imagination Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind https:/ / sites.google.com/ site/minddict/ imagination 1of6 Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind H_Q|V|EAB_O_UILND_EXC_QNlRLBlJlQRSCQ_NIACLliSSJlEJV|AE Navigating the Dictionary: There are different ways to navigate the dictionary. You can use our search engine at the top of the page, the index located in the menu above, or browse entries alphabetically. Alphabetical entries can be accessed via the alphab eton the home page. Other Resources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Dictionary of Cognitive Science Philpapers Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Phi/job s: Job s in Philosophy imaginatiQn See page 6 for citation information and publication history. Traditionally, the mental capacity for experiencing, constructing, or manipulating 'rnental imagery' (quasi-perceptual experience). Imagination is also regarded as responsible for fantasy, inventiveness, idiosyncrasy, and creative, original, and insightful thoughtin general, and, sometimes, fora much wider range ofmental activities dealing with the non-actual, such as supposing, pretending, 'seeing as', thinking ofpossib ilities, and even being mistaken. See representation. Search this site Details: Introduction Despite being a familiar word of everydaylanguage, imagination is a very complex, contested, and evaluativelyloaded concept. lt, like many cognate terms, often appears to have radically differentsenses and connotations when used in different contexts. Furthermore, although it plays onlya small overt role in mostcontemporarytheories ofthe mind, it has played a much more prominent part in the past. The conceptwill thus best be understood through its history. Ancient and Medieval Conception The concept ofthe imagination seems to have been first introduced into philosophy by Aristotle, who tells us that "imagination [phantasia] is (apart from any metaphorical sense of the word) the process bywhich we saythat an image [phantasma] is presented to us" (De Anima, 428a 1-4). It has been questioned in recenttimes whetherthe Greek words phantasia and phantasma are really equivalentto "imagination" and "(menta|) image" as heard in contemporary usage. However, there can be little doubt that, at least until very recenttimes, theoretical discussions ofphantasia, its Latin translation imaginatio, and their etymological descendants, continued to be rooted in the concepts introduced byAristotle and the problems arising from his rather elliptical explanation ofthem. Very arguablythis is true of all Western philosophical schools: Stoics, Epicureans and Neoplatonists quite as much as avowed Aristoteleans; Muslims as much as Christians; and, come to that, Empiricists quite as much as Rationalists. According to Aristotle "The soul never thinks without a mental image [phantasma]" (De Anima, 431a 15-20). ltwould appearthat, for him (and, again, for mostofsuccessors, until very recently), such images played something like the role that is played in contemporary cognitive theory by "mental representations". In this tradition, imagery, and thus imagination, has an essential role to playin all forms ofthinking (with the possible exception ofdirect intuitions of Platonic forms, or ofthe divine). It has no special connection with inventiveness or creativity. tdoes, however, have a special connection with desire. Aristotle argues that our desire for (and, thus, pursuitof) anything notactually presentto the senses must be mediated by an 'mage ofthe desired object. Aristotle's treatment is morally neutral, but his notion ofdesirous 'magination maylater have become conflated with the Hebraic concept of yetser, the willful (but also semi-divine) faculty in humanitythat led to Adam's (and, indeed, all subsequent) sin. Atany rate, in the Judaeo-Christian intellectual tradition (from ancientto relatively recenttimes) 'magination, although recognized as indispensable to cognition, was usually profoundly distrusted. Unless strictly disciplined by reason itwould soon lead us into concupiscence and sin. But, of course, the connection between imagination and perception is the more fundamental. Aristotle's conception ofphantasia/imagination seems to be closely bound up with his 07/07/2014 12 08 AM imagination Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind https:/ / sites.google.com/ site/minddict/ imagination postulation ofwhat came to be called the "common sense" or sensus communis. This is the part of the psyche responsible forthe binding of the deliverances ofthe individual sense organs into a coherent and intelligible representation, and for apprehending the so called "common sensibles", those aspects ofthe world (broadly, the spatio-temporal aspects) that can be known through more than one sense mode without being the characteristic proper object ofany ofthem (Aristotelian common sensibles are broadly coextensive with Lockean "primary qualities"). In fact, it is plausible to interpret phantasia and sensus communis as different aspects or modes ofa single faculty, depending on whether it is regarded as receptive