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  1. Social mechanisms and causal inference.Daniel Steel - 2004 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (1):55-78.
    Several authors have claimed that mechanisms play a vital role in distinguishing between causation and mere correlation in the social sciences. Such claims are sometimes interpreted to mean that without mechanisms, causal inference in social science is impossible. The author agrees with critics of this proposition but explains how the account of how mechanisms aid causal inference can be interpreted in a way that does not depend on it. Nevertheless, he shows that this more charitable version of the account is (...)
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  • (1 other version)Scientists' thoughts on scientific models.Daniela M. Bailer-Jones - 2002 - Perspectives on Science 10 (3):275-301.
    : This paper contains the analysis of nine interviews with UK scientists on the topic of scientific models. Scientific models are an important, very controversially discussed topic in philosophy of science. A reasonable expectation is that philosophical conceptions of models ought to be in agreement with scientific practice. Questioning practicing scientists on their use of and views on models provides material against which philosophical positions can be measured.
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  • Progress in Economics.Catherine Herfeld & Marcel Boumans - 2022 - In Yafeng Shan (ed.), New Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Progress. New York: Routledge.
    In this chapter, we discuss a specific kind of progress that occurs in most branches of economics today: progress involving the repeated use of mathematical models. We adopt a functional account of progress to argue that progress in economics occurs through the use of what we call “common recipes” and model templates for defining and solving problems of relevance for economists. We support our argument by discussing the case of 20th century business cycle research. By presenting this case study in (...)
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  • Model Transfer in Science.Catherine Herfeld - 2024 - In Tarja Knuuttila, Natalia Carrillo & Rami Koskinen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Scientific Modeling. New York, NY: Routledge.
    A conspicuous feature of contemporary modelling practices is the use of the same mathematical forms and modelling methods across different scientific domains. This model transfer raises many philosophical questions concerning, for example, the exact object of transfer, the relationship between the model and the target domain, the specific challenges such transfer confronts, and the ways in which model transfer relates to scientific progress. While the interest in studying model transfer has increased among philosophers of science in recent years, the phenomenon (...)
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  • Axe the X in XAI: A Plea for Understandable AI.Andrés Páez - forthcoming - In Juan Manuel Durán & Giorgia Pozzi (eds.), Philosophy of science for machine learning: Core issues and new perspectives. Springer.
    In a recent paper, Erasmus et al. (2021) defend the idea that the ambiguity of the term “explanation” in explainable AI (XAI) can be solved by adopting any of four different extant accounts of explanation in the philosophy of science: the Deductive Nomological, Inductive Statistical, Causal Mechanical, and New Mechanist models. In this chapter, I show that the authors’ claim that these accounts can be applied to deep neural networks as they would to any natural phenomenon is mistaken. I also (...)
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  • Using Paleoclimate Analogues to Inform Climate Projections.Aja Watkins - 2024 - Perspectives on Science 32 (4):415-459.
    Philosophers of science have paid close attention to climate simulations as means of projecting the severity and effects of climate change, but have neglected the full diversity of methods in climate science. This paper shows the philosophical richness of another method in climate science: the practice of using paleoclimate analogues to inform our climate projections. First, I argue that the use of paleoclimate analogues can offer important insights to philosophers of the historical sciences. Rather than using the present as a (...)
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  • Models, Algorithms, and the Subjects of Transparency.Hajo Greif - 2022 - In Vincent C. Müller (ed.), Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2021. Berlin: Springer. pp. 27-37.
    Concerns over epistemic opacity abound in contemporary debates on Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, it is not always clear to what extent these concerns refer to the same set of problems. We can observe, first, that the terms 'transparency' and 'opacity' are used either in reference to the computational elements of an AI model or to the models to which they pertain. Second, opacity and transparency might either be understood to refer to the properties of AI systems or to the epistemic (...)
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  • Evidence and analogy in Archaeoastronomy.Francesco Nappo, Giulio Magli & Giovanni Valente - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-25.
    This paper addresses the role of analogical reasoning in archaeoastronomy - the discipline which studies the connections between the ancient monuments and the heavens. Archaeoastronomy is a highly interdisciplinary science, placed at the border between the humanities – especially archaeology – and the scientific approach to cultural heritage. As a consequence, its scientific foundations are a delicate matter. We plan to investigate here the question of what constitutes the evidence for analogical inferences in archaeoastronomy and to what extent one can (...)
