BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Grails iCalendar plugin//NONSGML Grails iCalendar plugin//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20240329T152226Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20150612T050000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20150613T130000 SUMMARY:Conference on Scientific Fictionalism UID:20240329T152227Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-6f97df9687-7c6q9 TZID:Europe/London LOCATION:Senate House\, Malet Street \, London\, United Kingdom\, WC1E 7HU DESCRIPTION:
This is a two-day conference co-organised by the IP and by CPNSS at the LSE\, and sponsored by the IP\, by CPNSS and by the British Society of Aesthetics.
\nIn recent years new and innovative comparisons have been developed between the debate on scientific models in philosophy of science and the debate on the nature of fiction in aesthetics. The analogy squares well with scientific practice\, where scientists talk about models as if they were imaginary objects. Although a precursor of the analogy between models and fiction can be identified in Vaihinger&rsquo\;s emphasis on the importance of fictions for scientific reasoning\, only very recently philosophers of science have tried to articulate it by using paradigmatic accounts of fiction from aesthetics. Nancy Cartwright famously claimed that &lsquo\;a model is a work of fiction&rsquo\; and later suggested to analyse models as fables. Catherine Elgin argues that science shares important epistemic practices with artistic fiction. And Mary Morgan contends that narratives play an important role in economic modelling. During the last decade Peter Godfrey-Smith and Roman Frigg explicitly put forward the view that models are akin to fictional characters\, with Frigg explicitly developing a view of models as fiction in terms of Kendall Walton&rsquo\;s pretence theory.
\nHowever\, while the analogy between models and fiction has attracted attention in philosophy of science\, many issues remain open and deserve further investigation. The conference will focus on the following main questions:
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