Talk: Roberto Fumagalli (KCL)

Title:

Minimal Models, Minimal Results

Abstract:

In recent years, leading authors have built on the distinction between epistemic possibilities and objective possibilities to demonstrate that consideration of so-called minimal models can provide modal knowledge about real-world targets. This paper combines insights from scientific modeling and modal epistemology to critically assess these authors’ position. The paper then defends the thesis that consideration of minimal models cannot provide modal knowledge about real-world targets against several prominent objections that draw on the specialized literature on scientific modeling and modal epistemology. This result by no means excludes that philosophers and scientific modelers may gain modal knowledge about real-world targets through consideration of highly idealized models. Still, it provides compelling reasons to relinquish the most stringent definitions of minimal models and ground the ongoing debate about the epistemology of scientific modeling on more informative notions of models.