Imaginative representations are crucial to the generation of action--both pretense and plain action. But well-known theories of imagination on offer in the literature [1] fail to describe how perceptually-formatted imaginings (mental images) and motor imaginings function in the generation of action and [2] fail to recognize the important fact that spatially rich imagining can be integrated into one's perceptual manifold. In this paper, I present a theory of imagining that shows how spatially rich imagining functions in the generation of (...) action. I also describe the imaginative structures behind two under-explored forms of action: semi-pretense and pretense layering. In addition, I suggest that my theory of imagining meshes better than the competitors with current work in cognitive and affective neuroscience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christopher Gill PLATO'S ATLANTIS STORY AND THE BIRTH OF FICTION There is a sense in which Plato's Atlantis story is the earliest example of narrative fiction in Greek literature; which is also to say it is the earliest example in Western literature. This may seem a surprising claim. Plato's story is introduced in the Timaeus as the record of a factual event and as one which is "absolutely true." (...) If the story is conceded, nonetheless, to be an invention, one might suppose that earlier works of literature, such as Homer's epics, have an equal claim to be considered fictional. On the other hand, it might be objected that the genre of narrative fiction (what we call the romance or novel) did not emerge in Greece until considerably later, in or around the first century B.C. A better understanding both of fiction and of the Atlantis story will, however, show my claim to be justified. If we describe a narrative as a fiction, we usually mean that it is an account of events which did not actually take place as they are described but which have been invented by the author. This, however, does not distinguish between falsehood and fiction. And, indeed, fiction is distinguishable from falsehood only by the presumptions of author and audience: the author of fiction does not intend to deceive (nor is the audience generally deceived) about the status of the narrative. It is also true (though in a different sense) that it is the presumptions of author and audience that distinguish fictional from factual accounts. For a fictional narrative in the past tense is not formally distinguishable from a narrative of past factual events; and it is only certain conventional and extrinsic signals (like the title of a book) which denote the class of the narrative. Moreover, an audience follows a fictional narrative with much the same kind of mental attention and emotional involvement as it does a factual narrative: fictional events may seem, in a sense, as real as, or more real than, factual events. Yet, at some level, the audience is aware that the fictional events are not real in the ordinary sense of the word but invented by the author; this awareness underlies 64 Christopher Gill65 and characterizes the kind of attention, and involvement, elicited by fictional narrative. Fiction, one may say, is a kind of game, in which both participants share in a willed pretense, treating what is unreal as real, and what is invented as actual. The rules of the game of fiction are not intuitively obvious, but presuppose a degree of cultural sophistication in a society or individual: in particular, the capacity to draw a clear distinction between fact and fiction. This capacity cannot be reasonably attributed to the composers of Homeric epic, nor can the poems (which are a chemical fusion of legends about the past and creative invention) accurately be classified by either term. The genre of deliberately fictional narrative (that is, the romance) did not emerge until historiography, factual recording of the past, was an established technique. Indeed, the romance seems to have grown up as an imitation of history, in which the author played the game of recounting a sequence of past events. Xenophon's Education of Cyrus (c. 360 b.c.), the first self-consciously semi-fictional history, served as a suggestive prototype for later, more completely fictional narratives. It is perhaps not accidental that Thucydides' attempt in the fifth century to lay down criteria for wholly factual historiography (with none of the romantic elaborations of the Homeric epics, 1.3, 1.10, 1.22) was succeeded in the fourth century by the first philosophical accounts ofthe truth-status of literature; Aristotle, in fact, defines literary truth through a contrast with historical truth (Poetics, 9). The clearer delineation of fact promoted the desire to define fiction (or, at least, literary invention), as well as creating the preconditions for the self-conscious production of fiction. Plato may seem to be an enemy rather than an analyst of literature; and his discussions undeniably have a polemical tone. But, closely examined, his treatment of literature in the Republic, and of the kinds of... (shrink)

