Fictionalism plays a significant role in philosophy today, with defenses spanning mathematics, morality, ordinary objects, truth, modality, and more.1 Fictionalism in the philosophy of science is also gaining attention, due in particular to the revival of Hans Vaihinger’s work from the early twentieth century and to heightened interest in idealization in scientific practice.2 Vaihinger maintains that there is a ubiquity of fictions in science and, among other things, argues that Nietzsche supports the position. Yet, while contemporary commentators (...) have focused on fictionalism in Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, his view of fictions in science has remained largely unexamined.3 In this article, I begin... (shrink)

José A. Díez examines the reasons for claiming that models involve fictions. He opposes the claim that, in order to account for some key features of the practice of modeling in science, such as the existence of unsuccessful representations and also of successful yet inaccurate or idealized ones, it is necessary to accept fictional entities. In resisting such a view, he sketches an account of scientific modeling and argue that according to such account there is no need for strong (...) factionalism, only a weak, unproblematic fictionalist component is needed. (shrink)

Fictionalism is the view that a serious intellectual inquiry need not aim at truth. It came to prominence in philosophy in 1980, when Hartry Field argued that mathematics does not have to be true to be good, and Bas van Fraassen argued that the aim of science is not truth but empirical adequacy. Both suggested that the acceptance of a mathematical or scientific theory need not involve belief in its content. Thus the distinctive commitment of fictionalism is (...) that acceptance in a given domain of inquiry need not be truth-normed, and that the acceptance of a sentence from the associated region of discourse need not involve belief in its content. In metaphysics fictionalism is now widely regarded as an option worthy of serious consideration. This volume represents a major benchmark in the debate: it brings together an impressive international team of contributors, whose essays represent the state of the art in various areas of metaphysical controversy, relating to language, mathematics, modality, truth, belief, ontology, and morality. (shrink)

This paper defends an approach to modeling and models in science that is against model fictionalism of a recent stripe (the “new fictionalism” that takes models to be abstract entities that are analogous to works of fiction). It further argues that there is a version of fictionalism on models to which my approach is neutral and which only makes sense if one adopts a special sort of antirealism (e.g. constructive empiricism). Otherwise, my approach strongly suggests that one (...) stays away from fictionalism and embraces realism directly. (shrink)

This article develops an approach to modelling and models in science—the hybrid view—that is against model fictionalism of a recent stripe. It further argues that there is a version of fictionalism about models to which my approach is neutral and which makes sense only if one adopts a special sort of antirealism. Otherwise, my approach strongly suggests that one stay away from fictionalism and embrace realism directly.

This paper distinguishes revolutionary fictionalism from other forms of fictionalism and also from other philosophical views. The paper takes fictionalism about mathematical objects and fictionalism about scientific unobservables as illustrations. The paper evaluates arguments that purport to show that this form of fictionalism is incoherent on the grounds that there is no tenable distinction between believing a sentence and taking the fictionalist's distinctive attitude to that sentence. The argument that fictionalism about mathematics is (...) ‘comically immodest’ is also evaluated. In place of those arguments, an argument against fictionalism about abstract objects of any kind is presented in the last section. This argument takes the form of a trilemma against the fictionalist. (shrink)

This paper responds to John Burgess's ‘Mathematics and _Bleak House_’. While Burgess's rejection of hermeneutic fictionalism is accepted, it is argued that his two main attacks on revolutionary fictionalism fail to meet their target. Firstly, ‘philosophical modesty’ should not prevent philosophers from questioning the truth of claims made within successful practices, provided that the utility of those practices as they stand can be explained. Secondly, Carnapian scepticism concerning the meaningfulness of _metaphysical_ existence claims has no force against a (...) _naturalized_ version of fictionalism, according to which our ordinary standards of scientific evidence may show that we have no reason to believe the mathematical existence claims made within the context of our mathematical and scientific theories. (shrink)

Some fictionalist approaches to the notion of scientific model are based on the concept of game of make-believe developed by Kendall Walton, without proposing a similar interpretation of it. The distinction between authorized and unauthorized games can be one of the sources of those divergences. In relation to the distinction made by Walton, the de dicto and de re modalities of the fiction-operator reflect different epistemological engagements concerning objects which satisfy properties. This paper aims at following up on the (...) proposals formulated by Roman Frigg and Adam Toon by using some modal logic concepts, notably by defining the identities of properties in modal contexts in terms of world-lines. Applying a model to a target-system consists in transposing fictional truths into actual situations, through an extrapolation that goes beyond the games of make-believe. (shrink)

