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Models and fiction

Synthese 172 (2):251-268 (2010)

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  1. Technische Fiktionen: Zur Ontologie und Ethik der Gestaltung.Michael Kuhn - 2023 - transcript Verlag.
    Unentwegt werden neue technische Produkte gestaltet. Doch was macht die technische Gestaltung aus? Wie lässt sich ihr Gegenstand - (noch) nicht existierende Artefakte - adäquat auf den Begriff bringen? Michael Kuhn begreift technische Ideen vor ihrer Realisierung als Fiktionen. Er bietet eine fiktionstheoretische Rekonstruktion der Gestaltungstätigkeit und entwickelt hieraus eine Ethik der Gestaltung. Der stark interdisziplinäre Zugang zwischen Technikphilosophie und Ingenieurwissenschaften liefert neue Erkenntnisse für beide Fachrichtungen und stellt wertvolle Grundlagen bereit.
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  • 分析形而上学と経験科学の連続主義に対する批判的検討.Masahiro Takatori - 2023 - Kagaku Tetsugaku 56 (1):59.
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  • Deflationary realism: Representation and idealisation in cognitive science.Dimitri Coelho Mollo - 2021 - Mind and Language 37 (5):1048-1066.
    Debate on the nature of representation in cognitive systems tends to oscillate between robustly realist views and various anti‐realist options. I defend an alternative view, deflationary realism, which sees cognitive representation as an offshoot of the extended application to cognitive systems of an explanatory model whose primary domain is public representation use. This extended application, justified by a common explanatory target, embodies idealisations, partial mismatches between model and reality. By seeing representation as part of an idealised model, deflationary realism avoids (...)
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  • The Regulative Use of Transcendental Ideas in Kant: Metaphysics as Modelling.Kristina Engelhard - 2023 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 118 (2):175-194.
    La critique de la métaphysique dans la Dialectique transcendantale de la Critique de la raison pure débouche sur la doctrine de l’usage régulateur des idées transcendantales de la raison pure. La théorie de l’usage régulateur de ces idées est relativement abstraite et demande à être clarifiée. Kant affirme que ces idées ont un usage dans les sciences empiriques. Cependant il ne spécifie pas quel usage les sciences peuvent faire de ces idées. Dans cet article je compare les caractéristiques des idées (...)
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  • The philosophy of the metaverse.Melvin Chen - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (3):1-13.
    How might we philosophize about the metaverse? It is traditionally held that the four main branches of philosophy are metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic. In this article, I shall demonstrate how virtual walt-fictionalism, a particular version of virtual irrealism, is able to offer a straightforward, internally consistent, and powerful response about the metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology (ethics) of the metaverse. I will first characterize the metaverse in terms of a reality-virtuality (RV) continuum and distinguish between virtual realism and virtual irrealism, (...)
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  • Imitation in automata and robots: A philosophical case study on Kempelen.Lukas Geiszler - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 100 (C):22-31.
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  • Computer simulations and surrogative reasoning for the design of new robots.Viola Schiaffonati & Edoardo Datteri - 2023 - Synthese 202 (1):1-20.
    Computer simulations are widely used for surrogative reasoning in scientific research. They also play a crucial role in engineering, more specifically in the design of new robotic systems, yet the nature of this role has been little discussed so far in the philosophy of technology literature. The main claim made in this article is that the notion of surrogative reasoning is central to understanding how computer simulations can serve the purpose of designing new robots. More specifically, it is argued that (...)
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  • Introduction to the Synthese Topical Collection 'Modal Modeling in Science: Modal Epistemology meets Philosophy of Science’.Ylwa Sjölin Wirling & Till Grüne-Yanoff - 2023 - Synthese 201 (6):1-13.
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  • Representaciones como sistemas (2nd edition).Esteban Céspedes & Cecilia Valdivia - 2022 - Artefactos 11 (1).
