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A Note on Semantic Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Carl G. Hempel
Carl G. Hempel*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Professor Feigl's admirably lucid and concise appraisal of the major considerations which are still significant in the controversy between realism and phenomenalism includes the important reminder that the problem at hand should be viewed as concerning, not the truth or falsity of two conflicting hypotheses, but rather the comparative adequacy of two alternative proposals for the rational reconstruction of scientific knowledge. Feigl advocates the approach of semantic realism in preference to a phenomenalistic type of reconstruction on the grounds that in his critical examination, the latter has been “found wanting,” whereas semantic realism—and only semantic realism—can provide a satisfactory systematic account of the meaning and the experiential foundation of scientific hypotheses. While I fully agree with Feigl's general appraisal of the issues involved, I have doubts as to the superiority of the proposed realistic interpretation, and I should like to state these here in outline.

Type
Symposium on “Existential Hypotheses”
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 1950 , pp. 169 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1950

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References

1 The conception of a type A law as equivalent with the classes of all its instances has to be taken with a grain of salt, however; for none of the language systems available for scientific use provides a name for every object in the universe, so that is is impossible actually to formulate all the evidence sentences asserted by any one given type A law.—On this point, cf. also Part III of: W. Sellars, “Realism and the new way of words,” Philos. and Phenom. Res. 8 (1948) (Also reprinted in H. Feigl and W. Sellars, Readings in Analytic Philosophy, New York, 1949.)

2 For a detailed analysis, see R. Carnap “Testability and meaning,” Philos. of Science 3 and 4 (1936 and 1937), §§24-26, and C. G. Hempel, “Studies in the logic of confirmation,” Mind, n.s. 54 (1945).

3 A general characterization of this concept may be found in R. Carnap, “The two concepts of probability,” Philos. and Phenom. Res. 5 (1945). (Also reprinted in H. Feigl and W. Sellars, Readings in Analytic Philosophy, New York, 1949.)