UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES FILOSÓFICAS

Seminario Racionalidad, Razonamiento y Cognición

Tarja Knuuttila (university of south carolina)

The abstract and the concrete:
Fictional vs artefactual approaches to modeling

In this presentation Knuuttila presents a novel artifactual approach to models and fiction in science that addresses their shared features. She discusses first the imaginary accounts of fiction that set model descriptions apart from imagined-objects, concentrating on the latter. While the imaginary approaches address the features of surrogative reasoning characteristic of scientific modeling, they also raise difficult questions concerning how the imagined-objects are related to actual representational tools, and coordinated among different scientists, and with the real-world phenomena. The artefactual account focuses, in contrast, on the culturally established external representational artefacts that enable, embody and extend scientific imagination and reasoning. This artefactual perspective pays heed to the specific representational modes and media that models employ, emphasizing their abstract-cum-concrete nature.