According to widely accepted views in metasemantics, the outputs of chatbots and other artificial text generators should be meaningless. They aren’t produced with communicative intentions and the systems producing them are not following linguistic conventions. Nevertheless, chatbots have assumed roles in customer service and healthcare, they are spreading information and disinformation and, in some cases, it may be more rational to trust the outputs of bots than those of our fellow human beings. To account for the epistemic role of chatbots (...) in our society, we need to reconcile these observations. This paper argues that our engagement with chatbots should be understood as a form of prop-oriented make-believe; the outputs of chatbots are literally meaningless but fictionally meaningful. With the make-believe approach, we can understand how chatbots can provide us with knowledge of the world through quasi-testimony while preserving our metasemantic theories. This account also helps to connect the study of chatbots with the epistemology of scientific instruments. (shrink)

This paper surveys contemporary accounts of error theory and fictionalism. It introduces these categories to those new to metaethics by beginning with moral nihilism, the view that nothing really is right or wrong. One main motivation is that the scientific worldview seems to have no place for rightness or wrongness. Within contemporary metaethics there is a family of theories that makes similar claims. These are the theories that are usually classified as forms of error theory or fictionalism (...) though there are different ways of accepting some form of the view that nothing is really write or wrong. A range of different ways of going in the light of such a realization is also proposed. The resulting taxonomy of positions is quite complicated and sometimes surprising. One surprise will be that some positions plausibly classified as error theories or forms of fictionalism do not quite seem to be forms of nihilism. (shrink)

Suppose that a scientific theory X is well confirmed, and either states or implies a statement like “classes exist”. Suppose, if the statement is not explicit but implied, that the specified systems are ‘accepted’ by two individuals, R and F, as the ‘best available'. Suppose, finally, that both R and F, in some yet to be explained sense of the word, ‘accept’ and use theory X to regulate their experience. Then we have something very like the situation discussed by (...) Putnam and van Fraassen in their debate over ‘fictionalism'. I will argue that, in this situation, there is a great mystery over what would separate a fictionalist F from a realist R. Neither Putnam nor van Fraassen seems to be conscious of the problems involved.Fictionalism, according to its opponent, Putnam, statesvarious entities presupposed by scientific and common sense discourse [are] merely “useful fictions”, or that we cannot, at any rate, possibly know that they are more than “useful fictions”. (shrink)

In a previous article, I argued that some recent philosophical work on the use of fictions in science is, while illuminating about some aspects of current scientific practice, unduly limited to cases of well-established fictions. In other words, this earlier work contended, a philosophical account of scientific fictions can do more than merely describe scientific practices, but can aid in the resolution of disputes about the proper interpretation of scientific theories and the epistemic status of some (...) scientific models. In the present paper, I expand upon the variational account of fictions and idealizations... (shrink)

Fictionalists believe that scientific models are about model systems that are imaginary. Michael Weisberg has claimed that fictionalism is indefensible because many scientific models are about model systems that are unimaginable. According to a certain account of imagination, what Weisberg says is plausible. According to another, more defensible account of imagination, it is not. I discuss these issues within the context of an allegedly unimaginable model system in ecology, but the conclusions I draw are more general. I (...) then describe how fictionalism should be recast in order to deal with Weisberg’s critique. (shrink)

In this thesis, I aim to motivate a particular philosophy of mathematics characterised by the following three claims. First, mathematical sentences are generally speaking false because mathematical objects do not exist. Second, people typically use mathematical sentences to communicate content that does not imply the existence of mathematical objects. Finally, in using mathematical language in this way, speakers are not doing anything out of the ordinary: they are performing straightforward assertions. In Part I, I argue that the role played by (...) mathematics in our scientific explanations is a purely expressive one, merely allowing us to say more about the physical world than we would otherwise be able to. Mathematical objects do not need to exist for mathematics to play this role. This proposal puts a normative constraint on our use of mathematical language: we ought to use mathematically presented theories to express belief only in the consequences they have for non-mathematical things. In Part II, I will argue that what the normative proposal recommends is in fact what people generally do in both pure and applied mathematical contexts. I motivate this claim by showing that it is predicted by our best general means of analysing natural language. I provide a semantic theory of applied arithmetical sentences that reveals they do not purport to refer to numbers, as well as a pragmatic theory for pure mathematical language use which reveals that pure mathematical utterances do not typically communicate content that implies the existence of mathematical objects. In conclusion, I show that the emerging hermeneutic fictionalist position is preferable to any alternative interpretation of mathematical discourse as aimed at describing a domain of independently existing abstract mathematical objects. (shrink)

How do scientific models represent in a way that enables us to discover new truths about reality and draw inferences about it? Contemporary accounts of scientific discovery answer this question by focusing on the cognitive mechanisms involved in the generation of new ideas and concepts in terms of a special sort of reasoning—or model-based reasoning—involving imagery. Alternatively, I argue that answering this question requires that we recognise the crucial role of the propositional imagination in the construction and development (...) of models for the purpose of generating hypotheses that are plausible candidates for truth. I propose simple fictionalism as a new account of models as Waltonian games of make-believe and suggest that models can lead to genuine scientific discovery when they are used as representations that denote real world phenomena and generate two main kinds of theoretical hypotheses, model-world comparisons and direct attributions. (shrink)

