Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you anywhere

Franz Berto*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

There is some consensus on the claim that imagination as suppositional thinking can have epistemic value insofar as it's constrained by a principle of minimal alteration of how we know or believe reality to be – compatibly with the need to accommodate the supposition initiating the imaginative exercise. But in the philosophy of imagination there is no formally precise account of how exactly such minimal alteration is to work. I propose one. I focus on counterfactual imagination, arguing that this can be modeled as simulated belief revision governed by Laplacian imaging. So understood, it can be rationally justified by accuracy considerations: it minimizes expected belief inaccuracy, as measured by the Brier score.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)717-729
Number of pages13
JournalNoûs
Volume58
Issue number3
Early online date23 Aug 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2024

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