Models, Fictions, and Conditionals

Abstract

Abstract This chapter discusses recent debates about scientific models and fictional or imaginary systems. Model-based science often apparently deals in non-actual or fictional systems, and does so by design. This practice raises questions about the relationships that can exist between such models and their real-world targets, especially about the evident empirical utility of some highly idealized scientific models. The chapter considers a range of recent treatments of models and offers an account that gives a central role to counterfactual conditionals. This chapter takes these conditionals to be the typical output of scientific modeling. These conditionals raise many problems of their own, but understanding models in these terms does enable some progress.

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