–Nov. 2019 – Western Canadian Philosophical Association Conference, Lethbridge, Alberta *Winner of the WCPA Best Graduate Student Essay Prize*
Abstract: The pervasive use of images and diagrams in science has recently garnered a great deal of debate in the literature on scientific representation. Bechtel et al. (2013) argue that images aren’t merely contingently useful tools that scientists use in order to communicate scientific findings. Rather, they suggest that images are a constitutive part of scientific theories. This is because images represent worldly mechanisms in ways that draw on scientists’ capacity for spatial simulation. However, the authors’ account seems to be at odds with the fact that the congenitally blind are also capable of spatial simulations despite lacking visual input. I argue in support of Bechtel et al. that the contingency of visual imagery does not rule out its constitutive role since it forms an integral part of scientists’ sensorimotor coupling with the world. Furthermore, I argue that scientists’ reliance on imagery and spatial simulation shows that there is a crucial non-propositional and perceptual component at work in scientific representation.