Consciousness Live! with Peter Langland-Hassan (S7 E2)

0:00 we are live uh joining me today as usual a very special guest uh Peter langland Hassen uh Peter I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do for those who might not know you yeah sure uh thanks for having me uh Richard this is fantastic I've been looking forward to this um so I'm a professor of philosophy at University of Cincinnati I've been here about 12 years or so I work in the philosophy of Mind philosophy of psychology philosophy of cognitive science topics I work on are things like

0:32 imagination uh inner speech uh memory uh though I'm also interested in Consciousness and introspection and those things and those topics kind of oddly led me into these uh other more uh specific things like imagination and inner speech that I've uh worked a lot on um I was a postto at in the PNP program at at wasu before this job and then before that I was a grad student at the K Graduate Center with uh our host Richard Brown lot memories from that and I'm really enjoying catching up with him uh now because of that awesome um so

1:07 that's right uh back at the old Graduate Center what what year did you show up there I think 2003 so the same year that I did I didn't realize you came in the same class yeah yeah yeah we did yeah I remember you walking in with your big headphones and like who's this guy you know uh yeah that not that not that it's here or there but I remember one day I was in class and Peter Simpson was sitting next to me and I had my headphones on and he was like I can hear your awful music and I was like you're welcome bro

1:39 it's a snoop actually yeah no we were in a lot of the same uh you know session and then the kogai Symposium that David Rosenthal uh you know ran absolutely that was a big part of uh I think both of our experience there yeah I would say so so that's that's very cool and then so I forgot that you did the post at washu H how was it being there did you enjoy it yeah yeah I enjoyed my time I mean uh it was a great place got to uh work with some great people there um and uh it was a

2:15 harrowing time though you know like I had had a young son I had a second son was born while we were there and you know it's like a twoyear limit thing and you don't know what's going to happen so probably also the most stressful time of my life but it's a beautiful place to be and to work and a lot of uh brilliant people there so yeah I've always wanted to go to to visit over there but I've never quite made it so that's very cool yeah yeah no you should and then how long have you been at the University of Cincinnati here 2011 so I guess yeah

2:49 yeah we're coming up on a full 13 years uh wow awesome yeah yeah and University of cincin got some great people including yourself so I'm really really cool GL you got that job landed there oh thanks yeah well we got a good stable of uh people working Co Phil coai Phil mine so Tom poers here Tony shamiro who I think you had on one point yeah Heidi mayal uh and then we just hired some new uh folks uh working in Ai and things Andre Curtis trudell so yeah it's nice we're kind of like focused we got a kind

3:23 of a deep Phil sigh Phil mind focus and then so we're a little specialized in that way but um we're trying to uh fill in other I hear there's like a history of philosophy as well that uh is relevant um so we're trying to do some more hiring in that area but it's nice to have some colleagues who who who work on similar things yeah awesome so for you know it's a good place to for graduate students interested in that kind of philosophy philosophy of Mind Cog side to check out even though for some unknown reason it's not mentioned in the you know who rankings which is

3:55 sort of a TR in my opinion exactly yeah I won't ramble on about that I director Graduate Studies for a number of years before that so I've got a whole Spiel okay uh yeah you know we we do do great in those areas in fact um and we've we've done great at placing grad students uh I think there's this other independent report it's like what's academic I can never quite remember the acronym but adpa I don't know is that D Jennings one yeah exactly that one and uh we're uh something like third in the

4:29 world in like placing people in permanent positions so um some ten track but a lot of other just like permanent uh jobs and philosophies so we do find people uh jobs and yeah I mean the lighter rankings are are good and but they they really as you're saying they they highlight reputational status of the faculty which is not the same as ability to get students jobs or to Mentor the students that they have there so right just for what it's worth those are different qualities sometimes they overlap it's not always the case agreed yeah agreed cool well so that's awesome

5:05 um I mean I wanted to just recommend your book to anyone who's watching this later your book explaining imagination um came out in 2020 I I've I've read it I've read through it well twice actually now but it's just so clearly written um it's just you know very thorough very engaging uh very scholarly if one might say you've covered like all your bases I would say so I just think that this is like a really great book and um I I hope that it's attracting attention I know it's already been four years since it came out but as we were talking these

5:37 things move slowly so I do hope it attracts um changes the conversation a bit I also found myself largely agreeing with your conclusions so I was like found it to be very sensible in that way as well not that that matters or anything but just so you know I oh thanks yeah and it was surprising that the position that you that we're going to talk about wasn't already kind of a well-entrenched position um that was one of the most surprising things to me I'm glad you find that surprising cuz most people who for whatever reason people drawn to imagination find the kind of view I propose to be just utterly you

6:10 know Unthinkable but you know there that's interesting you can kind of make a case for that I'm like for that so they just can't imagine him I don't know okay so and of course you've done a lot of other work as you were saying so I might want to if we have time touch on some of that stuff as well sure um but I wanted to start out ask you about the imagination you mentioned that you got into imagination sort of through a Securus route so how did you become interested in imagination what sucked you in it was uh Nagel's footnote 11 the infamous footnote 11 stoar has a whole

6:47 paper on that footnote yeah there was a whole mini literature about the footnote so this is a footnote to the what is it like to be a bat paper where he's interested in you know if there is this sort of uh sort of necessary identity between you know conscious mental States and brain States why it would seem to be contingent and um as it does to many and uh he he throws out this idea well what may be going on here is there's two we're imagining some the one and the same thing in two different

7:19 ways uh we're um using when we think about you know when we imagine what it's like to be in the state we're imagining a state sympathetically and U where and to to imagine something sympathetically is to put your state similar to the to put yourself in a state that's similar to the state uh itself that you're thinking about similar to the state you would be in uh no uh if you were let's see to imagine sympathetically you you put yourself in a state yeah I guess it is as he put it

7:52 similar to the state itself right if as if you were in the state I guess and then but if you imagine something perceptually as we do sort of imagining it from the outside or imagining looking at say the brain state or whatever that it's supposedly identical to this is different because we put ourselves in a state similar to the one we would be in if we perceived the state and so it's like you know you're imagining one and the same thing in these two different ways and because I guess one way you think of it these disperate images like you might use to imagine one and the same thing so like

8:27 if I imagine sort literally looking at the brain State I might form an image of some squishy brain you know stuff you know like okay uh you know the the brain scientists neurosurgeons looking at as they operate on you or something um whereas if I imagine you know that that very same state but being sympathetically I put my state self in a state that similar to the one I would be in if I was in that which suppose when I'm in that state I'm you know uh seeing a beautiful sunset well then I'm just going to when I imagine that way I'm

9:00 going to use a image of a beautiful sunset to to think about it and then I got these two very different images one of a sunset one of squishy brain stuff I don't see how they fit together but this is really just an artifact of how we're imagining things you know and so it's just a very you know it's a gesture you gestures uh at that like maybe that's something like that's going on but there's all kinds of questions you know and it's is sort of a suggestive thing and a number of people found that an interesting proposal and it's been veled in different ways we don't have to dive fully into my thoughts on that I've

9:34 thought a lot about that fact that stuff didn't even make it into my book yeah but that's that kind of sucked me into it so it was I was always interested in this Mind Body problem stuff and why there why there appears to be this deep puzzle there and and you know different attempts to explain it away and there are many different you know attempts still on the market but that was one of them and that got me into imagination and from there I just kind of got pulled into other for surrounding phenomena and before I knew it I was like this guy who works on imagination okay that's interesting yeah

10:07 I want to come back to some of that stuff about uh the Mind Body problem maybe later on but um yeah I guess so that's I mean that's that's funny the power of one footnote that footnote has had a lot of influence on on the literature so never don't throw away those footnotes guys you never know that's right they just might spawn literature yeah so what do you take imagination to be well um you know the way I've come to

10:41 approach it is I I guess I wanted to try to ultimately these days I I approach it kind of from the outside is where I think about like well we describe people as a imagining in all kinds of important scenarios um you know how is this person able to pretend to be something he's not well he's imagining that he's that or or how is she able to reason to come to these you know conclusions about what would happen in hypothetical scenarios well she imagines

11:15 the scenario um you know how are we able to enjoy fictions you know without either thinking there really happening or and still reacting to them and so well we're imagining what's going on you know or um um how are people how do people manage to be so creative in generating interesting artworks and well they use their imagination so you know starting with these kinds of phenomena like I think of okay imagination is what whatever it

11:47 is that's enabling us to do these things um these things that we do when we're inclined to describe someone as imagining so it's kind of like trying to pin it down from the outside like like I it there's something there if we wanted to make an artificial mind that was like a human mind we need to give it this capacity whatever it is that's enabling people to pretend to reason hypothetically to enjoy artworks to um you know to be creative and I think there maybe to to understand other Minds

12:20 other perspectives to empathize these are all really important human things if we want to you know I'm always sort of thinking of things as as a naturalistic philosopher of mind like what would we how would you mechanize this how would you make something that can do this so I think of imagination as like well what capacity we want to make something that can imagines what do we need to be able to make it do and it's those kinds of things that we can point to and and then with with that as a sort of starting point I think okay well what is the nature of this cognitive capacity such that it's enables us to do these

12:56 things um and so if you're looking for like a really General slogan about what you know I I as a kind of like thing that unites so I just listed a bunch of context where we imagine if you likeing like a general description what unites all those what I suggest in the book is something like you know to imagine is to um form Rich elaborated thoughts about the possible uh unreal Fantastical and so on in a way that's epistemically safe by

13:31 epistemically safe I mean and when you're doing that it's the fact that you're doing that doesn't sort of cause your sanity or rationality into question un likee it might like if you're in a bout of Madness and you're having floored you know delusional thoughts and we don't necessarily call that imagining you're you're you're you're you're you're out of you know you're actually in a dangerous kind of situation and you might be forming a lot of false beliefs and Mis misperceptions hallucinations no it's it's thought about it's thought about the unreal Fantastical so on but that doesn't call your sanity into

14:04 question and that's just you know and then and then we can try to get more and more specific um but that's just a the most broadest the broadest way to gesture at it and um for for some people you know imagination has to involve mental imagery right the image in imagination which you know in the imagination literature there's going to debate about this whether that has to so um and then people want to divide up things and say well no there's this imagination it doesn't have to involve imagery it can um The View I sort of

14:40 suggest um as a kind of starting point is like well this kind of broad ability to sort of think about um possibilities in a rich and elaborated way it doesn't have to involve imagery but it often does uh so we'll want to be able to say something about the role of imagery in that but um yeah and just you know as a little personal not I found that very refreshing because as someone who like has a Fantasia um I don't I I mean I don't have visual imagery I have auditory imagery and maybe dreams in

15:13 imagistic ways but I still think of myself as having a good imagination um I love to read books I'm very good at pretend or so my kids think um and so I off it was nice to read something that was defending the possibility of Imagine in a non- imagistic imagination in a non imist way not to say that it never does involve images for for those who are typical in this way but uh at least it didn't exclude people like me right off the bat which I sort of get the feeling that is the case in a lot of other definitions of imagination yeah it it can happen um you know in which case you can always

15:49 just move to the side like well then I'm talk let's talk about supposition all right know well that is something I wanted to ask you is because you you say this in several places in your book but never really got clear about like what because you say they're closely related Notions like supposition conceivability um and things like that but what is the difference between these on your view and Imagination like what is it to suppose is it just the reason hypothetically um even though sometimes you do that imaginatively as well so I'm just wondering yeah what what what is the difference in your view of these

16:22 three things yeah no that's a good question it's something I realized you know after the fact like I should have been clearer about that uh so um I don't see a deep difference I don't see um I don't insist on any difference okay um I think these are sort of you know uh terms we we apply difference some people want to Mark out for the people who want the distinction between an image evolving thing and a non- imagistic might be useful to say well by supposition I sort of mean the non-image involving stuff and image

16:56 imagination I mean the image involving stuff but I don't think that's yeah um but for me I would want to equally give the same sort of answer about supposition and conceiving as I would about imagining okay so I I to just um I don't have so yeah I I I I think um non- imagistic Imaging is the same as supposing or conceiving um now people might we can talk about like well isn't there a difference here can I suppose some

17:28 things that I can't imagine we could talk about that if you want um sounds like you don't want to though I don't want to ramble on about you GNA force me to I will but I just don't want to ramble on about it if this is the place to ramble on my friend this is it okay okay fine all right all right well okay so why does anyone ever want that distinction between supposing and conceive and imagining um so I think it's the idea is supposed to

