[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-608434-105":59,"doc-detail-608434-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","stabilising-understanding-abstract","Stabilising understanding - Abstract","","We present an account of how idealised models ground scientific understanding in stability. A model provides understanding of a target behaviour when both the model and the target’s perfect model fall within a stable class of models. This class is determined by the model’s noetic core: features indispensable for both the model’s and the target’s behaviour. The view is factivist, requiring models to get those target aspects right, while differing from existing factivist proposals on how this is achieved.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/stabilising-understanding-abstract/608434/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/stabilising-understanding-abstract/608434.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Himbo","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-27","2026-10-17",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":14},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How do idealised models provide scientific understanding according to this account?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"A model provides understanding of a target behaviour when both the model and the target’s perfect model belong to a class of models over which that behaviour is stable.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What is the model’s noetic core?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The noetic core is the set of features indispensable to both the model’s and the target’s behaviour; it characterises the stable class of models.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What does the account mean by being factivist?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It insists that models must get the target aspects they aim to understand right, while proposing a different way to accommodate idealised aspects than extant factivist views.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},608434,1793071968,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":14,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},687197100911,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/a000239b6f1da00475?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1785132997149421697","Stabilising understanding  \nRoman Frigg1 · James Nguyen2  \nAccepted: 12 July 2025 © The Author(s) 2025  \nAbstract  \nWe present an account of how idealised models provide scientific understanding that is based on the notion of stability: a model provides understanding of a target behaviour when both the model and the target’s perfect model are in a class of models over which that behaviour is stable. The class is characterised in terms of what we call the model’s noetic core, which contains the features that are indispensable to both the model’s and the target’s behaviour. The account is factivist because it insists that models must get those aspects of the target that it aims to understand right, but it disagrees with extant factivist accounts about how models achieve this.  \nKeywords Understanding · Explanation · Scientific models · Stability · Idealisation · Robustness · Renormalization · Universality · Stability  \n1 Introduction  \nSuccessful science doesn’t just produce representations of the world, those representations are the means through which we understand it. Many fields achieve this goal through the construction of models. This raises the question: how do models provide understanding of their target systems?  \nThis has sparked a lively debate about the nature of scientific understanding.1 A central concern is that most, if not all, models involve idealisations: falsehoods, at least when taken literally. A ski slope is not a frictionless plane; a crystal doesn’t  \n1 The contributions to Lawler, Khalifa and Shech (2023) document both the state of play in the debate and the trajectory that it followed in the past.  \n* Roman Frigg [r.p.frigg@lse.ac.uk](r.p.frigg@lse.ac.uk)  \nJames Nguyen  \n[james.nguyen@philosophy.su.se](james.nguyen@philosophy.su.se)  \n1 Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK  \n2 Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden  \nconsist of an infinite number of molecules; and economic agents aren’t perfectly rational. And yet models that represent them as such seem to provide understanding. But how can such distortions do this? Views on how to answer this question are divided. Factivists insist that understanding is factive and embark on the project of separating models’ veridical and non-veridical parts, insisting that only the former contribute to understanding. Non-factivists demur and insist that radical departures from the truth don’t impede understanding and should be embraced rather than excised: models can provide understanding irrespective of being literally false.2  \nWe take issues with both sides, but for different reasons. We argue that non-factivism faces a dilemma: either it is too permissive to account for how models provide understanding, or, if amended to avoid that charge, it collapses into factivism. We argue for this with a thought experiment inspired by the history of physics which shows that unless a model gets those aspects of the target that we aim to understand right, it fails to provide understanding. This places us in the factivist camp. However, we object to existing articulation of factivism, particularly with respect to how to accommodate the idealised aspects of scientific models within a factivist framework. As we will see, the most promising attempts typically deal with idealisation via a comparison between an idealised model and some more veridical model, which requires that the latter, if not accessible in practice, is at least the sort of thing to which an idealised model can be compared to in principle.  \nOur strategy for handling idealisation eschews such comparisons.3 The account we propose is based on the notion of stability. In nuce, a model provides understanding of some target behaviour if both the model and the target’s “perfect model” are in a class of models over which that behaviour is stable. The class is characterised in terms of what we call the model’s “noeti","cbCaidpSkDnWakIv","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaidpSkDnWakIv","pdf",1003009,35,"English","# Abstract\n# 1 Introduction","[{\"question\":\"How do idealised models provide scientific understanding according to this account?\",\"answer\":\"A model provides understanding of a target behaviour when both the model and the target’s perfect model belong to a class of models over which that behaviour is stable.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the model’s noetic core?\",\"answer\":\"The noetic core is the set of features indispensable to both the model’s and the target’s behaviour; it characterises the stable class of models.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the account mean by being factivist?\",\"answer\":\"It insists that models must get the target aspects they aim to understand right, while proposing a different way to accommodate idealised aspects than extant factivist views.\"}]","Stabilising understanding - Abstract | PDF",1792255963,88]