Ramsey sentences, structural realism and trivial realization [An article from: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science]

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Description:
Several recent authors identify structural realism about scientific theories with the claim that the content of a scientific theory is expressible using its Ramsey sentence. Many of these authors have also argued that so understood, the view collapses into empiricist anti-realism, since an argument originally proposed by Max Newman in a review of Bertrand Russell's The analysis of matter demonstrates that Ramsey sentences are trivially satisfied, and cannot make any significant claims about unobservables. In this paper I argue against both of these claims. Structural realism and Ramsey sentence realism are, in their most defensible versions, importantly different doctrines, and neither is committed to the premises required to demonstrate that they collapse into anti-realism.