![Imagination-Warner-Highsmith](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Imagination-Warner-Highsmith.jpeg)
Imagination is the production or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
without any immediate input of the
sense
A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of Stimulus (physiology), stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the cen ...
s. Stefan Szczelkun characterises it as the forming of
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
s in one's mind, which can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes. Imagination helps make knowledge applicable in solving problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the
learning process
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of learnin ...
.
[Norman 2000 pp. 1-2]Brian Sutton-Smith
Brian Sutton Smith (July 15, 1924 – March 7, 2015), better known as Brian Sutton-Smith, was a play theorist who spent his lifetime attempting to discover the cultural significance of play in human life, arguing that any useful definition of pla ...
1988, p. 22[ Kieran Egan 1992, pp. 50] As an approach to build theory, it is called "disciplined imagination". A basic training for imagination is listening to
storytelling
Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural pre ...
(
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...
),
in which the exactness of the chosen words is the fundamental factor to "evoke worlds".
One view of imagination links it with cognition,
seeing imagination as a
cognitive process
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
used in mental functioning. It is increasingly used - in the form of
visual imagery
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of 'perceiving' some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are ...
- by clinicians in
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
treatment.
Imaginative thought may - speculatively - become associated with rational thought on the assumption that both activities may involve cognitive processes that may "underpin thinking about possibilities".
The cognate term, "mental imagery" may be used in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
for denoting the process of reviving in the mind recollections of objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as
"imaging" or
"imagery" or to speak of it as
"reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or
"constructive" imagination. Constructive imagination is further divided into voluntary imagination driven by the
lateral prefrontal cortex
In human brain anatomy, the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is part of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). According to Striedter the PFC of humans can be delineated into two functionally, morphologically, and evolutionarily different regions: the ven ...
(LPFC) and involuntary imagination (LPFC-independent), such as REM-sleep
dream
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, althou ...
ing,
daydreaming
Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. This phenomenon is common in people's daily life shown by a large-scale study in which partici ...
,
hallucinations
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinatio ...
, and spontaneous
insight
Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings:
*a piece of information
*the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intu ...
. The voluntary types of imagination include integration of
modifiers
In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which ''modifies'' the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", provi ...
, and
mental rotation
Mental rotation is the ability to rotate mental representations of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects as it is related to the visual representation of such rotation within the human mind. There is a relationship between areas of the br ...
. Imagined images, both novel and recalled, are seen with the "
mind's eye
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of 'perceiving' some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are ...
".
Imagination, however, is not considered to be exclusively a cognitive activity because it is also linked to the body and place, particularly that it also involves setting up relationships with materials and people, precluding the sense that imagination is locked away in the head.
Imagination can also be expressed through stories such as
fairy tale
A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...
s or
fantasies
Fantasy is a genre of fiction.
Fantasy, Fantasie, or Fantasies may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* Fantasia (music), a free-form musical composition
* ''Fantasie'' (Widmann), a 1993 composition for solo clarinet by Jörg Widmann
* ...
. Children often use such
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...
s and pretend play in order to exercise their imaginations. When children develop fantasy they play at two levels: first, they use
role playing
Role-playing or roleplaying is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' offers a definition of role-playing a ...
to act out what they have developed with their imagination, and at the second level they play again with their make-believe situation by acting as if what they have developed is an actual reality.
History
''Imaginatio'' is the standard Latin translation of the Greek term ''phantasia''.
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
in ''
On the Soul
''On the Soul'' (Greek: , ''Peri Psychēs''; Latin: ''De Anima'') is a major treatise written by Aristotle c. 350 BC. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different op ...
'' considered ''phantasia'' (imagination) as the capacity for making mental images, and distinguished it from perception and from thinking. He held however that thought was always accompanied by an image.
The notion of a "mind's eye" goes back at least to
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
's reference to ''mentis oculi'' during his discussion of the orator's appropriate use of
simile
A simile () is a figure of speech that directly ''compares'' two things. Similes differ from other metaphors by highlighting the similarities between two things using comparison words such as "like", "as", "so", or "than", while other metaphors cr ...
.
In this discussion, Cicero observed that allusions to "the
Syrtis
Syrtis ( grc, Σύρτις) may refer to: Places North African coast
* Syrtis Major (or the Great rSyrtis) is the Latin name for the Gulf of Sirte, a body of water in the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Libya
*Syrtis Minor (or the Lesser ...
of his patrimony" and "the
Charybdis
Charybdis (; grc, Χάρυβδις, Khárybdis, ; la, Charybdis, ) is a sea monster in Greek mythology. She, with the sea monster Scylla, appears as a challenge to epic characters such as Odysseus, Jason, and Aeneas. Scholarship locates her in t ...
of his possessions" involved similes that were "too far-fetched"; and he advised the orator to, instead, just speak of "the rock" and "the gulf" (respectively) — on the grounds that "the eyes of the mind are more easily directed to those objects which we have seen, than to those which we have only heard".
