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Two epistemological challenges regarding hypothetical modeling

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Abstract

Sometimes, scientific models are either intended to or plausibly interpreted as representing nonactual but possible targets. Call this “hypothetical modeling”. This paper raises two epistemological challenges concerning hypothetical modeling. To begin with, I observe that given common philosophical assumptions about the scope of objective possibility, hypothetical models are fallible with respect to what is objectively possible. There is thus a need to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate hypothetical modeling. The first epistemological challenge is that no account for the epistemology of hypothetical models seems to cohere with the most characteristic function of scientific modeling in general, i.e., surrogative representation. The second epistemological challenge is a version of “reliability challenges” familiar from other areas. There is a challenge to explain how hypothetical models could be a reliable guide to what is possible, given that they are not and cannot be compared against their nonactual targets and updated accordingly. I close with some brief remarks on possible solutions to these challenges.

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Notes

  1. For a dissenting view, see Verreault-Julien (forthcoming).

  2. Sometimes, discussions of hypothetical modeling include exploratory models, which I intend to ignore here – my focus is only on the uses of hypothetical models which appear to be focused on objective possibilities rather than epistemic possibilities. (See Grüne-Yanoff and Sjölin Wirling forthcoming for some excellent discussion.) Likewise, philosophers sometimes refer to hypothetical models as providing “how-possibly” explanations. But these discussions often assume or contest certain background assumptions regarding the nature of scientific explanation. Again, I wish to sidestep these issues and focus only on the kinds of modeling practices that are either aimed at or plausibly interpreted as representing objective possibilities.

  3. Of course, some of these idealizations might “seem” less impossible than others. For instance, the behavior of frictionless planes, while nonactual, is quite easily epistemically accessible. We can simply extend the curve of an observed surface as its friction decreases to the hypothetical limit where there is no friction. However, the fact that these idealizations are epistemically accessible should not make us think that they are any less impossible: friction results from intermolecular electromagnetism, so, for there to be no friction, there would need to be different fundamental forces than there actually are – hence the idealization is still nomologically impossible. Thanks to a referee for pressing me on this point.

  4. For those worried about my use of “imagination” as a rough-and-ready source of evidence regarding modality here, I am happy to concede that imagination is an unreliable source of evidence about what is possible: in fact, this only strengthens my overall concerns. See Sect. 4 below.

  5. It is worth noting that van Riel (2015) is overall quite sympathetic to these worries.

  6. Many thanks to a referee for this framing.

  7. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing me on this point.

  8. See Hirvonen et al., (2021, p. 13831) for an observation-only example regarding Alexander Fleming’s eventual development of penicillin.

  9. Thanks to Till Grüne-Yanoff for pushing me to clarify this point. See also Grüne-Yanoff 2013, p857 for an example of the confirmatory value of simulation from historical anthropology.

  10. See also Sjölin Wirling (2021, p. 475, fn5), Sjölin Wirling and Grüne-Yanoff (2021, §6). Although, as Fischer (2017, §2.4) notes, depending on which sorts of things count as theories, there might be more of a way to integrate these kinds of cases with the theory-based epistemology of modality. Maybe the Arrow-Debreu model by itself constitutes a theory. However, it is worth noting that when it comes to scientific theories, Fischer endorses the semantic view of theories, according to which theories are collections of models. And under the semantic view, it still looks like at least at the initial time of publication, the Arrow-Debreu model conflicted with the established theory, and didn’t itself constitute a theory (since presumably a single model does not constitute a theory). Still, there may be more to say here.

  11. This is not to say that the only factors that help decide whether some model is credible or imaginable are those that are intrinsic to the model. Consistency with existing theory or empirical knowledge can help explain why it is that something seems credible or imaginable (e.g., Kung 2010). Thanks to Till Grüne-Yanoff for this point.

  12. See Korman (2019) for an excellent survey of this literature. Another example besides the one mentioned here is “evolutionary debunking” in moral epistemology. If non-naturalist moral realism is correct, then even if all of our ordinary moral beliefs are true, they face a reliability challenge (see Vavova, 2015 for an overview of this extensive literature). For the explanation for why we come to have our moral beliefs would presumably be due to selection factors over the long course of human evolutionary history, which is to say, the non-natural moral properties would not enter at all into the explanation for why we have the moral beliefs we do. And if so, there needs to be an explanation for how those beliefs could manage to coincide so miraculously with the moral facts. Absent such an explanation, one naturally worries that those moral beliefs are unjustified even if they are true.

  13. Importantly, this opens the path to a possible response—more on this later, in the concluding section of the paper.

  14. I am not the first person to observe that a reliability challenge arises for knowledge of modality. The “integration challenge” (Peacocke 1999) in modal epistemology often presented as a version of a reliability challenge as well; for discussion of both integration and reliability challenges, see Thomasson (2018), Wang (2018), and Sjölin Wirling (2021), among many others.

  15. And if there are such cases, the “surrogacy challenge” raised in the previous sections will also be easy to answer.

  16. Thanks to Grüne-Yanoff and Verreault-Julien (2021, p. 119) for bringing these references to my attention.

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Acknowledgements

A predecessor of this paper was presented at Till Grüne-Yanoff and Ylwa Sjölin Wirling’s workshop “Modal Modeling in the Sciences,” as well as at the University of Birmingham and Fordham University. Thanks to audiences at all these venues for comments on the paper, including Otavio Bueno, Mike Hicks, Brian McLoone, and others. Thanks also to Jonathan Barker, Harjit Bhogal, and Jenn Wang for discussion of this paper. And finally, special thanks to two referees, Philippe Verreault-Julien, and to both Till Grüne-Yanoff and Ylwa Sjölin Wirling for their detailed comments on this paper, and for organizing a great workshop.

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    Peter Tan

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Tan, P. Two epistemological challenges regarding hypothetical modeling. Synthese 200, 448 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03928-z

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