A post by Alon Chasid

Imagining is a complicated mental activity. If we are asked to imagine, or find ourselves imagining, say, that the COVID-19 crisis is over, our imaginative episode will generally comprise more than just one single representational state with the content ‘the COVID-19 crisis is over.’ Rather, that representational state will likely be accompanied by sensory elements, additional imaginings, mental imagery, conative and emotional responses, and other mental states that are related, one way or another, to the fact that the crisis is over. Ordinarily, we seem to have access—perhaps even privileged access—to various elements of our imaginative activity. We have no trouble describing how our imaginings evolved, how we reacted emotionally or conatively to them, etc. There may be a problem with regard to tracking certain features of our stream of consciousness (Schwitzgebel 2011). But overall, tracking the main elements of our imaginative activity is quite straightforward.

As I will show, however, certain constitutive elements of our imaginative activity are difficult to pin down. The imaginer’s acts of stipulating that various propositions are fictionally true (i.e., true in the ‘world’ of an imaginative episode) comprise one such element. The factor that determines the broad content of imaginings is another such element.

That the first element is integral to our mental activity ensues from the thesis that imagining a proposition doesn’t render that proposition fictionally true.[1] Suppose, for instance, that Anna finds herself imagining a jellyfish in the water at the beach where she usually swims. As the object approaches the shore, it seems to be nothing but a plastic bag, not a jellyfish. [End of episode]. When Anna asks herself which of the propositions she imagined were true in the ‘world’ of her imaginative episode, she focuses mainly on how her imaginings evolved. For she has no trouble recalling her imaginings, whereas she finds it difficult to recall having made any stipulations (in addition to her imaginings) regarding which propositions she imagined were fictionally true.

Indeed, to discover whether it was stipulated to be true in the world of her episode that the object was just a plastic bag, not a jellyfish, Anna seems to recall her imaginings themselves, not any stipulations about fictional truths. Focusing on how her imaginings evolved, Anna’s initial impression is that, since her project ended with the ‘revelation’ that the object was just a plastic bag, the stipulation that it was fictionally true that the object was a plastic bag was made at this stage (namely, near the end) of the imaginative episode.

But Anna’s conjecture can be easily undermined. For it is far from obvious whether there was such a stipulation, and if so, whether it was made at the time she imagined the ‘revelation.’ For one thing, perhaps the episode ended due to a disruption, and could, in principle, have proceeded to encompass further ‘revelations,’ including the revelation that the object turned out to be a jellyfish and wasn’t a bag after all. For another, perhaps the episode reflected Anna’s recent experience of that beach as increasingly polluted, in which case the stipulation that the object was a plastic bag was tacitly made, not at the end of her imaginative episode, but at the outset, as part of the episode’s overall ‘script.’

Other considerations also call into question Anna’s conjecture about the stipulated fictional truth. Yet whether or not her conjecture is correct, the surprising thing is that Anna does not recollect making any stipulations. Whereas Anna readily recalls how her imaginings unfolded, her surprise-like reaction to the imagined revelation, etc., it is by no means easy for her to identify which, if any, propositions were stipulated to be fictionally true. In general, fictional truths, and their stipulation, seem to be integral elements of imaginative episodes, but they are ‘hidden’ and difficult to detect.

As I mentioned above, my claim that stipulations of fictional truths are hidden elements of imaginative episodes rests on the thesis that imagining, in itself, does not render its content fictionally true, but rather, the content of imaginings is rendered fictionally true (or false) by stipulations set down in addition to the imaginings. Since this thesis cannot be taken for granted (so it might be argued), let me adduce the second hard-to-pin-down element of imagining, namely, the way the broad content of imaginings is determined, which does not seem to depend on this thesis.

Consider Oscar, a philosophy student who recently learned of Putnam’s Twin-Earth thought experiment (Putnam 1975). Fascinated by this thought experiment, Oscar finds himself imagining that, sitting in a café with his parents, he asks for a glass of water. While sipping the clear liquid, his parents tell him that they are not his biological parents. In fact, he was abducted from Earth right after his birth, and has lived his entire life on Twin-Earth—a planet identical to Earth in all relevant respects, apart from the fact that the colorless liquid called ‘water’ on Twin-Earth is not H2O, but XYZ. More specifically, the drink he has been sipping is not water, but XYZ. [End of episode].

