Baruch de Spinoza.2 His intentions are clear: Nietzsche is to avoid the fate of .. (shrink)

Research collaboration promises a useful approach to bridging the gap between research and practice and thus promoting evidence-informed education. This study examines whether information on research collaboration can influence the reception of research knowledge. We assume that the composition of experts from the field and scientists in a research team sends out signals that influence trust in as well as the relevance and applicability of the finding. In a survey experiment with practitioners from the field of adult education the influence (...) of different research team compositions around an identical finding is tested. The results show overall high trust, relevance and applicability ratings with regard to the finding, regardless of the composition of the research team. We discuss the potential importance of additional information about research collaborations for effective knowledge translation and point out the need for more empirical research. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of the realist view that fictional characters exist. It argues for an instance of abstract realist views, according to which fictional characters are roles, constituted by sets of properties. It is argued that fictional names denote individual concepts, functions from worlds to individuals. It is shown that a dynamic framework for understanding the evolution of discourse information can be used to understand how roles are created and develop along with story content. Taking fictional names to (...) denote individual concepts provides accounts of a number of uses of fictional names. These include non-fictional uses, fictional uses, metafictional uses, interfictional uses, counterfictional uses, and negative existentials. It is argued that this account is not open to objections that have been raised in the literature. (shrink)

Memory of historical trauma has a unique power to generate works of art. This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York—three late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas. Berlin experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the city’s reemergence as the German capital; Buenos Aires lived through the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s and their legacy of state terror and disappearances; and New (...) York City faces a set of public memory issues concerning the symbolic value of Times Square as threatened public space and the daunting task of commemorating and rebuilding after the attack on the World Trade Center. Focusing on the issue of monumentalization in divergent artistic and media practices, the book demonstrates that the transformation of spatial and temporal experience by memory politics is a major cultural effect of globalization. (shrink)

People usually regard algorithms as more abstract than the programs that implement them. The natural way to formalize this idea is that algorithms are equivalence classes of programs with respect to a suitable equivalence relation. We argue that no such equivalence relation exists.

Whether meaning is compositional has been a major issue in linguistics and formal philosophy of language for the last 2 decades. Semantic holism is widely and plausibly considered as an objection to the principle of semantic compositionality therein. It comes as a surprise that the holistic peculiarities of scientific language have been rarely addressed in formal accounts so far, given that semantic holism has its roots in the philosophy of science. For this reason, a model-theoretic approach to semantic holism in (...) the language of science is presented here. This approach preserves compositionality to a large extent. *Received September 2009; revised February 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Seminar for Philosophy, Logic, and Theory of Science, Hauspostfach 49, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich 80539, Germany; e-mail: holger.andreas@lrz.uni-muenchen.de. (shrink)

I will argue firstly that law-statements should be understood as attributing dispositional properties. Second, the dispositions I am talking about should not be conceived as causes of their manifestations but rather as contributors to the behavior of compound systems. And finally I will defend the claim that dispositional properties cannot be reduced in any straightforward sense to non-dispositional (categorical) properties and that they need no categorical bases in the first place.

This paper argues for an account of fictional force, the central characteristic of the kind of non-assertoric speech act that authors of fictions are engaged in. A distinction is drawn between what is true in a fiction and the _fictional record_ comprising what the audience has been told. The papers argues that to utter a sentence with fictional force is to intend that its content be added to a fictional record. It is shown that this view accounts for phenomena such (...) as conversational implicatures in fictional discourse. Moreover, the view is seen to provide an attractive way of distinguishing fictional utterances from assertoric utterances. As a consequence, this account of fictional force offers a satisfactory way of distinguishing fiction from lying. (shrink)

The United Nations Global Compact – which is a Global Public Policy Network advocating 10 universal principles in the areas of human rights, labor standards, environmental protection, and anticorruption – has turned into the world's largest corporate responsibility initiative. Although the Global Compact is often characterized as a promising way to address global governance gaps, it remains largely unclear why this is the case. To address this problem, we discuss to what extent the initiative represents an institutional solution to exercise (...) global governance. We suggest that new governance modes, which have arisen in the context of globalization, often adopt a multiactor, multilevel, and network-based approach. We then analyze how far the Global Compact's institutional design reflects this multiactor, multilevel, and network-based steering mode. Drawing on this discussion, we offer suggestions regarding how the initiative can be further developed. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate whether the intuitions that make connexive logics seem plausible might lie in pragmatic phenomena, rather than the semantics of conditional statements. I conclude that pragmatics indeed underwrites these intuitions, at least for indicative statements. Whether this has any effect on logic choice, however, heavily depends on one’s semantic theory of conditionals and on how one chooses to logically treat pragmatic failures.

We prove some restrictions on the possible cofinalities of ultrapowers of the natural numbers with respect to ultrafilters on the natural numbers. The restrictions involve three cardinal characteristics of the continuum, the splitting number s, the unsplitting number r, and the groupwise density number g. We also prove some related results for reduced powers with respect to filters other than ultrafilters.

