niiniluoto - imagination and fiction

Journal of Semantics 4: 209-222

IMAGINATION AND FICTION

ILKKA NIINILUOTO

ABSTRACT

This paper employs possible worlds semantics to develop a systematic framework for studyingthe syntax and the semantics of imagination sentences. Following Hintikka's treatment ofprepositional attitudes like knowledge and perception, the propositional construction "a ima-gines that p" is taken as the basic form to which other sentences (such as "a imagines b", "aimagines an F", "a imagines b as an F") are reduced through quantifiers ranging over 'worldlines', i.e., functions picking out individuals from the relevant possible worlds or scenes. Thisintensional analysis is compared and contrasted with Barwise and Perry's situation semantics. Itis also suggested that the logic of imagination helps us to understand some peculiarities offictional discourse. For example, acts of imagination can be directed towards fictional entities(e.g. Donald Duck, Anna Karenina) as well as real ones. Further, fictional texts, like novels, canbe thought of as occurring within the scope of an imagination operator, relative to the author orthe reader. The author of a fictional text T can be viewed as performing an illocutionary act ofrecommendation of the form: Let us imagine that T!

Imagination is needed both in the creation and the understanding of fictionaltexts. For Romantic poets like Poe and Baudelaire, imagination was indeedthe 'Queen of the faculties'.* It is no wonder then that imagining as a mentalactivity has been discussed extensively within philosophy, psychology, andaesthetics. Logicians have failed to make a contribution in this field, how-ever. In this paper, I argue that a logic of imagination can be developed as aspecial case of Hintikka's semantics for propositional attitudes.1 I alsosuggest that this logic helps us to understand some characteristics andpeculiarities of fictional discourse.

A logic of imagination should not be understood as a logic-in-use, i.e., as asystem of rules which our mind ought to follow in imagining. Rather it is asystematic framework for studying the syntax and the semantics of sentencescontaining some form of the term "imagine" - in analogy with the so-calledlogic of perception which studies sentences constructed with the verbs "tosee" or "to perceive" (cf. Hintikka 1969, 1975; Niiniluoto 1979, 1982).

The logic of imagination in this sense is primarily a tool for understanding

at University of California, San Francisco on D

ecember 4, 2014

http://jos.oxfordjournals.org/D

ownloaded from

210

natural language. It can hardly be expected to solve any philosophicaldisputes about the true nature of imagining or any factual disagreementsabout the psychological laws that imagination in fact satisfies. Still, as avehicle for conceptual analysis it may enhance our understanding of thecharacteristics of imagination. In this respect, it is comparable to thephenomenology of imagination (cf. Sartre 1972; Casey 1976) which attemptsto achieve the same goal by a different method.

A phenomenologist tries to give a descriptive account of imagination byintrospectively studying selected examples of "intentional" acts of imagi-ning, while a logician is primarily analysing language, i.e., the structure andthe meaning of linguistic expressions with the word "imagine". In spite of thismethodological difference, there is a close parallelism between the phenome-nology and the logic of imagination. Again a similar situation obtains in thecase of perception (cf. Hintikka 1975; Smith and Mclntyre 1982; Dreyfus1982). The intentionality of the acts of imagination is reflected on the level oflanguage as the intensionality of the descriptions of imagination. The differ-ent ways in which an act of imagination can be directed towards an object canalso be nicely captured in the logic of imagination.

2.

To treat imagination as a propositional attitude means that statements of theform

(1) a imagines that p,

where "a" is an individual name and " p " is a declarative sentence, are takento be the basic expressions for the logic of imagination. Other similar atti-tudes include knowledge, belief, and perception:

Kap 'a knows that p 'Bap 'a believes that p 'Sap 'a sees that p'

Let us write Iap for the statement (1).Hintikka's general strategy is to view statements of the form

(2) a (p's that p

as expressing a relation between the person a and the proposition ||p||expressed by the sentence p. More precisely, let ^w

211

(3) Al^i.e., p is true in all the

212

the possible worlds semantics of propositional attitudes (see Barwise 1981;Barwise and Perry 1981). Barwise's basic idea is to analyse perception sen-tences with embedded 'naked infinitives' like "Esa saw Ingmar run". LetNI(p) be the naked infinitive form of sentence p. For example. NI(p) is"Ingmar run", when p is "Ingmar runs". Then Barwise's suggestion is asfollows:

(4) "a sees NI(p)" is true in world w if there is a scene s in w such that asees s and s supports the truth of p.