or productive, or on whether it is operating in the presence orthe absence of whatever is being mentally represented. Phantasmata are generated in either case, butwhen their immediate cause is an objectdirectly before us the tendencyis to referto them as percepts, and to the process as perception; when memoryof previouslyobserved things is the source, reference will more likely be to imageryand imagination. Thus imagination came to be particularly associated with thinking about things that are not actually currently present to the senses: things thatare not reallythere. Some ofAristotle's successors tended to laythe stress on the conceptual separation ofthe notions ofimagination and sensus communis. Thus Early Christian and Medieval anatomists often located sensus communis at the frontofthe brain's firstventricle, readyto receive sense impressions, whereas imagination was placed at the rear ofthis ventricle (or even in the second ventricle), and was responsible for holding and perhaps consolidating the resultant images, and passing them back to the other ventricles and faculties (where they could be used in thoughtor stored in memory). Imagination mightalso, sometimes, be held responsible forthe recombining ofvarious image parts into chimerical forms. This lattertype ofprocess would allow the individual mind a degree offreedom and a scope for idiosyncracythatwould hardly have been available from the othertraditional faculties, constrained as theywere by reality and the laws oflogic. It would also, of course, give rise to images even more removed from presentactualitythan images retrieved intact from memory, and thus even more quintessentiallyimaginary In this vein, we sometimes find modern writers making a distinction between "memoryimagery" and "imagination imagery", or even restricting the use of "imagination" (and, a fortiori, "imaginary") to thoughts aboutthings that have never (or never yet) been actually experienced. (For some reason, words derived from the original Greek term, such as "fantasy", "fancy", or "phantasm", seem to have come to connote unrealityeven more stronglythan "imagination" and its cognates. It is worth noting thatsome medieval authors, finding both the Greek and the Latin terms available, did attempt to draw functional and anatomical distinctions between imaginatio and phantasia, but no clear consensus on how this distinction was to be drawn is apparent, and these attempts seem unlikelyto have significantlyinfluenced more recent usages.) Modern Usage Other ancient and medieval authors, however, were more inclined to stress the underlying identity ofthe imagination and the common sense, and this interpretation probably became more widespread with the increased availability of more accurate Aristotelian texts and translations in the later middle ages and renaissance. We find this tendency even in such a consciously anti-Aristotelian figure as Descartes, who, in the Treatise on Man, explicitly identifies both the sensus communis and the imagination with the surface ofthe pineal gland, upon which images (ldeés) both ofsense and ofmemory orfancy are inscribed. Although it is important not to confuse these "corporeal ideas" with the "clear and distinct ideas" that play so prominent a part in Descartes' epistemology, it is surely not coincidental that the site of the Cartesian imagination/sensus communis, the pineal surface, is also the privileged site of mind-bodyinteraction, the lynchpin that holds togetherthe two metaphysical worlds of Cartesianism. As it had done for Aristotle, the imagination/sensus communis mediated between the bodily senses, and the (now incorporeal) rational mind. Afterthe conceptual revolutions of the 17th centurythe Aristotelian concept of sensus communis largely disappeared from philosophical discussion, and, inasmuch as the functions that had been ascribed to itwere considered ofinterest, theywere likelyto be directly ascribed to imagination. In the Em piricisttradition, images, underthe rubric of "ideas", came more than everto be seen as the preeminent, even the only, form ofmental content. Hume, indeed, frequently uses "imagination" as a virtual synonym for "mind". This is reasonable enough inasmuch as he regards the mind as no more than a bundle ofimages (impressions 2 of 6 07/07/2014 12 08 AM imagination Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind https:/ / sites.google.com/ site/minddict/ imagination and ideas), and cognition as a matter oftheir vicissitudes and associative interactions. But even for Hume, imagination has a special perceptual role to play. It bears the responsibility (through the wayin which itautomatically associates similar and contiguous impressions) for our natural tendencyto believe in the existence of real and persistent objects existing outside the mind. Likewise (because it also tends to associate similar impressions or impression complexes with certain words) it is responsible forthe waythatwe categorize things into kinds (seeing both Rover and Fido as dogs, for example). In a sense, for Hume, these latterfunctions ofimagination are defects ofthe human mind. Philosophical