    One of the problems that are often indicated as a criticism of different forms of representationalism is the difficulty to find definitions that are neither semantic nor realist in a simple sense. The present work tackles this class of critiques from a contextualist point of view, assuming those semantic aspects that are necessary for a concept of representation, but showing that semantic relations of representation should neither be static, nor referential in a classical and strictly realist sense. Two distinctions are (...)
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  • Regulative Idealization: A Kantian Approach to Idealized Models.Lorenzo Spagnesi - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 99 (C):1-9.
    Scientific models typically contain idealizations, or assumptions that are known not to be true. Philosophers have long questioned the nature of idealizations: Are they heuristic tools that will be abandoned? Or rather fictional representations of reality? And how can we reconcile them with realism about knowledge of nature? Immanuel Kant developed an account of scientific investigation that can inspire a new approach to the contemporary debate. Kant argued that scientific investigation is possible only if guided by ideal assumptions—what he calls (...)
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  • The Modal Basis of Scientific Modelling.Tuomas E. Tahko - 2023 - Synthese 201 (75):1-16.
    The practice of scientific modelling often resorts to hypothetical, false, idealised, targetless, partial, generalised, and other types of modelling that appear to have at least partially non-actual targets. In this paper, I will argue that we can avoid a commitment to non-actual targets by sketching a framework where models are understood as having networks of possibilities as their targets. This raises a further question: what are the truthmakers for the modal claims that we can derive from models? I propose that (...)
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  • God et al—World-Making as Collaborative Improvisation: New Metaphors for Open Theists.Mark Steen - 2022 - In K. J. Clark and J. Koperski (ed.), Abrahamic Reflections on Randomness and Providence. pp. 311-338.
    The Abrahamic traditions regard God as the world’s author. But what kind of author? A novelist? A playwright? Perhaps a composer of classical music? I will argue that it is best to regard God as like an improvisational play director or the leader of a jazz ensemble. Each determines the broad melodic contours or coarse-grained plot beforehand, while allowing their musicians or actors, and chance, to fill in the more fine-grained details. This analogy allows us to regard God as the (...)
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  • くりこみ群におけるミニマルモデルに基づく局所的創発.Kohei Morita - 2022 - Kagaku Tetsugaku 55 (1):1-23.
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  • What are general models about?Alkistis Elliott-Graves - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (4):1–26.
    Models provide scientists with knowledge about target systems. An important group of models are those that are called general. However, what exactly is meant by generality in this context is somewhat unclear. The aim of this paper is to draw out a distinction between two notions of generality that has implications for scientific practice. Some models are general in the sense that they apply to many systems in the world and have many particular targets. Another sense is captured by models (...)
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  • The Fictional Character of Scientific Models.Stacie Friend - 2019 - In Arnon Levy & Peter Godfrey-Smith (eds.), The Scientific Imagination. New York, US: Oup Usa. pp. 101-126.
    Many philosophers have drawn parallels between scientific models and fictions. In this paper I will be concerned with a recent version of the analogy, which compares models to the imagined characters of fictional literature. Though versions of the position differ, the shared idea is that modeling essentially involves imagining concrete systems analogously to the way that we imagine characters and events in response to works of fiction. Advocates of this view argue that imagining concrete systems plays an ineliminable role in (...)
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  • Sharpening the tools of imagination.Michael T. Stuart - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-22.
    Thought experiments, models, diagrams, computer simulations, and metaphors can all be understood as tools of the imagination. While these devices are usually treated separately in philosophy of science, this paper provides a unified account according to which tools of the imagination are epistemically good insofar as they improve scientific imaginings. Improving scientific imagining is characterized in terms of epistemological consequences: more improvement means better consequences. A distinction is then drawn between tools being good in retrospect, at the time, and in (...)
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  • Plumbing metaphysical explanatory depth.Nicholas Emmerson - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-22.