18:05 be I can suppose just about anything you know it's just a matter of like framing the thought or something like saying it to myself or whatever this is I can I can suppose a contradiction um but I can't imagine a contradiction um I don't you know I don't a pull of that claim I mean I think there's interesting things to be said about what is it to imagine a contradiction or what is it to suppose a contradiction um when those are put

18:41 forward as in like what kind of claim is it if you say I can suppose this but I can't imagine it or I can conceive this but I can't imagine it right what grounds do you make that claim I the typical grounds have seem to be introspective I guess like oh yeah I can tell I just suppose that oh that wasn't imagining it I can I'd know that if I did that you know or no I conceive it you know you know and if that's all it is it's like well I just don't think we have you know I'm

19:13 not some major skeptic about introspection but at the same time it's like our ability to make some sort of fine grain distinction between yeah there's this psychological State I can tell I'm in that it's supposing but it's not imagining you know like I don't find it particularly plausible that we were able to make that distinction or that we even know enough about what we're talking about with imagination or supposition to be in a position to make that kind of introspective uh distinction okay so if it's not through introspection that we know the the difference between those States I'm not

19:47 sure what it is I think they're you know if you want to point to a phenomen on okay the best the best case for um maybe that I think there is for for distinguishing imagining from supposing but this is still sort of a introspective one is the there's the literature on imaginative resistance um talk you talk about that yeah exactly a little bit yeah a little

20:19 bit and some people really like to talk about that um you know the idea like you're reading a fiction right um and the says something kind of bizarre like you know Bill and Lisa were out for a drive someone is in the road and was in the way they drove over them and killed them it was right that they did so because it's never good to be in someone's way or something and you know you're reading it and typically you're reading along and you're saying oh yeah you know they they're offer I'm imagining this story but you you feel

20:52 some resistance when the author says something and it was right that they did so like you're stopped in some sense like hold on I was following along and imagining like that they're driving over and they kept going but I don't I don't continue I I i' I experienced resistance at your at imagining at even just imagining that what they did was right or something right but I can suppose that what they did was right so this is a different these are two different mental

21:26 States I don't know uh I mean one pull there at all like well I was thinking of it more in terms of the conceivability stuff and I was specifically thinking of like Cher's conceivability distinction between negative and positive conceivability um where negative conceivability is put in terms of what I would call like rational coherence so is there a contradiction in the just in the uh proposed thing um whereas positive conceivability has something to do with being able to fill in the details about how the the scenario would be in such a

21:59 case like to actually give a an account of what would make it true or something like that um and I was wondering well so is merely like detecting so taking a some proposed scenario and asking is there a contradiction in that scenario is that would you consider that imaginative or us using the imagination or is that something that you would want to think of as distinct from that merely checking for Co coherence in that sense um I think it's all checking for coherence okay and you can draw it out

22:36 in more or less detail based on what you know I think um I I sort of see okay this gets to something that again probably um I didn't I didn't this is this is an area I didn't focus on in the book which from philosophy mind is an important area like to what extent imagination provides a warrant for beliefs about stuff like metaphysical possibilities and things

23:09 like that yeah I talk more about like everyday possibility like is the couch going to fit through the door kind of stuff um I think of imagining as more kind of like drawing inferences from what you already believe so not really in this terms of like I got into this state that now is providing evidence for beliefs that I wouldn't have had if I had to just rely on what I already knew um you know I think you can learn a

23:45 lot of interesting things by drawing out consequences of what you believed and there may be contradictions in what you already believe that you're interested to you're surprised to discover at times you know and so imagining can be a you could learn Le things in that way and I think a lot of thought experiments where you're trying to positively conceive different things or conceive of you know someone having true Justified belief without having knowledge you know you drive describe you imagine a situation you um but what this involves is just kind of drawing out what ought to be

24:20 true based on what you already think um and sometimes you infer new things on the basis of that so I don't know if this so positive conceiving [Music] um is I I guess I don't you know this would be like a matter of degree between what you know this sort of like negative I it seems to make some sense I can kind of think of I don't see any problem with it but now I go towards sort of filling it out more and thinking more how the world would be

24:53 if that were the case yeah it seems to be it's making more and more sense seems more and more plausible fits with what I already think but I don't see like [Music] a like a deep difference in kind there that's going to Warr going to provide like one's going to provide much better warrant for a belief than another interesting okay yeah I don't want to um I was gonna actually come back to this towards the end so we haven't even really gotten to your account yet which I want to make sure that we have uh time so I'll maybe table some of the stuff

25:25 and and revisit this CU I am interested in specifically what your account might serve as like a debunker for conceivability arguments which is sort of sounds like what you were hinting at um so I'm sympathetic to that but I before I mean I was just trying to ask some general questions about imagination before we get into the details and the other kind of general question that I had was that right at the be right at the beginning of your book you kind of say look I can imagine myself um you know without a leg without without Vision but you can't really be you

25:58 without imagination um that there's something something about the imagination that can't just be carved off uh like some other mental faculty it's somehow inherently a part of of your mind or my mind or something like that and I was really struck I thought that was a really interesting way to to to frame things um so in in your mind imagination then is something that's distinctively uh intertwined with all of our mental capacities it's not a separate capacity is that the right way to put that point yeah yeah yeah exactly

26:34 um and that and that fits with how I you know I I start that way because it kind of previews where I'm headed you know which is to say I developed this I call it like a reductive account of imagination where imagination isn't like this one faculty like Vision that oh you could lose it and then you got the rest of the mind going it's actually going to kind of Splinter into a lot of different things um so what we're calling imagining in one context is really just you know using your beliefs in certain kinds of ways to like uh just using beliefs arrive at sort of like a new

27:10 belief in a conditional or something or it might just be in another case having um some occurrent desires like you know you're just kind of experiencing your desire for this to happen we call it desire in one case but you could also call it he's imagining this um and um but it's also you know deeply intertwined with just um the ability to reason about different kinds of topics um a lot of cases um you know like pretending you

27:46 know maybe here's an example um to focus on you know people you know it's important if I face this question intuitively pretending requires imagining right you might it's very natural to think of like the cognitive component of pretend Behavior like well you're able to pretend because you're imagining you know um okay well what is this imagining are suppose we couldn't use the word imagining could we describe what's going on mentally with you such that you're able to pretend I say well sure um you know it's important that you not believe the things is happening

28:20 there's some sort of connection to I don't really believe this is going on and spelling that out is um just a little tricky in some cases but it can be done and then you're thinking about how how you know if I'm pretending to be a lion um well I need to know some things about lions if I don't know anything about lions I can't really pretend to be a lion what do I need to do well I I need to desire what's the desire that's relevant here well to make it's not you know I don't need to think I I said to get away from the idea that I need to think I am a lion yeah right I

28:56 don't need to think that right in fact um you know but but that's what starts a lot of you know theorizing I got this representation I a lion it needs to be sort of quarantined from the rest of my what I really believe and things and developed in certain ways because that's not something I think you don't need to think you're a lion you need to think how do I make myself lionlike in some Salient ways you know U what do lions do well if I move my arm like this if I think this kind of sound then I can make myself lion likee um it's a simple example but it's just to say like if don't start with that idea that I need

29:30 this thought I am a lion you might be you know you can go in a different way with it and and understand the psychology in much in to me a much you know simpler and more plausible way if you think I'm a lion there's all kinds of weird things that would occur to you that never occur to you when you're pretending like if I'm a lion then I'm a really weird looking lion you know a Cowardly Lion even just yeah like you know I'm a lion with human parent like but none of that you know none of

30:03 that's actually going on psychologically like let's you know let's just think about like no I know I'm not a lion and that's an important part of what makes me pretending that I'm lion uh you know I uh I just want to make myself sort of like a lion and I've got the knowledge to do so I don't you know and I can just draw on my beliefs about lions to to do so right but but is it really the case that you couldn't pretend without imagining is that is that your view um I I guess I'm inclined to say

30:37 that if you're pretending you are imagining so it to to read it the other way which is which is to say um imagining just picks out the cognition that is enabling you to pretend like that's how the term sort of gets a foothold so if we agree that oh yeah this is definitely pretense then whatever the whatever the mental states are that you're in those count as imagining so if it's just a belief like oh you know um a railroad engineer

31:12 goes like this you know and that's all this driving my behavior and and but you know but it's clear that I'm pretending I'm not just doing this for some other reason I'm pretending I like yeah I'm pretending to be a railroad engineer um I'm not going to turn around and say well now you're you're not really imagining it because you just have that one belief you're relying on whereas I think some others would want to say that like oh I think it's more common in the literature for people say oh we allow I mean people are mixed on this but many would say you know we allow you could

31:46 pretend without imagining um but it's just we usually do imag um imagine when we pretend and um I say no you're you're always imagining when you pretend because I'm inclined to to to treat those minimal cases that you would say was dis belief those count too there's not a I see there's not a deep difference and but I thought I on your view there's some subtly here because wa maybe every case of pretending is a case of imagining but can't but I thought it

32:18 was also through VI that you could say what pretending was without invoking imagination or did I misunderstand that part yeah that's right yeah no that's right um so I Define pretending in terms of imagining um I guess sounded like you kind of just did um well I said like if we agree that someone is pretending then we should go ahead and say that they are imagining um that is enabling to do that but then you can say well what is it to pretend then um and so my account of what it is to pretend is something is like this

32:53 like to pretend that um X is y is to to um intentionally make X Y like while believing that X is not a y and won't be made into a y in the process that's an account of what it is to pretend that X is y that doesn't involve um it involves an intention to make X Y like y um but it doesn't appeal to and you use imagination or you you know it just um does that

33:29 just a so I'm wondering about what the exact relationship there is because does it entail that to do to make X Y like is to imagine or is it that just as a matter of like happen stance of Being Human that that's the way we do it to make X Y like is by imagining so okay hold on so to pretend so this is like a conceptual analysis of what it is to pretend okay um it's to intentionally make X Y like while believing that X is not a y and

34:04 then there's some BL print okay so that's so okay there's a definition of pretense doesn't say anything about imagination right and then there's a separate thing um okay what you know what cognitively you know goes on in a person when they're pretending well I gave that one account at the most basic level uh they need to intend they need to be S successfully

34:37 they intending to make X Y like without believing that X is a y and they need to do that and you might say well how do they manage to to do that um and you could say well I don't know that's just my analysis of pretense or you could say well they do it um let's see so could you know I think you know I think I I see your questions but like um but they do it by

35:09 imagining and okay and so could some and then your question is um but could some other species or some other being intentionally you know so satisfy my criterian for pretending but then where we wouldn't say they do it by imagining right um or or is it going to turn out to sort of be part of what it means to intentionally make XY like that it terms it it turns out that you have to do the thing you call imagining that that really maybe imagining is kind of

35:41 mentioned in your definition just implicitly well um I and I don't mean this as an objection I was just something that's that I was curious about I'm not trying to yeah yeah so let me think about this so like I think I would move to Bel so my incl inclination to say I would first move to belief okay because I see that in throughout the book as the more basic notion so you want to know what goes on cognitively with someone who's

36:14 pretending even okay even I don't care if you're human or non-human I'm going to say you need to have some beliefs about what you know what if you're trying to make something like y like um a piece of paper like an airplane right you need to have some beliefs about what airplanes are like and an intention to make the paper like an airplane okay and then you also need to believe that the paper is not a uh an airplane okay that would help

36:52 yes okay so okay so I'm with you to the point of like um any being right who's able to pretend got to have some beliefs of this structure and some intentions uh intention to make XY like now it's part of my theory well acting any being that acts on those kinds of beliefs and uh intentions is pretending so now I guess I'm at the point like yeah any being who we saying is

37:25 pretending we we're going to be we need to be prep prepar prepared to ascribe to it relevant beliefs and intentions on the basis of which it's also true that they count as imagining on my view right so now did I Define pretense in terms of imagination I don't think so because I only if only because I give a reductive account of imagination in that account like I I I give an account it's if I had nothing to say about imag ination then I

37:58 guess I I would be defining pre terms of imagination but then I'm defining imagination in terms of beliefs and intentions of a certain sort so I don't think uh even though I I am committed as you say like yeah whatever being counts as pretending is imagining I'm still not you know there's still a sense in which I'm not leaving imagination primitive right I see so the the sense in which you can Define pretense without imagination is the sense that you don't need to invoke some

38:31 kind of primitive notion of imagination to make sense of it because all you have to do is say well they've got to be acting a certain way intentionally which entails that they have certain beliefs and then also that happens to be what what I and analyze imagination in so the two connect up afterwards right right okay yeah good okay all right well I yeah I didn't mean to preview so many interesting issues but they all are bound together so I was because I was just really curious about like how tight the relationship between like your claim that there's something Central about

39:03 imagination to the Mind such that it can't be that it can't be carved off and you say these things like well if you lack the imagination then you couldn't pretend you You' be super honest um you you you'd fail at charades and you know uh you wouldn't be very good at you know all all these other things and I was like huh that does that does this way of putting things kind of presuppose your view um or or is it that on any sort of view about imagination you you would make these kind of claims but it sounds like it's it's not really the case

39:36 that on a neutral conception of imagination well I don't know about neutral but on on a maybe an alternative conception of what imagination is maybe you could carve it off and um people could still go around and and lie and exapp those sorts of things or or is it more universally accepted in the imagination literature that if you lacked then you would also fail at these other things yeah well that's a great question I mean uh because it gets to a so yeah there on the one hand there was

40:09 something you know um tendentious is too strong word but you know something uh loaded in my my suggestion at the beginning to say oh yeah you just couldn't be human you couldn't carve it off right so you're right to be alerted like are you sure are you sure you're not building your view in here already but I'm also trying to I I list all those things because these are all um phenomena where philosophers have said oh to explain this we gotta invoke imagination you know um so I said yeah you'd be Terri you couldn't lie you

40:44 couldn't empathize you couldn't win a Chas you know you couldn't enjoy fiction you you like so because we need imagin right the philosophers have been saying we need imagination to do those things um and and then I say you know you know to extent to when you got to the point where you couldn't do any of those things you just wouldn't even be you anymore right now you're right under pressure they could turn around and say well I mean we theorized about imagination we think it's Central to these things and important but we could still conceive of situations where um you don't use imagination but you still

41:17 manage to pretend or you still manage to enjoy the fiction or right well but okay but once they say that I've kind of got my foot in the door you know like right oh so there are some cases right uh oh okay so it's not strictly necessary to it's just like oh it helps oh okay well let's let's peer into that then like let's look at the case where you feel like no but here's where you really need it or was especially help are you sure about those right and then and then you know then we're having a discussion then we're having the the discussion that I that I want to have

41:49 um um you know because it's not it's not commonly observed as you have just kind of raised it's not commonly observed in the lit literature like when people invoke imagination just like they're not quick to say of course you don't need it for this right you just it's we often use it for that because that as soon as you say you don't need it to you know gain modal knowledge in all instances or you don't need it to um you know enjoy a fiction we just sometimes use then then your then your discussion gets a lot

42:21 harder because it's like oh okay where are you drawing the line between these cases that you have allowed that you you don't need this sweet generous kind of primitive imagining in the cases where you do need it um so let's just to say that yeah it's a fair question yeah it was a bit loaded the way I start the book but it's just to try to get you in the mood of did yes immedately in the mood okay okay um and so we've already sort of previewed this a little bit but so your view is that the imagination can be I don't know if reduced is the right

42:54 word uh but so I want to ask you is that the right word but reduced to other cognitive faculties that involve just ordinary beliefs and desires and so that every case involving imagination is going to is going to turn out to be just a case of ordinary beliefs and desires not like I mean I was surprised by how many you know letter Dash than a word there are in the imagination literature so there's I desires and S desires F imagination and so okay and whatever but it's not some weird special desire like thing it's not some alter

43:28 uh thing it's just an ordinary belief the content will be different we'll talk about that but that's but that's your strategy is to try to every case show that it's just ordinary folk psychological things right right right yeah that's exactly and then you know you can talk about in what sense is this a reduction is it what sense are these more basic um you know uh those are things I talk about in places but you know um yeah there're supposed to be ordinary beliefs now you know part of it is I also have a view they' developed where an ordinary belief can

44:01 have a mental image say as a constituent so that everyone has that of view so that kind of brings in some of the sensory imagination stuff which sometimes just gets carved off it's like well we know our beliefs are you know a modal and propositional and so on and sensory imagination is something else um which I don't you know accept that view um and so that allows me to say that yes they're ordinary beliefs some of these ordinary beliefs have mental images as proper Parts um but there's still wor beliefs and or desires some of our desires have

44:33 mental images as proper Parts too so that might help people sort of understand how the imagery gets involved in this so I'm wondering if you could just say a little bit I mean you say a lot of bit about it in the book but I wonder if you could say about a little bit here about what the alternative view is what's the view that you're challenging the the idea that there's some soy generous imaginative like what do they mean by that which is that you're um in in opposition to yeah so the opposition view is something like well

45:05 look suppose someone's imagining you know going for a run right now we could list you know if you just listed it off all their current beliefs desires and intentions probably even hopes and uh wishes any other kind of just about any other folks psychological term you if you just list create a whole list to those um and and and you created some other mind with all those States in it you wouldn't have yet have a mind that's imagining right because imagining something on top of all those something

45:38 distinct from those it's its own type of mental state um that occurs you know is may be influenced by those and so on but it's it's it's importantly distinct um just like most people say belief and desire is distinct state so if you list all someone's beliefs you still don't know what they desire fire supposed you know if you think so same way if you list off you know all these other states you still haven't um captured you still haven't fully described what's going on with them mentally um because you haven't captured their imagining whereas on my view I

46:11 suggest like if you do give a full account of their beliefs and their current their judgments their decisions it's important to them bring in the current versions of these states um their intentions you list all of that you've captured the fact that they are imagining in that list of states some States among those are sufficient for qualifying them as engaging in the relevant imagining um and this you know just differs from Context to context it's not it is kind of a heterogeneous Bunch you know but a

46:44 lot of people think you know it's kind of clear from even from a distance that imagination seems to get invoked in a lot of different way different ways and different context so it's not shouldn't be super surprising that it's kind of a heterogeneous bunch of stuff this going on but the important point for me is that you can capture what's going on psychologically without invoking this distinct state of imagining but you know most everybody else that I most people you know in the literature are really committed to this distinct State it's very similar to a belief or similar to perception but

47:18 importantly distinct from it and you know and that's the key view that really I'm just kind of trying to challenge again again um throughout and so this other the the the distinct State view it's often I mean so you just mentioned perception but I was struck a lot by a lot of the contrast and the people you quote and things they're talking about are saying it's you know contrasted with belief and desire but it's not contrasted with like visual perception versus auditory perception so I was curious like what why belief and desire

47:54 like as opposed to uh visual like or auditory like um or is there that distinction is that the distinction between imagistic imagining and what you call attitudinal Imaging or is that a separ kind of Distinction or so so and what part of why I'm asking this question is because I would have thought that part of the way you want to distinguish these things is in terms of like some kind of phenomenal character or some kind of uh quality that's associated with imagination um whereas it seems like it's really more Associated like the

48:26 function role which is how I would associate people distinguishing beliefs from Desires in terms of the functional role in the mind as opposed to the way we distinguish audition from from visual stuff which is in terms of some kind of phenomenal character so I wonder it like is that a distinction that's made in this area or is it often thought in terms of the functional stuff yeah it's it's it's both you know so it's very common in this area to so like for instance Curry and Ravens crof have 200 two book that's been influential called recreative minds and

49:01 in there as in in some other places they like there's just two importantly different kinds of imagination one recreates perception so it's like perception like imagining what you might think of as sensory imagining and then there's one kind that recreates belief which you might think is like belief likee imagining or sometimes called propositional imagining by others um and then they kind of theorize about those separately um so so the phenomenal character will be more relevant to the sensory imaginings functional role more relevant to the belief like

49:33 imaginings um so but but is there a but is there a phenomenal character distinctive of the imagination part or is it just that there's like sensory phenomenal character used imaginatively or something like that so is there what it's like to imagine that's what kind of what I'm asking according to yeah um well I yeah there there there views on this differ uh so yeah yeah there are a lot of different views on this so um you know some people think well some

50:09 people think well not all imagery is I guess I think not all imagery is sensory imagining uh or at least you might feel like you want to say that you might think sensory imagining is more like you know you know considering the merely possible whereas you know when I like imagine the Cheerios I had this morning for breakfast that's just like representing something of the past using an imagery that's you know that the phenomenology of that is different than the sort of more possibility oriented imagining um so therefore it's not

50:43 imagining it's just remembering say so you know the relationship between remembering and imagining you know comes up here um how to understand those if they both involve mental imagery and both phenomenally similar in that sense is there a further phenomenal diff difference between you know phenomenology of remembering phenomenology of sensory imagining that's not remembering and trying to get into that um and I've gotten into those things a bit and sort of later I've done some work on episodic memory since the book since there's a good sort of literature

51:15 going on that and the relation of that to imagination so sort of dealt so there are those questions um were you asking about is there a phenomenology of like belief like imagining yeah or that you know um some people will say yes but you know others no um I didn't I haven't dwelt on those questions um okay but um you know I was sort of drawn to the stuff on propositional imagining

51:49 initially from a 2000 year 2000 um Sean Nichols and Steven Stitch paper cognitive theory of pretense and in which appeared in cognition um which was which is really nice if you were going to have this sort of a distinct State view of of like a belief like imagining that would be the view to have was really nicely developed in a lot of detail like they're trying to do a kind of formal boxology where you got your belief box your desire box and the imagination box and trying to support the belief in this element this distinct

52:24 element of cognitive architecture by appeal to result on pretense and children and things like that um and then so I you know one way I sort of another way I entered the imagination literature was through interest in that work and that's that's has nothing to do with phenomenology has nothing to do with imagery even they are really focused on this question of like how do you keep in mind stuff that you're pretending you know this just just

52:57 without getting confused you know psychologists who thought that there's this problem you know like how do we keep these two different mental Registries like the pretended World from what I really believe like that seems like ripe for confusion the what we're what you know what's pretended must be cognitively quarantined from our actual beliefs and they try to math this out in a rigorous way how but at the same time it has to be deeply informed by what you believe you know like you can't pretend to be at a tea party without drawing all your beliefs about well what even goes what

53:29 is a tea party what goes on in a tea parties it's all got to kind of make it into imagination too and so they got this whole kind of picture about how there's this interaction between boxes and but they're still distinct boxes right and um and that and so that's that's a aspect of the imagination literature has nothing to do with imagery nothing to do with um uh phenomenology uh and it has to do with like quarantining what they think of it as and and people interested in um hypothetical reasoning and conditional reasoning might be interested in that

54:00 kind in imagining in that kind of way too like so much but like how do we keep these things we don't yet believe but we're trying to work out the consequences of how do we keep them in mind uh so that we can do those kinds of hypothetical reasonings uh so that's that's you know that's an aspect of the whole imagination literature that's um kind of off to the side of the concerns U about like imagery and things though they do get mixed together too because someone might say oh and pretend and hypothetical reason you got to have the

54:33 imagery in there too so how's that going to work I mean part of the reason why I was asking those because I was trying to find the motivation for for well the this deep-seated desire it seems that some the have for there to be a separate State that's not belief or desire and I was wondering if is it is there appeals to like the phenomenology I know there's some stuff about well they just seem different in terms of like their their results and stuff like that we can get into that in just a bit where they say it's not belief because uh and then they give some reasons because beliefs act this way but pretends it

55:06 doesn't act that way allegedly but is there something more to it is there something is there supposed to be like well you can kind of tell introspectively when you're imagining and it doesn't seem belief likee or is there any aspect of that that's motivating theorist to posit this suig generous imaginative State I mean I think there is but you know they also like aren't going to try to bound their arguments on they going to try to found their arguments on something else but I do think driving know people you know David velman some

55:40 just quoted is like he considers in some of his work like whether you could pretend you know using just beliefs and so on and you know yeah it's conceivable but it would be depressing you know depress you know what a depressing you you know yeah what a a bummer man yeah like uh you know like um you know depressingly unchildlike if you were just con Consulting your beliefs you know you know like let me see what I believe you know as though that you know

56:14 you know so um I think there's kind of a sympathy for the imagination being this sort of you know untamed horse of the mind you know that harness occasionally and let's not say it's belief and okay if we can find an argument for this view great if we can't we're just not going to that other view anyway you know like yeah I mean that's interesting because I also was wondering like I I just sort of in response to your views do I was wondering if like the debate

56:47 between you and someone who has this Su generous view does it often turn out to be like the debate between like a you know dualist with respect to Consciousness and like an Illusionist with respect to Consciousness sort of one thinking no you've explained it away and the other side saying no I'm trying to say what it is um is there a kind of do you think there's a parallel there in this imagination debate yeah uh yeah I think there is I I am um yeah I think you know I I've kind of

