Imagination: the missing mystery of philosophy

Introduction

This course investigates certain philosophical issues concerning imagination, creativity and the relationships between them, and considers the conceptions and varieties of imaginative experience.

This OpenLearn course provides a sample of Level 3 study in Arts and Humanities.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• discuss basic philosophical questions concerning the imagination

• understand problems concerning the imagination and discuss them in a philosophical way.

1 Imagination

In much of western thought, the imagination has an ambiguous status, seemingly poised between spirit and nature, mediating between mind and body – the mental and the physical – and interceding between one soul and another. For Aristotle, the imagination – or phantasia – was a kind of bridge between sensation and thought, supplying the images or ‘phantasms’ without which thought could not occur. Descartes argued that the imagination was not an essential part of the mind, since it dealt with images in the brain whose existence – unlike that of the mind – could be doubted. Kant, on the other hand, held that the imagination was fundamental to the human mind, not only bringing together our sensory and intellectual faculties but also acting in creative ways, a conception that was to blossom in Romanticism and find poetic expression in the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth. More recently, the role of the imagination in empathy has been stressed: the ability to identify with our fellow human beings and with fictional characters being regarded as crucial in accessing other minds, enriching our own experience and developing our moral sense. In fact, in the history of western thought, the imagination has been seen as performing such a wide range of different functions that it is problematic whether it can be understood as a single faculty at all. In imagination we are able to think of what is absent, unreal or even absurd, and so it appears to grant us almost unlimited conceptual powers. Yet it also seems to inform our perception of what is present and real and everyday, and so permeates the most basic levels of our daily lives. In this course, we will be concerned with some of the different ways in which the imagination is talked of and conceived, exploring just what the imagination might be and what philosophical issues it raises.

The course is divided into two main sections. In the first, we will look at the range of conceptions of imagination, address the question of whether ‘imagining’ can be defined in any useful way, and consider the implications of this for a philosophical understanding of imagination. Despite the important role that is often accorded to the imagination in our mental activities, the topic has been somewhat marginalised in the philosophical literature, particularly (and perhaps surprisingly) in contemporary philosophy of mind. This has led one writer to call imagination the ‘missing mystery’ of philosophy, and in this course I will say something about what this mystery is meant to be, and how one might go about ‘demystifying’ the imagination. In the second main section, we will examine the relationship that imagination has to imagery and supposition, both of which have been seen as closely connected to, and sometimes even identified with, imagination. I will end with a review of the discussion.

2 The varieties of imaginative experience

What would life be like without imagination? Perhaps, in this very first question, we have found something that is impossible to imagine. Imagination infuses so much of what we do, and so deeply, that to imagine its absence is to imagine not being human. Some people, I am told, think about sex every five minutes. For them, I presume, a sudden loss of imaginative powers would be devastating. Some people (not necessarily the same ones), at certain points in their lives, think about getting married or having a child. They might imagine the sanctity of a white wedding or the horrors of having all their relatives in one place at one time, the patter of tiny feet or the exhaustion of sleepless nights. As they play, children imagine all sorts of things, and their ideas of what they want to be and do when they grow up are fundamental in their development. Most people have ambitions of one kind or another. Imagining being promoted, or seeing something you have done recognised publicly, plays an essential role in motivation. In our idle moments too, or in diverting ourselves amidst tedious tasks, we might imagine winning the lottery or our hero scoring the winning goal in a match or, more sinfully, an obnoxious colleague falling under a bus. When we meet or talk to anyone, whether we are assessing them as potential friends or enemies, lovers or colleagues, for either ourselves or others, we are imagining what they would be like in certain circumstances.

But the imagination is not just involved in thinking of ourselves or other people. When I look at a painting, or read a novel, or hear a piece of music, or taste a wine, I bring my imagination to bear in its appreciation. I imagine other things to compare it with, or simply allow my imagination free flight, making no effort to control the images that spring to mind. Or in creating something myself, I may conjure up an image or images of what I want to realise. Imagination is also involved in the most ordinary experiences. When I go for a walk, I might imagine what it is like to live in a particular house I see, or if it is dark, I might suddenly imagine that there is something following me. In thinking what to cook for dinner, I imagine what I can do with the ingredients I have. In choosing clothes, I imagine what they would go with and the occasions on which I might wear them. In perceiving anything, I might imagine it transformed in some way, coloured differently, radically restructured, or simply moved to another location. And even if I do not deliberately transform it in my mind, previous or anticipated experiences may influence how I perceive it.

Clearly, we talk of imagination across the full range of human experience. Indeed, it may be hard to find an experience in which the imagination is not somehow involved. But if this is so, then does ‘imagination’ really have a single sense or refer to a single faculty? Can any order at all be brought into the varieties of imaginative experience? What conceptions of imagination might be distinguished? And what philosophical issues arise, or are reflected, in our attempts to do so? We will explore these questions, in a preliminary way, in the first part of this course.

2.1 Meanings of ‘imagination’

A natural starting point is to consider the ways in which ‘imagination’ and related terms such as ‘imagine’ and ‘image’ are used in everyday contexts.