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  • Maps and Models.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - forthcoming - In Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Scientific Modeling. London, UK:
    Maps and mapping raise questions about models and modeling and in science. This chapter archives map discourse in the founding generation of philosophers of science (e.g., Rudolf Carnap, Nelson Goodman, Thomas Kuhn, and Stephen Toulmin) and in the subsequent generation (e.g., Philip Kitcher, Helen Longino, and Bas van Fraassen). In focusing on these two original framing generations of philosophy of science, I intend to remove us from the heat of contemporary discussions of abstraction, representation, and practice of science and thereby (...)
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  • Metaphors we Lie by: our ‘War’ against COVID-19.Margherita Benzi & Marco Novarese - 2022 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44 (2):1-22.
    In this paper we discuss the influence of war as a metaphor in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. After an introduction on the traditional analysis of the war metaphor, we address the social consequences of using this metaphor, a topic that has been widely debated with regard to public communication in the context of COVID-19. We pay particular attention to a theory that many intellectuals have raised: the possibility that the use of the metaphor in this context is harmful (...)
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  • (1 other version)Possibility, relevant similarity, and structural knowledge.Tom Schoonen - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-22.
    Recently, interest has surged in similarity-based epistemologies of possibility. However, it has been pointed out that the notion of ‘relevant similarity’ is not properly developed in this literature. In this paper, I look at the research done in the field of analogical reasoning, where we find that one of the most promising ways of capturing relevance in similarity reasoning is by relying on the predictive analogy similarity relation. This takes relevant similarity to be based on shared properties that have structural (...)
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  • Confirmation by analogy.Francesco Nappo - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-26.
    This paper proposes a framework for representing in Bayesian terms the idea that analogical arguments of various degrees of strength may provide inductive support to yet untested scientific hypotheses. On this account, contextual information plays a crucial role in determining whether, and to what extent, a given similarity or dissimilarity between source and target may confirm an empirical hypothesis over a rival one. In addition to showing confirmation by analogy compatible with the adoption of a Bayesian standpoint, the proposal outlined (...)
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  • Islamic Mystical Dialetheism: Resolving the Paradox of God’s Unknowability and Ineffability.Abbas Ahsan - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (3):925-964.
    Dialetheism is the view that some contradictions are true. Resorting to either metaphysical dialetheism or semantic dialetheism may seem like an appropriate resolve to certain theological contradictions. At least for those who concede to theological contradictions, and take dialetheism seriously. However, I demonstrate that neither of these types of dialetheism would serve to be amenable in resolving an Islamic theological contradiction. This is a theological contradiction that I refer to as ‘the paradox of an unknowable and ineffable God’. As a (...)
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  • Adaptation and its Analogues: Biological Categories for Biosemantics.Hajo Greif - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 90:298-307.
    “Teleosemantic” or “biosemantic” theories form a strong naturalistic programme in the philosophy of mind and language. They seek to explain the nature of mind and language by recourse to a natural history of “proper functions” as selected-for effects of language- and thought-producing mechanisms. However, they remain vague with respect to the nature of the proposed analogy between selected-for effects on the biological level and phenomena that are not strictly biological, such as reproducible linguistic and cultural forms. This essay critically explores (...)
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  • Idealizations and Analogies: Explaining Critical Phenomena.Quentin Rodriguez - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 89 (C):235-247.
    The “universality” of critical phenomena is much discussed in philosophy of scientific explanation, idealizations and philosophy of physics. Lange and Reutlinger recently opposed Batterman concerning the role of some deliberate distortions in unifying a large class of phenomena, regardless of microscopic constitution. They argue for an essential explanatory role for “commonalities” rather than that of idealizations. Building on Batterman's insight, this article aims to show that assessing the differences between the universality of critical phenomena and two paradigmatic cases of “commonality (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Practical Rationality: Intentional and Deontic Cognition.Preston Stovall - 2021 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (4):549-568.
