5 - Imagining

Summary

As I look at a horse coming slowly towards me I am presented, in experience, with that elegant animal. Yet seeing something face to face is not the only way for it to appear to us. I may look at a black and white pho-tograph of a horse by the sea, observe Whistler's vivid painting, dream that I am edging ahead at the Grand National, or simply visualize a stallion with its thick hair caressed by the light wind. Looking at pictures, having a dream or just imagining something are all phenomena too ordinary for any theory of human experience to attempt to analyse. A proper analysis of such phenomena, though, encounters a serious puzzle: how is it possible that we are presented with something that is not physically present?

Several philosophers have outlined a story of how to deal with that perplexing aspect of human experience. They usually approach the phenomena as deliverances of a supposedly peculiar faculty whose role is to populate one's consciousness with immaterial entities we call images. Imagination is thus conceived as a failed perception, a weak or defective attempt to launch into reality, that effectively locks oneself inside one's mind. This approach treats perception and imagination on a par, rendering the former a particularly vivid version of the latter, turning the sharp distinction between looking at something, and visualizing it, into a dubious difference of degree.