Imagining and Believing: The Promise of a Single Code

The imagination has always been one of the darker largely on empirical findings and empirical faculties of the human mind. Recent work on the considerations about pretend play.3 A brief imagination in cognitive science scarcely dispels review of a portion of our theory of pretend play all the mysteries of the imagination. But cognitive will supply the backdrop. Several features of the approaches might illuminate one central feature theory can be illustrated with a lovely experiof imagination-the striking similarities between ment on children by Alan Leslie. In Leslie's imagining and believing. In this paper I will explore experiment, the child pretends to fill two cups the idea that the similarities between imagination with tea. The experimenter picks up one of the and belief are partly explained by the hypothesis cups, upends it, and places it next to the other that imagination and belief are in a single code. Then the experimenter asks the child to point A good deal of scaffolding is necessary to explain at the and at the cup. Both cups this idea, but I will argue that the single-code are really empty throughout the entire procedure, hypothesis provides a surprisingly powerful but two-year-olds reliably indicate that the account of one aspect of the imagination. is the one that had been turned Unraveling the details of the relation between upside down and the is the other one.4 imagining and believing has ascended to a promOne significant feature of episodes like inent place on the agenda of researchers working Leslie's tea party is that children distinguish on theories of imagination, fiction, and belief. In what is pretend from what is real. That is, at no this paper, I will not be defending an underdog point in this experiment do children believe that theory. Far from it-the single-code theory, in either of the cups is full. Their that the one form or another, is embraced by most concup is full is quarantined from their belief that temporary cognitivist accounts of and the cup is not full. Another, more interesting, imagination.' However, the explanatory power feature of the experiment is that it indicates that of the single-code hypothesis has not, I will a belief and a can have exactly the maintain, been adequately recognized. The singlesame content. When the children are asked to code hypothesis provides a unified explanpoint to the and the cup, ation for a wide range of similarities between they maintain that the previously overturned imagination and belief. In the first section of this cup is the empty one. On the most natural interpaper, I will describe and elaborate the version of pretation of this, the child is pretending that the the single-code theory that Stephen Stich and I cup is empty. We adopt the representationalist have developed. Then I will argue that this theapproach that is common in this area and say ory offers simple solutions to a diverse set of that such pretending involves a pretense reprephilosophical puzzles about fiction.2 sentation with the content the cup is empty. Although the child is pretending that the cup is empty, she is not blind to the fact that the cup is I. FICTION AND IMAGINATION really empty throughout; rather, the child also believes that the cup is empty. This suggests In earlier work, Stephen Stich and I developed a that the crucial difference between cognitive theory of the imagination, based representations and beliefs is not given by the