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There Is a Special Problem of Scientific Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Brandon Boesch
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Abstract

Callender and Cohen argue that there is no need for a special account of the constitution of scientific representation. I argue that scientific representation is communal and therefore deeply tied to the practice in which it is embedded. The communal nature is accounted for by licensing, the activities of scientific practice by which scientists establish a representation. A case study of the Lotka-Volterra model reveals how licensure is a constitutive element of the representational relationship. Thus, any account of the constitution of scientific representation must account for licensing, meaning that there is a special problem of scientific representation.

Type
Representation and Realism
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 970 - 981
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Tarja Knuuttila, Michael Dickson, and members of a philosophy of science reading group at the University of South Carolina for helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks also for helpful questions and comments to audiences at the 2015 Congress on Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, the 2016 South Carolina and North Carolina Society for Philosophy Joint Meeting, and the 2016 Philosophy of Science Association Biennial Meeting.

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