Pretense and Cognitive Architecture

Herein I sketch out the foundations of a computational theory of pretense, where pretense is broadly defined as pretend-play. In keeping with the sizable literature on the topic, I assume that pretending involves a number of distinct features that include the intentional decoupling of pretense from reality. A scenario is presented that involves all of what have been claimed to be necessary conditions for engaging in pretense and are mapped to various representational and process-level commitments within the Polyscheme computational cognitive architecture. A model of the scenario is developed, and a summary trace through Polyscheme's computation is provided to demonstrate the architecture at work during an episode of play. Finally, the relationship of pretense to other mental states is discussed, especially with respect to how different varieties of mental state reasoning might be realized by the same underlying representations and architectural mechanisms.