Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Philosophy

Reader 1

Martin Glazier

Reader 2

Rima Basu

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Rights Information

2026 Ariana G DiDomenico

Abstract

Often, when one engages with fiction, one imaginatively portrays the mental states of the characters within said fiction. Typically, when one does this, one relates to the character as separate from oneself, and is consciously aware that what they are imagining is fictional. However, this is not always the case: when one engages in what I will call ‘immersive c-imagining’, one feels roughly as though a character’s thoughts and feelings are one’s own. Furthermore, there is a special subtype of immersive c-imagining, ‘inferential immersive c-imagining’, which occurs when one immersively c-imagines while, at the same time, efficiently and accurately inferring the actions and mental states of that character, allowing one to accurately portray that character in real time. In this thesis, I aim to provide an account of what is happening, cognitively, when one immersively c-imagines and what more is required, cognitively, to inferentially ICI. I argue that when one immersively c-imagines, one attends primarily to one’s belief-like and desire-like imaginings, which mirror the conscious beliefs and desires of one’s character. When one inferentially immersively c-imagines, one’s imaginings must mirror a significant number of a character’s beliefs and desires, one’s imaginings must mirror the structure of the character’s beliefs and desires, and one’s imagining updates primarily by reasoning on the basis of these imaginings.

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