DESCRIPTION

PRISMA (Parma Research Group on Imagination in the philosophy of Science, Mind and Art) is a research group that consists of philosophers working in different areas who share a strong interest in the heterogeneous family of activities that are commonly called “imagination”, understood both as a psychological faculty that plays a decisive and distinctive role in our mental lives and as a (rule-guided) social activity that allows us to explore together counterfactual or fictional scenarios. While philosophers of science and art have traditionally been more focused on the final products of human endeavors – such as scientific theories or works of art – our goal is to explore, through collaborative and individual efforts, the very processes that bring these products about along with the historical and social practices in which they are interwoven.

The group is a platform for various activities, starting from reading groups and the organization of seminars and workshops, to joint research projects that result in collective scientific publications. 

Actually, the group PRISMA conducts research in the following areas: 

1 - The epistemic value of imagining and its significance in the sciences, in modal reasoning and in thought experiments;
2 - The architecture of imagination, its psychological nature, constraints and dynamics;
3 - Games of make-believe as we know them from our engagement with the arts and with fictional works of literature;
4 - The historical uses of the concept of "imagination" in counterfactual scenarios in natural philosophy in the late medieval and the Renaissance period.

In the moment, all members of the group are affiliated with the University of Parma, but collaborates actively with various researchers from other Universities, among who:

• Carla Rita Palmerino (Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL)
• Valentina Petrolini (University of the Basque Countries)
• Fiora Salis (University of York)
• Michael Stuart (University of Taiwan)
• Alberto Voltolini e Carola Barbero (University of Turin)
• Harald Wiltsche (Linköping University, Sweden)