Darrell Rowbottom: Can ‘Meaningless’ Statements be Approximately True? On Relaxing the Semantic Component of Scientific Realism
First, I show that the semantic thesis of scientific realism may be relaxed significantly—to allow that some scientific discourse is not truth-valued—without making any concessions concerning the epistemic or methodological theses which lie at realism’s core. Second, I illustrate how relaxing the semantic thesis allows realists the flexibility to avoid commitment to the existence of abstract entities and potentially avoid some objections to the ‘no miracles’ argument from positions such as cognitive instrumentalism. Third, I argue that the semantic thesis of scientific realism should be relaxed, because it is possible for scientific statements to be partially true, and hence approximately true, without being false.
