Imagination has been assigned an important explanatory role in a multitude of philosophical contexts. This paper examines four such contexts: mindreading, pretense, our engagement with fiction, and modal epistemology. Close attention to each of these contexts suggests that the mental activity of imagining is considerably more heterogeneous than previously realized. In short, no single mental activity can do all the explanatory work that has been assigned to imagining.

A widespread claim, which I call ‘the Emotionality Claim’, is that imagination but not supposition is intimately linked to emotion. In more cognitive jargon, imagination is connected to the affect system, whereas supposition is not. EC is open to several interpretations which yield very different views about the nature of supposition. The literature lacks an in-depth analysis of EC which sorts out these different readings and ways to carve supposition and imagination at their joints. The aim of (...) this paper is to fill this gap. I shall argue that existing readings of EC fail to properly account for the emotional asymmetry between imagination and supposition. The tendency is to start from narrow conceptions of both imagination and supposition. I shall argue for a novel interpretation of EC pivoting on different ways a mental state can connect to the affect system. (shrink)

In the crucible of the pandemic, it has never before been clearer that, to ensure the relevance and even the survival of the discipline, nursing must cultivate a radical imagination. In the paper that follows, I trace the imperative for conjuring a radical imagination for nursing. In this fever dream for nursing futures, built on speculative visions of what could be, I draw on anarchist, abolitionist, posthuman, Black feminist, new materialist and other big ideas to plant seeds of (...) generative insurrection and creative resistance. In thinking through a radical imagination, I unpack the significance of reparatory history for nursing, a discipline founded on normative whiteness. From there, I consider what it would take to shift the capitalist frame of healthcare to one of mutual aid, which requires the deep work of abolition. With a radical imagination that breaks down the enclosures that contain us through reparatory history, mutual aid and abolition, kinship becomes urgently possible. (shrink)

After a long hiatus, psychology and philosophy are returning to formal study of imagination. While excellent work is being done in the current environment, this article argues for a stronger thesis than usually adopted. Imagination is not just a peripheral feature of cognition or a domain for aesthetic research. It is instead the core operating system or cognitive capacity for humans and has epistemic and therapeutic functions that ground all our sense-making activities. A sketch of imagination as (...) embodied cognition is offered, followed by suggestions of how to organize imagination studies into a more rigorous science–humanities research area. (shrink)

How do hearers manage to understand speakers? And how do speakers manage to shape hearers' understanding? Lepore and Stone show that standard views about the workings of semantics and pragmatics are unsatisfactory. They advance an alternative view which better captures what is going on in linguistic communication.

Guided by neuroscience, animal behavior, evolution, philosophy, and psychology, Asma burrows deep into the human psyche to look right at the enigmatic but powerful engine that is our improvisational creativity—the source, he argues, of our remarkable imaginational capacity. How is it, he asks, that a story can evoke a whole world inside of us? How are we able to rehearse a skill, a speech, or even an entire scenario simply by thinking about it? How does creativity go beyond experience and (...) help us make something completely new? And how does our moral imagination help us sculpt a better society? As he shows, we live in a world that is only partly happening in reality. Huge swaths of our cognitive experiences are made up by “what-ifs,” “almosts,” and “maybes,” an imagined terrain that churns out one of the most overlooked but necessary resources for our flourishing: possibilities. Considering everything from how imagination works in our physical bodies to the ways we make images, from the mechanics of language and our ability to tell stories to the creative composition of self-consciousness, Asma expands our personal and day-to-day forms of imagination into a grand scale: as one of the decisive evolutionary forces that has guided human development from the Paleolithic era to today. The result is an inspiring look at the rich relationships among improvisation, imagination, and culture, and a privileged glimpse into the unique nature of our evolved minds. (shrink)

I argue that any account of imagination should satisfy the following three desiderata. First, imaginations induce actions only in conjunction with beliefs about the environment of the imagining subject. Second, there is a continuum between imaginations and beliefs. Recognizing this continuum is crucial to explain the phenomenon of imaginative immersion. Third, the mental states that relate to imaginations in the way that desires relate to beliefs are a special kind of desire, namely desires to make true in fiction. These (...) desires to make true in fiction do not differ from regular desires in kind, but only in content. I argue for these three desiderata in turn by critically discussing several recent accounts of imagination. (shrink)

