The epistemic superiority of experiment to simulation

Synthese 195 (11):4883-4906 (2018)
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Abstract

This paper defends the naïve thesis that the method of experiment has per se an epistemic superiority over the method of computer simulation, a view that has been rejected by some philosophers writing about simulation, and whose grounds have been hard to pin down by its defenders. I further argue that this superiority does not come from the experiment’s object being materially similar to the target in the world that the investigator is trying to learn about, as both sides of dispute over the epistemic superiority thesis have assumed. The superiority depends on features of the question and on a property of natural kinds that has been mistaken for material similarity. Seeing this requires holding other things equal in the comparison of the two methods, thereby exposing that, under the conditions that will be specified, the simulation is necessarily epistemically one step behind the corresponding experiment. Practical constraints like feasibility and morality mean that scientists do not often face an other-things- equal comparison when they choose between experiment and simulation. Nevertheless, I argue, awareness of this superiority and of the general distinction between experiment and simulation is important for maintaining motivation to seek answers to new questions.

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Author's Profile

Sherrilyn Roush
University of California, Los Angeles

Citations of this work

Computer Simulations in Science.Eric Winsberg - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Why experiments matter.Arnon Levy & Adrian Currie - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (9-10):1066-1090.
Regimes of Evidence in Complexity Sciences.Fabrizio Li Vigni - 2021 - Perspectives on Science 29 (1):62-103.
Technology and Mathematics.Sven Ove Hansson - 2020 - Philosophy and Technology 33 (1):117-139.

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References found in this work

Ontological relativity and other essays.Willard Van Orman Quine (ed.) - 1969 - New York: Columbia University Press.
The sciences of the artificial.Herbert Alexander Simon - 1969 - [Cambridge,: M.I.T. Press.
On Certainty (ed. Anscombe and von Wright).Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1969 - San Francisco: Harper Torchbooks. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe, G. H. von Wright & Mel Bochner.
Science in the age of computer simulation.Eric Winsberg - 2010 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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