Fiora Salis

London School of Economics and Political Science

Of Predators and Prey, or How to Fictionally Modelling Reality

5 May 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Models represent. But how do they do it? In this paper I assess the two main fictionalist accounts of models as representations, indirect fictionalism and direct fictionalism, and develop a novel proposal, what I call simple fictionalism, by drawing on Walton’s theory of make-believe. Simple fictionalism offers an explanation of the nature of models from which several implications for an explanation of how they represent follow. The key to understanding how models represent resides in the idea that the representation relation between models and the world is a kind of indirect referential relation that is mediated by the imagination.