Imagination and Suppositional Thought

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores a reading of the two-place TSIM operators, in which they are interpreted as capturing a certain kind of imaginative exercise, Reality-Oriented Mental Simulation (ROMS): the activity one engages in, when one supposes that something is or had been the case and wonders what else will be or would have been the case in the hypothetical scenario. In this reading, the TSIM Iφψ says that in an imaginative act starting from supposition φ, one imagines that ψ is the case. The chapter argues that imagination, of this sort, can have epistemic value insofar as its departure from reality is regimented and only partly voluntary, and connects ROMS to the formation of conditional beliefs. The chapter also explores the idea of equivalence in imagination: what it means that φ and ψ play the same cognitive role in one’s mental life, in particular when one engages in suppositional thinking. It proposes the addition of a constraint on the semantics of the TSIMs, which allows them to capture such cognitive equivalence. Finally, it discusses the suggestion that full topic-inclusion of the topic of ψ in that of φ may be too draconian a constraint for our TSIMs, at least (and perhaps not only) in the ROMS setting.