The question is what Oscar imagined during the first part of his episode, namely, before he imagined the startling discovery: did he imagine drinking H2O, XYZ, or something else? On the one hand, since Oscar’s imaginings ensued in the real world, their broad content—like the broad content of any other kind of mental state—would presumably have been determined by Oscar’s real-world environment. That is, since Oscar lives on Earth, he initially imagined drinking H2O.

On the other hand, since Oscar’s imaginings were directed at a certain fictional world, perhaps their broad content was determined by what was stipulated to be the fictional environment, namely, Twin-Earth. Granted, since the stipulated fictional environment is not real, the content of Oscar’s first imagining might be ‘gappy’ or indeterminate. But the main quandary remains: did Oscar initially imagine drinking water (as per his relation to his real-world environment) or not (as per his stipulation regarding the fictional environment)? In general, is the broad content of our imaginings determined just like any other type of mental content, namely, by our relation to our real-world environment, or is it determined by what is set down as the fictional environment?

In my opinion, the answer to this question is pretty straightforward: sometimes imaginative content is determined by the real-world environment, sometimes by what is assumed to exist in the fictional world (I defend this claim in Chasid 2017). A more crucial question pertains to our access to this element: how are we to discover whether the broad content of our imaginings was determined by the real-world environment or by the stipulations we made regarding the fictional environment? Specifically, how can Oscar ascertain whether or not he initially imagined drinking water? It might be suggested that indeed, Oscar cannot ascertain which broad content he imagined, since in general, the broad content of our mental states is externally determined, hence we have no introspective access to it. However, this answer is beside the point. For the question is not whether we have introspective access to the broad content of our mental states (we do not), but rather, which environment we should look at, the real-world environment or the stipulated environment. Again, though there must be an answer to this question, there seems to be no straightforward way to provide that answer.

To recapitulate, certain elements of imaginative episodes are difficult to track. The determination of fictional truths, and the determination of broad imaginative content, are integral to imaginative episodes. But as their presence in an imaginative episode is only tacit, they are difficult to access.

Why is this so? Why are certain imaginative elements ‘hidden,’ and not explicit like other constitutive elements of imaginative episodes, such as the states of imagining themselves? My tentative answer is that the ‘hidden’ elements are infrastructural. More specifically, they regulate our imaginative activity, hence they cannot be readily discovered. Compare these hidden regulative elements to rules that govern our (rule-governed) activities. Much as we cannot readily articulate, let alone explicate, rules that govern reasoning, speech, or swimming, we cannot readily articulate certain elements that govern our imaginative activity. We can, upon reflection and study, describe how such rules apply in general. But to discover how they apply in a particular episode is far from straightforward.

If I’m right, the type of relation that obtains between, on the one hand, stipulations of fictional truths and factors that determine our imaginings’ broad content, and on the other hand, our imaginings themselves, is the same as, or similar to, the type of relation that obtains between rules and rule-governed activities. The aforementioned hidden elements, and probably other such elements, are infrastructural in nature, and regulate imaginative activity; as such, they are difficult to detect in a specific imaginative episode. What remains to be explained, however, is how, exactly, these hidden, infrastructural elements regulate imaginative activities. This question merits a separate discussion.

[1]  I defend this thesis in various papers, most recently in Chasid (forthcoming). See also my previous Junkyard post.

References

Chasid, Alon. (forthcoming) “Not by Imaginings Alone: On How Imaginary Worlds are Established,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association

Chasid, Alon. (2017) “Imaginative Content, Design-Assumptions and Immersion.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (2): 259-272.

Putnam, Hilary. (1975) “The Meaning of Meaning.” In Mind, Language and Reality; Philosophical Papers Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 215-271.

Schwitzgebel, Eric. (2011) Perplexities of Consciousness. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.