Wojciech Graboń
University of Warsaw
For almost half a century, scientific modelling has been one of the main topics of interest to philosophers of science. The construction of models, often understood as idealised structures that resemble parts of reality (Giere 2010), serves to represent the world and to engage in surrogate reasoning (Weisberg 2016) that enhances our understanding. The purpose of the proposed paper would be to analyse the use of models in the field of law in order to answer the question whether the study of law can be considered as a ‘model-based science’ (see Godfrey-Smith 2006), with particular emphasis on the differentiation of models by function. The main hypothesis would be that in legal studies, models can be seen as a special kind of tool for legal cognition, facilitating the structuring of knowledge, enabling inferences (e.g. Gardner 1987), or even shaping the imagination (cf. Stuart 2022). Such an approach should also make it possible to address the status of scientific reflection on law from a comparative perspective, since modelling methods are also widely used in other social sciences and humanities. Moreover, due to the specificities of law as a social phenomenon, the conclusions of the analysis should also shed new light on the question of normativity, understood in particular as the inclusion of values, in the context of problems related to methods of scientific representation.
Chair: Kamil Furman
Time: September 12th, 11:20 – 11:50
Location: SR 1.004
SOPhiA 2026 