The \;Lugano Philosophy Colloquia \;are back this fall 2023!
\nAbstract: \;I investigate \;the workings \;and \;epistemic credentials of counterfactual imagination: the activity of supposing that \;P \;in order to investigate what would be the case if \;P \;was the case. The mainstream way of drawing the distinction between imagination in the indicative \;and \;in the subjunctive or counterfactual mood has it that one can only suppose that \;P \;in the former way when one gives nonzero chance to \;P. I argue that that's wrong. Instead\, both \;kinds of \;suppositional thinking work by \;simulated belief revision\; but while the former is governed by \;Bayesian \;conditionalization\, the latter is governed by \;Lewisian \;imaging. So understood\, counterfactual imagination can be rationally justified by considerations concerning belief accuracy: a specific kind of \;imaging\, namely Laplacian generalized \;imaging\, minimizes expected inaccuracy as measured by the Brier score. \;So if one endorses the claims that (expected) accuracy is the fundamental virtue of epistemic attitudes\, \;and \;that accuracy is adequately measured by the Brier score\, \;imagining \;via \;imaging \;is virtuous indeed!
\nThis series of events are held \;on campus \;for philosophy students and \;on Zoom \;for everyone. We may also stream some of them on the USI \;Master in Philosophy Facebook \;page. To participate in these events\, please write to \;events.isfi@usi.ch \;
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