Imagination and Social Perspectives

Approaches from Phenomenology and Psychopathology

Michela Summa, Thomas Fuchs, Luca Vanzago, Michela Summa, Thomas Fuchs, Luca Vanzago

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138221000
• eBook ISBN: 9781315411514
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

Our experience of other individuals as minded beings goes hand in hand with the awareness that they have a unique epistemic and emotional perspective on the experienced objects and situations. The same object can be seen from many different points of view, an event can awaken different emotional reactions in different individuals, and our position-takings can in part be mediated by our belonging to some social or cultural groups. All these phenomena can be described by referring to the metaphor of perspective. Assuming that there are different, and irreducible, perspectives we can take on the experienced world, and on others as experiencing the same world, the phenomenon of mutual understanding can consistently be understood in terms of perspectival flexibility. This edited volume investigates the different processes in which perspectival flexibility occurs in social life and particularly focuses on the constitutive role of imagination in such processes. It includes original works in philosophy and psychopathology showing how perspectival flexibility and social cognition are grounded on the interplay of direct perception and imagination.

1 Imagination and Social Perspectives

Approaches from Phenomenology and Psychopathology

Michela Summa, Thomas Fuchs, and Luca Vanzago

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in both imagination and the meaning and formation of social perspectives. This interest arose in such different fields as phenomenology, the philosophy of mind, epistemology, aesthetics, psychopathology, developmental psychology and social psychology. This volume aims to offer a contribution mainly focused on the structures and the meaning of the interplay between imaginative and social experience, thereby particularly resorting, as the subtitle indicates, to phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology as methodological and epistemic approaches. The aim of this introductory chapter is to discuss how the here published studies fill some of the gaps in the available research on imagination and social perspectives and thus pave the way for future investigations. We will particularly emphasize the resources of the phenomenological method for the inquiry into these issues, as well as the empirical and theoretical impact of the insights stemming from phenomenologically informed psychopathology for a refined understanding of both imaginative and social phenomena—and of their interconnections.

Section (1) addresses some of the crucial issues discussed in more and less recent approaches to imagination, focusing on the relation between imagination and perception, on the distinction between our experience of what is real and of what is imagined, and on the idea of “freedom” of imagination. Section (2) discusses the various ways in which imagination is connected to social perspectives. Referring to the contributions published in this volume, we will address the need to differentiate several meanings that the “sociality” of perspectives, and of imagination, can assume, and this will allow us to reassess both the potentialities and the limits of the dominant epistemic orientation of current research in this field.

1. Imagination: A Phenomenological View

When it comes to introducing the topic of imagination, one is immediately confronted with a plurality of—sometimes irreconcilable—views that seem to deem to failure any attempt of a systematic definition. Throughout the history of philosophy, imagination has been variously considered, among others, as a representational state of mind, as a form of sensible knowledge, as the inner “visualizing” of mental images, as a modification of perception, as a psychic faculty or source of knowledge, as a disposition, or as an intentional act. Given this plurality and diversity of accounts, it seems that we can subscribe to P. F. Strawson’s (1974, 82) remark stating that the term “imagination” and its cognates make up such a “diverse and scattered family” that even the concept of ‘family’ may seem too definite to address them.¹

Accordingly, it comes as no surprise that researchers have often given up the attempt of providing a systematic definition of what imagination is and rather tend to assume a “negative”—or, maybe better, “differential”—approach: it is easier to begin by clarifying what imagination is not than to try to univocally define what it is. This approach is “differential” since it proceeds by elaborating on what distinguishes imagining from other kinds of mental states, events, or faculties. Although such a differential strategy is rather common throughout the history of philosophy, it does not seem to allow us to classify imagination as a mental state, a mental event, or a faculty. Yet, the advantage of this approach is that it allows us at least to identify clusters of distinctive features of imagining and thus also to recognize the guiding threads that any investigation of imaginative experience should follow. This becomes clearer if we consider the rather widespread consensus—at least in recent research—on some claims concerning imagination and its accomplishments among authors coming from different philosophical traditions and even from different disciplines. Kind (2016) identifies four major points of convergence:

