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32 - The Counterfactual Imagination: The Impact of Alternatives to Reality on Morality

from Part IV - Novel Combinatorial Forms of the Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2020

By
Ruth M. J. Byrne
Edited by
Anna Abraham
Anna Abraham
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Summary

People often create counterfactual alternatives to reality about how things could have been different “if only …” The creation of alternatives has widespread effects in daily mental life: It enables people to explain the past, to prepare for the future, and to experience emotions such as regret and guilt. In this chapter I consider the profound impact of the counterfactual imagination on everyday thought by focusing on its impact on moral judgments such as blame and responsibility. Insights from the study of imagination and morality shed light on the mechanisms underlying the counterfactual imagination: simulation processes that construct an alternative to reality by mutating aspects of the mental representation of reality. The relationship between the imagination and morality is two-way: On the one hand, counterfactuals affect moral judgments because people rely on them to identify causes of an outcome and to probe a person’s intentions and knowledge. On the other hand, moral thoughts affect the imagination because moral norms provide important “fault lines,” “junctures” in the mental representation of reality that affect the accessibility of imagined alternatives. The two-way relationship corroborates the idea that the imagination depends on cognitive processes shared with reasoning.

Keywords

Counterfactualscausesintentionsmoral judgmentsblamepunishment
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination , pp. 529 - 547
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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