  One can find philosophers arguing for the identity thesis as early as Humphreys 1995 and Hughes 1999. And there is at least implicit support for (the stronger) version of the epistemological dependence thesis in Hughes. The earliest explicit argument in favor of the epistemological dependence thesis, however, is in Norton and Suppe 2001. According to Norton and Suppe, simulations can warrant belief precisely because they literally are experiments. They have a detailed story to tell about in what sense they are experiments, and how this is all supposed to work.  According to Norton and Suppe, a valid simulation is one in which certain formal relations (what they call ‘realization’) hold between a base model, the modeled physical system itself, and the computer running the algorithm. When the proper conditions are met, ‘a simulation can be used as an instrument for probing or detecting real world phenomena. Empirical data about real phenomena are produced under conditions of experimental control’ (p. 73).