•  670
    This paper puts forward an account of imaginative immersion. Elaborating on Kendall Walton’s thesis that imagining aims at the fictional truth, it first argues that imaginings are inherently rule- or norm-governed: they are ‘regulated’ by that which is presented as fictionally true. It then shows that an imaginer can follow the rule or norm mandating her to imagine the propositions presented as fictional truths either by acquiring explicit beliefs about how the rule (norm) is to be followed, or …Read more
  •  665
    Imagining in response to fiction: unpacking the infrastructure
    Philosophical Explorations 23 (1): 31-48. 2019.
    Works of fiction are alleged to differ from works of nonfiction in instructing their audience to imagine their content. Indeed, works of fiction have been defined in terms of this feature: they are works that mandate us to imagine their content. This paper examines this definition of works of fiction, focusing on the nature of the activity that ensues in response to reading or watching fiction. Investigating how imaginings function in other contexts, I show, first, that they presuppose a cogniti…Read more
  •  561
    Belief-like imaginings and perceptual (non-)assertoricity
    Philosophical Psychology 33 (5): 731-751. 2020.
    A commonly-discussed feature of perceptual experience is that it has ‘assertoric’ or ‘phenomenal’ force. We will start by discussing various descriptions of the assertoricity of perceptual experience. We will then adopt a minimal characterization of assertoricity: a perceptual experience has assertoric force just in case it inclines the perceiver to believe its content. Adducing cases that show that visual experience is not always assertoric, we will argue that what renders these visual experien…Read more
  •  471
    Belief-Like Imagining and Correctness
    American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2): 147-160. 2021.
    This paper explores the sense in which correctness applies to belief-like imaginings. It begins by establishing that when we imagine, we ‘direct’ our imaginings at a certain imaginary world, taking the propositions we imagine to be assessed for truth in that world. It then examines the relation between belief-like imagining and positing truths in an imaginary world. Rejecting the claim that correctness, in the literal sense, is applicable to imaginings, it shows that the imaginer takes on, vis-à…Read more
  •  468
    A Puzzle about Imagining Believing
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (3): 529-547. 2021.
    Suppose you’re imagining that it’s raining hard. You then proceed to imagine, as part of the same imaginative project, that you believe that it isn’t raining. Such an imaginative project is possible if the two imaginings arise in succession. But what about simultaneously imagining that it’s raining and that you believe that it isn’t raining? I will argue that, under certain conditions, such an imagining is impossible. After discussing these conditions, I will suggest an explanation of this impos…Read more
  •  397
    How Judgments of Visual Resemblance are Induced by Visual Experience
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 28 (11-12): 54-76. 2021.
    Judgments of visual resemblance (‘A looks like B’), unlike other judgments of resemblance, are often induced directly by visual experience. What is the nature of this experience? We argue that the visual experience that prompts a subject looking at A to judge that A looks like B is a visual experience of B. After elucidating this thesis, we defend it, using the ‘phenomenal contrast’ method. Comparing our account to competing accounts, we show that the phenomenal contrast between a visual experie…Read more
  •  378
    Not by Imaginings Alone: On How Imaginary Worlds Are Established
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (2): 195-212. 2021.
    This article explores the relation between belief-like imaginings and the establishment of imaginary worlds (often called fictional worlds). After outlining the various assumptions my argument is premised on, I argue that belief-like imaginings, in themselves, do not render their content true in the imaginary world to which they pertain. I show that this claim applies not only to imaginative projects in which we are instructed or intend to imagine certain propositions, but also to spontaneous im…Read more
  •  173
    Why the pictorial relation is not reference
    British Journal of Aesthetics 44 (3): 226-247. 2004.
    Nelson Goodman argued that the pictorial relation is reducible to reference. After explaining why previous attempts to refute this thesis of reduction have failed, I argue that in order to show that the thesis is indeed wrong we must find an aspect of pictures that is incompatible with it. I proceed to argue that there is indeed such an element to pictures. Ordinarily, a picture depicts its subject as having aesthetic properties. I show that the depiction of these properties requires the picture…Read more
  •  169
    A Case against Representationalism
    Iyyun 62 (1): 29-42. 2013.
