European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (2):171-204 (2018)
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Computer simulations and experiments share many important features. One way of explaining the similarities is to say that computer simulations just are experiments. This claim is quite popular in the literature. The aim of this paper is to argue against the claim and to develop an alternative explanation of why computer simulations resemble experiments. To this purpose, experiment is characterized in terms of an intervention on a system and of the observation of the reaction. Thus, if computer simulations are experiments, either the computer hardware or the target system must be intervened on and observed. I argue against the first option using the non-observation argument, among others. The second option is excluded by e.g. the over-control argument, which stresses epistemological differences between experiments and simulations. To account for the similarities between experiments and computer simulations, I propose to say that computer simulations can model possible experiments and do in fact often do so.
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DOI | 10.1007/s13194-017-0181-5 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory.Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem - 1954 - Princeton: Princeton University Press.
On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the N Tscheidungsproblem.Alan Turing - 1936 - Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 42 (1):230-265.
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Citations of this work BETA
Grounds for Trust: Essential Epistemic Opacity and Computational Reliabilism.Juan M. Durán & Nico Formanek - 2018 - Minds and Machines 28 (4):645-666.
Why Computer Simulations Are Not Inferences, and in What Sense They Are Experiments.Florian J. Boge - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (1):1-30.
Virtual Realism: Really Realism or Only Virtually So? A Comment on D. J. Chalmers’s Petrus Hispanus Lectures.Claus Beisbart - 2019 - Disputatio 11 (55):297-331.
View all 9 citations / Add more citations
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