In medieval
faculty psychology Faculty psychology is the idea that the mind is separated into faculties, or sections, and that each of these faculties are assigned to certain mental tasks. Some examples of the mental tasks assigned to these faculties include judgement, compassion ...
, the imagination was one of the
inward wits along with
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
and the
sensus communis
''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arg ...
. It allowed the recombination of images, for example by combining perceptions of gold and mountain to obtain the idea of a golden mountain.
The concept of "mind's eye" appeared in English in
Chaucer's (c.1387)
Man of Law's Tale
"The Man of Law's Tale" is the fifth of the ''Canterbury Tales'' by Geoffrey Chaucer, written around 1387. John Gower's "Tale of Constance" in ''Confessio Amantis'' tells the same story and may have been a source for Chaucer. Nicholas Trivet's ...
in his
Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''magnum opus' ...
, where he tells us that one of the three men dwelling in a castle was blind, and could only see with "the eyes of his mind"; namely, those eyes "with which all men see after they have become blind".
Galileo used the imagination to conduct
thought experiment
A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences.
History
The ancient Greek ''deiknymi'' (), or thought experiment, "was the most anci ...
s, such as asking readers to imagine what direction a stone released from a sling would fly.
Description
The common use of the term is for the process of forming new images in the mind that have not been previously experienced with the help of what has been seen, heard, or felt before, or at least only partially or in different combinations. This could also be involved with thinking out possible or impossible outcomes of something or someone in life's abundant situations and experiences. Some typical examples follow:
*
Fairy tale
A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...
*
Fiction
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...
* A form of
verisimilitude
In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer ...
often invoked in
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...
and
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
invites readers to pretend such stories are true by referring to
objects of the mind such as fictional books or years that do not exist apart from an
imaginary world
A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes may ...
.
Imagination, not being limited to the acquisition of exact knowledge by the requirements of practical necessity is largely free from objective restraints. The ability to imagine one's self in another person's place is very important to social relations and understanding.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
said, "Imagination ... is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
The same limitations beset imagination in the field of
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
hypothesis
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...
. Progress in scientific research is due largely to provisional explanations which are developed by imagination, but such hypotheses must be framed in relation to previously ascertained facts and in accordance with the principles of the particular science.
Imagination is an experimental partition of the mind used to develop theories and ideas based on functions. Taking objects from real perceptions, the imagination uses complex If-functions that involve both
Semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
and
Episodic memory to develop new or revised ideas. This part of the mind is vital to developing better and easier ways to accomplish old and new tasks. In sociology, Imagination is used to part ways with reality and have an understanding of social interactions derived from a perspective outside of society itself. This leads to the development of theories through questions that wouldn't usually be asked. These experimental ideas can be safely conducted inside a virtual world and then, if the idea is probable and the function is true, the idea can be actualized in reality. Imagination is the key to new development of the mind and can be shared with others, progressing collectively.
Regarding the volunteer effort, imagination can be classified as:
* involuntary (the dream from the sleep, the daydream)
* voluntary (the reproductive imagination, the creative imagination, the dream of perspective)
Psychology
Psychologists have studied imaginative thought, not only in its exotic form of
creativity
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary w ...
and artistic expression but also in its mundane form of everyday imagination.
Ruth M.J. Byrne
Ruth M.J. Byrne, FTCD, MRIA, (born 1962) is an Irish cognitive scientist and author of several books on human reasoning. She is the Professor of Cognitive Science, in the School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Du ...
has proposed that everyday imaginative thoughts about
counterfactual
Counterfactual conditionals (also ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactual ...
alternatives to reality may be based on the same cognitive processes on which rational thoughts are also based. Children can engage in the creation of imaginative alternatives to reality from their very early years.
Cultural psychology
Cultural psychology is the study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members.Heine, S. J. (2011). ''Cultural Psychology. ''New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
It is based on the premise that mind and culture are i ...
is currently elaborating a view of imagination as a higher mental function involved in a number of everyday activities both at the individual and collective level that enables people to manipulate complex meanings of both linguistic and iconic forms in the process of experiencing.
