About this topic
Summary Imagination is typically taken to be the mental accompaniment to the activity of pretending.  In the course of pretending to be a cat, for example, a child might imagine that her hands are paws or that her sister is a vicious dog who is chasing her. The precise nature of the relationship between imagination and pretending, however, is a matter of dispute.  Some philosophers think imagination is essential for explaining pretend behavior, while others think that we can explain pretend behavior entirely in terms of beliefs and desires.  The philosophical discussion of this topic also takes up issues about the importance of pretense in child development.
Key works Ryle 1960 famously attempts to analyze imagining wholly in terms of pretending.  For discussions about the role of imagination in explaining pretend behavior, see Nichols & Stich 2003, Nichols 2004Carruthers 2006, and Currie & Ravenscroft 2002.  For a discussion of the phenomenon of imaginative contagion (cases in which imagining or pretending that P has effects that we would normally expect only from perceiving or believing that P), see Gendler 2006
Introductions In the course of discussing imagination more generally, Gendler 2011 provides a useful overview to the issues involving imagination and pretense.
Related

Contents
149 found
Order:
1 — 50 / 149
  1. Review of Recreative Minds. [REVIEW]P. Carruthers - forthcoming - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  2. Cults, Conspiracies, and Fantasies of Knowledge.Daniel Munro - forthcoming - Episteme:1-22.
    There’s a certain pleasure in fantasizing about possessing knowledge, especially possessing secret knowledge to which outsiders don’t have access. Such fantasies are typically a source of innocent entertainment. However, under the right conditions, fantasies of knowledge can become epistemically dangerous, because they can generate illusions of genuine knowledge. I argue that this phenomenon helps to explain why some people join and eventually adopt the beliefs of epistemic communities who endorse seemingly bizarre, outlandish claims, such as extreme cults and online conspiracy (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  3. Thought experiments: methodological and historical perspectives.C. Palmerino & S. Roux (eds.) - forthcoming - Brill, Leiden.
  4. The Prima Facie View of Perceptual Imagination.Andrea Rivadulla-Duró - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.
    Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a theory—the Prima (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Pretending and Disbelieving.Andrea Sauchelli - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    I formulate and criticise a condition that captures some recent ideas on the nature of pretence, namely, the disbelief condition. According to an initial understanding of this condition, an agent who is pretending that P must also disbelieve that P. I criticise this idea by proposing a counterexample showing that an agent may be in a state of pretence that does not imply disbelief in what is pretended. I also draw some general conclusions about the nature of pretence.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  6. The Story of the Ghost in the Machine.Adam Toon - forthcoming - In Sonia Sedivy (ed.), Art, Representation and Make-Believe: Essays on the Philosophy of Kendall L. Walton. New York, NY, USA:
  7. Pennywise Parsimony: Langland-Hassan on Imagination.Neil Van Leeuwen - forthcoming - Analysis.
    This essay discusses Peter Langland-Hassan's approach to "explaining imagination" as it plays out in his recent book of that title. Langland-Hassan offers a theory of “attitude imagining” that avoids positing what he calls a “sui generis cognitive attitude.” This theory attempts to explain things like pretend play, hypothetical reasoning, and cognition of fiction; to explain them using only (what he calls) more “basic” mental states like beliefs and desires; and thus to explain them without positing a distinct cognitive attitude of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. Imagining Dinosaurs.Michel-Antoine Xhignesse - forthcoming - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
    There is a tendency to take mounted dinosaur skeletons at face value, as the raw data on which the science of paleontology is founded. But the truth is that mounted dinosaur skeletons are substantially intention-dependent—they are artifacts. More importantly, I argue, they are also substantially imagination-dependent: their production is substantially causally reliant on preparators’ creative imaginations, and their proper reception is predicated on audiences’ recreative imaginations. My main goal here is to show that dinosaur skeletal mounts are plausible candidates for (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. Who Cares About Winning?Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt - 2023 - European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):248-265.
    Why do we so often care about the outcomes of games when nothing is at stake? There is a paradox here, much like the paradox of fiction, which concerns why we care about the fates and threats of merely fictional beings. I argue that the paradox threatens to overturn a great deal of what philosophers have thought about caring, severing its connection to value and undermining its moral weight. I defend a solution to the paradox that draws on Kendall Walton's (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  10. The Status of Video Games as Self-Involving Interactive Fictions: Fuzzy Intervals and Hard Identifications.Kristina Šekrst - 2023 - Sic: Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation 3.
    The goal of this paper is to see how mental and language representations are unique from a video-game perspective, using two main criteria. First, I will posit that the level of being both an interactive work of fiction and a self-involving interactive fiction belongs to a fuzzy interval and that some works – and, therefore, some video games – are more immersive than others. Second, I will observe how propositions tie the player’s representations of the real world and the game (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. Mind as Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism.Adam Toon - 2023 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    This book develops a new approach to the mind called mental fictionalism. The key idea behind this approach is that the mind is a useful fiction. The book begins with our ordinary conception of the mind (known as folk psychology). At present, the dominant interpretation of folk psychology sees it as an attempt to describe our inner machinery (a view the author calls Cartesianism). The representational theory of mind (or representationalism) argues that our folk theory is true, and that our (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  12. Religion as Make-Believe: a theory of belief, imagination, and group identity.Neil Van Leeuwen - 2023 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    We often assume that religious beliefs are no different in kind from ordinary factual beliefs—that believing in the existence of God or of supernatural entities that hear our prayers is akin to believing that May comes before June. Neil Van Leeuwen shows that, in fact, these two forms of belief are strikingly different. Our brains do not process religious beliefs like they do beliefs concerning mundane reality; instead, empirical findings show that religious beliefs function like the imaginings that guide make-believe (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  13. Imagination as a process.Nicholas Wiltsher - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (2):434-454.
    According to recent orthodoxy, imagination is best characterised in terms of distinctive imaginative states. But this view is ill-suited to characterisation of the full range of imaginative activities—creation, fantasy, conceiving, and so on. It would be better to characterise imagination in terms of a distinctive imaginative process, with the various imaginative activities as more determinate implementations of the determinable process.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Kripke’nin Kurgu Çözümlemesinde Ad ve Adımsı Arasındaki İlişki.Erim Bakkal - 2022 - Kilikya Felsefe Dergisi / Cilicia Journal of Philosophy 18 (2):36-53.
    Özet: Bu metindeki amacım Kripke’nin kurgu çözümlemesinde özel adlar ve adımsılar (pretended name) arasındaki ilişkiyi ele almak. Kripke için özel adlar değişmez imleyicilerdir (rigid designator), yani tek bir varlığı/şeyi var olduğu tüm olanaklı dünyalarda biricik belirlerler. Adımsılar ise kurgusal söylemde ortaya çıkan kurgunun taslamasının bir parçasıdır; yani kurgu dünyadaki karakterlerin adlarıdır. Kripke’ye göre adımsılar sadece gerçek adları taklit eden fakat taklit ve benzerlik ilişkisinden öte bir ilişkileri olmayan, adlardan kategorik olarak farklı şeylerdir. Fakat Kripke için adlar ve adımsılar kategorik olarak (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Are You There, God? It’s Me, the Theist: On the Viability and Virtue of Non-Doxastic Prayer.Amber Griffioen - 2022 - In Oliver Crisp, James Arcadi & Jordan Wessling (eds.), Analyzing Prayer: Theological and Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 38-58.
    The idea of “nonbelieving prayer” might sound odd, maybe even paradoxical. a closer examination of the functions of prayer and how religious participants actually engage in it tells a different story. After developing a working definition of prayer, this chapter examines a few types and functions of prayer and argues that they can be performed non-doxastically. In fact, such a stance might even be more epistemically and theologically virtuous than that which would accompany full belief in the kind of God (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Secret charades: reply to Hutto.Peter Langland-Hassan - 2022 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (5):1183-1187.
    In reply to Daniel Hutto’s “Getting Real About Pretense,“ I defend my theory of pretense against his claim that it is subject to counterexamples by clarifying wherein the value of the analysis lies. Then I argue that the central challenge still facing Hutto’s “primacy of practice” approach, as well as other 4E approaches to pretense, is to explain the link between pretense and deception.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. Why pretense poses a problem for 4E cognition (and how to move forward).Peter Langland-Hassan - 2022 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (5):1003-1021.
