Dear all The third CamPoS seminar of Lent term will be given by Dr James Nguyen <http://personal.lse.ac.uk/nguyenj1/>, Jacobsen Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and the Department of Philosophy at University College London. Details as follows:
Time: Wednesday 6 February, 1-2:30pm Place: Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science (Free School Lane, CB2 3RH) Title: Non-literal model interpretations Abstract: I suggest that the representational content of a scientific model is determined by a `key’ associated with it. A key allows the model's users to draw inferences about its target system. Crucially, these inferences need not be a matter of proposed similarity (structural or otherwise) to its target, but can allow for much more conventional associations between model features and features to be exported. Although this is a simple suggestion, it has broad ramifications. I point out that it allows us to re-conceptualise what we mean by `idealisation': just because a model is a distortion of its target (in the relevant respects, and even essentially so), this does not entail that it is a misrepresentation, even with respect to the features it distorts. Rather, we should focus on interpreting the distorted aspects of such models non-literally. I investigate various ways of doing so, and demonstrate that for at least some idealised models, the result is that they are not misrepresentations after all, thereby diffusing various puzzles associated with their use in science. Full information about the talk is here: https://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/118321 The term card for Lent 2019 is available at https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/news-events/seminars-reading-groups/campos <https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/news-events/seminars-reading-groups/campos> You can also follow us at https://twitter.com/CamPhilSci <https://twitter.com/CamPhilSci> All are welcome. All the best Matt Dr Matt Farr • Teaching Associate in Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge • Department of History & Philosophy of Science Free School Lane | Cambridge | CB2 3RH w mattfarr.co.uk <http://www.mattfarr.co.uk/> | e mw...@cam.ac.uk <mailto:mw...@cam.ac.uk> | t 01223334559 _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