1. (i) Not every ordinary use of the concept ‘imagination’ corresponds to something we imagine. For instance, if we use the term ‘imagining’ as synonymous of ‘supposing,’ or of entertaining a mistaken belief, this does not necessarily mean that we perform the activity of imagining what we suppose or mistakenly believe. Imagining sensu stricto designates a more specific kind of mental or psychic activity. In general terms, we can speak, with Gendler (2010, 179f, 204f.), of a particular kind of subjective engagement distinguishing imagination from mere supposition. Such engagement is certainly required as soon as we begin to understand imagination phenomenologically as an intuitive experience.²
2. (ii) Imaginings are specific and irreducible states—or, as we would rather say, specific and irreducible activities. As such, they cannot be properly considered as deriving from other mental states, such as perception or supposition. Current researchers, thus, tend to reject, on the one hand, Hume’s (2000, 7f.) suggestion that the difference between imagination and perception is only a matter of their different degree of vivacity. On the other hand, they also depart from both pictorialist accounts—which consider imagining (understood as mental imagery) as the “seeing” of an inner image (Kosslyn 1980, 1994)—and from propositional accounts, which derive imagining (mental imagery) from some kind of personal or subpersonal judgmental coding (see Pylyshyn 2002; Thomas 2014; Tye 1991).
3. (iii) Imagination is intentional. Within the philosophy of mind, this claim is generally understood as meaning that imagination always has some intentional content. It goes without saying, however, that the precise qualification of this trait essentially varies according to the notion of intentionality and of intentional content one endorses. From a phenomenological perspective, as we will see, this claim also has farther reaching implications that concern the status of imagination in relation to other kinds of experience. Yet, if we stay general for the moment, there is consensus on the assumption that imagination, as intentional experience, is neutral with respect to the existence of the intended object or state of affairs. This also has several implications, but let us mention here just two: first, inquiries into imagination generally bracket all questions concerning the imaginer’s belief in the existence of what s/he imagines; secondly, imagination is oriented at possibilities—it is simulated experience of possibilities (Jansen 2005, 2016).
4. (iv) Imagination, consistent with what has been said in (iii), is not constrained by what is real and does not have any immediate commitment to truthfulness. Although this should be further qualified, we can agree on the basic idea that we can imagine something which is neither real nor true. This is often associated with the “freedom” of imagination, whereby such freedom is understood as independency from of the constraints that reality imposes upon perception, on experiential judgments, and on any science aiming at enriching our knowledge of what we take to be real. Yet, while being an almost commonplace assumption, the idea of freedom of imagination should not be taken too naively: not only, indeed, are there levels and degrees of freedom, but, more importantly, there are both essential and empirical limits to it.

Emphasizing the difficulties—if not the impossibility of success—of any attempt to provide a univocal and positive definition of imagination does not mean that we should also give up the aim of clarifying the structures and dynamics of imaginative activities. And indeed, one of the major accomplishments of the phenomenology of imagination consists in its proposal of a differential descriptive account of imaginative experiences, which maintains the focus on their structures and dynamics, independently of any classification of such experiences in terms of faculty psychology, functionalism, modularity, or other pre-defined accounts of the mind. The focus on the intentional structures allows us to shed light on the interplay between imaginative and other mental activities, in a way that does not seem to be accessible to other kinds of taxonomic or “boxological”³ classifications of mental states, faculties, and/or mental events.

For instance, while maintaining that perceiving and imagining are distinguished—at least insofar as the former posits its object as existent and the latter is neutral with respect to the positing of its objects as existing, non-existing, doubtful, etc.—we can show why the apprehension of a concrete image (e.g., a painting on the wall or a photograph) can neither be classified as an act of pure imagination (“phantasy” in Husserl’s terminology), nor as a mere act of perception, but rather structurally entails moments of perception and of imaginative presentification—and, in some cases, also of semiotic indication (cf. Wiesing 2005, 37–80). Also, we can understand how imagining, while being not only different, but also “parallel” to perception, can nevertheless be joined with perception in some specific instances: besides the case of image consciousness, in perceptual imagining and in the experience of fictionality—this is discussed in Chapters 3 (Summa) and 4 (Feloj) in this volume. Finally, we can clarify how, while being a basic and primarily intuitive experience, imagination can be integrated with and modified by judgmental and propositional thinking.