    Recent years have seen increasing interest in interventionist analyses of metaphysical explanation. One area where interventionism traditionally shines, is in providing an account of explanatory depth; the sense in which explanation comes in degrees. However, the literature on metaphysical explanation has left the notion of depth almost entirely unexplored. In this paper I shall attempt to rectify this oversight by motivating an interventionist analysis of metaphysical explanatory depth (MED), in terms of the range of interventions under which a metaphysically explanatory (...)
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  • Weberian ideal type construction as concept replacement.Raphael van Riel - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (4):1358-1377.
    This paper contains a novel and coherent reading of Weberian ideal type construction, based on recent philosophical approaches to conceptual engineering. This reading makes transparent the dialectics of Weber's approach, resulting in a more nuanced interpretation of his methodological work. It will become apparent that Weber, when introducing his notion of an ideal type, did not merely summarize his views on methodology in the social sciences, but, rather, presented a two-step argument in favor of these views. The reconstruction will directly (...)
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  • Understanding metaphorical understanding (literally).Michael T. Stuart & Daniel Wilkenfeld - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (3):1-20.
    Metaphors are found all throughout science: in published papers, working hypotheses, policy documents, lecture slides, grant proposals, and press releases. They serve different functions, but perhaps most striking is the way they enable understanding, of a theory, phenomenon, or idea. In this paper, we leverage recent advances on the nature of metaphor and the nature of understanding to explore how they accomplish this feat. We attempt to shift the focus away from the epistemic value of the content of metaphors, to (...)
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  • Imaginative Resistance in Science.Valentina Savojardo - 2024 - Foundations of Science 29 (2):459-477.
    The paper addresses the problem of imaginative resistance in science, that is, why and under what circumstances imagination sometimes resists certain scenarios. In the first part, the paper presents and discusses two accounts concerning the problem and relevant for the main thesis of this study. The first position is that of Gendler (Journal of Philosophy 97:55–81, 2000), (Gendler, in: Nichols (ed) The Architecture of the Imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility and fiction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006a), (Gendler & (...)
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  • A Complementary Account of Scientific Modelling: Modelling Mechanisms in Cancer Immunology.Martin Zach - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    According to a widely held view, scientific modelling consists in entertaining a set of model descriptions that specify a model. Rather than studying the phenomenon of interest directly, scientists investigate the phenomenon indirectly via a model in the hope of learning about some of the phenomenon’s features. I call this view the description-driven modelling (DDM) account. I argue that although an accurate description of much of scientific research, the DDM account is found wanting as regards the mechanistic modelling found in (...)
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  • Empirical techniques and the accuracy of scientific representations.Dana Matthiessen - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 94 (C):143-157.
    This paper proposes an account of accurate scientific representation in terms of techniques that produce data from a target phenomenon. I consider an approach to accurate representation that abstracts from such epistemic factors, justified by a thesis I call Ontic Priority. This holds that criteria for representational accuracy depend on a pre-established account of the nature of the relation between a model and its target phenomenon. I challenge Ontic Priority, drawing on the observation that many working scientists do not have (...)
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  • Mechanistic inquiry and scientific pursuit: The case of visual processing.Philipp Haueis & Lena Kästner - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 93 (C):123-135.
    Why is it rational for scientists to pursue multiple models of a phenomenon at the same time? The literatures on mechanistic inquiry and scientific pursuit each develop answers to a version of this question which is rarely discussed by the other. The mechanistic literature suggests that scientists pursue different complementary models because each model provides detailed insights into different aspects of the phenomenon under investigation. The pursuit literature suggests that scientists pursue competing models because alternative models promise to solve outstanding (...)
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  • El problema de la representación: ¿razonamientos subrogantes válidos o sólidos?Hernán Lucas Accorinti - 2022 - Critica 54 (160):57-81.
    En el presente trabajo intentaré poner de manifiesto las debilidades de los argumentos dados por Contessa para sustentar, como fuente del representar, a los razonamientos subrogantes válidos por sobre los sólidos. En primer lugar, analizo ciertas ventajas epistémicas del criterio sustentado sobre los RS sólidos, evidenciando, consecuentemente, los límites del criterio estipulado por Contessa. En segundo lugar, muestro que los argumentos utilizados por Contessa para descartar el criterio instituido en los RS sólidos son deficientes, ya que, en el mejor de (...)
