A post by Max Jones and Sam Wilkinson

In an earlier paper (Jones & Wilkinson 2020) and a previous Junkyard blog post by Max, we suggested that (although we are both fans) the predictive processing framework has considerably more work to do if it is to provide a satisfying account of the imagination, and, importantly, more work than some of its key proponents seem to appreciate.

Our task here can be interpreted as an attempt to gesture towards and anticipate the implications of a positive account, consistent with predictive processing, on the foundations of our critical ground-clearing. Our suggestions, however, generalise and do not require any adherence to, or even comprehension of, predictive processing.

A major part of our worry for predictive processing was that, while it gives easy accounts of imagery, which may indeed be ubiquitous in mental life, imagery is not imagination. This is our starting point here: that imagery is not sufficient for imagination (and it is arguably not necessary either). What sorts of things do we want to grant the lofty accolade of “imagination” or of that which is “imaginative”?

Some forms of imagination (some acts of imagining) are rather mundane. Embodied or spatial practical simulations. Can I jump over that gap? Can I fit that sofa through that doorway? These simulations are what they are because of how they are embedded in the practicalities of life. This realisation needs to be accommodated, and probably can be. But the real challenge comes from more radical departures from reality. Indeed, these are not exotic forms of imagination: these are what we canonically think of as imaginative endeavours! The more mundane mental exercises are arguably capturable without mentioning imagination, as, for example, planning or thinking. In what follows, when we speak of imagination, we mean mental simulation that is aptly describable as imaginative.

Here is where we get onto our central suggestion: to account for this imaginative imagining, we need to think about the mind’s self-cueing with external, material symbols, narratives, and artifacts. This raises a conundrum, and also paves the way for quite a radical suggestion that echoes the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygostky (Vygostky 1934/2012, see also Fernyhough 1996). The conundrum is as follows. What came first: external creative practices or internal acts of imagination? It is natural to see imagination as some special mental faculty that provides the necessary spark for being creative. It is usually seen as an innate capacity that is the source of inspiration for creative practices. We think of authors imaginatively plotting out the course of their novels in their minds before writing them, or artists first imaginatively generating mental images of the work in their mind’s eye before committing them to paper. These natural conceptions of the creative process may be true in some sense when we consider the already developed imaginer, but they tell us little of where the imagination and the capacity for creativity comes from. We tend to see imagination as preceding creativity, with imagination, in general, being a precursor for external creativity, and individual creative acts being caused by individual episodes of imagination.

The radical suggestion we want to pursue is that the more correct answer is to say that external creative practices came first. External creative practices are, in general, a precursor to the capacity to imagine, and individual episodes of imagination are caused by creative acts (either external or simulated). However, that may be a misleading way of putting things because creative acts, in a very real sense, constitute imagination. The “internal” act of imagining is not a faculty that is causally acquired in virtue of the external training. It is that creative engagement with external stuff or internalised simulation of such creative engagement. In a recent Junkyard post, Matthew MacKisack has made the case that we should understand imagination as being extended in this way for the case of artists with aphantasia, who use the page as a substitute for their mind’s eye. We want to go further and suggest that external media play this role in the case of “normal” imaginers too, and, insofar as there is purely internal imagination, it is an internalised, simulated “mind’s page”, rather than a mind’s eye.

Our working hypothesis is that we learn to imagine by first playing with external representational media. Imagination is not innate but is the result of enculturation, whereby interaction with external media and other cognitive technologies reshapes the brain giving rise to novel capacities (See Menary 2018; Menary & Gillett 2016). Just as reading or arithmetic may be near ubiquitous capacities that are nonetheless culturally mediated (Dehaene 2010; Menary 2015), so too imagining may be something that emerges in almost all humans through our interactions with culturally-transmitted cognitive technologies. As Regina Fabry has highlighted (2018), our narrative practices may be another example of something enculturated, and as well as helping to explain narrative accounts of folk-psychology and self-understanding, the enculturation that results from our engagement with narrative may also help to, in part, explain our capacity for imaginative imagining.