In psychologists' attempts to explain the nature of language and thought, all pretense of building an axiomatic system was laid aside. The severely limited success of formal axiomatic systems in psychology eliminated most of the desire to even attempt such a project shortly after Hull's work was completed. Whatever axiomatic qualities psychological theories possess, they are rarely expressed as such. We have seen that Dollard and Miller translated some Freudian principles into those of Hull, and although they demonstrated the (...) similarities that existed between the two theories, this never induced Freudians to change their vocabulary or their theoretical concepts to those of Hull. Freudian theory was so extensively interpretative and so restructured in a formal, or even semi-formal, axiomatic manner. However, as we have seen, since Skinner developed a system that lent itself to axiomatic arrangement, a successful attempt to account for the functional aspects of language and thought through the principles of behavior analysis would constitute a major advance in psychological theory. (shrink)

Since 2016, my embodied avatar performance (EAP) has explored healing rituals and life review at the intersection of arts, health and virtual reality (VR) for a variety of individuals, including older adults and cancer patients. EAP established a format in which the avatar mirrors the participant’s behaviours and speech, facing them during the life review process. The aspect of mirroring and facing is crucial in EAP for facilitating engagement, embodiment and empathy and a symbiotic relationship between avatar and human. This (...) article outlines the symbiosis between humans and avatars within the EAP process, focusing on the interactions where participants face and mirror their avatars. The avatars are presented as if participants are looking into a mirror. As the avatars face the participants and mimic their movements, they create an illusion similar to seeing one’s reflection in a virtual setting. The article discusses a range of mirroring aspects, including virtual mirrors in VR, echoing techniques in drama and movement therapy, and broader concepts like empathy, embodiment, we-ness and the Korean emotional concept of Cheong. Early EAP avatars, especially in the case of technical failures, will be discussed as examples. (shrink)

This paper intends to reveal the essential value of interactive media by fully understanding the complex interactive mechanism of human experience. Following Cartesian dualistic thought, interactive technology has primarily been utilized as a physical control device. It hasn’t sufficiently explored its gigantic potential as a true interactive medium. Interactive technology reflects our desire to interact with someone or something. Historically, human desire for interaction has been continuously manifested from the day of primitive ritual to contemporary cyberspace. Our interactive routines have (...) continued, from micro to macro scale, in order to confirm our existence in every day life. This universal repetitive pattern of human activity is ‘the ritual’. It is ritual because it is the archetypes of cycles driven by human instinct, regardless of their cultural and historical period. In this paper, I am defining ‘the form of ritual’, to explain the fundamental human process of interaction and becoming, and furthermore, to find the imperative potential of interactive media. The form of ritual will be explained in detail, with agent, driving force, process and by-product, taking reference from Korean shaman ritual, Yin/Yang process and Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy. My virtual puppetry with spiralling interaction, ‘Yong-Shin-Gud’ (calling-dragon-spirit), will be introduced as an art example to carry out the ritual. Interactive technology is an ongoing expression of human desire. Its essential value would be found in understanding human beings, nature and cosmos. Revealing its hidden essence, historical presence and spiritual value will be the next paradigm of interactive art practice. (shrink)

We live in layers of mixed realities with continuous conflicts, negotiation and becoming. I find it interesting to look at our situation as a continuous struggle in the fusion of virtual/actual presences, and machine/human. However, we seem to be far from understanding these relationships. Maybe the problem lies in the questions themselves, promoting unidirectional preconceptions. By reversing the questions, we might be able to identify something that has been missing in previous discussions: Can we talk about disconnection to further discuss (...) connection? Can we talk about distancing to further discuss the process of becoming? Can we talk about love impossible, to further discuss love? This paradoxical journey would maintain us in the continuum of struggle and massive doubts, and encounter deep aspects of human being. In this article, I examine the Korean cultural psyche called han in the context of a paradoxical state of consciousness and the story of love impossible, and argue that han is a driving force of transformative ritual in human consciousness. Beyond cultural boundaries, this article also positions han in a microscopic view of contemporary life. han underlies paradoxical human relationships with objects, and with my virtual puppets, in the context of distance, disconnection and love impossible. (shrink)