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  • Models as signs of the imaginary: Peirce, Pierce, Langer, and the non-discursive sign.Joel West - 2022 - Semiotica 2022 (245):63-78.
    It is common for us to see models as exemplars of things that exist. Models, instead, are merely Peircean indexes, in that they only point to their objects, objects which may in themselves not exist. This is to say that these examples may only exist as thoughts that point to other thoughts or even ideas that point to objects that may not exist because they are paradoxical.
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  • Learning through the Scientific Imagination.Fiora Salis - 2020 - Argumenta 6 (1):65-80.
    Theoretical models are widely held as sources of knowledge of reality. Imagination is vital to their development and to the generation of plausible hypotheses about reality. But how can imagination, which is typically held to be completely free, effectively instruct us about reality? In this paper I argue that the key to answering this question is in constrained uses of imagination. More specifically, I identify make-believe as the right notion of imagination at work in modelling. I propose the first overarching (...)
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  • A review on Katzner’s Models, mathematics and methodology in economic explanation, Cambridge University Press 2018.Aki Lehtinen - 2021 - Journal of Economic Methodology 29 (1):105-109.
    A review of Donald Katzner's book on economic modelling is provided. In addition to characterising the book, I give critical comments on the distinction between primary and secondary assumptions.
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  • Contrasting Cases: The Lotka-Volterra Model Times Three.Tarja Knuuttila & Andrea Loettgers - 2016 - Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 319:151-178.
    How do philosophers of science make use of historical case studies? Are their accounts of historical cases purpose-built and lacking in evidential strength as a result of putting forth and discussing philosophical positions? We will study these questions through the examination of three different philosophical case studies. All of them focus on modeling and on Vito Volterra, contrasting his work to that of other theoreticians. We argue that the worries concerning the evidential role of historical case studies in philosophy are (...)
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  • There Are No Such Things as Theories, by Steven French. [REVIEW]Neil Dewar - 2021 - Mind 131 (524):1347-1357.
    Steven French’s new book is a bold and ambitious look at the question of what sorts of things scientific theories are—or rather, what they are not. For the purp.
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  • The epistemology of modal modeling.Ylwa Sjölin Wirling & Till Grüne-Yanoff - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (10):e12775.
    Philosophers of science have recently taken care to highlight different modeling practices where scientific models primarily contribute modal information, in the form of for example possibility claims, how-possibly explanations, or counterfactual conditionals. While examples abound, comparatively little attention is being paid to the question of under what conditions, and in virtue of what, models can perform this epistemic function. In this paper, we firstly delineate modal modeling from other modeling practices, and secondly reviewattempts to spell out and explain the epistemic (...)
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  • Bipedal Gait Costs: a new case study of mathematical explanation in science.Alan Baker - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-22.
    In this paper I present a case study of mathematical explanation in science that is new to the philosophical literature, and that arises in the context of estimating the energetic costs of running in bipedal animals. I refer to this as the Bipedal Gait Costs explanation. I argue that it is important for examples of applied mathematics to be driven not just by philosophical and mathematical concerns but also by scientific concerns. After a detailed presentation of the BGC case study, (...)
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  • The indeterminacy of computation.Nir Fresco, B. Jack Copeland & Marty J. Wolf - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):12753-12775.
    Do the dynamics of a physical system determine what function the system computes? Except in special cases, the answer is no: it is often indeterminate what function a given physical system computes. Accordingly, care should be taken when the question ‘What does a particular neuronal system do?’ is answered by hypothesising that the system computes a particular function. The phenomenon of the indeterminacy of computation has important implications for the development of computational explanations of biological systems. Additionally, the phenomenon lends (...)
