The strategy of model-based science

Missing systems and the face value practice

“…734-735 and 736-737 Fine (1993)), nor those discussed by Scheffler (1963), Scheffler (1970), or Nagel (1961), p. 134. 28 Frigg (2006 and Godfrey-Smith (2006) independently raise similar questions. Frigg asks whether Giere's models might be taken to be "fictional entities" (2006, p. 61), but does not attempt an answer.…”

“…39 Modulo the qualification made in n. 31, above. 40 As noted above (n. 23), Godfrey-Smith (2006) endorses a number of the essential elements of Giere's picture of representation (although it is a central point of Godfrey-Smith's paper that he regards the picture as capturing just one sort of scientific representation). Accordingly, I take it that even though Godfrey-Smith classifies the missing systems as imagined concrete entities (ibid., section 4), rather than abstract ones, his account inherits this central problem.…”

Why We Cannot Learn from Minimal Models

“…In particular, some have argued that the epistemic import of scientific models is best understood with reference to clusters of models relevant to the modellers' aims (see e.g. Godfrey- Smith, 2006, andWeisberg, 2007a). In their view, scientific modellers frequently rely on clusters of models to learn about their targets, and "one cannot fully appreciate the epistemic import of such models by way of singling out one model from this cluster […] and analyzing it in isolation" (Ylikoski and Aydinonat, 2014, 22).…”

Understanding through modeling: the explanatory power of inadequate representation

“…However, models also seem to play a vital role in understanding and explaining reality and in giving us descriptions of what there is; prima facie, their function does not reduce to merely enabling us to somehow get along. Given their representational "deficiencies", it is not at all clear to which extent and how models can help us understand the world, or how they can possibly exhibit something like explanatory power.In recent years, various proposals concerning the metaphysics of models as well as their representational nature have been advanced (Frigg 2010;Godfrey-Smith 2006;Weisberg 2013;Giere 2004;Alexandrova 2008;Toon 2012; Bokulich 2009;Strevens 2008;García-Carpintero 2010). However, these accounts have not provided a satisfactory or broadly accepted answer to the epistemic value of representationally inadequate models.…”

“…In recent years, various proposals concerning the metaphysics of models as well as their representational nature have been advanced (Frigg 2010;Godfrey-Smith 2006;Weisberg 2013;Giere 2004;Alexandrova 2008;Toon 2012; Bokulich 2009;Strevens 2008;García-Carpintero 2010). However, these accounts have not provided a satisfactory or broadly accepted answer to the epistemic value of representationally inadequate models.…”