Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Philosophy

Advisor

Graham Priest

Committee Members

Melvin Fitting

Anandi Hattiangadi

Muhammad Ali Khalidi

Subject Categories

Epistemology | Logic and Foundations | Logic and Foundations of Mathematics | Metaphysics | Philosophy of Language | Philosophy of Science

Keywords

model theory, model-theoretic arguments, Willard Van Orman Quine, Hilary Putnam, metasemantics, realism and anti-realism

Abstract

This dissertation is on model-theoretic arguments in philosophy, especially those of Quine, Davidson, and Putnam. In the first part, to ground the debate, I give a rigorous introduction to the salient parts of first-order model theory. I start the second part by giving an introduction to Quine's philosophy, and how the model-theoretic arguments fit into it. After considering how Donald Davidson adopted the Quinean lesson, I move on to Putnam's model-theoretic arguments. Putnam's spin on these model-theoretic considerations significantly departs from Quine and Davidson, while retaining many of the core ideas. Most importantly, I argue that the target of Putnam's arguments has largely been misunderstood in the literature by many philosophers. In particular, I argue that by 'metaphysical realist', Putnam essentially means someone who subscribes to epistemic structural realism (ESR), the view that of the external (alternatively, unobservable) world, we can only know its structure, by way of the model-theoretic semantics for our best theory of the world. Then, in the third part, I argue that contrary to contemporary philosophical orthodoxy, Putnam's arguments are not failed arguments against a generic sort of realism, but successful arguments against epistemic structural realism. In particular, I will consider the objections of Lewis and Devitt to Putnam's arguments that many philosophers took to be decisive in the debate. I will argue that if we understand Putnam's arguments as arguments against ESR, these objections are unsuccessful, and Putnam's challenge stands.

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