Explainable AI (xAI) methods are important for establishing trust in using black-box models. However, recent criticism has mounted against current xAI methods that they disagree, are necessarily false, and can be manipulated, which has started to undermine the deployment of black-box models. Rudin (2019) goes so far as to say that we should stop using black-box models altogether in high-stakes cases because xAI explanations ‘must be wrong’. However, strict fidelity to the truth is historically not a desideratum in science. Idealizations (...) – the intentional distortions introduced to scientific theories and models – are commonplace in the natural sciences and are seen as a successful scientific tool. Thus, it is not falsehood qua falsehood that is the issue. In this paper, I outline the need for xAI research to engage in idealization evaluation. Drawing on the use of idealizations in the natural sciences and philosophy of science, I introduce a novel framework for evaluating whether xAI methods engage in successful idealizations or deceptive explanations (SIDEs). SIDEs evaluates whether the limitations of xAI methods, and the distortions that they introduce, can be part of a successful idealization or are indeed deceptive distortions as critics suggest. I discuss the role that existing research can play in idealization evaluation and where innovation is necessary. Through a qualitative analysis we find that leading feature importance methods and counterfactual explanations are subject to idealization failure and suggest remedies for ameliorating idealization failure. (shrink)

Conceptions of acceptability-based moral or political justification take it that authoritative acceptability constitutes, or contributes to, validity, or justification. There is no agreement as to what bar for authoritativeness such justification may employ. The paper engages the issue in relation to (i) the level of idealization that a bar for authoritativeness, ψ, imparts to a standard of acceptability-based justification, S, and (ii) the degree of discursive purchase of the discursive standing that S accords to people when it builds ψ. (...) I argue that (i) and (ii) are interdependent: high idealization values entail low discursive purchase, while high degrees of purchase require low idealization values. I then distinguish between alethic conceptions of justification that prioritize ends that commit to high idealization values, and recognitive conceptions that favour high discursive purchase. On this basis, I argue for a moderately recognitivist constraint on idealization. To render the recognitive discursive minimum available to relevant people at the site of justification, S should set ψ low enough so that it is a genuine option for actual people to reject relevant views in ways that S recognizes as authoritative. (shrink)

The claim defended in the paper is that the mechanistic account of explanation can easily embrace idealization in big-scale brain simulations, and that only causally relevant detail should be present in explanatory models. The claim is illustrated with two methodologically different models: Blue Brain, used for particular simulations of the cortical column in hybrid models, and Eliasmith’s SPAUN model that is both biologically realistic and able to explain eight different tasks. By drawing on the mechanistic theory of computational explanation, (...) I argue that large-scale simulations require that the explanandum phenomenon is identified; otherwise, the explanatory value of such explanations is difficult to establish, and testing the model empirically by comparing its behavior with the explanandum remains practically impossible. The completeness of the explanation, and hence of the explanatory value of the explanatory model, is to be assessed vis-à-vis the explanandum phenomenon, which is not to be conflated with raw observational data and may be idealized. I argue that idealizations, which include building models of a single phenomenon displayed by multi-functional mechanisms, lumping together multiple factors in a single causal variable, simplifying the causal structure of the mechanisms, and multi-model integration, are indispensable for complex systems such as brains; otherwise, the model may be as complex as the explanandum phenomenon, which would make it prone to so-called Bonini paradox. I conclude by enumerating dimensions of empirical validation of explanatory models according to new mechanism, which are given in a form of a “checklist” for a modeler. (shrink)

The principal task of the book series Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities is to promote those developments in philosophy that respect the tradition of great philosophical ideas, on the one hand, and the manner of philosophical thinking introduced by analytical philosophy, on the other. The aim is to contribute to practicing philosophy as deep as Marxism and as caring about justification as positivism.