    Whether a person is pretending, or not, is a function of their beliefs and intentions. This poses a challenge to 4E accounts of pretense, which typically seek to exclude such cognitive states from their explanations of psychological phenomena. Resulting tensions are explored within three recent accounts of imagination and pretense offered by theorists working in the 4E tradition. A path forward is then charted, through considering ways in which explanations can invoke beliefs and intentions while remaining true to 4E precepts. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  18. A Dilemma for De Dicto Halakhic Motivation: Why Mitzvot Don’t Require Intention.Itamar Weinshtock Saadon - 2022 - Journal of Analytic Theology 10:76-97.
    According to a prominent view in Jewish-Halakhic literature, “mitzvot (commandments) require intention.” That is, to fulfill one’s obligation in performing a commandment, one must intend to perform the act because it’s a mitzvah; one must take the fact that one’s act is a mitzvah as her reason for doing the action. I argue that thus understood, this Halakhic view faces a revised version of Thomas Hurka’s recent dilemma for structurally similar views in ethics: either it makes it a necessary condition (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  19. Imaginative immersion, regulation, and doxastic mediation.Alon Chasid - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4): 1-43.
    This paper puts forward an account of imaginative immersion. Elaborating on Kendall Walton’s thesis that imagining aims at the fictional truth, it first argues that imaginings are inherently rule- or norm-governed: they are ‘regulated’ by that which is presented as fictionally true. It then shows that an imaginer can follow the rule or norm mandating her to imagine the propositions presented as fictional truths either by acquiring explicit beliefs about how the rule (norm) is to be followed, or directly, without (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  20. Not by Imaginings Alone: On How Imaginary Worlds Are Established.Alon Chasid - 2021 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (2):195-212.
    This article explores the relation between belief-like imaginings and the establishment of imaginary worlds (often called fictional worlds). After outlining the various assumptions my argument is premised on, I argue that belief-like imaginings, in themselves, do not render their content true in the imaginary world to which they pertain. I show that this claim applies not only to imaginative projects in which we are instructed or intend to imagine certain propositions, but also to spontaneous imaginative projects. After arguing that, like (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. A Puzzle about Imagining Believing.Alon Chasid - 2021 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (3):529-547.
    Suppose you’re imagining that it’s raining hard. You then proceed to imagine, as part of the same imaginative project, that you believe that it isn’t raining. Such an imaginative project is possible if the two imaginings arise in succession. But what about simultaneously imagining that it’s raining and that you believe that it isn’t raining? I will argue that, under certain conditions, such an imagining is impossible. After discussing these conditions, I will suggest an explanation of this impossibility. Elaborating on (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22. Belief-Like Imagining and Correctness.Alon Chasid - 2021 - American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2):147-160.
    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, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  23. I Am Legend as Philosophy: Imagination in Times of Pandemic... A Mutation Towards a "Second Reality"?Rachad Elidrissi - 2021 - Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy 4:1-20.
    A planetary panic and almost deserted cities, fear of food shortages, and the growing threat of an invisible virus that does more damage day by day. In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, many believe that science fiction has now been overtaken by reality. In these times of adversity, what does it take to survive when the world comes crashing down? How do humans stay resilient, manage their growing stress, and somehow navigate through the crisis? More specifically, how do humans (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. Making Sorrow Sweet: Emotion and Empathy in the Experience of Fiction. In A. Houen (Ed.), Affect and Literature (Cambridge Critical Concepts, pp. 190-210). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108339339.011.A. E. Denham, A. E. Denham & A. Denham - 2020 - In Denham, A. (2020). Making Sorrow Sweet: Emotion and Empathy in the Experience of Fiction. In A. Houen (Ed.), Affect and Literature (Cambridge Critical Concepts, pp. 190-210). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108339339.011. Cambridge, UK: pp. 190-210.
    The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. Explaining Imagination.Peter Langland-Hassan - 2020 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    ​Imagination will remain a mystery—we will not be able to explain imagination—until we can break it into parts we already understand. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the parts are other ordinary mental states like beliefs, desires, judgments, and decisions. In different combinations and contexts, these states constitute cases of imagining. This reductive approach to imagination is at direct odds with the current orthodoxy, according to which imagination is a sui generis mental state or process—one with (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  26. Imagining fictional contradictions.Michel-Antoine Xhignesse - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3169-3188.
