Explaining Imagination

## Abstract Imagination will remain a mystery—we will not be able to explain imagination—until we can break it into simpler parts that are more easily understood. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the simpler parts are other familiar mental states like beliefs, desires, judgments, decisions, and intentions. In different combinations and contexts, these states constitute cases of imagining. This reductive approach to imagination is at direct odds with the current orthodoxy, which sees imagination as an irreducible, sui generis mental state or process—one that influences our judgments, beliefs, desires, and so on, without being constituted by them. Explaining Imagination looks closely at the main contexts where imagination is thought to be at work and argues that, in each case, the capacity is best explained by appeal to a person’s beliefs, judgments, desires, intentions, or decisions. The proper conclusion is not that there are no imaginings after all, but that these other states simply constitute the relevant cases of imagining. Contexts explored in depth include: hypothetical and counterfactual reasoning, engaging in pretense, appreciating fictions, and generating creative works. The special role of mental imagery within states like beliefs, desires, and judgments is explained in a way that is compatible with reducing imagination to more basic folk psychological states. A significant upshot is that, in order to create an artificial mind with an imagination, we need only give it these more ordinary mental states. Cover 1 Explaining Imagination 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Preface 12 1 Explaining Imagination 16 1.1 Introduction 16 1.2 What It Is to Imagine 17 1.3 Cats and Bats 18 1.4 Imagistic Imagining and Attitude Imagining 19 1.5 The Relation of I-imagining to A-imagining 22 1.6 Explaining in What Sense? 23 1.7 What We Do When We Imagine 25 1.8 Simple and Complex Attitudes 27 1.9 What Do I Mean by “More Basic”? 30 1.10 The Delicious Mud Pie 32 1.10.1 Imagination and Action 33 1.10.2 Imagination and the Will 35 1.10.3 Imagining What We Disbelieve 36 1.10.4 Imagination and Emotion 37 1.11 Introspection and Mental Imagery 38 1.12 More Case Studies as Prelude 39 1.12.1 Daydreaming: Imagining that I Am Rich and Famous 40 1.12.2 Pretense—a Sketch of Chapters 7 and 8 40 1.12.3 Conditional Reasoning—a Sketch of Chapters 5 and 6 41 1.12.4 Consuming Fiction: The Barest Sketch 42 1.13 Summary 43 2 Folk Psychology and Its Ontology 44 2.1 Introduction 44 2.2 Folk Psychological Ontologies—a Brief History 45 2.3 Heavy-Duty Ontology 47 2.4 Light-Duty Ontology 51 2.5 Heavy-Duty Incredulity about Light-Duty Dispositionalism, and Principled Agnosticism 54 2.6 Explaining Imagination for Light-Duty Theorists 56 2.6.1 Objections to this Form of Explanation, from a Light-Duty Perspective 59 2.7 Explaining Imagination for Heavy-Duty Theorists 60 2.8 Summary 66 3 Imagistic Imagining Part I: Imagery, Attitude Imagining, and Recreative Imagining 68 3.1 Introduction 68 3.2 Imagistic Imaginings and the Nature of Mental Imagery 69 3.2.1 Defining ‘Mental Imagery’ 70 3.3 Attitude Imaginings—Keeping the Definition Neutral 73 3.4 The Relationship between A- and I-imagining 77 3.5 A-imagining without I-imagining 78 3.6 I-imagining without A-imagining 81 3.7 Against Recreative Imagining 86 4 Imagistic Imagining Part II: Hybrid Structure, Multiple Attitudes, and Daydreams 91 4.1 Introduction 91 4.2 The Relation of Mental Images to I-imaginings 92 4.3 The Multiple Use Thesis 93 4.4 Judgment I-imaginings 95 4.5 I-imaginings that are Desires, Decisions, and Intentions 99 4.6 On the Relation of Desire to A-imagining More Generally 101 4.7 Decision I-imaginings 102 4.8 Imaginative I-imagining? 102 4.9 Daydreams 103 4.10 Hybrid Structures Are Not Problematic 105 4.11 Recap 108 5 Conditional Reasoning Part I: Three Kinds of Conditionals and the Psychology of the Material Conditional 110 5.1 Introduction 110 5.2 Modal Epistemology? 