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  • Arnon Levy, Peter Godfrey-Smith (Eds.): The Scientific Imagination: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives: Oxford University Press: Oxford 2020, 344 pp., £55.00 (hardcover), ISBN 9780190212308. [REVIEW]Michael T. Stuart - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (3):493-499.
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  • Epistemic artifacts and the modal dimension of modeling.Tarja Knuuttila - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-18.
    The epistemic value of models has traditionally been approached from a representational perspective. This paper argues that the artifactual approach evades the problem of accounting for representation and better accommodates the modal dimension of modeling. From an artifactual perspective, models are viewed as erotetic vehicles constrained by their construction and available representational tools. The modal dimension of modeling is approached through two case studies. The first portrays mathematical modeling in economics, while the other discusses the modeling practice of synthetic biology, (...)
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  • Arnon Levy, Peter Godfrey-Smith (Eds.): The Scientific Imagination: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. [REVIEW]Michael T. Stuart - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (3):493-499.
    This is a review of Arnon Levy and Peter Godfrey-Smith's book, The Scientific Imagination.
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  • Models, structures, and the explanatory role of mathematics in empirical science.Mary Leng - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):10415-10440.
    Are there genuine mathematical explanations of physical phenomena, and if so, how can mathematical theories, which are typically thought to concern abstract mathematical objects, explain contingent empirical matters? The answer, I argue, is in seeing an important range of mathematical explanations as structural explanations, where structural explanations explain a phenomenon by showing it to have been an inevitable consequence of the structural features instantiated in the physical system under consideration. Such explanations are best cast as deductive arguments which, by virtue (...)
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  • Inconsistent idealizations and inferentialism about scientific representation.Peter Tan - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 89 (C):11-18.
    Inferentialists about scientific representation hold that an apparatus’s representing a target system consists in the apparatus allowing “surrogative inferences” about the target. I argue that a serious problem for inferentialism arises from the fact that many scientific theories and models contain internal inconsistencies. Inferentialism, left unamended, implies that inconsistent scientific models have unlimited representational power, since an inconsistency permits any conclusion to be inferred. I consider a number of ways that inferentialists can respond to this challenge before suggesting my own (...)
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  • Understanding realism.Collin Rice - 2019 - Synthese 198 (5):4097-4121.
    Catherine Elgin has recently argued that a nonfactive conception of understanding is required to accommodate the epistemic successes of science that make essential use of idealizations and models. In this paper, I argue that the fact that our best scientific models and theories are pervasively inaccurate representations can be made compatible with a more nuanced form of scientific realism that I call Understanding Realism. According to this view, science aims at (and often achieves) factive scientific understanding of natural phenomena. I (...)
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  • Extending Similarity-based Epistemology of Modality with Models.Ylwa Sjölin Wirling - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8 (45).
    Empiricist modal epistemologies can be attractive, but are often limited in the range of modal knowledge they manage to secure. In this paper, I argue that one such account – similarity-based modal empiricism – can be extended to also cover justification of many scientifically interesting possibility claims. Drawing on recent work on modelling in the philosophy of science, I suggest that scientific modelling is usefully seen as the creation and investigation of relevantly similar epistemic counterparts of real target systems. On (...)
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  • Structuralism and the conformity of mathematics and nature.Noah Stemeroff - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 86 (C):84-92.
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  • A critical analysis of Markovian monism.Majid D. Beni - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):6407-6427.
    Free Energy Principle underlies a unifying framework that integrates theories of origins of life, cognition, and action. Recently, FEP has been developed into a Markovian monist perspective. The paper expresses scepticism about the validity of arguments for Markovian monism. The critique is based on the assumption that Markovian models are scientific models, and while we may defend ontological theories about the nature of scientific models, we could not read off metaphysical theses about the nature of target systems from our theories (...)
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  • A pragmatic approach to the ontology of models.Antonis Antoniou - 2021 - Synthese (3-4):1-20.
