The sensory component of imagination: The motor theory of imagination as a present-day solution to Sartre's critique

Philosophical Psychology 25 (4):1-18 (2012)
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Abstract

Several recent accounts claim that imagination is a matter of simulating perceptual acts. Although this point of view receives support from both phenomenological and empirical research, I claim that Jean-Paul Sartre's worry formulated in L'imagination (1936) still holds. For a number of reasons, Sartre heavily criticizes theories in which the sensory material of imaginative acts consists in reviving sensory impressions. Based on empirical and philosophical insights, this article explains how simulation theories of imagination can overcome Sartre's critique by paying attention to the motor dimension of imagination. Intending to clarify the status of the sensory in imagination, a motor theory of imagination is presented in which the sensory component of imagination is interpreted in terms of anticipated sensory consequences of preparation for motor action

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Citations of this work

Pretend play with objects: an ecological approach.Agnes Szokolszky & Catherine Read - 2022 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (5):1043-1068.
Notice Board.David Johnston & Adrian van den Hoven - 2013 - Sartre Studies International 19 (2):132-147.

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References found in this work

Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind.Evan Thompson - 2007 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy.Edmund Husserl - 1980 - Hingham, MA, USA: Distributors for the U.S. and Canada, Kluwer Boston.
A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness.J. Kevin O’Regan & Alva Noë - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):883-917.

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