Scientific models are not fictions. Model-based science as epistemic warfare.

Autor/in	Magnani, Lorenzo
Titel	Scientific models are not fictions. Model-based science as epistemic warfare. Gefälligkeitsübersetzung: Wissenschaftsmodelle sind keine Fiktionen. Modellbasierte Wissenschaft als epistemische Kriegsführung.
Quelle	Aus: Magnani, Lorenzo (Hrsg.); Li, Ping (Hrsg.): Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Western & eastern studies. Berlin: Springer (2012) S. 1-38 PDF als Volltext Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Reihe	Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics. 2
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; gedruckt; Sammelwerksbeitrag
ISBN	978-3-642-29927-8
DOI	10.1007/978-3-642-29928-5_1
Schlagwörter	Kognition; Angewandte Wissenschaft; Wissenstransfer; Krieg; Naturwissenschaften; Erkenntnistheorie; Wissenschaft; Wissenschaftsverständnis; Fiktion; Modell
Abstract	"In the current epistemological debate scientific models are not only considered as useful devices for explaining facts or discovering new entities, laws, and theories, but also rubricated under various new labels: from the classical ones, as abstract entities and idealizations, to the more recent, as fictions, surrogates, credible worlds, missing systems, make-believe, parables, functional, epistemic actions, revealing capacities. The paper discusses these approaches showing some of their epistemological inadequacies, also taking advantage of recent results in cognitive science. The main aim is to revise and criticize fictionalism, also reframing the received idea of abstractness and ideality of models with the help of recent results coming from the area of distributed cognition (common coding) and abductive cognition (manipulative). The article also illustrates how scientific modeling activity can be better described taking advantage of the concept of 'epistemic warfare', which sees scientific enterprise as a complicated struggle for rational knowledge in which it is crucial to distinguish epistemic (for example scientific models) from non-epistemic (for example fictions, falsities, propaganda) weapons. Finally the author will illustrate that it is misleading to analyze models in science by adopting a confounding mixture of static and dynamic aspects of the scientific enterprise. Scientific models in a static perspective (for example when inserted in a textbook) certainly appear fictional to the epistemologist, but their fictional character disappears in case a dynamic perspective is adopted. A reference to the originative role of thought experiment in Galileo's discoveries and to usefulness of Feyerabend's counterinduction in criticizing the role of resemblance in model-based cognition is also provided, to further corroborate the thesis indicated by the article title." (author's abstract).
Erfasst von	GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, Mannheim
Update	2014/2