BOOK LAUNCH - Mauricio Suárez on 'Inference and Representation'

The HPS Podcast - Conversations from History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science

Today on the podcast, Mauricio Suárez talks with Samara about his new book - Inference and Representation: A study in Modelling Science.

Mauricio is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, a life member at Clare Hall Cambridge and research associate at the London School of Economics.
Mauricio has a long standing interest in the ways scientists represent the phenomena they study, in particular, through modelling, and his book seeks to answer the question: How should we best understand the relationship between a scientific model and the aspect of the world the model is intended to represent?
Are there substantive criteria – a set of necessary and sufficient conditions – that a model must meet to serve as an adequate representation?
Or, as Mauricio argues, is it better to take a more pragmatic and deflationary approach.
In this approach, the search for a ‘defining condition for representation’ is abandoned. Instead, the effectiveness of a model is understood to not be determined by substantive criteria, but rather by the models ability to enable appropriate, fruitful scientific inferences relevant for the phenomena under consideration.
Transcript of the episode available here: https://www.hpsunimelb.org/post/mauricio-suárez-transcript
Resources related to the episode:

• Inference and Representation: A Study in Modeling Science, Suárez (uchicago.edu)
• Mauricio Suárez (personal website)
• 'An Inferential Conception of Scientific Representation' | Philosophy of Science | Cambridge Core (2022)
• Scientific Representation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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