ABSTRACT
Imagining typically takes many forms. Consider Huali, an avid young gymnast, who is imagining competing at the 2020 Olympic Games. Some of her imaginings might be sensory or perceptual, as when she imagines her parents’ smiling faces as they watch from the stands or when she imagines the roar of the crowd as she finishes her routine. Some of her imaginings might be experiential, as when she imagines performing her dismount from the beam or when she imagines how it would feel to land it perfectly. And some of her imaginings might be attitudinal, as when she imagines that she wins the gold medal for her floor exercise or when she imagines that the Americans take first place in the all-around competition. Attitudinal mental states – also called propositional attitudes – consist in one’s adopting a
mental attitude towards some propositional content. We can take different attitudes toward the very same content: I can believe that p, hope that p, desire that p, intend that p, and so on. Attitudinal imagining is often considered to be similar to belief in important ways. Perhaps most significantly, attitudinal imagining mirrors the inference patterns of belief. (See, e.g., Leslie 1994.) If Huali believes that she will be competing in the 2020 Olympic Games then, given her belief that those games will be held in Tokyo, she will be inclined to believe that she’ll be in Tokyo in 2020. Likewise for imagining: if Huali imagines that she’s competing in the 2020 Olympic Games then, given her belief that those games will be held in Tokyo, she will be inclined all else being equal to imagine that she’ll be in Tokyo in 2020. Attitudinal imagining also shares with belief a mind-to-world direction of fit – though in the case of imagining, the relevant world is not the actual world but a make-believe or pretend world. While belief aims at the true, imagination aims at the fictional (Walton 1990, 41).1
