On Williamson, Kitcher, The Great Endarkenment (pt. II) and Meta-Expertise
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Early on, in the “preface” to second (revised, 2022) edition of The Philosophy of Philosophy, Timothy Williamson notes that collaborating with the economist, Hyun Song Shin, gave him “experience of the differences in research culture between two disciplines when dealing with the same phenomena.” Crucially, he learns from the economist that the “model-building approach, on which models are assumed from the outset to involve drastic simplifications of the reality under study, so that a mere discrepancy between model and reality is not news, and just pointing it out is not considered a significant intellectual contribution. Rather, what displaces a model is a better model.” (p. xiv) Refutation by counterexamples (as in Gettier 1963) is not what economists and model-builders do (the point is echoed on p. 383 including the repetition of the contrast to Gettier). As Williamson notes later in the book (in the newly inserted section 9.3):
On Williamson, Kitcher, The Great Endarkenment (pt. II) and Meta-Expertise
On Williamson, Kitcher, The Great…
On Williamson, Kitcher, The Great Endarkenment (pt. II) and Meta-Expertise
Early on, in the “preface” to second (revised, 2022) edition of The Philosophy of Philosophy, Timothy Williamson notes that collaborating with the economist, Hyun Song Shin, gave him “experience of the differences in research culture between two disciplines when dealing with the same phenomena.” Crucially, he learns from the economist that the “model-building approach, on which models are assumed from the outset to involve drastic simplifications of the reality under study, so that a mere discrepancy between model and reality is not news, and just pointing it out is not considered a significant intellectual contribution. Rather, what displaces a model is a better model.” (p. xiv) Refutation by counterexamples (as in Gettier 1963) is not what economists and model-builders do (the point is echoed on p. 383 including the repetition of the contrast to Gettier). As Williamson notes later in the book (in the newly inserted section 9.3):