Properties as World-Lines

Gallais, Matthieu

How Fictional Models Are Related to Target Systems

Type de document :

Autre communication scientifique (congrès sans actes - poster - séminaire...): Communication dans un congrès avec actes

Titre :

Properties as World-Lines
How Fictional Models Are Related to Target Systems

Auteur(s) :

Gallais, Matthieu [Auteur]
Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163 [STL]

Titre de la manifestation scientifique :

Philosophy of Science in the 21st Century - Challenges and Tasks

Ville :

Lisbon

Pays :

Portugal

Date de début de la manifestation scientifique :

2013-12-04

Mot(s)-clé(s) en anglais :

Properties
World-lines
Fictionalism

Discipline(s) HAL :

Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Philosophie

Résumé en anglais : [en]

The understanding of scientific models as fictions allows to explain the idealizations or abstractions of some models, like those produced, for example, by the analogy between gas molecules and billiard balls in the dynamical ...
Lire la suite >The understanding of scientific models as fictions allows to explain the idealizations or abstractions of some models, like those produced, for example, by the analogy between gas molecules and billiard balls in the dynamical theory of gases, highlighted by Marie Hesse. However, this interpretation struggles to explain the predictive success of scientific models, and more generally, the relation between a model as fiction and its real target system. In- deed, the realist correspondence theory of truth cannot hold, notably when a theoretical object is described with idealized properties according to a scientific model. Roman Frigg proposed a fictionalist approach to scientific models based on the notion of make-believe developed by Kendall Walton. Its principle is to compare properties rather than objects themselves; an idealized object of a model does not belong to the same ontological category as a real object of a target system. We agree with that idea because, as Fred Dretske showed, scientific laws describe relations between properties expressed by predicates, and not be- tween extensions of those predicates. But according to Frigg's approach, the comparison between models and reality is possible because the properties of abstract entities and of real objects are the same. In this paper, we will argue that this idea is a kind of correspondence- truth and we will propose to understand properties as world-lines: the real and the fictional properties are not the same, but they are linked by the same world-line. Originally, in this sense a world-line is a concept developed by Jaakko Hintikka to solve the issue concerning the identity of individuals in modal contexts. Here, we will generalize that idea to under- stand the relation between a fictional property of a model entity and a real property of an actual object. Hence, we persist in understanding models as fictions, but propose to explain their success in a new way.Lire moins >

Langue :

Anglais

Comité de lecture :

Oui

Audience :

Internationale

Vulgarisation :

Non

Collections :

Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Source :

Harvested from HAL