What is Imagination? - The Tricky Case of Supposition (original) (raw)
Related papers
Just the Imagination: Why Imagining Doesn't Behave Like Believing
Mind & Language, 2006
According to recent accounts of the imagination, mental mechanisms that can take input from both imagining and from believing will process imagination-based inputs (pretense representations) and isomorphic beliefs in much the same way. That is, such a mechanism should produce similar outputs whether its input is the belief that p or the pretense representation that p. Unfortunately, there seem to be clear counterexamples to this hypothesis, for in many cases, imagining that p and believing that p have quite different psychological consequences. This paper sets out some central problem cases and argues that the cases might be accommodated by adverting to the role of desires concerning real and imaginary situations.
Imagination and Belief in Action
Philosophia, 2019
Imagination and belief are obviously different. Imagining that you have won the lottery is not the same as believing that you have won. But what precisely is the difference? According to a rather standard view, they differ in two key functional respects: (i) with respect to the cognitive inputs to which they respond-imaginings do not respond to evidence and reasons as beliefs do; and (ii) with respect to the behavioural outputs that they produce-imaginings do not motivate us to act as beliefs do. I argue that this view is mistaken in one important respect. The distinction between imagination and belief does lie at the functional level, but the relevant functional difference does not concern behavioural outputs-since, in spite of appearances, imaginings and beliefs motivate us to act (and react) in the same ways. To see the difference, we need to focus on the input level-and, relatedly, on the sorts of inferential relations that imaginings and beliefs bear to each other. In §1, I introduce the standard view, and I argue that this view fails to deal adequately with a range of cases where imaginings seem to motivate action jointly with our desires, in the same way in which beliefs motivate. In § §2-3, I turn to cases where imaginings do not motivate-such as cases of daydreaming and engagement with fiction-which are alleged to show a motivational difference with respect to beliefs. But I argue that such cases do not reveal any difference, since the same factors that prevent imaginings from motivating in these cases are factors that, all else being equal, would also prevent beliefs with the same contents from motivating. On this basis, in §4 I conclude that imaginings and beliefs dispose us to act under the same conditions: they may contingently differ with respect to the satisfaction of such conditions, but they do not differ in motivating power. The critical difference between them should be sought at the inputs level.
The Epistemic Imagination Revisited (with Arnon Levy)
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2023
Recently, various philosophers have argued that we can obtain knowledge via the imagination. In particular, it has been suggested that we can come to know concrete, empirical matters of everyday significance by appropriately imagining relevant scenarios. Arguments for this thesis come in two main varieties:black box reliabilityarguments andconstraints‐basedarguments. We suggest that both strategies are unsuccessful. Against black‐box arguments, we point to evidence from empirical psychology, question a central case‐study, and raise concerns about a (claimed) evolutionary rationale for the imagination's reliability. Against the constraints‐based account, we argue that to the extent that it works, this does not give rise to knowledge that is distinctivelyfrom the imagination. We conclude by suggesting that the imagination's role in raising possibilities, traditionally seen as part of the context of discovery, can in fact play a role in justification, including as a bulwark against certain sorts of skepticism.
Belief-Like Imagining and Correctness
American Philosophical Quarterly, 2021
This paper explores the sense in which correctness applies to belief-like imaginings. It begins by establishing that when we imagine, we ‘direct’ our imaginings at a certain imaginary world, taking the propositions we imagine to be assessed for truth in that world. It then examines the relation between belief-like imagining and positing truths in an imaginary world. Rejecting the claim that correctness, in the literal sense, is applicable to imaginings, it shows that the imaginer takes on, vis-à-vis the imaginary world, the first-person perspective of a believer. Imaginings, it concludes, ‘mimic’ beliefs with respect to the property of being correct or incorrect by virtue of having true or false content.
A normative aspect of imagining: Taking on a (quasi-)doxastic role
Imagination and Experience: Philosophical Explorations, 2025
This chapter explores a noteworthy, as-yet-unanalysed normative aspect of imagining. It begins by examining cases where imaginings are deemed erroneous, showing that imaginings can “go wrong” not only by failing to represent that which the imaginer intends to imagine, or is asked to imagine by an external source (e.g. a work of fiction), but also when imaginings arise unbidden. That unintended, non-deliberate imaginings can be erroneous shows that there must be a norm or commitment that is inherent to imagining, a norm or commitment that, if violated, renders imaginings erroneous. Invoking Kendall Walton’s thesis about the normativity of imagining, I adduce a first-pass account of this normative aspect; the account pivots on the idea that imagining aims at, or is committed to representing, that which is fictionally true. After showing that this account is inadequate, I revise Walton’s thesis, arguing that in imagining, we are not committed to representing the fictional truth. Rather, taking on a quasi-doxastic role vis-à-vis the fictional world, we are committed to representing that which is (merely) presented as fictionally true. I proceed to explain the error in question in terms of this thesis, showing that when the quasi-doxastic role we take on in our capacity as imaginers is not carried out properly, our imaginings are rendered erroneous.
Forthcoming in Knowledge Through Imagination, Kind & Kung, eds., OUP
If imagination is subject to the will, in the sense that people choose the content of their own imaginings, how is it that one nevertheless can learn from what one imagines? This chapter argues for a way forward in addressing this perennial puzzle, both with respect to propositional imagination and sensory imagination. Making progress requires looking carefully at the interplay between one’s intentions and various kinds of constraints that may be operative in the generation of imaginings. Lessons are drawn from the existing literature on propositional imagination and from the control theory literature concerning the prediction and comparison mechanisms (or “forward models”) involved in ordinary perception. A more general conclusion is reached that, once we have the tools to understand how some imaginings are both under willful control and helpfully guide action and inference, we will have what we need to understand the cognitive basis of imagination in general.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2014 - Early View)
The point of this paper is to reveal a dogma in the ordinary conception of sensory imagination, and to suggest another way forward. The dogma springs from two main sources: a too close comparison of mental imagery to perceptual experience, and a too strong division between mental imagery and the traditional propositional attitudes (such as belief and desire). The result is an unworkable conception of the correctness conditions of sensory imaginings—one lacking any link between the conditions under which an imagining aids human action and inference and the conditions under which it is veridical. The proposed solution is, first, to posit a variety of imaginative attitudes—akin to the traditional propositional attitudes—which have different associated correctness (or satisfaction) conditions. The second part of the solution is to allow for imaginings with “hybrid” contents, in the sense that both mental images and representations with language-like constituent structure contribute to the content of imaginings.