ABSTRACT

Theoretical terms are terms that (purportedly) refer to unobservable things and therefore have no direct connection to experience. We discuss different approaches to understanding the meaning and reference of such terms. We start with a discussion of verificationism, the doctrine that meaning is the method of verification, and the analytic-synthetic distinction on which the doctrine is based. The Received View sees theoretical terms as being connected to observation terms by correspondence rules and verificationism suggests that correspondence rules take the form of explicit definitions. This view faces problems and a number of alternatives have been suggested: reduction sentences, which offer implicit definitions of theoretical terms, interpretative systems, meaning from models, eliminativism through either Craig’s theorem or the Ramsey Sentence, the so-called Carnap sentence, the Hilbert ε-operator, and definite descriptions. An alternative consists in renouncing empiricist commitments and reverting to a realist analysis of theoretical terms, for instance through adopting the causal-historical theory of reference.