    It is widely believed, among philosophers of literature, that imagining contradictions is as easy as telling or reading a story with contradictory content. Italo Calvino’s The Nonexistent Knight, for instance, concerns a knight who performs many brave deeds, but who does not exist. Anything at all, they argue, can be true in a story, including contradictions and other impossibilia. While most will readily concede that we cannot objectually imagine contradictions, they nevertheless insist that we can propositionally imagine them, and regularly (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  27. “An Argument against a Meta-Ontology of Art Inspired by Peter Lamarque’s Reading of Jean Paul Sartre”.Elisa Caldarola - 2019 - Aesthetica Preprint 111:85-96.
    As Peter Lamarque explains in "Work and Object", the claim that artworks are not identical with their vehicles lies at the core of a variety of art-ontological accounts, including Jean-Paul Sartre’s one. In chapter 10, Lamarque gives us an insightful read-ing of Sartre’s art-ontological proposal: works of art in themselves do not exist, while what exists is their ‘material analogue’ which, when perceived, arouses in us certain imaginings. What we call ‘artwork’ is the object of such imaginings – an object (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Imagining in response to fiction: unpacking the infrastructure.Alon Chasid - 2019 - Philosophical Explorations 23 (1):31-48.
    Works of fiction are alleged to differ from works of nonfiction in instructing their audience to imagine their content. Indeed, works of fiction have been defined in terms of this feature: they are works that mandate us to imagine their content. This paper examines this definition of works of fiction, focusing on the nature of the activity that ensues in response to reading or watching fiction. Investigating how imaginings function in other contexts, I show, first, that they presuppose a cognitive (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  29. The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World.Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei - 2018 - New York, NY, USA: Columbia University Press.
    Imagination allows us to step out of the ordinary but also to transform it through our sense of wonder and play, artistic inspiration and innovation, or the eureka moment of a scientific breakthrough. In this book, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei offers a groundbreaking new understanding of its place in everyday experience as well as the heights of creative achievement. -/- The Life of Imagination delivers a new conception of imagination that places it at the heart of our engagement with the world—thinking, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  30. Imaginative Transportation.Samuel Kampa - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (4):683-696.
    Actors, undercover investigators, and readers of fiction sometimes report “losing themselves” in the characters they imitate or read about. They speak of “taking on” or “assuming” the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings of someone else. I offer an account of this strange but familiar phenomenon—what I call imaginative transportation.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  31. The Factual Belief Fallacy.Neil Van Leeuwen - 2018 - Contemporary Pragmatism (eds. T. Coleman & J. Jong):319-343.
    This paper explains a fallacy that often arises in theorizing about human minds. I call it the Factual Belief Fallacy. The Fallacy, roughly, involves drawing conclusions about human psychology that improperly ignore the large backgrounds of mostly accurate factual beliefs people have. The Factual Belief Fallacy has led to significant mistakes in both philosophy of mind and cognitive science of religion. Avoiding it helps us better see the difference between factual belief and religious credence; seeing that difference in turn enables (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  32. Imaginative Content, Design-Assumptions and Immersion.Alon Chasid - 2017 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (2):259-272.
    In this paper, I will analyze certain aspects of imaginative content, namely the content of the representational mental state called “imagining.” I will show that fully accounting for imaginative content requires acknowledging that, in addition to imagining, an imaginative project—the overall mental activity we engage in when we imagine—includes another infrastructural component in terms of which content should be explained. I will then show that the phenomenon of imaginative immersion can partly be explained in terms of the proposed infrastructure of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  33. Walton's quasi-emotions do not go away.Miguel F. Dos Santos - 2017 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (3):265-274.
    The debate about how to solve the paradox of fiction has largely been a debate between Kendall Walton and the so-called thought theorists. In recent years, however, Jenefer Robinson has argued, based on her affective appraisal theory of emotion, for a noncognitivist solution to the paradox as an alternative to the thought theorists’ solution and especially to Walton's controversial solution. In this article, I argue that, despite appearances to the contrary, Robinson's affective appraisal theory is compatible with Walton's solution, at (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  34. Fictional names in psychologistic semantics.Emar Maier - 2017 - Theoretical Linguistics 43 (1-2):1-46.
    Fictional names pose a difficult puzzle for semantics. We can truthfully maintain that Frodo is a hobbit, while at the same time admitting that Frodo does not exist. To reconcile this paradox I propose a way to formalize the interpretation of fiction as ‘prescriptions to imagine’ (Walton 1990) within an asymmetric semantic framework in the style of Kamp (1990). In my proposal, fictional statements are analyzed as dynamic updates on an imagination component of the interpreter’s mental state, while plain assertions (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  35. Do religious “beliefs” respond to evidence?Neil Van Leeuwen - 2017 - Philosophical Explorations 20 (sup1):52-72.
