Nick Wiltsher currently works at Uppsala University, though he's moving to St Andrews in the summer. He still says he's writing a book on imagination.
A post by Nick Wiltsher
Here are three related claims to which I’m increasingly sympathetic:
(1) Imagination has no distinctive epistemic ends.
(2) The epistemic ends that can be pursued using imagination are better achieved by other means.
(3) There is, all the same, value in using imagination to pursue (some) epistemic ends.
Claim (3) only matters if claims (1) and (2) stand up. So let’s see if they do.
(1) Imagination has no distinctive epistemic ends.
A “distinctive epistemic end” is a goal such as knowledge, understanding, or wisdom that can only be achieved via imagination. This might be a distinctive type of end: for example, perhaps there’s a special kind of understanding that can only be achieved via imaginative empathy. Or it might be a distinctive subject matter: perhaps knowledge of what’s going on in other people’s minds is only accessible via imagination.
For the claim to be remotely credible, we have to set aside those views of imagination on which it is by definition an epistemic mode of thought; for example, views on which the principal or sole use of imagination is in counterfactual or hypothetical reasoning. So let’s set those aside. We should also set aside views on imagination on which it is by definition not epistemic: for example, views on which imagination proper pertains only to creative activities.
I’m left with two connected hunches about putative epistemic ends of imagination. They don’t yet add up to a general argument for the claim, but I’m working on it.
Hunch one: whenever the claim is that imagination furnishes a grasp of a particular, distinctive subject matter, it’s relatively controversial that this grasp is achieved at all by imagining, still more so that it can only be achieved that way. Take mind-reading: the position that imagining (or simulation) is the means by which we do this is directly opposed by the equally credible theory-theory position, and also by positions appealing to direct perception of mental contents. Or think of knowledge of possibilities: although some do think that this is uniquely imagination’s domain, the more popular position is that the modal knowledge to which imagination allows access can also be acquired in other ways.
Hunch two: whenever the claim is that imagination is the unique route to a special type of epistemic end, the only way to satisfactorily characterise that end is by its relation to imagination. This generates a tight circle of definition that comes close to tautology and gives us little independent grasp of what the alleged epistemic end is meant to be. For example, someone might think of empathetic understanding as the distinctive epistemic end of empathy, and empathy as the imaginative process of achieving empathetic understanding. That’s obviously not a very informative way of thinking. But as soon as you provide a more general characterisation of the putative end of imagination, hunch one looms: if empathic understanding is just normal understanding of a particular subject matter, namely what it’s like to be someone else, it’s unclear that imagination is the only way to get there (you could, after all, just ask them).
Now, it seems to me that a good number of people writing on epistemic imagining really do think that the ends they’re discussing are proprietary to imagining. But it also seems that a good number are concerned with a related, weaker idea: that imagination is a really good way of getting to certain epistemic ends, granted that they could be reached in other ways. This brings us to claim (2).
(2) The epistemic ends that can be pursued using imagination are better achieved by other means.
The relevant senses of better or worse achievement here relate to the usual aims of epistemic inquiry. Customarily, we want to believe only true things; arguably, we want to maximise the number of (interesting, relevant) true things we believe. The more knowledge (or understanding, or whatever) we can amass, the more easily and quickly, with the highest degree of certainty or reliability, the better. A means of acquiring knowledge is better to the extent that it’s more reliable and more efficient. My claim is that imagination is less reliable and less efficient than other means of achieving the same epistemic ends.
Again, two hunches. One: imagination is particular and conscious. It’s particular, in that imagining involves manifesting individual situations, events, experiences, or what have you: it doesn’t deal in generalities (though it does deal in indeterminacies). It’s conscious, in that imagining is an intentionally guided process whose operations are the focus of mental attention. Particularity and conscious control make for inefficiency. Mental processes that are under conscious control are slow, tricky, and liable to error if not done well—and frequently they aren’t. Meanwhile, the particulars manifested by imagination require interpretation, and perhaps abstraction along with further particulars, to achieve the status of useful knowledge or understanding. Contrary to cliché, imagination only gets you halfway.
Hunch two: I’m persistently bugged by the thought that, for many epistemic ends, it’s surprisingly hard to spell out why one actually needs to do some imagining once the material is in place that allows one to do so. Take, again, empathetic understanding. Suppose that, to achieve this, one needs to empathise; suppose that, to empathise, one needs to know a fair bit about the person you’re empathising with. What, then, do we gain by imagining—what do we learn that wasn’t already implicit in what we knew? (compare here the idea that we can’t really learn much from sensory imagining, because what’s presented is already determined by the intentions behind the presenting.)
If claims (1) and (2) are correct, the natural conclusion to draw might be that the valuable uses of imagination are not epistemic. But that’s not the conclusion I want to draw; I want to contend that . . .
(3) . . .there is, all the same, value in using imagination to pursue (some) epistemic ends.
The more cautious conclusion to draw from the above is that, insofar as imagination is valuable in pursuit of epistemic ends, it’s not valuable as a way of achieving those ends. Rather, the value of epistemic imagining must have to do with the fact that one is using imagination to pursue epistemic ends; the value inheres in the process, not in the product.
I can think of several possible sources of value in the use of imagination for epistemic ends. Some are more or less intrinsic to the process: things that are valuable about imagining itself. It might, for example, be pleasurable to imagine one’s way to an epistemic end, rather than to arrive there more efficiently. Or perhaps exercising authority and control over one’s epistemic endeavours is valuable in a way that simply accepting testimony is not. Some others are extrinsic or instrumental sources of value that depend upon the nature of the imaginative process used to achieve them. For example, in cases such as empathy, I wonder whether the value is not really to do with the epistemic end of gaining some sort of understanding, but rather with the care for and focus on the subject of one’s attention that is inherent in the attempt to imagine their particular perspective.
One might complain that at least some of these are essentially just valuable things about conscious deliberate thought more generally, but I don’t mind that complaint, because I think imagination is precisely a type of conscious deliberate thought. So it should be no surprise that imagination’s value is at least in part conscious thought’s value too.
A more general complaint one might have about all this is that, by questioning imagination’s status as an epistemically efficacious activity and instead locating its value in such frivolities as pleasure, or nebulous notions of care, I’m undermining the importance of imagination. But I think the opposite is the case. This complaint is informed by a sort of managerial theory of mind, where a putative mental kind earns its place in the organisation chart if it makes an efficient, productive contribution to running things, and faces redundancy if it spends most of its time self-indulgently messing around (you can sometimes glimpse the same sort of theory of mind lurking behind work in philosophy of emotion). But we can resist this theory, and so, against the complaint that it informs, we might think that it’s exactly the indulgent messing around, the frivolous enjoyment, the superfluous care and attention, that makes imagination important; for indulgences and frivolities and superfluities are more fundamental to being a fulfilled human than efficient pursuit of epistemic ends.