The Heterogeneity of Experiential Imagination

The Heterogeneity of Experiential ImaginationJérôme Dokic & Margherita Arcangeli

Imagination is very often associated with the experienceable. Imagination is saidto “re-create” conscious experiences. For instance, philosophers often talk of vis-ion-like or audition-like imagination. How many varieties of experiential imagina-tion are there, and how are they related? In this paper, we offer a detailed tax-onomy of imaginative phenomena, based on both conceptual analysis and phe-nomenology, which contributes to answering these questions. First, we shall spellout the notion of experiential imagination as the imaginative capacity to re-createexperiential perspectives. Second, we suggest that the domain of experiential ima-gination divides into objective and subjective imagination. In our interpretation,objective imagination comprises both sensory and cognitive imagination. In con-trast, subjective imagination re-creates non-imaginative internal experiences ofone’s own mind, including proprioception, agentive experience, feeling pain, andperhaps internal ways of gaining information about other types of mental states,such as sensory experience and belief. We show how our interpretation of the no-tion of subjective imagination differs from Zeno Vendler’s, who relies on an ortho-gonal distinction between two ways in which the self is involved in our imagin-ings. Finally, we show the relevance of our taxonomy for several important philo-sophical and scientific applications of the notion of imagination, including modalepistemology, cognitive resonance, mindreading and imaginative identification.

KeywordsCognitive imagination | Cognitive resonance | Experiential imagination | Externalexperience | Imagination | Imagination from the inside | Imaginative identifica-tion | Internal experience | Introspection | Mindreading | Motor imagery | Object-ive imagination | Recreative imagination | Self-involvement | Sensory imagina-tion | Subjective imagination

Authors

Jérôme [email protected] Institute Jean NicodParis, France

Margherita [email protected] Institute Jean NicodParis, France

Commentator

Anne-Sophie Brü[email protected]

Editors

Thomas [email protected] Johannes Gutenberg-UniversitätMainz, Germany

Jennifer M. [email protected] Monash UniversityMelbourne, Australia

1 Introduction

Many theorists have pointed out that imagina-tion, or at least a salient type of imagination, isbound to the “experienceable”.1 In this sense, wecan imagine only what can be experienced. For

1 This is a widespread claim that dates back to Plato and Aristotleand pervades the history of philosophy. See White (1990) for a goodsurvey and a critical view of the standard picture (suggested by ety-mology) according to which imagination is akin to perception only.Among contemporary philosophers see also, for instance, Wollheim(1984), Williams (1976), Casey (1976), O’Shaughnessy (1980), Vend-ler (1984), Peacocke (1985), Walton (1990), Mulligan (1999), Kind(2001), Currie & Ravenscroft (2002), Martin (2002), Noordhof(2002), Chalmers (2002), Carruthers (2002), McGinn (2004), Gold-man (2006), Byrne (2010).

instance, we can visually imagine only what canbe seen and auditorily imagine only what canbe heard. To capture the latter examples, philo-sophers often talk of vision-like and audition-like imagination. More generally, the relevanttype of imagination is experience-like or (as weshall also say) experiential, whether or not onebelieves that experiential imagination exhauststhe field of possible imaginings.

However, the precise sense in which ima-gination is experiential remains a deep andcomplicated issue. In this essay, we would like

Dokic, J. & Arcangeli, M. (2015). The Heterogeneity of Experiential Imagination.In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 11(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570085 1 | 20

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to inquire into the scope of experiential imagin-ation. In particular, we want to relate the no-tion of experiential imagination to two import-ant distinctions present in the contemporary lit-erature on imagination, namely the distinctionbetween sensory and cognitive imagination(Currie & Ravenscroft 2002; McGinn 2004) andthe distinction between subjective and objectiveimagination (Vendler 1984; Dokic 2008). Weaim at proposing, eventually, a systematic andhopefully enlightening taxonomy of the varietiesof experiential imagination.