Easy-road mathematical fictionalists grant for the sake of argument that quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable to some of our best scientific theories and explanations. Even so they maintain we can accept those theories and explanations, without believing their mathematical components, provided we believe the concrete world is intrinsically as it needs to be for those components to be true. Those I refer to as “mathematical surrealists” by contrast appeal to facts about the intrinsic character of the concrete world, (...) not to explain why our best mathematically imbued scientific theories and explanations are acceptable in spite of having false components, but in order to replace those theories and explanations with parasitic, nominalistically acceptable alternatives. I argue that easy-road fictionalism is viable only if mathematical surrealism is and that the latter constitutes a superior nominalist strategy. Two advantages of mathematical surrealism are that it neither begs the question concerning the explanatory role of mathematics in science nor requires rejecting the cogency of inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

Roman Frigg and Adam Toon, both, defend a fictionalist view of scientific modeling. One fundamental thesis of their view is that scientists are participating in games of make-believe when they study models in order to learn about the models themselves and about target systems represented by the models. In this paper, the epistemology of these two fictionalist views is critically discussed. I will argue that both views can give an explanation of how scientists learn about models they are studying. (...) However, how the use of models can foster an understanding of target systems is not sufficiently accounted for by Frigg and Toon. (shrink)

[EDIT: This book will be published open access. Production is taking longer than expected but I will post the whole book sometime this summer.] One central aim of science is to provide explanations of natural phenomena. What role(s) does mathematics play in achieving this aim? How does mathematics contribute to the explanatory power of science? Rules to Infinity defends the thesis, common though perhaps inchoate among many members of the Vienna Circle, that mathematics contributes to the explanatory power of science (...) by expressing conceptual rules, rules which allow the transformation of empirical descriptions. Mathematics should not be thought of as describing, in any substantive sense, an abstract realm of eternal mathematical objects, as traditional platonists have thought. In Rules to Infinity, this view, which I call mathematical normativism, is updated with contemporary philosophical tools, and it is argued that normativism is compatible with mainstream semantic theory. This allows the normativist to accept that there are mathematical truths, while resisting the platonistic idea that there exist abstract mathematical objects that explain such truths. Furthermore, Rules to Infinity defends a particular account of the distinction between scientific explanations that are in some sense distinctively mathematical – those that explain natural phenomena in some uniquely mathematical way – and those that are only standardly mathematical, and it lays out desiderata for any account of this distinction. Normativism is compared with other prominent views in the philosophy of mathematics such as neo-Fregeanism, fictionalism, conventionalism, and structuralism. Rules to Infinity serves as an entry point into debates at the forefront of philosophy of science and mathematics, and it defends novel positions in these debates. (shrink)

The usual question, “Are models fictions?” is replaced by the question, “Should scientific models be regarded as works of fiction?” This makes it clear that the issue is not one of definition but of interpretation. First one must distinguish between the ontology of scientific models and their function in the practice of science. Theoretical models and works of fiction are ontologically on a par, their both being creations of human imagination. It is their differing functions in practice that (...) makes it inappropriate to regard scientific models as works of fiction. Three reasons for thinking scientific models should be regarded as works of fiction are rejected. First, scientists themselves sometimes invoke the idea of fictions in their discussions of specific models. Second, many scientific models are physically impossible to realize in the real world. Third, regarding scientific models as works of fiction supports a general fictionalist understanding of scientific theories. It is concluded that promoting the general idea that scientific models are works of fiction unnecessarily supports attacks on the legitimacy of science itself. (shrink)

This chapter examines and criticizes the main arguments offered for scientific realism, here identified as the following view: Science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. In contrast, constructive empiricism, which also opts for a literal understanding of scientific language, is the following view: Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and (...) acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate. Topics examined include the ’theory/observation dichotomy’, observable versus unobservable entities, epistemology and the epistemic community, inference to the best explanation, principle of the common cause, and fictionalism. The views of Smart, Sellars, Reichenbach, Putnam, and Dummett are considered. It is argued that the arguments offered for scientific realism, though telling against logical positivism, do not support it over and against constructive empiricism. (shrink)

A brief examination of the most recent literature in philosophy of science shows that a host of research in this area studies the fictionalist approach to scientific models and related approaches such as van Fraassen's latest book (2008) on scientific representation. Van Fraassen's idea, to put it bluntly, relies on the idea that measurement is the main instrument by the means of which natural sciences achieve the representation aims expressed by scientific models. Moreover, if scientific knowledge (...) is associated with the deployment of some kind of explicative power, this power is closely related to the representation devices developed between the 17 th and 18 th century, when these were conceived as involving specific forms of measurement: measurement locates the target in a theoretically constructed logical space (van Fraassen 2008, p.2). The main objective of our talk is to delve into the logical features of such kind of approaches: the point is to understand the location-mechanism. On one hand we will follow a seminal idea of Olsson and Westlund (2006) that proposed to add to a scientific model a set of open questions (its scientific agenda), and on the other, we will deploy a recent proposal of Rahman/Redmond (2015) to conceive objects of models as functions (dependent-proof objects) of hypothetical judgments as formulated in the frame of constructive type theory. Against such a background, the point is how to relate those functions with the purported targets of the scientific model they constitute. Our main claim is that this achieved by a mapping. The specification mechanism of such a mapping, we claim, is related to those questions that constitute the agenda of the underlying theory and more particularly to the questions related to the relevant measurement theory. (shrink)

