tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4987609114415205593.post9215218931841504955..comments2024-03-28T13:40:26.497+00:00Comments on M-Phi: Theoretical Terms in Mathematical PhysicsJeffrey Ketlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753975411670884721noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4987609114415205593.post-55738894284490557992013-04-20T15:00:48.344+01:002013-04-20T15:00:48.344+01:00It's a long story, and I've another drafte...It's a long story, and I've another drafted post on this, called "Lewisian Definitions". But here goes: roughly, once phenomenalistic reductionism via explicit definitions (i.e., the first dogma of "Two Dogmas") is abandoned, a plausibly empiricist metasemantics will instead invoke implicit definition (via conceptual roles and/or inferential roles), with no external (non-epistemically accessible) constraints on interpretations. The problem now is that this faces,<br /><br />- indeterminacy problems of the Quine-Putnam sort, <br />- trivialization problems of the Newman sort (in connection with theoretical content turning into mere cardinality content) <br />- trivialization problems of the Miller sort (in connection with approximate truth becoming highly language-dependent). <br /><br />To avoid these problems, one has to go Lewisian, and to invoke naturalness and natural similarities, which needn't themselves be grasped or understood at all. (One might go even further along the realist route, and invoke Platonic grasping of abstract properties and relations.)<br /><br />In metasemantics, I'm arguing that the main choices are between: <br /><br />(a) denying naturalness of properties and relations any role in metasemantics and accounting for grasp of meaning in broadly empiricist terms (roughly, experience plus implicit definition via conceptual/inferential role); <br /><br />(b) accepting within metasemantics some further assumptions about external (i.e., nothing to do with our minds) naturalness structure, which then cuts down admissible interpretations, and reduces the indeterminacies.<br /><br />At the end, I endorse (b), because the cost of (a) seems too much: it leaves too much semantic indeterminacy; it trivializes part of the content of scientific theories, as well as certain notions, like "approximate truth", that needed in scientific theory comparison.<br /><br />JeffJeffrey Ketlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01753975411670884721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4987609114415205593.post-66247679206728107802013-04-20T13:58:30.114+01:002013-04-20T13:58:30.114+01:00Why think that if we can't reduce notions of m...Why think that if we can't reduce notions of mathematical physics to sense data then we're going to have to use something like Lewisian naturalness in our metasemantics? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com