Prof. Dr. Mauricio Suarez PhD, MSc, BSc

January 1^st - 31^th 2020 and July 1^st - 31^st 2022

Affiliation: Universidad Complutense Madrid

Research for a study about:

Research for a study for the book "Representation and Inference in Scientific Practice" about the modelling attitude in 19th century physics

Lecture

Representation in Art and Science

Date: March 17, 2021 | 15:00-17:00

Venue: online

Abstract:

I argue that artistic and scientific representation alike are best understood, in a deflationary spirit, to minimally require surrogative reasoning from what I call representational sources towards their (real or imagined; self-standing or constructed) targets. No other condition is universally required in either case, as shown by a variety of historically significant cases in both domains. I argue in particular against resemblance theories, showing that they do not deliver what an account of representation demands in general. Instead I provide a minimal logical characterisation of a suitably extended version of 'denotative function', broadly considered so as to apply to all types of representational sources.