Francesco Berto proposed a logic for imaginative episodes. The logic establishes certain (in)validities concerning episodic imagination. They are not all equally plausible as principles of episodic imagination. The logic also does not model that the initial input of an imaginative episode is deliberately chosen.Stit-imagination logic models the imagining agent’s deliberate choice of the content of their imagining. However, the logic does not model the episodic nature of imagination. The present paper combines the two logics, thereby modelling (...) imaginative episodes with deliberately chosen initial input. We use a combination ofstit-imagination logic and a content-sensitive variably strict conditional à la Berto, for which we give a Chellas–Segerberg semantics. The proposed semantics has the following advantages over Berto’s: (i) we model thedeliberate choiceof initial input of imaginative episodes (in a multi-agent setting), (ii) we showframe correspondencesfor axiomatic analogues of Berto’s validities, which (iii) allows thepossibility to disregard axiomsthat might be considered not plausible as principles concerning imaginative episodes. We do not take a definite stance on whether theseshouldbe disregarded but give reasons for why one might want to disregard them. Finally, we compare our semantics briefly with recent work, which aims to model voluntary imagination, and argue that our semantics models different aspects. (shrink)

Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or evaluated by scientists. This article begins to remedy this by presenting the results of a qualitative study performed on two systems biology laboratories. I found that the more advanced a participant was in their scientific career, the more they valued imagination. Further, positive attitudes toward imagination were primarily due to the perceived role (...) of imagination in problem-solving. But not all problem-solving episodes involved clear appeals to imagination, only maximally specific problems did. This pattern is explained by the presence of an implicit norm governing imagination use in the two labs: only use imagination on maximally specific problems, and only when all other available methods have failed. This norm was confirmed by the participants, and I argue that it has epistemological reasons in its favour. I also found that its strength varies inversely with career stage, such that more advanced scientists do (and should) occasionally bring their imaginations to bear on more general problems. A story about scientific pedagogy explains the trend away from (and back to) imagination over the course of a scientific career. Finally, some positive recommendations are given for a more imagination-friendly scientific pedagogy. (shrink)

Look at a red apple. Now close your eyes and visualize this apple. Your perceptual state and your imagery of the apple are very similar in some respects. They are also different in some respects. The aim of this paper is to address three questions about the relation between perception and imagination: -/- (a) How similar are perception and imagination and what explains this similarity? (b) How different are perception and imagination and what explains this difference? (c) (...) How do perception and imagination interact? (shrink)

Imagination and belief are obviously different. Imagining that you have won the lottery is not quite the same as believing that you have won. But what is the difference? According to a standard view in the contemporary debate, they differ in two key functional respects. First, with respect to the cognitive inputs to which they respond: imaginings do not respond to real-world evidence as beliefs do. Second, with respect to the behavioural outputs that they produce: imaginings do not motivate (...) us to act as beliefs do. I argue that this view is mistaken in one important respect. The distinction between imagination and belief does lie at the functional level; but the relevant functional difference does not concern behavioural outputs – since, in spite of appearances, imaginings and beliefs motivate us to act in the same ways. To see the difference, we need to focus on the inputs side – and, relatedly, on the sorts of inferential relations that imaginings and beliefs bear to each other. I show that this view does not have the absurd consequences that it may prima facie seem to have; on the contrary, it has important implications for our understanding of how the mind works. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers have appealed to the phenomenological similarity between visual experience and visual imagery to support the hypothesis that there is significant overlap between the perceptual and imaginative domains. The current evidence, however, is inconclusive: while evidence from transcranial brain stimulation seems to support this conclusion, neurophysiological evidence from brain lesion studies (e.g., from patients with brain lesions resulting in a loss of mental imagery but not a corresponding loss of perception and vice versa) indicates that there are functional and (...) anatomical dissociations between mental imagery and perception. Assuming that the mental imagery and perception do not overlap, at least, to the extent traditionally assumed, then the question arises as to what exactly mental imagery is and whether it parallels perception by proceeding via several functionally distinct mechanisms. In this review, we argue that even though there may not be a shared mechanism underlying vision for perception and conscious imagery, there is an overlap between the mechanisms underlying vision for action and unconscious visual imagery. On the basis of these findings, we propose a modification of Kosslyn’s model of imagery that accommodates unconscious imagination and explore possible explanations of the quasi-pictorial phenomenology of conscious visual imagery in light of the fact that its underlying neural substrates and mechanisms typically are distinct from those of visual experience. (shrink)

This paper considers the epistemic role that embodiment plays in imagining. We focus on two aspects of embodied cognition understood in its strong sense: explicit motoric processes related to performance, and neuronal processes rooted in bodily and action processes, and describe their role in imagining. The paper argues that these two aspects of strongly embodied cognition can play distinctive and positive roles in constraining imagining, thereby complementing Amy Kind's argument for the epistemic relevance of imagination "under constraints" and Magdalena (...) Balcerak Jackson's argument for justification by imagination. (shrink)

Appealing to imagination for modal justification is very common. But not everyone thinks that all imaginings provide modal justification. Recently, Gregory and Kung :620–663, 2010) have independently argued that, whereas imaginings with sensory imageries can justify modal beliefs, those without sensory imageries don’t because of such imaginings’ extreme liberty. In this essay, I defend the general modal epistemological relevance of imagining. I argue, first, that when the objections that target the liberal nature of non-sensory imaginings are adequately developed, those (...) objections also threaten the sensory imaginings. So, if we think that non-sensory imaginings are too liberal for modal justification, we should say the same about sensory imaginings. I’ll finish my defense by showing that, when it comes to deciding between saying that all imaginings are prima facie justificatory and saying that no imaginings are justificatory, there is an independent reason for accepting the former. (shrink)

Historically left to the margins, the topics of imagination and creativity have gained prominence in philosophy of science, challenging the once dominant distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’. The aim of this chapter is to explore imagination and creativity starting from issues within contemporary philosophy of science, making connections to these topics in other domains along the way. It discusses the recent literature on the role of imagination in models and thought experiments, and their (...) comparison with fictions. It then turns to the importance of constraints on imaginings in the scientific domain, as well as whether constraints can hinder creativity. The second part of the paper focuses on the social dimensions of science. It considers imagination and creativity of scientific communities, asks whether the institution of science promotes creativity (and whether we want it to) or if it encourages conservativeness, and ends with a reflection on the politics of imagination and creativity in science. (shrink)

In two posthumously published essays, ‘History of Astronomy’ and ‘Of the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called The Imitative Arts’, Adam Smith suggests provocatively that philosophy is an ‘art of imagination’ and that we take the same ‘very high intellectual pleasure’ in appreciating systematic scientific theories and in listening to musical ‘systems’, i.e., complex works of non-programmatic instrumental music. In this paper, I reconstruct the view of imagination, as the cognitive faculty primarily responsible (...) for perception and appreciation of such ‘systems’, that undergirds these claims, and argue that it is to be understood as aiming at ideal ends – in the first instance, at beauty or an order among variety (systematicity). Smith thus offers a distinctive view of aesthetic imagination, as neither freely playing nor imitative (two common views of imagination both in his time and ours) but rather as aiming at, and progressively realizing non-rational norms of order (again, at least in the first instance, an ideal of beauty). (shrink)

In recent works, Kind has argued that imagination is a skill, since it possesses the two hallmarks of skill: improvability by practice, and control. I agree with Kind that and are indeed hallmarks of skill, and I also endorse her claim that imagination is a skill in virtue of possessing these two features. However, in this paper, I argue that Kind’s case for imagination’s being a skill is unsatisfactory, since it lacks robust empirical evidence. Here, I will (...) provide evidence for by considering data from mental rotation experiments and for by considering data from developmental experiments. I conclude that imagination is a skill, but there is a further pressing question of how the cognitive architecture of imagination has to be structured to make this possible. I begin by considering how can be implemented sub-personally. I argue that this can be accounted for by positing a selection mechanism which selects content from memory representations to be recombined into imaginings, using Bayesian generation. I then show that such an account can also explain. On this basis, I hold that not only is imagination a skill, but that it is also plausibly implemented sub-personally by a Bayesian selection mechanism. (shrink)

Issues of pretense and imagination are of central interest to philosophers, psychologists, and researchers in allied fields. In this entry, we provide a roadmap of some of the central themes around which discussion has been focused. We begin with an overview of pretense, imagination, and the relationship between them. We then shift our attention to the four specific topics where the disciplines' research programs have intersected or where additional interactions could prove mutually beneficial: the psychological underpinnings of performing (...) pretense and of recognizing pretense, the cognitive capacities involved in imaginative engagement with fictions, and the real-world impact of make-believe. In the final section, we discuss more briefly a number of other mental activities that arguably involve imagining, including counterfactual reasoning, delusions, and dreaming. (shrink)

There is something prophetic about abolition; some element of the elsewhere that marks its practice, and its discourse. In the work of undoing, there is a crack. In the refusal, a moment of imagination. Abolition is driven by definitive demands as much as by what is yet to come and what is still unfinished.

This article explains Hume's conception of the imagination and its relations to our other faculties of thought, highlighting the continuities and discontinuities between his views and those of his Early Modern predecessors. It then presents some of the basic functions that Hume thinks the imagination performs, and surveys some highlights of his science of man, showing how he uses the imagination’s basic functions to explain several important mental phenomena; examines “fictions of the imagination,” which have an (...) important place in his science of man; examines his view that whatever we can clearly imagine is possible; and discusses the relationship between Hume’s theory of the imagination and his skepticism. (shrink)

In retrospect, I think I was right to compose Natural Supernaturalism by relying on taste, tact, and intuition rather than on a controlling method. A book of this kind, which deals with the history of human intellection, feeling, and imagination, employs special vocabularies, procedures, and modes of demonstration which, over many centuries of development, have shown their profitability when applied to matters of this sort. I agree with Booth that these procedures, when valid, are in a broad sense rational, (...) and subject to analysis and some degree of definition. But the rules underlying such a discourse are complex, elusive, unsystematic, and subject to innovative modification; they manifest themselves in the intuitive expertise of the historian; and the specification of these rules should not precede, but follow practice. . . . After the fact, nevertheless, a book like Natural Supernaturalism is subject to close critical inquiry about its methods and rationale. I am grateful to Booth for opening up such an inquiry, and for doing so in a way that is not only disarming, but seems to me to be the most promising of useful results. That is, instead of adopting a prosecutorial stance, demanding: "Justify the rationality and probative force of what you have done; it looks dammed suspicious to me," he has adopted the friendly tactic of saying: "Your book, in my experience of it, has yielded discoveries that I want to call knowledge, by methods, however deviant from standard rubrics of valid reasoning, that it seems irrational to call non-rational. Let's set out to clarify what these methods are, and to see what grounds we can find for the claim that they provide warranted knowledge." M.H. Abrams' contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Deconstructive Angel" and "Behaviorism and Deconstruction: A Comment on Morse Peckham's 'The Infinitude of Pluralism'". (shrink)

In this paper I outline an approach to managerial decision making that incorporates the important role that metaphors and moral imagination play in our moral reasoning coupled with an organisational moral concept I call the Health of the Organisation. I have used this concept in my managerial (and philosophical) career to interpret and evaluate potential, and actual, courses of action. I have concluded that this concept fits in nicely with Mark Johnson’s analysis of the metaphor of morality is health, (...) which he argues is one of the central moral metaphors in the conceptual framework that we use to interpret and evaluate actions from a reasonable moral point of view. He argues that metaphors are the essential components in defining the rational mental framework utilised in interpreting, evaluating, predicting likely outcomes from various alternatives, and choosing morally acceptable courses of action. I argue that the metaphor morality is health explicated as the Health of the Organisation can serve as an antidote to the unimaginative moral decision making processes that Patricia Werhane has shown can result in bad moral decisions. I do this by demonstrating that a healthy organisation is one that is optimally functional. This means that the components that make up the organisation are so structured that there is no better possible organisational arrangement available for achieving the goals designed to ensure successful performance in the marketplace. (shrink)

Gaston Bachelard occupies a unique position in the history of European thinking. As a philosopher of science, he developed a profound interest in genres of the imagination, notably poetry and novels. While emphatically acknowledging the strength, precision and reliability of scientific knowledge compared to every-day experience, he saw literary phantasies as important supplementary sources of insight. Although he significantly influenced authors such as Lacan, Althusser, Foucault and others, while some of his key concepts are still widely used, his oeuvre (...) tends to be overlooked. And yet, as I will argue, Bachelard’s extended series of books opens up an intriguing perspective on contemporary science. First, I will point to a remarkable duality that runs through Bachelard’s oeuvre. His philosophy of science consists of two sub-oeuvres: a psychoanalysis of technoscience, complemented by a poetics of elementary imagination. I will point out how these two branches deal with complementary themes: technoscientific artefacts and literary fictions, two realms of human experience separated by an epistemological rupture. Whereas Bachelard’s work initially entails a panegyric in praise of scientific practice, he becomes increasingly intrigued by the imaginary and its basic images, such as the Mother Earth archetype. (shrink)

I argue for the unity of imagination in two prima facie diverse contexts: experiences of beauty and achievements of understanding. I develop my argument in three steps. First, I begin by describing a type of aesthetic experience that is grounded in a set of imaginative activities on the part of the person having the experience. Second, I argue that the same set of imaginative activities that grounds this type of aesthetic experience also contributes to achievements of understanding. Third, I (...) show that my unified account of imagination has important implications: it sheds light on two puzzling phenomena, the aesthetic value of science and the cognitive value of art. (shrink)