The phenomenology of imagination is discussed In ''The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination'' (french: L'Imaginaire: Psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination), also published under the title ''The Psychology of the Imagination'', a 1940 book by
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...
, in which he propounds his concept of the imagination and discusses what the existence of imagination shows about the nature of human consciousness.
The imagination is also active in our perception of photographic images in order to make them appear real.
Memory
Memory and mental imagery, often seen as a part of the process of imagination, have been shown to be affected by one another.
"Images made by functional magnetic resonance imaging technology show that remembering and imagining sends blood to identify parts of the brain."
Various psychological factors can influence the mental processing of the brain and heighten its chance to retain information as either long-term memories or short-term memories. John Sweller indicated that experiences stored as long-term memories are easier to recall, as they are ingrained deeper in the mind. Each of these forms require information to be taught in a specific manner so as to use various regions of the brain when being processed. This information can potentially help develop programs for young students to cultivate or further enhance their creative abilities from a young age. The
neocortex
The neocortex, also called the neopallium, isocortex, or the six-layered cortex, is a set of layers of the mammalian cerebral cortex involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, generation of motor commands, sp ...
and
thalamus
The thalamus (from Greek θάλαμος, "chamber") is a large mass of gray matter located in the dorsal part of the diencephalon (a division of the forebrain). Nerve fibers project out of the thalamus to the cerebral cortex in all directions, ...
are responsible for controlling the brain's imagination, along with many of the brain's other functions such as consciousness and abstract thought. Since imagination involves many different brain functions, such as emotions, memory, thoughts, etc., portions of the brain where multiple functions occur—such as the thalamus and neocortex—are the main regions where imaginative processing has been documented. The understanding of ''how'' memory and imagination are linked in the brain, paves the way to better understand one's ability to link significant past experiences with their imagination.
Perception
Piaget Piaget () may refer to:
People with the surname
* Édouard Piaget (18171910), a Swiss entomologist
* Jean Piaget (18961980), a Swiss developmental psychologist
* Paul Piaget (disambiguation), several people
* Solange Piaget Knowles (born 1986) ...
posited that
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
s depend on the world view of a person. The world view is the result of arranging perceptions into existing imagery by imagination. Piaget cites the example of a child saying that the moon is following her when she walks around the village at night. Like this, perceptions are integrated into the world view to make sense. Imagination is needed to make sense of perceptions.
Brain activation
A study using
fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...
while subjects were asked to imagine precise visual figures, to mentally disassemble them, or mentally blend them, showed activity in the
occipital
The occipital bone () is a cranial dermal bone and the main bone of the occiput (back and lower part of the skull). It is trapezoidal in shape and curved on itself like a shallow dish. The occipital bone overlies the occipital lobes of the cereb ...
, frontoparietal,
posterior parietal
The parietal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The parietal lobe is positioned above the temporal lobe and behind the frontal lobe and central sulcus.
The parietal lobe integrates sensory informa ...
,
precuneus
In neuroanatomy, the precuneus is the portion of the superior parietal lobule on the medial surface of each brain hemisphere. It is located in front of the cuneus (the upper portion of the occipital lobe). The precuneus is bounded in front by th ...
, and
dorsolateral prefrontal
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC or DL-PFC) is an area in the prefrontal cortex of the primate brain. It is one of the most recently derived parts of the human brain. It undergoes a prolonged period of maturation which lasts until adultho ...
regions of the subject's brains.
Evolution
Phylogenetic
In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...
acquisition of imagination was a gradual process. The simplest form of imagination, REM-sleep
dream
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, althou ...
ing, evolved in
mammals
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...
with acquisition of
REM sleep
Rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep or REMS) is a unique phase of sleep in mammals and birds, characterized by random rapid movement of the eyes, accompanied by low muscle tone throughout the body, and the propensity of the sleeper to dream viv ...
140 million years ago. Spontaneous
insight
Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings:
*a piece of information
*the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intu ...
improved in
primates
Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...
with acquisition of the
lateral prefrontal cortex
In human brain anatomy, the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is part of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). According to Striedter the PFC of humans can be delineated into two functionally, morphologically, and evolutionarily different regions: the ven ...
70 million years ago. After
hominins
The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas).
The t ...
split from the
chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
line 6 million years ago they further improved their imagination.
Prefrontal analysis
Prefrontal Analysis (PFA) is a type of active constructive imagination that allows humans to mentally reduce an object into parts. For example, humans can recall a kettle and then mentally break a handle. The imaginary kettle with the broken handl ...
was acquired 3.3 million years ago when hominins started to manufacture
Mode One stone tools
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone A ...
