r 2006 The Author Journal compilation r 2006 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 37, No. 2, April 2006 0026-1068
BELIEF AND PRETENSE: A REPLY TO GENDLER MARTIJN BLAAUW
Abstract: In cases of imaginative contagion, imagining something has doxastic or doxastic-like consequences. In this reply to Tamar Szabo´ Gendler’s article in this collection, I investigate what the philosophical consequences of these cases could be. I argue (i) that imaginative contagion has consequences for how we should understand the nature of imagination and (ii) that imaginative contagion has consequences for our understanding of what belief-forming mechanisms there are. Along the way, I make some remarks about what the consequences of the contagion cases are for the relation between knowledge and imagination. Keywords: imaginative contagion, belief, knowledge.
In her contribution to this collection, Tamar Szabo´ Gendler offers a wide range of examples that aim to illustrate the phenomenon of what she calls imaginative contagion: cases where merely pretending or imagining that P has consequences we think that only believing or knowing that P can have. My basic aim in this article is to investigate what the philosophical significance of imaginative contagion could be.1 In section 1, I briefly recapitulate the key points of Gendler’s article and propose that the notion of ‘‘imaginative contagion’’ should be sharpened so as to yield two different varieties of imaginative contagion. In sections 2 and 3, I investigate what the philosophical significance of the contagion cases might be. Specifically, I address the questions of how the contagion cases affect our understanding of the concept and nature of imagination (section 2) and our understanding of what belief-forming mechanisms there are (section 3). Along the way, I make some remarks about the relation between knowledge and imagination. 1. Imaginative Contagion A well-known distinction in the empirically informed literature on the imagination is that between mirroring and quarantining. According to 1 Thanks to Peter Baumann, Tamar Szabo´ Gendler, and Rene´ van Woudenberg for valuable discussion on the topic of this article. Thanks as well to the Niels Stensen Foundation, which made work in this area possible.
r 2006 The Author Journal compilation r 2006 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
BELIEF AND PRETENSE
205
mirroring, if one pretends that P and if one tacitly or explicitly attends to the belief that P implies Q, then one will be inclined to pretend that Q. According to quarantining, if one pretends that P and if one tacitly or explicitly attends to the belief that P implies Q, then one is not inclined to believe that P or to believe that Q. The main aim of Gendler’s article is to illustrate that there are many violations of quarantining. That is, there are many examples of subjects pretending that P where the pretense episode in question has consequences beyond itself. As such, the imagination is shown to be possibly contagious. Several closely related but distinct formulations of imaginative contagion occur in Gendler’s article. Since in what follows it will prove important to have a sharp definition of imaginative contagion in mind, let’s briefly look at these formulations to see whether a general definition can be distilled from them: [1] [Imaginative contagion concerns the] effects that the contents of the pretense might have on the post-pretense cognitive state of the pretender. [2] For all P and all Q where the pretender would be inclined to form a belief that Q on the basis of a belief that P, the perfect pretender who makes believe that P will thereby be inclined to make believe that Q (so long as the rules governing the pretense episode do not cancel the implication from P to Q). At the same time, the perfect pretender will show no tendency toward a nonpretend belief in either P or Q. . . . [3] Violations of quarantining that I will focus on are cases whereFdespite explicitly recognizing something to be fictional (or, in some cases, despite having no explicit commitment to something’s being nonfictional)Fwe nonetheless respond to the content in question in (some of) the ways that we would if the content were reality reflective. [4] Paradigmatic cases of imaginative contagion are cases whereFeven though we would explicitly assert that we are only make believing that P, and that we in fact believe something incompatible with P’s being trueFour reactions or responses under certain conditions are characteristic of a genuine belief that P. In cases of imaginative contagion, even though I explicitly believe that notP, I am disposed to act or react in ways characteristic of P-believers (or P-perceivers), and noncharacteristic of non-P-believers (or non-P-perceivers).