    The case of blurry vision has been cited by many as a counterexample to representationalism in the theory of perception. Specifically, it is claimed that the phenomenon of blurry vision is incompatible with the supervenience thesis which is at the root of representationalism. Michael Tye, a leading representationalist, has responded to such objections by giving an account of blurry vision in a way that, allegedly, renders it compatible with representationalism. In this paper I argue that Tye’s a…Read more
  •  82
    Visual Experience: Cognitive Penetrability and Indeterminacy
    Acta Analytica 29 (1): 119-130. 2014.
    This paper discusses a counterexample to the thesis that visual experience is cognitively impenetrable. My central claim is that sometimes visual experience is influenced by the perceiver’s beliefs, rendering her experience’s representational content indeterminate. After discussing other examples of cognitive penetrability, I focus on a certain kind of visual experience— that is, an experience that occurs under radically nonstandard conditions—and show that it may have indeterminate content, par…Read more
  •  73
    On the Irreducibility of Attitudinal Imagining
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 1-33. forthcoming.
    This paper argues against the view, proposed in Langland-Hassan (2020), that attitudinal imaginings are reducible to basic folk-psychological attitudes such as judgments, beliefs, desires, decisions, or combinations thereof. The proposed reduction fails because attitudinal imaginings, though similar to basic attitudes in certain respects, function differently than basic attitudes. I demonstrate this by exploring two types of cases: spontaneous imaginings, and imaginings that arise in response to…Read more
  •  73
    Content-Free Pictorial Realism
    Philosophical Studies 135 (3): 375-405. 2007.
    What is it for a picture to be more realistic, or more depictive, than another? Without committing to any thesis as to what depiction consists in, I show that degrees of depictiveness are grounded in a certain relation between two basic kinds of differences between pictures: configurational differences and content differences. A picture is thus more depictive just in case it is seen as having fewer nondepictive features, whereas a nondepictive feature is individuated through the susceptibility o…Read more
  •  69
    Imaginative Content, Design-Assumptions and Immersion
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (2): 259-272. 2017.
    In this paper, I will analyze certain aspects of imaginative content, namely the content of the representational mental state called “imagining.” I will show that fully accounting for imaginative content requires acknowledging that, in addition to imagining, an imaginative project—the overall mental activity we engage in when we imagine—includes another infrastructural component in terms of which content should be explained. I will then show that the phenomenon of imaginative immersion can partl…Read more
  •  61
    Imaginatively‐Colored Perception: Walton on Pictorial Experience
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (1): 27-47. 2016.
    This paper develops Kendall Walton's account of pictorial experience. Walton argues that the key feature of that experience is that it is imaginatively-penetrated experience. I argue that this idea, as put forward by Walton, has various shortcomings. After discussing these limitations, I suggest, on the basis of a more general phenomenon of cognitive penetration, a refinement of Walton's account. I then show how the revised account explains various features of pictorial experience. Specifically,…Read more
  •  59
    Pictorial experience: not so special after all
    Philosophical Studies 171 (3): 471-491. 2014.
    The central thesis (CT) that this paper upholds is that a picture depicts an object by generating in those who view the picture a visual experience of that object. I begin by presenting a brief sketch of intentionalism, the theory of perception in terms of which I propose to account for pictorial experience. I then discuss Richard Wollheim’s twofoldness thesis and explain why it should be rejected. Next, I show that the socalled unique phenomenology of pictorial experience is simply an instance …Read more
  •  45
    Pictorial Experience and Intentionalism
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (4): 405-416. 2014.
    This article examines the compatibility of intentionalism (also called ‘representationalism’) in the philosophy of perception with the thesis that we can visually experience an object by looking at a picture of that object (the pictorial experience thesis, or PET). I begin by presenting three theses associated with intentionalism and various accounts of depiction that uphold PET. Next, I show that pictures sometimes depict an object indeterminately, thereby rendering the alleged visual experienc…Read more
  •  22
    On Images: Their Structure and Content: Book Reviews (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (3): 326-328. 2007.