Abstract
Whether a person is pretending, or not, is a function of their beliefs and intentions. This poses a challenge to 4E accounts of pretense, which typically seek to exclude such cognitive states from their explanations of psychological phenomena. Resulting tensions are explored within three recent accounts of imagination and pretense offered by theorists working in the 4E tradition. A path forward is then charted, through considering ways in which explanations can invoke beliefs and intentions while remaining true to 4E precepts. To make real progress in explaining pretense, 4E theorists will need to grow comfortable with the idea that two agents whose outward behaviors and environments are, in the short term, the same, may be guided by quite different beliefs and intentions, in virtue of which only one is pretending. In this way, the scientific project of explaining pretense remains inseparable from the more general project of determining which beliefs and intentions are appropriate to ascribe to which kinds of entities, given which kinds of behaviors.
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Notes
An important addendum to this thumbnail definition of pretense is that we can nevertheless pretend that x is a y while believing that x is a y. Engaged in a game of charades, for instance, I can pretend that I am a philosophy professor, while believing that I am one. However, such cases of pretending what is believed can only occur in the context of a broader pretense where something is pretended (e.g. “I am now giving an important lecture”) that is not believed by the person doing the pretending. We cannot, then, pretend the world is exactly as we believe it to be. These details are sorted out in Langland-Hassan (2014a, b). For the purposes of this paper, I set aside the matter of pretending what is believed.
Austin has it that “to be pretending . . . I must be trying to make others believe, or to give them the impression, by means of a current personal performance in their presence, that I am (really, only, &c.) abc, in order to disguise the fact that I am really xyz (1958, p. 275). One of his main examples involves a thief who pretends to be a window-washer in order to see what valuables lay inside a home. In conversation, Zuzanna Rucińska (a co-editor of this special issue) has emphasized that she does not view intentionally deceptive behaviors as cases of pretense—at least, not in the same sense in which childhood games of pretense are pretense. Perhaps some other 4E theorists will share that view. I think it comes with a high theoretical cost to assume no important connection between deceptive pretense and childhood pretense. Granted, if, after long theorizing, we can find no important psychological similarity between the two, skepticism about a deep link would be warranted. However, if we can find an elucidating analysis of pretense that captures both forms in its net—as I’ve aimed to provide (Langland-Hassan, 2014a, b)—such an account serves to vindicate their prima facie connection, and, in its generality, will be explanatorily preferable to an account that insists on a deep distinction between childhood and deceptive pretense.
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Many thanks to Zuzanna Rucińksa and Tony Chemero for thoughtful comments that improved this paper.
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Langland-Hassan, P. Why pretense poses a problem for 4E cognition (and how to move forward). Phenom Cogn Sci 21, 1003–1021 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-021-09745-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-021-09745-y