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Lange on Minimal Model Explanations: A Defense of Batterman and Rice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Travis McKenna
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Abstract

Marc Lange has recently raised three objections to the account of minimal model explanations offered by Robert Batterman and Collin Rice. In this article, I suggest that these objections are misguided. I suggest that the objections raised by Lange stem from a misunderstanding of the what it is that minimal model explanations seek to explain. This misunderstanding, I argue, consists in Lange’s seeing minimal model explanations as relating special types of models to particular target systems rather than seeing minimal model explanations as looking to explain robust patterns of behavior that are exhibited by a variety of physically diverse systems.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 88 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 731 - 741
Copyright
Copyright 2021 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Bob Batterman, J. Dmitri Gallow, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on various iterations of this article.

References

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Lange, Marc. 2015. “On ‘Minimal Model Explanations’: A Reply to Batterman and Rice.” Philosophy of Science 82 (2): 292–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar