Reasoning with Imagination

In Amy Kind & Christopher Badura (eds.), Epistemic Uses of Imagination. New York, NY: Routledge (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This chapter argues that epistemic uses of the imagination are a sui generis form of reasoning. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, there are imaginings which instantiate the epistemic structure of reasoning. Second, reasoning with imagination is not reducible to reasoning with doxastic states. Thus, the epistemic role of the imagination is that it is a distinctive way of reasoning out what follows from our prior evidence. This view has a number of important implications for the epistemology of the imagination. For one thing, it clarifies the epistemic role of widely invoked “constraints” on the imagination. For another, it highlights important and underappreciated disanalogies between how perceptual experiences and imaginings justify beliefs. Ultimately, the view that we can reason with imagination offers an illuminating and theoretically fruitful framework through which to understand the epistemic structure of the imagination.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Epistemic Status of the Imagination.Joshua Myers - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3251-3270.
The Epistemic Structure of the Imagination.Joshua Myers - 2023 - Dissertation, New York University
Epistemic Uses of Imagination.Amy Kind & Christopher Badura (eds.) - 2021 - New York, NY: Routledge.
An Imaginative Person’s Guide to Objective Modality.Derek Lam - 2021 - In Amy Kind & Christopher Badura (eds.), Epistemic Uses of Imagination. New York, NY: Routledge.
Imagining under constraints.Amy Kind - 2016 - In Amy Kind & Peter Kung (eds.), Knowledge Through Imagination. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 145-159.
How Imagination Gives Rise to Knowledge.Amy Kind - 2018 - In Fiona Macpherson & Fabian Dorsch (eds.), Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 227-246.
How Imagination Informs.Joshua Myers - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
Explaining Imagination.Peter Langland-Hassan - 2020 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Imaginative Beliefs.Joshua Myers - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-12-17

Downloads
859 (#20,966)

6 months
275 (#10,188)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Joshua Myers
Universitat de Barcelona

Citations of this work

How Imagination Informs.Joshua Myers - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
The Epistemic Status of the Imagination.Joshua Myers - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3251-3270.
The epistemic imagination revisited.Arnon Levy & Ori Kinberg - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (2):319-336.
Imagination as a source of empirical justification.Joshua Myers - 2024 - Philosophy Compass 19 (3):e12969.
The Epistemic Role of the Imagination.Margot Strohminger - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley Blackwell.

View all 14 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Rationality Through Reasoning.John Broome (ed.) - 2013 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Does conceivability entail possibility.David J. Chalmers - 2002 - In Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 145--200.
The skeptic and the dogmatist.James Pryor - 2000 - Noûs 34 (4):517–549.
The Rationality of Perception.Susanna Siegel - 2017 - Oxford University Press.

View all 25 references / Add more references