Natalia Carrillo and Tarja Knuuttila claim that there are two traditions of thinking about idealization offering almost opposite views on their functioning and epistemic status. While one tradition views idealizations as epistemic deficiencies, the other one highlights the epistemic benefits of idealization. Both of them treat idealizations as deliberate misrepresentations, however. They then argue for an artifactual account of idealization, comparing it to the traditional accounts of idealization, and exemplifying it through the Hodgkin and Huxley model (...) of the nerve impulse. From the artifactual perspective, the epistemic benefits and deficiencies introduced by idealization frequently come in a package due to the way idealization draws together different resources in model construction. Accordingly, idealization tends to be holistic in that it is not often easily attributable to some specific parts of the model. They conclude that the artifactual approach offers a unifying view into idealization in that it is able to recover several basic philosophical insights motivating both the deficiency and epistemic benefit accounts, while being simultaneously detached from the idea of distortion by misrepresentation. (shrink)

Philosophers of science increasingly recognize the importance of idealization: the intentional introduction of distortion into scientific theories. Yet this recognition has not yielded consensus about the nature of idealization. e literature of the past thirty years contains disparate characterizations and justifications, but little evidence of convergence towards a common position.

In this paper we present a new framework of idealization in biology. We characterize idealizations as a network of counterfactual and hypothetical conditionals that can exhibit different “degrees of contingency”. We use this idea to say that, in departing more or less from the actual world, idealizations can serve numerous epistemic, methodological or heuristic purposes within scientific research. We defend that, in part, this structure explains why idealizations, despite being deformations of reality, are so successful in scientific practice. For (...) illustrative purposes, we provide an example from population genetics, the Wright-Fisher Model. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to consider the influence of the methodological status of the concept of the totalitarian syndrome on the strategy of its development. It is argued that the totalitarian syndrome as put forward by Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski represented a kind of social modelling. However, there are different approaches to modelling in the social sciences. Modelling, when perceived from a neo-Hegelian perspectives, leads to the elaboration of dependencies between social phenomenon and their main factors. (...) Modelling, when seen from a neo-Weberian perspective, relies on the construction of notions which systematize and order social phenomena. This hypothesis is illustrated by a methodological analysis of the extension of the totalitarian syndrome authored by Achim Siegel and Mark R. Thompson. (shrink)

It is proposed that we use the term “approximation” for inexact description of a target system and “idealization” for another system whose properties also provide an inexact description of the target system. Since systems generated by a limiting process can often have quite unexpected, even inconsistent properties, familiar limit systems used in statistical physics can fail to provide idealizations, but are merely approximations. A dominance argument suggests that the limiting idealizations of statistical physics should be demoted to approximations.

Questions concerning the epistemological status of computer science are, in this paper, answered from the point of view of the formal verification framework. State space reduction techniques adopted to simplify computational models in model checking are analysed in terms of Aristotelian abstractions and Galilean idealizations characterizing the inquiry of empirical systems. Methodological considerations drawn here are employed to argue in favour of the scientific understanding of computer science as a discipline. Specifically, reduced models gained by Dataion are acknowledged as Aristotelian (...) abstractions that include only data which are sufficient to examine the interested executions. The present study highlights how the need to maximize incompatible properties is at the basis of both Abstraction Refinement, the process of generating a cascade of computational models to achieve a balance between simplicity and informativeness, and the Multiple Model Idealization approach in biology. Finally, fairness constraints, imposed to computational models to allow fair behaviours only, are defined as ceteris paribus conditions under which temporal formulas, formalizing software requirements, acquire the status of law-like statements about the software systems executions. (shrink)

Are societies required to pursue continual economic growth as a matter of justice? In “The Value of Economic Growth”, Julie Rose considers three arguments in favor of the need for continual economic growth, each of which revolves around the instrumental value of economic growth for promoting an important good that is needed for a just society. In each case, Rose argues that there are mechanisms other than economic growth that could allow a society to deliver the relevant goods, and thus (...) meet the demands of justice with respect to those goods. I raise a set of issues for Rose’s argument that put pressure on the normative significance of her discussion. At the heart of these issues are ones about which possibilities Rose considers and which idealizations she makes. These issues tie into more general questions about the aims and methodology of normative work in social/political philosophy. Thus, in addition to being a contribution to the debate over the politics of economic growth, this paper can be understood partly as a case study in how reflection on these kinds of issues – ones about modality, idealization, and methodology – can matter to how we evaluate specific arguments in social/political philosophy. (shrink)

