6. Imagination
A New Dynamism for Philosophy
Chapter 6. Imagination
Key Questions:
- What is the imagination?
- What is a mental image and how is it distinguishable from the perception?
- Is imagination necessary for perception to take place?
- Do we imagine the action of a play or the features of a portrait?
- What is thinking and its relationship with the imagination?
Download [PDF] chapter six: Imagination
Summary of Conclusions: Imagination
The imagination is subordinate to perception. It moves freely and creatively away from what is known to what is non-existent, elsewhere or otherwise inaccessible to perception. Its starting point is the voluntary production of a visual, tactile or other sensation that is creatively invested with attributes.
This disqualifies the mental image as a source of knowledge. The imagination can only work in opposition to what is known in reality. This ensures that perception and imagination are distinct and confusion unlikely. Accordingly imagination only plays a subordinate rather than a constructive role in perception.
Nominating an object usually suffices to identify and locate the object of a mental image, within limits determined by the identity of the person or object imagined. Involuntary imagery introduces other types of experiences such as dreams or delusions.
Many experiences stimulate the imagination whilst focussing upon perceived objects, for example a spoken narrative. Dynamism conceives reading, play watching, examining a photo and other “representational” experiences principally as sophisticated exercises of perception. These can therefore be a source of knowledge.
Although enriched by imagery, mental images are not necessary for these experiences. The dynamic approach can also resolve many of the paradoxes associated with an imagination-led approach to these experiences.
Thinking is an activity that may be conducted in the public as much as the private domain. In private thinking the activity takes place in the imagination.