57:21 treaded into this like the first you know known materialist or something I don't the first known reductivist of imagination l or something but like um yeah you know I I said in a in a piece okay so there's going to be a a um it really Echoes what you just said um there's going to be a symposium uh in in analysis on the book late arriving in in a few months and Neil Van L who works does great work on imagination he's one of the commentators and um one of the

57:55 things things he's like accused me of he you know it's like oh you're you're you know um you're trying to your view is like okay you're really working hard to do without to be parsimonious and doing without this extra thing of imagination but it it's it's like he says it's Pennywise parsimony because like it's just not that costly to add imagination to The View and then you can much easier explain stuff than and not having to bend backwards and doing all your control portions to um uh to explain imagination Within These ways like um

58:32 you just appeal to imagination and then you can do all this great work so don't worry don't you know don't be so Pennywise with your uh parsimony um or pound foolish or whatever with the with the parsimony um and my response to that was like well that's from a perspective where you say oh we're both kind of explaining the same things but I'm just working super hard you know to make do without imagination why am I doing that but we're not there's one big thing that you're not explaining which is Imagination yeah

59:05 like I'm explaining something to you're not so we're not it's not like two views and one's just a little bit more parsimonious it's like no it's it's one view that's explaining imagination the other that's not and they're just helpings to it in a way yeah they're helping themselves to it in a way and and then when then what they say about it is not internally consistent you know if you it's like this is one of my complaints about imagination and probably happens in similar things in the conscious literature it's like people have say a lot of things about imagination like it can do this it can

59:38 do that sometimes it does this sometimes it does the other you know sometimes it's this one thing but um there seemingly like if you were to add up all the sort of platitudes about imagination like what it's apt to do what it's apt to cause it and what it's apt to cause in return mhm it's a big mess like oh it might cause it it's not it's not going to give you some nice you know sort of functional role then we'll find the occupant of the role you know it's um you know in one case it's going to trigger strong emotions another time you

1:00:11 might imagine oh it doesn't trigger any emotions or you know one time you imagine something and you draw out kind of uh very realistic you know things from it other times you imagine you get completely unrealistic things like so and they just say you can do this you can do that and that's fine to list all those things but you're not actually giving anything you're not saying anything particularly helpful or is if you're trying to give a theory of it like if you're trying if you just want to appeal to imagination and some there exp something else like okay fine the less you say about imagination the less

1:00:45 helpful that is but still you can do that but I I guess what I say in defense my Approach is I'm actually trying to say something about imagination itself and then you know and also I mean throughout the book you make this argument which I think is really clever which is you kind of try to say look you know here's my explanation of relevant uh phenomenon XY or whatever and then it just turns out that this like Su generous imaginative state is redundant like what what work would it really do it doesn't seem like it's really explaining anything at all um and so I think that the strategy is successful in

1:01:20 my opinion that it was like it to me it revealed like yeah what real that's part of why I was asking like why are they so gung-ho about the the need for this thing when when the explanations that you provide kind of show that it's in the end redundant that all the work is done already so why need posit this extra strange thing um so yeah I just found that to be somewhat curious may maybe I was too convinced by your view but uh it did strike me well that was the point of the book it's supposed to be no but I mean appreciate I mean you

1:01:53 know um you know I'm sure we could get it you know the the the sweet generous imagination folks here and and they would start to you know um try to point to the clunkier parts of my view but it doesn't seem like you're contouring yourself so I mean just to give an example for the people listening like let's take I guess since we've been talking about pretense so much I mean there's so many other things as well but starting with pretense yeah like how would you explain um I don't know why everyone has to pretend about tea parties like what is this obsession with tea parties but all right so how do you explain the

1:02:27 pretense of a of a a tea party um without invoking the suie generous uh imaginative State well you already said I guess so we know a little bit but can't we make it explicit yeah sure so you know um there was a famous experiment I think it was alen Leslie did um where young children like two or three years old you know are having a tea party they understand the Tea Party and there's there actually one interesting portion of it like like um two cups you know they have a couple cups on the table

1:03:01 experiment pretends to pour tea in both of them and then um of course no tea is actually poured and then takes one of the cups and shakes it like this and puts it back down right and um and so then the child is asked which one of these still had which one of these has te in it and they correctly point just to the one that wasn't turned upside down now all the kids do this right there's no kids that fail this test I mean I think it's I think by

1:03:33 three they're all doing really well okay I can't remember the exact there are certain ages where it's less so but I think at least by then um yeah this is and and um interestingly they say ha not only is it a case of pretending something that you don't believe namely that there's pretending you know that there's tea in there she's also pretending what she believes namely that the other she believes the other one is empty and

1:04:05 she's also pretending that it's empty because that's why she only points to the other one so you can and and this is interest seems to be some sort of double dissociation between if you can put it that way um you know uh belief and Imagination you can imagine what you disbel believe but you can also imagine what you believe you can or pretend and you can also pretend what you believe you can pretend what you disbel we all know that but you can also pretend things that you believe and and that actually does create a wrinkle when you try to Def

1:04:39 Define what it is to pretend in terms of belief because it seems like oh wait I can't say that it's pretending that pee while believing that not pee because the child is pretending that one of the cups is empty and believes it it's empty right so that leads to like a further like and my answer to that is like well it's not really that deep of a puzzle it's all in the context of some larger Story part of which she doesn't believe you know and so there's got to be something you dis believe in the in the vicinity of what's going on here for it to be preent and

1:05:12 then other things that you believe can come along so I can pretend that I'm a philosophy Professor giving a lecture uh even if I'm not you know when I'm not really giving a lecture even even if I believe I'm a philosophy Professor because well I don't believe I'm really giving lecture right now it's in the context of that anyway so but those are the interesting like little psychological little Phil philosophical points I guess that you know if you not appreciating has have like driven people even you know psychologists working on people like Alan Leslie and you know um Orie

1:05:46 fredman who say he's not you know motivated by that but um you know to to think that yeah we really got to think of it as this distinct State because yeah you can can pretend what you can it's just it's just totally irrelevant what you believe you might pretend it or not be pretending it or or not anyway so but what goes on for me when when when the child pretends that the cups are you know one's empty one's full the child recognizes um that we're playing a game okay through kind of manner cues and

1:06:19 things which are important those have been studied you know like winks and nods and things like when we sort of grasp that someone's pretending is it's not a trivial recognition when we recognize that about something okay we're playing this game where we act uh like things are away that they're not really okay something like that like this is the kind of game we we do sometimes and um experimenters just acted like she poured tea in the uh in the cups um I understand this game that means I should act like there's tea in

1:06:52 the cups you know so believe and and then um oh look the EXP picked a cup up and turned it over um what would happen now the child has to think what what would happen ask herself what would happen if a cup with te in it were turned over so now we get the sort of hypothetical reasoning part does she need to imagine or have some non um belief state to at this crucial point this is the point where some people might say yeah she needs to she needs to represent in her mind a full

1:07:24 cup was turned over right and that can't be a belief because she doesn't believe one was but I say no I mean she just needs to think well what has happened in the past when cups I've seen have been turned over well in you know my experience when a cup gets turned over the stuff spills out of it um you know in this case therefore if this cup had had stuff in it and was turned over it would now be empty so um so there's and I'm not saying all

1:07:58 conditional reason can get that analysis but sometimes if you got a lot of relevant past experience you know like every time I've seen people turn over cups many times and stuff and you can infer from that well if someone had just now overturned another cup it would be empty too um now I should play along I should act as I would if it were empty and I should act as if it were as I should for the other one if it were full and um so you're keeping track of what's going on in the game like in the game he turned this over I got to remember that you know I got to think

1:08:32 about what happens with cups and stuff um and I need to you know um engage sometimes in some hypothetical reasoning but that hypothetical reasoning might just only require beliefs about which beliefs does the child have on your view like what what like you because it's part of your view that she has beliefs and she actually believes I mean that's probably redundant but she actually has these things what she really believes whereas a lot of people want to say no she can't really believe the things she's pretending because they're all like false and she doesn't think they're true

1:09:05 so on your view she there's a distinctive content to those beliefs what what is it right yeah so she believes that we are acting like there's um that we're acting like there's tea in the cups we're acting as would be appropriate if there's tea in the cup so you can put that way um she believes that if a if a full cup had been turned over it would now be empty empty so she has that's a belief in the conditional um she believes she she should play along and she believes she

1:09:37 should act like the cup is empty um those are some of the beliefs and so you know and there you know in in more complex pretenses like this like unlike the lion case we talked about ear there will often be a belief in a condition like it if then if this had happened then this would happen happen um and so a big part of my view is saying we those are still beliefs right and to to to arrive at those beliefs there's always some prior beliefs we can um use to infer those conditional beliefs from from them we

1:10:12 don't need to sort of represent the antecedent of the conditional like the cup is turned over in imagination as its distinct mental state in order to just survive at the Bel so there are a couple chapters on that um so that's the whole story yeah no exactly I just want to get the whole account on the on the table so that we could see that really there doesn't seem to be any room left over for some kind of other state to be doing some work at this point right right yeah and I I mean I try to drive it home by saying

1:10:45 like these all this reasoning all we know her beliefs need to be highly relevant to her ability to pretend like all this stuff about she she needs to have beliefs about what tends to happen when cups get turned over you don't have any beliefs about that prior to sitting down it says you know imagining anything is not going to help you right if you've never seen a cup get overturned or never seen liquids you're not it's not going to help you imagining it's not going to help you um figure out how to act when the experiment goes like that you know you're going to be totally puzzled so clearly belief to be richly involved and

1:11:19 this is true on even on the nickel and Stitch uh view you know on their view well all of your beliefs get copied into imagination and then and certain ones are weeded out they don't fit with what you're imagining and then you kind of go from there and that's like well that's a that's pretty heavy duty stuff to like copy all my beliefs why not can are you sure I can't just make do with my belief skip the imagination part are you absolutely sure you know like let's uh and so I think yeah I think you can um so um yeah so then I I try to press

1:11:54 that point against it like you know the police evolved so it really is just like what what what what is absolutely necessary about this crucial moment when you step outside of your beliefs right to have some representation that's like a sweet generous imagining like what what do we really want from that that we can't get from just the platitude oh yeah he's imagining they're imagining she's imagining she's at a tea party but but by what we mean by that is this all this psychological stuff is going on with her acting this way acting

1:12:27 that way drawing on beliefs and hypotheticals and so on you know and still childlike it's still child still refreshingly childlike yeah beautiful for the children this view is but and so on your view I mean so you have you make this distinction which we really haven't talked about too much between AD attitudinal imagination and imagistic Imagination and so this is all in terms of attitudinal right a imagining as you would put it um so even if even if the child kind of pictures

1:13:00 some imaginary liquid flowing out of the um overturned teacup that could still be playing the role of a belief or judgment in in in your view is that right so so that it would you could all be sort of propositional in some sense yeah like so one of her beliefs on my view could be something like you know liquid flowing out of the cup would look like thus and such you know and Pi thus and such is filled in by an image

1:13:33 and that's now she's involved some sensory imagining but that was really just a judgment about like what the scenario would look like were it to occur that's the belief she has like she really thinks like yeah if you had overturned liquid and gone like this it would really look about like that you know she's she's using her image to represent and that's a somewhat controversial view though right I mean do you find resistance to that yeah I um I do but you know this is an interesting place where

1:14:09 um there haven't gotten as much push back as you might think um because I was always so I've had this view you know since I think I first published it like a paper in 2015 saying hey we got these Jud they're just ordinary beliefs or judgments with have mental images as proper parts I know there's a whole tradition of philosophy that says your beliefs are non- imagistic they're prop they because you're they're I don't know they're a modal they represent propositions you couldn't have an image be part of that um but you know um there a problematic

1:14:43 interaction of different formats and things and sort of you know different possible objections you could raise but that's just very much a kind received view like I've never found the elus like where is the paper where it's written where that has to be so you know what I mean I feel like there's just like this this paper like someone showed like oh yeah belief has to get that analysis and and then we don't know what to say about all the imagery we're using because those aren't our beliefs are just stuff's kind of swirling around um you know hum didn't have that view you know like right all any empiricist

1:15:17 doesn't thinks that you know beliefs are part constituted by me imagery or like you know any kind of imper so there's this whole there you know um I don't know if it's like a kind of fodorian kind of background or something I would say that I wonder if also there's some precedent for this kind of view in the phenomenal concept strategy literature where people think talk about you know using the experience itself as part of a concept or something like that and I know you know Ned block has a has a view where he thinks that IM uh imagistic things can

