tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7664137943824779209.post5303859122989410999..comments2023-10-08T05:31:00.508-04:00Comments on khaliphilosophy: Understanding and (the neglect of) FictionalismKKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07535420083612229353noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7664137943824779209.post-57743788478378284502012-04-18T11:26:23.799-04:002012-04-18T11:26:23.799-04:00One of my questions deals with Elgin's dicussi...One of my questions deals with Elgin's dicussions on exemplification. More precisely, one of the weaknesses of Elgin's article is that she fails to provide a concrete analysis on how to define key properties. By key properties, i mean the kind of properties that are essential to the construction of an effective exemplification.This definition of key propertities is especially important since Elgin herself makes a distinction between exemplification and resemblance. Elgin only goes as far as arguing that exemplification should be selective because its primary function/object is to "bring out particular features" given the context that we are interested in. But one difficulty in tackling the problem is that without knowing the key roles that certain elements play in a phenomenon, how can we decide what properties should be selected in our chosen exemplification?MGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07078428078750265836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7664137943824779209.post-35847783183750465842012-04-18T11:24:08.088-04:002012-04-18T11:24:08.088-04:00Firstly, I'd wonder if I could get some help c...Firstly, I'd wonder if I could get some help clarifying a passage on page 87 of the Elgin article regarding various sorts of models (a passage, I'll admit, somewhat tangential to the point). The passage describes various forms of models and how each interacts with facts. She writes:<br /><br />"It is commonplace that scientists rarely if ever test theoretical models of phenomenological models against raw data... Only data models are apt to be tested against raw data. A theoretical model might take as its target a phenomenological model or a less abstract theoretical model... There may be a multiplicity of intervening levels of representation between the model and the facts it answers to."<br /><br />Is this saying nothing more that theories model curves, and curves model data? How rampant is this nesting of models actually? Does nesting of representations have any impact on the truth value of the models?<br /><br />In a related vein, I'm still resistant (as you might all expect) to the notion of models as fictions. It seems that, for a good model, it should describe a true outcome in a situation where its assumed starting conditions held. A claim not immune to contention. Then, insofar as real conditions are similar to the theoretical conditions, the outcomes seem as if they should resemble the outcomes predicted by the theory. Need this relationship be by analogy? Is this just a restatement of Mizrahi? Is it just nonsense?James H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07156815803180619576noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7664137943824779209.post-62381161316578821812012-04-18T09:44:15.116-04:002012-04-18T09:44:15.116-04:00Andrew: I think what Mizrahi is trying to do is re...Andrew: I think what Mizrahi is trying to do is rescue things like the Ideal Gas Law from being dubbed mere "fictions", even felicitous ones, as Elgin suggests. Just because there are no "ideal gasses" - i.e. gasses whose behavior is always predicted by the IGL - doesn't make the "law" non-factive, because the point of the law is not to fully describe some real gas. Rather, gasses under various circumstances behave more or less "ideally" -the law IS aiming to give us facts about the forces operating on gasses, though it is incomplete and we may often in practical circumstances have to add compensatory terms (especially for gasses under high pressure, etc.).<br /><br />Now, because there are these limiting factors, Mizrahi does want to call the law "quasi"-factive - it's not an exact description of reality. But it is POINTING at true facts. It's not just a useful fiction. If the facts it is pointing out weren't really true (the ways pressure and volume relate and so forth) it wouldn't be useful. (The analogy to the Copernican model of heliocentrism is illuminating and I'm pretty sympathetic to Mizrahi's challenge to Elgin on that score). More and more refined models are desirable, but a model doesn't stay a fiction until it's perfect. If it's based on facts - albeit a non-comprehensive body of facts - Mizrahi dubs it "quasi"-factive. And that's how scientific models work, he claims.Taylor Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13009011840979936013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7664137943824779209.post-42639722174813479432012-04-17T22:38:48.762-04:002012-04-17T22:38:48.762-04:00I generally enjoyed both the Elgin and Fine essays...I generally enjoyed both the Elgin and Fine essays, particularly Elgin’s extended account and further explication of exemplification and models. So, I want to reserve the rest of this comment to what I see as perhaps the fundamental question (and I mean the most basal) presented by Mizrahi, or the question of whether “scientific understanding involves some relationship between a model and the domain in nature it is supposed to be a model of” (Sec. 4). In particular, I’m not sure how Mizrahi can claim that if scientific understanding is to be had, the gas laws (or any idealization) must be true. This seems, to me, to be begging the question. That is, he appears – and this may just be an error in my quick read through of the material – to say that SU is quasi-factive because it accesses true theories which obtain in the world. But we know that our theories obtain in the world through scientific understanding.<br />Even if this is truly not begging the question, I do not see why the fact that our models and theories have feedback mechanisms, through interaction and experimentation, necessarily means they are factive or necessarily are in the external world. I feel that I am missing something in Mizrahi's argument, can someone help me out?Andrew Podrygulahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00100208483881339608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7664137943824779209.post-60186219585053504032012-04-17T18:57:57.914-04:002012-04-17T18:57:57.914-04:00I agree with Professor Khalifa that pursuing the s...I agree with Professor Khalifa that pursuing the semantic route is the way to go, if only because denying (1) is scary (in order to go the epistemological route, it would seem that we have to deny that knowledge is factive).<br /><br />I take it that the word semantic is used in the somewhat derogatory sense here (as opposed to meaning "meaning"), but intuitively it makes a good deal of sense. We can hash out the details in class, but doesn't it feel right to say that we can use a felicitous falsehood, like a model, to truly explain a real phenomena? I am totally comfortable with the proposition "If q explains p is true, then q is not necessarily true."Josh Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04275495963501501976noreply@blogger.com