analysis (he argues) shows thatour natural belief (engendered byimagination) that the world contains various objects ofvarious kinds cannot be rationallygrounded. Kant assigns similarfunctions to imagination [einbildungskraft], butwithoutsuch a skeptical twist. Imagination makes knowledge ofthe phenomenal world possible, bysynthesizing the incoherentsensory manifold into representational images suitable to be brought under concepts. The Kantian imagination, in this regard, seems, broadlyspeaking, to fill much the same role as the Aristotelian sensus communis. However, it has by now become clearjust how poorlywe understand how anysuch faculty could possiblywork. Kant rejects Hume's purely associative account, and argues that the imaginative synthesis must be governed bya priori rules or schemata, but how theyoperate is "an art concealed in the depths ofthe human soul, whose real modes ofactivity nature is hardlylikely everto allow us to discover" (Critique ofPure Reason A141-B181). The question as to how meaningful mental representations can arise in us remains obscure (or, at the least, very controversial) to this day. With the rise ofthe Romantic movement in the latter part of the 18th century, the main focus of discussion concerning imagination shifted awayfrom cognitive theory and epistemology, and towards its role in original, creative thinking, especiallyin the arts. This role had been acknowledged at least as far back as the work of Flavius Philostratus (c. 3rd centuryAD.). Also, unsurprisingly, imagination had a long standing place in discussions ofthe nature of dreams and visions. What happened with Romanticism was notso much a reconceptualization ofimagination, but rather a revaluation of certain concepts that had long been associated with it. Originality, passion, the unreal, and non-rational thought, all generally deprecated in former ages, suddenly achieved a new, strongly positive evaluation. Thus the stock of imagination, as the facultysupposedly responsible for such things, also rose sharply. In this cultural context, the fact that its workings were mysterious became an asset rather than a liability. Hyperbolic praise of the imagination became commonplace in Romantic writings, and certain Romantic aphorisms on the subject became (and remain) intellectual commonplaces. Although some Romantic authors, most notably Samuel Taylor Coleridge, did attempt to develop a new philosophy of imagination adequate to its new high status, in fact they relied heavilyon Kantand post-Kantian German idealism (and Plotinus, who himself relied heavilyon Aristotle), and the results, although suggestive and much quoted, are (from a philosophical perspective) fragmentary and largelyincoherent. Nevertheless, for many intellectuals "imagination" remains a term ofgreat cultural significance, butone whose primary association is with aesthetic theory ratherthan epistemology, and which is most naturallyfirst approached through the study ofthe ideas ofliteraryfigures such as Coleridge. Qontemporao/Usfilfi Although one major 20th century philosopher (Sartre) wrote two books on the imagination early in his career, bythe mid twentieth centurythe topic had become quite unfashionable in philosophical circles. Mostanalytical philosophers, where theyshowed interestatall, seem to have come to doubtwhetherthe imagination even exists. Gilbert Ryle declared, in The Conceptofll/lind, that "There is no special Faculty of Imagination, occupying itselfsing|emindedlyin fancied viewings and hearings" (1949), and this soon became a widely accepted viewpoint. It was pointed outthat although the verb "to imagine" in some contexts seems to be used to referto the having ofimagery, in other contexts this is notobviouslythe case. For example, it is not immediately apparentthat imagining that Goldbach's conjecture has been proven involves (or even can involve) imageryin any central way. Such imagining seems to be more closely akin to supposing, orjust believing falsely, than to visualizing. In other contexts, "imagining" seems to be used in a waythat is closerto "pretending" orto "thinking ofa possibility". How, ltwas asked, could all ofthese diverse sorts ofmental act be reasonably supposed to be the results ofthe operation ofa single, unitary mental faculty. It might equally be asked how some trite facts about linguistic usage could be thoughtto raise 3 of 6 07/07/2014 12 08 AM imagination Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind https:/ / sites.google.com/ site/minddict/ imagination a serious challenge to a key component ofthe cognitive theorythat had dominated Western thought almostsince its inception. (There are hotdogs, sun dogs, dog ends, and dog day afternoons, and a dogged investigation mayinvolve dogging someone's footsteps. None of them involve canine quadrupeds, but, equally, none of these expressions raise the slightest doubts aboutthe existence ofsuch creatures.) One factor, no doubt, was a reaction againstthe excesses of Romantic rhetoric, but, more importantly the traditional imagery centered theories of cognition had come into question for quite different