1:15:52 be cognitively enveloped and used in working stuff like that so maybe the view is becoming more people are becoming more open to this idea yeah which is nice one one question I have about it though is um and which I didn't really see you talk about in the book so uh I was curious about what your view was because we often are very comfortable talking about unconscious beliefs and desires um and if we can have these kind of imagistic beliefs or desires uh does that commit you to their being a current es of these things

1:16:26 unconsciously um or not or I just wondered like are can these kind of imagistic attitudes occur unconsciously according to your account so maybe you could have unconscious imagination imagistic or some or something I mean nothing I say would rule that out you know and I don't know yeah and so some people commit very heavily to the idea that mental images have to be sort of like you know conscious in respect of their yeah so I was curi I don't I don't you know I don't see any yeah I I don't have that view I think it's just just as

1:17:02 have to be unconscious as any other type of so you'd be fine with like an unconscious imagin imagining yeah yeah um yeah I you know I don't know you know I'd have to think about the situations where i' say that that has occurred but um I don't have any sort of you know a priori reason to think that that's not possible or something um okay you know um yeah and so and the other thing what you don't talk about a

1:17:33 lot about in the book is the imagistic kind of imagining um and you sort of focus the whole book around attitudinal imagining um which is fine I'm not it's not objection or anything but I am curious like uh so do you have a view about imagistic imagining um I've been working on that a little bit in a little more detail recently um so so I mean there's a lot of questions you can raise about it um um so when you so let me so when you ask

1:18:07 like do you have a view about imagistic managing it's like well are you saying like what is the question is it do I have a view about when people make use of a mental images or do you have or is it a more like so are you talking about like so you're going to include episodic memory in that do you have you know and and and then other cases where you use Mental imagery or is it something else no or is it something else like no I mean sensory imagination that's not memory that's more

1:18:39 like using mental images if it's just like using mental images but it with this sort of attitude of imagining attached to them then I feel like well I did say good amount about that but yeah clearly there's a lot more that could be said um and I some some things here here's something that I've been kind of I guess tell something I've kicking around in a recent in a draft paper um that maybe would speak to your question like but you're still not

1:19:12 talking about sensory imagination um certain interested in uh you know I've been astounded as everybody with like you know the new de generative AI stuff and and image generating AI such as like mid journey and DOL E3 and all that kind of stuff um I think those can provide some interesting analogies for thinking about imagistic imagination um so you know writing in the prompt right you write in this prompt what you want and then you

1:19:44 get some interesting image related to The Prompt thanks to this really you know huge Network that's carefully weighted and so on uh through train through you know obviously um now what can we say about I think that's an interesting way to think about imagistic imagination um because on that sort of view it's okay so the common view the sort of the paired view that goes with sort of the sweet generous imagination view that I've sort of been arguing against the paired view for sensory

1:20:18 imagination is that like sensory imagination is kind like this free kind of you know um unconstrained capacity you know that when we want to use it for serious business like figuring out how to get home or to some place or whether the couch was through the door we can constrain it in ways but otherwise it's just kind of this free floating thing um I I you know that's the kind of view that to me feels like it's a non view because it's not really placing any real constraints on what the nature of

1:20:50 imagination itself is um so I said well but but look at these these you know generative AI algorithms on the one hand they're highly constrained in fact they're nothing but constraints right right and and you know on the other hand you can get as wild or Fantastical a thing out of it as you want so in that sense it's completely unconstrained in what it can imagine like you can put a unicorn jumping over you know three elves uh you know whatever and then it's going to use it's

1:21:23 completely very tight constrained Network to generate this Fantastical image um so my way of my suggestion is like stop thinking about think of Cent imagination more like that we've got this like carefully weighted trained ability just through our past experience of the world that we can rely on it's always tightly constrained okay but we can rely on it to generate crazy Fantastical stuff or really serious stuff you know like getting you know am I going to jump over

1:21:56 succeeded in jumping over this you know River or whatever let me kind of feed into this you know carefully trained visual offline Network the input and see what I get I think people have sometimes you know mistaken the fact that you can get while you can you can ask the network to generate kind of bizarre weird stuff or really realistic stuff for for they've mistaken that as for the idea that imagining itself has no constraints or no nature to it it's just like un predicted and needs to be constrained

1:22:30 when you're actually serious about getting something serious done whereas I think even when you're just fantasizing or mind wandering you're probably making use of the very same complete you know whether you use the AI generator right to like get the project at work done or to just make a goofy you know screen saver um you're still making use of all the same constraints um and and if you want to know the nature of the thing then you're going to want an account of all in the

1:23:05 case of the image generating the account of the the the Deep neural network and all the waiting and so on and that will be an account of imagination you know that tells you something about how it works um and it's one where it has sort of the same where it is yeah so like you know not that you know I don't know how far we can take the analogies between deep neural networks and in the human mind like obviously that's a really interesting and active area of research but I think that's a case where we could usefully think about possible analogies

1:23:38 to kind of think about sensory imagination differently interesting so would you be inclined to say that these systems are imagining or that some ancestor system of them could yeah um I don't see a reason I don't I I don't see a reason for deep skepticism about it I put it that way you know this is all very new we're trying to understand the relationships of these systems to human Minds um we're trying to understand how deep the analogies go clearly you know the whole fact that

1:24:12 they're based on artificial neural networks and artificial neural networks be structural similarities actual human networks that's important you know yeah that's but we also know there are deep differences um but I've been writing about this also separately just about you know llms and connectionism and things I sort of been getting into this a bit um I mean you do bring up like generative adversarial networks in the sort of last chapter of your book as well oh yeah right yeah it was just beginning to come out then and um yeah and I talked about that finding it pretty thought provoking stuff and so

1:24:46 yeah I'm definitely um I'm definitely interested in that and I think um you know from my standpoint of this it could be that llms and the image generating things are kind of working completely differently than human Minds do but it's also seems that would be you know this isn't any kind of argument it's just sort of observation like you know um W how it be wild if you could get something so you know tweaked as like human cognition apparent human cognition into two completely different

1:25:19 ways right you know like are you sure there's not some especially when one is kind of modeled on the other right yeah when when yeah when you couldn't have developed one without being on the other are you sure that it didn't sort of ultimately sort of latch on to the way the prior one's actually working so I mean that's kind of interesting because I mean many people find well creativity generally speaking but this kind of imagination that you're talking about to be sort of the thing which these machines will never be able to do and find something kind of

1:25:52 unimaginative or uncreative about the outputs of Dolly 3 and um in that kind of case and so it sounds like what you're suggesting is that that's uh too quick yeah yeah I think it is I mean that's something I've been thinking about you know more since the book too and it's just um you know these these things that we actually get to interact with they're they're made to be Mass Market they're made to like please everybody as much as possible right you know like they're and they're they're

1:26:24 trained on you know kind of an indiscriminate variety of you know all kinds of stuff you know but if you if you just make some sort of sh relatively shallow tweaks to them like well we're not going to try to please everybody with its outputs and we're just training it on um on you know a kind of curated selection of works and things and reinforced for certain traits in the work and so on as actual artists are you give it a much more different then I think you quickly get um things that

1:26:59 seem much more creative you know much less Plan and there's a guy El gal at um Rucker cognitive science who who Who's done some interesting work like that like they actually reinforced for certain traits of like originality and and so on and um I can't remember there are a couple different ones but they're essentially just trying to train it not to you know please everybody but to sort of mirror you know traits of the most you know respected artworks of the 20th century while still being a little bit

1:27:32 different from them or something like that yeah and when they did that you know the outputs were not discriminable by ordinary folks you know from like they were preferred as like seemed more artistic than you know actual artists you know I'll just say anecdotally that my wife and I went to the MoMA uh recently and we went in and they had this like giant like morphing mural thing on the front wall it was like just changing into all different sorts of things and it look some of it looked Picasso like

1:28:03 some of it l Bango like then it was abstract and then it was like realistic and we were like sitting there and there was there's little benches so you can sit there and watch it we were like whoa this thing is amazing we were thinking it was some digital artist or something like that and then as we left we read the little inscription it was like this is a generative AI that's been trained on all the artwork in the MoMA and has like come up with its own original things and I was like wow I would not have guessed that that was AI like it was so strikingly cool and original I like kind of Blown Away um and that's kind of a critique that you hear sometimes about these AI is that they're not truly original they're all just

1:28:36 taking the the training data and then rearranging it and then I hear you kind of saying is like uh we're already kind of doing that like that's what we're people are already kind of doing it's so in that sense like are they much different than what we're doing um and that's so I guess your your view would be they could be really original in sense like something something truly original could be produced by this sort of H method yeah I mean I just it just doesn't seem that different from you know human artists being trained by other human artists and influenced by

1:29:10 you know all that training and then it refracts through their particular differences in their history and Sensibility to something a bit different but it's still influenced in that way um yeah and and yeah um there's a lot to say about that you know one of the other things I kind of very interested in you know the creative process and and and in the book I sort of quote some like songwriters and um how much they kind of invoke the unconscious you know when they're

1:29:42 talking about where their best ideas come from right um because you know once you know one thing people s well you know the AI can't be creative because it's not conscious or whatever and then you know question about creativity get wrapped up in questions about Consciousness one interesting thing that seems possible with creativity is you can possibly avoid con questions about Consciousness by saying and even agency more controversially I guess but um by saying well even if you ask actual artists about at least many you know about their actual how process they're sort of like it's not

1:30:16 conscious you know that's not where the good idea I mean I they can be K but if I sit down and try to consciously write the song or you know so it's not going to be nearly as good or original as if I just kind of get myself in a state I don't know how it happens and you know right can I forget who it was that you quoted but they said if I start to think about it I stop because that's when it gets messed up you know it's like yeah so I gotta Just Let It Go um get out of my own way so to speak yeah right yeah yeah that was Neil Young right okay so um yeah so sort of you know you take

1:30:50 Consciousness out of it and then um and then you think about the different kinds of trainings something could have and then there's just this broader question like well is that a bad thing if AI is genuinely creative like um it feels you know naturally feels a little like oh you know but why you know so is is it the same kind of thing like just conscious AI seems yeah unsettling or is it something else well I mean I feel like just just off the cup I would say we've been trained through science

1:31:25 fiction for so long to be thinking of AI hyper rational and logical and then what the true AI turned out to be was really creative and good at Humanities and it's just like not what we expected you know that's right right yeah yeah like yeah it's not logical and I love it man you know exactly oh man so I before we turning back to this I wanted just one more question about sensory imagination so are you more open there to a kind of soe generous uh notion of imagination or are

1:31:59 you going to try some kind of reductive explanation in that category as well um I'm not sure how to answer that but you know um I'm look I'm open to the idea that look there are some questions you can only answer some things you can only do by like relying on you're like a sensory motor knowledge uh certain kind of sensory

1:32:34 motor of knowhow that you develop through actually perceiving the world and um you could describe it just Loosely as like through simulating a certain situation [Music] um I don't you know and could that be carved off from other things maybe parts of it could you know

1:33:08 not so I don't think you could lose your full imagination right but like this ability like I don't I'm curious with in your sort of case of a Fantasia like I mean this raises the question like are there any things you can't do well that other people can do well as a result of the a Fantasia um so I mean I I would say no it's not that I've meant I mean I meant a rotation task I'm good at and it feels like I'm doing something to be honest

1:33:41 but it's not like picturing I kind of feel like well I'm rotating something I guess when I imagine like could could this fit over there um but yeah I think the the data so you know maybe there's some kind of unconscious image that I'm manipulating I'm open to that idea um and I like this paper that came out from uh I don't know if you saw recently about a Fantasia as a kind of mental blindsight um by by Ned and Jorge um okay and and was it mattius I think anyway but anyway so I I like I sort of I'm open to those kinds of views

1:34:13 but as far as I know there isn't really any food deficits um I know so many people are surprised like they say you know you have a Fantasia which I only found out about about in grad school by the way when we were discussing speckled hens and how many That Old Chestnut and I was like wait you guys are actually picturing hens in your head like what the um that that was a very bizarre moment for me but anyway um I love to read I and I want to ask you about fiction before I know your time you can't stay here forever but I do want to try to get to that um I love fiction I've always loved fiction um and a lot

