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The Puzzle of Imaginative Desire

2010; Routledge; Volume: 89; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00048402.2010.503763

1471-6828

Amy Kind,

Classical Philosophy and Thought

Abstract The puzzle of imaginative desire arises from the difficulty of accounting for the surprising behaviour of desire in imaginative activities such as our engagement with fiction and our games of pretend. Several philosophers have recently attempted to solve this puzzle by introducing a class of novel mental states—what they call desire-like imaginings or i-desires. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the i-desire solution to the puzzle of imaginative desire. The introduction of i-desires is both ontologically profligate and unnecessary, and, most importantly, fails to make sense of what we are doing in the imaginative contexts in question. Notes 1This problem is roughly what Currie [1997] has called the paradox of caring. 2This name might evoke the puzzle that Gendler [2000] has called the puzzle of imaginative resistance (the term 'imaginative resistance' appears first in Moran [1994]). The question of the relationship between these two puzzles is an interesting one that I will unfortunately be unable to address here. 3This terminology has the unfortunate implication that our mental states are products developed by Apple (e.g., the iDesire), but there's also a more important reason to be careful about it: The term 'i-desire' might tempt one to think of the mental state of imaginatively wanting as a special kind of desire. This temptation must be resisted; i-desires are by definition not desires. 4A similar move is made also by proponents of simulation theory in the theory of mind debate. According to simulation theory, we understand the minds of others by simulating their mental states. The simulated desires that we produce are often referred to as pretend desires or off-line desires. See, e.g., Gordon [1986] and Goldman [2006]. It's plausible that these pretend desires are equivalent to i-desires. For example, Currie, a proponent of the i-desire solution to the puzzle of imaginative desire, is also a simulation theorist. See Currie and Ravenscroft [2002]; also Doggett and Egan [2007: 16]. 5The fact that my son and I have different beliefs about Tinker Bell's existence means that our desires are unlikely to have exactly the same content and thus that we cannot be perfectly in sync. However, in so far as my desire differs from my son's, this seems like the perfectly familiar fact that our desires reflect our conceptions of things. For example, my son's desire that a particular candidate win the election might not have quite the same content as my own desire about that candidate. Since I know much more about the candidate than he does, the content of my desire might be fuller, or richer. In contrast, once we employ the reinterpretation strategy, it's not just that my desire has a content slightly different from my son's; rather, it becomes a desire of a different type. This seems to make too sharp a differentiation between my desire and my son's. Thanks to Suzanne Obdrzalek for pressing me to clarify this point. 6Currie's own examples are drawn mainly from Shakespeare. In the quoted passage, he is concerned with the reasonableness of our wanting punishment for Desdemona compared to the reasonableness of our wanting punishment for Macbeth. 7In a discussion of our emotional responses to fiction, Moran notes that we experience all sorts of emotional reactions about things that are non-actual. The fact that our emotions about what might have been are entirely unparadoxical should, Moran suggests, help to dissolve the sense that our emotional responses to fiction are paradoxical [Moran Citation1994: 77–8]. As I suggest in the text, I think these points apply equally well to our conative attitudes to fiction. 8See also Doggett and Egan [2007: 6]. 9While this desire does not motivate me to bring it about that her plane departed on time, it might have other motivational consequences, for example, it might lead me to make various utterances, e.g., 'I hope that her plane departed on time.' Mele adduces further (much more complicated) examples to show that desires can be entirely inert, lacking even these motivational consequences [1995: 394–6]. Joel Marks also argues that desires need not be inherently motivational; on his view, 'motivation is conceptually tied to action, while desire is not. For example, one cannot be motivated that it be a nice day, for its being a nice day is not a possible act … But one can certainly desire that it be a nice day'[Marks Citation1984: 140]. 10Carruthers's reply presupposes the pretence theory of fiction, i.e., that we engage with works of fiction via our imagination. For a defence of the pretence theory, see, e.g., Walton [1990] or Currie [1990]. Though I personally have reservations about this theory, proponents of i-desires can raise no complaints about its invocation here since they are themselves committed to it. 11This point relates to the failure of the reinterpretation strategy that we considered earlier. See also n. 15. 