Comments on the notion ‘empirical claim of a specialization theory net’ within the structuralist conception of theories

✍ Scribed by Henk Zandvoort

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 629 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1876-2514
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00179242

✦ Synopsis

HENK ZANDVOORT COMMENTS ON THE NOTION 'EMPIRICAL CLAIM OF A SPECIALIZATION THEORY NET' WITHIN THE STRUC-TURALIST CONCEPTION OF THEORIES

In Balzer and Sneed (1977/78) there is presented a conceptual framework, that is intended as an adequate tool for analyzing empirical theories and their relations. The ideas underlying this framework, which were developed earlier in Sneed (1971), have become known as the structuralist conception of theories. As a part of this framework, Balzer and Sneed formulate three different explications of the notion 'empirical claim of atr theory net'. The first of these starts with the notion 'empirical claim of a theory element', and comes down to considering as the claim of a a theory net the conjunction of the claims of the theory elements contained in the net. The second and the third notion of the claim of a net are subsequently weaker than the first, which we shall label (A).

The aim of the present note is to show that: 1. Since (A) is, in an essential way, too liberal in the expansions of the intended applications it allows, this claim form cannot be used in general for depicting claims made with theory nets as they are understood by Balzer and Sneed. Further, since the two other proposals considered by Balzer and Sneed are both weaker than (A)~ the same can be said of these. We shall suggest a new claim form, that we label (B), that does fulfill the intuitive desideratum (A) lacks to capture. The point has been considered earlier by Sneed (1971). In this book he dismissed a claim form that he labeled (3), and that is equivalent to a special case of (A), and consequently adopted a claim form labeled (4), that is equivalent to a special case of our (B), for essentially the same reason as we shall give below. The reason that we find it important to reconsider this issue is, that this criticism formulated in Sneed (1971) is entirely neglected in Balzer and Sneed (1977/8) by proposing (A) as the adequate claim form without any further consideration. The same holds for the exposition of the structuralist approach given in Stegrntiller (1979). In this book the claim form (A) is recommended as the adequate form, or, at some places, even a still weaker one; 2. However, notwithstanding the inadequacy of