Philosophy-5 Flashcards
Imagination
An activity that surpasses the current perception of reality into a new one by investing in experiences, memories, ideas, and images; it is affected by conscious desires, fears, and tendencies, in order ro create mental and artistic representations/inventions + represent another’s perspective (empathy).
Imagination also helps individuals set plans, solve problems by creating the tools of “satisfaction and progress”.
Arguments against imagination (ancients)
●Aristotle: argued that verified sensations are true, but imaginations are usually false.
●Pascal & Descartes: argued that imagination is the source of mistakes.
Empiricists VS Jean-Paul Sartre
●empiricists theory: the image is a residue of perception.
●Satre’s theory: imagination precedes perception and creates new realities.
Passive Reproductive Imagination VS Active Creative Imagination
1st is when mental images are produced from previous perceptions stored in the memory. (Follows Empiricists)
2nd is when the mind produces new images, objects, solutions.. that are insecurely related to past and present realities. (Follows Sartre)
The Empiricists Theory of Imagination
According to Empiricists:
●mental images come from the external world, through the sense–>the image is a residue of perception conserved in the brain (imagination is the second step to perception).
●images are conveyed to the mind through sensation (John Locke).
●images are faint reproductions of the perception of objects.
The difference between sensation and images/ideas is in a degree of intensity: the stronger ones (objects) are perceptions, while the weaker ones are residues of perception. (David Hume)
●imagination is a process that reproduces reality–> reproductive imagination.
Criticism of the Empiricists’ Theory
May be criticized for reducing imagination to faint perception, to the point where we might confuse between them. They can also be criticized for not recognizing the role of the unconscious in stimulating imagination and that it is an act of consciousness. (Perception and imagination are 2 distinct acts of consciousness).
However, the distinction between perception and imagination is very clear, and they shall not be confounded.
(Ex: I can imagine the sound of an explosion and distinguish it to the real perception of hearing a faint ring..).
Sartre’s Theory of Imagination
●refutes the existence of mental images (no perceptions, images, souvenirs..) and that all conscious activities are intentional–> his viewpoints are based on the theories of Alain and Edmund Husserl.
●we have the illusion of having seen interior images of the mind. (Ex: a person who claimed to have imagined the Colosseum was asked to count its columns, but couldn’t..).
●believes that imagining is knowing accompanied by bodily movements (ex: hands and pupils of the eye..).
●consciousness is an aimed at something outside itself–>”All consciousness is the consciousness of something”- Husserl
●believes in the imagining conscious, that aims at an absent/nonexistent object, while perception presents itself in physical reality and can be sensed.
●imagining is posing the object as nothingness (I will feel it is not there), and aims at an object by means of an analogical representative.
From this viewpoint, we can draw that it is not creative imagination that is reduced to reproductive imagination, but vice versa: if imagination represents the way I project myself on the world, then, it is perception that is reduced to imagination.
Criticism of Sartre’s Theory
May be criticized for underestimating perception that gives the data for sensory experience. He ignored the role of stored images and memories in enriching the creative conscious mind (a blind person cannot use the analogy that Sartre spoke about).
Sartre also underestimated the role of the unconscious repressed desires and fears, and the role of the human needs and tendencies in shaping imagination.
Problematic of Imagination
What is the nature of Imagination? Is Imagination a residue of perception? Or is it a new and original attitude of consciousness?
