Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Alejandro Cassini (University of Buenos Aires) and Juan Redmond (University of Valparaiso) who recently edited Models and Idealizations in Science: Artifactual and Fictional Approaches (Springer, 2021). Here they present the book. This book is intended both as an introduction to the philosophy of scientific modeling and as a contribution to the discussion and clarification of two recent philosophical conceptions of models: the artifactual and the fictional views.  The first chapter provides a rather elementary but fairly complete and extensive introduction to the present state of the philosophy of scientific models. It also offers a brief historical narrative of the rise and the early development of the philosophy of scientific models since the middle of the 20th century.  Juan Redmond The commented bibliography at end of the book complements this narrative by offering a classified list of the main relevant books on models and idealizations in science preced...

Catherine Z. Elgin is Professor of the Philosophy of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Considered Judgment, Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary, With Reference to Reference, and (with Nelson Goodman) Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences. In this post, she talks about her book True Enough . Epistemology valorizes truth.  There may be practical or prudential reasons to accept a contention that is known to be false, but it is widely assumed that there can never be epistemically good reasons to do so.  Nor can there be epistemically good reasons to accept modes of justification that are not truth-conducive.  Although this seems plausible, it has a fatal defect.  It cannot accommodate the cognitive contributions of science.  For science unabashedly uses models, idealizations, and thought experiments that are known not to be true.  Nor do practicing scientists think that such devices will ultimat...