This essay explores Aristotle’s treatment of imagination. It argues that Aristotle need not be charged with the radical inconsistency in his treatment of phantasia diagnosed by Hamlyn. Although a conceptual link can be made between imagination and a use of ‘appears’, the link is not as close as the connection between phantasia and phainesthai, nor does ‘appears’ provide the natural entree to the study of imagination which phainetai provides to that of phantasia. A little lexicography will show (...) that the syntactic behaviour and semantic range of phantasia are different from those of imagination. (shrink)

According to recent accounts of the imagination, mental mechanisms that can take input from both imagining and from believing will process imagination‐based inputs (pretense representations) and isomorphic beliefs in much the same way. That is, such a mechanism should produce similar outputs whether its input is the belief that p or the pretense representation that p. Unfortunately, there seem to be clear counterexamples to this hypothesis, for in many cases, imagining that p and believing that p have quite (...) different psychological consequences. This paper sets out some central problem cases and argues that the cases might be accommodated by adverting to the role of desires concerning real and imaginary situations. (shrink)

Imagination allows us to step out of the ordinary but also to transform it through our sense of wonder and play, artistic inspiration and innovation, or the eureka moment of a scientific breakthrough. In this book, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei offers a groundbreaking new understanding of its place in everyday experience as well as the heights of creative achievement. -/- The Life of Imagination delivers a new conception of imagination that places it at the heart of our engagement (...) with the world—thinking, acting, feeling, making, and being. Gosetti-Ferencei reveals imagination’s roots in embodied human cognition and its role in shaping our cognitive ecology. She demonstrates how imagination arises from our material engagements with the world and at the same time endows us with the sense of an inner life, how it both allows us to escape from reality and aids us in better understanding it. Drawing from philosophy, cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, developmental psychology, literary theory, and aesthetics, Gosetti-Ferencei engages a spectacular range of examples from ordinary thought processes and actions to artistic, scientific, and literary feats to argue that, like consciousness itself, imagination resists reductive explanation. The Life of Imagination offers a vital account of transformative thinking that shows how imagination will be essential in cultivating a future conducive to human flourishing and to that of the life around us. (shrink)

This chapter considers how imagination generates emotion. ‘Supposition-imagination’ (S-imagination) is distinguished from ‘enactment-imagination’ (E-imagination). The former kind of imagination involves entertaining or supposing various hypothetical scenarios; with the latter kind of imagination, one tries to create a kind of facsimile of a mental state. Thus, one might try to create a perception-like state as in visual imagination or motoric imagination. It is argued that this much richer form of imagination generates (...) typical emotional reactions to fiction. Emotional reactions to fiction are generated in several different ways, including a process in which we E-imagine being a hypothetical reader or observer of fact. (shrink)

À partir de l’analyse d’un argument présenté dans la correspondance avec More, cette étude examine la conception cartésienne du rapport de l’étendue à l’impénétrabilité à travers le prisme de l’imagination. Je montre que l’argument en question est une expérience de pensée qui s’appuie sur le caractère inimaginable d’une étendue pénétrable. Je défends l’idée selon laquelle la conception proprement cartésienne de l’imagination implique que le contenu et les limites de nos actes d’imagination dépendent des propriétés des images cérébrales. (...) J’en déduis que cette conception particulière de l’imagination explique pourquoi l’argument des lettres à More est concluant du point de vue de Descartes. (shrink)

The Moral Imagination describes how some of the most provocative thinkers of modern times, coming from different traditions, responding to different concerns, and writing in different genres, shared a moral passion that permeated their work. The second edition includes a revised introduction and three new essays on Adam Smith, Lord Acton, and Alfred Marshall.

Both perception and imagination seem to play a crucial role in our engagement with fiction films but whether they really do so, and which role they possibly play, is controversial. On the one hand, a fiction film, as film, is a depiction that invites us to perceive the events portrayed. On the other hand, as fiction, it invites us to imagine the story told. Thus, after watching the film Alien, one might say that one saw Ripley fighting the monster (...) but one might also say that one imagined Ripley fighting the monster. Are these two reports compatible? If they are, how can we combine them so to make sense of them? If, instead, they are not, which of them should we give up? (shrink)

In this volume Henry Corbin emphasizes the differences between the exoteric and esoteric forms of Islam. He also reveals that whereas in the West philosophy and religion were at odds, they were inseparably linked, at least during this period, in the Islamic world. A valuable section of notes and appendices includes original translation of numerous Sufi treatises.