The generality of scientific models: a measure theoretic approach

Lewis, Cory Travers; Belanger, Christopher

doi:10.1007/s11229-014-0567-2

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…We refer to this as the Generality consideration; it relates to students' perception of whether and how specific phenomena or experiences relate to one another and to more general scientific ideas. While different knowledge products foreground different levels of abstraction (i.e., scientific models are often generalized accounts and explanations are often accounts of specific phenomena or classes of phenomena), an important aspect of science is to connect across these levels such that patterns in specific phenomena build general scientific ideas (often explanatory models) and explanations of specific phenomena are constructed using general scientific ideas (e.g., Kitcher, ; Lewis & Belanger, ; Strevens, ). These ideas have been echoed in much of the research articulating the practice of model‐based reasoning (Passmore et al, ; Passmore & Svoboda, ; Schwarz et al, ; Schwarz et al, ; Schwarz & White, ; Stewart, Cartier, & Passmore, ), and in studies of epistemic ideas in science (see universality of ideas in Chinn et al ()).…”

Section: The Epistemologies In Practice Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemologies in practice: Making scientific practices meaningful for students

et al. 2015

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Recent research and policy documents call for engaging students and teachers in scientific practices such that the goal of science education shifts from students knowing scientific and epistemic ideas, to students developing and using these understandings as tools to make sense of the world. This perspective pushes students to move beyond the rote performance of scientific actions or processes and engage instead in purposeful knowledge construction work. This raises parallel questions about how to go beyond characterizing student performance of scientific process to understand their engagement in scientific practices as a goal-directed activity. To that end, this article offers a framework-the Epistemologies in Practice (EIP) framework-for characterizing how students can engage meaningfully in scientific practices. This framework emphasizes two aspects of student engagement in scientific practices: (1) the students' epistemic goals for their knowledge construction work and (2) their epistemic understandings of how to engage in that work.

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Section: The Epistemologies In Practice Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemologies in practice: Making scientific practices meaningful for students

et al. 2015

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“…An essential feature of modeling is to generalize. Generality, understood as the property of applying widely, plays a pivotal role in philosophy of science ( Lewis and Belanger, 2015 ). Furthermore, it is important to understand the inversely proportional character of generality and precision.…”

Section: Transversal Overview Of Current Empirical Normative and Docmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decisional Dimensions in Expert Witness Testimony – A Structural Analysis

Biedermann

Kotsoglou

2018

Front. Psychol.

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The relationship between forensic science and legal adjudication is intricate mainly because the need to inform fact-finders on issues going beyond the layman’s knowledge poses challenges both on empirical and normative dimensions, in particular with regards to the specific role and duties of the different participants in the legal process. While rationality is widely upheld as one of the aspirations of the legal process across many modern jurisdictions, a pending question is how to remedy the uneasy relationship between general propositions (and knowledge claims) conditioning expert witness testimony, and individualized decisions taken by fact-finders. The focus has hitherto been put on the utilization of model-based and formal methods of reasoning while, regrettably, the concepts of judgment and decision-making have not received equal attention. A first aspiration of our paper will thus be to further clarify the nature of this systemic relationship in the particular area of the legal process involving scientific experts, by conducting a critical transversal analysis of current empirical, normative and doctrinal understandings of expert witness testimony. As a second aim, we will use this insight to argue in favor of the view that structural features of expert witness testimony are embedded in a decision-making process, and that the understanding of this decisional dimension is important for clarifying the respective roles of expert witnesses and fact-finders, and for favoring their mutual understanding thereof. To substantiate this perspective, and attest to its growing recognition as a frontier understanding, we will provide real-world examples from forensic science reporting practice and policy documents of professional bodies.

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“…Representations that omit from representing some aspects of the systems they purport to describe are commonly called abstractions . The generality of a model refers to the number of phenomena it can explain or predict, or to the number of systems to which it applies (Levins, 1966 , 1993 ; Lewis & Belanger, 2015 ; Matthewson & Weisberg, 2009 ; Weisberg, 2004 , 2013 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The epistemic benefits of generalisation in modelling II: expressive power and abstraction

Lehtinen

2022

Synthese

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This paper contributes to the philosophical accounts of generalisation in formal modelling by introducing a conceptual framework that allows for recognising generalisations that are epistemically beneficial in the sense of contributing to the truth of a model result or component. The framework is useful for modellers themselves because it is shown how to recognise different kinds of generalisation on the basis of changes in model descriptions. Since epistemically beneficial generalisations usually de-idealise the model, the paper proposes a reformulation of the well-known distinction between abstraction and idealisation. A reformulated notion of abstraction is needed because the extant accounts yield wrong judgments when model-modifications introduce implicit assumptions.

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The generality of scientific models: a measure theoretic approach

Cited by 9 publications

References 32 publications

Epistemologies in practice: Making scientific practices meaningful for students

Epistemologies in practice: Making scientific practices meaningful for students

Decisional Dimensions in Expert Witness Testimony – A Structural Analysis

The epistemic benefits of generalisation in modelling II: expressive power and abstraction

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