Consuming Fictions Part III

Further challenges to the idea that sui generis imaginings account for our affective responses to fiction are developed. The chapter then undertakes an extended analysis of the “paradox of fiction”—viz., the claim that it is irrational or inappropriate to respond emotionally to mere fictions—and proposes a novel solution. A number of theorists have held that special features of imagination play a role in resolving the paradox. It is argued that these proposals fail on their own terms and that the paradox can nevertheless be resolved in a way consistent with our emotional reactions to fiction being grounded in beliefs and desires. Coming to terms with the paradox requires both understanding why the “rug-pull” structure of the examples typically used to motivate it are disanalogous to our experience of fictions, and appreciating the specific emotional norms relevant to fiction-appreciation.

Folk Psychology and Its Ontology

The question of whether imagination can be reduced to other folk psychological states will turn, in part, on what we take those other states to be—on how we view their ontological status. There are very different views in philosophy and psychology concerning the nature of folk psychological states, ranging from eliminativism, to dispositionalism, to representationalsim. This chapter explains how those different ontological viewpoints bear on the project of explaining imagination. An important conclusion is that the explanations pursued in this book do not assume or require the existence of mental representations of any sort and thus should be of interest to theorists with quite different commitments concerning folk psychological ontology. However, in some cases, when assessing competing arguments, it will be essential to grasp the difference between “heavy-duty” (representationalist) views of folk psychological states and “light-duty” (dispositionalist) views.

Consuming Fictions Part I

Given that we imagine in response to fictions, the key question is whether these imaginings can be understood in more basic folk psychological terms. This chapter argues that we can determine what is true in a fiction without use of sui generis imaginative states. Related arguments from Derek Matravers (2014) and Kathleen Stock (2017) are discussed in some depth. Uses of genre conventions and symbolism by an author to generate fictional truths do not imply any special role for imagination. Moreover, Stock’s “extreme intentionalist” view of what constitutes truth in fiction can be configured to omit any appeal to imagination. The questions of what generates truth in a fiction, of how we come to know those truths, and of what makes something a fiction can all be answered without appeal to an irreducible mental state of imagining.

Pretense Part II

The question of the psychological states typically relied upon to carry out a pretense is explored. The influential idea that pretenders must “quarantine” or “decouple” certain representations from others is queried and critiqued. An alternative approach to the psychology of pretense is developed that does not require quarantining, and which is consistent with pretenses being driven entirely by beliefs and desires. A number of different pretenses are provided as examples. While some pretenses involve use of beliefs in conditionals, many pretenses can proceed with the use of ordinary non-conditional beliefs and desires. A number of objections to the approach are considered and rebutted, including the claim that the dissociations seen in people with autism spectrum disorder favor belief in sui generis imaginings.

Creativity

Comparatively easy questions we might ask about creativity are distinguished from the hard question of explaining transformative creativity. Many have focused on the easy questions and, in so doing, have offered no reason to think that the imagining relied upon in creative cognition cannot be reduced to more basic folk psychological states. The relevance of associative thought processes to songwriting is then explored as a means for understanding the nature of transformative creativity. Productive artificial neural networks—known as generative antagonistic networks (GANs)—are recent examples of how a system’s ability to generate creative products can be both finely tuned by prior experience and grounded in strategies that are inarticulable to the system itself. Further, the kinds of processes exploited by GANs need not be seen as incorporating anything akin to sui generis imaginative states. The chapter concludes with reflection on the added relevance of personal character to explanations of creativity.

Consuming Fictions Part II

This chapter and the next consider whether our emotional and cognitive “immersion” within fiction suggests a role for sui generis imaginative states. Currie’s (2010) argument that “i-desires” should be posited to explain our responses to fiction—and tragedy, in particular—is critically discussed. It is argued that beliefs and desires featuring ‘in the fiction’ operators—and not sui generis imaginings—are the crucial states involved in generating fiction-directed affect. A defense of the Operator Claim is mounted, according to which ‘in the fiction’ operators would also be required within fiction-directed sui generis imaginings, were there such. When we appreciate that even fiction-directed sui generis imaginings would need to incorporate ‘in the fiction’ operators, the main appeal of the thesis that sui generis imaginings are at work in fiction-appreciation is undercut.

Imagistic Imagining Part II

This chapter argues that I-imaginings (viz., episodes of thought involving mental imagery) should be conceived of as hybrid states, involving both a mental image and a non-imagistic mental state of some kind. A proposal is then developed for how to understand the relationship between the image and non-imagistic element within I-imaginings, with images serving to predicate properties of an object determined by the non-imagistic element. Within the terms of this account, we can see how some I-imaginings are simply image-involving judgments (what I call JIGs), image-involving desires (DIGs), or image-involving decisions (DECs). Moreover, in some cases, these JIGs, DIGs, and DECs will also be cases of elaborated, rich, epistemically safe thought about the merely possible, fantastical or unreal—and so also constitute cases of A-imagining. In addition, some of these A-imaginings are what are colloquially known as “daydreams.” The chapter closes by responding to worries that the hybrid view proposed here requires an untenable mixture of cognitive representational formats.

Explaining Imagination

The project of explaining imagination is introduced and motivated. A distinction is drawn between two kinds of imagining: attitude imagining (A-imagining) and imagistic imagining (I-imagining). While both receive extended treatment in the book, the core project will be to explain A-imagining in more basic folk psychological terms. A-imagining, it will be argued, is simply the use of more basic folk psychological states such as beliefs, desires, judgments, and decisions. Some of these states have mental images as constituents and so qualify also as I-imaginings as well. The chapter’s second half explains why the most common arguments for imagination’s irreducibility to other folk psychological states are either question-begging or inconclusive. The chapter concludes by previewing a number of the reductive strategies for explaining imagination that later chapters develop in detail. In this way, the first chapter serves as a précis for the book as a whole.

Conditional Reasoning Part I

Three types of conditional are distinguished: the material conditional, indicative conditional, and subjunctive/counterfactual conditional. The apparent difference in truth conditions of each is suggestive of different psychological procedures used in the evaluation of each. The psychology of the material conditional is then examined. Despite procedures in formal logic that are suggestive of sui generis imaginative states (e.g., “assuming” a proposition for conditional proof, or for reductio), we need not countenance the use of such states within the psychological procedures used to carry out the inferences. Further, work in psychology has long suggested that humans do not, as a rule, reason in accordance with normative standards appropriate to the material conditional. A popular alternative proposal in psychology is that conditional reasoning involves the use of mental models (Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 2002). The use of mental models is shown to be consistent with conditional reasoning involving only sequences of beliefs.

Pretense Part I

Three related questions—metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological—about pretense and its relationship to imagination are distinguished. Answers to the metaphysical and epistemological questions are defended in the balance of the chapter. In response to the metaphysical question of what it is to pretend, it’s argued that we need not invoke a sui generis notion of imagination, nor a concept of pretend, in order to say what qualifies someone as pretending. To pretend that x is y is, roughly, to intentionally make some x y-like while believing that x will not, in the process, become a y. Nor, in answer to the epistemological question, need we hold that the recognition of pretense in others requires attributing to them sui generis imaginings, or a primitive mental state concept of PRETEND. Pretense can be recognized—when it is recognizable at all—via superficial features of a person’s behavior.