Abstract
Our ordinary conception of imagination takes it to be essentially a conscious phenomenon, and traditionally that’s how it had been treated in the philosophical literature. In fact, this claim had often been taken to be so obvious as not to need any argumentative support. But lately in the philosophical literature on imagination we see increasing support for the view that imagining need not occur consciously. In this paper, I examine the case for unconscious imagination. I’ll consider four different arguments that we can find in the recent literature—three of which are based on cases and one that is based on considerations relating to action guidance. To my mind, none of these arguments is successful. I conclude that the case for postulating unconscious imagining has not yet been well motivated.
Highlights
Our ordinary conception of imagination takes it to be essentially a conscious phenomenon
Theorists who accept the existence of unconscious imagination or something very much like it include Kendall Walton (1990), Alvin Goldman (2006), Jennifer Church (2008), This article is part of the topical collection "Imagination and its Limits", edited by Amy Kind and Tufan Kiymaz
Consider the definition offered by Shen-yi Liao and Tamar Gendler to open their entry on imagination in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “To imagine is to represent without aiming at things as they presently, and subjectively are.”1 Since representational states, as a general matter, can be either conscious or unconscious, this definition alone does not settle the question whether imagination must be conscious
Summary
Consider the definition offered by Shen-yi Liao and Tamar Gendler to open their entry on imagination in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “To imagine is to represent without aiming at things as they presently, and subjectively are.” Since representational states, as a general matter, can be either conscious or unconscious, this definition alone does not settle the question whether imagination must be conscious. Traditionally, philosophers have taken imagining to be a conscious phenomenon. It seems likely that the unconscious imaginings posited by Neil Van Leeuwen are meant to occur outside of conscious awareness and to lack phenomenal properties. A state’s being conscious is not the same thing as its being occurrent or explicit—even when we focus on consciousness just in the sense of conscious awareness Walton himself makes this very point when he notes a suspicion “that occurrent imaginings need not be conscious.” A similar point seems to apply to the distinction between explicit and implicit states, i.e., there cannot be conscious states—states that are part of our conscious awareness—that are merely implicit If this is right, arguments that imagination can be nonoccurrent or implicit would entail that imagination can be outside of conscious awareness.
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