ABSTRACT
Propositional imagination is the capacity we exploit when we imagine that there is an evil demon or that Iago deceived Othello. This capacity is centrally implicated in thought experiments, modal judgment, and counterfactual reasoning. As a result, the capacity plays a central role in philosophical inquiry. The propositional imagination also gures greatly in everyday life. We use it to understand others, to develop plans for action, and for hypothetical reasoning more broadly. Indeed, the propositional imagination is implicated in such a vast and fundamental set of practical and philosophical endeavors that it’s a wonder that the topic received little systematic attention for the bulk of the twentieth century. Fortunately, over the last two decades, there has nally been a concerted research effort to develop a cognitive account of the propositional imagination.