reasons. The combination of the linguisticturn in philosophyand the Behavioristturn in psychology(itself partlyinspired bythe "imageless thought" psychology ofthe Wiirzburg school) led to a widespread acceptance of the view that thought is ultimately based upon language ratherthan on imagery, and powerful criticisms oflong accepted imagery based theories oflinguistic meaning were putforvvard in the writings ofphilosophers such as Frege, Wittgenstein, and Moritz Schlick. John B. Watson (1913), the influential instigator ofthe Behaviorist movement in psychologywentso far as to question the very existence ofimagery, and although few philosophers went quite this far, the debunking tone taken toward the notion bythinkers as diverse as Ryle and the French author Alain, led to a philosophical climate in which ltwas generally not taken seriously. Certainlyit was no longer ubiquitous in cognitive theory, as itformerlyhad been, and we should hardly be surprised that in such circumstances it became difficultto see any unifying thread in all the diverse usages of "imagine" that had emerged overthe centuries, still less anytheoretical need for a faculty of imagination to accountfor them. Things changed somewhat in the 1960s early1970s, when (through the efforts of cognitive psychologists such as Allan Paivio, Roger Shepard, and Stephen Kosslyn) imagery once again became respectable as a topic for experimental psychological investigation. Ataboutthe same time, considerations ofthe need for an explanatoryframework capable of handling cognitive process in higher animals and human infants (first language learning, in particular) led theorists awayfrom theories that implied that "natural" (actuallyspoken) language is representationally basic. However, imageryis still farfrom regaining acceptance as the fundamental form ofmental representation, and currenttheories ofimage formation hardly aspire to the central place in cognitive theory once occupied by the imagination. In contem poraiy Cognitive Science, imageryis usuallytreated as merelya representationally dependentauxiliaryto other, more fundamental and "abstract" forms ofmental representation, whetherthese be the pseudo-languages of "classical" Artificial Intelligence theories (philosophicallyrepresented by Jerry Fodor's "mentalese"), the weightspaces and activation patterns of connectionism, attractors in chaotic neural dynamic systems, or whatever. But ifsuch things do underlie ourthought processes, we are certainly not conscious of them as such, and thus their relevance to explaining conscious thoughtwould seem to be, at best, indirect. People are frequently conscious ofimagery, however, and it remains very arguable (pace the Wtirfiaurg introspectors) that all conscious mental contents are imaginallperceptual in character. The recently renewed interest in trying to develop a scientific account of consciousness maythus be paving the way forthe imagination/sensus communis to be taken seriouslyonce again. Imagination and Possibility One other issue desen/es mention. According to Hume "'Tis an established maxim in metaphysics, That. . . nothing we imagine is absolutelyimpossible. We can form the idea ofa golden mountain, and from thence conclude thatsuch a mountain may actually exist. We can form no idea ofa mountain withouta valley, and therefore regard itas impossible." (Treatise, I, ii, 2). (Note that, for Hume, "idea" explicitly meant mental image.) He seems to have meantthat whatever is imaginable is possible, and, conversely, ifsomething is impossible it is also unimaginable. Many philosophers have found this view significantand attractive. It would certainly be very convenient for metaphysicians ifthere were a mental faculty capable of providing a reliable testfor possibility! Hume's maxim is very questionable, however. Although examples thatseem to favor it can be multiplied, it is also not hard to come up with apparentcounter-examples. ltseems to me thatl am incapable ofimagining curved space-time, but I am reliablyinformed that it is notonly possible but actual. Conversely, countless science fiction buffs have imagined traveling faster than light, which is supposedlyim possible. Perhaps some version ofthe maxim can be saved bysufficiently ingenious maneuvers, probably including the restriction ofits scope to some or other subspecies of possibility(perhaps itapplies to logical, conceptual, or metaphysical, but not to physical possibility), butsuch issues lie well beyond the scope ofthis discussion. It is, 4 61 6 07/07/2014 12 08 AM imagination Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind https:/ / sites.google.com/ site/minddict/ imagination however, worth mentioning that the maxim has verylittle purchase ifimagination is interpreted after the fashion of those who would denyits essential connection with imagery. Clearlywe can pretend or mistakenly believe that impossible things are possible, and we suppose an impossibility everytime we set up a sound reductio ad absurdum proof. On the other hand, if "imagination" is to be understood (as some recent philosophers claim) as something like "the facultythatenvisages possibilities" (Rorty, 1988; c.f. White, 1990), then Hume's maxim would seem to be true buttrivial. Who buta philosopher, however, would dream ofdenying that imagination has to do with imagery? Nigel J.T. Thomas References: o [lmagination, Mental Imagery Consciousness, and Cognition] ~ Aristotle (Hett, W.S., trans. 