Date: 15/06/2016 – 16:00 – 18:00
Institute: Institute of Philosophy
Type: Seminar
Venue: Room 243, Second Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Speaker
Kathleen Stock (Sussex)
Abstract
Imaginative resistance’ is a phenomenon supposedly encountered with respect to certain fictional sentences – one experiences difficulty, or resistance in imagining that they are true. I discuss some trends in explanations of this supposed phenomenon, before offering my own new explanation: namely, there is no such thing as imaginative resistance. There is only (in nearly every case standardly discussed under this heading) resistance to believing something that, the reader takes it, it is pragmatically implicated that she should believe.