We know, since Descartes (1641), that exercises of sensory imagining (S-imagining) are not purely imagistic: they possess multiple aspects. This much is agreed upon among philosophers but, when the question of the intentionality of S-imaginings arises, agreement seems to unravel. -/- According to the Two Content View (TCV), S-imagining “has two kinds of content, qualitative content and assigned content” (Kung, 2010:632) – e.g., my image of an apple is about both (i) shapes and colors and (ii) about the fact (...) that it is an apple, rather than a perfect imitation thereof. Advocates of TCV claim that the imagistic content does represent something, but it is not enough to individuate the imagining of an A rather than a B (Kung, 2010; Langland-Hassan, 2015; Martin, 2002; Noordhof, 2002; Peacocke, 1985; Tooming, 2018; White, 1990). -/- Some, however, have expressed skepticism about TCV. As Sartre claims, “despite some prejudices […] when I produce in myself the image of Pierre, it is Pierre who is the object of my current consciousness.” (1940/2010:4) The intentional object of our S-imaginings is exhausted by a single content treated in a specific way (Currie & Ravenscroft, 2002; Goldman, 2006; Hutto, 2015; Mulligan, 1999; Soteriou, 2013; Stock, n.d.; Wiltsher, 2016,2019). -/- In the following, (1) I sketch one of the most efficient pleas for the TCV by Peter Langland-Hassan, (2) I give two reasons to doubt the decisiveness of his arguments, and (3) suggest that S-imagining can be captured by the attitude/content distinction. (shrink)

This article starts out by introducing the category of the ‘one-character film’ — that is, narrative feature films that rely on a single onscreen character. One-character films can range from extremely laconic movies entirely focused on the action in the narrative here-and-now via highly talkative films that revolve around soliloquies of self-reflection, questioning of identity and a problematizing of the narrative past to strongly dialogue-heavy films that — via phones and other telecommunication devices — reach far beyond the depicted scene. (...) It is on the latter that the article eventually focuses. Films like Buried, Locke or The Guilty centrifugally thrust the viewers into a simultaneous present that remains invisible and that they have to imagine in sensory ways. Imagining this invisible elsewhere, which I call mise en esprit, can be facilitated and evoked through various cinematic means such as reduced within-modality-interference, suggestive verbalizations, acousmatic voices and sound effects. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

I lay out the framework for my theory of sensory imagination in “Imagining as a guide to possibility.” Sensory imagining involves mental imagery , and crucially, in describing the content of imagining, I distinguish between qualitative content and assigned content. Qualitative content derives from the mental image itself; for visual imaginings, it is what is “pictured.” For example, visually imagine the Philadelphia Eagles defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their first Super Bowl. You picture the greenness of (...) the field and the football’s brown oblong shape. Some of what you imagine isn’t explicitly pictured, however. That it is Sunday, that it is the Super Bowl: these facts are assigned. (shrink)

The point of this paper is to reveal a dogma in the ordinary conception of sensory imagination, and to suggest another way forward. The dogma springs from two main sources: a too close comparison of mental imagery to perceptual experience, and a too strong division between mental imagery and the traditional propositional attitudes (such as belief and desire). The result is an unworkable conception of the correctness conditions of sensory imaginings—one lacking any link between the conditions under (...) which an imagining aids human action and inference and the conditions under which it is veridical. The proposed solution is, first, to posit a variety of imaginative attitudes—akin to the traditional propositional attitudes—which have different associated correctness (or satisfaction) conditions. The second part of the solution is to allow for imaginings with “hybrid” contents, in the sense that both mental images and representations with language-like constituent structure contribute to the content of imaginings. (shrink)

