Journal
SYNTHESE
Volume 193, Issue 2, Pages 365-386Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0517-z
Keywords
Idealization; Explanation; Indispensability; Difference-making; Counterfactuals
Categories
Funding
- Australian Research Council [DP120102871]
- John Templeton Foundation
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Enhanced indispensability arguments seek to establish realism about mathematics based on the explanatory role that mathematics plays in science. Idealizations pose a problem for such arguments. Idealizations, in a similar way to mathematics, boost the explanatory credentials of our best scientific theories. And yet, idealizations are not the sorts of things that are supposed to attract a realist attitude. I argue that the explanatory symmetry between idealizations and mathematics can potentially be broken as follows: although idealizations contribute to the explanatory power of our best theories, they do not carry the explanatory load. It is at least open however that mathematics is load-carrying. To give this idea substance, I offer an analysis of what it is to carry the explanatory load in terms of difference-making and counterfactuals.
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