Getting serious about shared features

Khosrowi, Donal

Abstract

In Simulation and Similarity, Michael Weisberg offers a similarity-based account of the model–world relation, which is the relation in virtue of which successful models are successful. Weisberg’s main idea is that models are similar to targets in virtue of sharing features. An important concern about Weisberg’s account is that it remains silent on what it means for models and targets to share features, and consequently on how feature-sharing contributes to models’ epistemic success. I consider three potential ways of concretizing the concept of shared features: as identical, quantitatively sufficiently close, and sufficiently similar features. I argue that each of these concretizations faces significant challenges, leaving unclear how Weisberg’s account substantially contributes to elucidating the relation in virtue of which successful models are successful. Against this background, I outline a pluralistic revision of Weisberg’s account and argue that this revision may not only help Weisberg evade several of the problems that I raise but also offers a novel perspective on the model–world relation more generally.

Citation

Khosrowi, D. (2020). Getting serious about shared features. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 71(2), 523-546. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axy029

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jun 30, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jul 19, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 19, 2018
• Journal: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
• Print ISSN: 0007-0882
• Electronic ISSN: 1464-3537
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 71
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 523-546
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axy029
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1699894