If you have ever played pretend with a child, then you know it usually goes like this: The stuffed dog and the toy farmer are fighting. The dog keeps trying to eat the farmer’s prize tomato (represented by a red bouncy ball). At last he succeeds—he snatches the tomato and devours it—only to fall deathly ill, unknowingly allergic to tomatoes. He rides the toy bus to the doctor’s. But he does not need medicine to get better. He needs to eat his carrots.
At this point, the adult laughs a little and thinks something about how kids have such fun, wild imaginations. And so they do. But the child in this game is not being “imaginative” in the way we usually mean that word; she is not inventing fantastical solutions out of thin air for the stuffed dog’s sickness, nor is she amused by her own suggestion. Rather, she is being logical.