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Are Models Our Tools Not Our Masters?

Jacobs, Caspar (2023) Are Models Our Tools Not Our Masters? [Preprint]

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Abstract

It is often claimed that one can avoid the kind of underdetermination that is a typical consequence of symmetries in physics by stipulating that symmetry-related models represent the same state of affairs (Leibniz Equivalence). But recent commentators (Dasgupta 2011; Pooley 2021; Pooley and Read 2021; Teitel 2021a) have responded that claims about the representational capacities of models are irrelevant to the issue of underdetermination, which concerns possible worlds themselves. In this paper I distinguish two versions of this objection: (1) that a theory’s formalism does not (fully) determine the space of physical possibilities, and (2) that the relevant notion of possibility is not physical possibility. I offer a refutation of each.

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Item Type: Preprint
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CreatorsEmailORCID
Jacobs, Casparc.a.jacobs@phil.leidenuniv.nl0000-0001-6903-0468
Keywords: symmetries, models, representational capacities, leibniz equivalence, underdetermination, indeterminism, invariance
Subjects: General Issues > Models and Idealization
General Issues > Structure of Theories
Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances
Depositing User: Caspar Jacobs
Date Deposited: 12 Sep 2023 01:44
Last Modified: 12 Sep 2023 01:44
Item ID: 22530
Subjects: General Issues > Models and Idealization
General Issues > Structure of Theories
Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances
Date: 2023
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22530

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