The ontological status of theories themselves has recently re-emerged as a live topic in the philosophy of science. We consider whether a recent approach within the philosophy of art can shed some light on this issue. For many years philosophers of aesthetics have debated a paradox in the (meta)ontology of musical works (e.g. Levinson [1980]). Taken individually, there are good reasons to accept each of the following three propositions: (i) musical works are created; (ii) musical works are abstract objects; (iii) (...) abstract objects cannot be created. However it seems clear that, if one wants to avoid inconsistency, one cannot commit to all three. Following up recent developments courtesy of Cameron ([2008a]), we consider how one might respond to the corresponding set of propositions in the (meta)ontology of scientific theories. 1 Introduction2 Setting up the Problem3 What to Reject? 3.1 Scientific theories are not created? 3.2 Scientific theories are not abstract objects? 3.3 Abstract objects can be created?4 A Fourth Way: Truth-maker Theory5 Objections and Replies 5.1 What are the truth-makers? 5.2 Objections from World 3 5.3 Fictionalism 5.4 Concrete/abstract6 Conclusion. (shrink)

This article charts a path between those who champion the culture concept and those who think it dangerous. This path navigates between two positions: realists who adopt realist conceptions of both the culture concept and the category of cultural groups, and fictionalists who see such efforts as just creative and fictional extrapolation. Developing the fictionalist position, I suggest it overstates the case against realism: there is plenty of room for realist positions that produce well-grounded empirical studies of cultural groups. Nonetheless, (...) I stress the importance of one element of the fictionalist critique: that the choice of ontology can lead to downstream harm. Developing an extended case study around the work of the anthropologist Julian Steward, I show how ontological decision making is an important element of contemporary scientific and policymaking work. I conclude by arguing that greater attention should be paid both to the processes by which ontologies are adopted and the potential consequences that may result. (shrink)

Upholders of fictionalism about scientific models have not yet successfully explained how scientists can learn about the real world by making comparisons between models and the real phenomena they stand for. In this paper I develop an account of model-world comparisons in terms of what I take to be the best antirealist analyses of comparative claims that emerge from the current debate on fiction.

Substantive counterlegal discourse poses a problem for those according to whom the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. I discern two types of necessitarianism about laws: dispositional essentialism and modal necessitarianism. I argue that Toby Handfield’s response to the problem of counterlegals cannot help the modal necessitarian, according to whom all possible worlds are identical with respect to the laws. I thus propose a fictionalist treatment of counterlegals. Fictions are not limited by metaphysical possibility; hence, fictionalism affords the modal (...) necessitarian the means to account for the apparent substance of counterlegals even granting the metaphysical necessity of the laws. (shrink)

Scientific models share one central characteristic with fiction: their relation to the physical world is ambiguous. It is often unclear whether an element in a model represents something in the world or presents an artifact of model building. Fiction, too, can resemble our world to varying degrees. However, we assign a different epistemic function to scientific representations. As artifacts of human activity, how are scientific representations allowing us to make inferences about real phenomena? In reply to this (...) concern, philosophers of science have started analyzing scientific representations in terms of fictionalization strategies. Many arguments center on a dyadic relation between the model and its target system, focusing on structural resemblances and “as if” scenarios. This chapter provides a different approach. It looks more closely at model building to analyze the interpretative strategies dealing with the representational limits of models. How do we interpret ambiguous elements in models? Moreover, how do we determine the validity of model-based inferences to information that is not an explicit part of a representational structure? I argue that the problem of ambiguous inference emerges from two features of representations, namely their hybridity and incompleteness. To distinguish between fictional and non-fictional elements in scientific models my suggestion is to look at the integrative strategies that link a particular model to other methods in an ongoing research context. To exemplify this idea, I examine protein modeling through X-ray crystallography as a pivotal method in biochemistry. (shrink)

A natural way to think of models is as abstract entities. If theories employ models to represent the world, theories traffic in abstract entities much more widely than is often assumed. This kind of thought seems to create a problem for a scientific realist approach to theories. Scientific realists claim theories should be understood literally. Do they then imply the reality of abstract entities? Or are theories simply—and incurably—false? Or has the very idea of literal understanding to be (...) abandoned? Is then fictionalism towards scientific theories inevitable? This paper argues that scientific realism can happily co-exist with models qua abstracta. (shrink)

