1. Gendler, Imaginative Resistance

Front 1

What is the phenomenon of imaginative resistance?

Back 1

We live in a society of fake stuff. You are faced with ridiculous stuff in virtually every movie you watch, among almost every other part of your so-called life. What is your problem with imagining morally troubling stuff?

Or, as Gendler explains it:
Given that for the most part we have no trouble fictionally entertaining all sorts of far-fetched and implausible scenarios, what explains the impediments we seem to encounter when we are asked to imagine moral judgments sharply divergent from those we ordinarily make?

Front 2

Gendler defines it: The puzzle of imaginative resistance:

the puzzle of _____ our _________ in _________ fictional _________ that we take to be ________ ___________.

Back 2

the puzzle of explaining our difficulty in imagining fictional worlds that we take to be morally deviant.

Front 3

Define it! Again!

Back 3

the puzzle of explaining our comparative difficulty in imagining fictional worlds that we take to be morally deviant.

Front 4

Why is it a puzzle?

Back 4

It’s a puzzle because there is a seemingly inexplicable asymmetry between:
(1) our willingness to suspend what we normally take to be factual, and
(2) the fact that moral sentiment is capable of removing us (per resistance, as it were) from fiction that is otherwise founded in crap.

Front 5

quote about it

Back 5

“When we engage in ... fictional scenarios ... we are ... unconstrained by what we take to be factual. We have no trouble imagining that a hobbit named Frodo Baggins carried a magic ring all over Middle Earth. Indeed, one might think that we are unconstrained even by what we take to be possible. We make sense of stories where characters travel back in time, where spaceships go faster than the speed of light, where wizards turn straw into gold, and where lonely geniuses prove the continuum hypothesis. So, given that imagination is such a powerful and agile capacity, it seems extraordinary that little old morality could stop it in its tracks.”

Front 6

How does she try to solve the problem?

Back 6

She claims it comes from our unwillingness, not our inability.

Front 7

the main difference between beliefs and make believe?

Back 7

I don't have control over what i believe. I can engage in and leave make believe.

Front 8

Believe states concern _________ __ __________, and make believe is concerned with ______________ ______________.

Back 8

belief concerns states of affairs, make-believe with constructing scenarios.
“Where belief is concerned with tracking states of affairs, make-belief is concerned with constructing scenarios. So while believing at will is, in general, precluded by the aims of belief, make-believing at will is not merely permitted, it is what the practice is about in the first place.”

Front 9

What's wrong with the impossibility theory?

Back 9

(f) She considers the impossibility theory -- that we cannot imagine what seems impossible to us (killing a baby as a good thing seems impossible to us). She argues, to the contrary, that we can in fact imagine these things, in that it is at least possible.
“So conceptual impossibility does not preclude imaginability. As long as they are properly disguised, we are able to imagine all sorts of impossible things.”

Front 10

what does our following the fiction depend on?

two stories?

funny story response?

Back 10

“Whether or not we are inclined to respond with imaginative resistance is going to turn out to depend on why we think we are being asked to imagine them.”

white man's burden and white mice story

"That's what you think!"

Front 11

Outline of argument: I, II, III, IV

Back 11

I. we want what we believe to track what is true in the actual world.

II. we want what we make-believe to track what is true in a given fictional world.

III. So we can say, roughly, that to engage in imaginative resistance is to fail to follow the author's lead, in make-believing what the author wants to make fictional. What is the source of this failure?

IV. Gendler’s proposal traces IR to a problem with our relations to the actual world. It says essentially: we are unwilling to follow the author's lead because in trying to make that world fictional, she is providing us with a way of looking at this world which we prefer not to embrace.

Front 12

I

Back 12

I. we want what we believe to track what is true in the actual world.

Front 13

II

Back 13

II. we want what we make-believe to track what is true in a given fictional world.

Front 14

III

Back 14

III. to engage in imaginative resistance is to fail to follow the author's lead, in make-believing what the author wants to make fictional. What is the source of this failure?

Front 15

IV

Back 15

IV. Gendler’s proposal traces IR to a problem with our relations to the actual world. It says essentially: we are unwilling to follow the author's lead because in trying to make that world fictional, she is providing us with a way of looking at this world which we prefer not to embrace.