Deliberative Imagination
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12697/spe.2026.19.1.02Keywords:
agency, imagination, deliberation, anticipation, choice scenarios, simulationAbstract
Philosophical accounts of imagination tend to focus on science, art, and games—not on decision-making. Accounts of decision-making tend to focus on desires, beliefs, and reasoning—not on imagination. Contrary to these traditions, I argue that imagination plays at least three important roles in decision-making. In what I call Diagnostic Imagination, agents aim to get clear about situations in which they act. In Imaginative Anticipation, agents mentally rehearse scenarios they take to lie ahead. In Imagination Tests, agents imagine choice scenarios with a view to assessing whether they would like them. I call these kinds of imagination “deliberative,” to signal that, while they are all concerned with decisions, they are not all about the moment of choice.
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