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Imagination (Imagination and knowledge (Optimists (Timothy Williamson…
Imagination
Imagination and knowledge
Optimists
Timothy Williamson
Evoluntionary account of imagination as source of knowledge- we evolved to say, know whether we could jump a ditch by imagining ourselves doing so. Our imagination left to itself constrains itself in a reality-oriented way. Only reality-oriented imagination would be useful and thus only reality-oriented and selective (in selecting relevant possibilities) imagination evolved.
Two uses of imagination- calculation, and priming for dangers (e.g. in a dark forest, wolves).
Argument re the costs of skepticism about imagination as a source of knowledge. Williamson says that reasoning with real and imagined information is similar in many respects. So, skepticism about imagination would give us reason to be skeptical about other ways of gaining knowledge/ reasoning.
Amy Kind
Kind bases her argument for the instructive use of imagination around a notion of ideal imagination. Kind uses a science fiction example to develop the idea of an ideal imagination, drawn from Campbell's story 'The Last Evolution'. In this story, superintelligent machines have become the caretakers of humans. These machines have an imagination that respects two constraints: the reality constraint and the change constraint. This makes their imagination ideal for generating knowledge in that it reliably maps onto reality/ tracks reality.
Example of alien attack- imagine defences and alien resources as they
are
, etc., and imagine things changing in a realistic way.
Reality constraint= imagining the target content in a maximally realistic way.
Change constraint= imagine the situation evolving in a realistic way.
If we can be ideal imaginers, then this would explain how imagination can be instructive. But, can we?
Examples of individual scientists like Nikola Tesla, Temple Grandin
Kind is optimistic that ordinary people also are in a reasonably good position re ideal imagining. Ordinary examples like expectant parents seeing if a crib will fit through the door.
Kind in her introduction develops a theme of imagination being able to give knowledge through constraints of some sort. These might be architectural or deliberate, and different theorists take different views on this.
Peter Langland-Hassan
The TOPLAT approach to imagination
History of the debate
Hume
Descartes
Kant
Uses of the imagination
'Instructive' uses
Mind-reading
Modal epistemology
A distinctive question here- how to reconcile modal errors with the idea that imagination does usually guide us right?
Kripke redescription approach
Another distinctive question concerns modal arguments
Van Inwagen is skeptical
Thought experiments
What is the role of imagination in thought-experiments? Only hypothesis-generating? Or, in justification?
Transcendental uses
Engagement with fiction
Described as 'unlimited'
Puzzle of imaginative use
Skeptics
Shannon Spaulding
Spaulding distinguishes between deliberate and spontaneous imagination- the former being voluntarily initiated and perhaps guided imaginings, and the latter being things like dreams or daydreams. Spaulding thinks that neither can give us knowledge of contingent facts.
Spaulding examines the invocation of imagination in mind-reading in light of this distinction.
Skeptics seem to often consider whether imagination can give knowledge often in the context of mind-reading- challenging simulationism etc.
Imagination and imagery
Imagination and pretence
Imagination, Belief and Desire