The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination by Kind Amy

Author:Kind, Amy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

4 Conative imagination accounts

Conative imagination accounts invoke both cognitive and conative imagination in their explanations of imaginative resistance. As the name indicates, a core feature that these accounts share is that they place the constraint that one experiences during imaginative resistance on conative imagination. Insofar as these accounts are successful, they push us toward the position in the cognitive architectural debate that accepts both cognitive and conative imagination.

4.1 Desire-like imagination

There seems to be an asymmetry between supposing and imagining a morally deviant proposition. We seem to have no trouble supposing that female infanticide is morally right without any further explanation for the purpose of, say, philosophical arguments. However, as our responses to Giselda show, we do have trouble imagining that female infanticide is morally right, absent some explanation.

Gregory Currie (2002) gives an interpretation of this asymmetry at the cognitive architectural level. What we ordinarily call “imagination” is the use of both cognitive and conative imagination. In contrast, what we ordinarily call “supposition” is the use of cognitive imagination without the accompaniment of conative imagination. On this interpretation, the fact that we can easily suppose the moral rightness of female infanticide but cannot easily imagine so is evidence that cognitive imagination does not play a central role in explaining imaginative resistance. In fact, the explanatory work is done by a specific version of conative imagination that he calls “desire-like imagination.”

Whereas to desire something is to want it to be the case in the real world, to desire-like imagine something is to want it to be the case in some imagined or fictional world. However, Currie says that there is an important difference between the dissociability of cognitive imagining and belief and the dissociability of desire-like imagining and desire. While we can easily cognitively imagine something we do not believe, we cannot easily desire-like imagine something we do not desire. Hence, for the majority of people who do not in fact desire that female infanticide for no obvious reason is morally right, it is difficult to desire-like imagine that female infanticide for no obvious reason is morally right. And this difficulty to desire-like imagine so is what explains the difficulty with imagination that Giselda brings out.

4.2 Value-like imagination

Dustin Stokes (2006) revises Currie’s account and argues that the relevant conative imaginative attitude is not Currie’s desire-like imagination but what he calls “value-like imagination.” Stokes relies on David Lewis’s (1989) picture of valuing, on which to value something is to have a second-order desire of that thing: to value x is to desire that one desires x. On Stokes’s account, imaginative resistance is best explained by value-like imagination, an attitude to want oneself to want something to be the case in some imagined or fictional world.

Stokes argues that desire-like imagination is insufficient to explain imaginative resistance. For example, it is not clear how Currie’s view explains why we experience imaginative resistance with a story that says that a really dumb Knock-Knock joke is hilariously funny (Walton 1994). We have no actual desire about the joke and its funniness.

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