Kripke (Wittgenstein on rules and private language: an elementary exposition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass, 1982 ) rejected a naturalistic dispositional account of meaning (hereafter semantic dispositionalism) in a skeptical argument about rule-following he attributes to Wittgenstein (Philosophical investigation. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1958 ). Most philosophers who oppose Kripke’s criticisms of semantic dispositionalism take the stance that the argument proves too much: semantic dispositionalism is similar to much of our respected science in some important aspects, and hence to discard the (...) former would mean to give up the latter, which is obviously wrong. In this paper, I shall discuss and reject a recent defense of Kripke by Kusch (Analysis 65(2):156–163 2005 ; Sceptical guide to meaning and rules: defending Kripke’s Wittgenstein. McGill-Queen’s, London, 2006 ). Kusch attempts to show that semantic dispositionalism differs from the sciences, and consequently, Kripke’s attack can only target semantic dispositionalism, but not the sciences. Specifically, Kusch identifies some important features of the sciences with regard to how it employs idealization and ceteris paribus clauses, and argues that the ways in which semantic dispositionalism uses them are dramatically different. I argue that, upon close examination, the two are more similar than otherwise in each of those features. (shrink)

Although Burke, Bentham, Hegel and Marx do not often agree, all criticized certain ethical theories, in particular theories of rights, for being too abstract. The complaint is still popular. It was common in Existentialist and in Wittgensteinian writing that stressed the importance of cases and examples rather than principles for the moral life; it has been prominent in recent Hegelian and Aristotelian flavoured writing, which stresses the importance of the virtues; it is reiterated in discussions that stress the distinctiveness and (...) particularity of moral vicissitudes and query the importance of ethical theory. Recent critics of abstraction are opposed not only to theories of rights, and the Kantian notions with which these are linked, but also to consequentialist ethical theories. The two ethical theories that are most influential in the English-speaking world now both stand accused of being too abstract. (shrink)

Highly idealized models, such as the Hawk-Dove game, are pervasive in biological theorizing. We argue that the process and motivation that leads to the introduction of various idealizations into these models is not adequately captured by Michael Weisberg’s taxonomy of three kinds of idealization. Consequently, a fourth kind of idealization is required, which we call hypothetical pattern idealization. This kind of idealization is used to construct models that aim to be explanatory but do not aim to (...) be explanations. (shrink)

The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards modelbased approaches. The idea that there are simple and true laws of nature has met with objections from philosophers such as Nancy Cartwright (1983) and Paul Teller (2001), and this has made a strictly Hempelian D-N style explanation largely irrelevant to the explanatory practices of science (Hempel & Oppenheim, 1948). Much of science does not involve subsuming particular events under laws of nature. It is increasingly recognized (...) that science across the disciplines is to some degree a patchwork of scientific models, with different methods, strategies, and with varying degrees of successful prediction and explanation. And so accounts of scientific explanation have reflected this change of perspective and model-based approaches have flourished in the explanation literature (Batterman, 2002b; Bokulich, 2008; Craver, 2006; Woodward, 2003). (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to emphasize a number of important points that will provide a better understanding of the history of philosophical thought concerning scientific knowledge. The main points made are: (a) that the principal way of viewing abstraction which has dominated the history of thought and epistemology up to the present is influenced by the original Aristotelian position; (b) that with the birth of modern science a new way of conceiving abstraction came into being which is better (...) characterized by the term idealization, the name that was later, in fact, to be used by scientists to describe their scientific activity; (c) that, however, on account of the influence of empirical and inductive philosophy, scientists have often not had sufficient methodological awareness of this new way of viewing abstraction; (d) that this new concept of abstraction has frequently been expressed in the framework of philosophies that lie outside the mainstream of contemporary epistemology or even exhibit marked anti-scientific tendencies; (e) that the theme of idealization has been taken up again in the last few decades and a great contribution in this direction has been made by the so-called Pozna school of methodology. (shrink)

