Margherita Arcangeli, Supposition and the Imaginative Realm. A Philosophical Inquiry, Routledge: New York, 2018, 148 pp., US$150 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1138223042

Abstract

In her excellent monograph, Margherita Arcangeli offers a defense of supposition as a sui generis kind of imagination. Endorsing a simulationist account of imagination according to which every imaginative attitude simulates/re‐creates a genuine counterpart (visualizing re‐creates visual perception, for instance), she argues against this backdrop that supposition is a re‐creative state of acceptance. Arcangeli's inquiry concentrates on the most recent literature. She starts by critically examining certain putative features of supposition that place them outside of the realm of imagination (Part I. §1. Phenomenology, §2. Emotionality, §3. Participation). She then explores the positive features of supposition (Part I. §4. Features proper to supposition) and, then, the deflationists' attempts to define supposition in terms of non‐imaginative (Part II. §5. Supposition as non‐imaginative) or imaginative (Part II. §6. Supposition as imaginative) mental states. Through technical and yet crystal‐clear prose, Arcangeli provides what is, in my opinion, the best defense of the imaginative account of supposition to date.