Imagining as a Guide to Possibility

Against the Additive View of Imagination

“…So, what makes it an image of Desert Orchid? One explanation, offered by both Christopher Peacocke [1985] and Peter Kung [2010], is what I will call the additive view of imagination. They say that sensory imagining involves two kinds of content: qualitative content, which gives the experience its sensory phenomenal character, and non-qualitative content, which specifies details of the imagined situation that are not manifest in the qualitative content.…”

Putting modal metaphysics first

“…This approach is widespread: it includes the family of so-called conceivability theories (Chalmers 2002;Yablo 1993;Menzies 1998); as well as those appealing to modal intuition (BonJour 1998;Bealer 2002;Chudnoff 2013); but also those theories variously appealing to imaginative exercises, counterfactual reasoning, and similarity reasoning (Ichikawa & Jarvis 2011;Kung 2010;Williamson 2007;Roca-Royes 2016). These "means-first" theories, as I call them, may operate on the basis of specific notions of metaphysical possibility and necessity, and sometimes include some discussion of modal metaphysics.…”

You Really Do Imagine It: Against Error Theories of Imagination

“…See Kung (, §4). Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing out that probity is relativized to a proposition.…”

“…For simplicity, I am presenting a rough version of this constraint, one which suffices to diagnose the cases from section . A more precise version of the constraint would have to rule out cases like: in your imagining, you “picture” q and assign r. The conjunction q & r does not follow from the assignments alone, but seems like the imagining should not be probative with respect to q & r. For a fuller treatment that excludes such cases, see Kung ().…”

“…See Kung (), where I explain in more detail about how authentication operates, work through a number of examples, and reply to several natural objections.…”