Deflationary representation, inference, and practice
Section snippets
Scientific representation: the state of play
‘Science represents through its models—and this representational aim is characteristic, or defining, of its model-building activity’. As stated—in this minimal and restricted sense—this is as uncontroversial a claim as one may encounter in contemporary philosophy of science. But what is it that science represents, and how does it do it? These are much harder questions, and there is intense debate nowadays amongst philosophers regarding how best to address them.1
What is deflationism? Three views
My main claim in this paper is that both Hughes' DDI model and my own inferential conception are deflationary accounts of scientific representation in some relevant respects. In order to make the claim precise I need to first characterize what those relevant respects are. My strategy is to employ an analogy with the debates regarding the nature of truth within metaphysics and the philosophy of language. By means of reference to those debates, I shall attempt to distinguish three different
Deflationary representation: two accounts
In this section I review the elements of two accounts of scientific representation that have been claimed to be deflationary, namely RIG Hughes' (1997) DDI model and my own inferential conception (2004). I shall defend their deflationary character in due course, but first some neutral terminology is needed. We shall say that, in model-building science, a model source A typically represents a target B. This terminology implies no constraints on what types of objects A and B may be: These may be
Deflationary views and representational practice
Let us quickly take stock of what has been achieved so far. In section 2 I reviewed, in connection to truth, three different strategies for ‘deflating’—or rather more simply, displaying the deflationary nature of—any concept: ‘no-theory’, ‘abstract minimalism’, ‘use-based’ strategies. In the last section I reviewed in outline the elements of two accounts of scientific representation that have been claimed to be ‘deflationary’: Hughes' DDI account and the inferential conception. In this section
Conclusions
In this largely theoretical paper I have aimed at an improved understanding of what is meant by the claim that an account of representation is “deflationary”. I have distinguished three different meanings of the term “deflationary” and applied them to two accounts of representation that have been claimed to be deflationary. In so doing I hope to have illustrated the concept of representation, as much as the relevant kinds of deflationism. If the analysis provided of the different options is
Acknowledgements
I thank audiences at the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) conference in Toronto in 2013, the British Society for the Philosophy of Science (BSPS) 2013 conference, and at the Universities of the Balearic Islands, and Open University (UNED) during the Madrid Inferentialism in Epistemology and Philosophy of Science conference in November 2013. Thanks in particular to my co-symposiasts, Chiara Ambrosio and Chris Pincock, at the SPSP conference. I also thank two referees of
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