Imagination as a generative source of justification

Abstract

One of the most exciting debates in philosophy of imagination in recent years has been over the epistemic use of imagination where imagination epistemically contributes to justifying beliefs and acquiring knowledge. This paper defends “generationism about imagination” according to which imagination is a generative source, rather than a preservative source, of justification. In other words, imagination generates new justification above and beyond prior justification provided by other sources. After clarifying the generation/preservation distinction (Section 2), we present an argument for generationism about imagination, which can be divided into two parts; the philosophical part and the empirical part. In the philosophical part of our argument (Section 3), we claim that generationism about imagination follows from what we call “INACCESSIBILITY”. According to INACCESSIBILITY, imagination is properly constrained by the imaginative constrainers (i.e., the prior representations that constrain the development of a scenario in imagination) to which non‐imaginative belief‐forming processes do not have access. In the empirical part of our argument (Section 4), we claim that INACCESSIBILITY is plausible in light of relevant studies and theories in the empirical literature, especially the literature on mental simulation (Section 4.1), core cognition (Section 4.2), and intuitive physics (Section 4.3).

Imagination as a source of empirical justification

“…For example, Langland‐Hassan (2016) and Williams (2021) both argue that the imagination automatically develops according to generative models within the perceptual system, and Balcerak Jackson (2018) argues that the recreative architecture of the imagination imposes epistemically relevant limitations on the contents that can be imagined 12 . The voluntary/architectural distinction is related to a different distinction between personal constraints, which are reflectively accessible, and subpersonal constraints, which are not (Miyazono & Tooming, 2023; Myers, 2021a). However, these distinctions crosscut each other.…”

“…However, within this broad strategy, there is disagreement over the details. Miyazono and Tooming (2023) argue that the imagination can access information that is otherwise cognitively inaccessible, such as representations of intuitive physics and core object principles. By making this information accessible, the imagination can justify more beliefs than one's prior, non‐imaginative evidence alone 14 .…”

“…The constraints-based approach-first advocated by Kind (2016Kind ( , 2018 and Kind and Kung (2016a) and further developed by many others (Langland-Hassan, 2016;Miyazono & Tooming, 2023;Myers, 2021aMyers, , 2021bWilliams, 2021)-is a prominent account of the conditions under which the imagination justifies belief. It can also be seen as a constructive argument for optimism: an account of how imagination justifies that demonstrates why it is epistemically relevant in the first place.…”

“…But the former is a much stronger and more ambitious form of optimism because it holds that the imagination can go beyond what one already has justification for believing. Following Miyazono and Tooming (2023), let us say that generationism about the imagination is the view that the imagination can generate new justification and preservationism about the imagination is the view that the imagination only preserves existing justification.…”

“…For example,Dorsch, 2016, Kind, 2016, Kind, 2018, Miyazono & Tooming, 2023, Munro, 2021, Myers, 2021a, 2021b For example, Egeland, 2021 claims to argue against optimism despite conceding that imagination can serve as a nonfoundational source of empirical justification. He is better interpreted as arguing for a form of preservationism, discussed in §6.6 For example,Kinberg and Levy (2023) claim to argue against optimism despite conceding that there are cases in which the imagination confers empirical justification.…”