A scene s in world w is 'a visually perceived situation' in w; a situation in w is apartial submodel of w, i.e., a configuration of certain objects of w havingproperties and relations to each other and located in space and time. Asituation s supports the truth of only those sentences p whose truth value isdetermined by the perceived scene.

For Barwise, seeing a scene is an extensional relation between a perceiverand a part of the world. Thus, his definition (4) implies

(5) a sees NI(p) D p.

In Hintikka's approach, seeing is an intensional operator Sa which is follow-ed by a description of the propositional content of a's perception. Therefore,the force of Sap is something like "a seems to see that p" or "It appearsvisually to a that p", so that the principle

(6) S a P D p .

is not valid. For this reason, Hintikka's system is able to treat phenomenarelated to the intentionality of perception - such as visual illusions andhallucinations (cf. Niiniluoto 1979, 1982). Moreover, if we allow perspectivalquantification over events, then the Hintikka-type analysis can also give anadequate treatment of the extensional naked infinitive perception reports.(Cf. Niiniluoto 1982; Saarinen 1983; Vlach 1983; and Higginbotham 1983.)

Barwise's strategy (4) does not work for imagination sentences. If therewere naked infinitive imagination reports in English (such as "John imaginedMary run"), then an analysis along the lines of (4) would lead to the undesira-ble result

(7) a imagines NI(p) D p.

(Cf. Higginbotham 1983:120.) It is clear that imagination should not satisfythe principle

(8) Iap D p.


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

213

To treat imagination within situation semantics, it should not be assumedthat imagined scenes are parts of the world - at least not parts of the worldexternal to the mind of the imaginer. However, if we allowed 'imaginaryscenes' that have a real mental existence, the relation between the imaginerand his scenes would not be extensional - as the analysis of type (4) requires.

Barwise and Perry, in Situations and Attitudes (1983), outline a generaltheory of attitudes, where 'abstract situations' are used for the 'indirectclassification' of psychological states. As this theory is intended to be applic-able to such attitudes as belief, perhaps it works also for the case of imagina-tion. It seems, however, that this approach would not eliminate the problemsthat arise from the intentionality of imagination - and that the extensionalapplication of situation semantics has to be complemented with ideas frompossible worlds semantics.

These points can be illustrated by an example. It also serves to suggest asomewhat modified possible worlds analysis of imagination which shareswith situation semantics the virtue that the principle (13) does not hold.

Assume I imagine that Ingmar is dancing with a blond girl. According to asimple-minded analysis (criticized by Ryle 1949), this means that I am as itwere 'looking with my mind's eye' at a picture or a 'mental image' of Ingmarwith a blondie - and perhaps even hearing a tune 'with my mind's ear'. In theterms of situation semantics, this might perhaps be expressed by saying thatimagining amounts to seeing a mentally existing situation - or an imaginaryconfiguration of some objects with some properties and relations.

Apart from the difficulties with the postulation of'my mind's eye', the ideaof a movie theatre inside my head showing mental pictures suggests a toopassive model of imagination: we are not the observers of our mental images,but we create and recreate them through our acts of imagining. Whether theseacts are sensuous or nonsensuous (cf. Casey 1977:43), they are conceptualrelative to our 'language of thought'.

When we try to describe the content of an act of imagining, we notice thatour 'mental images' are more or less unspecific in many of their relevantfeatures. Is Ingmar wearing a dark suit or a tail-coat? Who is the blond girl?Are they dancing a waltz or a tango? What is the time and place of this scene?How many other persons are there in the dim margin area of my picture?Hence, to describe a picture with some unspecific features is equivalent togiving a systematic list of all complete alternatives that this picture allows(Ingmar-in-tail-coat-with-Marilyn-Moroe-dancing-waltz-in-this-room etc.)These complete alternatives correspond to the 'possible worlds' in t h e c l a s s ^ /defined in Section 2.

