To digest all that has been written on the extremely flexible notion of imagination would be a lifetime’s work. (…) What I offer here is a philosophical overview, and I hope a conceptual clarification, of the most important conceptions of imagination. The topic sprawls promiscuously over philosophy of mind, aesthetics, ethics, poetry, and even religion.

A conceptual pearl¹ by Leslie Forster Stevenson:

1. The ability to think of something not presently perceived, but spatio-temporally real.
2. The ability to think of whatever one acknowledges as possible in the spatio-temporal world.
3. The liability to think of something that the subject believes to be real, but which is not.
4. The ability to think of things that one conceives of as fictional.
5. The ability to entertain mental images.
6. The ability to think of anything at all.
7. The non-rational operations of the mind, that is, those explicable in terms of causes rather than reasons.
8. The ability to form perceptual beliefs about public objects in space and time.
9. The ability to sensuously appreciate works of art or objects of natural beauty without classifying them under concepts or thinking of them as useful.
10. The ability to create works of art that encourage such sensuous appreciation.
11. The ability to appreciate things that are expressive or revelatory of the meaning of human life.
12. The ability to create works of art that express something deep about the meaning of life

____________________

(1) Leslie Stevenson, ‘Twelve Conceptions of Imagination’, The British Journal of Aesthetics 43, no. 3 (1 July 2003): 238–59, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/43.3.238.

Featured Image: Gustave Doré, Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Plate 1 (detail). Via wikipedia (Imagination) “Don Quixote, engrossed in reading books of chivalry.”