The Argument For A Realistic Understanding Of Scientific Models

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Several philosophers argue for a realistic understanding of scientific models, by claiming that they postulate abstract entities. While I do not intend to discuss this issue in detail here [1], I would like to focus on a point which I think is of particular interest. Instead of arguing about whether one is able to think of scientific models as abstract entities or not and how could it be possible, I focus on how one can become aware of their existence if they are abstract entities. The issue of awareness emerges since it is plausible to think that one should become aware of an abstract entity in order to actively employ it in a scientific inquiry. I maintain that that the issue of awareness poses a challenge for any realistic approach to abstract models. For fairly obvious reasons, arguing for intuitive awareness of abstract objects seems more promising for a realist than arguing for their perceptual awareness. The issue gains more interest, since intuition has been plausibly linked with what could be called "creative thinking", a connection rooted a long time ago. For example, one could trace it back in Poincare [3]. Therefore, given the growing literature on the models-as-fictions approach [4], in which the creative features of model-building are scrutinized, questions regarding intuition are legitimately raised. It is quite …show more content…

Most of these definitions agree that intuition is based on automatic processes that rely on knowledge structures acquired through different kinds of learning [10]. I maintain that appropriating such a broad understanding suffices for my current purposes. After all, different types of intuition make use of partly non-conscious processes, such as pattern recognition, memory traces and currently perceived information, and often the only awareness is of the result [10] (p.