Three thoughts strongly influence recent work on sensory imagination, often without explicit articulation. The image thought says that all mental states involving a mental image are imaginative. The attitude thought says that, if there is a distinctive imaginative attitude, it is a single, monolithic attitude. The function thought says that the functions of sensory imagination are identical or akin to functions of other mental states such as judgment or belief. Taken together, these thoughts create a theoretical (...) context within which eliminativism appears attractive. Eliminativism is the idea that we needn’t refer to a distinctive attitude in order to characterize sensory imagination: the attitudes involved in other states provide all the resources we need. Peter Langland-Hassan’s account of sensory imagination provides an example of such eliminativism. Via close examination of this account, I make manifest the three thoughts and their collective tendency to support eliminativism. I argue that all three are dubious, and that we should reject eliminativism; we need a distinctive imaginative attitude if we are to adequately explicate sensory imagination. (shrink)

BackgroundDuring the course of a previous study, our laboratory made a serendipitous finding that just thinking about genital stimulation resulted in brain activations that overlapped with, and differed from, those generated by physical genital stimulation.ObjectiveThis study extends our previous findings by further characterizing how the brain differentially processes physical ‘touch’ stimulation and ‘imagined’ stimulation.DesignEleven healthy women participated in an fMRI study of the brain response to imagined or actual tactile stimulation of the nipple and clitoris. Two additional conditions – imagined (...) dildo self-stimulation and imagined speculum stimulation – were included to characterize the effects of erotic versus non-erotic imagery.ResultsImagined and tactile self-stimulation of the nipple and clitoris each activated the paracentral lobule and the secondary somatosensory cortex. Imagined self-stimulation of the clitoris and nipp... (shrink)

1. Sensa and propositional experience. 2. An option between propositions and properties (as objects or contents of sensory experience). 3. The property option and adverbialism. 4. Sensa as images, images as intentionalia. 5. Do we refer directly to sensa? 6. Focusing and the supervenience of images and our reference to them: a question raised. 7. Internal and external properties of images and characters. Strict vistas introduced. 8. A correction on strict vistas. 9. Focusing and experience: the question answered. 10. (...) Conclusion. (shrink)

If imagination is subject to the will, in the sense that people choose the content of their own imaginings, how is it that one nevertheless can learn from what one imagines? This chapter argues for a way forward in addressing this perennial puzzle, both with respect to propositional imagination and sensory imagination. Making progress requires looking carefully at the interplay between one’s intentions and various kinds of constraints that may be operative in the generation of imaginings. (...) Lessons are drawn from the existing literature on propositional imagination and from the control theory literature concerning the prediction and comparison mechanisms (or “forward models”) involved in ordinary perception. A more general conclusion is reached that, once we have the tools to understand how some imaginings are both under willful control and helpfully guide action and inference, we will have what we need to understand the cognitive basis of imagination in general. (shrink)

Imagination comes with varying degrees of sensory accompaniment. Sometimes imagining is phenomenologically lean (cognitive imagining); at other times, imagining involves or requires sensory presentation such as mental imagery (sensory imagining). Philosophers debate whether contradictions can obtain in fiction and whether cognitive imagining is robust enough to explain our engagement with fiction. In this paper, I defend the Principle of Poetic License by arguing for the Permissive View of fictional truth: we can have fictions in which a (...) contradiction is true, everything is true, or nothing is true. I show that imagination-based worries about impossible, unlimited, and empty fictions can be shown to be about sensory imagination and that sensory imagination isn’t necessary for fictional truth. (shrink)

It has long been recognized that we have a great deal of freedom to imagine what we choose. This paper explores a thesis—what we call “intentionalism (about the imagination)”—that provides a way of making this evident (if vague) truism precise. According to intentionalism, the contents of your imaginings are simply determined by whatever contents you intend to imagine. Thus, for example, when you visualize a building and intend it to be of King’s College rather than a replica of the (...) college you have imagined the former rather than the latter because you intended to imagine King’s College. This is so even if the visual image you conjure up equally resembles either. This paper proposes two kinds of counterexamples to intentionalism and discusses their significance. In particular, it sketches a positive account of how many sensory imaginings get to be about what they are about, which explains how the causal history of our mental imagery can prevent us from succeeding in imagining what we intended. (shrink)

This paper investigates a capacity I call actuality-oriented imagining, by which we use sensory imagination in a way that's directed at representing the actual world. I argue that this kind of imagining is distinct from other, similar mental states in virtue of its distinctive content determination and success conditions. Actuality-oriented imagining is thus a distinctive cognitive capacity in its own right. Thinking about this capacity reveals that we should resist an intuitive tendency to think of the imagination’s (...) primary function or default mode as representing the non-actual or the fictional. Instead, the imagination is a cognitive faculty that often puts us in touch with the way things are in reality. (shrink)

The primary intention of this book is to elucidate the relations between sensory perception and art as a form of knowledge. This enables us to understand how different kinds of art are given their meaning not only from observation, resemblance and reason but also from an artist’s sensitivity to the inner form of sensory experience as it is realized in perception, reflection, memory and imagination. By assuming a number of different points of view, Part 1 shows how (...) the physical object and the act of sensory perception are logically interdependent, and I give my elaboration of this argument two kinds of emphasis. In the first place, it opposes all arguments that support a merging of the mental and physical, as in idealism, materialism, neutral monism and panpsychism. A conceptual distinction is observed because sensory perception gives the physical object its identity. This idea also implies that the physical object is only realized by sentient life - self-aware inner life and a world become possible simultaneously. The second emphasis concerns the mind-body problem, and towards the end of Part 1 I offer an argument which places this problem in a certain light by representing the brain not as a physical counterpart to inner experience but as essentially instrumental to perception and self-awareness, and related experience. The argument in Part 2 is distinguished by a sense of continuity between the nature of sensory perception and the formal resources of artists in both physical and literary media. Hence, in a discussion of Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, I indicate ways in which the painter conveys the inner experience and character of the figures in the painting by means of compositional design, light and colour, and thereby uses these and other sensuous resources to portray human life and experience. This is followed by a discussion of two sonnets by Shakespeare, in which the same general aim is pursued by using the literary resources of figurative language. Finally, a discussion of Hamlet shows how, in this work, the augmentation of figurative language by dramatic form strengthens the view that art can provide a form of knowledge that is based as completely upon intuition about our sensory experience as it is upon reason and observation. Just as my (true) perception of a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee arises immediately from past experience, so the dramatist can see immediately from his or her past experience how a character might perceive things and behave. -/- . (shrink)

Is imagination a source of knowledge? Timothy Williamson has recently argued that our imaginative capacities can yield knowledge of a variety of matters, spanning from everyday practical matters to logic and set theory. Furthermore, imagination for Williamson plays a similar epistemic role in cognitive processes that we would traditionally classify as either a priori or a posteriori, which he takes to indicate that the distinction itself is shallow and epistemologically fruitless. In this chapter, I aim to defend the (...) a priori-a posteriori distinction from Williamson’s challenge by questioning his account of imagination. I distinguish two notions of imagination at play in Williamson’s account – sensory vs. belief-like imagination – and show that both face empirical and normative issues. Sensory imagination seems neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Whereas, belief-like imagination isn’t adequately disentangled from inference. Additionally, Williamson’s examples are ad hoc and don’t generalize. I conclude that Williamson’s case against the a priori-a posteriori distinction is unconvincing, and so is the thesis that imagination is an epistemic source. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a strange sensory blending: synaesthetes report experiences of colours or tastes associated with particular sounds or words. This volume presents new essays by scientists and philosophers exploring what such cases can tell us about the nature of perception and its boundaries with illusion and imagination.

This volume presents ten new essays on the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory, framed by an introductory overview of these topics. How do perceptual imagination and memory resemble and differ from each other and from other kinds of sensory experience? And what role does each play in perception and in the acquisition of knowledge? These are the two central questions that the contributors seek to address.

We attribute the capability of imagination to the madman as to the scientist, to the novelist as to the metaphysician, and last but not least to ourselves. The same, apparently, holds for thought experimentation. Ernst Mach was the first to draw an explicit link between these two mental acts; moreover -in his perspective- imagination plays a pivotal role in thought experimentation. Nonetheless, it is not clear what kind of imagination emerges from Mach’s writings. Indeed, heated debates among (...) cognitive scientists and philosophers turn on the key distinction between sensory and cognitive imagination. Generally speaking, we can say that sensory imagination shares some processes with perception, cognitive imagination with the formation of belief. Both the vocabulary used in the literature on thought experiments and what I refer to as “Machian tradition” indicate imagination as a notion of central importance in the reasoning involved in thought experiments. However, most authors have really focused on sensory (in particular, visual) imagination, but have neglected the second kind. Moreover, some authors attribute to Mach the idea that it is visual imagery that is primarily at work in thought experiments. I claim another interpretation is possible, according to which Mach can be said to deal with cognitive imagination. The main aim of this paper is to retrace Mach’s original arguments and establish a connection with the cognitive literature on imagination. I will argue that imagination tout court could play a role in thought experimentation. Once imagination is seen as the key to the “cognitive black-box” of the thought experiment, we will have moved a step closer to a simulative imagining-based account of thought experimentation. (shrink)

This volume presents ten new essays on the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory. The central questions are: How do perceptual imagination and memory resemble and differ from each other and from other kinds of sensory experience? And what role does each play in perception and in the acquisition of knowledge?

ABSTRACT How can imagination generate knowledge when its contents are voluntarily determined? Several philosophers have recently answered this question by pointing to the constraints that underpin imagination when it plays knowledge-generating roles. Nevertheless, little has been said about the nature of these constraints. In this paper, I argue that the constraints that underpin sensory imagination come from the structure of causal probabilistic generative models, a construct that has been highly influential in recent cognitive science and machine (...) learning. I highlight several attractions of this account, and I favourably contrast it with Peter Langland-Hassan’s account of sensory imagination in terms of the forward models exploited in sensorimotor control. (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)

ABSTRACT How can imagination generate knowledge when its contents are voluntarily determined? Several philosophers have recently answered this question by pointing to the constraints that underpin imagination when it plays knowledge-generating roles. Nevertheless, little has been said about the nature of these constraints. In this paper, I argue that the constraints that underpin sensory imagination come from the structure of causal probabilistic generative models, a construct that has been highly influential in recent cognitive science and machine (...) learning. I highlight several attractions of this account, and I favourably contrast it with Peter Langland-Hassan’s account of sensory imagination in terms of the forward models exploited in sensorimotor control. (shrink)

Naïve realists hold that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is in part constituted by environmental objects that the subject is perceiving. Although naïve realism is well-motivated by considering the cognitive and epistemic roles of the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience, it is considered difficult to explain hallucinatory and imaginative experiences. This paper provides three arguments to address these explanatory problems systematically on behalf of naïve realism. First, I argue that the imagination view of hallucination (IH), which states that (...) hallucinations are involuntary sensory imagination, can be applied to total and neutrally matching hallucinations. Second, I argue for the conjunction of IH and the representational view of imagination (RI), according to which sensory imagination (including hallucination) is representational (shortly RIH). Third, I argue that naïve realism can coherently be integrated with RIH. I finally present an integrative model of perception, imagination and hallucination from the perspective of the combination of naïve realism and RIH. (shrink)

Imagination is widely thought to come in two varieties: perception-like and belief-like imagination. What precisely sets them apart, however, is not settled. More needs to be said about the features that make one variety perception-like and the other belief-like. One common, although typically implicit, view is that they mimic their counterparts along the conceptuality dimension: while the content of belief-like imagination is fully conceptual, the content of perception-like imagination is fully non-conceptual. Such a view, however, is (...) not sufficiently motivated in the literature. I will show that there are good reasons to reject it and I will argue that both varieties of imagination involve fully conceptual contents. I will suggest an alternative way to draw the distinction between perception-like and belief-like imagination along the conceptuality dimension, according to which only perception-like imagination requires observational concepts. (shrink)

The literature suggests that in sensory imagination we focus on the imagined objects, not on the imaginative states themselves, and that therefore imagination is not introspective. It is claimed that the introspection of imaginative states is an additional cognitive ability. However, there seem to be counterexamples to this claim. In many cases in which we sensorily imagine a certain object in front of us, we are aware that this object is not really where we imagine it to (...) be. So it looks as if in these cases of imagination, we are aware of the mere appearance of the imagined object, and hence introspection is a constitutive part of imagination. In this article, I address this contradictory state of affairs and argue that we should classify at least some forms of sensory imagination as introspective. For this purpose I use the appearance-reality distinction as a central notion for introspection. I also defend the thesis of introspective imagination against the objection that young children imagine without yet understanding the concept of experience. (shrink)

Cats and dogs are the same kind of thing in being mammals, even if cats are not a kind of dog. In the same way, remembering and imagining might be the same kind of mental state, even if remembering is not a kind of imagining. This chapter explores whether episodic remembering, on the one hand, and future and counter-factual directed imagistic imagining, on the other, may be the same kind of mental state in being instances of the same cognitive attitude. (...) I outline a continuist position where all three involve the same judgment-like attitude and compare its advantages to a discontinuist alternative where remembering requires use of its own distinctive attitude. Reasons are given for favoring a version of the continuist position, though this chapter’s focus is on the metatheoretical questions of how to go about understanding remembering in terms of a content and attitude pair, and which considerations are relevant when deciding among competing content/attitude pairs. (shrink)

What are hallucinations? A common view in the philosophical literature is that hallucinations are degenerate kinds of perceptual experience. I argue instead that hallucinations are degenerate kinds of sensory imagination. As well as providing a good account of many actual cases of hallucination, the view that hallucination is a kind of imagination represents a promising account of hallucination from the perspective of a disjunctivist theory of perception like naïve realism. This is because it provides a way of (...) giving a positive characterisation of hallucination—rather than characterising hallucinations in negative, relational, terms as mental events that are subjectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptual experiences. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued in favour of the Dependency Thesis: if a subject sensorily imagines an F then he or she sensorily imagines from the inside perceptually experiencing an F in the imaginary world. They claim that it explains certain important features of imaginative experience, in brief: the fact that it is perspectival, the fact that it does not involve presentation of sensory qualities and the fact that mental images can serve a number of different imaginings. I (...) argue that the Dependency Thesis is false and that, in any event, it does not have the explanatory credentials claimed for it. Some of the features of imaginative experience are incorrectly specified, namely the absence of presentation of sensory qualities. With a more precise idea of what we need to explain, I argue that the explanation should proceed by noting that imagination and perception have phenomenally similar contents and that this is to be explained in terms of the similar kinds of representations in play. I trace the consequences of my discussion for disjunctivist theories of perception, Berkeleian Idealism and the characterisation of knowing what an experience is like. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In this article, I defend the view that we can acquire factual knowledge – that is, contingent propositional knowledge about certain (perceivable) aspects of reality – on the basis of imaginative experience. More specifically, I argue that, under suitable circumstances, imaginative experiences can rationally determine the propositional content of knowledge-constituting beliefs – though not their attitude of belief – in roughly the same way as perceptual experiences do in the case of perceptual knowledge. I also highlight some philosophical consequences of (...) this conclusion, especially for the issue of whether imagination can help us to learn something from fictions. (shrink)

Please send me an email ([email protected]) if you wish to receive a copy of the book. — 'In this highly ambitious, wide ranging, immensely impressive and ground-breaking work Fabian Dorsch surveys just about every account of the imagination that has ever been proposed. He identifies five central types of imagining that any unifying theory must accommodate and sets himself the task of determining whether any theory of what imagining consists in covers these five paradigms. Focussing on what he takes (...) to be the three main theories, and giving them each equal consideration, he faults the first two and embraces the third, which argues that imagining is a special form of mental agency. The scholarship is immaculate, the writing crystal clear and the argumentation always powerful.' (Malcolm Budd). (shrink)

Imagination, like other higher cognition, is often thought to arise after the evolution of language. Stephen Asma argues instead that imagination is much older and forms a kind of early cognition --harvesting sensory, motor and affective impressions, and generating novel generate-and-test information.

It seems undeniable that we have many items of modal knowledge. Tradition has it that conceivability is the evidence for possibility that gets us to this modal knowledge. But "conceive" cannot mean think, understand, entertain, suppose, or find believable, because none of these are suited to serve as evidence for possibility, and if it is none of these, it is mysterious what conceivability is, and why it is evidence for possibility. I argue that sensory imagination is the most (...) promising candidate for a source of modal evidence. A theory of imaginative content is developed in Chapter One, one which allows what seems undeniable: that we do imagine the impossible. This raises a challenge to explain why, in the face of our ability to imagine the impossible, we should accept imagination as modal evidence. The predominant response, developed by Saul Kripke, limits the scope of imagination to preserve the link between imagination and what is possible. In Chapter Two I argue that the Kripkean theory is best thought of as an error theory: when we take ourselves to imagine, e.g., water without H2O, or Mark Twain and Sam Clemens in a fistfight, we are mistaken. I articulate and defend an alternative modal epistemology, one that exploits the crucial difference between assigned and basic content of imagining. The evidential value of some imaginings is undermined by independent considerations about the connection between assigned content and ignorance. Instances in which we imagine the impossible are all cases where these independent considerations give us reason to doubt the imagining's value as modal evidence. The conclusions about assigned content are applied in Chapter Three to the first-person imaginings thought to be crucial in philosophy of mind: the imaginability of zombies, and the imaginability of being a disembodied soul. It is argued that such imaginings offer no evidence favoring dualism over materialism. Finally, alternatives to imagination as the source for modal evidence are discussed in Chapter Four. I explore both direct intuition and a priori-based accounts, and conclude that neither offers a genuine alternative to the imagination. (shrink)

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)

A certain philosophical frame of mind holds that contentless imaginings are unimaginable, “inconceivable” (Shapiro, p. 214) ‐ that it is simply not possible to imagine acts of imagining in the absence of representational content. Against this, this paper argues that there is no naturalistically respectable way to rule out the possibility of contentless imaginings on purely analytic or conceptual grounds. Moreover, agreeing with Langland‐Hassan (2015), it defends the view that the best way to understand the content and correctness conditions of (...) non‐basic, hybrid imaginative attitudes is to assume that basic sensory imaginings are enlisted to play many different kinds of cognitive roles depending on the surrounding contentful attitudes that imaginers adopt toward them. Finally, it argues that when it comes to understanding how pure, basic sensory imaginings do their explanatorily important work there is every reason to focus on the properties of such imaginings that enable appropriate interactions and exactly no reason for thinking that representational contents are amongst those properties. (shrink)

I can imagine a banana to be a phone receiver. I can also imagine the flapping of my arms to be flying. So it is possible to imagine one thing to be another—at least for some types of ‘things’. I will argue that although it is possible to imagine an object to be another object and it is also possible to imagine an activity to be a different activity, one cannot imagine one’s present sensory experience to be a different (...) sensory experience with different qualitative character. This claim will have some important consequences beyond the philosophy of imagination, for example, for some accounts of depiction. (shrink)

We tend to think that perceptual experiences tell us about what the external world is like without being influenced by our own mind. But recent psychological and philosophical research indicates that this might not be true. Our beliefs, expectations, knowledge, and other personal-level mental states might influence what we experience. This kind of psychological phenomena is now called “cognitive penetration.” The research of cognitive penetration not only has important consequences for psychology and the philosophy of mind, but also has interesting (...) epistemological implications. According to the Downgrade Thesis, some cognitively penetrated perceptual experiences give their subjects less justification for believing their penetrated contents than perceptual experiences that are unpenetrated to represent those contents would usually give. In this paper, I propose an innovative argument for the Downgrade Thesis. First, I develop a positive account of how some cognitive penetration works, according to which cognitive states influence perceptual experiences by triggering some imaginings. Second, I argue that imaginings do not give their subjects justification for believing their contents. I apply this epistemology of imagining to cognitive penetration, and argue that because of the role that imaginings play, some cognitively penetrated experiences also give their subjects less justification for believing their penetrated contents. (shrink)

One strategy for working out how to individuate the senses is to pursue that task in tandem with that of individuating the sensory imaginings. We can tackle both, at least for the spatial senses of sight and touch, if we appeal to the idea that, while both modes represent their objects perspectivally, different forms of perspective are involved in each. This cannot, however, exhaust the differences between tactual and visual. Tactual experience is tied to bodily awareness as visual is (...) not. I explore these connections in the context of the more sophisticated forms tactual experience can take. This raises questions the account in terms of differing perspectives has yet to answer. Although these include whether touch really is perspectival after all, neither the qualifications required nor the questions raised undermine the fundamental appeal of distinguishing both the senses and the sensory imaginings by appeal to the structures within which they represent their objects. (shrink)

What is it like to dream? On an orthodox view, dreams involve misleading sensations and false beliefs. I argue, on philosophical, psychological, and neurophysiological grounds, that orthodoxy about dreaming should be rejected in favor of an imagination model of dreaming. I am thus in partial agreement with Colin McGinn, who has argued that we do not have misleading sensory experiences while dreaming, and partially in agreement with Ernest Sosa, who has argued that we do not form false beliefs (...) while dreaming. Rather, on my view, dreams involve mental imagery and propositional imagination. I defend the imagination model of dreaming from objections. (shrink)

[Late draft.] The paper examines the roles that may be played by sensory images in relation to the contents of sensory memories. It argues that the images may serve either simply to characterise putative past states of the world or to capture putative past sensory experiences of the subject. It uses the resulting account to shed light on various phenomena involving sensory memories, such as the status of 'observer memories'.

Imagination has been the focus of much philosophical inquiry in recent decades. Although it plays an essential role in linking emotional engagement with ethical experience, imagination has received comparatively little attention in film-philosophy. In this article, I argue that imagination plays an essential role in linking emotional engagement with moral-ethical experience. Drawing on phenomenological, cognitive and aesthetic perspectives, I focus on perceptual imagining and suggest that an account of embodied cinematic imagination — encompassing both perceptual/sensory (...) and propositional/cognitive imagining — is especially relevant to theorizing cinematic experience. The interplay of first-person empathic and third-person sympathetic perspectives is another essential feature of our emotional and ethical engagement with cinema. By synthesizing ‘bottom-up’ sensory, affective responses to audiovisual images, with ‘top-down’ cognitive processes associated with mental simulation, an account of embodied cinematic imagination can explain how emotional engagement and ethical responsiveness work together in our experience of audiovisual narratives. (shrink)

We enjoy modes of sensory imagining corresponding to our five modes of perception - seeing, touching, hearing, smelling and tasting. An account of what constitutes these different modes of perseption needs also to explain what constitutes the corresponding modes of sensory perception. In this paper I argue that we can explain what distinguishes the different modes of sensory imagination in terms of their characteristic experiences without supposing that we must distinguish the senses in terms of the (...) kinds of experience involved. thus the fact that we enjoy different modes of sensory imagining poses no threat to someone who thinks that the five senses are to be distinguished by appeal to the kinds of mechanism or psychological capacities their exercise involves, and not by appeal to experience. (shrink)