The essay is structured as follows: Section2 tackles the broad phenomenological sense inwhich our imaginings are experiential. Sensoryimagination will emerge as an important sub-type of experiential imagination.

Section 3 individuates two more funda-mental sub-species of experiential imagination,namely objective and subjective imagination.We shall point out that this distinction mapsonto an independently motivated distinction inthe field of non-imaginative mental states,namely that between external and internal ex-periences. While external experiences (such asvision) are only accidentally de se, internal ex-periences (such as proprioception or agentiveexperience) are essentially or at least normallyde se. The upshot will be that sensory imagina-tion is best seen as a paradigmatic case of ob-jective imagination.

Section 4 discusses the distinction betweenobjective and subjective imagination, as ZenoVendler introduces it on the basis of intuitivecontrast examples. We shall show that Vendler’sdistinction diverges from ours, since it seems tohinge on a distinction between two ways the selfcan be involved in our imaginings. We shall sug-gest that the latter distinction is in fact ortho-gonal to our distinction between objective andsubjective imagination (section 4.1). Moreover,upon closer look, the contrast examples offeredby Vendler motivate our construction of the ob-jective versus subjective distinction, which willprove to be more fruitful for the theory of ima-gination (section 4.2).

Section 5 presents the notion of cognitiveor belief-like imagination and gives some reasonto resist its interpretation as a form of non-ex-

periential imagination. Cognitive imaginationcan be construed as experiential, provided thatat least some of our occurrent beliefs are con-scious. Moreover, if belief is an experience, it isclearly an external experience. Therefore, cog-nitive imagination will emerge as a sub-speciesof objective imagination, along with sensoryimagination.

Section 6 further investigates the domainof subjective imagination and its heterogeneity.We shall suggest that, along with propriocep-tion, agentive experience, introspection, andfeeling pain, subjective imagination may re-cre-ate other internal ways of gaining informationabout one’s mental states, including beliefs.

Although much of our discussion in thisessay belongs to conceptual clarification in-formed by phenomenological considerations, sec-tion 7 briefly describes several upshots of ouraccount with respect to modal epistemology,cognitive resonance phenomena, mindreading,and imaginative identification. It is our conten-tion that the relevance of the conceptual dis-tinctions proposed by our taxonomy of experi-ential imagination has been crucially neglectedin many important philosophical and scientificapplications of the notion of imagination.

2 Experiential and sensory imagination

Let us start with Christopher Peacocke’s ana-lysis of imagination, which can help us to delin-eate what we mean by “experiential imagina-tion.” Peacocke (1985) puts forward what hecalls the “General Hypothesis” about imagina-tion, or GH (General Hypothesis) for short:

GH =Df To imagine something is always atleast to imagine, from the inside, being insome conscious state (Peacocke 1985, p.21).

Peacocke does not offer an explicit definition ofthe phrase “from the inside”, but we shall followKendall Walton’s interpretation and assumethat “the question of whether an imagining isfrom the inside arises only when what is ima-gined is an experience (broadly construed)”(Walton 1990, p. 31). For instance, I may ima-


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gine being a descendant of Napoleon, but, ac-cording to Walton, my imagining does not es-sentially involve the perspective of any experi-ence properly speaking. There is nothing it islike to be a descendant of Napoleon.2 So there isno question of imagining “from the inside” hav-ing this relational property. In contrast, when Ivisually imagine a white sandy beach, my ima-gining involves an experiential perspective. Iimagine “from the inside” a specific visual ex-perience.

