Monika Dunin-Kozicka, Julia Langkau, Zuzanna Rucińska and Piotr Kozak
Affiliation: John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, University of Geneva, University of Antwerp, University of Białystok
Category: Symposia
Keywords: imagination, world-sensitivity, constraints, memory, perception, embodiment, virtual reality
Date: Tuesday 2nd of September
Time: 14:30
Location: Maria Skłodowska-Curie Hall (123)
There have so far been several different ways of disentangling the imagination from the world. First, imagining has been treated as insensitive to evidence (McGinn, 2004), not aiming for truth (Kind, 2022), or as being non-truth-bound (Stokes, 2014)—that is, unlike perception or belief, it is said to not aim at providing an account of how things are in the world. Secondly, it has been said to be unconstrained and not limited by worldly rules (Hume, 1902; Tse, 2024), thereby enabling imaginers to go beyond what they already know and have experienced. Thirdly, it has been described as a representational mental activity (Liao & Gender, 2019; Walton, 1990) rather than as an activity rooted in the body and environment. This list could likely go on.
Bringing imagination back ‘down to Earth’ has recently become a common pursuit in philosophy and cognitive science. For example, Kind and Kung (2016) have shown that when put to an instructive (rather than a transcendental) use, imagination can be directed toward truth and an accurate mirroring of the world. McClelland and Dunin-Kozicka (2024) have proposed that imagination can be afforded by worldly things. Others have demonstrated that the contents of the imagination are subject to constraints of various kinds (Byrne, 2007; Harris, 2021; Jones & Schoonen, 2024; Langkau, forthcoming), or that imagistic thinking is a rule-governed operation (Kozak, 2023). Still others, mainly enactivists, have argued that imagination is an activity that is embodied, enactive, and embedded in the environment (Hutto, 2015; Rucińska, 2024; Rucińska & Gallagher, 2021).
In this symposium, we want to continue the debate around these topics. We will address some of the substantial issues mentioned above—whether and how imagination is world-sensitive, limited, and embodied in the world—but aim to expand the discussion in new, unexplored directions. In "Imagination’s Roots in Memory" (1), Julia Langkau will argue that one cannot imagine a potential future experience involving affective states because we instead imagine something closer to what a future episodic memory of such an experience would be like. In "The World-Sensitive Contents of Imagination" (2), Monika Dunin-Kozicka will propose that in all hybrid perceptual-imaginative experiences, the contents of imaginings are determined by concurrent percepts. In "Down-to-Virtual-Earth Imaginings" (3), Zuzanna Rucińska plans to apply the enactive and embodied perspective to demonstrate the role of imagination in one’s engagements with virtual reality. Finally, in "The Nature of Imagination’s Constraints…" (4), Piotr Kozak will make an argument against embodied theories of imagination and, we expect, provide an impetus for the discussion that concludes the symposium.
Our philosophical discussion will be further informed by empirical studies, psychological-experimental research, and technological findings—and some of us will refer to our own experimental studies. This symposium thereby aims to bring together a variety of perspectives from philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science to better understand the nature of imagination and its possible worldly entanglements. We also wish to push the discussion on these topics in new promisingly fruitful directions.
References
Byrne, R. M. (2007). The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality. MIT press.
Harris, P. L. (2021). Early constraints on the imagination: The realism of young children. Child Development, 92(2), 466-483.
Hume, D. (1902/1748). Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (2nd Edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hutto, D. D. (2015). Overly enactive imagination? Radically re-imagining imagining. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 53 (Spindel Supplement), 68–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12122
Jones, M., & Schoonen, T. (2024). Embodied simulation and knowledge of possibilities. Philosophical Psychology, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2024.2417990
Kind, A. (2022). Imagination and creative thinking. Cambridge University Press.
Kind, A. (2018). How Imagination Gives Rise to Knowledge. In F. Macpherson & F. Dorsch (Eds.), Perceptual imagination and perceptual memory (pp. 227-246). Oxford University Press.
Kind, A., & Kung, P. (2016). Introduction: The puzzle of imaginative use. In A. Kind & P. Kung (Eds.), Knowledge through imagination (pp. 1–37). Oxford University Press.
Kozak, P. (2023). Thinking in Images. Imagistic Cognition and Non-propositional Content. Bloomsbury.
Langkau, J. (forthcoming). Imaginative Freedom and Epistemic Constraints in the Context of Literary Text. In F. Vassiliou, E. Kyprianidou and K. Bantinaki: Empathy and the Aesthetic Mind, Bloomsbury.
Liao, S., & Gendler, T. S. (2019). Imagination. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition); https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/imagination/.
McClelland, T, & Dunin-Kozicka, M. (2024). Affording imagination. Philosophical Psychology, 37(7), 1615-1638. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2024.2354433
McGinn, C. (2004). Mindsight. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rucińska, Z. (2024). Embodied and Enactive Imagination in VR. Journal of the Philosophy of Games, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.5617/jpg.1063
Rucińska, Z., & Gallagher, S. (2021). Making imagination even more embodied: Imagination, constraint and epistemic relevance. Synthese, 199(3–4), 8143–8170. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03156-x
Stokes, D. (2014). The Role of Imagination in Creativity. In E. S. Paul & S. B. Kaufman (Eds.), The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays (pp. 157-184). Oxford University Press.
Tse, P. U. (2024). Free Imagination: The deep roots of creativity, freedom and meaning in the human brain and mind. Oxford University Press.
Walton, K. L. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe. On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Harvard: Harvard University Press.