1:34:48 of people when they find out I have a Fantasia they they're like what what wait how do you read books like what are you doing I was like I don't know I'm doing something I love it but it certainly doesn't involve little pictures in appearing in my mind that's that much is for sure yeah I okay I mean we could talk about a Fantasia too I I I always I'm I'm sort of like do I see little pictures no I I I see I wouldn't have described myself as having a

1:35:21 Fantasia but at the same time uh if I was going to be at all literal about it it's not like seeing a it's not very like I guess I say it's not very like seeing a picture I think there's a range here uh some people are vivid imagers and they can like picture a hyperrealistic apple like to in extreme detail other people just kind of have this like vague Appley kind of thing and other people just like me are just like have blink space so I think there's a bit of a range there um but like my son my

1:35:54 9-year-old son he when he says he imagines an apple it's like right before like right before his eyes and all any detail he wants I was like okay um if you say so bro I can't even imagine what that's like yeah well um yeah well with the with the just the issue about you know sensory imagination was there a question about like does it does it reduce in some ways maybe not you could you could see a joint I guess but it wouldn't be the sort of joint where it's

1:36:27 like the reason we have it is because this is stuff we don't believe that's not the joint you know right like it's not like we need to keep these things separate because this is all stuff we're just imagining it no like you use this ability and maybe you could lose that ability and still you know have your others you use the sensory ability sensory kind of motor knoow to solve certain kind of questions or and things um but if you think about it in attitudinal

1:37:00 terms there's no reason to to posit some distinct attitude behind what's going on there right although I grant you know there could be um there seems to be you know there could likely be some sort of cognitive difference between you know well even the difference between semantic memory and episodic memory kind of gets I was going to say like oh you could you could lose your episodic memory but still have all your semantic memory like that's kind of like losing imagination but still you know being a

1:37:32 rational person who knows facts and things like that but even that's kind of um questionable like people have been questioning that distinction that's sort of been passed down from tving and others that there's a really deep joint here like yeah think memory really does seem to bleed into episodic memory and I don't think you have much episodic memory with out semantic memory so even there it's like ah I don't know how deep the joint is like yeah we're you know some I could see some of spectrum where you use more or less of this kind of

1:38:06 sensory motor knowhow that we associate with visualizing or hearing stuff in your head you know you know but don't draw an attitude distinction in there and is what I would say and um and then be very careful about um what even what deeper distinctions you do draw like if you unless you got really clear double dissociations between those abilities um look at again like look at contemporary you know you got your

1:38:38 language large language models just dealing with a lang language but then you got your other one deep neural networks dealing with imagery and stuff on one level this a similar kind of architecture right know one's doing images and one's doing language like interesting we do both you know like there's no given that those two architectures very structurally similar can handle imagery or words there's not you know a lot of the kind of distinctions philosophers have kind of assumed like there's this deep image versus wordlike distinction in the mind I'm not so sure about you know so I

1:39:12 don't I don't try to build that assumption into anything that I'm doing interesting I I will also I think just point out that I think there's some evidence that people with a Fantasia have less ability with episodic memory that they're not as good okay um so maybe that has maybe that has an interesting consequence um and if eptopic memory does involve images like I have memories about things relating to me but I can't they're not involving any images but I still know what I have for breakfast and what I wore yesterday and things like

1:39:45 that um so so it does seem to me that maybe there's more a bleed through in that sense but um just really quickly I'm getting very distracted by what you're saying but um when when it comes to episodic memory you know there's a debate about whether animals have it like for example especially certain kinds of birds that are food um stores and things like that so um is it your view then I wonder that they do or don't have because sometimes they people say episodic like um do they don't have two episodic memory but they

1:40:18 have something that's kind of like it uh but it's more factual or less imagistic or something so I sort of wonder if you have a view about that especially if it's related to imagination and then tied to the question of could animals not are nonhumans engage in imagination yeah that's tough I mean I don't have um a view really about what's it like the food cashing JS or something exactly scrub JS scrub JS yeah um whether that should count as episodic memory um

1:40:53 open to being you know learning more about that um I think there could be something to yes I think it is an interesting topic like why or in if you know episodic memory is really far more developed in humans than other species um and I think it kind of gets to um the possible relation between like semantic memory and episodic memory like if episodic memory was just a separate

1:41:27 system just like stores stuff like videos and you can just call on them you know then like yeah give it to whatever species you want that seems you know they got the module you know and then they can rewind to where they did and and but if instead it's kind of wrapped up with your whole conception of what kind of thing you are with what kind of history and and you know what's typical for I I think you know I'm kind of I am sort of sympathetic to some of the more the re like constructive memory work it's pretty popular where it's like remembering is is is not really in

1:42:01 general like replaying some finding the right file to replay it's like based on everything I know right right I've got at my disposal let me kind of construct the most plausible representation of what happened at that time and so it's far more cognitively taxing and sophisticated thing than the the more um the analogy that you would draw if you think of it as like a set of video recordings you know it's like I gota I got to do some like problem solving in a way to figure out you know when I try to remember am I remembering you know three

1:42:34 days ago or two days ago and why why would I how would I tell the difference there it's a pretty complicated thing you know remembering like dinner three days ago as opposed to four days ago like um and so I I wouldn't you know it's from that perspective that I would sort of say well if that's a really important feature of epis tic memory I I could see why it wouldn't be that common in a lot of other species even if they have some sort of analogous thing to some degree and that would be a link to imagination as well on your view wouldn't it that that recalling episodic

1:43:08 memories would involve something that is well I mean it would involve imagination on on your account yeah yeah I talk about it as like um you know construct the same way people think of imagining as sort of constructive as involving some sort of some active construction of a scenario not just a replay of some past scenario but I I'm whether I'm sort of facing the future I'm thinking what's going to happen tonight when I go home and I'm I'm drawing on what I know to try to construct an accurate representation of that it's not a whole lot

1:43:40 different um if I'm trying to remember something you know cogn we got essentially the same systems going here um I'm doing the best I can to construct it and then you know and episodic memory literature there's all this debate about you know well when do you count as really remembering it you know as just getting getting an accurate representation of it clearly there's a difference between the two and then oh God you know the ink spelt on that you know it's fun literature actually i' I've partaken in it but um um but yeah as you're saying there's this connection

1:44:16 to imagination then that's that's partly why I got drawn into it interesting okay so I I want to get to fiction if we can you wrote three three chapters of your book are on fiction so it's a huge topic we won't um probably have time to cover it all but I I did want to kind of get your account of um fiction and so one of the things that I was curious about is what your definition of fiction is so you you do state it in the book but I wonder if you like have you changed your mind on or what what is what do you mean by fiction

1:44:49 okay um I think I said in the book and it wasn't something I dwell a lot on but I think I said um you know a work of fiction is like a set of and well this only works let's just say the literary fiction the written fiction not like a fic I think it could extend to movies and things but it's just a set of sentences it's easier to say um for for written fiction set of sentences I guess it could be or images for a movie um put forward by

1:45:24 an uh its author with um the expectation that [Music] um readers will not you know with the belief and also the I guess with the belief that at least some or most of them are not true and that believe and with the expectation that readers will um will not think that uh all true or something like that and we'll read it for reasons other than

1:45:59 gaining you know knowledge about what has happened things like for for sort of entertainment or personal edification or something uh something like that I mean nothing like that nothing very complicated yeah um but something about like it it traced to the expectations and intents of the author as making it a work of fiction like um so even if everything the author wrote happens cruly to be true um still the author put it forward with the

1:46:31 expectation that the readers would um not assume that everything's true and and I suppose even you know not think that the author was putting it forward to be believed I me hence the disclaimer at the beginning this is a work of fiction all relations to people yeah right right right let me know right right right we're all on the same page yeah uh so this seems like a very liberal definition which was one of the questions I had is so okay um so I mean obviously it covers like you said you could be easily extended to to movies or

1:47:04 uh you know other things that involve more than just sentences but can it be like for example do you think of songs as fictions um yeah I guess my immediate answer is no okay um I don't think are fictions either okay so I was curious yeah why what what what part of the definition do they not mean um so okay that's

1:47:44 yeah yeah that's a good point um so take a poem because it's just word and it could be all sentences is there is it important to distinguish a poem from a work of fiction yeah you know like uh Robert Frost the two paths or whatever path not taken all sentences you're not supposed to take them to be true I suppose

1:48:17 yeah does it have something to do maybe with the intention of the author cuz you say that ultimately it boils down to the author's prescribing that you do something not to necessarily imagine them um but to make certain judgments or about what would be true or something in the case I guess is how you would put it uh or yeah um I guess you know so my you know why why I was concerned to distinguish those um from fictions why it would even matter

1:48:53 was connected to this idea that a fiction brings with it a fictional world you're just saying where intuitively like certain things are the case in the fictional world that weren't explicitly stated um so you know the standard example of like you know shlock Holmes has 10 fingers though you know it's true in fictions he really does have 10 fingers suppose but they never actually said that so in virtue of what and and then you know does it true that you know how do these fictional truths get

1:49:26 generated and um you know David Lewis has her influential paper on that that I was pretty sympathetic to in the book um just saying that well you have to consult the the the the consider the possible the most the the you know the nearest possible world where the fiction is told as known fact so imagine it's just being told as fact find the closest possible world and you consider what else is true in that world and this is kind of your heris of figuring out what's what's true but

1:50:01 merely sort of implied in the fiction so you got that whole apparatus going right and when you're enjoying a fiction now maybe so if I wanted to and and I and I guess you know I haven't thought much about this so you know it's a great question is something like that going on when we read a poem is there the truth of like what's true in the poem like you know maybe some poetry I mean some poetry is kind of like there's pros poetry you know like I don't know yeah I don't know that I'm gonna get

1:50:34 some like but other poetry is can be highly abstract and it's just like it seems like a misplaced question as it would be to like what's true in the symphony you know like or you know like that's just a a misplace and then you know and then the middle place is like what's true and like the radio head song with like they got the music and the lyrics and like is there a world like where are there implicit truths generated by the radio head song like uh you

1:51:08 know well that's part of what I was thinking about certain like certain it seems that way to me I mean so you know take a song like Jack and Diane a little diddy about Jack and Dion you know so there it's kind of a story element to lot of songs where they're I guess Jack and Diane have 10 hand 10 fingers 10 hands I guess they know that's why you're so good at the football but you know anyway so in a lot of these kind of lyrical settings it does seem as though there's a storytelling element not in every maybe

1:51:42 radio head's a good example of cases where that's not the case but even some radio head songs I would say um meet meet that criteria but yeah so I guess it's not an objection or a deep question I would just I just when I was read your definition of it I was like okay this applies quite generally right um but uh yeah I wasn't I wasn't like I was wondering how generally does it apply because for example songs came to my mind poems also pretense like is pretending of something fictional like is is that a fiction um it's it seems

1:52:17 like it me your definition in in in some sense um but but I wasn't sure like how like how do we constrain this definition of fiction or if it even really matters I mean I'm not really an expert on this literature so maybe it's already been dealt with I just was curious about how we're supposed to take this yeah no it's good it's a good question I think there's interesting stuff in it and I think people have wrangled a bit over you know definitions of what makes a fiction and some H it's just it's not we're not going to be able to do it you

1:52:50 know we're not going to yeah be able to give that account um um I do think you're right like you can talk about what's true in the pretense you know um and I think that that does seem to me to get a really similar analysis um um I know you introduced this operator thing and and maybe it's like you could give the pretense operator account of pretense right in the pretense it's true that the cups are filled with tea or so it did seem like there's a lot of similarities between

1:53:22 those and I just yeah I was just curious if you had a view about that or if you wanted to rule it out in some way um I don't yeah I don't so I don't want to rule out um giving a kind of similar analysis like truth in the pretense to you know because the child's saying in the pretense in instead of saying like you instead of characterizing the child as believing like you are acting like um you poured um you know you're acting like like you poured tea into the teacup um you could

1:53:58 say something like oh in the in this in this pretense game you poured tea in the teacup like you could do it with an operator like that and still a belief if I had said that though people would say oh you got this unreduced notion of pretense in the operator and that's that's you're just s smuggling imagination in that way or something so I just like would leave it out of that but I do think an analysis of but but you didn't do that in the fiction case because you you have what like defined as a fiction is like a set of sentences whether you're not to be taken to be

1:54:30 true or something like that so then you can introduce the the operator in that way um yeah that's right and then I said okay well I guess it's important that the notion of fiction for its definition doesn't need imagination for my project to say what it is to be a fiction uh so then I tried to say well it's a set of sentences put forward you're not going to believe it all and stuff um I have been pushed on it about like Yeah but isn't it problematic to have

