H2020Индивидуална стипендия2018–2020

CKI · Counterfactual Knowledge from the Imagination

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2018-09-01 → 2020-08-31
Финансиране от ЕС: 165 599 €
Участници: 2
Схема: MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Накратко на български

Контрафактуалното мислене изследва как въображението ни помага да оценим хипотетични ситуации, например какво би станало, ако бяхме взели различно решение. Това е важно, защото нашите индивидуални и колективни решения често се основават на подобни въображаеми сценарии.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Counterfactual Knowledge from the Imagination

The project "Counterfactual Knowledge from Imagination" investigated the epistemology of counterfactual thinking and its connections to the imagination. Thoughts about counterfactual situations are a central feature of human cognition, key to planning in any domain of activity: What would happen if I missed a mortgage payment? What would happen if May had called a second referendum on Brexit? It seems that knowledge about counterfactual situations is possible under some circumstances. The project aimed to improve our understanding of those circumstances and what role the imagination plays in specifying them. The guiding hypothesis of the project was that normal human cognition includes an imaginative capacity for evaluating conditionals; this same capacity can be used to evaluate a range of other claims too. How we can learn from the imagination is important for society because much of our decision-making, both individual and collective, relies on judgments reached using our imagination. The overall objectives were to get clearer on the nature of the imagination, its role in the evaluation of conditionals and related claims, and the relevance of the problem to the issue of how philosophers and scientists learn from what are sometimes called "thought experiments". The conclusions of the project provided support to its guiding hypothesis and helped to achieve these objectives. One project publication argued against a view of the imagination, "intentionalism", which has been thought to be incompatible, or at least in tension, with the thesis that the imagination can produce knowledge. Another project publication examined a prominent thought experiment from the history of physics due to Galileo. It argued that we are expected to use two different kinds of imagination in order to see how the counterfactual situation described by the thought experiment poses a challenge to a principle of motion.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Thoughts about counterfactual situations are a central feature of human cognition, key to planning in any domain of activity: What would happen if I missed a mortgage payment? What if Britain were to leave the EU? It seems that knowledge about counterfactual situations is possible under some circumstances. The project’s general aim is to improve our understanding of those circumstances, and what role the imagination plays in specifying them. The specific objectives are to investigate: (1) the connection between the epistemology of counterfactual conditionals and the epistemology of claims involving modal terms like “possible”, “necessary”, and “can”, (2) the role of the imagination in the epistemology of thought experiments in science, and (3) the cognitive architecture underlying counterfactual thinking. Over the course of investigating (1)-(3), I develop and defend the view that certain constrained imaginative exercises can provide knowledge about counterfactual situations.I will carry out this research within the interdisciplinary setting of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. My supervisor Francesco Berto is investigating questions highly relevant to my project’s, especially in his current work that develops a logic of conceivability. I will also make two visits to Oxford Philosophy to discuss my project research with Timothy Williamson, who has made some of the key contributions to the epistemology of counterfactual thinking and the imagination to date.The project will give me the opportunity to establish myself as an important scholar in analytic philosophy. By the project’s end, I will have submitted four articles to internationally leading journals in the field. The project will also enhance cooperation between UvA (ILLC/Philosophy) and Oxford (Philosophy).

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordКоординаторОбединеното кралство
UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM · AmsterdamНидерландия