Abstract

This paper criticises the Waltonian fictional view for misconstruing the role of imagination in scientific modelling, and for failing to provide an adequate account of the epistemology of modelling. It is argued that the central notions of prescribed imagination, props and principles of generation should be abandoned because they confuse more than clarify the philosophy of modelling. It is argued that the epistemic credibility of inferences in modelling require that results are explicitly derived with model descriptions in a proof, but since prescribed imagination does not guarantee that any actual inferences are made, principles of indirect generation cannot determine the content of a model. An alternative epistemic account of model content is proposed, and it is shown that the Waltonian fictional view does not have resources to accommodate the practices in which such content is determined. This critique highlights the limitations of using concepts from fiction theory in scientific modelling, suggesting that the Waltonian fictional view obscures rather than clarifies modelling practices.