It is instructive to compare this situation to the case where I actually see thatIngmar isdancingwithablondgirl.Ifldon'tseeclearlywhatlngmariswearing.Icanobserve it by going closerto him. My expectations may thereby getfulfilled,and my anticipations may turn out to be correct or incorrect. In the case ofimagination these concepts do not make sense (cf. Casey 1977:168). Still, if myimage of Ingmar is indefinite with respect to his suit, it is up to me to decide thismatter by continuingand sharpening my imaginative activity.


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

214

It is natural to assume that the complete alternatives in the classes.4 w 5 and/4W j -corresponding to the examples of seeing Ingmarand imagining Ingmar,respectively - are described in the same conceptual framework (cf. Casey1977:134). Moreover, there is no reason to regard thesealternativesascompletepossible worlds where each fact is determined (i.e., each descriptive sentence iseither true or false). For example, it is entirely irrelevant to my imaginationabout Ingmar's dance whether Ronald Reagan is the President of the UnitedStates or not. We may thus assume that these alternatives are what Hintikka(1975,1983) calls small worlds or what Barwise calls situation-types. Condition(3) can then be replaced by the requirement

(9) Each alternative in.4 w j supports the truth of p.

This definition licences inferences like

Esa imagines that Ingmar is dancing with a blond girl..'. Esa imagines that Ingmar is dancing.

but blocks inferences like

Esa imagines that Ingmar is dancing..'. Esa imagines that Ingmar is dancing or the moon is cheese.

4.

It was noted above that imagination should not satisfy the success condition

(14) I aADA.

If I imagine that I am Francis Bacon, it does not follow that I am Francis Bacon.Indeed, one might even suggest an an//-5MccejJcondition for I a :

(15) I a ADA.

For example, in L'Imaginaire (1940) Sartre claims that there is an intimateconnection between imagination and nothingness:

"But if I imagine Peteras he might beatthismomentinBerlin-orsimplyPeterashe exists at this moment (and not as he was yesterday on leaving me), I graspanobject which is not at all given to me or which is given to me simply as beingbeyond reach. There I grasp nothing, that is, I posit nothingness. In thissense theimaginative consciousness of Peter in Berlin(what is hedoingat this moment? Iimagine he is walkingin the Kurfurstendamm,etc.),isverymuchclosertothat ofthe centaur (whose complete non-existence I proclaim), than therecollectionof


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

215

Peter ashewasthedayheleft. What iscommonbetweenPeterasanimageandthecentaur as an image is that they are two aspects of Nothingness." (Sartre1972:210-211).

However, on closer analysis it seems that this passage is not intended to supportprinciple (15) at all. We may agree with Sartre that his image of Peter in Berlin isnot 'given' to him in the same way ashisperceptionsandmemoriesof Peter-andthis image is probably wrong. But, it seems to me, it would be too much to claimthat this imagemust be wrong: it may happenafterallthatPeterinfactiswalkingin the Kurfurstendamm when his friend Jean-Paul is imagining that he is doingso. Therefore, (15) as a general principle should be rejected.

It is certainly possible to imagine situations and courses of events which arephysically impossible. This is shown both by surrealist novels and films and byscience Fiction, which play with effects that arisefrom violationsof natural laws.If OP"1 is the operator of physicalpossibility, then the following principle is notvalid:

(16) I a AD0P h A.

But is it possible to imagine a logical contradiction? If I imagine that Ingmar isbothdancingandnotdancingatthesametime.thentheremustbe/H'oIngmarsinmy field of imagination. This is a violation of the laws of nature (the samephysical individual appears in two locations at the same time), but it is not alogical contradiction. And who haseverbeenabletoimaginearoundsquare? Assome people have thought that they can do this, it is possible to imagine thatoneimagines a contradiction. But still it seems clear that the principle

(17) I a A D 0 A

where 0 is the operator of logical possibility, should be accepted. With (12), (17)entails the principle

(19) I a A D I a ~ A .

5.

Let us go back to the example where Esa imagines that Ingmar is dancing with ablond girl. Then a well-defined physical individual, Ingmar, enters Esa'simaginary worlds. This can be expressed by HinUkka'sphysicalquantifier(Ex)as follows

(ExJIg^ (x = Ingmar & x dances).

