Imagination is the ability to form mental images. It helps providing meaning to
experience and understanding to knowledge; it is a fundamental facility through which
people make sense of the world,[1][2][3] and it also
plays a key role in the learning process.[1][4] A basic training for imagination is the listening to storytelling (narrative),[1][5]
in which the exactness of the chosen words is the fundamental factor to 'evoke worlds'.[6]
It is accepted as the innate ability and process to invent partial or complete personal
realms within the mind from elements derived from sense perceptions of the shared world.[citation needed] The term is technically used in
psychology for the process of reviving in the mind
percepts of objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts
with that of ordinary language, 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. Imagined images are seen with the "mind's
eye".
One hypothesis for the evolution of human imagination is that it allowed conscious
beings to solve problems (and hence increase an individual's fitness) by use of mental
simulation.
Description
The common use of the term is for the process of forming in the mind new images which have not been previously experienced, or
at least only partially or in different combinations. Some typical examples follow:
Imagination in this sense, not being limited to the acquisition of exact knowledge by the requirements of practical necessity,
is, up to a certain point, free from objective restraints. The ability to imagine one's self in another person's place is very
important to social relations and understanding. (Some psychiatrists suspect this is beyond the grasp of a sociopath. All they know is the gratification of personal pleasure).
In various spheres, however, even imagination is in practice limited: thus a man whose imaginations do violence to the
elementary laws of thought, or to the necessary principles of practical possibility, or to the reasonable probabilities of a given case is regarded as insane.
The same limitations beset imagination in the field of scientific hypothesis. Progress in scientific research is due largely to provisional explanations which are constructed
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 create theories and ideas based on functions. Taking objects from
real perceptions, the imagination uses complex IF-functions to create new or revised ideas. This part of the mind is vital to
developing better and easier ways to accomplish old and new tasks. These experimented 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.
Imagination vs. belief
Imagination differs fundamentally from belief because the subject understands that what is personally invented by the mind
does not necessarily impact the course of action taken in the apparently shared world while beliefs are part of what one holds as
truths about both the shared and personal worlds. The play of imagination, apart from the obvious limitations (e.g. of avoiding
explicit self-contradiction), is conditioned only by the general trend of the mind at a given moment. Belief, on the other hand,
is immediately related to practical activity: it is perfectly possible to imagine oneself a millionaire, but unless one believes
it one does not, therefore, act as such. Belief endeavours to conform to the subjects experienced conditions or faith in the
possibility of those conditions; whereas imagination as such is specifically free. The dividing line between imagination and
belief varies widely in different stages of technological development. Thus someone from a primitive culture who is ill frames an
ideal reconstruction of the causes of his illness, and attributes it to the hostile magic of an enemy based on faith and
tradition rather than science. In ignorance of the science of pathology the subject is satisfied with this explanation, and
actually believes in it, sometimes to the point of death, due to what is known as the nocebo effect.
It follows that the learned distinction between imagination and belief depends in practice on religion, tradition, and
culture.
Imagination as a reality
The world as experienced is actually an interpretation of data apparently arriving from the senses, as such it is perceived as
real by contrast to most thoughts and imaginings. This difference is only one of degree and can be altered by several historic
causes, namely changes to brain chemistry, hypnosis or other altered states of consciousness, meditation, many hallucinogenic drugs, and electricity
applied directly to specific parts of the brain. The difference between imagined and perceived real can be so imperceptible as to
cause acute states of psychosis. Many mental illnesses can be attributed to this inability to
distinguish between the sensed and the internally created worlds. Some cultures and traditions even view the apparently shared
world as an illusion of the mind as with the Buddhist maya or go to the opposite extreme and
accept the imagined and dreamed realms as of equal validity to the apparently shared world as the Australian Aborigines do with
their concept of dreamtime.
Imagination, because of having freedom from external limitations, can often become a source of real pleasure and unnecessary pain. A person of vivid imagination
often suffers acutely from the imagined perils besetting friends, relatives, or even strangers such as celebrities. Also
crippling fear can be seen as taking an imagined painful future too
seriously.
Imagination can also produce some symptoms of real illnesses. In some cases, they can seem so "real" that specific physical
manifestations occur such as rashes and bruises appearing on the skin, as though imagination had passed into belief or the events
imagined were actually in progress. See, for example, psychosomatic illness and
folie a deux.
It has also been proposed the the whole of human cognition is based upon imagination. That is, nothing that we perceive is
purely observation but all is a morph between sense and imagination.
Imagination preceding reality
When two existing perceptions are combined within the mind the resultant third perception referred to as its synthesis and on occasion a fourth called the antithesis, which at that
point only exists as part of the imagination, can often become the inspiration for a new invention or technique[citation needed].
Notes
References
- Egan, Kieran (1992). Imagination in Teaching and Learning. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
- 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.
- Sutton-Smith, Brian. (1988). In Search of the Imagination. In K. Egan and D. Nadaner (Eds.), Imagination and
Education. New York, Teachers College Press.
A philosopher for whom imagination is a central concept is John Sallis. See in
particular:
- John Sallis, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (2000)
- John Sallis, Spacings—Of Reason and Imagination. In Texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel
(1987)
See also
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