On the pragmatic equivalence between representing data and phenomena

Philosophy of Science 83 (2):171- 191 (2016)
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Abstract

Van Fraassen argues that data provide the target-end structures required by structuralist accounts of scientific representation. But models represent phenomena not data. Van Fraassen agrees but argues that there is no pragmatic difference between taking a scientific model to accurately represent a physical system and accurately represent data extracted from it. In this article I reconstruct his argument and show that it turns on the false premise that the pragmatic content of acts of representation include doxastic commitments.

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James Nguyen
Stockholm University

References found in this work

The scientific image.C. Van Fraassen Bas - 1980 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 2008 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Languages of Art.Nelson Goodman - 1970 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 3 (1):62-63.
Saving the phenomena.James Bogen & James Woodward - 1988 - Philosophical Review 97 (3):303-352.

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