. Progress in stone tools culture to
Mode Two stone tools
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...
by 2 million years ago signify remarkable improvement of prefrontal analysis. The most advanced mechanism of imagination,
prefrontal synthesis
Prefrontal synthesis (PFS, also known as mental synthesis) is the conscious purposeful process of synthesizing novel mental images. PFS is neurologically different from the other types of imagination, such as simple memory recall and dreaming. Un ...
, was likely acquired by humans around 70,000 years ago and resulted in behavioral modernity. This leap toward modern imagination has been characterized by paleoanthropologists as the "Cognitive revolution", "Upper Paleolithic Revolution", and the "Great Leap Forward".
Moral imagination
Moral imagination usually describes the mental capacity to find answers to ethical questions and dilemmas through the process of a mental and intellectual imagination and visualization.
Different definitions of "moral imagination" can be found in the literature.
One of the most prominent definitions was provided by the philosopher
Mark Johnson: "An ability to imaginatively discern various possibilities for acting in a given situation and to envision the potential help and harm that are likely to result from a given action."
In an article recently published in the Journal of Management History, the authors argued that Hitler's assassin
Claus von Stauffenberg
Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (; 15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German army officer best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
Despite ...
decided to dare to overthrow the Nazi regime in particular (among other factors) as a result of a process of "moral imagination." His willingness to kill Hitler was less due to his compassion for his comrades, his family or friends living at that time (actual people living at that time), but originated rather from the fact that he was already thinking about the potential problems of later generations and people he did not know. In other words, through a process of “moral imagination” he developed empathy for "abstract" people (for examples, Germans of later generations, people who were not yet alive).
See also
*
Artificial imagination Artificial imagination, also called synthetic imagination or machine imagination, is defined as the artificial simulation of human imagination by general or special purpose computers or artificial neural networks. The applied form of it is known as ...
*
Body of light
The body of light, sometimes called the 'astral body' or the 'subtle body,' is a "quasi material" aspect of the human body, being neither solely physical nor solely spiritual, posited by a number of philosophers, and elaborated on according to ...
*
Cognitive dissonance
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. ...
*
Creative visualization
Creative visualization is the cognitive process of purposefully generating visual mental imagery, with eyes open or closed, simulating or recreating visual perception, in order to maintain, inspect, and transform those images, consequently modi ...
*
Creativity
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary w ...
*
Decatastrophizing
In cognitive therapy, decatastrophizing or decatastrophization is a cognitive restructuring technique to treat cognitive distortions, such as magnification and catastrophizing, commonly seen in psychological disorders like anxiety and psychosis.
...
*
Exaggeration
Exaggeration is the representation of something as more extreme or dramatic than it really is. Exaggeration may occur intentionally or unintentionally.
Exaggeration can be a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke str ...
*
Fantasy (psychology)
In psychology, fantasy is a broad range of mental experiences, mediated by the faculty of imagination in the human brain, and marked by an expression of certain desires through vivid mental imagery. Fantasies are associated with scenarios that ar ...
*
Fictional countries
A fictional country is a country that is made up for fictional stories, and does not exist in real life, or one that people believe in without proof.
Sailors have always mistaken low clouds for land masses, and in later times this was given ...
*
Guided imagery
Guided imagery (also known as guided affective imagery, or katathym-imaginative psychotherapy (KIP)) is a mind-body intervention by which a trained practitioner or teacher helps a participant or patient to evoke and generate mental images that si ...
*
Imagery
Imagery is visual symbolism, or figurative language that evokes a mental image or other kinds of sense impressions, especially in a literary work, but also in other activities such as psychotherapy.
Forms
There are five major types of sensory ima ...
*
The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)
The Imaginary (or Imaginary Order) is one of three terms in the psychoanalytic perspective of Jacques Lacan, along with the Symbolic and the Real. Each of the three terms emerged gradually over time, undergoing an evolution in Lacan's own devel ...
*
Imaginary (sociology)
The imaginary (or social imaginary) is the set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols through which people imagine their social whole. It is common to the members of a particular social group and the corresponding society. The concept of the ...
*
Imagination Age
The Imagination Age is the period beyond the Information Age where creativity and imagination become the primary creators of economic value. (In contrast, the main activities of the Information Age are analysis and thinking.) This concept holds t ...
*
Imagination inflation
Imagination inflation is a type of memory distortion that occurs when imagining an event that never happened increases confidence in the memory of the event.
Several factors have been demonstrated to increase the imagination inflation effect. Im ...
