Comments on 'Theoretical Explanation and ontological commitments: a structuralist model' of C. Ulises Moulines

Abstract

In this comment on the work by Ulises Moulines I shall not refer to the interesting analysisof the ontological commitments that depends the treatment of the so-called «data models», nor shall I debate the general metaphysical principles proposed in his approach,adopting an experimentalist, instrumentalist, anti-realistic, positivist or empirical stance. Ishall focus on the last part of his article in which he elaborates on the links between WesleySalmon’s causalist approach and the structuralist analysis of explanation viewed as theoreticalsubsumption, as he relates it to the structural analysis of the theoretical terms inlight of a certain general shared understanding of the job of epistemology.