Scientists Are Epistemic Consequentialists about Imagination

• DOI: 10.1017/psa.2022.31
• Publication Date: 2022-05-25T07:47:28Z
• Authors: Michael T. Stuart
• Keywords: 06 humanities and the arts; 0603 philosophy, ethics and religion

AbstractScientists imagine for epistemic reasons, and these imaginings can be better or worse. But what does it mean for an imagining to be epistemically better or worse? There are at least three metaepistemological frameworks that offer different answers to this question: epistemological consequentialism, deontic epistemology, and virtue epistemology. This paper presents empirical evidence that scientists adopt each of these different epistemic frameworks with respect to imagination, but argues that the way they do this is best explained if scientists are fundamentally epistemic consequentialists about imagination.