“Structuralism, Fictionalism, and the Applicability of Mathematics in Science”. This article has two objectives. The first one is to review some of the most important questions in the contemporary philosophy of mathematics: What is the nature of mathematical objects? How do we acquire knowledge about these objects? Should mathematical statements be interpreted differently than ordinary ones? And, finally, how can we explain the applicability of mathematics in science? The debate that guides these reflections is the one between mathematical realism (...) and anti-realism. On the other hand, the second objective is to discuss the arguments that use the applicability of mathematics in science to justify mathematical realism, and show that none of them reaches its aim. To this end, we will distinguish three aspects of the problem of the applicability of mathematics: the utility of mathematics in science, the unexpected utility of some mathematical theories, and the apparent indispensability of mathematics in our best scientific theories - in particular, in our best scientific explanations. Finally, I argue that none of these aspects constitutes a reason to adopt mathematical realism. (shrink)

Many accounts of scientific modeling conceive of models as fictions: scientists interact with models in ways analogous to various aesthetic objects. Fictionalists follow most other accounts of modeling by taking them to be revelatory of the actual world in virtue of bearing some resemblance relation to a target system. While such fictionalist accounts capture crucial aspects of modelling practice, they are ill-suited to some design and engineering contexts. Here, models sometimes serve to underwrite design projects whereby real-world targets are (...) constructed. In such circumstances, it is unclear what the model is supposed to resemble. Further, while fictionalists often require that models qua models have their content in virtue of construal or interpretation, in some engineering and design contexts success-conditions do not require such content—all that is required is that the model generates the required outputs. I take these points to motivate a view which accommodates fictionalism, but is broader. I articulate and defend an account of models as tools: specifically, material objects which are put to particular uses in particular contexts. (shrink)

Many accounts of scientific modeling conceive of models as fictions: scientists interact with models in ways analogous to various aesthetic objects. Fictionalists follow most other accounts of modeling by taking them to be revelatory of the actual world in virtue of bearing some resemblance relation to a target system. While such fictionalist accounts capture crucial aspects of modelling practice, they are ill-suited to some design and engineering contexts. Here, models sometimes serve to underwrite design projects whereby real-world targets are (...) constructed. In such circumstances, it is unclear what the model is supposed to resemble. Further, while fictionalists often require that models qua models have their content in virtue of construal or interpretation, in some engineering and design contexts success-conditions do not require such content—all that is required is that the model generates the required outputs. I take these points to motivate a view which accommodates fictionalism, but is broader. I articulate and defend an account of models as tools: specifically, material objects which are put to particular uses in particular contexts. (shrink)

Fiora Salis compares the fictional and the artifactual views of models. She argues that both accounts contain several deep insights concerning the nature of scientific models but they also face some difficult challenges. She then puts forward an account of the ontology of models intended to incorporate the benefits of both views avoiding their main difficulties. Her key idea is that models are human-made artifacts that are akin to literary works of fiction. In this view, models are complex objects (...) that are constituted by a model description and the model content generated within a game of make-believe. As per the fiction view, model descriptions are construed as props in a game of make-believe, where props are concrete objects that prescribe certain imaginings. As per the artifactual view, model descriptions are construed as concrete representational tools that enable and constrain a scientist’s cognitive processes and provide intersubjective epistemic access to their imaginings. (shrink)

Our best scientific theories explain a wide range of empirical phenomena, make accurate predictions, and are widely believed. Since many of these theories make ample use of mathematics, it is natural to see them as confirming its truth. Perhaps the use of mathematics in science even gives us reason to believe in the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets. These issues lie at the heart of the Indispensability Argument, to which this Element is devoted. The (...) Element's first half traces the evolution of the Indispensability Argument from its origins in Quine and Putnam's works, taking in naturalism, confirmational holism, Field's program, and the use of idealisations in science along the way. Its second half examines the explanatory version of the Indispensability Argument, and focuses on several more recent versions of easy-road and hard-road fictionalism respectively. (shrink)

State of the art paper on the topic realism/anti-realism. The first part of the paper elucidates the notions of existence and independence of the metaphysical characterization of the realism/anti-realism dispute. The second part of the paper presents a critical taxonomy of the most important positions and doctrines in the contemporary literature on the domains of science and mathematics: scientific realism, scientific anti-realism, constructive empiricism, structural realism, mathematical Platonism, mathematical indispensability, mathematical empiricism, intuitionism, mathematical fictionalism and second philosophy.

I take up the task of examining how someone who takes seriously the ambitious programme of conceptual analysis advocated by the Canberra School can minimise the eliminative consequences which I argue the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis recipe of conceptual analysis is likely to have for many folk discourses. The objective is to find a stable means to preserve the constative appearance of folk discourse and to find it generally successful in its attempts to describe an external world, albeit in non-scientific terms that (...) do not reflect the nature of things. The view I settle on, quasi-fictionalism, is modelled on a modified descriptivist version of Kendall Walton’s account of prop-oriented games of make-believe. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to assess whether the construct of neural representations plays an explanatory role under the variational free-energy principle and its corollary process theory, active inference; and (2) if so, to assess which philosophical stance - in relation to the ontological and epistemological status of representations - is most appropriate. We focus on non-realist (deflationary and fictionalist-instrumentalist) approaches. We consider a deflationary account of mental representation, according to which the explanatorily relevant contents of neural (...) representations are mathematical, rather than cognitive, and a fictionalist or instrumentalist account, according to which representations are scientifically useful fictions that serve explanatory (and other) aims. After reviewing the free-energy principle and active inference, we argue that the model of adaptive phenotypes under the free-energy principle can be used to furnish a formal semantics, enabling us to assign semantic content to specific phenotypic states (the internal states of a Markovian system that exists far from equilibrium). We propose a modified fictionalist account: an organism-centered fictionalism or instrumentalism. We argue that, under the free-energy principle, pursuing even a deflationary account of the content of neural representations licenses the appeal to the kind of semantic content involved in the aboutness or intentionality of cognitive systems; our position is thus coherent with, but rests on distinct assumptions from, the realist position. We argue that the free-energy principle thereby explains the aboutness or intentionality in living systems and hence their capacity to parse their sensory stream using an ontology or set of semantic factors. (shrink)

How do models represent reality? There are two conditions that scientific models must satisfy to be representations of real systems, the aboutness condition and the epistemic condition. In this article, I critically assess the two main fictionalist theories of models as representations, the indirect fiction view and the direct fiction view, with respect to these conditions. And I develop a novel proposal, what I call ‘the new fiction view of models’. On this view, models are akin to fictional stories; (...) they represent real-world phenomena if they stand in a denotation relation with reality; and they enable knowledge of reality via the generation of theoretical hypotheses, model–world comparisons and direct attributions. (shrink)

What is the status of a cat in a virtual reality environment? Is it a real object? Or part of a fiction? Virtual realism, as defended by D. J. Chalmers, takes it to be a virtual object that really exists, that has properties and is involved in real events. His preferred specification of virtual realism identifies the cat with a digital object. The project of this paper is to use a comparison between virtual reality environments and scientific computer simulations (...) to critically engage with Chalmers’s position. I first argue that, if it is sound, his virtual realism should also be applied to objects that figure in scientific computer simulations, e.g. to simulated galaxies. This leads to a slippery slope because it implies an unreasonable proliferation of digital objects. A philosophical analysis of scientific computer simulations suggests an alternative picture: The cat and the galaxies are parts of fictional models for which the computer provides model descriptions. This result motivates a deeper analysis of the way in which Chalmers builds up his realism. I argue that he buys realism too cheap. For instance, he does not really specify what virtual objects are supposed to be. As a result, rhetoric aside, his virtual realism isn’t far from a sort of fictionalism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, by combining eliminativist and fictionalist approaches toward the sub-personal representational posits of predictive processing, we arrive at an empirically robust and yet metaphysically innocuous cognitive scientific framework. I begin the paper by providing a non-representational account of the five key posits of predictive processing. Then, I motivate a fictionalist approach toward the remaining indispensable representational posits of predictive processing, and explain how representation can play an epistemologically indispensable role within predictive processing explanations without (...) thereby requiring that representation metaphysically exists. Finally, I outline four consequences of accepting this approach and explain why they are beneficial: we arrive at a victory for metaphysical eliminativism in the ‘representation wars’; my account fits with extant empirical practice; my account provides guidance for future research; and, my account provides the beginnings of a response to Mark Sprevak’s IBE problem for fictionalist approaches toward sub-personal representation. (shrink)

The dissertation studies the mathematical strength of strict constructivism, a finitistic fragment of Bishop's constructivism, and explores its implications in the philosophy of mathematics. ;It consists of two chapters and four appendixes. Chapter 1 presents strict constructivism, shows that it is within the spirit of finitism, and explains how to represent sets, functions and elementary calculus in strict constructivism. Appendix A proves that the essentials of Bishop and Bridges' book Constructive Analysis can be developed within strict constructivism. Appendix B further (...) develops, within strict constructivism, the essentials of the functional analysis applied in quantum mechanics, including the spectral theorem, Stone's theorem, and the self-adjointness of some common quantum mechanical operators. Some comparisons with other related work, in particular, a comparison with S. Simpson's partial realization of Hilbert's program, and a discussion of the relevance of M. B. Pour-El and J. I. Richards' negative results in recursive analysis are given in Appendix C. ;Chapter 2 explores the possible philosophical implications of these technical results. It first suggests a fictionalistic account for the ontology of pure mathematics. This leaves a puzzle about how truths about fictional mathematical entities are applicable to science. The chapter then explains that for those applications of mathematics that can be reduced to applications of strict constructivism, fictional entities can be eliminated in the applications and the puzzle of applicability can be resolved. Therefore, if strict constructivism were essentially sufficient for all scientific applications, the applicability of mathematics of mathematics in science would be accountable. The chapter then argues that the reduction of mathematics to strict constructivism also reduces the epistemological question about mathematics to that about elementary arithmetic. The dissertation ends with a suggestion that a proper epistemological basis for arithmetic is perhaps a mixture of Mill's empiricism and the Kantian views. (shrink)