Peacocke’s notion of imagining from theinside is broadly related to other notions in thephilosophical literature on imagination. For in-stance, Gregory Currie and Ian Ravenscroft in-troduce the notion of recreative imagination asthe capacity to have “states that are not per-ceptions or beliefs or decisions or experiences ofmovements of one’s body, but which are in vari-ous ways like those states—like them in waysthat enable the states possessed through ima-gination to mimic and, relative to certain pur-poses, to substitute for perceptions, beliefs, de-cisions, and experiences of movements” (Currie& Ravenscroft 2002, p. 12). Similarly, AlvinGoldman puts forward the notion of enactmentimagination (or E-imagination) as “a matter ofcreating or trying to create in one’s own mind aselected mental state, or at least a rough fac-simile of such a state, through the faculty of theimagination” (Goldman 2006, p. 42).3

Many other philosophers have held theview that imagination is the capacity to“modify” non-imaginative kinds of mental state(Husserl 1901; Meinong 1902; Mulligan 1999;Weinberg & Meskin 2006a, 2006b), where therelevant modification is to be understood as the“preservation” of some features of the non-ima-ginative states, such as part of their functionalroles, despite phenomenological discrepancies ordifferent overall cognitive underpinnings. Thisview is independent of a strong kind of simula-tionism, according to which each of severaltypes of imagination shares with a proper non-imaginative counterpart some cognitive mechan-

2 Throughout the paper, we assume that experiences are consciousmental states.

3 Goldman himself acknowledges that these two treatments of imagina-tion are similar (Goldman 2006, p. 52, fn. 21).

ism (or set of information-processing systems),which is redeployed off-line.

To recapitulate, according to the termino-logy used in this essay, imagination is the gen-eral capacity to produce sui generis occurrentmental states, which we call “imaginings”.Whenever a subject imagines something, she isin a particular mental state of imagining. Whattype of mental state the subject is in dependson the non-imaginative conscious state that isre-created. Here we want to remain as neutralas possible with respect to the relationshipbetween imaginings and their analogues in thenon-imaginative mental realm. It is enough forour purposes to accept the idea that a phe-nomenologically useful taxonomy of imaginationcan be guided by a corresponding taxonomy ofnon-imaginative mental states (and perhaps alsothe other way around, as we shall suggest to-ward the end of the essay).

From now on, instead of using Peacocke’sphrase “imagining from the inside”, which is po-tentially misleading (see footnote 16 below), weare going to use phrases of the form “X-likeimagination”, or “re-creating X” in imagination,where X is a type of non-imaginative state (asin “vision-like imagination”, or “re-creating aproprioceptive experience”). However, our use ofthese phrases should not be interpreted as car-rying all the commitments of simulationist orrecreative theories of imagination (whence thepresence of the hyphen in “re-creating”).

GH turns out to be a general definition ofimagination as essentially involving the perspect-ive of a conscious experience—precisely what wecall “experiential imagination”. Peacocke then in-troduces a more specific hypothesis precisely inorder to identify sensory imagination as a sub-do-main of experiential imagination.4 He himself callsthis hypothesis the “Experiential Hypothesis”,

4 What is the relationship between sensory imagination and mentalimagery? The latter phenomenon is at the heart of the well-knowndebate about the format of representations involved in cognitivetasks such as mental rotation (see Kosslyn 1980, 1994; Tye 1991;Pylyshyn 2002; Kosslyn et al. 2006). This debate concerns the kindof content of the relevant representations, and one of the issues iswhether such content is propositional or iconic. In contrast, the no-tion of sensory imagination is defined here by reference to the psy-chological mode of the re-created mental state, namely a consciousperceptual experience. For our purposes we can leave open thenature of the contents of sensory imaginings.



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but in order to avoid confusion and make it clearthat only sensory imagination is at stake, we aregoing to call it the “Sensory Hypothesis” (orSensory Hypothesis (SensH) for short), and reph-rase it as follows:

SensH =Df To imagine something sensorilyis always at least to re-create some sensoryexperience.

For instance, imagining being in front of thePanthéon or at the helm of a yacht (Peacocke’sexamples) may involve re-creating some visual ex-perience as of being in front of the Panthéon or atthe helm of the yacht.