In this paper we re-assess the philosophical foundation of Exactly True Logic ($$\mathcal {ET\!L}$$ ET L ), a competing variant of First Degree Entailment ($$\mathcal {FDE}$$ FDE ). In order to do this, we first rebut an argument against it. As the argument appears in an interview with Nuel Belnap himself, one of the fathers of $$\mathcal {FDE}$$ FDE, we believe its provenance to be such that it needs to be taken seriously. We submit, however, that the argument ultimately fails, (...) and that $$\mathcal {ET\!L}$$ ET L cannot easily be dismissed. We then proceed to give an overview of the research that was inspired by this logic over the last decade, thus providing further motivation for the study of $$\mathcal {ET\!L}$$ ET L and, more generally, of $$\mathcal {FDE}$$ FDE -related logics that result from semantical analyses alternative to Belnap’s canonical one. We focus, in particular, on philosophical questions that these developments raise. (shrink)

We prove several theorems about the cardinal $\mathfrak{g}$ associated with groupwise density. With respect to a natural ordering of families of nond-ecreasing maps fromω toω, all families of size $< \mathfrak{g}$ are below all unbounded families. With respect to a natural ordering of filters onω, all filters generated by $< \mathfrak{g}$ sets are below all non-feeble filters. If $\mathfrak{u}< \mathfrak{g}$ then $\mathfrak{b}< \mathfrak{u}$ and $\mathfrak{g} = \mathfrak{d} = \mathfrak{c}$ . (The definitions of these cardinals are recalled in the introduction.) Finally, (...) some consequences deduced from $\mathfrak{u}< \mathfrak{g}$ by Laflamme are shown to be equivalent to $\mathfrak{u}< \mathfrak{g}$. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay suggests that we should understand the varieties of “popular science” as part of a larger phenomenon: the changing set of processes, practices, and actors that generate and transform public knowledge across time, space, and cultures. With such a reconceptualization we can both de‐essentialize and historicize the idea of “popularization,” free it from normative notions, and move beyond existing imbalances in scholarship. The history of public knowledge might thus find a central place in many fundamental narratives of the (...) modern world. More specifically, the essay proposes that we pay more attention to forms of knowledge outside the realm of “science,” embrace the richness, traffic, and transfer of public knowledge on a transnational scale as well as in comparative perspective, and rethink conventional forms of periodization. (shrink)

It helps ordinary citizens evaluate their options and their responsibility for global institutional factors, and it challenges social scientists to address the causes of poverty and hunger that act across borders.The present volume ...

This paper presents an information-based logic that is applied to the analysis of entailment, implicature and presupposition in natural language. The logic is very fine-grained and is able to make distinctions that are outside the scope of classical logic. It is independently motivated by certain properties of natural human reasoning, namely partiality, paraconsistency, relevance, and defeasibility: once these are accounted for, the data on implicature and presupposition comes quite naturally.The logic is based on the family of semantic spaces known as (...) bilattices, originally proposed by Ginsberg (1988), and used extensively by Fitting (1989, 1992). Specifically, the logic is based on a subset of bilattices that I call evidential bilattices, constructed as the Cartesian product of certain algebras with themselves. The specific details of the epistemic agent approach of the logical system is derived from the work of Belnap (1975, 1977), augmented by the use of evidential links for inferencing. An important property of the system is that it has been implemented using an extension of Fitting's work on bilattice logic programming (1989, 1991) to build a model-based inference engine for the augmented Belnap logic. This theorem prover is very efficient for a reasonably wide range of inferences. (shrink)

A number of multinational enterprises have come under ethical scrutiny over the recent decades. In some cases, this may be due to a lack of maturity of corporate moral reasoning. The article is based on a framework developed by Lawrence Kohlberg. He suggested three main stages of moral development: They are (1) pre-conventional moral reasoning, (2) conventional and (3) post-conventional moral reasoning. The article places different approaches to business ethics into the framework developed by Kohlberg. It is argued that the (...) first two stages form an insufficient basis for ethical guidance for multinational organizations. Five post-conventional ethical perspectives are presented to assist MNC's in their analysis in order to uncover the possible dilemmas, to avoid harming others and also to avoid costly embarrassment at the hands of critics. (shrink)

This paper is intended to give for a general mathematical audience a survey of intriguing connections between analytic combinatorics and logic. We define the ordinals below ε0 in non-logical terms and we survey a selection of recent results about the analytic combinatorics of these ordinals. Using a versatile and flexible compression technique we give applications to phase transitions for independence results, Hilbert’s basis theorem, local number theory, Ramsey theory, Hydra games, and Goodstein sequences. We discuss briefly universality and renormalization issues (...) in this context. Finally, we indicate how regularity properties of ordinal count functions can be used to prove logical limit laws. (shrink)

