2024.08.9 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Mauricio Suárez, Inference and Representation: A Study in Modeling Science, University of Chicago Press, 2024, 328pp., $35.00 (pbk), ISBN 9780226830049.
Reviewed by Robert Hudson, University of Saskatchewan
What is involved when someone, such as a scientist, uses a model to represent the world? According to Mauricio Suárez, we can examine this question in one of two ways: in terms of an analytic inquiry that answers a ‘constitutional’ question, or in terms of a practical inquiry that answers a ‘means’ question (84–89).
Traditionally, representation is understood constitutionally, “identifying [representation] entirely with the set of facts about the properties of the relata” (7). Here, the relata are the source of representation, “the object doing the representational work”, and the target of representation, “the object getting represented” (6). The traditional approach, which Suárez labels ‘reductive naturalism’, provides a metaphysical analysis of the representational relation, one that “[avoids] any reference to human values [and] . ….
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