Synthese (2010) 176:311–332

DOI 10.1007/s11229-009-9561-5

New account of empirical claims in structuralism

Holger Andreas

Received: 7 July 2007 / Accepted: 16 April 2009 / Published online: 19 June 2009
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract In this paper, a new account of empirical claims in structuralism is devel-

oped. Its novelty derives from the use that is made of the linguistic approach to scientific
theories despite the presumed incompatibility of structuralism with that approach. It
is shown how the linguistic approach can be applied to the framework of structuralism
if the semantic foundations of that approach are refined to do justice to the doctrine
of indirect interpretation of theoretical terms. This doctrine goes back to Carnap but
has been advanced until the present day without a proper semantic explanation.

Keywords Structuralist theory of science · Theoretical terms · Carnap · Sneed ·

Stegmüller

1 Introduction

Structuralist theory of science has evolved from an emendation of the Ramsey sen-
tence by Sneed in his seminal work The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics.
A few years after the first edition was published, Stegmüller made an attempt to can-
onize Sneed’s work by showing what merits it has compared to traditional attempts
at logical reconstruction of scientific theories. In particular, reasons were advanced
why the linguistic approach to scientific theories, in which a theory is represented as
a set of sentences, was deemed to fail in several respects. Stegmüller has even made
the claim that predicate logic itself is inappropriate as a means to attain logical recon-
structions of scientific theories. In the mature account of structuralism, expounded in
Balzer et al. (1987), the divergence from the linguistic approach to scientific theories
remains significant.

H. Andreas (B)
Seminar für Philosophie, Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie - LMU, München, Germany
e-mail: holger.andreas@lrz.uni-muenche

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In this paper, an account of empirical claims in structuralism is developed that uses

predicate logic in a manner rather akin to the linguistic approach in the philosophy of
science. In presenting such an account we do not, however, claim that the arguments
advanced by Sneed and Stegmüller against that approach are wrong. Rather, a slight
modification of the standard semantics of predicate logic is used through which the
opposition between structuralism and the linguistic approach can be removed to a sur-
prisingly high extent. By using such a modification, the present account differs from
another attempt at a syntactic analysis of a theory in structuralism, given by Scheibe
(1982).1 A major intent of the present paper is to deepen the semantic understanding
of scientific theories. At another place it will be shown how a stronger orientation
towards the linguistic approach helps to extend the expressive resources of the struc-
turalist framework.

2 The structuralist framework

In this section, we attempt to explain the basic notions of structuralism. Although

every notion being relevant to what follows is considered, the section cannot replace
an introduction to structuralism. For this, the reader may be referred to a brief sum-
mary of the mature account of structuralism, as given in Moulines (1996); Balzer and
Moulines (2000).

2.1 Theory-elements

The distinction between theoretical and observational terms is essential to traditional

accounts in philosophy of science. In structuralism, this distinction is not entirely re-
jected. Rather, it is modified such that we obtain a distinction being relativized to a par-
ticular theory T . Roughly, the idea is that a term t is theoretical with respect to a theory
T , or T -theoretical, if its meaning cannot be explained without reference to T . If the ref-
erence to a particular theory is clear from the context or inessential in the sense that what
is said applies to all theories, then it is nevertheless legitimate to speak of theoretical
and non-theoretical terms without making an explicit reference to a particular theory.
In the traditional, linguistic approach to scientific theories, the application of a
theory to the empirical world is modelled through correspondence rules, i.e. rules
of inference or axioms specifying conceptual relations between observational and
theoretical terms.2 As a consequence of this, it is assumed that it is single objects,

1 Scheibe (1982) exploits commonalities between Ludwig (1978) and Sneed (1979) to obtain a syntactic
version of a theory in the structuralist framework. He thereby questions the manner in which Stegmüller
(1976) thought it justified to draw a distinction between the statement view and the non-statement view of
scientific theories, where the statement view stands for the linguistic approach and the non-statement view
for the structuralist approach to scientific theories. The problem of theoretical terms, which serves as a
major objection to the linguistic approach and which will be dealt with here in Sect. 3, remains unaddressed
in Scheibe (1982).
2 A precise account of the linguistic approach is to be found, among others, in Carnap (1956, 1958); Tuomela
(1973); Ramsey (1950). Other labels commonly used to designate what we mean by the traditional, linguistic
approach to scientific theories are ‘received view’, ‘standard construal of scientific theories’, and ‘dual-level
conception’.

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