Abstract
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 imaginative projects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
An account that invokes the notion of “mental files,” for instance, may be adopted for this purpose: a (singular) thought about Vulcan and a (singular) thought about, say, Twin-Vulcan, are different thoughts, since different mental files are tokened in such a case despite the fact that neither Vulcan nor Twin-Vulcan exist; see, e.g., Recanati (2012), ch.13.
To my knowledge, the theorist who first used the term “imaginative project” is Williams (1973). My characterization of an imaginative project draws on his. Williams used this term to emphasize that imaginings come in clusters rather than a single state, that they are mutually related so as to constitute a “narration,” and that they are related in a certain way to visualizing. Similarly, Peacocke (1985) used this term to refer to the overall activity we engage in when we imagine, an activity that also includes, on his view, a kind of supposition. Although this term is not used by every theorist, it is commonly accepted that propositional imaginings hardly ever arrive unaccompanied, and hence the term is generally applicable.
See the references in notes 1 and 2. Clearly, no one claims that visualizing is common visual experience; however, the relation between imagining and visualizing is in dispute; see note 2.
That there are tacit imaginings is commonly accepted; see, e.g., Gendler (2003, 2013); Nichols (2004, 2006b); Walton (1990), ch. 4. Tacit imaginings are usually implicit in explicitly-imagined scenarios along with features of analogous real-world scenarios, or what are believed to be features of those scenarios.
See Gendler (2013), sec. 5.2.
There are various other complications in the relation between works of fiction and fictional worlds on the one hand, and imaginative projects and their assumed i-worlds on the other hand; see, e.g., Walton (2015), ch. 2. I will not discuss those complications here, since the argument focuses on imaginative projects, which are mental activities, whatever the relation of this activity to a work of fiction. Note specifically that I do not maintain that a work’s “fictional world” is identical to the i-world of the reader’s imaginative project (i.e., the project that is associated with reading the work). Moreover, I suspect that these worlds, though similar, may nevertheless differ in important respects. This point, however, should be developed separately.
Another indexical that this case involves refers to the moment in which John finishes the marathon (“as soon as he finishes…”). For simplicity, I will focus on the indexical that refers to the finish-line’s location.
Higher-order theories of consciousness, by contrast, would hardly accept Schellenberg’s claim, since on such theories, we are necessarily aware, in one way or another, of every conscious state.
An anonymous referee raised the concern that imaginings about the future are, in some sense, of the real world. Although there is a grain of truth in this claim, I think that, strictly speaking, whereas beliefs about the future are of the real world, imaginings “about the future” are not. This issue deserves its own discussion. In brief, suppose that, believing that you will be giving a political speech tomorrow, you decide to prepare yourself by imagining various scenarios. Thus, you engage in one or more imaginative projects in which you design-assume various propositions to be true in an imaginary world. You might assume, for instance, that a certain political rival is sitting in front of you, shaking his head derisively while you are speaking or perhaps asking you some unpleasant questions. Whatever the likelihood of these scenarios, you design-assume that they are occurring now and imagine your response. Your imaginings, then, are not of anything real but rather are directed at an imaginary world or at imaginary events, i.e., what you design-assume to be i-true. The fact that the scenarios might occur do not make them real. It is true, of course, that the purpose of engaging in such a project is to prepare for future scenarios, i.e., what may occur in the real world. It is only in this derivative sense that imagining the future is ‘of’ the real world. The project’s structure, however, includes imaginings that are directed at an imaginary world, a world that you assume to exist while engaged in this project.
See the end of sec. 2.
What Williams (1973) calls the project’s “narration” may entail similar difficulties if no specific purpose or intention exits.
References
Boghossian, P. 1989. Content and self-knowledge. Philosophical Topics 17: 5–26.
Burge, Tyler. 1979. Individualism and the Mental, in French. In Midwest studies in philosophy, vol IV, eds. Uehling, and Wettstein, 73–121. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Burge, Tyler. 1986. Individualism and psychology. Philosophical Review 95: 3–45.
Currie, Gregory, and Ian Ravenscroft. 2002. Recreative minds: imagination in philosophy and psychology. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Doggett, Tyler, and Andy Egan. 2007. Wanting things you Don’t want. Philosophers’ Imprint 7(9): 1–17.
Doggett, Tyler, and Andy Egan. 2012. How We feel about terrible, non-existent Mafiosi. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84(2): 277–306.
Garcia-Carpintero, Manuel. 2014. Introduction: the problem of empty representations. In Empty representations: reference and non-existence, eds. Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, and Genoveva Marti, 1–22. Oxford: OUP.
Gendler, Tamar. 2003. On the relation between pretense and belief. In Imagination, philosophy, and the arts, eds. Matthew Kieran, and Dominic Lopes, 125–141. London: Routledge.
Gendler, Tamar. 2013. Imagination, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta ed. URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/imagination/>.
Jeshion, Robin ed. 2010. Introduction, in her New Essays on Singular Thought. 1–37 Oxford University Press.
Kind, Amy. 2001. Putting the image back to imagination. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62: 85–109.
Kind, Amy. 2013. The heterogeneity of the imagination. Erkenntnis 78(1): 141–159.
Langland-Hassan, Peter. 2012. Pretense, imagination, and belief: the single attitude theory. Philosophical Studies 159(2): 155–179.
Van Leeuwen, Neil (2013). The meanings of ‘imagine’ part I: constructive imagination, Philosophy Compass 8 (3):220–230
Liao, Shen-yi, and Tyler Doggett. 2014. The imagination box. Journal of Philosophy 111(5): 259–275.
Martin, Michael G.F. 2002. The transparency of experience. Mind and Language 4(4): 376–425.
McKinsey, Michael. 1991. Anti-individualism and privileged access. Analysis 51: 9–16.
Nichols, Shaun. 2004. Imagining and believing: the promise of a single code. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62(2): 129–139.
Nichols, Shaun. 2006a. Introduction. In The architecture of the imagination, ed. Shaun Nichols, 1–16. New York: Oxford UP.
Nichols, Shaun. 2006b. Just the imagination: why imagining Doesn’t behave like believing. Mind and Language 21(4): 459–474.
Nichols, Shaun, and Stephen Stich. 2003. Mindreading: an integrated account of pretence, self-awareness, and understanding of other minds. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Peacocke, Christopher. 1985. Imagination, experience, and possibility: a Berkeleian view defended. In Essays on Berkeley, eds. John Foster, and Howard Robinson, 19–35. Oxford: Clarendon.
Putnam, Hilary. 1973. Meaning and reference. Journal of Philosophy 70(19): 699–711.
Putnam, Hilary (1975). The Meaning of ‘Meaning,’ Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7:131–193.
Recanati, François. 2012. Mental files. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Schellenberg, Susanna. 2013. Belief and desire in imagination and immersion. Journal of Philosophy 110(9): 497–517.
Walton, Kendall. 1990. Mimesis as make-believe. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Walton, Kendall. 2008. Marvelous images. New York: Oxford UP.
Walton, Kendall. 2015. In other shoes: music, metaphor, empathy, existence. New York: OUP.
Williams, Bernard. 1973. Imagination and the self, in idem, Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chasid, A. Imaginative Content, Design-Assumptions and Immersion. Rev.Phil.Psych. 8, 259–272 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0315-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0315-2