Belief-like Imagination

This paper explores belief-like imagination. I start by discussing the characteristic features of imagination of this kind, focusing on features that differentiate it from a mere supposition or a thought on the one hand, and from belief on the other hand. I will show that, although imagining, unlike believing, is not committed to representing the truth, it initially seems to be committed to represent that which is stipulated to be true in the imaginative project in which the imagining arises; in this sense, it is analogous to belief. Having shown that this analogy between imagination and belief is not warranted, I will present a more moderate view on which imagination involves the positing of a doxastic perspective toward the imaginary world. That is, imagination is nothing but pretending to believe, or playing the role of a believer, toward a certain imaginary world. My conclusion will be that, unlike the commonly held view on which pretense is defined in terms of imagination, imagination should be defined in terms of pretense (or role-playing). This definition explains the various belief-like features of imagination by invoking the primitive, but widely used, notion of pretense.