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What's the Story on the Present King of France? Some Reflections on How to Fictionalize Science| old_uid | 10476 |
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| title | What's the Story on the Present King of France? Some Reflections on How to Fictionalize Science |
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| start_date | 2011/12/01 |
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| schedule | 11h-13h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | The short bold answer is “Don’t”. A less short and more circumspect answer is “Don’t in any event bother with literary fictions”. The question to which these are answers is whether the idealizations and abstractions of model-based science are best – or even acceptably – accommodated by fictionalism. In developing a negative answer, a number of suggestions are considered and rejected. One is that the fictions of science are logical fictions. Another is that the fictions of science are fictions of a kind discussed by Bentham. Yet another is the suggestion that the fictions of science bear an exploitable similarity to the present king of France. There follows an argument to the general effect that any purported benefit conferred on the philosophy of science by a literary semantics can be achieved elsewhere at lesser cost. |
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| responsibles | Lesguillons |
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