Abstract
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.
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Notes
The term imagination has been used very widely. It is often used for suppositional purposes, e.g. imagine the number of primes to be finite. It can also mean to put oneself into someone else’s shoes, e.g. kids imagine themselves to be tigers and crouch on the floor. But I will only discuss imagination in the sense of sensorily imagining X, e.g. imagine a chocolate bar floating in front of you, imagine the beats of a load drum. In the visual sense we often use verbs like ‘to picture’ or ‘to visualize’ synonymously for ‘to sensorily imagine’.
It remains of course possible for authors like McGinn and Tye to use a different notion of introspection to make sense of the claim that we can introspect our imaginative states. However, Tye (2003, p.32) thinks of introspection very much like Rosenthal and Dretske as a matter of focusing on how things appear to be. McGinn states that “Introspection is the name of the faculty through which we catch consciousness in all its nakedness. By virtue of possessing this cognitive faculty we ascribe concepts of consciousness to ourselves.” (1993, p.8) It thus seems to me that reportability of inner states does encompass McGinn’s conception of introspection.
It is important not to confuse the distinction of appearance and reality with a possible difference in content between an appearance and reality. In other words, the veridicality of experience E is not at stake. In hallucinations, dreams and sensory imaginations, objects are usually not located where they are represented as being, whereas in perception, objects exist where they are represented in one’s experience.
Lucid dreams provide further support for the thesis of introspective imagination. Lucid dreams are considered by many to be introspective in nature. Moreover, the state of dreaming resembles the state of imagination in that both dream experiences and imaginative experiences are caused endogenously and not through outside stimuli. The main difference between them is that dreams are not subject to the conscious will whereas imagination usually is. However, this difference is nullified when people dream lucidly because then people can steer their dreams. So it seems that if people think of lucid dreams as introspective, they should also consider classifying imagination as a kind of introspection.
The Dependency Thesis of imagination states that if a person sensorily imagines x then he imagines an experience of x. I do not endorse the dependency thesis: On my account, if a person sensorily imagines x, then he simply imagines x. However, the imagining person is aware that the content of the imaginative experience only appears to him and is thus distinct from reality.
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Acknowledgements
I thank the participants of the Summer Graduate Conference (London) and the BPPA Conference (Durham) for their helpful comments and discussion. Special thanks to Sarah Patterson, Michael O’Sullivan and an anonymous referee of Philosophia for detailed comments on previous versions of this paper.
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Reuter, K. Is Imagination Introspective?. Philosophia 39, 31–38 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9275-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9275-4