    Some examples suggest that religious credences respond to evidence. Other examples suggest they are wildly unresponsive. So the examples taken together suggest there is a puzzle about whether descriptive religious attitudes respond to evidence or not. I argue for a solution to this puzzle according to which religious credences are characteristically not responsive to evidence; that is, they do not tend to be extinguished by contrary evidence. And when they appear to be responsive, it is because the agents with those (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  36. Two paradigms for religious representation: The physicist and the playground.Neil Van Leeuwen - 2017 - Cognition 164 (C):206-211.
    In an earlier issue, I argue (2014) that psychology and epistemology should distinguish religious credence from factual belief. These are distinct cognitive attitudes. Levy (2017) rejects this distinction, arguing that both religious and factual “beliefs” are subject to “shifting” on the basis of fluency and “intuitiveness.” Levy’s theory, however, (1) is out of keeping with much research in cognitive science of religion and (2) misrepresents the notion of factual belief employed in my theory. So his claims don’t undermine my distinction. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  37. Pretense as deceptive behavioral communication.Cristiano Castelfranchi - 2016 - Pragmatics and Cognition 23 (1):16-52.
    Our claim in this paper is that a theory of “pretense” (in all its crucial uses in human society and cognition) can be built only if it is grounded on the general theory of “behavioral implicit communication” (BIC), which is not to be confused with non-verbal communication (with distinct notions being frequently conflated, such as “signs” vs. “messages”, or goal as “intention” vs. goal as “function”). Pretense presupposes some BIC-based human interaction, where a normal, practical behavior is used for signifying (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38. Imagination in Action.Philipp Dorstewitz - 2016 - Metaphilosophy 47 (3):385-405.
    Recent interest in phenomena of simulation, pretense, and play has given rise to new philosophical debates on the basic structure of human action and action planning. Some philosophers sought to transform Hume's desire-belief-action model by sophisticating its basic structure. For example, they introduced “hypothetical world boxes” or imaginary “i-desires” and “i-beliefs” into the standard model, in order to account for the representational and motivational structures of imaginary scripts. Others used phenomena of behavior driven by imagination to attempt a more fundamental (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  39. The Problem of Imaginative Resistance.Tamar Szabó Gendler & Shen-yi Liao - 2016 - In John Gibson & Noël Carroll (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature. Routledge. pp. 405-418.
    The problem of imaginative resistance holds interest for aestheticians, literary theorists, ethicists, philosophers of mind, and epistemologists. We present a somewhat opinionated overview of the philosophical discussion to date. We begin by introducing the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. We then review existing responses to the problem, giving special attention to recent research directions. Finally, we consider the philosophical significance that imaginative resistance has—or, at least, is alleged to have—for issues in moral psychology, theories of cognitive architecture, and modal epistemology.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  40. On Choosing What to Imagine.Peter Langland-Hassan - 2016 - In A. Kind & P. Kung (eds.), Knowledge Through Imagination. Oxford University Press. pp. 61-84.
    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 (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  41. What guides pretence? Towards the interactive and the narrative approaches.Zuzanna Rucińska - 2016 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 15 (1):117-133.
    This paper will explore one aspect of the relationship between pretence and narratives. I look at proposals about how scripts play guiding roles in our pretend play practices. I then examine the views that mental representations are needed to guide pretend play, reviewing two importantly different pictures of mental guiders: the Propositional Account and the Model Account. Both accounts are individualistic and internalistic; the former makes use of language-like representations, the latter makes use of models, maps and images. The paper (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  42. Imagination in scientific modeling.Adam Toon - 2016 - In Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination. Routledge. pp. 451-462.
    Modeling is central to scientific inquiry. It also depends heavily upon the imagination. In modeling, scientists seem to turn their attention away from the complexity of the real world to imagine a realm of perfect spheres, frictionless planes and perfect rational agents. Modeling poses many questions. What are models? How do they relate to the real world? Recently, a number of philosophers have addressed these questions by focusing on the role of the imagination in modeling. Some have also drawn parallels (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  43. Imagination and Action.Neil Van Leeuwen - 2016 - In Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination. Routledge. pp. 286-299.
