Deflationary representation, inference, and practice

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Highlights

  • An updated discussion of scientific representation by one of the most prominent contributors to this topic over the years.

  • Addresses a novel distinction between deflationary and substantive accounts of representation.

  • Argues that some leading accounts of scientific representation are duly and legitimately deflationary.

  • Brings to the fore the essential connection to scientific practice that is characteristic of deflationary accounts.

  • Addresses in detail the analogy between deflationary conceptions of truth and scientific representation.

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.

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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