Abstract
This paper proposes a novel distinction between accounts of scientific representation: it distinguishes thin accounts from thick accounts. Thin accounts focus on the descriptive aspect of representation whereas thick accounts acknowledge the evaluative aspect of representation. Thin accounts focus on the question of what a representation as such is. Thick accounts start from the question of what an adequate representation is. In this paper, I give two arguments in favor of a thick account, the Argument of the Epistemic Aims of Modeling and the Argument of the Normativity of the Practice of Modeling. I also discuss possible objections to a thick account: the Argument from Misrepresentation and the Objections from Model Testing. The conclusion will be that the arguments on balance support a thick account of representation.
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Notes
Throughout this paper, ‘representation’ will refer to representation in the sciences; I am particularly interested in model-based representation.
I will not distinguish between prescriptive and evaluative aspects of concepts, or concepts themselves. It may be that, in addition to evaluative and descriptive aspects, there is a prescriptive aspect that may or may not be separable from the evaluative aspect. In what follows, I mainly use the language of evaluation in order to talk about these notions or aspects of notions. The term ‘evaluative’ therefore means normative, in a broad sense that encompasses both a deontic and an axiological meaning.
According to Frigg, there is “a factual and a normative variant” of that problem of style (2006, p. 50).
Many scholars try to address the problem of representation in related but non-identical ways (cf. Giere 1988, 2004; Hughes 1997; Bailor-Jones 2003; Van Fraassen 2008; Chakravatty 2010; Bueno and French 2011; Toon 2012; Weisberg 2013; Boesch forthcoming). However, it is not always clear whether these scholars belong to what I call here the thin or the thick camp of accounts of representation.
There are alternative analyses of the situation of the debate. For example, Agnes Bolinska calls the focus on representation simpliciter the “Mere-Representation Priority (MRP) approach” (Bolinska 2015, p. 67). Her position concerning representation simpliciter and adequate representation is in plain contrast to Contessa and others: she argues that an account of successful epistemic representation should be developed before an account of mere representation.
Here, the question is not only what distinguishes adequate representation from misrepresentation but also whether there are different types of misrepresentation. A more specific question, relevant to the argument in Sect. 5, is whether any misrepresentation is in fact a representation. One might think that there are at least two classes of misrepresentations: misrepresentations that are inadequate representations in some respects and misrepresentations that are not representations at all.
Modeling also requires creativity and knowing-how. Of course, it is not enough to just follow certain pre-defined rules in order to reach neat results of particular modeling tasks.
There are other possible applications of this model. An electric circuit is a further target that may be represented with the help of the harmonic oscillator.
Of course, the sentence about the lethal dose of the toxic substance mentioned in the previous section is an example of a sentence that is world-guided. The point that I am stressing here is that linguistic representation per se does not involve world-guidedness.
There are also many pedagogical uses of models that do not straightforwardly aim at representing particular targets. Often, the teacher will be satisfied if the student learns something about the model itself.
In its focus on the goal of representation, my view echoes that of Bolinska (2013). She claims that the aim of faithfully representing a target is a necessary and sufficient condition for the informativeness of a representational vehicle. Such informativeness is an essential property of epistemic representation. However, Bolinska explicitly states that epistemic representation is not a success term, in either a strong or a weak sense.
This genus-species model of representation and misrepresentation is mirrored in debates about thick ethical concepts. Thick ethical concepts are more specific than thin ethical concepts. And, conversely, thin concepts are more general than thick concepts in their applicability. Under separationist assumptions about thick concepts, this may generate a genus-species model of the distinction: a thick concept might be a species of a certain thin concept (which functions as a genus). ‘Good’ could be seen as a genus for various species such as ‘courageous’ or ‘brave’ (cf. Tappolet 2004). According to a separationist view, a thick concept consists of an evaluative element and a descriptive element; the descriptive element can be interpreted as the distinguishing feature of a species concept, the so-called differentia. So the thin concept and the descriptive element become the genus and the differentia of the thick concept that is treated as a species concept (cf. Kirchin n.d., Ch. 3).
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for bringing these objections to my attention.
I elaborated on the distinction between knowledge about models and knowledge about targets in more detail at another place (cf. Poznic 2016).
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Acknowledgements
For written and oral comments, I am indebted to Rafaela Hillerbrand, Simon Kirchin, Peter Kroes, Michael Stoeltzner, the audiences at the following events: Workshop on Thick Concepts at University of Zurich in 2014, OZSW Conference 2014 in Nijmegen, OZSW Graduate Conference in Theoretical Philosophy 2015 in Nijmegen, the members of the Philosophical Research Seminar at KIT and an anonymous referee for this journal.
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Poznic, M. Thin versus thick accounts of scientific representation. Synthese 195, 3433–3451 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1374-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1374-3