To be a little clearer, this is about dotted import names, not regular dotted names.
pydoc.locate(path, forceload=0):
  """Locate an object by name or dotted path, importing as necessary"""
pydoc.resolve(thing, forceload=0):
  """Given an object or a path to an object, get the object and its name.""" 

It is not completely clear to me how this is different from using __import__ but I will believe it is. It something like this is in at least 3 places, +1 on factoring it out to one place.