Imagination Cannot Justify Empirical Belief

Recently, various philosophers have argued that we can obtain knowledge via the imagination. In particular, it has been suggested that we can come to know concrete, empirical matters of everyday significance by appropriately imagining relevant scenarios. Arguments for this thesis come in two main varieties: black box reliability arguments and constraints‐based arguments. We suggest that both strategies are unsuccessful. Against black‐box arguments, we point to evidence from empirical psychology, question a central case‐study, and raise concerns about a (claimed) evolutionary rationale for the imagination's reliability. Against the constraints‐based account, we argue that to the extent that it works, this does not give rise to knowledge that is distinctively from the imagination. We conclude by suggesting that the imagination's role in raising possibilities, traditionally seen as part of the context of discovery, can in fact play a role in justification, including as a bulwark against certain sorts of skepticism.

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“…Egeland (2019) makes an argument that may seem, on first blush, similar to ours. Specifically, he distinguishes doxas-…”

supporting

confidence: 62%

The epistemic imagination revisited

Levy

Kinberg

2022

Philos Phenomenol Research

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“…at T1 into doxastic justification at T2. Egeland (2021) has recently argued that imagination's epistemic role is just to turn pre-existing propositional justification into doxastic justification. If Egeland is correct, and if the pre-existing propositional justification comes from non-imaginative sources, then imagination does not generate new justification, according to our generation/preservation distinction.…”

Section: Defining Generationism/preservationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our generation/preservation distinction is in terms of propositional justification rather than doxastic justification such that J1 does not count as generative if it merely turns pre‐existing propositional justification by J2 (or, by J2 & J3 & …) at T1 into doxastic justification at T2. Egeland (2021) has recently argued that imagination's epistemic role is just to turn pre‐existing propositional justification into doxastic justification. If Egeland is correct, and if the pre‐existing propositional justification comes from non‐imaginative sources, then imagination does not generate new justification, according to our generation/preservation distinction.…”

Section: Clarifying the Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Imagination as a generative source of justification

Miyazono

Tooming

2023

Nous

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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).

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“…Similarly, White states 'one can't be surprised by the features of what one imagines, since one put them there ' (1990, 92). Stock (2007) and Todd (2020) have offered a detailed response to such claims, and see also Kind (2018) and Egeland (2019) for discussions of how we can gain new information from the imagination. such that if a body A has natural speed 1, and a body B has natural speed 2, the natural speed of the combined body A-B will fall between 1 and 2' (1998, p. 404).…”

Section: (C)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Value of Surprise in Science

French

Murphy

2021

Erkenn

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Scientific results are often presented as ‘surprising’ as if that is a good thing. Is it? And if so, why? What is the value of surprise in science? Discussions of surprise in science have been limited, but surprise has been used as a way of defending the epistemic privilege of experiments over simulations. The argument is that while experiments can ‘confound’, simulations can merely surprise (Morgan, 2005). Our aim in this paper is to show that the discussion of surprise can be usefully extended to thought experiments and theoretical derivations. We argue that in focusing on these features of scientific practice, we can see that the surprise-confoundment distinction does not fully capture surprise in science. We set out how thought experiments and theoretical derivations can bring about surprises that can be disruptive in a productive way, and we end by exploring how this links with their future fertility.

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Imagination Cannot Justify Empirical Belief

Cited by 9 publications

References 10 publications

The epistemic imagination revisited

The epistemic imagination revisited

Imagination as a generative source of justification

The Value of Surprise in Science

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