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Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology
Recreative Minds develops a philosophical theory of imagination that draws upon the latest work in psychology. This theory illuminates the use of imagination in coming to terms with art, its role in enabling us to live as social beings, and the psychological consequences of disordered imagination. The authors offer a lucid exploration of a fascinating subject.
- GenresPhilosophy
244 pages, Paperback
First published October 3, 2002
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About the author
Gregory Currie
26 books5 followersGregory Currie is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of York.
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March 21, 2021
Currie and Ravenscroft set out to examine one particular form of imagination: the imaginative activity behind our acts of taking up perspectives (which might be of specific individuals, social archetypes, or fictional people). They call this recreative imagination. The key idea of their theory is that there are imaginative correlates to primary kinds of intentional states, such as desire, belief, and perception. Each correlate shares the overall functional profile of the respective kind of intentional state but with slight differences, differences which define the imaginative essence of the correlate.
For example, belief takes in inputs of one's surroundings, and, combined with appropriate desires, will yield the output of action. The imaginative correlate of belief will share these functions, except that it does not necessarily yield action. So when we imagine having certain beliefs, which we do not in fact have, the overall experience might phenomenologically feel quite similar to having a genuine belief, by virtue of these functional commonalities. But nonetheless the imaginative beliefs feel different in certain aspects and do not manifest in the same behaviors as the beliefs would if they were genuine, by virtue of the functional difference.
The key idea can be grasped by reading the first two chapters. The vast majority of the book is dedicated to presenting myriads of objections and to responding to those; to making finer-grained distinctions between variations within a given type of imagination (e.g., fantasy v. imaginative-perceptual state); and to presenting applications of their theory to explaining puzzling psychological phenomena (e.g., certain experiences had by people with autism). I personally found much of this so tedious that I skipped many of the chapters. For readers interested in just the thesis, you can skip the majority of the book and be just fine.
Here are some thoughts I had in response to the book. Overall, I think the authors' approach to assuming that imagination is like a functional mirror to the primary intentional states can be misleading. A lot changes if we take imagination itself to be on par with and as primary as our other kinds of intentional states. Doing that might encourage us to think about how there are elements associated with imagination built into our ordinary perceptual experience, or experiences of having beliefs and desires (in contrast to the authors' theory encouraging us to only think about how elements of beliefs and desires are found in their imaginative correlates). I haven't read too much on imagination so far, but from what I've seen, Bence Nanay (a philosopher who works with cognitive scientists) has fascinating work that shows that imagination plays a central and essential role in perception.
The authors heavily rely on the classic attitude v. content distinction found in much philosophy and some cognitive science. This is the idea that the different "attitudes" (e.g., belief, desire) can be taken towards the same object. This is such a commonplace distinction, but in general I've leaned towards the view that it is a model/heuristic for understanding different states, and doesn't correspond to anything metaphysically real about the mind. Taking a model too seriously might obscure alternative ways of thinking of the phenomenon at hand and make only certain features of the phenomenon salient. What features of imagination does the attitude/content model make salient, and what features might this model obscure?
A preliminary thought, for example, is that the attitude/content distinction makes salient that the same content can be related to via different attitudes; this implies phenomenological differences between belief and imagination are due to a difference in the nature of the attitudes, since the contents are the same. This seems to obscure the possibility of a 'holism' where the content and the attitude depend on one another, and so different attitudes entail different contents even if the object of the content nominally is the same.
For example, if I actually perceive my father, and then later I imaginatively-perceive him, perhaps the latter experience involves some phenomenology (i.e., "content") has some distinctive features that influences what "attitude" I take towards this "content" (e.g., I intuitively grasp that this is just imagination, and this in turn might influence what's going on in the phenomenology). I guess overall, the attitude/content distinction is hostile to a phenomenological approach to imagination, and the latter is something I'm particularly interested in.
I'm also dissatisfied with the classic assumption that kinds of intentional states are absolutely distinct kinds (e.g., belief and desire are separate categories). This is definitely a useful model, but confusing it for reality might short-circuit potentially interesting paths of research (as the conflation between reality and the model of the attitude/content distinction might do). I don't think it's plausible that there are distinct kinds of imaginative states that neatly 1:1 correspond with kinds of intentional states. I'd like to explore the complexity that's neglected here. But overall I think Currie and Ravenscroft are right to propose we think about imagination in relation to non-imaginative states.
For example, belief takes in inputs of one's surroundings, and, combined with appropriate desires, will yield the output of action. The imaginative correlate of belief will share these functions, except that it does not necessarily yield action. So when we imagine having certain beliefs, which we do not in fact have, the overall experience might phenomenologically feel quite similar to having a genuine belief, by virtue of these functional commonalities. But nonetheless the imaginative beliefs feel different in certain aspects and do not manifest in the same behaviors as the beliefs would if they were genuine, by virtue of the functional difference.
The key idea can be grasped by reading the first two chapters. The vast majority of the book is dedicated to presenting myriads of objections and to responding to those; to making finer-grained distinctions between variations within a given type of imagination (e.g., fantasy v. imaginative-perceptual state); and to presenting applications of their theory to explaining puzzling psychological phenomena (e.g., certain experiences had by people with autism). I personally found much of this so tedious that I skipped many of the chapters. For readers interested in just the thesis, you can skip the majority of the book and be just fine.
Here are some thoughts I had in response to the book. Overall, I think the authors' approach to assuming that imagination is like a functional mirror to the primary intentional states can be misleading. A lot changes if we take imagination itself to be on par with and as primary as our other kinds of intentional states. Doing that might encourage us to think about how there are elements associated with imagination built into our ordinary perceptual experience, or experiences of having beliefs and desires (in contrast to the authors' theory encouraging us to only think about how elements of beliefs and desires are found in their imaginative correlates). I haven't read too much on imagination so far, but from what I've seen, Bence Nanay (a philosopher who works with cognitive scientists) has fascinating work that shows that imagination plays a central and essential role in perception.
The authors heavily rely on the classic attitude v. content distinction found in much philosophy and some cognitive science. This is the idea that the different "attitudes" (e.g., belief, desire) can be taken towards the same object. This is such a commonplace distinction, but in general I've leaned towards the view that it is a model/heuristic for understanding different states, and doesn't correspond to anything metaphysically real about the mind. Taking a model too seriously might obscure alternative ways of thinking of the phenomenon at hand and make only certain features of the phenomenon salient. What features of imagination does the attitude/content model make salient, and what features might this model obscure?
A preliminary thought, for example, is that the attitude/content distinction makes salient that the same content can be related to via different attitudes; this implies phenomenological differences between belief and imagination are due to a difference in the nature of the attitudes, since the contents are the same. This seems to obscure the possibility of a 'holism' where the content and the attitude depend on one another, and so different attitudes entail different contents even if the object of the content nominally is the same.
For example, if I actually perceive my father, and then later I imaginatively-perceive him, perhaps the latter experience involves some phenomenology (i.e., "content") has some distinctive features that influences what "attitude" I take towards this "content" (e.g., I intuitively grasp that this is just imagination, and this in turn might influence what's going on in the phenomenology). I guess overall, the attitude/content distinction is hostile to a phenomenological approach to imagination, and the latter is something I'm particularly interested in.
I'm also dissatisfied with the classic assumption that kinds of intentional states are absolutely distinct kinds (e.g., belief and desire are separate categories). This is definitely a useful model, but confusing it for reality might short-circuit potentially interesting paths of research (as the conflation between reality and the model of the attitude/content distinction might do). I don't think it's plausible that there are distinct kinds of imaginative states that neatly 1:1 correspond with kinds of intentional states. I'd like to explore the complexity that's neglected here. But overall I think Currie and Ravenscroft are right to propose we think about imagination in relation to non-imaginative states.
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