A popular view has it that the mental representations underlying human pretense are not beliefs, but are “belief-like” in important ways. This view typically posits a distinctive cognitive attitude (a “DCA”) called “imagination” that is taken toward the propositions entertained during pretense, along with correspondingly distinct elements of cognitive architecture. This paper argues that the characteristics of pretense motivating such views of imagination can be explained without positing a DCA, or other cognitive architectural features beyond those regulating (...) normal belief and desire. On the present “Single Attitude” account of imagination, propositional imagining just is a form of believing. The Single Attitude account is also distinguished from “metarepresentational” accounts of pretense, which hold that both pretending and recognizing pretense in others require one to have concepts of mental states. It is argued, to the contrary, that pretending and recognizing pretense require neither a DCA nor possession of mental state concepts. (shrink)

Issues of pretense and imagination are of central interest to philosophers, psychologists, and researchers in allied fields. In this entry, we provide a roadmap of some of the central themes around which discussion has been focused. We begin with an overview of pretense, imagination, and the relationship between them. We then shift our attention to the four specific topics where the disciplines' research programs have intersected or where additional interactions could prove mutually beneficial: the psychological underpinnings of performing (...) pretense and of recognizing pretense, the cognitive capacities involved in imaginative engagement with fictions, and the real-world impact of make-believe. In the final section, we discuss more briefly a number of other mental activities that arguably involve imagining, including counterfactual reasoning, delusions, and dreaming. (shrink)

Several philosophers advance substantive theories of propositions, to deal with several issues they raise in connection with a concern with a long pedigree in philosophy, the problem of the unity of propositions. The qualification ‘substantive’ is meant to contrast with ‘minimal’ or ‘deflationary’ – roughly, views that reject that propositions have a hidden nature, worth investigating. Substantive views appear to create spurious problems by characterizing propositions in ways that make them unfit to perform their theoretical jobs. I will present in (...) this light some critical points against Hanks’ (2015, 2019) act-theoretic view, and Recanati’s (2019) recent elaboration of Hanks’ notion of cancellation. Both Hanks and Recanati, I’ll argue, rely on problematic conceptions of fiction and pretense. (shrink)

Whether a person is pretending, or not, is a function of their beliefs and intentions. This poses a challenge to 4E accounts of pretense, which typically seek to exclude such cognitive states from their explanations of psychological phenomena. Resulting tensions are explored within three recent accounts of imagination and pretense offered by theorists working in the 4E tradition. A path forward is then charted, through considering ways in which explanations can invoke beliefs and intentions while remaining true to (...) 4E precepts. To make real progress in explaining pretense, 4E theorists will need to grow comfortable with the idea that two agents whose outward behaviors and environments are, in the short term, the same, may be guided by quite different beliefs and intentions, in virtue of which only one is pretending. In this way, the scientific project of explaining pretense remains inseparable from the more general project of determining which beliefs and intentions are appropriate to ascribe to which kinds of entities, given which kinds of behaviors. (shrink)

Semi-parliamentarism is a compelling design with attractive features, including those discussed by Ganghof, and also its likely tendency to break preference cycles and moderate politics. However, I argue that semi-parliamentarism may be a difficult system to sustain. My contribution concludes with consideration of how such systems might be preserved.

Idioms – expressions like kick the bucket and let the cat out of the bag – are strange. They behave in ways that ordinary multi-word expressions do not. One distinctive and troublesome feature of idioms is their unpredictability: The meanings of sentences in which idiomatic phrases occur are not the ones that we would get by applying the usual compositional rules to the usual meanings of their (apparent) constituents. This sort of behavior requires an explanation. I will argue that the (...) right explanation is that the sentences are being interpreted through a pretense. (What this means, exactly, will be explained in what follows.) This is a surprising claim, for two reasons. On the one hand, it seems that adopting a pretense account is overkill—it’s a far more radical move than is required to account for the phenomena. On the other hand, it seems that a pretense account is hopeless—that there is a fatal overgeneration problem for pretense accounts of idiom that causes them to fail, as Jason Stanley charges, “as badly as it is possible for an account of idiom to fail.” So I will have some work to do. (shrink)