How might this work? We engage in creative practices that we are taught by our caregivers, teachers and peers. We experiment with putting words together in novel ways or doodling new forms on the page, and this playful exploration gives rise to new external representations that can drive our mental content to previously inaccessible regions. Many of the important imagination-generating representations that we make in the world need not be carefully controlled by our intentions. The constraints of the material that we’re engaged with and slips or errors in our creative activities can be just as important in steering our imagination.

We won’t say much about why we favour this hypothesis here. At the very least, we see it as worth exploring as a relatively unexplored and potentially fruitful line of thought. Instead, we’ll look at some of the potential implications of such a view for the philosophy of imagination.

One implication is that we should be cautious in assuming any homogenous view of how the imagination works. It may be that imagination works very differently depending on the kind of creative practice that has helped to form one’s imaginative capacities. This may mean that two instances of imagining in a particular individual have very different bases and characteristics. It may also lead us to expect cultural differences across space and time in terms of how and perhaps even whether people imagine, based on the kinds of creative practices that tend to be taught and encouraged and the kinds of material available to engage in such practices. We should expect a wide variety of possible developmental trajectories for the imagination, with a range of different destinations, and we should expect variation in imagination to be in some way related to one’s upbringing and the specific cultural milieu one developed within.

A further implication is that we should, as Amy Kind (2020) has suggested, understand imagination as a kind of skill. However, unlike Kind, we don’t think imagination should be seen as a primary skill but as dependent on one’s other skills. What, whether, and how well one can imagine will depend on one’s skill at external creative practices (or internal simulation of such practices). As mentioned, this may mean that a particular individual has a mixture of imaginative skills. They may, for example, be particularly skilled at imagination supported by their capacity for painting but less so at imagination supported by their capacity for wordplay. The relationship between skill in creating external representations and the corresponding skill at imagination may also be complex. For example, someone blessed with an ability to perfectly recreate images of scenes they’ve seen may lack the requisite capacity for error that can spark imaginative imagination.

A further, and perhaps the most important, implication of the approach we favour is that it highlights the importance of encouraging children to engage in creative activities and of education in the arts more broadly. As Martha Nussbaum argues (Nussbaum 1998), engagement with the humanities is an integral part of cultivating our “narrative imagination”, which is itself a key ingredient in us becoming compassionate, humane and imaginative citizens of the world. Recent years have seen a Gradgrindian obsession amongst policy makers for emphasising the importance of STEM subjects, accompanied by a diminishing respect for the importance of arts education. At the same time, many wonder how to educate scientists and engineers to think imaginatively. If we are right, then this separation of arts and science education is part of the problem, since if imagination is dependent on engaging in and with external creative practices, then arts education is invaluable, regardless of whether one is more interested in scientific or cultural outputs.

References

Dehaene, S. (2010). Reading in the brain: The new science of how we read. Penguin Group USA.

Fabry, R. E. (2018). Enculturation and narrative practices. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 17(5), 911-937.

Fernyhough, C. (1996). The dialogic mind: A dialogic approach to the higher mental functions. New ideas in Psychology, 14(1), 47-62.

Jones, M., & Wilkinson, S. (2020). From Prediction to Imagination. In Abraham (Ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination (pp. 94-110). Cambridge University Press.

Kind, A. (2020). The Skill of Imagination. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill And Expertise (pp. 335-346). Routledge.

Menary, R. (2015). Mathematical cognition: a case of enculturation. In Open MIND (pp. 1-20). MIND Group.

Menary, R. (2018). Cognitive integration: how culture transforms us and extends our cognitive capabilities. In Newen, De Bruin, & Gallagher (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (pp. 187-216). Oxford University Press.

Menary, R., & Gillett, A. J. (2016). Embodying culture: Integrated cognitive systems and cultural evolution. In The Routledge handbook of philosophy of the social mind (pp. 88-103). Routledge.

Nussbaum, M. C. (1998). Poetic justice: The literary imagination and public life. Political Theory, 26(4), 557-583.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/2012). Thought and language. MIT press.