ONLINE Gastvortrag von Dr. Christopher Badura (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): „How Imagination Can Justify” [Plakat]

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This talk explains the justificatory force of imaginative episodes. I argue that if imaginative episodes piggy-back on dispositions called “conditional beliefs”, imaginative episodes inherit their justificatory force. The idea is roughly this: if I am disposed to believe that I am cold, given I believe that I am in the mountains, then if I imagine being in the mountains, I imagine being cold. Since conditional beliefs come with a notion of justification, this carries over to imagination being justificatory. This view faces two challenges: First, the challenge of a lacking stimulus condition to manifest a conditional belief: imagining something typically does not entail believing it. I argue that conditional beliefs can be “offline-manifested”. Second, the challenge of new contents: we often imagine about stuff that we have no conditional beliefs about. Based on Amy Kind’s notion of “imaginative scaffolding” and Yablo’s aboutness-theory, I explain how to overcome this challenge.

Christopher Badura studied Philosophy in Hamburg, Logic in Amsterdam, and obtained his Doctorate in Philosophy at RuhrUniversity Bochum in 2021. His research on imagination focused on developing formal logics modelling imagination for a better conceptual understanding. His research has also touched upon issues in epistemology and philosophy of mind. With Amy Kind he co-edited “Epistemic Uses of Imagination”. He is currently working in Excellence Strategy Management at Universität Hamburg.