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Visual Representations and Confirmation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Laura Perini
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Abstract

Publications in contemporary science journals often include figures like graphs, diagrams, photographs, and MRIs, which are presented as support for the hypothesis the author is defending. As a first step to explaining how figures contribute to confirmation, I present an account of visual representation and use examples to show how the visual format is involved in the support those figures provide the authors’ conclusions. I then show that attempts to explain what figures contribute to scientific arguments without analyzing them as visual representations (for example by translating them into linguistic representations) will not succeed.

Type
Causality, Confirmation and Inference
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. 913 - 926
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I wish to thank Sandy Mitchell, Paul Churchland, Brian Keeley, and Deborah Mayo for their valuable comments on this paper.

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