Sullivan, Emily and Khalifa, Kareem
(2018)
Idealizations and Understanding: Much Ado About Nothing?
[Preprint]
Abstract
Because idealizations frequently advance scientific understanding, many claim that falsehoods play an epistemic role. In this paper, we argue that these positions greatly overstate idealizations’ import for understanding. We introduce work on epistemic value to the debate surrounding idealizations and understanding, arguing that idealizations qua falsehoods only confer non-epistemic value to understanding. We argue for this claim by criticizing the leading accounts of how idealizations provide understanding. For each of these approaches, we show that: (a) idealizations’ false components only promote convenience instead of understanding and (b) only the true components of idealizations have epistemic value.
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