Thought about fictional characters is special, and needs to be distinguished from ordinary world-directed thought. On my interpretation, Kendall Walton and Gareth Evans have tried to show how this serious fiction-directed thought can arise from engagement with a kind of pretending. Many criticisms of their account have focused on the methodological presupposition, that fiction-directed thought is the appropriate explanandum. In the first part of this paper, I defend the methodological claim, and thus the existence of the problem to which (...) class='Hi'>pretense is supposed to be a solution. In the second part, I elaborate and defend the pretense theory as a solution to this problem. (shrink)

Our claim in this paper is that a theory of “pretense” (in all its crucial uses in human society and cognition) can be built only if it is grounded on the general theory of “behavioral implicit communication” (BIC), which is not to be confused with non-verbal communication (with distinct notions being frequently conflated, such as “signs” vs. “messages”, or goal as “intention” vs. goal as “function”). Pretense presupposes some BIC-based human interaction, where a normal, practical behavior is used (...) for signifying something, based on a sign that is not a conventional one. In light of BIC interaction theory, one can exploit this sign or message in a deceptive way in order to induce the other to believe that he/she is performing a given behavior or has a given mental state. -/- . (shrink)

A pretense theory of a given discourse is a theory that claims that we do not believe or assert the propositions expressed by the sentences we token (speak, write, and so on) when taking part in that discourse. Instead, according to pretense theory, we are speaking from within a pretense. According to pretense theories of mathematics, we engage with mathematics as we do a pretense. We do not use mathematical language to make claims that express (...) propositions and, thus, we do not use mathematical discourse to make claims that are either true or false. In this paper I make use of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience and developmental science to suggest that pretense theories of mathematics fail. 1 Introduction 2 The Autism Objection 2.1 Autism and pretense 2.2 Autistic engagement with mathematics 2.2.1 Cortical folding 2.2.2 The language of mathematics 3 The Onset of the Number Sense and the Recognition of Pretense 3.1 A difference in neurology 3.2 Young and no numbers 3.2.1 When and where is the difference? 3.2.2 Damaged HIPS without impairment to engagement with fiction 4 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

Semi-DeMorgan algebras are a common generalization of DeMorgan algebras and pseudocomplemented distributive lattices. A duality for them is developed that builds on the Priestley duality for distributive lattices. This duality is then used in several applications. The subdirectly irreducible semi-DeMorgan algebras are characterized. A theory of partial diagrams is developed, where properties of algebras are tied to the omission of certain partial diagrams from their duals. This theory is then used to find and give axioms for the largest (...) variety of semi-DeMorgan algebras with the congruence extension property. (shrink)

Impostor Syndrome is the belief or feeling that one is passing oneself off as much more capable than one really is. Anecdotally, it is experienced more by members of historically disadvantaged groups, but the empirical data seems inconsistent with this view. I argue that impostor syndrome occurs because (a) it is normal, appropriate and often even necessary to engage in some degree of pretense in order to acquire specialist expertise, but (b) we are much more likely to be aware (...) of our own pretense than that of others. I argue that we are especially likely to notice pretense when we’re made self-conscious, and that failing to match the stereotype of one’s profession or domain of expertise tends to give rise to self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is elicited by certain cues; this fact explains not only the greater vulnerability of the members of some groups to it, but also explains why the empirical data has not yet provided evidence for this greater vulnerability. I end with some suggestions for reducing the prevalence or impact of impostor syndrome. (shrink)

Kendall Walton’s pretense theory, like its rivals, says that what’s true in a fiction F depends in part on the importation of background propositions into F. The aim of this paper is to present, explain, and defend a brief yet straightforward argument–one which exploits the specific mechanism by which the pretense theory says propositions are imported into fictions–for the falsity of the pretense theory.

ABSTRACT Semi-revision is a mode of belief change that differs from revision in that the input sentence is not always accepted. A constructive approach to semi-revision is proposed. It requires an efficient treatment of local inconsistencies, which is more easily obtainable in belief base models than in belief set models. Axiomatic characterizations of two semi-revision operators are reported.

