Sometimes we learn through the use of imagination. The epistemology of imagination asks how this is possible. One barrier to progress on this question has been a lack of agreement on how to characterize imagination; for example, is imagination a mental state, ability, character trait, or cognitive process? This paper argues that we should characterize imagination as a cognitive ability, exercises of which are cognitive processes. Following dual process theories of cognition developed in cognitive science, the set of imaginative processes (...) is then divided into two kinds: one that is unconscious, uncontrolled, and effortless, and another that is conscious, controlled, and effortful. This paper outlines the different epistemological strengths and weaknesses of the two kinds of imaginative process, and argues that a dual process model of imagination helpfully resolves or clarifies issues in the epistemology of imagination and the closely related epistemology of thought experiments. (shrink)

Scientists imagine for epistemic reasons, and these imaginings can be better or worse. But what does it mean for an imagining to be epistemically better or worse? There are at least three metaepistemological frameworks that present different answers to this question: epistemological consequentialism, deontic epistemology, and virtue epistemology. This paper presents empirical evidence that scientists adopt each of these different epistemic frameworks with respect to imagination, but argues that the way they do this is best explained if scientists are fundamentally (...) epistemic consequentialists about imagination. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of imaginative resistance in science, that is, why and under what circumstances imagination sometimes resists certain scenarios. In the first part, the paper presents and discusses two accounts concerning the problem and relevant for the main thesis of this study. The first position is that of Gendler, The Architecture of the Imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility and fiction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006a), The routledge companion to philosophy of literature, Routledge, New York, 2016), (...) according to which imaginative resistance mainly concerns evaluative scenarios, presenting deviant moral attitudes. The second account examined is that of Kim et al. Advances in experimental philosophy of aesthetics, Bloomsbury, London, 2018), who insisted on the link between imaginative resistance on the one hand and counterfactual and counterdescriptive scenarios on the other. In the light of both theories, this paper discusses the importance of addressing the problem of imaginative resistance in the scientific enterprise in the light of some mechanisms of embodied simulation, based on the activity of mirror neurons and investigated within the framework of the Embodied Simulation Theory. (shrink)

Different why-questions emerge under different contexts and require different information in order to be addressed. Hence a relevance relation can hardly be invariant across contexts. However, what is indeed common under any possible context is that all explananda require scientific information in order to be explained. So no scientific information is in principle explanatorily irrelevant, it only becomes so under certain contexts. In view of this, scientific thought experiments can offer explanations, should we analyze their representational strategies. Their representations involve (...) empirical as well as hypothetical statements. I call this the “representational mingling” which bears scientific information that can explain events. Buchanan’s thought experiment from constitutional economics is examined to show how mingled representations explain. (shrink)

Until recently, leading work on the philosophy of thought experiments mistakenly credited Mach with coining the term. While Ørsted’s prior use has become more widely acknowledged, there remains a c...

It is necessary to reconsider P. M. S. Hacker’s assessment of Kant and Wittgenstein’s philosophical affinities and the question concerning Wittgenstein’s alleged use of “transcendental arguments”. First, Alfred Norman’s reading of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a thought experiment receives revision to develop a view of the Critique of Pure Reason as a large-scale thought experiment that shares important logical features with the Tractatus. Then the question is addressed whether the middle Wittgenstein and the pre-critical Kant employed any thought experiments that (...) could be equally characterised as “transcendental arguments”. A rational reconstruction of both thinkers’ arguments is carried out in the light of the contemporary literature on thought experimenting. The novelty and relevance of this approach is the emphasis laid upon a largely neglected affinity between Kant and Wittgenstein, namely the systematic use of thought experiments in their epistemological pursuits. The conclusions are: i) Wittgenstein’s and Kant’s magna opera can be seen as philosophical thought experiments that attempt to try out the limits of language and the limits of possible experience respectively; ii) Both philosophers developed arguments that can be designated as transcendental if only from a methodological standpoint; and iii) some key arguments put forward by the middle Wittgenstein in the determination of the structure of visual space could be characterised better as thought experiments than transcendental arguments. (shrink)

Elsewhere I have tried to provide the justification of both the irreducible distinction of science and philosophy and their inevitable complementarity. Unlike empirical science, philosophy has no limit whatever as far as its possible objects are concerned. To say that there is no limit whatever to the possible objects of philosophy is to say that, strictly speaking, it has no object at all and must find its object outside itself, that is, in common sense knowledge and the natural and human (...) sciences. Against the background of this conception, the paper argues that philosophy of science, as a critical reflection on common sense knowledge and the natural or human sciences, inherits from philosophy in general this two-faced Janus nature, which in the philosophy of science shapes the epistemological status of the discipline in an even more prominent way. To show this in detail, the paper enunciates eleven theses that derive from the intimate connection of unity and distinction that exists between philosophy of science on the one hand and the particular and specialized scientific knowledge on the other. (shrink)

What role does the imagination play in scientific progress? After examining several studies in cognitive science, I argue that one thing the imagination does is help to increase scientific understanding, which is itself indispensable for scientific progress. Then, I sketch a transcendental justification of the role of imagination in this process.

In order to carry out “a great and important piece of work, and that in a complete and lasting way”, Kant claims that one must join one’s “effort with that of the author”. The reading of a work, therefore, must try to embrace “the articulation or structure of the system, which yet matters most when it comes to judging its unity and soundness”. This structure and articulation, however, may not be so easily accessible; it may, rather, be latent under “bright (...) colours [that] paint over and make unrecognizable” the argument’s essence, often confusing the reader, who “cannot quickly enough attain a survey of the whole”. Now, it would be expected, then, that Kant, condemning such “ornaments”, would not employ those resources I n his writings. However, it is curious that not infrequently he makes use of such “bright colours”. The present paper aims at pointing out some passages of Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy in which it is possible to identify such “colouring”. (shrink)