An Inferential Conception of Scientific Representation

By Mauricio Suárez. Philosophia Scientiæ, 2004

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How do models give us knowledge? The case of Carnot’s ideal heat engine (2011, background): “Thus representation becomes less a feature of models and their target systems than an accomplishment of representation users (Suárez 2004, 2010, Giere 2004, 2010, Bailer-Jones 2003, 2009).”
Learning from Minimal Economic Models (2009, background): “…be an abstract feature of a class of phenomena, or even a vague idea about such a feature, without any 1 Suarez defends a ‘deflationary or minimalist attitude and strategy towards the concept of scientific representation’ that is related to the minimal model presented here (Suárez 2004, p. 770).”
An agent-based conception of models and scientific representation (2009, background): “It is not by itself what makes the 9 This designation parallels Suárez’ (2004) “Inferential Conception of Scientific Representation,” which also has an intentional component.”
Modelling and representing: An artefactual approach to model-based representation (2011, methodology): “Two-place analyses attempt, as Suárez (2004) put it, “to reduce the essentially intentional judgments of representation-users to facts about the source and target objects or systems and their properties” (p. 768).”