Wanting Things You Don't Want: The Case for an Imaginative Analogue of Desire

Abstract

©  Tyler Doggett & Andy Egan Y ’ , in the course of a game of make-believe, that you’re a cat. You don’t believe that you’re a cat. You are moved to say “Meow.” This case illustrates something that a theory of imagination should explain: sometimes when you imagine something, you are moved to act. Consider another case. You’re watching a movie. A monster is on the loose and you are imagining, along with the movie, that it is attacking people willy-nilly. You do not believe there is a monster on the loose or that you are in any danger, but still you feel afraid. This case illustrates something else that a theory of imagination should explain: sometimes we have emotional reactions to things that we do not believe but merely imagine.  By “imagining” we mean what you do when you daydream or pretend or when you take on board, without believing, the contents of books or movies. We assume there is a single something you do in these three disparate activities, but we don’t think much hangs on this assumption. We think imagining is distinct from supposing. Though we think that it is hard to imagine that killing babies for fun and profit is permissible, we have no trouble supposing this. We can easily suppose it for reductio. Though we think it is hard to imagine that Robert Stalnaker is the smallest prime number, we have no trouble supposing that he is.

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