Here the variable x ranges over 'physical world-lines', i.e., functions that pickout from each imaginary world the same, 'physically cross-identified' indivi-


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

216

dual. On the other hand, the personal identity of the blond girl is unspecific- inonepossibleworldshecouldbeMarilynMonroe.inanotherDorisDay.etc.Thefunction that picks out from each alternative the blond girl in that world is a'perspectival world-line'-it cross-identifies thosegirlswhoplaythesameroleinEsa's field of imagination as the dancing partner of Ingmar. (Similarly,perspectival world-lines in the case of perception identify the individuals whoplay the same role in the perceiver's visual space.) If (Hx) is the perspectivalquantifier which ranges over perspectival world-lines, then we can write

lond girl & y dances with Ingmar).

Hence,

(ExX 3y)lEsa (x = Ingmar & y is a blondie & x dances with y).In the logic of perception, the sentence "a sees b" with a direct objectconstruction can be formalized in two radically different ways:

(10) (Hx)Sa(x=b)(11) (Hx)(x=b&Sa(3yXy=x)).

Here (10) says that something visually appears to a and a identifies it as b. Forexample, "Macbeth sees the ghost of Duncan" has the form (10). A visualillusion, where aseesb asc, can beexpressed as follows:

(12) (SxXx=b&Sa(x=c)).

Thus,(ll)saysineffect that aseesbasexisting.butitdoesnottellhowaidentifieswhat he sees. As Hintikka (1975) requires that a's perspectival world-linecanbecontinued toanindividualbintheactualworldonly if thereisacausalchainfromb to a's perception, it is natural to read (11) as "a looks atb"(cf.Niiniluoto 1979,1982).

The counterparts of (10),(11), and (12) in the logic of imagination are

(13) (3x)Ia(x=b)

(14) (HxXx=b&Ia(HyXx=y))

(15) (3x)(x=b&Ia(x=c))

Here (13) and (15) are special cases of the formulas

(16) (3x)IaF(x)

(17) (Hx)(x=b&IaF(x))


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

217

where F(x) is a formula with x as a free variable.To illustrate the expressive power of these formulas, let us first consider

Sartre's favourite example, where he imagines that Peter is walking on thestreets of Berlin. According to Sartre, perceiving Peter and imagining Peterare two different ways in which our consciousness can be related or directedto the same object:

"The imaginative consciousness I have of Peter is not a consciousness of the image ofPeter: Peter is directly reached; my attention is not directed on an image, but on anobject." (Sartre 1972:5.)

Thus, Sartre imagines of Peter that he is walking in Berlin. Similarly, Esaimagines of Ingmar that he is dancing. These sentences can be formalized by(17) - which therefore has the reading

(17)* a imagines of b that he is an F

Hence, (14) can be read by

(14)* a imagines of b something

or

(14)** **a is imagining about b

The term " b " in formulas (14) and (17) is outside the scope of the operator I a ,and its occurence is therefore referentially transparent. It also follows fromthese formulas that (Hx)(x=b), i.e., b exists in the actual world.

The analogy with the logic of perception is not complete, however, sincethe cross-identification between the actual world and the imaginary worldsneed not take place through causality. This is a crucially important feature ofimagination - a point that Sartre emphasizes in his example discussed above.

If I imagine Ingmar as Ingmar, i.e., as a person with his familiar appea-rance, then my act is of course causally related to my earlier perceptions andmemories about him, but not necessarily to his present existence. Further,imagination is 'free' in the sense that I can also imagine what some existingperson whom I have never even seen looks like. What is more, I can imagineIngmar as someone else. This situation is expressed by formula (15) whenbA;, which thus can be read by

(15) *a imagines b as c.

Here "c" occurs within the scope of Ia , and hence in a referentially opaqueposition.

Assume, for example, that I am following Ingmar's lecture, and I amuse


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

218

myself by imagining that he is Alfred Tarski. To do this, I need not have anypicture of Tarski in my mind - 1 just stretch my imagination to think that thelecturer who looks like Ingmar is Tarski. Then it is true to say that Inon-sensuously imagine Ingmar as Tarski. There is no causal connectionbetween Ingmar and my perspectival world-line in this case.

On the other hand, suppose I sensuously imagine a doll as Marilyn Mon-roe. In this case, there is a causal connection between my earlier perceptionsand memories of Marilyn and my image of Marilyn, but not between the dolland rrjy image. There is also an interesting overlap of my fields of perceptionand imagination: when I see the doll as a doll, but imagine that it is Marilyn,we have the following situation

(Hx)(3y)(x=y=the doll & Sa(x is a doll) & Ia(x is Marilyn)).