The magnitude of public concerns about agricultural innovations has often been underestimated, as past examples, such as pesticides, nanotechnology, and cloning, demonstrate. Indeed, studies have proven that the agricultural sector presents an area of tension and often attracts skepticism concerning new technologies. Digital technologies have become increasingly popular in agriculture. Yet there are almost no investigations on the public acceptance of digitalization in agriculture so far. Our online survey provides initial insights to reduce this knowledge gap. The sample represents the (...) German population in terms of gender, age, education and size of place of residence. Results showed that if the potential of digital farming technologies regarding animal welfare and environmental protection was described, respondents reacted positively. Thus, the general attitudes of respondents toward the benefits of DFT were mostly positive. The approval to increasing adoption rates of particular DFT by providing subsidies was also high. Linear regression models showed that the dominant positive influences on respondents’ attitudes toward the benefits of DFT were a generally positive attitude toward farming and a strong trust in farmers in Germany. Confronting respondents with pictures showing DFT resulted in many spontaneous negative associations and general criticism of agricultural production. The latter holds true for DFT in animal husbandry in particular. However, as agriculture as a whole is criticized by many groups in Germany, it is unlikely that benefits from digitalization will significantly increase the public acceptance of agriculture as a whole. (shrink)

For α less than ε0 let $N\alpha$ be the number of occurrences of ω in the Cantor normal form of α. Further let $\mid n \mid$ denote the binary length of a natural number n, let $\mid n\mid_h$ denote the h-times iterated binary length of n and let inv(n) be the least h such that $\mid n\mid_h \leq 2$ . We show that for any natural number h first order Peano arithmetic, PA, does not prove the following sentence: For all (...) K there exists an M which bounds the lengths n of all strictly descending sequences $\langle \alpha_0, ..., \alpha_n\rangle$ of ordinals less than ε0 which satisfy the condition that the Norm $N\alpha_i$ of the i-th term αi is bounded by $K + \mid i \mid \cdot \mid i\mid_h$ . As a supplement to this (refined Friedman style) independence result we further show that e.g., primitive recursive arithmetic, PRA, proves that for all K there is an M which bounds the length n of any strictly descending sequence $\langle \alpha_0,..., \alpha_n\rangle$ of ordinals less than ε0 which satisfies the condition that the Norm $N\alpha_i$ of the i-th term αi is bounded by $K + \mid i \mid\cdot inv(i)$ . The proofs are based on results from proof theory and techniques from asymptotic analysis of Polya-style enumerations. Using results from Otter and from Matou $\breve$ ek and Loebl we obtain similar characterizations for finite bad sequences of finite trees in terms of Otter's tree constant 2.9557652856... (shrink)

A common objection to the precautionary principle is that it is irrational. I argue that this objection goes beyond the often-discussed claim that the principle is incoherent. Instead, I argue, exp...

In this paper I take a look at what I take to be the best argument for dispositions. According to this argument we need dispositions in order to understand certain features of scientific practice. I point out that these dispositions have to be continuously manifestable. Furthermore I will argue that dispositions are not the causes of their manifestations. However, dispositions and causation are closely connected. What it is to be a cause can best be understood in terms of counterfactuals that (...) are based on dispositions. (shrink)

Animals depleting one patch of resources must decide when to leave and switch to a fresh patch. Foraging theory has predicted various decision mechanisms; which is best depends on environmental variation in patch quality. Previously we tested whether these mechanisms underlie human decision making when foraging for external resources; here we test whether humans behave similarly in a cognitive task seeking internally generated solutions. Subjects searched for meaningful words made from random letter sequences, and as their success rate declined, they (...) could opt to switch to a fresh sequence. As in the external foraging context, time since the previous success and the interval preceding it had a major influence on when subjects switched. Subjects also used the commonness of sequence letters as a proximal cue to patch quality that influenced when to switch. Contrary to optimality predictions, switching decisions were independent of whether sequences differed little or widely in quality. (shrink)

What has the dispositional analysis of properties and laws (e.g. Molnar, Powers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003; Mumford, Laws in nature, Routledge London, 2004; Bird, Nature’s metaphysics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007) to offer to the scientific understanding of physical properties?—The article provides an answer to this question for the case of spacetime points and their metrical properties in General Relativity. The analysis shows that metrical properties are not ‘powers’, i.e. they cannot be understood as producing the effects of spacetime on (...) matter with metaphysical necessity. Instead they possess categorical characteristics which, in connection with specific laws, explain those effects. Thus, the properties of spacetime do not favor the metaphysics of powers with respect to properties and laws. (shrink)

Historically, one of the most controversial aspects of Darwinian evolution has been the prominent role that randomness and random change play in it. Most biologists agree that mutations in DNA have random effects on fitness. However, fitness is a highly simplified scalar representation of an enormously complex phenotype. Challenges to Darwinian thinking have focused on such complex phenotypes. Whether mutations affect such complex phenotypes randomly is ill understood. Here I discuss three very different classes of well-studied molecular phenotypes in which (...) mutations cause nonrandom changes, based on our current knowledge. What is more, this nonrandomness facilitates evolutionary adaptation. Thus, living beings may translate DNA change into nonrandom phenotypic change that facilitates Darwinian evolution. (shrink)

In this paper, a new account of empirical claims in structuralism is developed. Its novelty derives from the use that is made of the linguistic approach to scientific theories despite the presumed incompatibility of structuralism with that approach. It is shown how the linguistic approach can be applied to the framework of structuralism if the semantic foundations of that approach are refined to do justice to the doctrine of indirect interpretation of theoretical terms. This doctrine goes back to Carnap but (...) has been advanced until the present day without a proper semantic explanation. (shrink)