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Overextending Partial Structures: Idealization and Abstraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Christopher Pincock
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Abstract

The partial structures program of da Costa, French and others offers a unified framework within which to handle a wide range of issues central to contemporary philosophy of science. I argue that the program is inadequately equipped to account for simple cases where idealizations are used to construct abstract, mathematical models of physical systems. These problems show that da Costa and French have not overcome the objections raised by Cartwright and Suárez to using model-theoretic techniques in the philosophy of science. However, my concerns arise independently of the more controversial assumptions that Cartwright and Suárez have employed.

Type
Science Models
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2005 , pp. 1248 - 1259
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Otávio Bueno, Steven French, Sean Stidd, Mauricio Suárez, and Susan Vineberg for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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