ABSTRACT
This chapter defines “referential opacity” and spell out its relevance to the possession of an understanding of mind. It examines whether pretence, as one form of symbolic activity, implies a conception of referential opacity and ultimately the rudiment of an understanding of mind. The seminal work outlining the link between early pretence and understanding of mind was formulated by Alan Leslie. A profound lack of imagination would mean that the child would be exclusively immersed in the current stream of events and entirely unable to conceive of how things might have seemed in the past, how they might seem in the future, and of course how anybody else might see them.According to Leslie, the child not only engages in pretence, but he or she understands about pretence. He argues this on two counts. Leslie has been effective in arguing that engaging in pretence rests upon a process that has the properties of referential opacity.
