WHAT MODELS DO THAT THERIES CAN’T НБУ什么模式做理论不能НБУ.pptVIP

WHAT MODELS DO THAT THEORIES CAN’T Lilia Gurova Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology New Bulgarian University THIS TALK IS ABOUT a kind of models, which allow to increase the empirical content of the theories they instantiate. CONTENTS: The relations between theories and models: introducing the main thesis Some examples illustrating the main thesis: what exactly some models do that theories can’t Discussion: open questions; relations to the current talk about models in science and in the philosophy of science; TERMINOLOGICAL CONVENTIONS THEORY – a set of general statements representing a certain aspect of the world MODEL – a set of statements about a particular object, event, or situation. EXAMPLE: a theory of atomic structure but a model of hydrogenic atom Other popular views about the distinction between theories and models Theories are models - both theories and models are representations; the alleged generality of the theories and the alleged particularity of the models are in fact relative Models are semantic interpretations of theories INSTANTIATION A model M instantiates a theory T if M consists of two types of statements {M1, M2} such that M1 are independent of T (neither M1 nor non-M1 could be inferred from T) M2 are inferable from {T, M1} A NOTE ON INSTANTIATION The term instantiation is taken from [Smith Medin, 1981]. They first drew my attention to the importance of the fact that a model could obey to laws of a certain theory and in the same time it could imply predictions, which could not be directly inferred from the underlying theory. THE MAIN CLAIM Some models, which instantiate a given theory possess the following important features: they allow to infer statements, which reveal important properties of the instantiated theory; these statements could not be inferred directly from (or in) the theory itself; If the inferred statements are empirically testable, the model increases the empirical content of the instantiate