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Climate Models and the Irrelevance of Chaos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Corey Dethier
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Abstract

Philosophy of science has witnessed substantial recent debate over the existence of a structural analogue of chaos, which is alleged to spell trouble for certain uses of climate models. The debate over the analogy can and should be separated from its alleged epistemic implications: chaos-like behavior is neither necessary nor sufficient for small dynamical misrepresentations to generate erroneous results. The kind of sensitivity that matters in epistemology is one that induces unsafe beliefs, and the existence of a structural analogue to chaos is better seen as an explanation for known safety failures than as providing evidence for unknown ones.

Type
Computer Simulation and Computer Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 88 , Issue 5 , December 2021 , pp. 997 - 1007
Copyright
Copyright 2021 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Roman Frigg for valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. The article also benefited greatly from conversations with Anjan Chakravartty and Wendy Parker.

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