1:55:04 the notion of fiction in the operator and is that make it somehow circular I don't think it does I mean unless there's some reason to think that you just can't Define fiction without mentioning imagination I think what you know I was trying to analyze what it is to be um what happens cognitively right when we when we're imagining what goes on in

1:55:39 a fiction I say a lot of it's just like judging that in the fiction thus and such has happened thus and such and um and then if you want to say well but what is a fiction I mean that's a fair question on the one hand we all have a pretty you know we have a we have a everyday grasp of it like I you know I can point out the works of fiction right and distinguish them non-fictions and so can you and we're not there's no deep puzzlement about where what the works of fiction are so um but then you know but then if you

1:56:13 want like a formal analysis of it you know um that'll be a project and we'll see if we could do it you know um unless there's some special reason to think that that's going to require you to invoke imagination then it's not really that a problem at least as far as I can see at the moment yeah no I didn't mean it as an objection I was just when I read the what you did Define it as it seemed to me to apply quite generally yeah I mean one thing that would in this territory that would there's a like a question

1:56:46 something I don't even know what to say about is like okay I talked about fiction like or or some of these other like Jack and Diane you can imagine situations where like the imagining we do in response to it is judging that in the fiction blah blah blah in the fiction Jack and Diane blah blah blah okay but what about when we're responding to other kinds of artworks like just you know um instrumental music you know yeah uh are we imagining in response to that um or you know when we

1:57:21 um respond to um you know artworks that are just visual or abstract artworks or really abstract poet God poetry or whatever are do we even need to say that we're imagining in enjoying those involves the imagination and you know if we do what is what what is that imagination yeah it's not it's not judging that according to this this is happening and this is happening well I wasn't that's actually something I wanted to ask you

1:57:53 about because okay in some cases it does seem to me sort of to be the case that that's what is intended um for example there there's a very famous classical piece called um Carnival of animals I don't know if you're familiar with this or not but uh the um it's it's a nice piece and the the the composer tries to give you a sequence of these movements which are to evoke certain animals so there's one for penguins and there's one for like underwater aquarium and there's one for um giraffes or whatever on the planes and I was playing this game with

1:58:28 my my son where I was like here listen to this now each one of these is supposed to be an animal guess which one it is and he got several of them right not all of them but a lot of them not a lot of them but a few of them he was able to say oh this is Penguins um and it did seem to me sort of like the composer wanted you to judge in that case that this was like evocative of the penguin like the way they walk or the Bing sounds they make or the slithering of the snake um and I I I wondered like if a lot of these especially when you're thinking about scores for movies and

1:59:00 these other kinds of things that that there's an intention of the composer to get you to to make a certain like oh this is the chase scene music this is when they're running away this is when you should be afraid um which heightens the emotional aspect so yeah it I was wondering like are those meeting the definition in some sense like it's not true you wouldn't say it's true in that piece that there's a penguin but you would say oh yeah it's the the the composer wanted me to make the Judgment this sounds like penguins yeah um in which case this

1:59:37 imagination on your view I don't know I mean [Music] um yeah I if if you know if it's just a if that's the only the only judgment I'm supposed to make like oh this is similar to to Penguins walking or this this brings this is evocative of penguins or um you know why would that count for me

2:00:13 or anybody as imagination um you know is it just because of the context well you're responding to an artwork and when people respond to art we say that they're imagining you know like is um or was you then the question you know the difficult question is like was there something else going on there cognitively that wasn't just oh that sounds that reminds me of penguins the imagining that allowed that led to that judgment

2:00:46 um you know um I can imagine Penguins not making that sound but I whatever you know it's an interesting thing like uh imagine penguins and that just reminds me of penguins um I mean I could I guess I could see giving an account of you know yeah I mean we often do use terms like soundscape when we describe certain instrumental yeah you know which even in visual artwork I would say like you know certain pointings are painted with the intention that you this is a person

2:01:21 crawling toward Wards you know the barn in the distance or whatever so um yeah I don't know anyway so it's not meant as an OB objection it's just again kind of my my quest to understand like what is a fiction and the way you defined it like are these things fictional like is that a is this song a fiction is that instrumental piece of fiction um it sounds like you want to say no but I would just kind of uh you know thinking why why yeah you're right no the way I spelled it out um um I I I

2:01:56 didn't in any clear way you know keep those things out I think my in the you know in the book I was just concerned with like treating this Central case of like responding to literary fiction and the psychology of that and so yeah um and then yeah so when you mentioned these other cases and you know I'm I'm not sure I want to think about them more but um you know I just I think like well what what are the differences in our psychology when we respond to these other things how similar are they to

2:02:30 responding to a fiction um how different are they um and you know and so that would be my sort of um leaping in point to then thinking about you know what do we call what do we say about imagining in each case um I do in the fiction stuff talk about you know responding emot tionally to I mean emotional responses are a big part of what we're interested in responses to artworks right um you know if you just hear a

2:03:04 beautiful you know um classical piece or something and you're moved by it I don't know what I honestly don't know what people thoughts are you imagining necessarily or you just like I'm just moved by it's just beautiful and there's no need for imagination like I I I don't even know what people would be inclined just on a first path to say about that um and it's that kind of experience that it's like well that's an interesting thing to theorize about I don't know even know if a theory of imagination

2:03:37 should try to apply itself to that right it could be you know a theory of aesthetic experience I guess in in Aesthetics and then that's maybe what it would be um yeah yeah it would be interesting view if you if had like yeah these do involve imagination but you're right it's not a canonical case of imagination uh by by far uh also I want to ask about possible worlds in this context whether you think they're fictions uh are they fictions well see I would need a better definition of fiction

2:04:10 before I could answer that well but um well by your definition that you gave in the book I don't think they're um yeah I mean so I guess I don't think they're concrete you know um so what are they um they're kind of I guess I guess you know I don't have any um well worked out view on this but I tend to think of them as just uh these sort

2:04:45 of heuristics we use to kind of as a way of summarizing our modal you know intuitions about things I don't you know um but like when we describe twin earth or something like that it certainly seems like we have a set of sentences that we don't take of as true and that we don't think of as true and oh okay so like a thought experiment um I wasn't asking like a metaphysical question about like style world but like what goes on when

2:05:18 we're dealing with possible worlds yeah exactly context of a thought experiment yeah because it did seem to me like it met the definition of fiction in your yeah I guess you know if you told the fiction well and you try to think about like well you know what else would be true in a world where these things that are stated are the case or the case you're cons that's sort of fits with my understanding what's going on in fiction to imagine the world is to you know know

2:05:53 um to fill out the world you're told certain things explicitly About It by whatever person's presenting the possible world in the thought experiment and then you sort of based on you know then you consider like well what else would be true in the closest possible world where this is told as known fact you know like there really is this twin or you know whatever um and then you're just trying to fill it out like what else has to be true given what else given my prior beliefs about all this kind of

2:06:26 stuff um and by the way I know all of this is tangental to the things you care about in the book I so I'm just it was just my idol curiosity I'm not trying to you know wait on your view no I mean I um that's fine I mean yeah I don't know if I'm treading into saying something that seems ridiculous but I mean I think the way that you know you fill out that world is co totally dependent on you know your beliefs about the nature of

2:07:00 the actual world because that's what you use to sort of fill it out you kind of locate that world you know you try to keep that world as close to this one as possible and then you fill out everything um in it as best you can and it may that may alert sometimes you know if it's an interestingly crafted you know thought experiment like the twin earth thing or like a gettier case it might alert you to the fact that oh I I had some kind of confusions in my background beliefs that weren't entirely consistent before and you've sort of brought those to light by making me focus on this case about what I would

2:07:33 say about it but I don't think you know that's not like cons you know again to going back what we earlier said that's not like some distinct source of evidence I've not but conceivability evidence or something like that that I've accessed you've just led me to you know um you've pointed to a dark spot in my background belief set kind of by and you you sort of triggered awareness of it through forcing me to consider what I would say about you know what else is true in this world that you just described so

2:08:07 would you say there's there is something which is true in those worlds in the same way you would say there's truth in in a fictional World well yeah I guess so um with the with the you know with the pro with you know Proviso that the author gets to the author can always you know change what's true very easily right so you have to follow their lead you know but if it's a good thought experiment they don't want to beg the

2:08:41 question with the way what they explicitly say right they don't want to just beg the question they want to describe it and you say and then have you fill out their world and like yeah you know in in that possible World um this just such would be true and then furthermore that possible world is not materially different than the actual world I guess for our purposes you know so the possible world where you know the geter case comes true doesn't matter you

2:09:14 know it's not there's nothing exceptional about it that doesn't mean it could that means it couldn't come true in the actual world like it's not like you know physics doesn't apply and you know no it's like you can imagine it happening here and if you're inclined to in judge that it's true in the fiction that Jones or whoever doesn't know that P then you're inclined to judge that those things aren't sufficient for knowledge in the actual World um but you know conceiving of the situation was really just like hey are you sure that you know any case of true Justified

2:09:50 belief is knowledge like what if this happens this happens this happens oh well that's a coinc then he just coincidentally has true belief oh so you don't think all cases of coincidentally having a true Justified belief are knowledge no oh well then that doesn't then you had a kind of you didn't realize you weren't you had a kind of conflicting background beliefs like you believed that you couldn't if you coincidentally had you if your belief was sort coincidentally true couldn't be knowledge but you also beli that true

2:10:23 Justified belief is always knowledge and you just didn't realize that those could conflict um until I told this story um so you know um that's the role of the story is yeah is is is leading you to fill it in based on what you already believe um is true about the actual world right um I I'm aware I have a million things I want to ask you about these

2:10:55 last chapters of your book but I'm aware that we're approaching our our limit here but I'm just curious about one thing I I I'll ask which is about in fiction um do you allow that there could be partial truths or incomplete truths uh so could it be the case that it's kind of indeterminately the case whether something occurred or not occurred so I'm thinking of you know fictional stories like uh Pan's Labyrinth I think is a good one where sort of at the end of the story you're left wondering okay was that guy real or was this all a dream or um and so if it's not determined in the story then is

2:11:29 it is it like a part of your account that that's okay that is kind of indeterminately true or is it always going to be one or the other um I think no I I think it can be um I think there can be things that are left indeterminate um yeah you know what I want to capture is like the experience of the reader the psychology of enjoying it so so the question is like what goes on psychologically when you can't judge

2:12:02 that in the fiction P or in the fiction not P um and in the and and sometimes it's an important part as you're mentioning of the fiction that it's supposed to be indeterminate you know and that that appreciating that is part of appreciating the fiction you know properly um and I think you know it's it's it's open to me and I'd be inclined to say you know those cases well you infer that you know in the fiction it's indeterminate whether P all

2:12:36 right and the the and you know if you're sophisticated enough about it you know you and and the author wants me to appreciate that and it's an important feature of this you you can have like a metap fictional thought at a certain point you know like oh it's actually an important feature of this work that that's left indeterminate like and that's part of the Imagine like you know I'm enjoying this I'm like oh yeah it you know there's a nearby possible world where this is true peace true there's also a nearby possible world where you know it's told his known fact and not p

2:13:09 is true um you know there's I think even on L's picture he always had like a a range of like you know worlds are kind of where you know it could be true or not true so it's kind of like it's just indeterminate whether it's true and the fiction um because these are equally similar worlds or something so you could try to do that um but you know I'm I'm inclined to think what's going on there when you just ex you know so there there's sort of like the meaningless things like is it

2:13:43 it's indeterminate the precise color of of of homes's underwear you know what I mean like it's neither true or not true that they're white you know like or whatever so that's less interesting than the kind of case where uh the author purposefully like it's some important part of aspect of the fiction that's sort of purposefully made in determinate and the appreci proper appreciation of fiction requires you to recognize that and for those um I'd say yeah something like you you have a kind of a metap fictional thought

2:14:15 like oh this was crafted so that that's purposely left uh indeterminate and um I think that fits you know I believe that it's indeterminate and you know what I mean and purposely so you know in violation of the law of the excluded middle because I get the feeling like people like Lewis didn't want that to be true in the fiction but but you so in fictional cases there could be you know things which are neither true nor false well I think um

2:14:51 unless I misremember I thought he would say like with the homes's color of homes's underwear like it's neither it's not like there's it's neither true nor false that his underwear was white is that and and why is that well because the world there's a world that's you know the world where it's told as known fact and his underwear is white is equally close or you know to the world where it's told his known fact and it's you know right but that's different than