Etymologically, ‘imagination’ derives from the Latin word imaginatio, while ‘fantasy’ and ‘fancy’ derive from the ancient Greek term phantasia. In the works of Plato and Aristotle, phantasia meant the power of apprehending or experiencing phantasmata (‘phantasms’). Arguably, what phantasma originally meant was an ‘appearance’ – an occurrence of something appearing to be such-and-such, as when the sun looks to us as being only a foot across. But even in Aristotle's work, it was also used to mean ‘mental image’, which is how it was subsequently understood. Phantasia came to be translated by imaginatio and phantasma by imago in Latin, preserving the etymological and conceptual connection here, although the original Greek terms were also used in their transliterated form (i.e. employing the Latin rather than Greek alphabet, as I have done here) alongside their Latin correlates. In the seventeenth century, as Latin lost its place as the official language of philosophy, the terms that replaced phantasia and imaginatio in English were ‘fantasy’ – or ‘fancy’ or ‘phantasy’ – and ‘imagination’. In this initial period of English usage, there seems to have been no established distinction between the two terms. In his Leviathan of 1651, for example, Hobbes claimed that what ‘the Latins call imagination … the Greeks call … fancy’ (I, ii). By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the distinction between fantasy and imagination had more or less settled down into its current sense. In his Dissertations Moral and Critical of 1783, James Beattie wrote: ‘According to the common use of words, Imagination and Fancy are not perfectly synonymous. They are, indeed, names for the same faculty; but the former seems to be applied to the more solemn, and the latter to the more trivial, exertions of it. A witty author is a man of lively Fancy; but a sublime poet is said to possess a vast imagination’ (quoted in Engell 1981, 172).

This brief consideration of some of the uses of ‘imagination’ and related terms illustrates the range of the meanings involved here, and hints at some of the philosophical issues that will concern us in what follows. Does it make sense to talk of a single faculty of imagination? Can ‘imagining’ be defined? What role do images play in imagination? How does imagining differ from perceiving? What contribution does the imagination make to our thought processes? To what extent does the imagination involve distortion or illusion? What is the relationship between imagination and creativity?

2.2 Twelve conceptions of imagination

Can we say anything more systematic about the different ways in which we talk of imagination? In a paper entitled ‘Twelve conceptions of imagination’ (2003), Leslie Stevenson distinguishes the following meanings of imagination, which I list here (in italics) as he formulates them, together with my own examples to illustrate each one:

1. The ability to think of something that is not presently perceived, but is, was or will be spatio-temporally real. In this sense I might imagine how my daughter looks as I speak to her on the phone, how she used to look when she was a baby, or how she will look when I give her the present I have bought her.

2. The ability to think of whatever one acknowledges as possible in the spatio-temporal world. In this sense I might imagine how my room will look painted in a different colour.

3. The liability to think of something which the subject believes to be real, but which is not real. Stevenson talks of ‘liability’ rather than ‘ability’ here to indicate that there is some kind of failure in the cognitive process. In this sense I might imagine that there is someone out to get me, or Macbeth imagines that there is a dagger in front of him.

4. The ability to think of things one conceives of as fictional, as opposed to what one believes to be real, or conceives of as possibly real. In this sense I might imagine what the characters in a book are like, or imagine the actors in a film or play as the characters they portray, aware that the characters are only fictional.

5. The ability to entertain mental images. Here I might conjure up an image of a large, black spider or a five-sided geometrical figure.

6. The ability to think of (conceive of, or represent) anything at all. Here I might imagine anything from an object before me being transformed in some way to an evil demon systematically deceiving me.

7. The non-rational operations of the mind, that is, those kinds of mental functioning which are explicable in terms of causes rather than reasons. Here I might imagine that smoking is good for me since I associate it with the cool behaviour of those I see smoking in films. It may not be rational, but there is a causal explanation in terms of the association of ideas, upon which advertisers rely so much.

8. The ability to form beliefs, on the basis of perception, about public objects in three-dimensional space which can exist unperceived, with spatial parts and temporal duration. Here I might imagine that the whole of something exists when I can only see part of it, or that it continues to exist when I look away.

9. The sensuous component in the appreciation of works of art or objects of natural beauty without classifying them under concepts or thinking of them as practically useful. In looking at a painting or hearing a piece of music, for example, I may be stimulated into imagining all sorts of things without conceptualising it as a representation of anything definite, or seeing it as serving any particular purpose.

10. The ability to create works of art that encourage such sensuous appreciation. In composing a piece of music, the composer too may imagine all sorts of things without conceptualising it in any definite way in the sense, say, of having a message that they want to get across.

11. The ability to appreciate things that are expressive or revelatory of the meaning of human life. In contemplating a craggy mountain range at dusk, for example, or a painting by Caspar David Friedrich depicting such a scene, I may imagine how much we are subject to the awesome power of the natural world, and yet ourselves have the conceptual and imaginative power to transcend it all in thought.

12. The ability to create works of art that express something deep about the meaning of human life, as opposed to the products of mere fantasy. Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Goethe's Faust, Beethoven's late string quartets or Wagner's Ring cycle might all be offered as examples of this final conception of imagination.

Any attempt at bringing order into discussions of the imagination runs the risk of arbitrariness and distortion, and many alternative divisions are possible. Indeed, Stevenson subdivides some of these conceptions and offers various illustrations, which might be taken to warrant adding to the main list. As a subdivision of the first conception, for example, he identifies ‘the ability to think about a particular mental state of another person, whose existence one infers from perceived evidence’ (2003, 241), which might be thought to deserve separate recognition. Nor are the conceptions he distinguishes either exhaustive or exclusive, as he admits himself, and there are many interrelationships that are, at best, only implicitly indicated. But the twelve conceptions he distinguishes provide a useful initial framework for locating the philosophical issues.

