ABSTRACT
This chapter explains what it think is a better response to the phenomenological challenge of imaginative resistance: one which can explain how, as just observed, whether resistance arises or not seems to vary across fictional genres, even given sentences of similar content and structure. If empathy is understood in a relatively loose sense as perspective-taking, and moral perspectives are understood as generalised moral judgements towards people in a certain sort of situation, then counterfactual (COUNT) invokes a failure of empathy, in this loose sense. COUNT explains resistance in terms of an inability to empathise, understood in a particular sense: namely, the ability to endorse a particular moral perspective. Prima facie, Intelligibility (INTEL) looks a more psychologically plausible position than COUNT. For COUNT apparently leaves little room for imaginatively entertaining a different moral perspective to one's own without believing it. Intelligibility looks like it involves understanding what conception of the action another person might have.
