Recent work in developmental psychology indicates that children naturally think that psychological states continue after death. One important candidate explanation for why this belief is natural appeals to the idea that we believe in immortality because we can't imagine our own nonexistence. This paper explores this old idea. To begin, I present a qualified statement of the thesis that we can't imagine our own nonexistence. I argue that the most prominent explanation for this obstacle, Freud's, is problematic. I go on (...) to describe some central features of contemporary cognitive accounts of the imagination, and I argue that these accounts provide an independently motivated explanation for the imaginative obstacle. While the imaginative obstacle does not dictate a belief in immortality, it does, I maintain, facilitate such a belief. (shrink)

Recent work in developmental psychology indicates that children naturally think that psychological states continue after death. One important candidate explanation for why this belief is natural appeals to the idea that we believe in immortality because we can't imagine our own nonexistence. This paper explores this old idea. To begin, I present a qualified statement of the thesis that we can't imagine our own nonexistence. I argue that the most prominent explanation for this obstacle, Freud's, is problematic. I go on (...) to describe some central features of contemporary cognitive accounts of the imagination, and I argue that these accounts provide an independently motivated explanation for the imaginative obstacle. While the imaginative obstacle does not dictate a belief in immortality, it does, I maintain, facilitate such a belief. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Crispin Wright's modal anti-realism as based on the availability of a certain attitude of Caution towards judgements of necessity. I think that Wright's account should be attractive in several ways for modal theorists with an anti-realist bend. However, the attitude of Caution to which it appeals has attracted some controversy. Wright himself has later come to doubt whether Caution is ultimately coherent. Here I first address Wright's worries concerning the coherence of Caution and show that (...) they are unfounded. But then I argue that although the attitude of Caution is coherent, it cannot provide a suitable basis for a non-eliminativist account of necessity. I offer two different objections against Caution. I argue that Wright's appeal to Caution, if successful, would show not only that modal judgement is non-objective but also that it is dispensable. Thus, I claim that appeal to Caution would seem to serve more as a threat against a non-eliminativist account of necessity, rather than as a potential adequate basis for it. However, I argue that Wright's appeal to Caution is unsuccessful, for there is no genuine Caution: Caution is a mere verbal attitude. (shrink)