Abstract

Aphantasia, a recently labelled spectrum condition affecting mental imagery, has brought to the fore the centrality of imagination in our lives. Intuitively it may seem that we cannot have a normal life without the possession of imaginative abilities. Yet, aphantasics do not seem to be much affected by their condition. Can aphantasia tell us anything about the nature and role of our imaginative abilities? I contend that an important distinction that can shed light on this question has been largely overlooked, namely that between two senses of mental imagery: as a type of mental content (viz., mental imagery strictly speaking), and as a kind of psychological attitude (viz., sensory imagination). Drawing on this distinction, I suggest three possible conditions: (i) impairment in mental imagery only, (ii) impairment in sensory imagination only, (iii) impairment in both mental imagery and sensory imagination. I show that core cases of aphantasia are better understood as impairments in sensory imagination only, but I indicate empirical strategies to investigate whether some cases of aphantasia rather involve impairments in mental imagery, which would point toward a plurality of forms of aphantasia. Sensory imagination, however, does not exhaust the imaginative realm, therefore we shouldn’t jump to the hasty conclusion that aphantasics have no imagination. Most aphantasics lack sensory imagination, but arguably can exploit other forms of imagination. This would explain in which sense they still possess imaginative abilities.