If I imagine a doll as Marilyn, then I also imagine Marilyn in the sense offormula (13): there is a perspectival world-line which picks out Marilyn frommy imaginary worlds. Thus, (13) and (16) have the natural readings

(13) *a imagines b.

(16) *a imagines an F.

Here 'b' occurs in a referentially opaque position. Unlike (14) and (15),formulas (13) and (16) do not entail that b exists. They thus cover two kinds ofcases: imagining a thing or person which also has real existence (Ingmar,Marilyn, a horse, etc.), and imagining something 'purely imaginary' orfictitious (the present king of France, Anna Karenina, a unicorn, etc.).

Formulas (13) - (17) illustrate different meanings that the direct objectconstruction "a imagines b" may have. It is important to note their commonfeature: they are all defined in terms of the operator I a which takes proposi-tional that-clauses. Hence, what Casey (1976) calls imaging is a special case ofimagining-that}

6.

Sartre points out that "cases may be cited in which I produce an image of anobject which has no real existence outside of myself. But, he adds, thechimera does not exist even "as an image" (Sartre 1972:5). On the other hand,Brentano would say that an imagined unicorn - towards which our act ofimagining is "directed" - had "intentional inexistence." In his analysis of a"naive hallucination", where Macbeth sees a dagger before him and believeswhat he sees, Smith (1983) comes to the conclusion that Macbeth's percep-tion has "no object". More precisely, he rejects the alternatives that theobjects of naive hallucinations could be existent objects, nonexistent objects,objects in possible worlds, sense-data, intentional objects, or objects thatexist only insofar as they are perceived.


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

219

Smith attributes to Hintikka the view that Macbeth's hallucination is"intentionally related to at most one object in each of the many possibleworlds compatible with what is presented in the experience". But instead ofsaying that a perception is "directed toward something in each world compa-tible with what the subject sees", Hintikka (1969,1975) himself has repeated-ly argued that the proper counterparts of 'sense-data', as the objects ofperception, are the perceptual world-lines? These 'entities' are intensional inthe sense that they do not belong to one world - to the actual world or to anysingle possible world. There is thus an important difference between sayingthat perception is multiply directed to objects in several possible worlds(Smith's interpretation) and that perception is directed to a world-line. Thereare quantifiers that range over world-lines, but still these lines exist no-where'.

The status of 'mental images' in the logic of imagination is similar toHintikka's reconstruction of sense data in the logic of perception. To assumethat such intensional entities exist in one world would be just as objectionable(cf. Ryle 1949, Ch. VIII) as the corresponding existence assumption aboutsense data.

7.

One interesting aspect of imagination has so far been ignored in ourdiscussion. Consider some fictional character, like Walt Disney's DonaldDuck or Anna Karenina in Tolstoy's novel. While it is never possible for meto perceive Donald Duck (I can only see pictures and films about him), I canimagine various things about him - e.g., that he enters this room now.Similarly, I cannot see Anna Karenina, but I can imagine what she looks like.In such cases, Donald and Anna not only play a role in my imaginary worldsin the sense of formula (13), but I also seem to be able to imagine of themsomething in the sense of formula (17). In other words, it seems that acts ofimagination can be directed towards fictional entities as well as real ones.

This idea leads us directly to the notorious problems within the semanticsof fictional terms. Assume I imagine of Anna Karenina that she has greeneyes. This cannot be formalized by a sentence of the form (17), i.e., by

(18) (Hx)(x=Anna Karenina & Ia (x has green eyes))

since (18) entails that Anna Karenina exists in the actual world.We also stumble on the problem of 'intentional identity' (cf. Saarinen

1979): if you and I are both imagining something about Donald Duck, inwhat sense are our acts directed toward the same object? As Donald does notexist in the actual world, this cannot be formalized by

(19) (3xXHyXx=y=Donald Duck & Ia(x is ...) & Ia(y is ...)).