And elsewhere Gendler writes: [5] But the quarantining and mirroring principles do not hold universally. In regular and predictable ways, merely pretending P does seem to cause (what can be characterized as something sufficiently like) the belief that P. . . . (Gendler 2003, 131)
So what is imaginative contagion? In very general terms (and as expressed by formulation 1 above), imaginative contagion occurs when the pretense episode has consequences beyond the pretense episode itself. Put differr 2006 The Author Journal compilation r 2006 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
206
MARTIJN BLAAUW
ently, we can speak of imaginative contagion when the pretense episode somehow ‘‘contaminates’’ the post-pretense episode. But obviously this is very general: What exactly are the effects of this contagion? Quotation 5 above seems to suggest that imaginative contagion occurs when the pretense episode has doxastic consequences: the pretense episode leads the subject actually to believe P. And quotation 4 seems to suggest a similar idea: the perfect pretender is inclined to form a make-belief that Q on the basis of the make-belief that P, but is not inclined to form a real belief that Q on the basis of a make-belief that P. At the same time, this of course suggests that the nonperfect pretender is inclined to form a real belief that Q on the basis of the make-belief that P, which is just what imaginative contagion says. In contrast, quotations 3 and 4 suggest a less strong form of contagionFthey seem to say that imaginative contagion occurs when pretending that P leads the subject to respond to the content of P in the same way she would have had the subject believed P, and this is subtly different from what the other quotations say. From the foregoing discussion, the following two types of imaginative contagion emerge: Mild Imaginative Contagion (MIC): Pretending that P, and believing that P implies Q, cause the subject to respond in the same way as she would have had she believed that P or believed that Q (even though the subject explicitly believes not-P and not-Q). Strong Imaginative Contagion (SIC): Pretending that P, and believing that P implies Q, cause the subject to believe that P. Cases that display perfect pretending (PP) are cases where pretending that P does not cause the subject to act in the same way as she would have had she believed that P or Q are true: PP: Pretending that P does not cause the subject either to believe that P or to respond to the content of the pretense episode as if she believed that P. The imaginative-contagion cases are extremely interesting from an empirical point of view. In what follows, however, I will focus the discussion by looking into the question of whether the imaginativecontagion casesFas summarized in MIC and SICFhave any significant philosophical relevance. Specifically, I will try to determine whether (and, if so, how) the contagion cases affect our understanding of the concept and nature of imagination (section 2) and whether these cases affect our understanding of what sources of belief there are (section 3).2 2 In fact, this is a question Gendler herself asks. However, it remains a bit unclear what answer she proposes.
r 2006 The Author Journal compilation r 2006 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
BELIEF AND PRETENSE
207
2. Contagion and Imagination Should accepting MIC or SIC lead to a different understanding of the analysis of the concept imagination than accepting PP would? It seems to me that the choice between MIC, SIC, and PP is irrelevant when it comes to answering this conceptual question. MIC, SIC, and PP are concerned with the consequences of an imagination episode, and it is hard to see that the consequences of an imagination episode have any effect on analyzing what the concept imagination is. This seems to be a general phenomenon. Take the concept of knowledge, for instance. Whatever the consequences are of a subject’s knowing a particular proposition, these consequences will most likely not change the analysis of the concept of knowledge. Likewise, one might argue that whatever the consequences of a subject’s imagining a particular proposition or situation, these consequences will not change the analysis of the concept of the imagination. To illustrate this, take the case of the pretend bear behind the door. Even though the little girl might really be anxious to open the door after the pretense episode, this anxiety is not a necessary consequence of the pretense episode. That is, the pretense episode would still be a pretense episode even if the little girl were not anxious at all. Thus, I’d say that the analysis of the concept of the imagination remains unchanged in light of the contagion cases. However, even though the contagion cases have no consequences for how we should analyze the concept of imagination, they might still teach us something about the nature of the imagination in general. It is possible, for instance, that the contagious consequences could only obtain in cases where we have a particular view on the nature of the imagination. So the question becomes: Do the contagion cases in some way constrain our understanding of the nature of the imagination? In order to answer this question, remember that imaginative contagion means that a pretense episode has doxastic or doxastic-like consequences. But one plausible characteristic of beliefs is that they are always based on evidence; we typically do not believe propositions on the basis of nothing.3 I tentatively suggest that this might have a consequence for how we should think about the nature of the imagination: in the absence of reality-based evidence, the imagination of P itself is (or can become) evidence in favor of P. Thus, preferring MIC and SIC over PP can have interesting ramifications. 3. Contagion and Belief Formation Do the contagion cases have any consequences for how we should answer the question as to what sources of belief there are? There are many acknowledged sources of belief: perception, reasoning, testimony, and 3
William Alston defends a similar view (2005, 87–88).
