Idealized Models as Selective Representations

Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 54 (2):189-213 (2023)
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Abstract

This paper calls into question one fundamental claim at the basis of an alleged puzzle for veritistic accounts of the value of idealized models: the claim that idealized models cannot be veridical representations of the world. Catherine Elgin has argued that the value of idealized models can only be explained if we construe them as exemplars, which do not represent the world. I argue that Elgin’s proposal is problematic and cannot accommodate central cases of idealization. Nevertheless, there is value in Elgin’s proposal. I rescue her notion of selectiveness in exemplification and incorporate it within a revised account of representation. I provide independent motivation in favour of a form of veritism, which motivates a revision of Elgin’s case against it. I argue that an account based on selective representation has the resources to rescue veritism from the problems raised by Elgin. In the proposal I advance, idealized models are literally veridical representations of the world.

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Alfonso Anaya
University of Warsaw

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References found in this work

Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?Edmund Gettier - 1963 - Analysis 23 (6):121-123.
Knowledge in a social world.Alvin I. Goldman - 1991 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Three Kinds of Idealization.Michael Weisberg - 2007 - Journal of Philosophy 104 (12):639-659.
True enough.Catherine Z. Elgin - 2004 - Philosophical Issues 14 (1):113–131.

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