As far as the first four conceptions are concerned, the contrast with sense perception is fundamental to imagination. In sense perception we have some kind of conscious awareness of something that is actually before us in the spatio-temporal world. Where we are aware of something that is not actually before us in the spatio-temporal world, we speak of ‘imagining’ it. But this can take several forms. What we imagine can be real (but just not present at the time), merely possible, or even impossible; and where possible or impossible, we can believe it to be such or not. (There is argument over what kind of impossibility is allowed, however. Can you imagine a round square, for example? Or imagine that a banana is a gun? Or imagine being an insect?) This gives us Stevenson's first four conceptions. One or more of these conceptions is involved in every (more complex) conception of imagination that can be found.

Taken together, the first four conceptions already suggest a certain generality to imagination. Imagination may be said to be involved whenever we think of something not actually present to us. Even when we think of something present to us, i.e. perceive something, that (perceptual) thought may be informed – rationally or non-rationally – by thoughts of other things; so it is a natural move to see the imagination at work in all thought. This gives us the second group of conceptions, numbered 5 to 8 in Stevenson's list. If thinking of something involves having a mental image of it (a view which we will examine shortly), then we have the fifth conception. The sixth is the most general of these conceptions, and the seventh restricts the imagination to the non-rational operations of thought. The eighth makes specific the supposed role of the imagination in perception. Stevenson identifies a source of the fifth conception in Aristotle's work, as already noted above (section 2.1), and mentions Descartes too in this regard. All four conceptions he finds illustrated in Hume's philosophy, and the eighth in particular is also characteristic of Kant's philosophy.

The final four conceptions, numbered 9 to 12, concern the role of the imagination in aesthetic experience, and highlight the creative aspects of imagination. In the eighteenth century, when aesthetics as a discipline itself emerged, a distinction was drawn between the beautiful and the sublime. Flowers and birds were often given as examples of what is beautiful, while towering waterfalls in a thunderstorm and the starry firmament above provide good illustrations of what was seen as sublime. The beautiful gives rise to a kind of calm and comforting pleasure, while the sublime generates a more exhilarating pleasure, but one tinged with pain or fear. If we make use of this distinction, then we could say the following. Imagination is required in both the aesthetic appreciation and artistic creation of what is beautiful, which gives us the ninth and tenth conceptions, and also in both the aesthetic appreciation and artistic creation of what is sublime, which gives us the eleventh and twelfth conceptions.

2.3 A first attempt at defining ‘imagining’

So far I have made some preliminary remarks on the meanings of ‘imagination’ and related terms, and considered one attempt at distinguishing different conceptions of imagination. In a broad sense, ‘imagining’ means thinking in some way of what is not present to the senses. Imagining may involve, but is not the same as, imaging. In a derogatory sense, ‘imagining’ may mean ‘fantasising’, as suggested by their etymological roots in Latin and Greek, and our use of the term ‘imaginary’; in a more appreciative sense, it may mean ‘creating’, as suggested by our use of the term ‘imaginative’. In considering the twelve conceptions of imagination that Stevenson distinguishes, I divided them into three groups of four. The first group, numbered 1 to 4, highlight the point that, in imagining, I am aware of something that is not actually present to the senses. The third conception captures the sense of ‘imagining’ as ‘fantasising’. In the second group of conceptions, numbered 5 to 8, we have both the conception that imagining is imaging (the fifth conception) as well as further recognition that there may be an element of ‘fantasy’ or ‘delusion’ in imagination (the seventh conception). The creative aspects of imagination are explicitly reflected in the third group of conceptions, numbered 9 to 12.

What emerges from this is the possibility of defining ‘imagining’, in its most basic or core sense, as ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’. As I have noted, this sense certainly underlies Stevenson's first group of conceptions, which are divided according to whether what is thought is real (but just not present), possible or impossible, and if possible or impossible, whether it is believed to be such or not. We also saw how we might move from the first to the second group of conceptions. One way to think of what is not present to the senses is to conjure up an image of it, which gives the fifth conception. The sixth conception might seem even more general than the core sense. But if it is possible to think of anything regardless of whether it is present to the senses or not, then we might be tempted to identify the heart of any thinking with ‘imagining’. (We will return to this shortly.) As far as the example illustrating the seventh conception is concerned, it can certainly be claimed that what I ‘imagine’ – the goodness of smoking – is unreal, and hence cannot be present to the senses. So too, in my example illustrating the eighth conception, when I imagine that the whole of something exists when I can only see part of it, the part I do not see is not, of course, present to the senses. It is possible to argue, then, that the core sense of ‘imagining’ just suggested underlies Stevenson's second group of conceptions of imagination as well.

How might this core sense be seen as involved in the third group of conceptions, concerning aesthetic appreciation and creation? In all four conceptions, we have the idea of imagining all sorts of things without fixing on any single definitive conceptualisation or representation. So here too we have thinking of things that are not directly present to the senses, things which go beyond what is strictly or literally perceived or created, although the thought of those things may well be triggered by what lies before the senses.