The project of this paper is to synthesize enactivist cognitive science and practice theory in order to develop a new account of pretend play. Pretend play is usually conceived of as a representationalist phenomenon where a pretender projects a fictional mental representation onto reality. It thus seems that pretense can only be explained in representationalist terms. In this paper, we oppose this usual approach. We instead propose not only new explanatory tools for pretend play, but also a fundamental reconceptualization (...) of the phenomena of pretend play, that is, of the very explanandum of theories of pretense. To do so, we suggest combining the turn to action and embodiment in the cognitive sciences with the practice turn in the humanities. From our point of view, pretend play has to be seen in its role in human life as a whole, which is to help children to learn to master the complex sociocultural contingencies of the manifold social practices that make up social reality. Pretend play should therefore be conceived as alternative sense-making that is always related, in varying ways, to ordinary social practices. Pretenders do not need to project mental representations onto reality, but make sense of their surroundings in different ways than encultured adults in ordinary practices. In the paper, we spell out this view and show how it enables an enactivist reconceptualization of imagination, intentions and knowledge, which are usually thought of as being available only to representationalist accounts of pretense. (shrink)

Gendler [2007. “Self-deception as Pretense.” Philosophical Perspectives 21 : 231–258] offers an account of self-deception in terms of imaginative pretense, according to which the self-deceptive...

Most empirical work in human categorization has studied learning in either fully supervised or fully unsupervised scenarios. Most real-world learning scenarios, however, are semi-supervised: Learners receive a great deal of unlabeled information from the world, coupled with occasional experiences in which items are directly labeled by a knowledgeable source. A large body of work in machine learning has investigated how learning can exploit both labeled and unlabeled data provided to a learner. Using equivalences between models found in human categorization (...) and machine learning research, we explain how these semi-supervised techniques can be applied to human learning. A series of experiments are described which show that semi-supervised learning models prove useful for explaining human behavior when exposed to both labeled and unlabeled data. We then discuss some machine learning models that do not have familiar human categorization counterparts. Finally, we discuss some challenges yet to be addressed in the use of semi-supervised models for modeling human categorization. (shrink)

In this book, Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge distinguish various species of fictionalism, locating and defending their own version of philosophical fictionalism. Addressing semantic and philosophical puzzles that arise from ordinary language, they consider such issues as the problem of non-being, plural identity claims, mental-attitude ascriptions, meaning attributions, and truth-talk. They consider 'deflationism about truth', explaining why deflationists should be fictionalists, and show how their philosophical fictionalist account of truth-talk underwrites a dissolution of the Liar Paradox and its kin. (...) They further explore the semantic notions of reference and predicate-satisfaction, showing how philosophical fictionalism can also resolve puzzles that these notions appear to present. Their critical examination of fictionalist approaches in philosophy, together with the development and application of their own brand of philosophical fictionalism, will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and linguistics. (shrink)

Semi-realism offers a metaphysics of science based on causal properties. Insofar as these are understood in terms of dispositions for specific relations that comprise the concrete structure of the world it can be regarded as a form of structural realism. And insofar as these properties are 'sociable' and cohere into the groupings that comprise the particulars investigated by science, it captures the underlying intuition behind forms of entity realism. However, I shall raise concerns about both these features. I shall (...) suggest that dispositionalism is not an appropriate metaphysics for modern physics and that 'sociability' should be understood in terms of the coherence revealed by symmetry principles. I hope to show how we can retain the virtues of semi-realism while dispensing with the problematic elements by recasting it in more thoroughly structuralist terms. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to define a new logic $${\mathcal {SI}}$$ called semi-intuitionistic logic such that the semi-Heyting algebras introduced in [ 4 ] by Sankappanavar are the semantics for $${\mathcal {SI}}$$ . Besides, the intuitionistic logic will be an axiomatic extension of $${\mathcal {SI}}$$.

We introduce and study (weakly) semi-equational theories, generalizing equationality in stable theories (in the sense of Srour) to the NIP context. In particular, we establish a connection to distality via one-sided strong honest definitions; demonstrate that certain trees are semi-equational, while algebraically closed valued fields are not weakly semi-equational; and obtain a general criterion for weak semi-equationality of an expansion of a distal structure by a new predicate.