Against this background, what we wish to draw particular attention to are two main issues discussed in the phenomenological literature on imagination, and taken up in several contributions in this book: first, the problem of the continuity/discontinuity between what we imagine and what we take to be real and, more generally, the question as to whether and how our experience of reality impacts on our imaginative experience and vice versa (1.1.); and secondly, the above-mentioned question concerning the freedom of imaginative experience and its limitations (1.2.).

1.1. Imagination, Perception, and Reality

It should be emphasized once more that both the concepts of ‘perception’ and of ‘imagination’ need to be historically contextualized and that they generally mirror the single author’s approach to psychology, the concept of mind, and also metaphysics. For instance, as Bernet shows in Chapter 8 of this volume, what Spinoza means by ‘imagination’ as the first and most basic kind of knowledge is something that includes sensations, mental imagery, and modes of bodily representation (see also Garrett 2008)—and that, as such, also underlies our experience of others. Yet, even if we stay within the phenomenological tradition, the approaches to imagination tend to diverge in several ways, and one of the crucial points of divergence precisely concerns the relation between imagination and perception (see Casey 2000, 127f.).

To some extent, such divergences stem from terminological issues, and these could probably be settled by a more precise qualification of the concepts we use. While Husserl, for example, maintains that imagining and perceiving should be considered not only as distinguished, but also as discontinuous—thus implicitly rejecting Kant’s idea (taken up, among others, by P. F. Strawson) that “the imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception” (Kant 1998, 239; A120n)—he is nevertheless keen to recognize the “brilliant insights” that Kant expresses “in his profound but obscure doctrine of the synthesis of productive imagination” (Husserl 2001, 410). Yet, he attributes at least some of the functions Kant considers to pertain to the imagination to the passive syntheses underlying, among others, sensible Gestalt-apprehension, the constitution of an object as identical in and through different modes of appearance, and the formation and the application of empirical concepts (Typoi) (Husserl 2001, 410f.). This has prompted researchers to elaborate on the conceptual distinction between ‘strong phantasy’ and ‘weak phantasy’ (or imagining): whereas the former concept designates a class of intentional acts that are to be distinguished from perception (and that are not part of perception itself), the latter designates non-independent accomplishments that are part of perceptual experience—such as associative syntheses and empty protentional consciousness.⁴

Divergences become more substantial when the relation between imagining and perceiving also concerns the ontological relation between the real and the imaginary. If we try to simplify a rather complex issue, we can recognize two opposing views on this matter: according to the former, the real and the imaginary are considered as two separate domains, according to the latter they should be considered as interwoven. The views defended by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty can be considered to be paradigmatic for such a divergence. Whereas Sartre (2004) notoriously insists on the discontinuities between perceiving and imagining and considers imagination, in a specific sense, as an annihilating power of consciousness, Merleau-Ponty rather endorses a view that aims to overcome all dualisms by stressing the ambiguity of all experience, and this is what underlies his idea of an “imaginary texture of the real” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 165). It has been argued that these views eventually presuppose two different approaches to ontology, consciousness, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity.⁵

Without aiming to reconstruct the controversy here, let alone propose a solution, we should emphasize that the problem can be, at least to a certain extent, methodologically reassessed. This requires us, first, to recognize that, as mentioned above, the problems are at least partly of terminological nature. Secondly, we should notice that isolating a narrower concept of imagination as discontinuous with perception does not eo ipso imply that there are no influences betw...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Imagination and Social Perspectives: Approaches from Phenomenology and Psychopathology
• Section I Imagination and the As-If: Experiencing Multiple Realities
• Section II Imagination and Intersubjectivity in Psychopathology
• Section III Imagination and the Experience of Others
• Section IV The Sociality of Imagination
• Section V Aesthetic, Ethical, and Socio-Political Grounds of Perspective-Taking
• List of Contributors
• Index