What Stevenson's conceptions suggest, then, is this. If it is possible to identify a core sense of ‘imagining’, then an obvious candidate is ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’. Admittedly, this is rather vague and general. But any sense that might be offered as underlying all twelve of Stevenson's conceptions is bound to be vague and general. And there may be virtue in its vagueness. For bearing it in mind may make us less likely to restrict our attention to just a few kinds of case, and more willing to consider the complex relationships that ‘imagining’ has both to other mental acts and to the wider context in which it occurs. Vague and general though it may be, it is also a sense that has often been articulated and, as we will see, has had a role to play in talking of imagination.

What we have here is a case of what is called ‘seeing-as’. We see the tree as a person, and in this case at least it also seems reasonable to describe what is going on as ‘imagining’ the tree as a person. Wittgenstein remarks on the topic of seeing-as. Wittgenstein does not talk of ‘imagining’ in all cases of seeing-as, which we might take to indicate – if we agree with him – that what we have here is a special kind of case. We could still claim, in other words, that the definition of ‘imagining’ as ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’ captures its core sense, while allowing qualifications or even departures from it in certain cases, which might then be counted as ‘non-standard’. But we should keep in mind that such qualifications or departures may be necessary.

Any adequate definition of a term should lay down both necessary and sufficient conditions for its applicability (in all the main kinds of case). If we can handle such cases as imagining a tree as a person, then we might take ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’ as a necessary condition of imagining. If I imagine something, then I am thinking of something that is not present to my senses. Without such thinking, there could be no imagining. But is it a sufficient condition? If I am thinking of something that is not present to the senses, then am I imagining it? The core sense suggested by Stevenson's twelve conceptions is admittedly vague and general. But is it too general?

What is the difference between remembering and imagining something? When we talk of remembering something, we imply that what is remembered actually happened or is true. (We need the clause ‘or is true’ to cover cases such as remembering a mathematical equation or remembering that I have an appointment tomorrow.) There is no such implication in talk of imagining something. But did I not admit, in illustrating Stevenson's first conception, that I can imagine something that actually happened or is true? We can indeed imagine what actually happened or is true, but when we talk of imagining it, there is nevertheless a recognition that we could be wrong (even if we are not). That what we are imagining actually happened or is true is a merely accidental or contingent feature of our imagining, in the following sense. If it had not happened or were not true, then we would still talk of imagining it; whereas if something that we claim to remember had not actually happened or were not true, then we would regard talk of ‘remembering’ here as illegitimate.

What this suggests, then, is that the definition of ‘imagining’ as ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’ is inadequate as it stands. While it arguably lays down a necessary condition for imagining, it does not lay down a sufficient condition. The definition is too general, since it includes things – such as remembering – that we would not count as imagining. If what we have said in distinguishing imagining from remembering is right, then in imagining something we are not just thinking of something that is not present to the senses, but also thinking of something that need not have actually happened or that need not be true. But can more be said about this additional requirement? Or are there alternative or better specifications? One attempt to offer a more restricted definition has been made by Berys Gaut in a paper entitled ‘Creativity and imagination’ (2003), an extract from which is included as a reading in section 2.4.

2.4 Gaut's analysis of imagination

Berys Gaut's main concern in his paper is to provide an account of the relationship between imagination and creativity. But in section 2 of his paper he offers an analysis of the notion of imagination, which we will look at here.

Central to Gaut's account is the idea that mental acts have a ‘thought-content’ that can be thought of in different ways. The idea is often expressed by saying that mental acts involve the adoption of a certain attitude to a proposition – a ‘propositional attitude’ – or, in the case of objects, involve thinking of an object under a certain ‘mode of presentation’. Take the thought or proposition that Immanuel (my cat) is wet. I can adopt various propositional attitudes to this. I can believe it, I can desire it, I can fear it, or I can imagine it, to mention just four. On Gaut's conception, to imagine it is to think of it without commitment to its truth or falsity. To believe it, on the other hand, as Gaut himself notes, is to think of it with commitment to its truth. But in both cases, the ‘thought-content’ of the propositional attitude is the same – the proposition that Immanuel is wet. The basic idea suggests, too, that there is a kind of bare thinking of this proposition lying at the core of the mental acts, which one might even be tempted to identify as ‘imagining’ in the most general sense possible. (This would give us Stevenson's sixth conception.) Certainly, imagining comes out as a form of thinking, for it involves thinking of a proposition or object (but without alethic or existential commitment, i.e. without commitment to its truth or falsity, or its existence or non-existence, respectively).

The appeal to ‘propositions’, however, is more controversial than Gaut's account implies. What are ‘propositions’? I have already raised doubts as to whether they can be construed as ‘states of affairs’. Even understanding them simply as ‘thought-contents’ is problematic. For it has proved notoriously difficult to provide criteria of identity for such contents. Can one really identify one and the same ‘thought-content’ across the various mental acts? If there is at least some sense in which imagination plays a role in perception itself, then specifying a ‘thought-content’ independent of the act of imagining may be more difficult than one might assume. However, let us leave this can of worms for the moment. Let us just accept the tautological point that, when I imagine or think of something, there is something that I am imagining or thinking of. And let us take Gaut's example of a wet cat. There is a whole range of imaginings that might, in some sense, have a particular wet cat, say Immanuel – or the ‘state of affairs’ in which Immanuel is wet – as their ‘thought-content’. I can imagine that Immanuel is wet, I can imagine a wet Immanuel, I can conjure up an image of a wet Immanuel, I can visually imagine Immanuel as wet, I can imagine Immanuel (who is standing dry before me) as wet, I can imagine what it is like to be as wet as Immanuel, I can imagine (perhaps) what it is like to be wet Immanuel, I can imagine (perhaps) what it is like to be in wet Immanuel's paws, and so on. Obviously, I have set it up this way, but there is clearly something that relates these various imaginings, and the natural thing to say is that they all concern a wet Immanuel, and furthermore involve thinking of a wet Immanuel in some way, a way that does not commit me to taking Immanuel as actually wet. It seems plausible to regard imagining, then, in a wide variety of cases, as thinking of something without alethic or existential commitment. At any rate, this is what Gaut offers as the core sense of ‘imagining’, and which we can take as constituting his main definition.

