Check Please! De-idealizing De-idealization

罗懿宸

南洋理工大学

翟宸宇

中国科学院哲学研究所

2025年9月17日（周三）15:00-17:00

中国科学院哲学研究所报告厅

(中关村南四街中国科学院软件园4号楼南楼4层)

中国科学院哲学研究所

There is a question of whether de-idealization is needed for justified use of—for ‘checking’—idealizations. We argue that the standard philosophical account of de-idealization has become too idealized, but that this does not preclude the possibility of justificatory practices that show how models can be used to make inferences about the world. In turn, motivated by examples in physics, we de-idealize de-idealization by relaxing the standards for closeness to more realistic theoretical items, identifying at least three procedures for de-idealization: intra-model, inter-model, and measurement de-idealizations. These highlight ways in which idealizations can—and have been—checked in physics without appealing to the philosopher’s idealized notion of de-idealization.

Yichen Luo （罗懿宸） is a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received Ph.D. in philosophy of physics from the University of Western Ontario. His research spans foundational and epistemological issues in black hole physics and General Relativity and general topics in scientific modeling and explanation. Before his Ph.D., he studied at Tsinghua University and Beijing Normal University.