ABSTRACT
We frequently use imagination to think about possibilities. Examples are easy to come by. When you plan, you imagine various courses of action you can take, and imagine the outcome of those actions before you settle on one. Modal epistemology examines both how we think about possibilities and the epistemic
status of those thoughts. Philosophers have developed a number of different concepts for different types of epistemic status, and most of them can be applied to the modal case. Do we have at least some reason to believe that the thoughts we have about possibilities are true? Are our possibility thoughts justified? Warranted? Reliable? Does the evidence support them? Are they rational? Reasonable? Probable? Do we know things about possibilities? For the sake of brevity, we will focus on justification and evidence, though the issues raised here apply to other epistemic statuses as well with suitable modification. The issue addressed in this chapter is whether imagination can confer any positive epistemic
status on our thoughts about possibility. Hume famously asserts that it can.