L’épistémologie du désaccord s’est développée autour d’une notion idéalisée de pairs épistémiques. L’analyse d’exemples dans la littérature a quelque peu enraciné cette idéalisation, surtout lorsque les exemples étudiés sont des désaccords tirés du canon philosophique contemporain et qu’ils opposent des interlocuteurs identifiés. Il est difficile, pour des raisons socio-professionnelles, de souligner les manières ordinaires par lesquelles ces collègues disciplinaires peuvent se tromper. Il est probablement d’autant plus facile de négliger ces possibilités que les attitudes concernant l’importance du génie dans la (...) pratique de la philosophie sont fort répandues dans le domaine. L’utilisation de ces exemples limite donc la prise en compte de toutes les caractéristiques épistémiquement pertinentes des désaccords. (shrink)

Idealization in mathematics, by its very nature, generates a gap between the theoretical and the practical. This article constitutes an examination of two individual, yet similarly created, cases of mathematical idealization. Each involves using a theoretical extension beyond the finite limits which exist in practice regarding human activities, experiences, and perceptions. Scrutiny of details, however, brings out substantial differences between the two cases, not only in regard to the roles played by the idealized entities, but also in regard (...) to appropriate criteria for justifying the use of such entities. The background information supplied and the examples chosen for analysis in this paper were selected from the areas of measurement theory, probability theory, mathematical logic, and philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

This paper addresses the methodological problem of analysing what it is to explain observed behaviours of engineered computing systems, focusing on the crucial role that abstraction and idealization play in explanations of both correct and incorrect BECS. First, it is argued that an understanding of explanatory requests about observed miscomputations crucially involves reference to the rich background afforded by hierarchies of functional specifications. Second, many explanations concerning incorrect BECS are found to abstract away from descriptions of physical components and (...) processes of computing systems that one finds below the logic circuit and gate layer of functional specification hierarchies. Third, model-based explanations of both correct and incorrect BECS that are provided in the framework of formal verification methods often involve idealizations. Moreover, a distinction between restrictive and permissive idealizations is introduced and their roles in BECS explanations are analysed. (shrink)

This paper aims (a) to provide characterizations of realism and instrumentalism that are philosophically interesting and applicable to economics; and (b) to defend instrumentalism against realism as a methodological stance in economics. Starting point is the observation that ‘all models are false’, which, or so I argue, is difficult to square with the realist's aim of truth, even if the latter is understood as ‘partial’ or ‘approximate’. The three cheers in favour of instrumentalism are: (1) Once we have usefulness, truth (...) is redundant. (2) There is something disturbing about causal structure. (3) It's better to do what one can than to chase rainbows. (shrink)

I argue that idealization can throw a new light upon Freud’s theory of sublimation and that courtly love can be seen as an illustration of this suggestion. For Freud sublimation is the process in which the sexual aim of the instincts is diverted towards a non-sexual aim that is still related with the original one. Freud’s theory struggles with at least two problems.The first problem regards the relation between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem. Freud describes (...) this relation with different terms. The notion of ‘desexualization’ represents precisely what he has in mind. This term propounds that Freud understands sublimation as a one-sided movement that consists in leaving behind the original sexual aim. Courtly love proves that desexualization, as Freud understands it, is not a necessary condition for sublimation. A weakening of Freud’s strong claim concerning desexualization implies however that the distinction between sublimation and perversion is not always clearcut.The second problem appertains to the processes that bring about the transformation of the sexual aim. Courtly love infers that idealization of the love-object can play an important role in bringing about sublimation. The kind of sublimation that corresponds to courtly love is what has been called Verführung in German Idealism.Psychoanalytic theory is not willing to conceive idealization in this sense. According to the classical psychoanalytic theory, idealization produces repression of sexual instincts. I argue that this idea is counter-intuitive and that Freud’s understanding of idealization is more subtle. I give a short overview of Freud’s approach and I draw attention to some elements in his approach that help us to describe the direct link between idealization and sublimation.Idealization of the beloved can go together with an inhibition of sexual instincts. But it is wrong to identify aim-inhibition with repression or with a softening of the instincts. My suggestion is that the interaction between idealization and sublimation can be characterised as an interaction between an intensification of the sexual instincts, as it happens in any form of falling in love, and an inhibition of them.This interaction results in being lifted up above the sexual instincts that are caused by the idealised object. In religion and art, the double movement of the instincts is called ‘exaltation.’. (shrink)