    Despite growing appreciation in recent decades of the importance of shared intentional mental states as a foundation for everything from divergences in primate evolution, to the institution of communal norms, to trends in the development of modernity as a socio-political phenomenon, we lack an adequate understanding of the relationship between individual and shared intentionality. At the same time, it is widely appreciated that deontic reasoning concerning what ought, may, and ought not be done is, like reasoning about our intentions, an (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Lamp of Reason and the Mirror of Nature.Preston Stovall - 2019 - In Randall Auxier, Eli Kramer & Krzysztof P. Skowronski (eds.), Beyond Rorty. Lexington Books. pp. 215-234.
    At the close of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Richard Rorty lays out a contrast between what he calls 'systematic' and 'edifying' philosophical anthropologies. Whereas the systematic philosopher aims to speak for the ages, the edifying philosopher addresses herself to issues of her day, often by way of shattering conventional idols. Rorty sees these two approaches as mutually exclusive. The aim of this paper is to defend a conception of philosophy as both systematic and edifying in the relevant senses. (...)
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  • The Ecology of Money: a Critical Assessment.Louis Larue - 2020 - Ecological Economics 178.
    This paper assesses the proposal to transform the monetary system into an Ecology of money, that is, into a system made of a large diversity of complementary currencies. Its central aim is to examine whether this proposal could provide a systemic solution to both the ecological and financial crises, as several authors, most notably Lietaer and Douthwaite, have argued. To this end, it analyses the two main arguments in favour of this proposal. First, it focuses on the claim that an (...)
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  • Metaphors as models: Towards a typology of metaphor in ancient science.Marcel Humar - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (3):1-26.
    Metaphors play a crucial role in the understanding of science. Since antiquity, metaphors have been used in technical texts to describe structures unknown or unnamed; besides establishing a terminology of science, metaphors are also important for the expression of concepts. However, a concise terminology to classify metaphors in the language of science has not been established yet. But in the context of studying the history of a science and its concepts, a precise typology of metaphors can be helpful. Metaphors have (...)
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  • Critique of Wave-Particle Duality of Single-Photons.Varun S. Bhatta - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (4):501-521.
    A prominent way through which wave-particle duality has been ascribed to photons is by illustrating their “wave-like” behaviour in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer and “particle-like” behaviour in the anti-correlation experiment. This duality has been formulated in two ways. Some have based the claim on the complementarity principle. This formulation, however, has already been shown to be problematic. Others have made a much simpler duality claim by considering that single-photons are analogous to waves and particles in the above experiments. I criticise this (...)
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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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  • The multifaceted role of imagination in science and religion. A critical examination of its epistemic, creative and meaning-making functions.Ingrid Malm Lindberg - 2021 - Dissertation, Uppsala University
    The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine critically and discuss the role of imagination in science and religion, with particular emphasis on its possible epistemic, creative, and meaning-making functions. In order to answer my research questions, I apply theories and concepts from contemporary philosophy of mind on scientific and religious practices. This framework allows me to explore the mental state of imagination, not as an isolated phenomenon but, rather, as one of many mental states that co-exist and interplay (...)
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  • Science & Speculation.Adrian Currie - 2021 - Erkenntnis 88 (2):597-619.
    Despite wide recognition that speculation is critical for successful science, philosophers have attended little to it. When they have, speculation has been characterized in narrowly epistemic terms: a hypothesis is speculative due to its (lack of) evidential support. These ‘evidence-first’ accounts provide little guidance for what makes speculation productive or egregious, nor how to foster the former while avoiding the latter. I examine how scientists discuss speculation and identify various functions speculations play. On this basis, I develop a ‘function-first’ account (...)
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  • Evidence and Inductive Inference.Nevin Climenhaga - 2024 - In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 435-449.
    This chapter presents a typology of the different kinds of inductive inferences we can draw from our evidence, based on the explanatory relationship between evidence and conclusion. Drawing on the literature on graphical models of explanation, I divide inductive inferences into (a) downwards inferences, which proceed from cause to effect, (b) upwards inferences, which proceed from effect to cause, and (c) sideways inferences, which proceed first from effect to cause and then from that cause to an additional effect. I further (...)
