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My current research project consists in developing a pragmatist conception of scientific theories that could compete with the now mainstream semantic conceptions of theories. I characterise a pragmatic conception in terms of the fact that it does not abstract away users and application contexts when analysing the content of theories. My methods to develop such a conception is by importing tools from the philosophy of language, notably hyperintensional notions of aboutness.

This blog is dedicated to make public my advances in the project: first this will be mostly reading notes with comments, and then perhaps more substantial reflections.

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Review of "There Are No Such Things As Theories", by Steven French

In “There Are No Such Things As Theories”, Steven French defends that there are no such things as theories. This well-named book provides a careful review of a wide range of issues, ranging from the philosophy of science (the syntactic and semantic conceptions of scientific theories, fictionalism about scientific representation, theoretical equivalence, science in practice) to the philosophy of art, with a particular focus on the metaphysics of abstract objects, including fictions and works of art, and, of course, theories, so as to arrive at its provocative conclusion, which is roughly the following: scientific theories don’t really exist, but we can still make sense of ordinary discourse about scientific theories. I wasn’t convinced by this conclusion in the end, but I think that this is because I approach things very differently at the meta-philosophical level, and I am not particularly moved by metaphysical considerations in general (the ones signalled by the “really” emphasised...
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Reflections (1): on the practical equivalence between semantic and syntactic conceptions of theories

Having reviewed the work of the most influential authors on the syntactic and semantic views of theories (and having read a bunch of articles that I won’t review here), I guess it’s about time to give my own reflections on this debate. So, what is it all about? Are theories statements about the world, or are they families of models? Or something else entirely? As my draft was becoming very long, I decided to cut these reflections into several parts. Today, I will argue that there are no differences of grain in the way the two views can individuate theories, so that the difference must lie somewhere else: in the way theories are interpreted. Tomorrow, I will examine and debunk an idea: that the semantic view is about there being various more or less abstract levels of representation in science, with models playing an intermediary role between statements and phenomena: this cannot be the claim. The day after I will examine a better idea: that it's all about representation in s...
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(non-)Review of Models as Mediators

Models as Mediators, edited by Mary Morgan and Margaret Morrison (so many Ms!), is a collective book from 1999 that has now become kind of a classic for whoever is interested in modelling activities in science. It played an important role in impulsing a trend in philosophy of science that consists in focusing more on modelling activities, considered scientifically important for their own sake, and less on the content of abstract theories (a trend that arguably started earlier, in particular with Nancy Cartwright’s work, who contributed to the book, and also perhaps even earlier with Mary Hesse, cited in the introduction). This book is somehow relevant for my project of discussing how a pragmatic conception of theories could fare better than a semantic conception, because, as we will see, it opposes, or at least attempts to supersede the semantic conception of theories in some respects. However, it is also partly irrelevant to my project, because my main focus is still on abstract ...
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