Richmond, Andrew (2023) What really lives in the swamp? Kinds and the illustration of scientific reasoning. [Preprint]

Text Swamps_Kinds D3.1S.docx Download (123kB)

Abstract

It’s not clear what philosophers of science can learn from thought experiments. Consider Swampman: a physical duplicate of Donald Davidson that arises by chance after lightning strikes a swamp. Swampman is a popular counterexample to teleosemantics: he appears to have representation, but no selection history. So, apparently, it’s a mistake to define representation in selectional terms. Teleosemanticists respond that Swampman can’t tell us anything about representation because he’s simply not real, or even realistic: representation is a scientific kind, and if we take scientific kinds seriously, we can’t say that just because some imagined creature looks like typical representational systems, or could be explained in representational terms, it is a representational system. So Swampman isn’t a counter-example to the teleosemantic account of representational systems, because he isn’t an example of a representational system in the first place. I endorse this response to the Swampman counterexample, and especially its motivation: to take the scientific role of representational concepts seriously. But this motivation supports another way of understanding Swampman, according to which he is an illustration of scientific explanation, rather than an example of a representational system. I draw out the logic of this kind of illustration, compare it to some experimental paradigms in science, and argue that it provides a better way of understanding Swampman and other thought experiments in philosophy of science.

---

Export/Citation:

EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL

Social Networking:

Share |

---

Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Richmond, Andrew arichmo8@uwo.ca 0000-0001-7824-7474
Keywords:	Cognitive Science, Teleology, Representation, Swampman, Thought Experiment, Philosophical Methodology
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Neuroscience General Issues > Thought Experiments
Depositing User:	Andrew Richmond
Date Deposited:	16 Dec 2023 19:02
Last Modified:	16 Dec 2023 19:02
Item ID:	22874
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Neuroscience General Issues > Thought Experiments
Date:	2023
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22874

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item