In this paper we introduce a logic that we name semi Heyting–Brouwer logic, \, in such a way that the variety of double semi-Heyting algebras is its algebraic counterpart. We prove that, up to equivalences by translations, the Heyting–Brouwer logic \ is an axiomatic extension of \ and that the propositional calculi of intuitionistic logic \ and semi-intuitionistic logic \ turn out to be fragments of \.

For semi-continuous real functions we study different computability concepts defined via computability of epigraphs and hypographs. We call a real function f lower semi-computable of type one, if its open hypograph hypo is recursively enumerably open in dom × ℝ; we call f lower semi-computable of type two, if its closed epigraph Epi is recursively enumerably closed in dom × ℝ; we call f lower semi-computable of type three, if Epi is recursively closed in dom × (...) ℝ. We show that type one and type two semi-computability are independent and that type three semi-computability plus effectively uniform continuity implies computability, which is false for type one and type two instead of type three. We show also that the integral of a type three semi-computable real function on a computable interval is not necessarily computable. (shrink)

Imaginative pretend play is often thought of as the domain of young children, yet adults regularly engage in elaborated, fantastical, social-mediated pretend play. We describe imaginative play in adults via the term “pretensive shared reality;” Shared Pretensive Reality describes the ability of a group of individuals to employ a range of higher-order cognitive functions to explicitly and implicitly share representations of a bounded fictional reality in predictable and coherent ways, such that this constructed reality may be explored and invented/embellished with (...) shared intentionality in anad hocmanner. Pretensive Shared Reality facilitates multiple individual and social outcomes, including generating personal and group-level enjoyment or mirth, the creation or maintenance of social groups, or the safe exploration of individual self-concepts (such as alternative expression of a players sexual or gender identity). Importantly, Pretensive Shared Reality (both within the specific context of table-top role-playing games, and other instances) are primarily co-operative and co-creative. We draw on multiple examples, and focus on Table-Top Role Playing games (TTRPG) – and specifically, the most popular and enduring table-top role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) – as a primary example of such play. Our conception of “pretensive shared reality” links the widespread existence and forms of adult imaginative play to childhood pretense, places it within a developmental and evolutionary context, and argues that pretensive shared realities – which underpin many forms of imaginative culture – are an important topic of study unto themselves, and may be utilized to provide methodological insight into a variety of psychological domains. (shrink)

Este artículo comienza elucidando la noción aristotélica de deseo de saber. Desde ahí, examina las diferencias entre deseo de saber y pretensión intelectual. La pretensión intelectual sustituye, entre los filósofos modernos, la admiración y el deseo de saber clásicos. Por último se centra en un tipo de pretensión intelectual, la pretensión de sí. Para ilustrar tal tipo de pretensión se examina la actitud intelectual hegeliana, y el olvido del ser que comporta.

In this text, we will introduce the reader to the special issue on _Pretense and Imagination from the Perspective of 4E Cognitive Science_. To do so, we will introduce the concept of 4E cognition and showcase what the available 4E approaches to pretense and imagination look like, in particular if they are contrasted with current cognitivist accounts. Against this background, we provide an overview of the articles included in this special issue.

Semi-intuitionistic logic is the logic counterpart to semi-Heyting algebras, which were defined by H. P. Sankappanavar as a generalization of Heyting algebras. We present a new, more streamlined set of axioms for semi-intuitionistic logic, which we prove translationally equivalent to the original one. We then study some formulas that define a semi-Heyting implication, and specialize this study to the case in which the formulas use only the lattice operators and the intuitionistic implication. We prove then that (...) all the logics thus obtained are equivalent to intuitionistic logic, and give their Kripke semantics. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Sartre's seminal 1945 talk, “Existentialism is a Humanism,” and the stakes of the humanism debate in France by looking at the immediate political context that has been overlooked in previous discussions of the text. It analyses the political discussion of the term “humanism” during the French national elections of 1945 and the rumbling debate over Sartre's philosophy that culminated in his presentation to the Club Maintenant, just one week after France went to the polls. A consideration of (...) this context helps explain both the rise, and later the decline, of existentialism in France, when, in the changing political climate, humanism lost its centrality, setting the stage for new antihumanist criticisms of Sartre's work. (shrink)

