The Life of Imagination

Revealing and Making the World

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4158912
AutoresAmy Kind (0000-0001-9513-8704, Claremont McKenna College, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Fecha de publicación2019-10-29
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/aesthj/ayz043
OpenAlexW2982435279
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5

In recent years, philosophers have increasingly turned to imagination in their attempts to shed light on a vast array of phenomena—pretence, mindreading, the production and consumption of art and literature, metaphors, scientific discovery, dreams, hallucinations, and so on. Typically, this is done piecemeal, with philosophers focusing on only one or two of these phenomena, often in complete isolation from any of the others. In The Life of Imagination, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei takes a more holistic approach. Taking imagination to be a pervasive force in our mental lives, she aims to account for its overarching role in all of these activities and, indeed, in shaping the very nature of human cognition. Given the ambition of this all-encompassing aim, it is perhaps unsurprising that the conception of imagination that Gosetti-Ferencei operates with is an especially expansive one. As she defines it, imagination is ‘the presentational and transformational activity of human consciousness’ (26). On her view, as she makes clear throughout the book, imagination should not be identified with a single activity or capacity but rather should be considered to be ‘a constellation of modes of consciousness’ (193

Aesthetics · Cognition · Cognitive science · Consciousness · Epistemology · Expansive · Imagination · Isolation (microbiology · Presentational and representational acting · Sociology · Philosophy · Psychology