Creative Imagining as Practical Knowing: an Akbariyya Account

Abstract

I argue that ‘practical knowledge’ can be understood as constituted by a kind of imagining. In particular, it is the knowledge of what I am doing when that knowledge is represented via extramental imagination. Two interesting results follow. First, on this account, we can do justice both to the cognitive character and the practical character of practical knowledge. And second, we can identify a condition under which imagination becomes factive, and thus a source of objective evidence. I develop this view by extracting an account of self-knowledge via extramental imagination from the writings of Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240).