    What are scientific models? Philosophers of science have been trying to answer this question during the last three decades by putting forward a number of different proposals. Some say that models are best understood as abstract Platonic objects or fictional entities akin to Sherlock Holmes, while others focus on their mathematical nature and see them as set theoretical structures. Although each account has its own strengths in offering various insights on the nature of models, several objections have been raised against (...)
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  • Social Ontology and Model-Building: A Response to Epstein.Nadia Ruiz - 2021 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 51 (2):176-192.
    Brian Epstein has recently argued that a thoroughly microfoundationalist approach towards economics is unconvincing for metaphysical reasons. Generally, Epstein argues that for an improvement in the methodology of social science we must adopt social ontology as the foundation of social sciences; that is, the standing microfoundationalist debate could be solved by fixing economics’ ontology. However, as I show in this paper, fixing the social ontology prior to the process of model construction is optional instead of necessary and that metaphysical-ontological commitments (...)
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  • Scenarios as Tools of the Scientific Imagination: The Case of Climate Projections.Michael Poznic & Rafaela Hillerbrand - 2021 - Perspectives on Science 29 (1):36-61.
    Climatologists have recently introduced a distinction between projections as scenario-based model results on the one hand and predictions on the other hand. The interpretation and usage of both terms is, however, not univocal. It is stated that the ambiguities of the interpretations may cause problems in the communication of climate science within the scientific community and to the public realm. This paper suggests an account of scenarios as props in games of make-belive. With this account, we explain the difference between (...)
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  • Models, Fictions and Artifacts.Tarja Knuuttila - 2021 - In Wenceslao J. Gonzalez (ed.), Language and Scientific Research. Springer Verlag. pp. 199-22.
    This paper discusses modeling from the artifactual perspective. The artifactual approach conceives models as erotetic devices. They are purpose-built systems of dependencies that are constrained in view of answering a pending scientific question, motivated by theoretical or empirical considerations. In treating models as artifacts, the artifactual approach is able to address the various languages of sciences that are overlooked by the traditional accounts that concentrate on the relationship of representation in an abstract and general manner. In contrast, the artifactual approach (...)
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  • Metaphors in arts and science.Walter Veit & Ney Milan - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-24.
    Metaphors abound in both the arts and in science. Due to the traditional division between these enterprises as one concerned with aesthetic values and the other with epistemic values there has unfortunately been very little work on the relation between metaphors in the arts and sciences. In this paper, we aim to remedy this omission by defending a continuity thesis regarding the function of metaphor across both domains, that is, metaphors fulfill any of the same functions in science as they (...)
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  • Universality and Modeling Limiting Behaviors.Collin Rice - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (5):829-840.
    Most attempts to justify the use of idealized models to explain appeal to the accuracy of the model with respect to difference-making causes. In this article, I argue for an alternative way to just...
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  • Fictionalist Strategies in Metaphysics.Lukas Skiba & Richard Woodward - 2020 - In Ricki Bliss & James Miller (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. New York, NY: Routledge.
    This paper discusses the nature of, problems for, and benefits delivered by fictionalist strategies in metaphysics.
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  • Do fictions explain?James Nguyen - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3219-3244.
    I argue that fictional models, construed as models that misrepresent certain ontological aspects of their target systems, can nevertheless explain why the latter exhibit certain behaviour. They can do this by accurately representing whatever it is that that behaviour counterfactually depends on. However, we should be sufficiently sensitive to different explanatory questions, i.e., ‘why does certain behaviour occur?’ versus ‘why does the counterfactual dependency invoked to answer that question actually hold?’. With this distinction in mind, I argue that whilst fictional (...)
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  • Generative Models.Sim-Hui Tee - 2020 - Erkenntnis 88 (1):23-41.
    Generative models have been proposed as a new type of non-representational scientific models recently. A generative model is characterized with the capacity of producing new models on the basis of the existing one. The current accounts do not explain sufficiently the mechanism of the generative capacity of a generative model. I attempt to accomplish this task in this paper. I outline two antecedent accounts of generative models. I point out that both types of generative models function to generate new homogenous (...)
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