In everyday usage, ‘realism’ is often used as a name for a practically or epistemically low-ambition attitude, while ‘idealism’ is often taken to denote a highambition—if not utopian—attitude. In philosophcal usage, mostly, it is the other way around: those who are called realists tend to claim more than their opponents—they are the philosophical optimists. Within philosophy itself, ‘realism’ adopts a variety of interrelated and contested meanings. It is used as the name for doctrines about issues such as perceptual access to (...) reality, the existence of universals, the goals and achievements of science, the nature of truth, the objectivity of morality, and many other things. Given this variety, no single shorthand definition of the term ‘realism’ can be provided. One manifestation of this variety is that the opponents of realism about these issues are not called uniformly by a single label (other than the rather uninformative ‘antirealism’): the labels used include idealism, phenomenalism, instrumentalism, conventionalism, fictionalism, noncognitivism, constructivism, relativism, irrealism, and others. Sometimes such labels vary from one dispute or domain to another even when similar ideas are being expressed. Sometimes they are used to make claims that are specific to the domain at hand and distinct from other antirealist theses. In what follows a brief tour will be taken along some of the representative philosophical highways and lanes, from ontology through semantics to epistemology. Along the way, realism will be confronted with some of its various opponents and internal conflicts. The philosophical landscape in the neighborhood of realism is nowadays much broader than it used to be: in a typical older encyclopedia, ‘realism’ was taken to name doctrines about universals or about perception, or both, to the exclusion of much of its present coverage, and many of the current opponents were missing from view altogether. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for philosophers to maintain that one is obliged to believe nothing beyond the observable consequences of a successful scientific theory. This doctrine is variously known as instrumentalism, fictionalism, constructive empiricism, theoretical skepticism and the philosophy of "as if". The purpose of the present paper is to subject such forms of scientific antirealism to a two-pronged critique. In the first place it is argued that there is no genuine difference between believing a theory and (...) being disposed to use it to make predictions, design experiments, and so on; so traditional instrumentalism is incoherent. In the second place, a retrenched position is considered in which theoretical belief would be tolerated but said to be justified on merely pragmatic, and not epistemic, grounds. In criticizing this point of view it is shown that the onus of proof rests on anyone who maintains it; furthermore, the only possible rationale for it (which is based on underdetermination of theory by data) is described, and various deficiencies in this argument are exposed. (shrink)

This book provides both an introduction to the philosophy of scientific modeling and a contribution to the discussion and clarification of two recent philosophical conceptions of models: artifactualism and fictionalism. These can be viewed as different stances concerning the standard representationalist account of scientific models. By better understanding these two alternative views, readers will gain a deeper insight into what a model is as well as how models function in different sciences. Fictionalism has been a traditional (...) epistemological stance related to antirealist construals of laws and theories, such as instrumentalism and inferentialism. By contrast, the more recent fictional view of models holds that scientific models must be conceived of as the same kind of entities as literary characters and places. This approach is essentially an answer to the ontological question concerning the nature of models, which in principle is not incompatible with a representationalist account of the function of models. The artifactual view of models is an approach according to which scientific models are epistemic artifacts, whose main function is not to represent the phenomena but rather to provide epistemic access to them. It can be conceived of as a non-representationalist and pragmatic account of modeling, which does not intend to focus on the ontology of models but rather on the ways they are built and used for different purposes. The different essays address questions such as the artifactual view of idealization, the use of information theory to elucidate the concepts of abstraction and idealization, the deidealization of models, the nature of scientific fictions, the structural account of representation and the ontological status of structures, the role of surrogative reasoning with models, and the use of models for explaining and predicting physical phenomena. (shrink)

The epistemology of models has to face a conundrum: models are often described as highly idealised, and yet they are considered to be vehicles for scientific explanations. Truth-oriented—veritist—conceptions of explanation seem thereby undermined by this contradiction. In this article, I will show how this apparent paradox can be avoided by appealing to the notion of fiction. If fictionalism is often thought to lead to various flavours of instrumentalism, thereby weakening the veritist hopes, the fiction view of models offers (...) a framework much richer than it seems at first sight. To do so, I will call upon the concepts of modality, counterfactual structure and credible worlds. In the end, veritism of explanation and fiction can indeed go hand in hand, but the scope of explanations we can hope to draw from models must be more precisely delineated. (shrink)