12Doggett and Egan consider and reject two other suggestions: my desire that Peter Pan beat Captain Hook might be (1) a de dicto desire that people who fit Peter Pan's general description be victorious in that sort of situation, or, (2) a de re desire about some actual boy named Peter Pan who wouldn't grow up. I agree with them that both these suggestions are non-starters. I might desire that Peter Pan take the Darling children with him to Neverland, but I certainly don't desire that real life individuals dressed similarly to elves take children from their bedrooms at night, and even if, coincidentally, there really is some real-life boy named Peter Pan, my desire is not about him. 13I should note that Doggett and Egan have not specified the problem of conative engagement quite the same way that I do, and thus my presentation of their argument departs slightly from what they actually say. To avoid begging any questions, rather than focusing directly on our conative attitudes to fiction, they raise the concern indirectly by way of our emotional responses to fiction. Watching Peter Pan, you are filled with anxiety that Tinker Bell might die. They argue, and I agree, that 'something like a desire is needed to produce affective response when you are anxious about something that you are imagining'[Doggett and Egan Citation2007: 13]. They then adduce the reasons I outline in the text above to show that no actual desire you have has adequate content to produce this anxiety. 14I am indebted to Peter Kung for this suggestion. 15As this should make clear, in claiming that our desires can be desires about fictional characters, I am not embracing the reinterpretation strategy we rejected earlier. The reinterpretation strategy claims that (1) can be reinterpreted as (2)—my desire about Wendy Darling is best understood as a desire about the fiction in which she appears. I claim only that (1) can be reinterpreted as (1a)—my desire about Wendy Darling can be understood as a desire about the fictional character Wendy Darling. Importantly, I deny that (1a) entails (2), and thus a fortiori I deny that (1a) can be reinterpreted as (2). 16This is not meant to be a phenomenological point, i.e., I am not presuming that we can phenomenologically tell the difference between believing p and imagining p. For my purposes, it doesn't matter how we make the differentiation. All that matters is that we do it and that we do it non-inferentially. 17I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pushing me on this point. 18In putting forth these considerations about our conative responses to fiction, I am indebted to Moran's use of parallel considerations about our emotional responses to fiction [Moran 1994]; Moran sets out these considerations in an attempt to call into question the view advocated by Walton [1990, 1997] and others that such responses are not full-fledged emotions. In his enormously rich discussion, Moran notes that the fact that someone can make disturbing discoveries about himself by considering his emotional reactions to fiction only makes sense if those reactions are genuine emotions: 'Such reactions would be hard to understand if what he felt was as remote from his real temperament as the events on the screen are remote from his real beliefs about the world'[1994: 93]. Moran also notes that our 'ordinary practice of eliciting, sharing, and criticizing such emotional responses to fictions would be a quite bizarre and pointless exercise if these responses and the attitudes they express were not located on this side of the counterfactual divide', and thus concludes that 'it is less misleading to see them as different types of, for example, pity, rather than to think of the difference as akin to that between a real horse and an imaginary one'[1994: 94]. 19The puzzling nature of these reactions is what Currie has called the problem of personality: 'The desires we seem to have concerning fictional things can be very unlike the desires we have concerning real life—so dissimilar, indeed, that it is hard to see how such disparate desires could exist within any reasonably integrated human mental economy'[1997: 65]. This seems to me to overstate the case, however, and again to smuggle in some kind of consistency requirement about desires. 20Imaginings with either sexual or violent content might seem to constitute an exception to this claim; such imaginings might often seem to be taken quite seriously. When we do so, however, our reactions depend primarily on the way that the imagining is viewed by the imaginer, i.e., by the (genuine) attitude that the person takes towards her imagining. What matters to us is not, for example, that someone spontaneously imagines some horrific violence but that she enjoys doing so. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.) See also n. 26. 21In fact, on my view, imagining is best understood as an active mental exercise. This is part of how it differs from perception. See Kind [2001]. 