Can a definition be offered that is better than both the general definition and Gaut's definition? What seems to be needed is a definition that is more specific than the general definition, yet less specific than Gaut's definition. Gaut is right that issues of truth and existence are relevant, but they are relevant, I think, in a different way to the one he supposes. At the end of the last section, it was suggested that, in imagining something, I am thinking of something that need not be true or existent (in either the past, present or future) in the sense that, were it not true or existent, it would still be legitimate to talk of my ‘imagining’ it. I may well be alethically or existentially committed myself, but my thinking would still count as imagining even if I were wrong in my alethic or existential commitment. The actual truth or existence of what I am imagining, in other words, is not essential to the imagining itself in the way that it is essential to perceiving or remembering by contrast.

If a definition of ‘imagining’ can be offered at all, then it is something along these lines that I think is needed. But the suggestion will not do as it stands. For we now seem to have lost the distinction between imagining and believing. In believing something, am I not also thinking of something that need not be true or existent, in the sense indicated? So what is the difference between imagining and believing? Gaut characterised this as the difference between thinking of something without alethic or existential commitment and thinking of something with such commitment. But if what I have said is right, then imagining too can occur with alethic or existential commitment. An obvious response is to say that while in the case of believing, I cannot believe something without commitment to its truth or existence, in the case of imagining, I can imagine something without such commitment, or indeed with commitment to its falsity or non-existence. This is true, of course. But it does not enable us to distinguish cases of believing something with commitment to its truth or existence from cases of imagining something with commitment to its truth or existence. How can we draw this distinction? Perhaps all we need is a minor refinement to my current suggestion, on the basis of which we can then draw the following contrast. In the case of imagining, if what I imagine were not true or existent, and I were to realise this, then it would still be legitimate for me to talk of ‘imagining’. But in the case of believing, if what I believe were not true or existent, and I were to realise this, then I could no longer talk of ‘believing’ it.

This is correct as far as it goes, but it obscures what I think is the crucial point here. Consider the case of Macbeth's imagining that there is a dagger before him, as he feverishly prepares to kill Duncan at the start of Act II of Shakespeare's play. Does he not also, as he reaches out to take it, believe that there is a dagger before him? And is this believing not part of his imagining? In the core sense of ‘imagine’ as Gaut defines it, the answer to this latter question would have to be ‘No’. But as we have seen, Gaut does allow that ‘imagine’ can sometimes mean ‘believe falsely’. So his considered answer would presumably be: ‘Yes, but not in the core sense of “imagine”’. However, a different response is possible that does not force us to distinguish two incompatible senses of ‘imagine’. The crucial point, I think, is this. To say that Macbeth ‘believes’ there is a dagger before him implies that he is committed to the existence of a dagger before him. But to say that he ‘imagines’ that there is a dagger before him implies not that he is not committed to the existence of a dagger before him (though he may be), but that we are not committed to its existence in describing him as ‘imagining’ it. The lack of commitment to the truth or existence of something, in other words, lies not so much on the side of the person who is being described as ‘imagining’ something, as on the side of the person who is doing the describing. In talking of ‘imagining’, it is we who are indicating that lack of commitment. Of course, someone can themselves talk of ‘imagining’ something, as Macbeth in effect goes on to do (after he fails to take hold of the dagger he initially believes to be before him), but this would indicate their own lack of commitment to the truth or existence of what they are thinking of. On this alternative account, then, Gaut is right about the relevance of considerations of truth and existence, but he has brought them in at the wrong place.

2.5 The problematic status of the imagination

Let us review the position we have reached. Stevenson's twelve conceptions of imagination suggest that ‘imagining’ might be defined as ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’. This definition succeeds in distinguishing imagining from perceiving, but is too general in including such things as remembering. Gaut defines ‘imagining’, in its core sense, as ‘thinking of something without commitment to its truth or falsity, existence or non-existence’. This succeeds in distinguishing imagining from both perceiving and remembering, but is arguably too specific in excluding too many standard cases of imagining (i.e. cases that ought really to be captured in any core sense we specify). Can a better definition be offered? My alternative account might suggest the following possibility. ‘Imagining’ means thinking of something that is not present to the senses and that may or may not be true or existent, thinking which, in being called ‘imagining’, indicates a lack of commitment to the truth or existence of what is thought of by the person calling it such.

