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The means-end account of scientific, representational actions

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Abstract

While many recent accounts of scientific representation have given a central role to the agency and intentions of scientists in explaining representation, they have left these agential concepts unanalyzed. An account of scientific, representational actions will be a useful piece in offering a more complete account of the practice of representation in science. Drawing on an Anscombean approach to the nature of intentional actions, the Means-End Account of Scientific, Representational Actions describes three features of scientific, representational actions: (I) the final description in the means-end ordering of descriptions is some scientific aim; (II) that interaction with a vehicle distinct from its target stands as an earlier description which is ordered toward the final description as means to end; and (III) the means-end structure is licensed by scientific practice. After describing each of the components of the Means-End Account in greater detail through the example of the representational use of a mathematical model, I explain how it can demarcate scientific, representational actions from other sorts of actions. I close by describing some payoffs of the account, showing how it contributes to a more thorough understanding of the practice of representation in science and how it can be of use in understanding the close connection between representation and other forms of scientific activity.

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Notes

  1. While van Fraassen and Giere have often been interpreted as holding dyadic accounts of scientific representation in the form of isomorphism and similarity in their early work, Suárez (2004, p.768) has pointed out that they each give importance to the role of a user even in their early work. Van Fraassen agreed with Suárez’s assessment, arguing that he always left room for pragmatics, and only makes it more explicit later on (see Ladyman et al. 2011, pp. 443–444).

  2. Other alternatives to a substantive account include denying that there is any such thing as representation in science, suggesting that instead there is a mere family of resemblance of a set of practices (see Lynch and Woolgar 1990). Giere (1994) and Knuuttila (2014) criticize this ‘no-representation’ approach. Another alternative is to offer an account of representation which applies to all disciplines in which it is found. Callender and Cohen (2006) make such an argument in terms of internal mental states. For a criticism of this account, see my response to their work (Boesch 2017).

  3. You could of course ask why I am doing (C). But at a certain point, the answer to this question is too far ‘downstream,’ as the example of ‘getting tenure’ shows (Anscombe 2000, pp. 38–40).

  4. This depends a bit on what I assume the reward to be. I am assuming it is the refill of the mug (and not drinking the coffee) because I often count a refill a reward and do not then drink from it. If you find this contentious, you can consider Anscombe’s more detailed water pump example (2000, 37) which is not subject to the same ambiguities.

  5. Note carefully that the multiple describability of actions, on Anscombe’s account means that there are many ways to describe any given action, but this does not further imply that either (1) every action has multiple aims in its descriptions nor that (2) the descriptions are purely arbitrary.

  6. I make this point to avoid offering normative restrictions on scientific practice, especially as it changes and evolves going forward. I take it that the scientific community at any given stage will be the best judge (even if fallible) of what counts as a scientific aim.

  7. In some cases, representational vehicles will be used in novel ways (e.g. in the transfer of a model between disciplines). In such a case, the licensing of the representational action is given through the scientist’s application of theoretical and empirical constraints to her action (for more on this point, see Boesch 2017).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Tarja Knuuttila, Mauricio Suárez, Jennifer Frey, Michael Dickson, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am grateful for helpful comments received from presentations of earlier versions of this paper to the Second London Philosophy of Science Graduate Conference, a philosophy of science reading group at the Complutense University of Madrid, and a philosophy department symposium at the University of South Carolina. I am grateful for financial support from the University of South Carolina Office of the Vice President for Research and the Department of Philosophy, which funded research visits to the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki and the Complutense University of Madrid, during which the bulk of this paper was written.

Funding Funding was provided by Office of the Vice President for Research and the Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina (Grant No. # 12560-16-41276).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, 901 Sumter St., Columbia, SC, 29201, USA

    Brandon Boesch

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Boesch, B. The means-end account of scientific, representational actions. Synthese 196, 2305–2322 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1537-2

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