NYU Ethics Forum: Katja Vogt (Columbia), "Agency Imagination"

Abstract: Does the imagination help us make good decisions? Contrary to long-standing trends which emphasize reasoning, my answer is yes. I argue that distinctive uses of the imagination, which I call Diagnostic Imagination, Imaginative Anticipation, and Imagination Tests, can contribute to decision-making and agency. In Diagnostic Imagination, agents aim to get clear about situations in which they act. In Imaginative Anticipation, agents simulate and mentally rehearse scenarios they take to lie ahead. In Imagination Tests, agents imagine states of affairs that bear on decision making. These uses of the imagination, I submit, are quotidian. And yet they are neither discussed in the philosophy of mind, which focuses on imagination in science, games, and art, nor in action theory, which focuses either on practical reasoning or on the analysis of belief and desire. Empirical research has long examined the role of imagination in agency. Philosophy too, I propose, needs to find a place for imagination in the analysis of action.