Christine J. Thomas is an associate professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. Her research focuses on topics and authors in Ancient Greek Philosophy.
A post by Christine J. Thomas
What are you to do? You are drawn to the last piece of triple chocolate layer cake. Your mouth waters as you imagine savoring the sweet, creamy icing. The problem? You promised this piece to your daughter. And when you visualize confessing your indulgence to her, you feel a twinge of guilt. In the end, given the principled and emotionally intelligent person that you are, you opt to have fruit for dessert.
Plato’s dramatization of your soul’s inner goings-on would employ his regular actors: appetite, spirit, and reason. But he also appreciates a need for some lesser-known talents: a painter and the liver (see below). An expanded cast is Plato’s way of recognizing a complicated psychology in which imagination supports human cognition and action.
My hope with this post is to advertise some intriguing and rich moments in Plato’s psychology to those interested in imagination. I am also keen to promote Plato’s positive view that affect-laden imaginings are essential to practical success.
Philebus
Drawing especially on the Philebus and Timaeus, recent scholarship accords imagination a central role in Plato’s psychology of agency (Lorenz, Moss, Wilburn, Vogt). The Philebus introduces imagination when it likens the formation of mental representations to the production of an illustrated book.[1] At 38e-40e, at least some judgements are said to draw on memory, perception, and functional roles assigned to a soul’s “scribe” and to its “painter.” Socrates reports “when memory concurs with perceptions and other related affections, it seems to me to inscribe words in our soul, as it were” (39a1-7). In addition, a painter follows the scribe and “draws images (eikonas) in the soul of the things spoken of” (39b6-7) so that the individual “sees in himself the images” (39c1). While taking a walk outside, for example, you might perceive something situated under a tree. If you mistakenly judge that what you see is a statue when in fact it is a living person, the scribe records something false in your soul. The painter’s ensuing image captures the content of that judgement, including corresponding inaccuracies (38c-e).
But mental pictures based on immediate, even if mistaken, perceptual judgements aren’t the only sorts of illustrations supplied by the painter. The images that arise in a soul can concern the past, present, or future (39d7-e2). Consider someone who hopes to come into possession of an enormous amount of gold. Socrates suggests that the individual “sees an inner picture of himself, beside himself with delight” (40a10-12). And “the same account holds in the case of fear, spirited anger, and everything of that sort” (40e2-3). Hopes and fears, and expectations for the future generally, are depicted in “painted images.” And the experience of those images is affect-laden in at least two ways. The images represent positive or negative affect and they are accompanied by anticipatory feelings of pleasure or pain (32b9-c2, 39d7-e2). Recall your discomfort at the mere prospect of disclosing a peccadillo to your disappointed daughter.
Unlike Aristotle, Plato doesn’t explicitly argue to distinguish imagination as a unique faculty in a larger cognitive architecture. Rather, texts rich in psychological theorizing, like those from the Philebus, supply suggestive grounds for assigning imagination an important role. Imagination draws on memory and perception and other psychological states to create mental images. Many of those representations allow souls to picture themselves in merely possible situations. Indeed, Socrates notes that human beings are full of expectations – future-oriented states – for all sorts of things throughout their lifetimes (39e4-6). Imagination is essential to envisioning the possibilities targeted by those expectations. And depicted affect, combined with the anticipatory feelings constituting expectations, help agents to assign positive or negative values to potential future outcomes. When I imagine participating in tomorrow’s race, for example, the image depicting my hope for success might issue in more present pleasure than my imagined fear of failure issues in present pain. Or vice versa. By focusing on expectations, the Philebus forges a link between its conception of agency and the role of imagination (Vogt). Agency is future-oriented and importantly affective. Imagination is essential to depicting the future and encourages affect. So, imagination is essential to agency.
Timaeus
Among its many and varied accomplishments, the Timaeus provides accounts of how the psychological states of an explicitly tripartite soul are physically realized. The embodied soul incorporates one rational, immortal part along with two nonrational, mortal parts. Drawing on parallels with the Republic, we can characterize the soul’s three parts in some detail. The rational part is able to calculate, to plan, and to deliberate about what is best for the whole soul; it pursues truth and wisdom, and its cognitive representations, whether derived ultimately from perception or from reason alone, are linguistic (i.e. propositional). The nonrational parts have access to memories and perceptual experiences, including pains and pleasures. They can also experience forward-looking states such as fear, confidence, and hope (69c5-d6). Like reason, each of the nonrational parts has its own characteristic motivating conditions and natural ends. Spirit aims at honor, victory, and esteem; it “shares in courage and anger” and is an ally to reason in controlling appetite (70a2-3). Appetite has the role of securing basic bodily health; it is the home of desires for food, drink, and sex (70d7-8). Both nonrational parts accept appearances grounded in perception and memory without critical scrutiny, and their psychological responses are formed accordingly (Moss). Reason alone is able critically to reflect so as to recognize when the contents of perceptual appearances might depart from truth. And reason alone deliberates about which courses of action might be all-things-considered best.
