Fiora Salis (University of York)
How do we learn through the scientific imagination involved in scientific models? I distinguish between two sorts of claims scientists can make within the modelling practice, claims about the imaginary system the model describes and claims about reality. The former raises the problem of how the claims generated within such imaginary scenarios might be justified, whereas the latter raises the problem of how the imagination might be constrained so as to generate potentially true claims about reality. I will argue that the key to solving both problems is in a particular account of make-believe drawn from the study of fiction.
