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Making Models Count

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Anna Alexandrova
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Abstract

What sort of claims do scientific models make and how do these claims then underwrite empirical successes such as explanations and reliable policy interventions? In this paper I propose answers to these questions for the class of models used throughout the social and biological sciences, namely idealized deductive ones with a causal interpretation. I argue that the two main existing accounts misrepresent how these models are actually used, and propose a new account.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 383 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I owe many thanks to Nancy Cartwright, Francesco Guala, Robert Northcott, Jay Odenbaugh, Julian Reiss, Till Gruene-Yanoff, Harold Kincaid, Don Ross, and many others including my teachers and friends at UC San Diego and audiences at the Philosophy Department colloquia at New York University, University of Missouri Columbia, Washington University in St Louis, Center for Philosophy of Science at Pittsburgh, London School of Economics, the 2007 meeting of the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division, and the 2007 meeting of the British Society for Philosophy of Science.

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