But in what sense is this a definition, and what are the implications of the suggested alternative account? If talk of ‘imagining’ says something about the person using the term (namely, that they are not committed to the truth or existence of what is being thought of) and not just about the person doing the thinking, then ‘imagining’ cannot be taken to denote a specific kind of mental activity or state. The definition, then, does not provide necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be imagining, but rather, to the extent that it is correct, explains our use of the term ‘imagining’. In describing someone as ‘imagining’ something, we are indeed describing them as thinking of something, something that is not present to the senses. But at the same time we are evaluating that thinking, in refraining from committing ourselves to the truth or existence of what is being thought of. On some occasions, we may be implying something stronger, that we are committed to the falsity or non-existence of what is being thought of, as when we say that someone is ‘merely imagining’ something. On other occasions, there may be other implications too. But we might see the definition as capturing what is minimally involved in all the basic uses of the term ‘imagining’. However, the key point is that, in using a term such as ‘imagining’, we are not just referring to some mental activity, but also evaluating that activity in some way. The general idea here – that we must reject the assumption that terms such as ‘imagining’ get their meaning by simply denoting mental states or processes – is particularly associated with the work of Wittgenstein. Indeed, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that this is the governing idea of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind. Although Wittgenstein does not say as much about ‘imagining’ and its cognates as he does about other mental terms, and does not himself offer the suggested alternative account, which reflects merely the spirit of his thought, the case of ‘imagining’ provides a good way to illustrate Wittgenstein's philosophy.

Without saddling Wittgenstein with the suggested alternative account, then, what are the implications of what might nevertheless be called a Wittgensteinian view of imagining? If ‘imagining’ does not denote a specific kind of mental activity, categorically distinct from forms of thinking such as believing, then talk of ‘imagination’ – as the faculty responsible for ‘imagining’ – may be misleading. This might seem disconcerting, but it does offer the beginnings of an explanation of the problematic status that the imagination has had throughout the history of western philosophy. From ancient Greek thought onwards, the imagination has been invoked in describing and explaining certain kinds of unusual or puzzling experiences or phenomena, but it has proved enormously difficult to say just what the imagination is. But if ‘imagining’ does not denote a specific kind of mental activity, then it is not surprising that it has been hard to say exactly what it is; and if our use of ‘imagining’ partly expresses an evaluation on our part of a mental activity, then it is not surprising that it should be invoked in trying to account for these experiences or phenomena where we may well be unsure about matters of truth or existence.

In fact, the imagination has been invoked not just in describing and explaining unusual or obviously puzzling experiences or phenomena. In the work of Hume and Kant, for example, the imagination is seen as involved in all forms of perceptual judgement; and in Romanticism, which was heavily influenced by Hume and Kant, we find the imagination glorified as the most important cognitive power. In his essay ‘On the imagination’ (1817), Coleridge declared: ‘The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a representation in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM’ (1983, 304). Wordsworth described the imagination, in Book XIII of The Prelude, as ‘but another name for absolute strength/And clearest insight, amplitude of mind/And reason in her most exalted mood’ (quoted in Wu 1998, 405). But despite the virtually unlimited powers accorded to the imagination, or perhaps because of it, one is hard pressed to find clarification of the nature of the imagination in Romantic writings, and one must look to Hume and Kant for the source of this conception.

Partly in reaction to the excesses of Romanticism, discussion of imagination has been relatively absent in recent philosophy of mind. Sensation and perception, thought and language, content and representation, consciousness and intentionality are all topics that are standardly covered in textbooks, but not imagination. However, there are a few notable exceptions. Eva Brann, for example, in The World of the Imagination (1991), makes the most substantial effort to date to explore the imagination in all its relations and ramifications. The imagination, she remarks in her preface, ‘appears to pose a problem too deep for proper acknowledgment. It is, so to speak, the missing mystery of philosophy’ (1991, 3). In referring to this ‘missing mystery’ later on, with Kant specifically in mind, she writes:

In The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (1987), Mark Johnson has also argued against the marginalisation of the imagination in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science. His book opens with similarly grandiose claims:

In the sixth chapter of his book, Johnson outlines the theory of imagination that he thinks is required, developing Kant's account. It is significant that both Brann and Johnson appeal to Kant in arguing for the importance of the imagination. For the imagination is indeed accorded a central role in Kant's philosophy, and it is natural to see Kant's conception of imagination as the model here.

Despite its importance, however, even Kant described the imagination as a ‘hidden art in the depths of the human soul, whose true operations we can divine from nature and lay unveiled before our eyes only with difficulty’ (1997, A141–2/B180–1). [Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was first published in 1781, and a second, revised edition appeared in 1787. In a number of places there are significant differences, and most modern editions, while based on the second edition, note the original formulations and, where an entire section has been changed, give the whole of the first version as well. Standard references to the Critique are given in the form ‘Ax/By’, where ‘A’ and ‘B’ indicate the first and second editions, respectively, and ‘x’ and ‘y’ give the relevant page numbers of the original editions, which are also given in the margins of modern editions.] So Brann might seem right in calling the imagination a ‘missing mystery’. But is there really a ‘missing mystery’ here, in the sense she has in mind? There may be a great deal of philosophical work to do in clarifying our talk of imagination, in understanding the complex ways in which the imagination is invoked, and in explaining the intricate relations between our concepts of perception, imagination, thought, and so on. But if the Wittgensteinian view suggested above is right and ‘imagining’ does not denote a specific kind of mental activity, then there is nothing that has the astonishing powers attributed to ‘imagination’, and so, as far as this goes, nothing to explain. There is no problem here that is ‘too deep for proper acknowledgment’. Nor is it ‘shocking’ that current theories of meaning and rationality do not offer any ‘serious treatment’ of imagination, at least in the sense that Johnson has in mind. It may be regrettable, but it is not clear that the imagination must be accorded pride of place in any such theory. In any case, to use a distinction that Wittgenstein draws, what may be needed is not so much a theory of imagination that ‘solves’ the mystery of imagination as a conceptual clarification that ‘dissolves’ it – that demystifies the imagination.

