The idea that imagination is guided by the same principles as rational thoughts is developed in The Rational Imagination (Byrne Reference Byrne2005) into a rich and fruitful framework for the analysis of counterfactual thoughts. This framework, however, would probably benefit from a broader approach to rational thinking. The book focuses on one aspect of rational thinking, namely, the way people make inferences. Rationality, however, is not only about making sound inferences: It is also (and, some would argue, mainly) about making choices that will help one to achieve his or her goals (Baron Reference Baron1988/2000; Evans & Over Reference Evans and Over1996).
The way people make such choices (and the way they believe other people make their choices) is likely to yield valuable insights – just as the way they make inferences offers insights – into the workings of counterfactual imagination. As an illustration, I attempt to show how such a broader approach to rationality can explain the puzzling effect of reasons to act on the mutability of actions and inactions, which is considered in the book on several occasions.
This explanation requires a few assumptions. The first assumption is that the effect is real. That assumption is not as trivial as it may seem, because most of the evidence for the effect is indirect, at best. Reasons to act are known to impact the regret people feel about actions and inactions, and this impact is commonly assumed to be mediated by counterfactual thoughts; but direct demonstrations of the effect are scarce. However, from the new data reported in The Rational Imagination, as well as recent data reported in Bonnefon et al. (Reference Bonnefon, Zhang and Deng2007), we can assume that a good reason to act does make an action less mutable.
Second, let's assume that when people think of the way they and others make rational choices, they draw on some lay notion of consequentialism. Broadly defined, consequentialism holds that decisions should be made on the basis of their consequences for the achievement of the goals of the decision maker. Now, a decision maker is aware of at least some of the consequences of her actions: Let us say that among these consequences, the ones that help her achieve her goals have positive utility and the ones that prevent her from achieving her goals have negative utility. Overall, some actions will have a negative net utility for the decision maker, whereas others will have a positive net utility. The lay notion of consequentialism that people are likely to entertain is the following: Individuals do not knowingly undertake an action that has a negative net utility for them. The possibility that someone would knowingly do something that ultimately compromises her personal goals – which, incidentally, may very well be altruistic goals – would be a consequentialist aberration. (That is not to say it does not happen; only that the folk conception of behavior considers is the exception rather than the rule.)
Third, let's assume that in a vast majority of cases, a “reason to act” essentially boils down to the belief that an action has a positive utility, or that the corresponding failure to act has a negative utility. Strong reasons to act signal comparatively higher positive utility, whereas weak reasons to act signal a positive utility that is not much higher than zero and that, in fact, might be treated as null. This framework does not discriminate between reasons “based on goals” and reasons “based on obligations.” Obligations simply denote situations wherein it is clear to everyone, from widely shared social norms, that a failure to act would have unpleasant consequences: for example, blame, punishment, privation of rights, and so on.
From these assumptions, we can conclude that possibilities where one had a (strong) reason to act and did not, just as possibilities where one had a (strong) reason not to act but acted nevertheless, both correspond to consequentialist aberrations. Now, if counterfactual imagination is really guided by the same principles as rational thought, should not people disregard counterfactual possibilities that correspond to consequential aberrations? Such a principle would explain why people do not mutate actions when there was a reason to act, because they are not willing to consider the possibility of not acting when acting had positive utility – an irrational behavior according to their lay notion of consequentialism.
The idea that people disregard possibilities that correspond to consequentialist aberrations is also supported by data on human reasoning. Bonnefon and Hilton (Reference Bonnefon and Hilton2004) showed that when presented with conditional statements such as “If Didier takes up the new job, his life will improve in every respect,” participants spontaneously inferred that “Didier will take up the new job,” as if they discarded from their representation of the conditional all the possibilities where Didier would act against his own interests and not take up the job. Similarly, when presented with premises like “If Mary goes to the party, she buys a new dress; if Mary buys a new dress, she cannot pay the electricity bill; Mary goes to the party,” participants refused to endorse the valid conclusion that “Mary buys a new dress.” Again, they seemed to discard from their representation of the premises all possibilities where Mary would act against her own interests and end up unable to pay the bill.
Thus, it would appear that the principles of rational decision making, at least in the guise of some lay notion of consequentialism, can act as a filter on the possibilities people are willing to consider, both when they make inference and when they exercise counterfactual imagination. The argument that imagination is guided by the principles of rational thought is a clever one, but rational thought should not be limited to inference making. Broadening its notion of rationality, to encompass decision making as well as reasoning, would provide The Rational Imagination with an even more fruitful framework to investigate the parallels between rational and creative thoughts.