2:15:23 there being a world where the underwear is neither oh okay where it's literally not true nor false in that world that it has a certain color Okay um can you not to sort of add on like it's true in the fiction blah blah blah what's true in the fiction is what's true at the world uh closest world where it's told known fact and then that just captures what's true it

2:15:57 doesn't say What's um so that doesn't capture you know and then if something's indeterminate you in the fiction you could say why it's [Music] indeterminate um because of this fact about the closeness of the worlds no just curious about your view if you if you were comfortable with this idea that there could be like in the fiction thing which were neither true nor false or if you want to pressy it in the way kind of I thought Lewis would where no there's just a range of Worlds we don't know which one but in each one there's like a fact um about you know

2:16:32 which thing this is like whether that whether Pan's Labyrinth involves an actual Supernatural occurrence or something more mundane like a dream um or David Lynch films like you know does he fall asleep on the plane at the beginning of moland drive or is is there a fact of the matter um and you might think no in the fiction there's no factor of the matter um it's left open yeah I guess um I wanted it to wanted to leave it open um and then just analyze the things that aren't left

2:17:07 open in terms of this idea of Worlds where things are told as known fact and what's true you know um but as far as the fiction the fictional world is not to be identified but a possible world one of those possible worlds that makes sense it's like there's a world of um the fiction and then you can sort of engage in this like game about thinking about possible world is trying to tease out what's true in that world the world of the fiction but the world of the

2:17:40 fiction is not itself some possible world I guess that's how I guess that's how I'm inclined to think of it but okay and you go the same way for contradictions in the fiction um and I'm thinking in particular of you know Grand priest's famous uh what's he call it Sophie's box or something he wrote a short story where there's like a contradiction about something being in the box and not in the box at the same time in the story and it's kind of on purpose that he did

2:18:13 that yeah I don't know um so so I guess what's true in the fiction is like well okay so there's you know imagining in response to the fiction is just like judging that in the fiction thus and such and if certain things are explicitly stated in the fiction then

2:18:46 um then you say well okay you don't need a clever fiction you could just say a fiction says Bob went to the store no he didn't you know okay um according to the fiction Bob went to the you know St store but no he didn't uh and also didn't go to the store um and you could say well that's that's what's um that's what's true in the fiction um I guess that's kind of like the author said it you know okay you get to

2:19:21 say you know um because I think part of Graham's idea is to push back against the quinian claim that we can't like really imagine contradictions or entertain them or we can't interpret other people as believing contradictions and in the story is kind of explicitly told in a way that you have to imagine the person in the story is holding this contradictory belief because in this in the story it is literally true and also not true that the thing is in the Box he doesn't come out and literally say this is true and also false but if you pay a care attention to the story The only inference that you can draw is that it

2:19:54 is true and also not true that this certain thing is in the Box well that's interesting yeah so I don't I haven't read the story um I think um there are cases similar to that that I've considered like um in the context of imaginative resistance um you know Tomar gendler wanted to say hey there's this phenomenon of imaginative resistance and it's not to be explained in terms of well it says something that's impossible and we can't imagine impossibilities cuz here I'm going to tell you a story where

2:20:26 something impossible happens and um you you'll be able to imagine it and and then um hers involves like a mathematical impossibility or something um now okay so I think I I see better where you're going with it now but um um I do think like our ability when we're trying to engage with something we're trying to understand you know the fictional World imagining will be driven

2:21:01 by you know um trying to draw out what else is true at that world and if there's a contradiction that'll that'll kind of stop you that might stop you in your tracks um and I and I guess I think it does sometimes cause resistance when people you know if if someone tells a story like literally like you know Bob went to the store and but actually he didn't um you do stop you're like well I'm just kind of confused you know like

2:21:34 what are you talking about um and that's you can call that imaginative resistance but it really just kind of like what I'm not sure how I'm supposed to play along here like what's going on maybe if you keep talking I'll get it you know then I'll be able to fill out a world um but you know if you just leave me with that contradiction flat out I'm sort of like I I'm not sure what else is true or what how to fill out this world because you just really kind of made it impossible for me to do it I think you know probably with the the grand priest

2:22:06 example and and others like some maybe time travel movies and things they might involve impossibilities right probably do it's often you you know something like imagining is elicited by kind of hiding the contradiction you know burying it you know right and so it's always open to the person like well I didn't you know I I I I was following along and imag you drawing things out in the possible World filling that out and then I kind of did that over here too and you kind of hid this part where you know they can't all

2:22:40 be true together but then again I wasn't really keeping everything in mind together you know like um and if I did when you really point out that impossibility then I may then I I do feel some kind of resistance you know but it and and then I get confused like but like you know take like an Avengers movie like there's all kind of incoherent time travel going on some of that stuff where if you focus like what the but you can you know like so um you know if if um I guess I I I do think that in a

2:23:18 lot of these cases I am inclined to say that like contradictions generate difficulty imagining but you can circumvent that by sort of hiding the hiding the contradiction or you know imag sorry to interrupt you but when you say you you hide it then are you saying that the person doesn't really imagine the contradiction yeah kind of like yeah like yeah yeah exactly like yeah I I guess I'd be happy enough

2:23:51 saying that like I IM I did a heck of a lot of imagining in response to this story that's involves contradictions right but I didn't actually imagine the contradiction you know um that seems fair to me you know um to say so you're more open to the idea that there's indeterminacy in the fiction than there's like that that we could imagine the indeterminacy in the fiction then we can the contradiction in the

2:24:25 fiction I think so yeah I think um yeah that's interesting I mean I hadn't you know put it that way before um so I mean I'm just thinking about it now but uh um you know there's it's be weird to think like a story has to be completely filled out in some metaphysical sense right

2:25:02 like clearly there's got to be things well clearly it just you know could again like I guess I'm I'm okay with it being true in the fiction that there's a contradiction just cuz I think well the author gets to say he what's true in the fiction that's okay it's just um I guess I'm I'm less happy imagining contradictions and I am I don't know what is it to imagine an indeterminacy it's kind of like

2:25:35 to to just believe that you know there's no proper there's no prescribed way you're supposed to think of it as going with respect to that feature um you're not prescribed to believe it's one way or the other but like the case of grma is interesting because he wrote the story with the intention that you end up imagining something contradictory like that's kind of his whole point in writing the story so he's definitely prescribing that you imagine that it is and isn't this way um so that that's why I think that's a

2:26:10 more interesting I mean not a more interesting but that's an interesting case because there's no doubt about what the intention of the author is in that case right and then it's not like an accident where they up and like the Marvel case where they just don't understand like time travel right yeah I mean so in that case it could be again but there's a difference between like imagining p and then like you know five minutes later imagining that not P you know between that and imagine the p and not P

2:26:42 um you know so it you know um so I don't know I don't know I don't know what hangs that you know like yeah when are we going to say that well you didn't imagine a contradiction you just imagine something at one point and then you imagine something contradictory later but you didn't imagine them at the same time oh no you know like or or justes making sense I have to read the story like just making sense of the story sort of require you to keep both in mind you know all the time and to the extent that it does then yeah I grant then you then you are in this

2:27:15 interesting space of like um um yeah imagining a contradiction um and I don't know I I wasn't inclined to rest a lot on the issue other than just to say I was trying to give an account of what what causes imaginative resistance those cases where we paus like I'm not following you with that I don't feel like I'm imagining that you know what I mean um because there is some sort of phenomenon there you know where certain things elicit that

2:27:47 response where it's like yeah was ordinarily you tell me what to imagine I just imagine it right but then you said that I'm like I I don't even know what to do with that um it's I think it is nice to say it's something about impossibility tends to like stop us in our tracks um but I think you know a lot of things could stop us in our tracks like um if you're like telling a story it's a regular novel about a couple and you're going on

2:28:20 for a few chapters then there's a sentence and they are caterpillars and then you then the story continues on the rest and you're just kind of like what that's not impossible I guess is it I don't now I don't I'm I'm experiencing resistance you know what I mean like like what's is is this a deep psychologic you just kind of confused me you know like because there is I did say you know what I talking about there's just like you know reading and and I guess a lot of enjoying artwork but it is interactive like you you're

2:28:54 bringing something to the table you're filling things in you know that's part of the enjoyment maybe even more in honestly in in fiction than in watching a movie where it's just like given to you more you know depending on the film you know yeah but like um you know but so there's this interactive aspect and you know one way to think about that aspect is you're kind of filling in this most nearby possible world where it's told just known fact and then suddenly they they throw in something like and they were caterpillars like well hold on I had this I was located this world

2:29:27 right about here you know yeah now we're off over here somewhere I don't know what else is true in this world you know and now you've really thrown me for a loop um and I'm not sure what else to assume and my whole interactive component of this is kind of thrown into a jumble and um and so um I don't know that you know throw in a contradiction that is psychologically a lot different than that like maybe you can make sense of it for me tell me how to follow along like maybe Grand priest can do

2:29:59 it and then I'll say okay I guess I see what you mean you know how I'm supposed to imagine in response to this impossibility but usually if you stick an impossibility there I'm just going to be you're GNA you're G to jar me out of my you know so it's not that there's some like deep psychological fact about humans that they resist contradictions or something it's just like it's sort of surprising I wasn't expecting that I think so you know um but you know these yeah it just gets you know it takes it

2:30:33 back to the picture you it's hard to avoid these kind of foundational things well what did we mean in calling it impossible anyway and you know as opposed to just really weird and um um so so I'm not sure you know that I have a fully that you know my metaphysic you know I have the satisfying metaphysics to fit match up with the psychology but I'm trying you to extent I've been focused on the psychology I I don't feel a need to like say hey the mind works this way you know it can't

2:31:06 conceive of an in contradiction you know I don't know you know okay think we can try to make do with them but it'll be hard you know um it'll have to be um but yeah but you know it's interesting questions they're just not things I I am I focused on a lot there but I have I've been asked about those um you're knocking on some doors that other people have too in the recent years oh okay well I'm aware of that we need to be

2:31:38 wrapping this up so at the end I'd just like to ask if there's anything that you wanted to come up have come up but hasn't come up and that answer can be no but I'm just wondering if there were something you were like I want to make sure mention this or bring this up wow well I mean we covered a lot of ground uh uh you know there's nothing there's not a burning thing I guess I would say you know if I had like a um concluding remark it would be kind of echo some things that I was you know you mentioned at the beginning like oh I would have

2:32:12 thought there had been like these two camps in imagination work like the kind of more we see a kind of reductive approach as it consists in these other things that aren't primitive versus the Primitive approach you know and with the book explaining imagination I you know I I attempted to go this route of you know the non-primitive route and and stake a ground there but not really with the idea that the way I did it well you know I I did the best I could right but I I what I would like hope is like other people see that

2:32:44 General approach and are like oh okay I see that's a whole different kind of approach you could take to it and we would do it slightly differently you know but nevertheless right it's important not to just assume all these things to to be kind of convinced by really kind of superficial phenomena like the way we talk sometimes that imagination must be this sort of discreet you know dissociable part of the mind um and to quite chip away at that so I just you know I do hope that there come to be more and more camp and I am seeing more of that like people

2:33:18 starting to propose like well either they'll say like well his approach works works well for this aspect of imagination but not others or they'll say ah I'm thinking of it reductively maybe more as like um people have been saying like looking at Imagination as a kind of like uh a success term of a Kind like it's imagining when you're thinking really well and in a good way and other times it's just whatever uh and you know these are different kind of approaches are chipping away at like um this tendency that how sometimes

2:33:53 happens in the philosophy of mind to kind of write relatively you know to write stuff we say you know our our platitudes about the mind like to take them write them too literally into the structure of how we think you know yeah without saying ah some of this is a little superficial like we could kind of just think our way through it and have a clear and then result a clear resulting picture of like how to how to how our own minds work you know how to mechan how to create something to imagines you know what we would need to do and what

2:34:25 we wouldn't we'll might get clearer questions if we think more critically about some of those Notions so there you go that's my my parting uh thought on the project and um and so yeah but really I've really appreciated uh the attention to the work you've given Richard and and this has been a great conversation and I agree it's been a great conversation so thank you for joining me I really appreciate your time and you know should have happened much sooner hopefully will happen again um because there's still tons of stuff that we haven't talked about in not only in

2:34:57 this book but in your other work as well which is uh tremendous so um thanks again and if you just hang out for one second I'll say by off the air uh but other than that thanks again sure thing thank you all right we are clear