*
Intuition (psychology)
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...
*
Magic realism
*
Mental image
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of 'perceiving' some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are ...
*
Mimesis
Mimesis (; grc, μίμησις, ''mīmēsis'') is a term used in literary criticism and philosophy that carries a wide range of meanings, including ''imitatio'', imitation, nonsensuous similarity, receptivity, representation, mimicry, the act ...
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Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism
The Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism involved two entirely separate and independent French Royal Commissions, each appointed by Louis XVI in 1784, that were conducted simultaneously by a committee composed of four physicians from the Paris F ...
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Sociological imagination
Sociological imagination is a term used in the field of sociology to describe a framework for understanding social reality that places personal experiences within a broader social and historical context.
It was coined by American sociologist C ...
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Truth
Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs ...
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Tulpa
Tulpa is a concept in Theosophy, mysticism, and the paranormal, of an object or being that is created through spiritual or mental powers. Modern practitioners, who call themselves "tulpamancers", use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary ...
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Verisimilitude
In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer ...
References
Further reading
;Books
* Byrne, R. M. J. (2005). ''The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality.'' Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
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Egan, Kieran (1992). ''Imagination in Teaching and Learning''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fabiani, Paolo "The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche". F.U.P. (Florence UP), Italian edition 2002, English edition 2009.* Frye, N. (1963). ''The Educated Imagination''. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
* Norman, Ron (2000) ''Cultivating Imagination in Adult Education'' Proceedings of the 41st Annual Adult Education Research.
* Salazar, Noel B. (2010)
Envisioning Eden: Mobilizing imaginaries in tourism and beyond.' Oxford: Berghahn.
* Sutton-Smith, Brian. (1988). ''In Search of the Imagination''. In K. Egan and D. Nadaner (Eds.), Imagination and Education. New York, Teachers College Press.
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;Articles
* Salazar, Noel B. (2020)
On imagination and imaginaries, mobility and immobility: Seeing the forest for the trees.''Culture & Psychology'' 1–10.
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* Watkins, Mary: "Waking Dreams"
arper Colophon Books, 1976and "Invisible Guests - The Development of Imaginal Dialogues"
he Analytic Press, 1986
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
* Moss, Robert: "The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination"
ew World Library, September 10, 2007*
Three philosophers for whom imagination is a central concept are
Kendall Walton
Kendall Lewis Walton (born 1939) is an American philosopher, the Emeritus Charles Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His work mainly deals with theoretical questions about ...
,
John Sallis
John Sallis (born 1938) is an American philosopher well known for his work in the tradition of phenomenology. Since 2005, he has been the Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He has previously taught at Pennsylvania Sta ...
and
Richard Kearney
Richard Kearney (; born 1954) is an Irish philosopher and public intellectual specializing in contemporary continental philosophy. He is the Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy at Boston College and has taught at University College Dublin ...
. See in particular:
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Kendall Walton
Kendall Lewis Walton (born 1939) is an American philosopher, the Emeritus Charles Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His work mainly deals with theoretical questions about ...
, ''Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts.'' Harvard University Press, 1990. (pbk.).
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John Sallis
John Sallis (born 1938) is an American philosopher well known for his work in the tradition of phenomenology. Since 2005, he has been the Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He has previously taught at Pennsylvania Sta ...
, ''Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental'' (2000)
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John Sallis
John Sallis (born 1938) is an American philosopher well known for his work in the tradition of phenomenology. Since 2005, he has been the Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He has previously taught at Pennsylvania Sta ...
, ''Spacings-Of Reason and Imagination. In Texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel'' (1987)
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Richard Kearney
Richard Kearney (; born 1954) is an Irish philosopher and public intellectual specializing in contemporary continental philosophy. He is the Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy at Boston College and has taught at University College Dublin ...
, ''The Wake of Imagination.'' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (1988); 1st Paperback Edition- ()
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Richard Kearney
Richard Kearney (; born 1954) is an Irish philosopher and public intellectual specializing in contemporary continental philosophy. He is the Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy at Boston College and has taught at University College Dublin ...
, "Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post-modern." Fordham University Press (1998)
External links
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Imagination, Mental Imagery, Consciousness, and Cognition: Scientific, Philosophical and Historical ApproachesTwo-Factor Imagination Scaleat the
Open Directory Project
DMOZ (from ''directory.mozilla.org'', an earlier domain name, stylized in lowercase in its logo) was a multilingual open-content directory of World Wide Web links. The site and community who maintained it were also known as the Open Directory ...
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{{Authority control
Cognition
Mental processes