ABSTRACT
Hilary Putnam, in the course of his discussions of realism in logic and mathematics, advanced several arguments for scientifi c realism as well. In Philosophy of Logic he concentrates largely on indispensability arguments – concepts of mathematical entities are indispensable to non-elementary mathematics, theoretical concepts are indispensable to physics. 25 Then he confronts the philosophical position of Fictionalism, which he gleans from the writings of Vaihinger and Duhem:
(T)he fi ctionalist says, in substance, ‘Yes, certain concepts . . . are indispensable, but no, that has no tendency to show that entities corresponding to those concepts actually exist. It only shows that those ‘entities’ are useful fi ctions ’. 26
Glossed in terms of theories: even if certain kinds of theories are indispensable for the advance of science, that does not show that those theories are true in toto , as well as empirically correct.
