On the Irreducibility of Attitudinal Imagining

Bibliographic Data

ID22109452
AuthorsAlon Chasid (0000-0002-4793-1190, Bar-Ilan University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume12
Issue0
Publication date2025-04-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueErgo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2330-4014 • E-ISSN: 2330-4014
PublisherUniversity of Michigan Library (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3998/ergo.7430
OpenAlexW4409216634
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited21

This paper argues against the view, proposed in Langland-Hassan (2020), that attitudinal imaginings are reducible to basic folk-psychological attitudes such as judgments, beliefs, desires, decisions, or combinations thereof. The proposed reduction fails because attitudinal imaginings, though similar to basic attitudes in certain respects, function differently than basic attitudes. I demonstrate this by exploring two types of cases: spontaneous imaginings, and imaginings that arise in response to fiction, showing that in these cases, imaginings cannot be identified with basic attitudes. I conclude that imagining is a distinct attitude: it enables us to freely conjure up scenarios without being bound by the restrictions that govern basic folk-psychological attitudes

Epistemology · Irreducibility · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Multimodal Machine Learning Applications · Philosophy · Psychology

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