Abstracts

Scientific Fictionalism, Cognitive Niches, and Epistemic Warfare

The main aim is to revise and criticize scientific fictionalism, also reframing the received idea of abstractness and ideality of models with the help of recent results coming from the area of distributed cognition (common coding), abductive cognition (manipulative), and cognitive niche construction. The presentation will also illustrate how scientific modeling activity can be better described taking advantage of the concept of “epistemic warfare” I have recently introduced. Epistemic warfare sees scientific enterprise as a rich struggle for rational knowledge in which it is important to distinguish epistemic (for example scientific models) from non epistemic (for example fictions, falsities, propaganda) weapons. Finally I will illustrate a typical aspect of scientific models: in a static perspective (for example when inserted in a textbook) they certainly appear fictional to the inattentive epistemologist, but their fictional character disappears in case a dynamic perspective is adopted.