3 Imagery and supposition

Whatever view one takes of whether or how ‘imagining’ can be defined and whether there is a deep mystery here or not, it remains the case that there are many different conceptions of imagination, which are combined in different ways, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in tension, in the work of individual thinkers (the work of Descartes, Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein together give a good sense of the range of different conceptions, the ways in which the imagination is invoked, and the philosophical issues that arise). However, if there is a single issue that lies at the heart of debates about the imagination, then it is the tension between what might be described broadly as sensory and intellectual conceptions of the imagination. In the rest of this course, we will look at two questions that highlight this tension: whether imagery is a form of imagination, and whether supposition is a form of imagination. On the one hand, as reflected in Stevenson's first four conceptions, imagination is conceived in relation to sense perception, the only difference being the presence of the relevant object. In perception, we are aware of something that is present to the senses; in imagination, we are aware of something that is not present to the senses. What relates imagination to perception, it is often thought, is the presence in both of some kind of ‘image’ of what we are aware of. So imagery is regarded as essential to imagination (see Stevenson's fifth conception). But is this right? We will examine this issue in the next section. On the other hand, imagining is conceived as a kind of thinking. Since, more specifically, it is conceived as thinking of something whose truth or existence is somehow in question (whether on our part or on the part of the person doing the thinking), it has seemed natural to call this type of thinking ‘supposing’. So supposition has been seen as a form of imagination. We will look at this issue in the final section of this course.

3.1 Imagination and imagery

From the very origins of concern with the imagination in the work of the ancient Greeks, the imagination has been associated with imagery. But what is the relationship between imagination and imagery? In chapter 12 of his book, The Language of Imagination (1990), Alan White addresses this question and argues that imagination neither implies nor is implied by imagery.

Maximise

Figure 1 William Blake, ‘A Divine Image’, from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, 1831–2. By permission of The British Library (C.43.d.25)

The poem in Figure 1 was originally written for Blake's Songs of Experience (1794), as the counterpart to ‘The divine image’ of his earlier Songs of Innocence (1789), but it seems not to have been used in any of the copies of the combined Songs that Blake produced in his lifetime. The plate that Blake prepared for it was never coloured, and the poem is only known from a print made after Blake's death (see Keynes 1970,13,125; Wu 1998,84). ‘The divine image’ of the Songs of Innocence has five verses, of which the third runs as follows: ‘For Mercy has a human heart/Pity, a human face:/And Love, the human form divine,/And Peace, the human dress.’ The contrast between this and the poem above is stark, a reaction perhaps to the horrors of the French Revolution. But Blake presumably then felt that it was too extreme, though the plate itself was obviously not destroyed. The poem that actually appeared as the counterpart to ‘The divine image’ was ‘The human abstract’, which is far subtler in tone.

As Keynes describes it in his facsimile edition, Blake's plate shows ‘Los, the poet and craftsman, forging the Sun, symbol of imagination, into the words of his poem with furious blows of his creative sledge-hammer on the anvil’ (1970, 125). The plate may be literally an image of someone hammering something on an anvil, but it clearly represents far more – the way in which our sensitive, imaginative nature can be beaten out of us by hatred and brutality, as revealed in the violence of the French Revolution or the oppression of industrialisation, for example. The plate is an image, in other words, of far more than what is merely ‘copyable’.

In the final three paragraphs of the extract, White seems to be making quite a strong claim: that imagery never plays an essential role in imagination. But is this right? To answer this, let us consider a response to White's arguments that is made by Gregory Currie and Ian Ravenscroft in Recreative Minds (2002). In their first chapter, Currie and Ravenscroft distinguish between recreative and creative imagination. By ‘recreative imagination’ they mean the capacity to recreate in our minds states that are in some sense ‘counterparts’ to perceptions, beliefs, desires, and so on (2002, 11). In imagining a cat, for example, my imagining is some kind of ‘counterpart’ to seeing it. The ‘creative imagination’, on the other hand, is involved in creating something valuable in art, science or practical life, but this is only mentioned in order to be put aside (2002, 9). Their concern is with recreative imagination, and mental imagery, they suggest, is one important kind. In their second chapter, they offer arguments for this view, or more specifically, respond to White's arguments against this view.

In the seventh paragraph of a second extract from White (see Activity 9), he offers a further argument, which Currie and Ravenscroft do not consider. Imagery, White writes, ‘does not express anything, whereas imagination does’. Here most of all, perhaps, we can see that what White is concerned to describe are the differences between merely having an image and imagining. Take his example of an image of a sailor on a beach. This could be interpreted as a sailor scrambling ashore, his twin brother crawling backwards into the sea, or any of a host of other things. Imagining that a sailor is scrambling ashore, then, cannot consist in having such an image. We can agree with White on this. But it does not follow that having such an image is not an essential part of the imagining, which is the issue at stake as White himself formulates it (in the fourth paragraph of the first White extract). What turns the mere having of an image into imagining is what we do with that image – the role it plays in our thinking. This is what Currie and Ravenscroft mean when they talk of imagery being a form of imagination. It is acts of producing and using images that constitute one form of imagining, and images are of course essential in this.