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  • The Hammer and the Nail : Interdisciplinarity and Problem Solving in Sustainability Science.Henrik Thorén - 2015 - Dissertation, Lund University
    This is a thesis about interdisciplinarity, scientific integration, and problem solving in sustainability science. Sustainability science is an emerging and highly interdisciplinary field that seeks to integrate vastly differentiated bodies of knowledge in addressing the challenge of transitioning contemporary societies towards sustainability. Interdisciplinarity is paramount. Interdisciplinarity in general, and in the context of sustainability science in particular, has often been associated with solving particular problems and problem solving is one important theme in this thesis. A central idea that is developed (...)
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  • Reductive Explanation and the Construction of Quantum Theories.Benjamin H. Feintzeig - 2022 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (2):457-486.
    I argue that philosophical issues concerning reductive explanations help constrain the construction of quantum theories with appropriate state spaces. I illustrate this general proposal with two examples of restricting attention to physical states in quantum theories: regular states and symmetry-invariant states. 1Introduction2Background2.1 Physical states2.2 Reductive explanations3The Proposed ‘Correspondence Principle’4Example: Regularity5Example: Symmetry-Invariance6Conclusion: Heuristics and Discovery.
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  • Mechanisms in clinical practice: use and justification.Mark R. Tonelli & Jon Williamson - 2020 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 23 (1):115-124.
    While the importance of mechanisms in determining causality in medicine is currently the subject of active debate, the role of mechanistic reasoning in clinical practice has received far less attention. In this paper we look at this question in the context of the treatment of a particular individual, and argue that evidence of mechanisms is indeed key to various aspects of clinical practice, including assessing population-level research reports, diagnostic as well as therapeutic decision making, and the assessment of treatment effects. (...)
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  • Implanting plasticity into sex and trans/gender: Animal and child metaphors in the history of endocrinology.Julian Gill-Peterson - 2017 - Angelaki 22 (2):47-60.
    This essay argues that the reigning medical and scientific understanding of the endocrine system, which insists on its fundamental biological plasticity, was historically constructed through a dual child–animal metaphor. The work accomplished by such organic metaphors, as Donna Haraway terms them, returns us to the endocrine laboratories and clinics in which they were built in Europe and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The child and animal metaphors implanted the concept of plasticity into the human (...)
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  • Argument by Analogy in Ancient China.Yun Xie - 2019 - Argumentation 33 (3):323-347.
    Argument by analogy has long been regarded as the characteristic way of arguing in ancient Chinese culture. Classic Chinese philosophers not only prefer to use analogy to argue for their own views, but also take efforts to theorize it in a systematic way. This paper aims to provide a careful study on the relevant ideas in ancient China in order to reconstruct the ancient Chinese theory of argument by analogy, and then to reveal some of its distinctive features through a (...)
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  • Realismo Pragmático.Hasok Chang - 2016 - Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 8:107.
    En este trabajo intento articular y desarrollar la defensa que Roberto Torretti hace del realismo pragmático. En el núcleo de la visión de Torretti existe un rechazo a la idea de que la verdad de las teorías científicas consista en su correspondencia con el mundo. Propongo entonces entender la correspondencia como una noción metafórica. Articularé una noción de coherencia pragmática sobre la cual establezco una nueva teoría de la coherencia entre verdad y realidad. En consecuencia, resultará posible afirmar que el (...)
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  • Explaining Explanations in AI.Brent Mittelstadt - forthcoming - FAT* 2019 Proceedings 1.
    Recent work on interpretability in machine learning and AI has focused on the building of simplified models that approximate the true criteria used to make decisions. These models are a useful pedagogical device for teaching trained professionals how to predict what decisions will be made by the complex system, and most importantly how the system might break. However, when considering any such model it’s important to remember Box’s maxim that "All models are wrong but some are useful." We focus on (...)
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  • Theory and Empiricism of Religious Evolution (THERE): Foundation of a Research Program (Part 2).Volkhard Krech - 2018 - Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 26 (2):215-263.
    This two-part article presents the research program for a theory and empirical analysis of religious evolution. It is assumed that religion isprimarilya co-evolution to societal evolution, which in turn is a co-evolution to mental, organic, and physical evolution. The theory of evolution is triangulated with the systems theory and the semiotically informed theory of communication, so that knowledge can be gained that would not be acquired by only one of the three theories: The differentiation between religion and its environment can (...)
