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    Models are real entities because model descriptions exist — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Models are real entities because model descriptions exist

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.What counts as the model are the model descriptions and their content, not the imaginings those descriptions prescribe
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    • 2.Descriptions are real, existing objects
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The existence of a description does not entail the existence of the entity the description purports to describe, as Frege's distinction between sense and reference demonstrates.
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    • 2.Model descriptions can be meaningful and scientifically useful even when no corresponding real entity satisfies them, as with frictionless planes or ideal gases.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Goodman and Quine's nominalist tradition holds that abstract objects posited solely by virtue of linguistic or descriptive practice lack genuine ontological standing.
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    • 2.Conflating the reality of a representational vehicle with the reality of what it represents commits a use-mention error that undermines the ontological inference.
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    Related

    Conflating the reality of a representational vehicle with the reality of what it...Descriptions are real, existing objectsGoodman and Quine's nominalist tradition holds that abstract objects posited sol...Model descriptions can be meaningful and scientifically useful even when no corr...
    +2 moreShow less
    The existence of a description does not entail the existence of the entity the d...What counts as the model are the model descriptions and their content, not the i...

    Similar

    Properties exist as real entities corresponding to meaningful predicat...81%Conventionally real entities are wholes compounded out of simpler enti...80%Descriptions are real, existing objects79%There are no model objects; models only live in scientists' imaginatio...77%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: models-science
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    Only a small portion of the options available in the extensive literature on fictions have actually been explored in the context of scientific models. Contessa (2010) formulates what he calls the “dualist account”, according to which a model is an abstract object that stands for a possible concrete object. The Rutherford model of the atom, for instance, is an abstract object that acts as a stand-in for one of the possible systems that contain an electron orbiting around a nucleus in a well-defin
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit