A significant feature of contemporary science is the widespread use of mathematics in several of its subfields. In many instances, the content of scientific theories cannot be formulated without reference to mathematical objects (such as functions, numbers, or sets). In the hands of W. V. Quine and Hilary Putnam, this feature of scientific practice was invoked in support of platonism (the view ...

Can a constructive empiricist make sense of scientific representation? Usually, a scientific model is an abstract entity (e.g., formulated in set theory), and scientific representation is conceptualized as an intentional relation between scientific models and certain aspects of the world. On this conception, since both the models and the representation relation are abstract, a constructive empi...

Hilary Putnam's argument against metaphysical realism (commonly referred to as the "model theoretic argument") has now enjoyed two decades of discussion. 1 The text is rich and contains variously construable arguments against variously construed philosophical positions. David Lewis isolated one argument and called it "Putnam's Paradox".2 That argument is clear and concise; so is the paradoxical...