Deflationary representation, inference, and practice

Abstract

This paper defends the deflationary character of two recent views regarding scientific representation, namely RIG Hughes' DDI model and the inferential conception. It is first argued that these views' deflationism is akin to the homonymous position in discussions regarding the nature of truth. There, we are invited to consider the platitudes that the predicate "true" obeys at the level of practice, disregarding any deeper, or more substantive, account of its nature. More generally, for any concept X, a deflationary approach is then defined in opposition to a substantive approach, where a substantive approach to X is an analysis of X in terms of some property P, or relation R, accounting for and explaining the standard use of X. It then becomes possible to characterize a deflationary view of scientific representation in three distinct senses, namely: a "no-theory" view, a "minimalist" view, and a "use-based" view -in line with three standard deflationary responses in the philosophical literature on truth. It is then argued that both the DDI model and the inferential conception may be suitably understood in any of these three different senses. The application of these deflationary 'hermeneutics' moreover yields significant improvements on the DDI model, which bring it closer to the inferential conception. It is finally argued that what these approaches have in common -the key to any deflationary account of scientific representation -is the denial that scientific representation may be ultimately reduced to any substantive explanatory property of sources, or targets, or their relations.Keywords: Deflationary Representation; models and idealization; deflationary accounts; theories of truth; inference. 2 1. 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. The various attempts to answer these questions can be distinguished in a number of different ways. In this paper I focus on one particular distinction between what I call 'substantive' and 'deflationary' accounts of representation. The former type claims that representation is some substantive or objective property or relation; the latter, by contrast, 'deflates' the notion of representation by claiming that there is no substantive property or relation at stake. These terms will be defined more fully below. Substantive accounts have traditionally been, implicitly if not explicitly, the norm in much of the discussion of scientific representation. Bas van Fraassen and Ronald Giere have often been thought to defend substantive analyses of representation (as isomorphism and similarity, respectively), alth...

Scientific Representation, Denotation, and Fictional Entities

“…This article draws extensively on the discussion of related topics in Suárez (2014) Hughes (1997) with permission from University of Chicago Press.…”

“…So, on the DDI account, in order for the geometrical model to represent (for us) the kinematical situation, we must carry out Galileo's demonstration ourselves. It would not seem to be true that "there is a demonstration out there, waiting 2 For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Suárez (2014).3 Goodman (1976); see also Elgin (1996Elgin ( , 2009.6 for us to apprehend it". Here, by contrast with the denotation part, the activity itself is constitutive of representation, and there is no relation that may stand in its place.…”

“…So, on the DDI account, in order for the geometrical model to represent (for us) the kinematical situation, we must carry out Galileo's demonstration ourselves. It would not seem to be true that "there is a demonstration out there, waiting 2 For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Suárez (2014).…”

“…I have argued (Suárez, 2014) that there are functional replacements for both denotation and mapping, referred to as denotative and inferential function respectively. The resulting Denotative…”

Models and Representation

“…But deflationism comes in different guises, which Suárez illustrates by analogy with deflationism with respect to truth. Suárez (2015) distinguishes between the 'redundancy' theory (associated with Frank Ramsey and also referred to as the 'no theory' view), 'abstract minimalism' (associated with Crispin Wright) and the 'use theory' (associated with Paul Horwich). What all three are claimed to have in common is that they accept the disquotational schema -i.e.…”