Collection
Imagination and its Limits
Imagination is at the center of contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind. The ontological status of mental imagery, the epistemological status of imagined scenarios in terms of counterfactual and modal claims, and the relationship between imaginative ability and phenomenal knowledge are all rigorously debated in analytic literature. Likewise, the nature and function of imagination is an important and lively area of research in neuroscience and psychology. In all of these contexts of discussion, one key theme involves the limits of imagination. Our special issue takes up this theme.
In exploring the limits of imagination, the articles in this special issue can be seen as addressing questions that fall roughly into three categories: (1) Questions about the nature of imagination, such as: What cognitive phenomena fall under imagination and what cognitive phenomena do not? What are the different kinds of imagination? Is mental imagery necessary for imagination? (2) Questions about the (proper) function of imagination, such as: In what ways imagination is, or can be, used? What is the role of imagination in perception, memory, our engagement with fiction, phenomenal knowledge, moral knowledge, self-knowledge, knowledge of conditionals and modals, etc.? (3) Questions about the reach and range of imagination, such as: Can imagination extend beyond the merely possible to the impossible? Are there some scenarios that cannot be imagined, and if so, why not?
Editors
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Amy Kind
Amy Kind is Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. She has authored two textbooks: Persons and Personal Identity and Philosophy of Mind: The Basics, and she has edited or co-edited four books: Epistemic Uses of Imagination (co-edited with Christopher Badura), Knowledge Through Imagination (c-edited with Peter Kung), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, and Philosophy of Mind in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.
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Tufan Kiymaz
Tufan Kıymaz is an assistant professor at Bilkent University, Ankara, and he is the primary organizer of Exploring the Mind’s Eye: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Imagination at Bilkent (October 2019), on which this topical collection is based. He has received his PhD degree from Indiana University at Bloomington, in June 2017. He has published several refereed articles on topics such as imagination, phenomenal concepts, and the conceivability of non-Euclidean geometries.