Sensory imagination is not confined to vis-ion. In Peacocke’s words, SensH deals with “ima-ginings describable pre-theoretically as visualiza-tions, hearings in one’s head, or their analogues inother modalities” (Peacocke 1985, p. 22).5 A sim-ilar definition of sensory imagination can befound in the work of other philosophers (Kind2001; Noordhof 2002; McGinn 2004). The sametype of imagination has also been labeled “per-ception-like” (Currie & Ravenscroft 2002), “per-ceptual imagination” (Chalmers 2002), and even“experiential imagination” (Carruthers 2002).

To the extent that SensH is concerned onlywith cases in which the subject re-creates a spe-cific type of experience, namely sensory experi-ence, it deals with a sub-type of experiential ima-gination as covered by GH, namely sensory ima-gination. At this point, the question arises as towhat other types of experiential imagination thereare beyond the sensory type. Walton suggeststhat the notion of experience at stake in GHshould be interpreted in a broad way, and we maywonder about its precise breadth.

3 Objective and subjective imagination

Peacocke himself intends GH to cover genuine in-stances of experiential imagination that are notcovered by SensH—what we shall call non-sensory

5 At this point we can count at least the five senses (vision, audition,touch, taste, and olfaction) as sensory modalities. Later on, we shallsuggest that a sensory modality involves an external perceptual per-spective on the world. This excludes proprioception and the sense ofagency as sensory modalities, insofar as they involve internal per-spectives on oneself.

imagination. For instance, one can imagine “theconscious, subjective components of intentionalaction” (Peacocke 1985, p. 22). On Peacocke’sview, imagining playing the Waldstein sonatamay involve re-creating a non-sensory experience,namely the intimate experience one has of one’sown action while or in acting.

Of course, the precise nature of what wemay call “motor imagery” is controversial.6 Currieand Ravenscroft suggest that “motor images haveas their counterparts perceptions of bodily move-ments. They have as their contents active move-ments of one’s body” (Currie & Ravenscroft 2002,p. 88). So on Currie and Ravenscroft’s suggestion,imagining playing the Waldstein sonata involvesre-creating the perception of bodily movements.

Certainly, in order to imagine performing anaction, it is not enough to re-create a visual ex-perience of the appropriate bodily movements—otherwise, the relevant type of imagining wouldbelong to sensory imagination after all. Alternat-ively, one might suggest that motor imagery in-volves re-creating a proprioceptive experience ofthe appropriate bodily movements. However, suchimagining does not entail re-creating an agentiveexperience, even if it may accompany the latter.In a similar vein, Goldman claims that motor im-agery “is the representation or imagination of ex-ecuting bodily movement” and has as its counter-part “events of motor production, events occur-ring in the motor cortex that direct behavior”(Goldman 2006, pp. 157–158). Following Gold-man, we can say that imagining playing theWaldstein sonata may involve re-creating an exe-cution of the appropriate bodily movements.

In fact, an ordinary case of imagining play-ing the Waldstein will probably involve (at least)three types of imagining:

• Imagining seeing movements of one’s fin-gers on the keyboard.

• Imagining having a proprioceptive experi-ence of these movements.

• Imagining playing the sonata.

6 See section 7.2. As Thomas Metzinger reminded us, the existence ofmotor imagery has been acknowledged by twentieth century phe-nomenology. For instance, Karl Jaspers has coined the German term“Vollzugsbewusstsein”, which can be translated as “executive con-sciousness”.