Manuel García Carpintero defends a form of antirealism for the explicit talk and thought both about fictional entities and scientific models: a version of StephenYablo’s figuralist brand of factionalism. He argues that, in contrast with pretense-theoretic fictionalist proposals, on his view, utterances in those discourses are straightforward assertions with straightforward truth-conditions, involving a particular kind of metaphors or figurative manner. But given that the relevant metaphors are all but “dead”, this might suggest that the view is after all realist, (...) committed to referents of some sort for singular terms in the relevant discourses. He revisits these issues from the perspective of the more recent work on them and applies his view to recent debates in semantics on the role and adequacy of supervaluationist models of indeterminacy. (shrink)

Numbers without Science opposes the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument, seeking to undermine the argument and reduce its profound influence. Philosophers rely on indispensability to justify mathematical knowledge using only empiricist epistemology. I argue that we need an independent account of our knowledge of mathematics. The indispensability argument, in broad form, consists of two premises. The major premise alleges that we are committed to mathematical objects if science requires them. The minor premise alleges that science in fact requires mathematical objects. The most (...) common rejection of the argument denies its minor premise by introducing scientific theories which do not refer to mathematical objects. Hartry Field has shown how we can reformulate some physical theories without mathematical commitments. I argue that Field’s preference for intrinsic explanation, which underlies his reformulation, is ill-motivated, and that his resultant fictionalism suffers unacceptable consequences. I attack the major premise instead. I argue that Quine provides a mistaken criterion for ontic commitment. Our uses of mathematics in scientific theory are instrumental and do not commit us to mathematical objects. Furthermore, even if we accept Quine’s criterion for ontic commitment, the indispensability argument justifies only an anemic version of mathematics, and does not yield traditional mathematical objects. The first two chapters of the dissertation develop these results for Quine’s indispensability argument. In the third chapter, I apply my findings to other contemporary indispensabilists, specifically the structuralists Michael Resnik and Stewart Shapiro. In the fourth chapter, I show that indispensability arguments which do not rely on Quine’s holism, like that of Putnam, are even less successful. Also in Chapter 4, I show how Putnam’s work in the philosophy of mathematics is unified around the indispensability argument. In the last chapter of the dissertation, I conclude that we need an account of mathematical knowledge which does not appeal to empirical science and which does not succumb to mysticism and speculation. Briefly, my strategy is to argue that any defensible solution to the demarcation problem of separating good scientific theories from bad ones will find mathematics to be good, if not empirical, science. (shrink)

The concept of causation is essential to ascribing moral and legal responsibility since the only way an agent can make a difference in the world is through her acts causing things to happen. Yet the extent and manner in which the complex features of causation bear on responsibility ascriptions remain unclear. I present an analysis of four aspects of causation which yields new insights into different properties of responsibility and offers increased plausibility to certain moral views. Chapter I examines the (...) realist assumption that causation is an objective and mind-independent relation between space-time located relata – a postulate meant to provide moral assessment with a naturalistic basis and make moral properties continuous with a scientific view of the world. I argue that such a realist stance is problematic, and by extension so are the views seeking to tie responsibility attributions to an objective relation. Chapter II combines the context sensitivity of causal claims with the plausible idea that responsibility ascriptions rest on the assessment of causal sequences relating agents and consequences. I argue that taking context sensitivity seriously compels us to face a choice between moral contrastivism and a mild version of scepticism, viz. responsibility is not impossible, but ultimately difficult to identify with confidence. I show why the latter view is preferable. Chapter III explores the concern that group agents would causally overdetermine the effects already caused by their constituent individuals. I argue that non-reductive views of agency and responsibility lack a coherent causal story about how group agents impact the world as relatively independent entities. I explain the practical importance of higher-order entities and suggest a fictionalist stance towards group agency talk. Chapter IV analyses the puzzle of effect selection – if causes have infinitely many effects, but only one or a few are mentioned in causal claims, what determines their selection from the complete set of consequents? I argue that the criteria governing the difference between effects and by-products lack clarity and stability. I use the concerns about appropriate effect selection to formulate an epistemic argument against consequentialism. (shrink)

The first interpretations of Kant’s unfinished work, the so-called Opus postumum, occur almost exclusively within German Neo-Kantianism . The central point of discussion focuses on the relationship between transcendental idealism and empirical realism in Kant’s late thought. Some Neokantians regard the final development of Kant’s philosophy as a radical form of idealism, either a fictionalism or a scientific idealism . Several interpreters attribute the theory of the so-called “double affection” to the Kant of the Opus postumum. Krause tries (...) instead to match transcendental idealism and empirical realism. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss this debate. (shrink)

Our best social scientific theories try to tell us something about the social world. But is talk of a “social world” a metaphor that we ought not take too seriously? In particular, do the denizens of the social world—cultural values like the Protestant work ethic, firms like ExxonMobil, norms like standards of dress and behavior, institutions like the legal system, teams like FC Barcelona, conventions like marriages—exist? The question is not merely academic. Social scientists use these different social entities (...) to explain social phenomena such as the rise of capitalism, the decline in oil prices, or the effect of unions on the sports labor market. But how could these explanations possibly work if social entities don’t exist? (shrink)