111 5.3 Conditionals: Metaphysics and Psychology 113 5.4 The Material Conditional and Its Relation to Indicative and Subjunctive Conditionals 114 5.5 The Material Conditional and Assumptions: Conditional Proof and Reductio ad Absurdum 118 5.6 Psychology and Systems of Natural Deduction 120 5.7 Conditional Proof and Reductio ad Absurdum Revisited 123 5.7.1 Conditional Proof without Assumptions 123 5.7.2 Reductio without Assumptions 124 5.8 Mental Models? 128 5.9 Summary 133 6 Conditional Reasoning Part II: Indicatives, Subjunctives, and the Ramsey Test 134 6.1 Introduction 134 6.2 The Ramsey Test and Its Psychology 134 6.3 From Belief Conditions to Truth Conditions 137 6.4 A Difference for Subjunctives 138 6.5 The Ramsey Test and the Psychology of Indicative Conditionals 142 6.6 A General Argument Against the Need for Sui Generis Imaginative States in Conditional Reasoning 144 6.7 It Is Simpler to Just Use Beliefs—Considering an Example from Williamson 146 6.8 Mental Imagery and Conformations of the Brain? 153 6.9 Two Objections Considered 155 6.9.1 Would We Really Have to Copy So Much into Imagination? 155 6.9.2 Thought Experiments—Hard Cases for Me? 156 6.10 Recap 158 7 Pretense Part I: Metaphysics and Epistemology 159 7.1 Introduction 159 7.2 Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Psychology: Three Questions about the Relation of Pretense to Imagination 159 7.3 The Metaphysical Question: What Is It to Pretend? 162 7.4 What It Is to Pretend 167 7.5 Answering the Epistemological Question 172 7.6 Summary 176 8 Pretense Part II: Psychology 178 8.1 Introduction 178 8.2 The Question of Quarantining from a Light-Duty Perspective 179 8.3 Quarantining: The Central Mistake 180 8.4 Inner Speech as Imagining? A Digression 183 8.5 Leslie’s Tea Party—a More Complex Pretense 184 8.6 Conditional Reasoning during Pretense 187 8.7 Inferential Disorderliness and the Outlandish Premise 189 8.8 Cognitive Attention—Asking Ourselves Questions and Holding Propositions in Mind 190 8.9 Freedom and Pterodactyls 192 8.10 Autism and Pretense 194 8.11 Conclusion 197 9 Consuming Fictions Part I: Recovering Fictional Truths 199 9.1 Imagination and the Many Puzzles of Fiction: Plan for the Next Three Chapters 199 9.2 Understanding a Fiction—the First Puzzle 202 9.3 Imaginative Filling-in—the Second Puzzle 205 9.3.1 Sidebar on Matravers 207 9.3.2 Recovering Fictional Content through Counterfactual Reasoning 210 9.3.3 Imagery and the Development of Indeterminate Fictional Truths 212 9.4 Extracting Fictional Truths through Non-counterfactual Reasoning 213 9.5 Constraints on Fiction-related Imaginings? 218 9.6 Reconciliation with Intentionalism—the Third and Fourth Puzzles of Comprehension 220 9.7 Summary 223 10 Consuming Fictions Part II: The Operator Claim 225 10.1 Introduction 225 10.2 The Operator Claim 225 10.3 Mapping the Territory: Three Views 226 10.4 To Which Fiction Do Your Desires Refer? Troubles for the Simple View 229 10.5 Troubles with I-desires 231 10.6 The Life-expectancy of Fiction-directed Desires 237 10.7 Imagining that, in the Fiction, p, and the Problem of Thatcher’s Pearls 238 10.8 The OC’s Implications 242 10.9 Immersion in the Fiction as Such? 243 10.10 Does Immersion Involve an Imaginative “Spectrum”? 244 10.11 Being Upset at the Fiction Itself, or Its Events? 246 10.12 Summary 247 11 Consuming Fictions Part III: Immersion, Emotion, and the Paradox of Fiction 249 11.1 Introduction 249 11.2 The Emotional Irrelevance of What We Merely Imagine 250 11.3 The Paradox of Fiction 254 11.4 Some Background on the Paradox 256 11.5 Distinguishing the Metaphysical and Normative Puzzles 257 11.6 Solving the Normative Puzzle: False Starts 261 11.7 Believing It Is a Fiction and the Norms of Immersion 265 11.8 But None of These Things Are Happening! Summary via Objection 270 11.9 Back to the Triad 273 11.10 Summary 275 12 Creativity 277 12.1 Introduction 277 12.2 Creativity and A-imagining 278 12.3 The Easy versus the Hard Problems of Creativity 280 12.4 The Build Challenge 283 12.5 Losing the Scent—Recent Missteps in Linking (Sui Generis) Imaginings to Creativity 285 12.6 Back to the Deep Waters 291 12.7 Songwriters on Songwriting 292 12.8 Creativity and the Subconscious 295 12.9 Creativity and Associationism 297 12.10 Generative Adversarial Networks 301 12.11 The Importance of Being Earnest 306 12.12 Character, Creativity, and Conscious Dreams 307 12.13 Concluding Thoughts 310 References 312 Index 326 "Imagination will remain a mystery--we will not be able to explain imagination--until we can break it into simpler parts that are more easily understood. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the simpler parts are other familiar mental states like beliefs, desires, judgments, decisions, and intentions. In different combinations and contexts, these states constitute cases of imagining. This reductive approach to imagination is at direct odds with the current orthodoxy, which sees imagination as an irreducible, sui generis mental state or process--one that influences our judgments, beliefs, desires, and so on, without being constituted by them. Explaining Imagination looks closely at the main contexts where imagination is thought to be at work and argues that, in each case, the capacity is best explained by appeal to a person's beliefs, judgments, desires, intentions, or decisions. The proper conclusion is not that there are no imaginings after all, but that these other states simply constitute the relevant cases of imagining. Contexts explored in depth include: hypothetical and counterfactual reasoning, engaging in pretense, appreciating fictions, and generating creative works. The special role of mental imagery within states like beliefs, desires, and judgments is explained in a way that is compatible with reducing imagination to more basic folk psychological states. A significant upshot is that, in order to create an artificial mind with an imagination, we need only give it these more ordinary mental states." -- Oxford Scholarship Online This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. 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 its own inscrutable principles of operation. Explaining Imagination upends that view, showing how, on closer inspection, the imaginings at work in hypothetical reasoning, pretense, the enjoyment of fiction, and creativity are reducible to other familiar mental states--judgments, beliefs, desires, and decisions among them. Crisscrossing contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and aesthetics, Explaining Imagination argues that a clearer understanding of imagination is already well within reach. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. 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 its own inscrutable principles of operation. Explaining Imagination upends that view, showing how, on closer inspection, the imaginings at work in hypothetical reasoning, pretense, the enjoyment of fiction, and creativity are reducible to other familiar mental states—judgments, beliefs, desires, and decisions among them. Crisscrossing contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and aesthetics, Explaining Imagination argues that a clearer understanding of imagination is already well within reach. "Imagination will remain a mystery - we will not be able to explain imagination - until we can break it into simpler parts we already understand. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the simpler 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 its own inscrutable principles of operation. Explaining Imagination upends that view, showing how, on closer inspection, the imaginings at work in hypothetical reasoning, pretense, the enjoyment of fiction, and creativity are reducible to other familiar mental states -- judgments, beliefs, desires, and decisions among them. Crisscrossing contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, philosophy of language, and aesthetics, Explaining Imagination argues that a clearer understanding of imagination is already well within reach."--Dust jacket cover