IngentaConnect 11. The Imagination (1)

Author: O'Shaughnessy, Brian

Source: Consciousness and the World, January 2003 , pp. 339-362(24)

Publisher: Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs

Abstract:

Perception is here differentiated from perceptual imagining. To better understand the latter, the imagination was studied. Three different kinds of imaginative experience were characterized: propositional imagining (e.g. inventing a story), imaginative perception (e.g. looking at photos), and perceptual imagining (e.g. mental images). The origins of propositional imagining ensure that they cannot instantiate the cognitive prototype (knowledge). Meanwhile, both the origins and constitutive character ensure the same in the case both of imaginative perception and of perceptual imagining. The general conclusion is, that imaginings are imaginings neither through having a required constitution nor through origins, and not even through a combination of these factors. Rather, they are imaginings through satisfying the definition. Imagining is quasi a cognitive prototype, which represents Reality as endowed with a certain character, is of necessity not that prototype, and is merely quasi that prototype.

This article is hosted on another website.

You may be required to register, activate a subscription or purchase the article before you can obtain the full text.

Proceed