The Content-Dependence of Imaginative Resistance

In Florian Cova & Sébastien Réhault (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 143-166 (2018)
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Abstract

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved.

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Author Profiles

Markus Kneer
University of Zürich
Michael T. Stuart
University of York
Hanna Kim
Washington and Jefferson College

Citations of this work

Imagination.Shen-yi Liao & Tamar Gendler - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Imaginative Resistance.Emine Hande Tuna - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Imagination.Tamar Szabó Gendler - 2011 - In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.
Extracting fictional truth from unreliable sources.Emar Maier & Merel Semeijn - 2021 - In Emar Maier & Andreas Stokke (eds.), The Language of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Imaginative Resistance in Science.Valentina Savojardo - forthcoming - Foundations of Science:1-19.

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References found in this work

Mimesis as Make-Believe.Kendall L. Walton - 1996 - Synthese 109 (3):413-434.
The puzzle of imaginative resistance.Tamar Szabó Gendler - 2000 - Journal of Philosophy 97 (2):55-81.
Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality (I).Kendall Lewis Walton - 2015 [1994] - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 68:27-50.

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