22I here mean to be deliberately neutral on whether the imagining happens first, followed by the pretend behaviour, whether the reverse is true, or whether the imagining and the behaviour happen concurrently. For our purposes here, this need not be settled. I will return to this issue in §5 below. 23I have, however, seen children pretending to be 'biting monsters' whose parents end up with tooth marks on their legs. I return to this example in §5, below. 24Given the functional architecture of their system, Nichols and Stich themselves might have reasons to believe that it would, but there is no special reason for us to accept that overarching architecture. 25For Velleman, these mock-desires are called wishes. As best as I understand his view, wishes are not quite what Doggett and Egan have in mind by i-desires [Doggett and Egan Citation2007: 10–11]. Desires and wishes are both members of the same class of mental state—they are both 'conations'[Velleman Citation2000: 260]. According to Velleman, what distinguishes them is that desires can (at least usually) only be directed at things that at least have the appearance of being attainable, whereas wishes are directed at things that we know to be unattainable. I'm sceptical, as are Doggett and Egan [2007: 11], that Velleman is right that we cannot desire what is 'patently unattainable', but that is not important for our purposes here. What is important is that we keep in mind that desires and i-desires are not members of the same class of mental state, and they are not meant to be distinguished from one another in terms of the attainability of their aims. 26For a related argument against the depressing objection, see Funkhouser and Spaulding [2009]. 27Exceptions may arise from romantic fantasies. (Think of Jimmy Carter's famous Playboy interview in which he claimed that 'anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery'.) My guess is that these exceptions are explained by the fact that people often require especially stringent standards of faithfulness in their romantic relationships; one must be faithful not only in body but in mind and heart, too. 28Whether we can i-believe what we know to be logically or metaphysically impossible is controversial, but no one denies that we can imagine things that we know to be physically impossible. 29Despite this problem, I expect that Doggett and Egan would choose the route laid out by this first horn of the dilemma. On their view: 'pretend action is motivated by i-desires and imaginings, with the aim of making the i-desired things fictional rather than true … People who imagine that P are disposed to act in ways that would, if P were fictional, be likely to make the propositions that they i-desire fictional'[Doggett and Egan Citation2007: 10]. This helps to explain the fact, as we've already noted, that we don't normally act exactly like what we are pretending to be. When pretending to be a dog, one engages in behaviour that more closely matches the conventions for pretend-dog behaviour than dog behaviour itself. So perhaps we don't i-desire to fly when we are pretending to be birds because the conventions for pretend-bird behaviour don't call for it. Birds fly, but pretend (human) birds don't. To make it fictional that I am a bird, Doggett and Egan might claim, I need not fly. Thus, I need not have the i-desire to fly, and this explains why the child constrains herself to an i-desire to flap her wings. But this way of escaping the dilemma seems unsatisfactory. First, it doesn't offer a plausible explanation of why children don't i-desire to fly. It's hard to believe that young children are sufficiently well-schooled in the conventions of pretence to realize that they shouldn't i-desire to fly. Second, the claim seems overly strong. A child need not fly to make it fictional that she is a bird, and thus she need not i-desire that she fly, but that does not support the claim that she should not i-desire flying, that it would actually be a mistake for her to do so. 30Moreover, the proponent of i-desires cannot avoid the dilemma by claiming that both i-desires play a role. On this suggestion, we would still face the difficulties of the second horn of the dilemma, namely, why we don't see more attempts at real flying. 31Previous versions of this paper were delivered at the 2009 Smartin Workshop on Imagination, Mind, and Morality at Yale University, and the 2009 Pacific Division meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics. I am grateful to the audiences there—particularly to Tyler Doggett and Gregory Currie—for their insightful comments. Thanks also to my colleagues in the Claremont Colleges Works-in-Progress group and the students in the Pomona College spring 2009 Imagination seminar for their feedback, and especially to Peter Kung for ongoing conversations about this material. This paper has also significantly benefited from the comments of two anonymous referees for the AJP. Finally, I'm grateful as always to Frank Menetrez for his support throughout this project and to Stephen and Joseph for inspiring so many of the examples in this paper.