If this is right, then we can agree with Currie and Ravenscroft that imagery – or more accurately, using images in our thinking – is one form of imagining. To go back to White's earlier arguments, though, we can agree with White that imagination does not imply imagery, and that imagery does not imply imagination. But this is not to say that there are no forms of imagining in which images play an essential role. (Descartes, Hume and Kant all thought that there were forms of imagining in which images were essential. Perhaps they were wrong to focus too exclusively on these forms of imagining, but they were not confused from the outset.)

3.2 Imagination and supposition

To regard images as playing an essential role in imagining is to conceive of imagination as a sensory power. But as we have seen, imagining can also occur in the absence of imagery, and we might take this to reveal a more intellectual form of imagination. Many philosophers have suggested that this more intellectual form of imagining be construed as supposing. On this view, to imagine something, in cases where there may be no imagery involved, is to suppose something. But is it right to identify imagining in such cases with supposing? In the last section we considered White's arguments against the identification of imagination with imagery. In chapter 16 of his book, he also argues against the identification of imagining with supposing.

According to White, in supposing something, I am merely assuming or hypothesising it, as a preliminary to considering its consequences. But this seems too restricted a conception of supposing. And even if we allow that some cases of supposing involve an invitation to explore the consequences of something, this may still reveal an imaginative act. In finding a mathematical proof or in writing a story, many things may be supposed along the way and their implications thought through, and it seems appropriate to regard this as part of the imaginative process. ‘Supposing’ and ‘imagining’ may not be synonymous, just as ‘having an image’ and ‘imagining’ are not synonymous, but this is not to say that there are no acts of imagining in which supposing plays an essential role, or that supposing itself may not constitute a form of imagining.

‘Imagining’ covers a wide range of different mental acts and activities, and a number of different things may be involved, depending on the type of case. Imagery and supposition are not the only things that may be involved. Imagining may also involve visualising, fantasising, and pretending, for example, all of which have raised further questions in discussions of imagination. But the two issues we have just considered – the relationship that imagination has to imagery and supposition – do illustrate that fundamental tension identified at the beginning of this second main section. Imagery suggests a sensory conception of imagination, while supposition suggests a more intellectual conception.

4 Conclusion

1. We began by considering the meanings of ‘imagination’ and related terms in everyday contexts, and then looked at the twelve conceptions of imagination that Stevenson distinguishes. This suggested a first definition of ‘imagining’ – ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’. This may lay down a necessary condition for imagining, but it does not lay down a sufficient condition, since it fails to exclude such things as remembering. We then examined Gaut's definition of ‘imagining’ as ‘thinking of something without alethic or existential commitment, i.e. without commitment to its truth or falsity, existence or non-existence’. This succeeds in distinguishing imagining from both perceiving and remembering, but excludes many standard cases of imagining. While Gaut is right about the relevance of considerations of truth and existence, he arguably brings them in at the wrong place. In an attempt to formulate a definition that was neither too general nor too specific, the following alternative was suggested. ‘Imagining’ means thinking of something that is not present to the senses and that may or may not be true or existent, thinking which, in being called ‘imagining’, indicates a lack of commitment to the truth or existence of what is thought of by the person calling it such. We considered the implications of such a definition and, in particular, the possibility it opens up of demystifying the Romantic conception of imagination.

2. If there is a single issue that underlies debates about the imagination, then it is the tension between sensory and intellectual conceptions. This was brought out by examining the relationship that imagination has to imagery, on the one hand, and to supposition, on the other. Imagination neither implies nor is implied by imagery, it was argued, but this is not to say that there are no forms of imagination in which imagery plays an essential role. So too, it was argued, imagination neither implies nor is implied by supposition, but this is not to say that supposing may not constitute a form of imagining.

5 Further reading

Stevenson (2003) is a good place to start in clarifying the various conceptions of imagination, but for a fuller exploration, analysing in detail the language of imagination both historically and conceptually, although with many questionable claims, White (1990) can be recommended. Of the other books mentioned in this chapter, Brann (1991) is a superb resource of ideas on the imagination throughout history and in all areas of intellectual life, and Johnson (1987) makes a strong plea for a ‘serious treatment’ of the imagination, although both books arguably work with too romanticised a conception of imagination. Currie and Ravenscroft (2002) develop a more moderate theory of imagination, drawing upon psychology and cognitive science, and according pride of place to what they call ‘recreative imagination’. Engell (1981) approaches the subject from literary criticism rather than philosophy, but offers a rich account of the development of ideas on the creative imagination. Other books that might also be mentioned here are Kearney (1988), which takes a historical journey from ancient times to postmodernism, and Warnock (1976), which offers a lucid and accessible account of Hume and Kant, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and Sartre and Wittgenstein.

References

Acknowledgements

This course was written by Dr Michael Beaney

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this course:

Course image: Kate Ter Haar in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.

Readings 1 & 2 White, A.R. (1990), The Language of Imagination, ch 12, Oxford, Blackwell. Used by permission of Blackwell Publishing.

Reading 5 Currie, G. and Ravenscroft, I. (2002), Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology, ch 2, Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Reading 6 Gaut, B. (2003), ‘Creativity and imagination’, from Gaut B. and Livingston, P. (eds)(2003), The Creation of Art’ ch 6, Cambridge University Press. Used with permission.

Figure 1 William Blake, ‘A Divine Image’, from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, 1831–2. By permission of The British Library (C.43.d.25)

By permission of The British Library (C.43.d.25).

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