Here you will find publications, presentations and other scientific products of the Possible Life project.
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Grüne-Yanoff, Till. 1/1/2019 - 31/12/2022. KTH, Stokholm
The project aims to describe exemplary practices of such modal modelling, to provide a philosophical account that both explains and justifies these scientific practices, and to offer methodological prescriptions for how to construct good modal models. In describing existing modal modelling practices, we focus on three scientific domains in which the use of modal models is especially prominent: modeling possible organisms in synthetic biology, scenario-construction in climate science and how-possibly explanation in economics. We draw both on available accounts of the epistemology of scientific modelling, but importantly also on recent work in the epistemology of modality. For instance, there are several interesting interconnections between the roles modal epistemology assigns to cognitive tools like mental models, epistemic counterparts, imaginary scenarios and simulations, and the role played by models in scientific reasoning. Some of the insights provided in this investigation can also be fed back into the epistemology of modality proper, in particular, the parts of it concerned with scientifically interesting modal claims.