1936). On the Soul; Parva Naturalia; On Breath. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brann, E.T.H. (1991). The World ofthe Imagination: Sum and Substance. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ~ Casey, E.S. (1976). Imagining: APhenomenological Study. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ~ Cocking, J.M. (1991). Imagination: AStudyin the Historyofldeas. London: Routledge. ~ Coleridge, S. T. (1817). Biographia Literaria. Edition ofG. Watson, (1975), London: Dent. ~ Descartes, R. (1633l1664). Treatise on Man. In Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., & Murdoch, D., trans. & eds., (1985). The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ~ Egan, K. & Nadaner, D., eds. (1988). Imagination and Education. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Open University Press. ~ Engell, J. (1981). The Creative Imagination: Enlightenmentto Romanticism. Cambridge, MA: Han/ard University Press. Harvey, E.R. (1975). The Inward Wits: Psychological Theoryin the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: Warburg Institute. Hume, D. (1739l1740). ATreatise ofHuman Nature. Edition ofL.A. Selby-Bigge & P.H. Nidditch (1978). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ~ Kant, I. (1781l1787). Critique of Pure Reason. Translation ofN. K. Smith (2nd edn. 1933). London: Macmillan. o Kearney, R. (1988). The Wake of Imagination: Ideas ofCreativityin Western Culture. London: Hutchinson. 0 Nussbaum, M.C. (1978). The role ofphantasia in Aristotle's explanation ofaction. In her Aristotle's De motu animalium (pp. 221-269). Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. ~ Rorty, AO. (1988). "lmagination and Power." In her Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophyof Mind. Boston, IVIA Beacon Press. ~ Russow, L.-M. (1978). "Some RecentWork on lmagination."American Philosophical Quarterly (1 5) 57-66. ~ Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson. ~ Sartre, J.-P. (1948). The Psychology of Imagination. Translation ofB. Frechtman, New York: Philosophical Library. (Original French, 1940.) 0 Sartre, J.-P. (1962). Imagination: APsychoIogicaI Critique. Translation of F. Williams, Ann Arbor, Ml: University of Michigan Press. (Original French, 1936.) ~ Schofield, M. (1978). Aristotle on the Imagination. In G.E.R. Lloyd & G.E.L. Owen (Eds.). Aristotle on the Mind and the Senses (pp. 99-140). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ~ Sepper, D.L. (1996). Descartes's Imagination: Proportion, Images, and the Activity of Thinking. Berkeley, CA University of California Press. o Thomas, N.J.T. (1997). "lmagery and the coherence of imagination: Acritique ofWhite." Journal of Philosophical Research (22) 95-127. Thomas, N.J.T. (1999). "Are Theories of Imagery Theories of Imagination? An Active Perception Approach to Conscious Mental Content." Cognitive Science (23) 207-245. o Warnock, M. (1976). Imagination. London: Faber & Faber. 0 Watson, G. (1988). Phantasia in Classical Thought. Galway, Ireland: Galway University Press. o Watson, J.B. (1913). "Psychology as the Behaviorist\Aews lt." Psychological Review (20) 158-177. o White, A. R. (1990). The Language of Imagination. Oxford: Blackwell. 5 61 6 07/07/2014 12:08 AM This bibliographical note by Nigel J.T. Thomas, 7th July, 2014. This article on "Imagination", by Nigel J.T. Thomas, was originally published in 1999 in the online Dictionary of Philoshophy of Mind, founded and edited by Chris Eliasmith, at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/ philos/MindDict/imagination.htm. Together with the rest of the Dictionary, the article was Iater moved to http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/imagination.html, but is now to be found, in reformatted form, at https://sites.google.com/site/minddict/imagination (from where this version was taken). (Content has not been updated or otherwise altered since 1999. The "Last updated" date, as given above this box refers just to URL and formatting changes.) Editorship of the Dictionary of Philoshophy of Mind has now been taken over by Eric Hochstein, and the dictionary may now be found at http://dictionaryofphilmind.com/ which redirects to https://sites.google.com/site/minddict/ with this entry now at http://dictionaryofphilmind.com/imagination or https://sites.google.com/site/minddict/imagination Suggested citation: Thomas, Nigel J.T. (1999). "Imagination," in Dictionary of Philoshophy of Mind, edited by Chris Eliasmith and Eric Hochstein. Open access online: http://dictionaryofphilmind.com/imagination imagination Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind https:/ / sites.google.com/ site/minddict/ imagination Last Updated: May 2004 Siqnin | Recent SiteActivity| ReportAbuse | Print Paqg | Powered By Google Sites 6 61 6 07/07/2014 12:08 AM