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  • Moral Tuning.Sveinung Sundfør Sivertsen, Jill Halstead & Rasmus T. Slaattelid - 2018 - Metaphilosophy 49 (4):435-458.
    Can a set of musical metaphors in a treatise on ethics reveal something about the nature and source of moral autonomy? This article argues that it can. It shows how metaphorical usage of words like tone, pitch, and concord in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments can be understood as elements of an analogical model for morality. What this model tells us about morality depends on how we conceptualise music. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smith's metaphors that have seen (...)
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  • A Causal Approach to Analogy.Wolfgang Pietsch - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (4):489-520.
    Analogical reasoning addresses the question how evidence from various phenomena can be combined and made relevant for theory development and prediction. In the first part of my contribution, I review some influential accounts of analogical reasoning, both historical and contemporary, focusing in particular on Keynes, Carnap, Hesse, and more recently Bartha. In the second part, I sketch a general framework. To this purpose, a distinction between a predictive and a conceptual type of analogical reasoning is introduced. I then take up (...)
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  • The development of renormalization group methods for particle physics: Formal analogies between classical statistical mechanics and quantum field theory.Doreen Fraser - 2020 - Synthese 197 (7):3027-3063.
    Analogies between classical statistical mechanics and quantum field theory played a pivotal role in the development of renormalization group methods for application in the two theories. This paper focuses on the analogies that informed the application of RG methods in QFT by Kenneth Wilson and collaborators in the early 1970's. The central task that is accomplished is the identification and analysis of the analogical mappings employed. The conclusion is that the analogies in this case study are formal analogies, and not (...)
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  • Conceptual Variation or Incoherence? Textbook Discourse on Genes in Six Countries.Niklas M. Gericke, Mariana Hagberg, Vanessa Carvalho dos Santos, Leyla Mariane Joaquim & Charbel N. El-Hani - 2014 - Science & Education 23 (2):381-416.
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  • Models as signs: extending Kralemann and Lattman’s proposal on modeling models within Peirce’s theory of signs.Sergio A. Gallegos - 2019 - Synthese 196 (12):5115-5136.
    In recent decades, philosophers of science have devoted considerable efforts to understand what models represent. One popular position is that models represent fictional situations. Another position states that, though models often involve fictional elements, they represent real objects or scenarios. Though these two positions may seem to be incompatible, I believe it is possible to reconcile them. Using a threefold distinction between different signs proposed by Peirce, I develop an argument based on a proposal recently made by Kralemann and Lattman (...)
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  • Models, models, models: a deflationary view.Jay Odenbaugh - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 21):1-16.
    In this essay, I first consider a popular view of models and modeling, the similarity view. Second, I contend that arguments for it fail and it suffers from what I call “Hughes’ worry.” Third, I offer a deflationary approach to models and modeling that avoids Hughes’ worry and shows how scientific representations are of apiece with other types of representations. Finally, I consider an objection that the similarity view can deal with approximations better than the deflationary view and show that (...)
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  • How models represent.James Nguyen - 2016 - Dissertation,
    Scientific models are important, if not the sole, units of science. This thesis addresses the following question: in virtue of what do scientific models represent their target systems? In Part i I motivate the question, and lay out some important desiderata that any successful answer must meet. This provides a novel conceptual framework in which to think about the question of scientific representation. I then argue against Callender and Cohen’s attempt to diffuse the question. In Part ii I investigate the (...)
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  • Against explanatory realism.Elanor Taylor - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (1):197-219.
    Explanatory realism is the position that all explanations give information about whatever metaphysically determines the explanandum. This view is popular and plays a central role in metaphysics, but in this paper I argue that explanatory realism is false. In Sect. 1 I introduce explanatory realism in its weak and strong versions, and discuss the argumentative work that explanatory realism is used for in contemporary metaphysics. In Sect. 2 I present a series of problem cases for explanatory realism, including explanation by (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Models and representation.Roman Frigg & James Nguyen - 2017 - In Lorenzo Magnani & Tommaso Bertolotti (eds.), Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science. Springer. pp. 49-102.
    Scientific discourse is rife with passages that appear to be ordinary descriptions of systems of interest in a particular discipline. Equally, the pages of textbooks and journals are filled with discussions of the properties and the behavior of those systems. Students of mechanics investigate at length the dynamical properties of a system consisting of two or three spinning spheres with homogenous mass distributions gravitationally interacting only with each other. Population biologists study the evolution of one species procreating at a constant (...)