r 2006 The Author Journal compilation r 2006 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
208
MARTIJN BLAAUW
memory are the most important of them. Some faculties of the mind, however, have always been regarded as not being able to be beliefforming mechanisms, among them the imagination. Here, Thomas Reid is explicit: Sensation and memory therefore are simple, original, and perfectly distinct operations of the mind, and both of them are original principles of belief. Imagination is distinct from both, but is no principle of belief. Sensation implies the present existence of its object; memory its past existence; but imagination views its object naked, and without any belief of its existence or non-existence. . . . (Reid 1997, 29)
What Reid says, in effect, is that the imagination should not be seen as a belief-forming mechanism. We might now interpret the contagion cases as throwing a new light on Reid’s idea. What the contagion cases show is that the imagination can produce beliefs after all, at least if we interpret imaginative contagion along the lines of SIC. However, though this does indeed seem to be a consequence of imaginative contagion, we should not overestimate its weight. In the first place, imagination-based beliefs will probably display a far lesser degree of confidence than, for instance, perception-based beliefs.4 In the second place, the imagination as a belief generator is structurally different from the other sources of belief. The other sources of belief typically give rise to beliefs that have some degree of positive epistemic status. In the case of the imagination, however, this positive epistemic status is absent even if the belief in question is true.5 The reason for this is that true beliefs produced by the imagination are only true in a lucky, accidental way. And, as various commentators have proposed, luck is incompatible with knowledge.6 Thus, the contagion cases not only show that there are more sources of belief than one might think, they also emphasize an important characteristic of knowledge. 4. Concluding Remarks The main aim of this article has been to investigate what the philosophical consequences of the imaginative-contagion cases are. Bearing in mind a distinction between a weak form of contagion and strong form of contagion, we have seen that imaginative contagion is philosophically relevant in the following ways. In the first place, though these cases have no influence on how we should analyze the concept imagination, they do have an influence on how we should understand the nature of the imagination: imagining something to be the case can imply that the 4 This only relates to the examples of imagination Gendler uses in her article. This point is not meant to be applied to imagination-based beliefs about necessary truths. 5 Again, this point only relates to the examples of imagination Gendler uses in her article. 6 For more on the relation between luck and knowledge, see Duncan Pritchard (2005).
r 2006 The Author Journal compilation r 2006 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
BELIEF AND PRETENSE
209
imagination itself is (or becomes) evidence in favor of the imagined state. In the second place, imaginative contagion illustrates that the imagination can be a source of beliefsFcontrary to what many philosophers have thought. Thirdly, however, it becomes clear that imagination-based beliefs cannot be instances of knowledge, even if they are true. The reason is that such beliefs can only be true in an accidental way, and accidentally true beliefs cannot be instances of knowledge. Department of Philosophy University of Aberdeen Old Brewery High Street Aberdeen AB24 3UB Scotland
[email protected] References Alston, William P. 2005. Beyond ‘‘Justification’’: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gendler, Tamar Szabo´. 2003. ‘‘On the Relation between Pretense and Belief.’’ In Imagination and the Arts, edited by Domenic McIver Lopes and Matthew Kieran, 125–42. New York: Routledge. Pritchard, Duncan. 2005. Epistemic Luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reid, Thomas. 1997. An Inquiry into the Human Mind and the Principle of Common Sense. Edited by Derek R. Brookes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Originally published in 1764.
r 2006 The Author Journal compilation r 2006 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
