I argue that fictional models, construed as models that misrepresent certain ontological aspects of their target systems, can nevertheless explain why the latter exhibit certain behaviour. They can do this by accurately representing whatever it is that that behaviour counterfactually depends on. However, we should be sufficiently sensitive to different explanatory questions, i.e., ‘why does certain behaviour occur?’ versus ‘why does the counterfactual dependency invoked to answer that question actually hold?’. With this distinction in mind, I argue that whilst fictional (...) models can answer the first sort of question, they do so in an unmysterious way. Moreover, I claim that the second question poses a dilemma for the defender of the idea that fictions can explain: either these models cannot answer these sorts of explanatory questions, precisely because they are fictional; or they can, but in a way that requires reinterpreting them such that they end up accurately representing the ontological basis of the counterfactual dependency, i.e., reinterpreting them so as to rob them of their fictional status. Thus, the existence of explanatory fictions does not put pressure on the idea that accurate representation of some aspect of a target system is a necessary condition on explaining that aspect. (shrink)

This paper explores varieties of scientific structuralism. Central to our investigation is the notion of `shared structure'. We begin with a description of mathematical structuralism and use this to point out analogies and disanalogies with scientific structuralism. Our particular focus is the semantic structuralist's attempt to use the notion of shared structure to account for the theory-world connection, this use being crucially important to both the contemporary structural empiricist and realist. We show why minimal scientific structuralism is, at the very (...) least, a powerful methodological standpoint. Our investigation also makes explicit what more must be added to this minimal structuralist position in order to address the theory-world connection, namely, an account of representation. (shrink)

Este artículo propone una alternativa a la discusión entre las visiones objetivistas y construccionistas sobre la ciencia. Para alcanzar tal objetivo, partimos de una esquemática presentación de lo que se ha denominado las Guerras de la Ciencia; en seguida expondremos en detalle la propuesta de Knor-Cetina, mostrando cómo conduce a actitudes anticientíficas. Posteriormente, confrontaremos las tesis construccionistas extraídas de Knor-Cetina con las propuestas realistas de Giere, Kitcher y Hacking, con el fin de morigerar las posturas anticientíficas, depurando las tradicionales polaridades. (...) Finalmente, esbozamos las tesis del Sensismo Común Crítico propuestas por Susan Haack, las que plantearemos como una salida a la confrontación entre objetivistas y construccionistas, así como una forma moderada de comprender la ciencia en la época actual.This article proposes an alternative to the discussion between the objectivist and constructionist vision on science. In order to reach such objective, we start from a schematic presentation about what it is called Science Wars; then, we are going to talk in detail about Knor-Cetina’s proposal, showing how it leads to antiscientific attitudes. Later, we will confront the constructionist thesis taken from Knor-Cetina with the realistic ones, proposed by Giere, Kitcher and Hacking, in order to moderate the antiscientific positions, cleansing the traditional polarities. Finally, the Critical Common-Sensism proposed by Susan Haack will be outlined and stated as an option to the confrontation between objectivists and constructionists and also, as a moderate way to understand science in the present-day. (shrink)