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The three types of imagining are typically en-tangled within a single imaginative endeavor.That is, someone who imagines playing the son-ata will typically imagine having a proprioceptiveexperience of her fingers running on the keyboardbut also various sensory experiences: visual exper-iences of her moving fingers and auditory experi-ences of the music. Still, each type is essentiallydistinct from the others, and might even be disso-ciable in special circumstances (although we donot want to insist too much on the possibility ofsuch dissociation). Suppose for instance that oneimagines one’s limbs being remotely controlled.One can imagine from a proprioceptive perspect-ive one’s arms and legs going through the motionscharacteristic of playing the piano without ima-gining oneself playing the piano. In this case, (ii)is instantiated but (iii) is not. More controver-sially, suppose that one imagines oneself being se-lectively anesthetized, or in the situation of adeafferented subject.7 Perhaps one can then ima-gine playing the piano without imagining havinga proprioceptive experience; (iii) but not (ii)would be instantiated. Given the role of proprio-ceptive feedback in the ordinary execution of ac-tion, it is probably hard if not impossible to ima-gine playing a whole sonata in the absence of anyproprioceptive-like imagining, but the relevantdissociation is in principle possible for simpler ac-tions, such as stretching one’s finger. Finally, itseems possible to imagine playing the pianowithout re-creating any visual or auditory experi-ence. For instance, one can imagine playing thesonata with one’s eyes closed or one’s earsblocked. Here, (iii) is instantiated but (i) is not.Again, given the role of sensory feedback in theordinary execution of action, it might be hard toform such a selective imagining, especially if theaction gets complicated.

The upshot of the foregoing discussion isthat only (iii) is a genuine case of motor imagery.It involves the re-creation of what philosophers ofaction call the “sense of agency” or the “sense ofcontrol” (see e.g., Haggard 2005 and Pacherie2007). Since the sense of agency or control is aconscious experience, motor imagery clearly fallsunder the umbrella of experiential imagination.7 Deafferented patients have lost the sense of proprioception; see e.g.,

Cole (1995) and Gallagher (2005).

Moreover, to the extent that motor imagery is (atleast in principle) dissociable from sensory ima-gination, even if it typically depends on the latter,it is a case of non-sensory imagination.8

What about (ii)? Proprioception is arguablya mode of perception; it is a way of perceiving thespatial disposition of one’s body.9 In this respect,(ii) is like (i), which is a case of sensory imagina-tion. However, proprioception is also essentially orat least normally a way of gaining informationabout oneself; what proprioception is about is abodily state of oneself. In this respect, (ii) is morelike (iii), which also involves a way of gaining in-formation about oneself, and more precisely one’sactions.10

What unifies (ii) and (iii) as cases of non-sensory imagination is the fact that what is re-cre-ated is a (non-imaginative) internal experience. Aninternal experience is essentially or at least nor-mally de se, in the following sense: it is supposedto be about a mental or bodily state of oneself.Proprioceptive and agentive experiences are bothinternal in this sense. At least in normal circum-stances, one cannot have a proprioceptive experi-ence of another’s body or a sense of agency for an-other’s action. In contrast, all cases of sensory ima-gination are such that what is re-created is a (non-imaginative) external experience. An external ex-perience is typically about the external world andis only accidentally de se. For instance, vision is an

8 Even if it turns out that motor imagery is constitutively dependenton sensory imagination, it is clearly not fully sensory, as we willshortly show. Note also that if motor imagery can be conceived asthe re-creation of an essentially active phenomenon, namely the senseof agency or control, it need not be itself active. Although we cannotdwell on this issue here, imaginings can be either active, when we de-liberately imagine something, or passive, as for instance when we arelost in an episode of mind wandering (see footnote 22).

9 If proprioception is a case of perception, there must be proprioceptive ex-periences. This has been contested, especially by Anscombe (1957). How-ever, in our view, Anscombe conflates two different claims. The firstclaim, which we accept, is that there are no proprioceptive sensations.Proprioception is not a case of sensory perception. The second claim,which we reject, is that proprioception does not involve any consciousexperience. Even if there are no proprioceptive sensations, we are con-sciously aware of the positions and movements of our body.

10 The idea that there are “self-informative methods,” i.e., ways of findingout about oneself, is pervasive in John Perry’s theory of self-knowledge;for a recent statement, see Perry (2011). As Perry makes clear, thesemethods can be either metaphysically or merely architecturally guaran-teed. François Recanati makes use of a similar idea in his account of per-spectival thought (Recanati 2007) and mental files (Recanati 2012); forinstance, he writes: “In virtue of being a certain individual, I am in a po-sition to gain information concerning that individual in all sorts of waysin which I can gain information about no one else, e.g. through proprio-ception and kinaesthesis” (Recanati 2007, p. 262).



