ABSTRACT
Imagination and make-believe, along with fantasy, pretense and play, are regular components of theories of art and the aesthetic. Imagination is the central idea; the others generally appear as forms of imaginative activity or as its manifestations. The special importance of make-believe as a companion to imagination in recent aesthetic thinking reflects the influence of Kendall Walton’s ideas, and we start with this. Towards the end we consider some empirical work which bears on the question of how imagination affects other mental states.