A review of the chemical education research literature suggests that the term constructivism is used in two ways: experience-based constructivism and discipline-based constructivism. These two perspectives are examined as an epistemology in relation to the teaching and learning of the concept of idealization in chemistry. It is claimed that experience-based constructivism is powerless to inform the origin of such concepts in chemistry and while discipline-based constructivism can admit such theoretical concepts as idealization it does not offer any unique (...) perspectives that cannot be obtained from other models. Chemical education researchers do not consistently appeal to constructivism as an epistemology or as a teaching/learning perspective and it is shown that, while it draws attention to worthwhile teaching/learning strategies, it cannot be considered as foundational to chemical education research and tends to be used more as an educational label than as an undergirding theory. (shrink)

The Galilean explanatory style is characterized by the search for the underlying structure of phenomena, the positing of "deep" explanatory principles, and a view of the relation between theory and data, on which the search for "crucial data" is of primary importance. In this paper, I trace the dynamics of adopting the Galilean style, focusing on the science of episodic memory. I argue that memory systems, such as episodic and semantic memory, were posited as underlying competences producing the observable phenomena (...) of memory. Considered in idealized isolation from other systems, episodic memory was taken to underlay the ability of individuals to remember events from their personal past. Yet, in reality, memory systems regularly interact, standing in many-to-many relations to actual memory tasks and experiences. Upon this backdrop, I explore a puzzle about the increasing prominence of the notion of autonoetic consciousness in Tulving's theory of episodic memory. I argue that, contrary to widespread belief, the prominence is not best explained by the purported essential link between autonoetic consciousness and episodic memory. Rather, it is explained by the fact that autonoetic consciousness, hypothesized to uniquely accompany episodic retrieval, was considered a source of crucial data, predictable only from theories positing a functionally distinct episodic memory system. However, with the emergence of a new generation of theories, positing wider memory systems for remembering and imagination, the question of the relation between episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness has been reopened. This creates a pressing need for de-idealization, triggering a new search for crucial data. (shrink)

Contemporary public reason liberalism holds that coercion must be publicly justified to an idealized constituency. Coercion must be justified to all qualified points of view, not the points of view held by actual persons. Critics, in particular Nicholas Wolterstorff and David Enoch, have complained that idealization, by idealizing away what actual people accept, risks authoritarianism and disrespect by forcing people to comply with laws they in fact reject. I argue that idealization can withstand this criticism if it satisfies (...) two conditions. First, the standards of idealization, such as the norms of rationality and information, must be grounded in the present commitments of the large majority of members of the public. Second, the standards of idealization must be moderate; that is, they cannot be used to attribute reasons to citizens that stray too far from their actual commitments. (shrink)

Robert Batterman and others have argued that certain idealizing explanations have an asymptotic form: they account for a state of affairs or behavior by showing that it emerges “in the limit”. Asymptotic idealizations are interesting in many ways, but is there anything special about them as idealizations? To understand their role in science, must we augment our philosophical theories of idealization? This paper uses simple examples of asymptotic idealization in population genetics to argue for an affirmative answer and (...) proposes a general schema for asymptotic idealization, drawing on insights from Batterman’s treatment and from John Norton’s subsequent critique. (shrink)

This paper defends the viability of de-idealization strategies in economic modeling against recent criticism. De-idealization occurs when an idealized assumption of a theoretical model is replaced with a more realistic one. Recently, some scholars have raised objections against the possibility or fruitfulness of de-idealizing economic models, suggesting that economists do not employ this kind of strategy. We present a detailed case study from the theory of industrial organization, discussing three different models, two of which can be construed as (...) de-idealized versions of the first. We conclude that recent pessimism about de-idealization in economics is largely unfounded, and that de-idealization strategies are not only possible but also widely employed in economics. (shrink)