David Wallace - Learning to Represent: Mathematics-First Accounts of Representation and Their Relation to Natural Language

David Wallace (University of Pittsburgh)

The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh invites you to join us for our Lunch Time Talk. Attend in person at 1117 Cathedral of Learning or visit our live stream on YouTube at David Wallace

September 10 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST

Title: Learning to Represent: Mathematics-first accounts of representation and their relation to natural language

Abstract:

I develop an account of how mathematized theories in physics represent physical systems, in response to the frequent claim that any such account must presuppose a non-mathematized, and usually linguistic, description of the system represented. The account I develop contains a circularity, in that representation is a mathematical relation between the models of a theory and the system as represented by some other model — but I argue that this circularity is not vicious, in any case refers in linguistic accounts of meaning and representation, and is simply a consequence of the fact that we have no unmediated, representation-independent access to the world.

This talk will also be available live streamed on:

Zoom at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.