    Abstract: This entry elucidates causal and constitutive roles that various forms of imagining play in human action. Imagination influences more kinds of action than just pretend play. I distinguish different senses of the terms “imagining” and “imagination”: imagistic imagining, propositional imagining, and constructive imagining. Each variety of imagining makes its own characteristic contributions to action. Imagistic imagining can structure bodily movement. Propositional imagining interacts with desires to motivate pretend play and mimetic expressive action. And constructive imagination generates representations of possibilities (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  44. Beyond Fakers and Fanatics: a Reply to Maarten Boudry and Jerry Coyne.Neil Van Leeuwen - 2016 - Philosophical Psychology 29 (4):1-6.
    Maarten Boudry and Jerry Coyne have written a piece, forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology, called “Disbelief in Belief,” in which they criticize my recent paper “Religious credence is not factual belief” (2014, Cognition 133). Here I respond to their criticisms, the thrust of which is that we shouldn’t distinguish religious credence from factual belief, contrary to what I say. I respond that their picture of religious psychology undermines our ability to distinguish common religious people from fanatics. My response will appear in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  45. Fictionality and Photography.Richard Woodward - 2016 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74 (3):279-289.
    In Mimesis as Make-Believe, Kendall Walton gave a pioneering account of the nature of fictionality, which holds that what it is for p to be fictional is for there to exist a prescription to imagine that p. But Walton has recently distanced himself from his original analysis and now holds that prescriptions to imagine are merely necessary conditions on fictionality. Many of the alleged counterexamples that have prompted Walton's retreat are drawn from the field of photography, and it is upon (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  46. Self-knowledge and imagination.Peter Langland-Hassan - 2015 - Philosophical Explorations 18 (2):226-245.
    How do we know when we have imagined something? How do we distinguish our imaginings from other kinds of mental states we might have? These questions present serious, if often overlooked, challenges for theories of introspection and self-knowledge. This paper looks specifically at the difficulties imagination creates for Neo-Expressivist, outward-looking, and inner sense theories of self-knowledge. A path forward is then charted, by considering the connection between the kinds of situations in which we can reliably say that another person is (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  47. Names of Attitudes and Norms for Attitudes.Inga Nayding - 2015 - Disputatio 7 (40):1-24.
    Fictionalists claim that instead of believing certain controversial propositions they accept them nonseriously, as useful make-believe. In this way they present themselves as having an austere ontology despite the apparent ontological commitments of their discourse. Some philosophers object that this plays on a distinction without a difference: the fictionalist’s would-be nonserious acceptance is the most we can do for the relevant content acceptance-wise, hence such acceptance is no different from what we ordinarily call ‘belief’ and should be so called. They (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  48. Imaginative and Fictionality Failure: A Normative Approach.Nils-Hennes Stear - 2015 - Philosophers' Imprint 15.
    If a work of literary fiction prescribes us to imagine that the Devil made a bet with God and transformed into a poodle, then that claim is true in the fiction and we imagine accordingly. Generally, we cooperate imaginatively with literary fictions, however bizarre, and the things authors write into their stories become true in the fiction. But for some claims, such as moral falsehoods, this seems not to be straightforwardly the case, which raises the question: Why not? The puzzles (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  49. Improvisation and the self-organization of multiple musical bodies.Ashley E. Walton, Michael J. Richardson, Peter Langland-Hassan & Anthony Chemero - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology 6:1-9.
    Understanding everyday behavior relies heavily upon understanding our ability to improvise, how we are able to continuously anticipate and adapt in order to coordinate with our environment and others. Here we consider the ability of musicians to improvise, where they must spontaneously coordinate their actions with co-performers in order to produce novel musical expressions. Investigations of this behavior have traditionally focused on describing the organization of cognitive structures. The focus, here, however, is on the ability of the time-evolving patterns of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  50. The First-Person Perspective Requirement In Pretense.Albergo Gaetano - 2014 - Phenomenology and Mind 7:224-234.
    According to Lynne Baker we need to investigate the performances to understand if someone has a first-person perspective. My claim is that language has not the main role in the formation of epistemic states and self-consciousness. In children’s performances, we have evidence for a self-consciousness without “I” thoughts. We investigate if it is possible to understand the difference between a case of false belief and one of pretense. My aim is to demonstrate that pretense is not a proto-concept but a (...)
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 149