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

220

It seems to me that we have to make a distinction between private andpublic fictional entities. If I now create in my mind some fancy character, noone is able to refer to it or to direct any mental acts towards it. But I can makethis private 'entity' public by giving a name to it, by describing or drawing it,and by telling or writing stories about it. This is precisely what Tolstoy didwith Anna Karenina and Disney with Donald Duck. After they publishedtheir descriptions of Anna and Donald, other people could then refer to thesefictional creatures.

Hence, two persons can think different thoughts about the same DonaldDuck, but only in the sense that their mental acts are causally related to thesame public descriptions and drawings of Donald. And it is only throughthese Donald-descriptions in the actual world that my perspectival Donald-world-line can be linked with Disney's own Donald-world-line.

These remarks suggest the following treatment of fictional discourse. Let abe the author of a. fictional text T (such as a short story, a novel, or a play),where T is conceived as a conjunctive sequence of sentences. For simplicity,we assume that Tdoes not contain any non-fictional sentences, i.e., assertionswhich do not belong to the fictional story of T. Then in publishing the text Tits author certainly is not asserting that T is true in the actual world. JohnSearle (1979) suggests that a is (nondeceptively) pretending to assert that T.However, with explicitly fictional stories it does not seem to me at allplausible to say that the author 'pretends' to assert anything or 'pretends torefer' to something.4 Instead, a is making a sincere attempt to describesomething that he has first imagined in his own mind.

Indeed, if a is the author of T, then it must be true to say that a imagines thatT (cf. Haapala 1984) - or at least that a has imagined that T. In writing andpublishing the story T, the author is then transforming his private imaginarycharacters to public ones. So a is really engaging in the illocutionary act ofrecommending his readers to share his imagination, i.e., a's act has thefollowing form:

(20) Let us imagine that T!

As a recommendation, (20) is neither true nor false; and as an imaginationstatement it does not commit a to defending the truth of T.

This analysis is compatible with the possibility that a nevertheless intendsto convey some interesting truths by his story: even if the actual world is not amodel of T, the text T may have logical consequences p which are actuallytrue. These truths need not even be consciously thought by a - he may onlyhave an 'intuition' that the story T entails something vitally important aboutthe world or about human nature. Thus, in spite of the facts "a imagines thatT" and "T entails p", it need not be the case that "a imagines that p". Thisfollows from our treatment (9) of imagination statements.

In writing the text T, the author attempts to describe the propositionalcontent of his imagination. In terms of Section 2, this means that he should


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

221

specify the class ,4wj of his imaginary worlds. Through his work, he thus"projects" - as Wolterstorff (1980) says - a class of possible worlds. It hardlyever holds, however, that Aw T is simply the class Mod(T) of the models of T:the author a narrows down the class Mod(T) with a set of contextualpresuppositions P a (cf. Lewis, 1978), which contains at least factual assump-tions about the world and semantical conventions about the language of thetext T. The class of possible worlds projected by the author a is thenMod(T&Pa). Everything that is true in this class, i.e., follows logically fromT&Pa , is true in the fiction T. Everything that is false in this class is false in thefiction T. It follows that there is a class of sentences true in some elements ofM(T&Pa) and false in others. These sentences are indetermined in the fictionT.

A different class of possible worlds Mod(T&P^) is projected by a reader bwho reads the text T with his own presuppositions P^, where P^ and P a maybe more or less similar to each other. In reading about the fictional charactersthat a made public through T, the reader b may then usehis own imaginationand produce a more or less vivid private image of the fictional world describ-ed by T. In this way, each reader of a literary work of art will have an activerole in 'constituting' for himself the imaginary world that this work speaksabout.

The communication between the author a and the readers b of a fictionaltext T is made possible primarily by the shared presuppositions in P a and P^which help the reader to understand the intended meaning of the author.Through the public character of the text T, the author and the readers are ableto think about the same fictional objects. But, as the presuppositions P a maybe partly unconscious to the author a, an interpreter b may claim, as it oftenhappens, that he understands the text T better than its author.