Young children spend a large portion of their time pretending about non-real situations. Why? We answer this question by using the framework of Bayesian causal models to argue that pretending and counterfactual reasoning engage the same component cognitive abilities: disengaging with current reality, making inferences about an alternative representation of reality, and keeping this representation separate from reality. In turn, according to causal models accounts, counterfactual reasoning is a crucial tool that children need to plan for the future and learn (...) about the world. Both planning with causal models and learning about them require the ability to create false premises and generate conclusions from these premises. We argue that pretending allows children to practice these important cognitive skills. We also consider the prevalence of unrealistic scenarios in children's play and explain how they can be useful in learning, despite appearances to the contrary. (shrink)

Semi-Post algebras of any type T being a poset have been introduced and investigated in [CR87a], [CR87b]. Plain Semi-Post algebras are in this paper singled out among semi-Post algebras because of their simplicity, greatest similarity with Post algebras as well as their importance in logics for approximation reasoning ([Ra87a], [Ra87b], [RaEp87]). They are pseudo-Boolean algebras generated in a sense by corresponding Boolean algebras and a poset T. Every element has a unique descending representation by means of elements (...) in a corresponding Boolean algebra and primitive Post constants which form a poset T. An axiomatization and another characterization, subalgebras, homomorphisms, congruences determined by special filters and a representability theory of these algebras, connected with that for Boolean algebras, are the subject of this paper. (shrink)

In this paper we explain our pretense account of truth-talk and apply it in a diagnosis and treatment of the Liar Paradox. We begin by assuming that some form of deflationism is the correct approach to the topic of truth. We then briefly motivate the idea that all T-deflationists should endorse a fictionalist view of truth-talk, and, after distinguishing pretense-involving fictionalism (PIF) from error- theoretic fictionalism (ETF), explain the merits of the former over the latter. After presenting the (...) basic framework of our PIF account of truth-talk, we demonstrate a few advantages it offers over T-deflationist accounts that do not explicitly acknowledge pretense at work in the discourse. In turning to the Liar Paradox, we explain how the quasi-anaphoric functioning that our account attributes to truth-talk provides a diagnosis of the Liar Paradox (and other instances of semantic pathology) as having no content—in the sense of not specifying any of what we call M-conditions. At the same time, however, we vindicate the intuition that we can understand liar sentences, thereby avoiding one standard objection to “meaningless strategy” responses to the Liar Paradox. With this diagnosis in place, we then, by way of treatment, introduce a new predicate, ‘semantically defective’, and show how the explanation we give for its application allows for a consistent, yet revenge-immune, (dis)solution of the Liar Paradox, and semantic pathology generally. (shrink)

There has recently been considerable interest in accounts of fiction which treat fictional characters as abstract objects. In this paper I argue against this view. More precisely I argue that such accounts are unable to accommodate our intuitions that fictional negative existentials such as “Raskolnikov doesn’t exist” are true. I offer a general argument to this effect and then consider, but reject, some of the accounts of fictional negative existentials offered by abstract object theorists. I then note that some of (...) the sort of data invoked by the abstract object theorist in fact cuts against her position. I concludle that we should not regard fictional characters as abstract objects but rather should adopt a make-believe theoretic account of fictional characters along the lines of those developed by Ken Walton and others. (shrink)

In this paper, we do two things. First, we clarify the notion of deflationism, with special attention to deflationary accounts of truth. Second, we argue that one who endorses a deflationary account of truth (or of semantic notions, generally) should be, or perhaps already is, a pretense theorist regarding truth-talk. In §1 we discuss mathematical fictionalism, where we focus on Yablo’s pretense account of mathematical discourse. §2 briefly introduces the key elements of deflationism and explains deflationism about truth (...) in particular. §3 discusses why deflationary accounts of truth should be construed as pretense accounts and gives a preliminary sketch of a particular pretense account of truth-talk. §4 addresses a main objection to a pretense account, and §5 concludes. (shrink)

The Conditional Probability Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics replaces the abstract notion of time used in standard Quantum Mechanics by the time that can be read off from a physical clock. The use of physical clocks leads to apparent non-unitary and decoherence. Here we show that a close approximation to standard Quantum Mechanics can be recovered from conditional Quantum Mechanics for semi-classical clocks, and we use these clocks to compute the minimum decoherence predicted by the Conditional Probability Interpretation.

