Idealization Xi

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Idealization XIV: Models in Science

Idealization XIV: Models in Science offers a detailed ontological, epistemological and historical account of the role of models in scientific practice. The volume contains contributions of different international scholars who developed many aspects of the use of idealizations and models both in the natural and the social sciences. This volume is particularly relevant because it offers original contributions concerning one of the main topic in philosophy of science: the role of models in such branches of the sciences and the humanities like comparative historical sociology, economics, history, linguistics and political philosophy. Contributors are: Giacomo Borbone, Krzysztof Brzechczyn, Mieszko Ciesielski, Adam Czerniak, Xavier de Donato Rodríguez, José L. Falguera, Adolfo García de la Sienra, Lidia Godek, Igor Hanzel, Łukasz Hardt, Krzysztof Kiedrowski, Barbara Konat, Zenonas Norkus, Piotr Przybysz, Piotr Szwochert
Idealization X: The Richness of Idealization

Contents: Preface. - Introduction. - Science as a caricature of reality. - Three methodological revolutions. - The method of idealization. - Explanations and applications. - Truth and idealization. - A generalization of idealization. - References.
The Idealized Mind

A defense of scientific realism based on the role of idealization in the cognitive sciences. We study nature, including the mind and brain, by building scientific models. In The Idealized Mind, Michael Kirchhoff brings together ideas from the philosophy of cognitive science and the philosophy of science to reconcile scientific realism with model-based science. His defense of scientific realism—the view that one reasonable aim of science is to provide true (or approximately true) descriptions of reality—is based on the role of idealization in the cognitive sciences. Idealization, he claims, is inevitable in cognitive science; at the same time, any understanding of the mind and brain must show how it is possible for scientific models to be reliably used to make truth-conditional assertions about their target phenomena. A central error in most theorizing about the mind, Kirchhoff claims, is to confuse the properties of scientific models with those of the system being modeled. But scientific models are, almost exclusively and unavoidably, idealizations of the world we seek to understand. They are descriptions of hypothetical systems, things that do not actually exist in nature. Specifically, Kirchhoff uses insights on idealization in science to assess the status and standing of three foundational issues in cognitive science: neural representation, neural computation, and the prospects for explanatory unification. He also explains why it is a mistake to approach neural representation and neural computation through the metaphysical stances of realism, fictionalism, or eliminativism.