The concepts of imagination and consciousness have, very arguably, been inextricably intertwined at least since Aristotle initiated the systematic study of human cognition (Thomas, 1998). To imagine something is ipso facto to be conscious of it (even if the wellsprings of imaginative creativity are in the unconscious), and many have held that our conscious thinking consists largely or entirely in a succession of mental images, the products of imagination (see, e.g., Damasio, 1994 -- or, come to that, see (...) Aristotle, or Hume, or almost any pre-twentieth century cognitive theorist). A venerable tradition also regards perceptual experiences, the main focus of most recent work on consciousness, as products of the imagination, whose primary function is to integrate sensory inputs and render them meaningful (Thomas, 1998, 1999). As Coleridge (1817) famously put it, primary imagination is "the living power and prime agent of all human perception." A better understanding of imagination is likely to deepen our insight into the nature of consciousness (and, probably, vice-versa). (shrink)

How do artists share, translate, reveal their imagination by using different semiotic systems; how can the audience partake in this imagination receiving only images, words, notation, sounds? Starting from artwork of the novelist Italo Calvino and the composers Helmut Lachenmann and Gyorgy Kurtag, this article addresses the relation among imagination, perception, remembrance and expression. The ‘images’ used, be they visual, verbal, auditory or haptic, are much more than images. They concentrate in themselves layers of subjective and intersubjective (...) perceptual, cognitive and emotive experiences. I will argue that imagination relies upon sensory fluidity. This allows us (1) to integrate sensorial experiences from different perceptual origins — synaesthesia, (2) to link past, present and future by way of sensorial and embodied patterns of remembrance — embodied sedimentation, and (3) to share intersubjective patterns of affect and effect, bridging idiosyncratic and universal human experiences. (shrink)

R. G. Collingwood thought that to express emotion is to come to understand it and that this is something art can enable us to do. The understanding in question is distinct from that offered by emotion concepts. I attempt to defend a broadly similar position by drawing, as Collingwood does, on a broader philosophy of mind. Emotions and other affective states have a profile analogous to the sensory profiles exhibited by the things we perceive. Grasping that one's feeling exhibits (...) such a profile is to understand it. That understanding differs from any involved in conceptualizing the affect in question. And, I argue, engagement with the expressive character of works of art is one way to gain it. (shrink)

Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a (...) theory—the Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation for the empirical findings reviewed. According to this view, mental images are treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory. Finally, I address alternative explanations that could account for the reviewed empirical evidence—such as a Spinozian model of belief formation or Gendler’s notion of alief—as well as potential objections to the Prima Facie View. (shrink)

Chess is sometimes referred to as a ‘mind-sport’. Yet, in obvious ways, chess is very unlike physical sports such as tennis and soccer; it doesn't require the levels of fitness and athleticism necessary for such sports. Nor does it involve the sensory-governed, skilled behaviour required in activities such as juggling or snooker. Nevertheless, I suggest, chess is closer than it may at first seem to some of these sporting activities. In particular, there are interesting connections between the way that (...) we use our perceptual imagination in sports, and also in chess. The same distinction between calculation and natural instinct applies in chess as it does in many physical sports. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) holds that the senses, imagination, and passions aim at survival and the satisfaction of the body’s needs, rather than truth or the good of the mind. Each of these faculties makes a distinctive and, indeed, an indispensable contribution to the preservation of life. Commentators have largely focused on how the senses keep us alive. By comparison, the imagination and passions have been neglected. In this paper, I reconstruct Malebranche’s account of how the imagination contributes (...) to the preservation of the body by compensating for the limitations of the senses. First, the imagination represents non-actual states of affairs, such as probable or possible future states. Second, the imagination forges new and often helpful associations based on past experiences. Third, the imagination (mis)represents that objects will cause pleasure and pain, thereby imbuing them with emotional significance they would otherwise lack. Together, these features flesh out Malebranche’s view that the imagination is necessary for the preservation of life. (shrink)