Abstract

A holistic account of the meaning of theoretical terms leads scientific realism into serious troubles. Alternative methods of reference fixing are needed by a realist who wishes to show how reference invariance is possible in spite of meaning variance. This paper argues that the similarity theory of truthlikeness and approximate truth, developed by logicians since the mid 1970s, helps to make precise the idea of charitable theoretical reference. Comparisons to the recent proposals by Kitcher and Psillos are given. This argument helps to undermine the scepticist meta-induction about theories, and thereby to reevaluate Laudan's alleged confutation of scientific realism