University of HelsinkiDept. of PhilosophyUnioninkalu 40 B00170 Helsinki 17Finland

NOTES

This paper is a revised version of a paper which appeared under the title "Remarks on the Logicof Imagination" in G. Holmstr5m and A.J.I. Jones (eds.): Action, Logic, and Social Theory(=Ada Philosophica Fennica vol. 38 (1985), pp. 183-202.1. For my first attempt to develop a logic of imagination, see Niiniluoto (1983).2. It seems to me clear that imagining-how is also reducible to imagining-that. For example, toimagine how it feels to dance with Marilyn Monroe, I imagine that I dance with Marilyn - withfeelings.3. Fora treatment of hallucinations within Hintikka's logic of perception, see Niiniluoto (1979).Smith's distinction between "naive", "neutral", and "hip" hallucination would require that thebelief operator B a is combined with Sa. If this is done (cf. Niiniluoto 1979), then we can expressthe difference between the terms "the dagger now here sensuously before me" and "the dagger


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

222

actually now here sensuously before me" (cf. Smith 1983:108).4. Searle rejects the view that "fiction contains different illocutionary acts from nonfiction"(such as 'telling a story'), since this would commit us to the claim that "words do not have theirnormal meanings in works of fiction" (Searle 1979: 64). This is a mistake, since ordinary wordsmay have the same meanings in two different illocutionary acts, e.g., in assertions and questions.

REFERENCES

Barwise, J., 1981: Scenes and Other Situations, Journal of Philosophy 78: 369-691.Barwise, J. and Perry, J., 1981: Situations and Attitudes. Journal of Philosopy 78: 668-691.Barwise, J. and Perry, J., 1983: Situations and Attitudes. MIT Press, Cambridge. Mass.Casey, E.S., 1976: Imagining; A Phenomenological Study, Indiana University Press,

Bloomington.Dreyfus, H.L. (ed.), 1982: Husserl, Intentionality, andCognitiwe Science. MIT Press. Cambridge,

Mass.Haapala, A., 1984: Fiktto ja todellisuus. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopiston yleisen kirjallisuustieteen,

teatteritieteen ja estetiikan laitoksen monistesarja n:o 12.Higginbotham, J., 1983: The Logic of Perceptual Reports: An Extensional Alternative to

Situation Semantics. Journal of Philosophy 80: 100-127.Hintikka, J., 1969: Models for Modalities. Reidel, Dordrecht.Hintikka, J., 1975: The Intentions of Intentionality. Reidel, Dordrecht.Hintikka, J., 1983: Situations, Possible Worlds, and Attitudes. Synthese 54: 153-162.Lewis, D., 1978: Truth in Fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly 15: 37-46.Niiniluoto, I., 1979: Knowing that Ones Sees. In: E. Saarinen et al. (eds.), Essays in Honour of

Jaakko Hintikka. Reidel Dordrecht, pp. 249-282.Niiniluoto, I., 1982: Remarks on the Logic of Perception. In: Niiniluoto and Saarinen (1982), pp.

116-129.Niiniluoto, I., 1983: On the Logic of Imagination. In: I. Patoluotoif/a/. (eds.), Vexing Questions.

Reports from the Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, N:o 3, pp. 23-28.Niiniluoto, I. and Saarinen, E. (eds.), 1982; Intensional Logic; Theory and Applications. Acta

Philosophica Fennica vol. 35, Helsinki.Rantala, V., 1982: Impossible Worlds Semantics and Logical Omniscience. In: Niiniluoto and

Saarinen (1982), pp. 106-115.Ryle, G., 1949: The Concept of Mind, Hutchinson, London.Saarinen, E., 1979: Intentional Identity Interpreted. In: E. Saarinen (ed.), Game-Theoretical

Semantics. Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 245-327.Saarinen, E., 1982, Propositional Attitudes are not Attitudes Towards Propositions. In:

Niiniluoto and Saarinen (1982), pp. 130-162.Saannen, E., 1983: On the Logic of Perception Sentences. Synthese 54: 115-128.Sartre, J.-P., 1972: The Psychology of Imagination. Methuen, London.Searle, J., 1979; Expression and Meaning. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.Smith, D.W., 1983: Is This a Dagger I See Before Me? Synthese 54: 95-124.Smith, D.W. and Mclntyre, R., 1982; Husserl and Intenlionalily; A Study of Mind, Meaning, and

Language. Reidel, Dordrecht.Vlach, F., 1983: On Situation Semantics for Perception. Synthese 54: 129-152.Wolterstorff, N., 1980: Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford University Press. Oxford.


ecember 4, 2014


ownloaded from

niiniluoto - imagination and fiction

Documents