Abstract
ABSTRACTIn this commentary I suggest that a comparative investigation of Ancient psychological notions may contribute to Professor Lloyd's project of understanding the role that analogy plays in human reasoning. In particular, I propose that the Greek notion of imagination (phantasia) may serve as a starting point. I argue that, because in Platonic and Aristotelian thought the ultimate object of knowledge is form (eidos), thinkers working in this paradigm were obliged to introduce a faculty mediating between the senses and the intellect. This is the imagination. Some of the problems associated with Greek conceptions of imagination carry over to the use of analogy. I suggest that because Chinese thought had a very different approach to images (in part based on a long history of reception of the Yijing) and a different approach to the object of knowledge, they did not need to forge a conception of a specific faculty of imagination and were thus in a position to exploit analogies in a way which was rather different from Greeks.
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