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Semantic realism, the semantic component of scientific realism, is the view that scientific theories are true or false in virtue of their correspondence to the world. It is often uncritically assumed today, and philosophers of science rarely consider that philosophy of language is important for the epistemology of science. There are two main reasons for this: the rise of the semantic conception of theories, with its focus on structures rather than statements, and Kripke and Putnam's arguments against reductionist theories of meaning, that, according to some, have settled the issue in favor of semantic realism. I argue against these two reasons. I argue that an important area of philosophy of language, pragmatics, has been neglected by philosophers of science and that it supports a viable alternative to semantic realism. Finally, I attempt to show how pragmatics could apply to scientific representation and throw light on the nature of theories and their relation to the world.
