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Imagination and Experience: Philosophical Explorations

Today's post is by Ingrid Vendrell Ferran (University of Marburg) and Christiana Werner (University of Duisburg-Essen) about their recently edited book, Imagination and Experience: Philosophical Explorations (Routledge 2024).

Recent approaches in philosophy of mind and epistemology have shown a growing interest in examining the nature of phenomenal knowledge and the epistemic value of having an experience. The basic idea in these debates has been that having an experience has a unique character and provides the experiencer with a kind of knowledge which otherwise cannot be achieved. As expressed by an ancient proverb: “Experience is the best teacher.” That there is a specific type of knowledge we can only gain by means of experience is a claim defended in the debate about the mind–body problem and consciousness (e.g., Nagel 1974; Jackson 1982), and in the debate on the so-called “knowledge argument” in particular. 

Christiana Werner

Simultaneously, the philosophy of imagination has emerged as a new field of research. That we can only imagine what we have experienced before is a widespread view on imagination and was advocated by prominent philosophers of the last century, such as Wittgenstein (1989) and Sartre (2010). However, while in previous decades the role of imagining for the achievement of knowledge was regarded with scepticism, in recent debates on imagination, philosophers such as Kind (e.g., 2020) have challenged the traditional consensus and argued that we can imagine beyond the limits of past experiences. Indeed, imagination can provide knowledge of different kinds. 

Ingrid Vendrell Ferran

This volume aims at bringing together these two philosophical areas of research. The main impulse to do so comes from new arguments in manifold philosophical debates such as on the mind–body problem, feminist philosophy, the philosophy of oppression, epistemic ontology, and empathy. These debates suggest the necessity of examining how the two areas of research interrelate and can enrich each other. Our book gathers together these two fields and, in so doing, fills a lacuna in the current research. 

The chapters of the volume examine topics related to the overlap and intersection of both areas. In particular, it explores ontological, epistemological, phenomenological, psychological, and intersubjective issues common to both areas as well as the different ways in which philosophical analyses of experience can enrich our understanding of imagination and vice versa. The volume is divided into four main parts. The first consists of novel contributions to epistemic issues written by Frank Jackson, Uriah Kriegel, Yuri Cath, and Margherita Arcangeli regarding how imagination contributes to obtaining knowledge of an experience. The second part which contains contributions by Peter Langland-Hassan, Alon Chasid, Anna Ichino, Bence Nanay, and Alberto Voltolini is concerned with the ontology and the normativity of imagination and experience. The third part which focuses on a series of issues regarding the phenomenology of imaginative experiences contains chapters written by Martina Fürst, Christiana Werner, Nick Wiltsher, Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, Julien Bugnon and Martine Nida-Rümelin. The final part focuses on the role of imagining in the experience of other minds. The contributors of this last part of the volume are Julien Bugnon, Martine Nida-Rümelin, Heidi L. Maibom, Gerson Reuter, Matthias Vogel, Karsten R. Stueber, Amy Kind, and Thimothy Williamson.

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