Modals model models: scientific modeling and counterfactual reasoning

Abstract

Counterfactual reasoning has been used to account for many aspects of scientific reasoning. More recently, it has also been used to account for the scientific practice of modeling. Truth in a model is truth in a situation considered as counterfactual. When we reason with models, we reason with counterfactuals. Focusing on selected models like Bohr’s atom model or models of population dynamics, I present an account of how the imaginative development of a counterfactual supposition leads us from reality to interesting model assumptions; how it guides our reasoning from these assumptions to interesting consequences for the model scenario via counterfactual entailment; and how it leads us back to conclusions on real target phenomena.