Reason’s preferences about which actions ought to be pursued or avoided are revealed to the nonrational parts and promoted by means of commands, threats, and exhortations. Timaeus claims that the best part of the soul is in charge when “everything in the body that is perceptive” receives reason’s messages and “listens and follows along completely” (70b4-70c1). The fact that reason’s directives are aimed at “everything in the body that is perceptive” is important. Both nonrational parts of the soul are perceptive. And since appetite at least is without belief or reason (77b3-6), it won’t understand reason’s linguistic messages unless they are translated into a form accessible to it, namely into the perceptual “images and appearances” it finds especially enticing (71a3-5).
The physiological mechanisms of intra-psychic communication are fascinating and complex. Here I offer a partial and oversimplified reconstruction (see Lorenz and Wilburn for more detail). Reason relies on the force, power, and inspiration of its thoughts to issue directives to the other parts of the soul (71b3-c4). When it aims a thought toward appetite, for example, the content of reason’s message is encoded into blood and transmitted throughout the body. The linguistic message is accompanied by – or perhaps better, transformed into – a “painted appearance” on the smooth, mirror-like surface of the liver (71b-72d). The liver contracts and releases unpleasant bile in cases where the content of the image on its surface is frightening. When the content of the image is gentle, the liver relaxes and releases sweetness. Presumably the frightening or gentle images include depictions of the possible futures reason deems either best avoided or best pursued. Ideally, appetite receives reason’s messages, experiences either some pleasure or some pain, and forms its own desires or aversions appropriately oriented to the different courses of action.
Like the Philebus, the Timaeus characterizes a psychology in which the contents of linguistic judgments are translated into compelling images. In the Timaeus, those images are required if a full accounting of the formation of nonrational motivations is to be supplied by the psychology. To be sure, imaginings play a role in representing what sorts of futures might be in store for you depending on which courses of action you pursue. But, importantly, images also depict the actions reason declares you ought to pursue or to avoid. These sorts of evaluative images help to secure novel, nonrational motivations to act accordingly. Reason makes use of imagination, then, to deliver its propaganda to the nonrational parts of the soul.
So now, back to you and your dessert. On Plato’s analysis, as you imagine enjoying the cake, you experience pleasure and your appetitive desire is strengthened. On the other hand, as your soul’s painter depicts your daughter’s dismay, your shame manifests a spirited aversion. Reason steps in to announce “One ought to keep one’s promises. Stand down appetite.” The message resounds throughout the circulation system and, as your liver contracts and secretes bile, an image arises on its surface. It’s you, grimacing, clutching your stomach, and turning green with nausea after having eaten some chocolate cake.
Notes
[1] The role assigned to imagination may or may not amount to a commitment to a distinct attitude or faculty. An appeal to episodes of imagining, where the deep mechanisms grounding such episodes is left somewhat open, could be sufficient to capture what Plato has in mind.
References
Delcomminette, S. (2003). ‘False Pleasures, Appearances, and Imagination in the Philebus.’ Phronesis 48, 215-37.
Lorenz, H. (2012). ‘The Cognition of Appetite in Plato’s Timaeus.’ In Barney, Brennan, and Britain (eds.) Plato and the Divided Self, 238-58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moss, J. (2012). ‘Pictures and Passions in the Timaeus and Philebus.’ In Barney, Brennan, and Britain (eds.) Plato and the Divided Self, 259-80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thaler, N. (2015). ‘Plato on the Philosophical Benefits of Musical Education.’ Phronesis 60, 410-435.
Thein, K. (2012). ‘Imagination, Self-Awareness, and Modal Thought at Philebus 39-40.’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 42, 109-49.
Vogt, K. (2017). ‘Imagining Good Future States: Hope and Truth in Plato’s Philebus.’ In Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (eds.) Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill, 34-49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wilburn, J. (2014). ‘The Spirited Part of the Soul in Plato’s Timaeus.’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 52.4, 627-52.