Models and Mechanisms:
Special Focus on Cognitive Science
Thursday 6 - Friday 7 December 2012
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Special Focus on Cognitive Science
Thursday 6 - Friday 7 December 2012
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
The development of models and the investigation of mechanisms are often deeply related across scientific research. Modelling plays a range of roles in directing research into mechanisms, ranging from suggesting very general computational frameworks to studying low-level features of a mechanism. Partly due to such prominence, recent years have witnessed an increasing amount of interest by philosophers and by scientists alike in the distinctive roles that models and mechanisms play in scientific explanation. In spite of much attention, however, many outstanding issues about the relationship between models, investigations of mechanisms and scientific explanation remain.
The aim of this workshop is to address some such outstanding issues by exploring the multifaceted relationship between modelling and mechanisms—paying special attention to practice in the cognitive sciences.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) how mechanistic models relate to scientific explanation; whether the models used to investigate mechanisms possess any distinctive properties; how trade-offs in models, such as between simplicity and realism, fit within a mechanistic approach to explanation; how mechanistic modelling contributes to questions of explanation, reduction and scientific realism in specific cases, particularly in the cognitive sciences.
Papers are welcomed from researchers across philosophy and science (especially from the cognitive sciences), including papers based on experimental studies that illustrate the relationship between modeling and investigating mechanisms.
The aim of this workshop is to address some such outstanding issues by exploring the multifaceted relationship between modelling and mechanisms—paying special attention to practice in the cognitive sciences.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) how mechanistic models relate to scientific explanation; whether the models used to investigate mechanisms possess any distinctive properties; how trade-offs in models, such as between simplicity and realism, fit within a mechanistic approach to explanation; how mechanistic modelling contributes to questions of explanation, reduction and scientific realism in specific cases, particularly in the cognitive sciences.
Papers are welcomed from researchers across philosophy and science (especially from the cognitive sciences), including papers based on experimental studies that illustrate the relationship between modeling and investigating mechanisms.