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  • Analogical Arguments: Inferential Structures and Defeasibility Conditions.Fabrizio Macagno, Douglas Walton & Christopher Tindale - 2017 - Argumentation 31 (2):221-243.
    The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structure and the defeasibility conditions of argument from analogy, addressing the issues of determining the nature of the comparison underlying the analogy and the types of inferences justifying the conclusion. In the dialectical tradition, different forms of similarity were distinguished and related to the possible inferences that can be drawn from them. The kinds of similarity can be divided into four categories, depending on whether they represent fundamental semantic features of the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Macroscopic Oil Droplets Mimicking Quantum Behaviour: How Far Can We Push an Analogy?Louis Vervoort & Yves Gingras - 2015 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (3):271-294.
    We describe a series of experimental analogies between fluid mechanics and quantum mechanics recently discovered by a team of physicists. These analogies arise in droplet systems guided by a surface wave. We argue that these experimental facts put ancient theoretical work by Madelung on the analogy between fluid and quantum mechanics into new light. After re-deriving Madelung’s result starting from two basic fluid mechanical equations, we discuss the relation with the de Broglie–Bohm theory. This allows to make a direct link (...)
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  • Model templates within and between disciplines: from magnets to gases – and socio-economic systems.Tarja Knuuttila & Andrea Loettgers - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (3):377-400.
    One striking feature of the contemporary modelling practice is its interdisciplinary nature. The same equation forms, and mathematical and computational methods, are used across different disciplines, as well as within the same discipline. Are there, then, differences between intra- and interdisciplinary transfer, and can the comparison between the two provide more insight on the challenges of interdisciplinary theoretical work? We will study the development and various uses of the Ising model within physics, contrasting them to its applications to socio-economic systems. (...)
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  • Validating Animal Models.Nina A. Atanasova - 2015 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 30 (2):163.
    This paper responds to a recent challenge for the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge from laboratory animals to humans. According to this challenge, experimental neurobiology, and thus neuroscience, is in a state of crisis because the knowledge produced in different laboratories hardly generalizes from one laboratory to another. Presumably, this is so because neurobiological laboratories use simplified animal models of human conditions that differ across laboratories. By contrast, I argue that maintaining a multiplicity of experimental protocols and simple models (...)
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  • The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology.Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.) - 2016 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...)
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  • (1 other version)Quanten-Identität und Ununterscheidbarkeit.Holger Lyre - 2015 - In Cord Friebe, Meinard Kuhlmann, Holger Lyre, Paul Näger, Oliver Passon & Manfred Stöckler (eds.), Philosophie der Quantenphysik. Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum. pp. 79-111.
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  • Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science.Brian Scott Baigrie (ed.) - 1996 - University of Toronto Press.
    List of Illustrations Introduction 1 The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technological Illustrations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 3 2 Temples of the Body and Temples of the Cosmos: Vision and Visualization in the Vesalian and Copernican Revolutions 40 3 Descartes’s Scientific Illustrations and ’la grande mecanique de la nature’ 86 4 Illustrating Chemistry 135 5 Representations of the Natural System in the Nineteenth Century 164 6 Visual Representation in Archaeology: Depicting the Missing-Link in Human (...)
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  • Layers of Models in Computer Simulations.Thomas Boyer-Kassem - 2014 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 28 (4):417-436.
    I discuss here the definition of computer simulations, and more specifically the views of Humphreys, who considers that an object is simulated when a computer provides a solution to a computational model, which in turn represents the object of interest. I argue that Humphreys's concepts are not able to analyse fully successfully a case of contemporary simulation in physics, which is more complex than the examples considered so far in the philosophical literature. I therefore modify Humphreys's definition of simulation. I (...)
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  • Living Words: Meaning Underdetermination and the Dynamic Lexicon.Peter Ludlow - 2014 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Peter Ludlow shows how word meanings are much more dynamic than we might have supposed, and explores how they are modulated even during everyday conversation. The resulting view is radical, and has far-reaching consequences for our political and legal discourse, and for enduring puzzles in the foundations of semantics, epistemology, and logic.
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