A post by Magdalena Balcerak Jackson

Many of our everyday decisions – small and big – involve thinking about what it would be like to live a certain future in order to figure out whether this is indeed a future one would want to live:

It’s a hot humid afternoon in Miami. An ice cream sounds like it will hit the spot. You open the doors to the Azucar Ice cream company on Calle Ocho. Sure, you could just get a scoop of chocolate, but now that you are here, your eyes are drawn to the board with the signature flavors: Would you enjoy olive oil, orange zest and dark chocolate? Or maybe sweet potato, ancho chile and chocolate chip? And how about banana and red hots?  

You can’t actually taste the ice cream. So, you would likely answer the question of which ice cream you would like best by imagining how each ice cream tastes. If your gustatory imagination is good enough, this imagining will be an essential part of making a rational choice, that is, a choice that best satisfies your preferences. This is so because absent the possibility of actually experiencing the taste, imagination is the only capacity we have to obtain information that is essentially experiential, information about how things look, sound, taste or feel.

So far, so good, you might say. Maybe my familiarity with the individual tastes of chocolate, orange and olive oil and my good-enough gustatory imagination will allow me to make a good guess about whether I would like an ice cream that combines the flavors, and absent any considerations against it, it will give me a good reason to buy that ice cream. If I am wrong, all that happens is that I wasted $5. But what about cases in which the quality of my experience matters, but which are both more complex and more important for my life?

You accepted a new job in Bigtown – far away from Miami. It is the job you always wanted to have, and you hope to be able to settle down. Of course, you need to find a place to live. Unfortunately, Bigtown is very expensive and the price of housing is high. And although you are quite confident that you will love your job, it does not pay that well. You could afford getting a smallish apartment in the city. You would be close to work, and close to many things you really like to do, like art museums, the theatre and interesting restaurants. If you moved out to the countryside and commuted to work, you could get a house with a big yard and garden. You would be able to walk your dog and hike in the pretty hills. And you are really into the idea of growing your own vegetables and fruits. Which home to choose?

Buying the apartment rather than the house means choosing not merely an architectural structure, but also a way of life. Where you choose to live will influence the structure of your day and how you will spend your personal time. If you have a partner or children, it will also influence what their days will be like. And, this decision cannot be easily undone. If you choose the house, and you turn out to have been mistaken about what it is like to live that kind of life, you cannot simply discard the house and buy something else.

Recently, people have expressed suspicion about the rationality of using our capacity of imagination in making complex high-stakes decisions such as this one. L.A. Paul, for instance, has argued that many such decisions involve experiences that are transformative, that is, experiences that you cannot epistemically anticipate in imagination and that might change your personal preferences and values. As a result, your decision will be irrational, at least insofar it is what the future will be like for you that matters for you, rather than other practical considerations, such as financial means, physical ability, reports from others etc. And yet, it seems so natural and tempting to use our imagination to deliberate about even important life decisions, such as where to live, whether to have children, whether to have a certain invasive surgery etc. Is this just an irrational impulse to try to imagine a future that is un-imaginable?

There is some truth to the idea that for some experiences, we actually need to have them to understand what they are like. But a lot of the scepticism about the potential of imagination in important life decisions ultimately rests on a simplistic picture of the imagination, one that does not do justice to its creative powers.

On the Fortune Teller Model, in imagination we form a representation of what it will be like to live a certain future with the goal of getting it right about the future. We turn on our internal crystal ball, and we see the future of working in Bigtown and living in the country. If we like what we see more than the alternative options, we choose accordingly.

On the Architect Model, imagination actively creates a representation of what it will be like to live a certain future with the goal of designing that future rather than predicting it. We put an initial picture of the possible future of working in Bigtown and living in the country on the drafting table, and we use our control over the imagination to modify and to work on this picture until we achieve a result that we like and to which we can commit.

Imagination is not a fortune teller as much as an architect. It gives us the unique capacity to plan our lives. When you imagine working in Bigtown and living in the country, you do not simply imagine what this life would be like. There are still many different ways your country future could turn out. And which of these ways will become the actual one depends to a large extent on the many choices you will make, choices that will turn the general option of a life in the country into a genuine plan how to live in the country.

You imagine using the space in the house for a sunny workspace, and you imagine what it would be like if you could read and write in a calm environment when you take your work here, instead of staying in the office. You imagine planting a few cherry trees in one part of the garden, and you imagine how the cherry tree would bring up happy memories from your childhood. You imagine making an effort to plan occasional outings to the city to see shows, and you imagine what it would be like to look forward to these very special evenings. And while you create this possible future in imagination, you decide whether the way of living you imaginatively designed is not only achievable, but more importantly more desirable and valuable than the ways you can imagine your life in the city. And if you choose the option of living in the country, you thereby also commit to this plan.

Of course, your imagination will get things wrong in some respects. And of course, your life is not as much under your control as your imagination. But many, or at least some aspects of your imagined way of life in the country will ultimately be more or less accurate, not because you relied on the mysteriously reliable power of the crystal ball, but rather because you – in imagination – worked out a plan, that you can (to some extent) turn into reality.