Early modern philosophers after Ren? Descartes are commonly distinguished as either rationalists or empiricists: rationalists are understood to agree with Descartes that reason is the source of knowledge, while empiricists are seen to emphasize the role of the senses within processes of knowledge acquisition. In recent years, this classic distinction has increasingly come under scrutiny. It is objected that, in its simplicity, the distinction tends to conceal the various cross-categorial influences thinkers of the early modern era had on each other.1 (...) In "The History of Scepticism,"2 Richard Popkin provided an alternative approach to early modern philosophy: instead of focusing on the opposition between the two rival camps of empiricists and rationalists, he tells us to concentrate on "la crisepyrrhonienne,"3 for it is this crisis that lay at the heart of early modern philosophy and preoccupied rationalists as much as empiricists. (shrink)

We propose a logic of imagination, based on simulated belief revision, that intends to uncover the logical patterns governing the development of imagination in pretense. Our system complements the currently prominent logics of imagination in that ours in particular formalises (1) the algorithm that specifies what goes on in between receiving a certain input for an imaginative episode and what is imagined in the resulting imagination, as well as (2) the goal-orientedness of imagination, by allowing the context to determine, (...) what we call, the overall topic of the imaginative episode. To achieve this, we employ well-developed tools and techniques from dynamic epistemic logic and belief revision theory, enriched with a topicality component which has been exploited in the recent literature. As a result, our logic models a great number of cognitive theories of pretense and imagination [cf. Currie and Ravenscroft (Recreative minds, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002); Nichols and Stich (Mindreading: an integrated account of pretence, self-awareness, and understanding other minds, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003); Byrne (The rational imagination, The MIT Press, London, 2005); Williamson (The philosophy of philosophy, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2007); Langland-Hassan (Philos Stud 159:155–179, 2012, in: Kind and Kung (eds) Knowledge through imaginaion, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016]. (shrink)

Jason Stanley raises an important objection to hermeneutic fictionalism. The objection is called “The Autism Objection.” In this paper, I examine Stanley’s objection and defend hermeneutic fictionalism against it. After I show that the Autism Objection assumes the metarepresentational theory of pretense, I argue, mainly based on recent psychological studies, that pretense does not require the metarepresentational capacity. By doing this, I show that there are no good reasons to accept one of the premises the Autism Objection, that (...) people with autism lack the capacity to pretend. Finally, I mention two limitations of this paper. (shrink)

I assess Tamar Gendler's (2007) account of self-deception according to which its characteristic state is not belief, but imaginative pretense. After giving an overview of the literature and presenting the conceptual puzzles engendered by the notion of self-deception, I introduce Gendler's account, which emerges as a rival to practically all extant accounts of self-deception. I object to it by first arguing that her argument for abandoning belief as the characteristic state of self-deception conflates the state of belief and the (...) process of belief-formation when interpreting David Velleman's (2000) thesis that belief is an essentially truth-directed attitude. I then call attention to the fact that Velleman's argument for the identity of motivational role between belief and imagining, on which Gendler's argument for self-deception as pretense depends, conflates two senses of 'motivational role'-a stronger but implausible sense and a weaker but explanatorily irrelevant sense. Finally, I introduce Neil Van Leeuwen's (2009) argument to the effect that belief is the practical ground of all non-belief cognitive attitudes in circumstances wherein the latter prompt action. I apply this framework to Gendler's account to ultimately show that imaginative pretense fails to explain the existence of voluntary actions which result from self-deception. (shrink)