Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

It is often said that propositional imagining is, in central cases or ‘as a default’, belief-like, in that imaginative episodes tend to unfold, in terms of their content, as would beliefs given the same ‘premises’ as a starting point in each case. Yet, I will argue, with respect to fiction, the reader’s imaginings are not automatically or even often belief-like in this sense. David Lewis’s account of truth in fiction effectively construes the reader’s interpretation of fictional truth, and so what she imagines in response to a fiction, as proceeding in a belief-like way; but this is an inadequate theory of fictional truth in nearly every respect, I will argue. Meanwhile, I will also argue, it is equally implausible that an author’s imagining, as she writes a fiction, proceeds as a default in a belief-like way. Propositional imagining generally is responsive to a range of possible purposes, only a few of which would be served by being belief-like. I conclude with some reflection on how we should see the functional role of the propositional imagining.