Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts
Major
Philosophy
Date of Defense
4-12-2024
Graduate Advisor
Gualtiero Piccinini
Committee
Jon McGinnis
Waldemar Rohloff
Abstract
One of the main goals of philosophy of science is to give a proper account of scientific theories and their structure. One way that accounts of the structure of scientific theories can be distinguished is by the mathematical or logical structures that they involve. For instance, syntactic accounts of scientific theories hold that theories are axioms in a logical framework, whereas semantic accounts are more liberal in the range of mathematical and logical structures they take as pertinent to the structure of scientific theories. Paul Thagard (1988) offers a computational account of scientific theories, which holds that theories are complex data structures and procedures. Thagard also argues that syntactic and computational accounts are distinct, partly due to differences in the efficiency of the relevant scientific procedures employing each formalism and the usefulness of accounts of the structure of scientific theories in other debates in philosophy of science, e.g., scientific explanation. In this paper, I characterize the notion of efficiency of scientific procedures more precisely and challenge Thagard’s distinction between computational and syntactic accounts of scientific theories based on efficiency. Using tools from theoretical computer science, I sketch some reasons why the distinction may not be as sharp as Thagard suggests. Ultimately, I suggest that we understand the computational account of scientific theories as a kind of syntactic account. I then show how such an understanding of the computational account of scientific theories fits into contemporary literature on logic and philosophy of science.
Recommended Citation
Luft, Timothy, "Towards Erasing the Distinction Between the Computational and Syntactic Accounts of Scientific Theories" (2024). Theses. 458.
https://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/458
Included in
Logic and Foundations Commons, Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Commons, Philosophy of Science Commons, Theory and Algorithms Commons