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external experience; it is a way of gaining informa-tion about one’s immediate surroundings, whetheror not one also sees oneself.11

These considerations allow us to give amore fine-grained analysis of the realm of exper-iential imagination based on the externalversusinternal contrast, rather than the sensoryversus non-sensory contrast. In a nutshell, we11 This is an oversimplification, since many ordinary experiences have

presumably both internal and external aspects. On the one hand,vision might involve both exteroception and interoception (Gibson1966). On the other hand, proprioception and other forms of bodilyexperience often rely on visual information (Botvinick & Cohen1998; de Vignemont 2013). Still, the external aspect of many ordin-ary visual experiences is clearly dominant, while visually aidedproprioception remains essentially a way of gaining informationabout oneself, and thus is an internal experience in our sense.

can say that experiential imagination comes intwo varieties. Experiential imagination can re-create: (a) some external experience—e.g., away of gaining information about the world(e.g., I imagine seeing Superman flying in theair), and (b) some internal experience—e.g., away of gaining information about oneself (e.g., Iimagine having a proprioceptive experience offlying in the air). Following Jérôme Dokic(2008), we shall call (a) “objective imagination”and (b) “subjective imagination”; see figure 1.12

12 To make our terminology as clear as possible, the distinctionbetween internal and external experiences concerns the realm of non-imaginative states, while the analogous distinction between subject-ive and objective imagination concerns the realm of imaginative


Figure 1: Types of imagining involved in playing a sonata


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We may thus introduce two other hypo-theses subordinate to GH, which we call theObjective Hypothesis (ObjH) and the Subject-ive Hypothesis (SubjH):

ObjH =Df To imagine something object-ively is always at least to re-create someexternal experience.

SubjH =Df To imagine something subject-ively is always at least to re-create someinternal experience.

Sensory imagination forms an important sub-class of experiential imagination, but it can alsobe seen as a paradigmatic case of objective ima-gination, since it involves re-creating an ex-ternal experience. Experiential imagination isnot merely objective imagination, since anothersub-class of experiential imagination, namelysubjective imagination, is constituted by casesin which an internal experience is re-created.For instance, imagining having one’s legscrossed or driving a Ferrari may involve re-cre-ating some internal non-sensory experience,namely a proprioceptive and/or agentive experi-ence as of having one’s legs crossed or driving aFerrari.

To sum up, we have identified two import-ant varieties of imagination that seem to exhaustthe domain of experiential imagination: objectiveand subjective imagination.13 We have arguedthat this distinction, which gives rise to phe-nomenologically different imaginings, traces backto an independent distinction within the domainof non-imaginative experiences, between externaland internal experiences. We have also claimedthat sensory imagination, which is the variety ofexperiential imagination most commonly recog-nized, should be seen as a paradigmatic exampleof objective imagination. More should be saidabout the distinction between objective and sub-jective imagination. For instance, questions ariseas to whether sensory imagination exhausts thefield of objective imagination and as to whether

states. The question of whether imaginings themselves can be said tobe internal or external is not raised in this essay.

13 Note that our definition leaves open the possibility that a particular ima-gining is both objective and subjective, to the extent that the re-createdexperience has both external and internal aspects (see footnote 11).

subjective imagination encompasses more thanproprioceptive or agentive experiences.

The remainder of the paper is devoted tofurther clarification of the notions of objectiveand subjective imagination. We shall begin with acomparison between our own proposal and ZenoVendler’s observations about imagination.

4 Vendler’s varieties of imagination

A well-informed reader might think that our dis-tinction between objective and subjective imagin-ation is the same as a homonymous distinction in-troduced by Vendler (1984). Certainly Vendler in-tends to capture two phenomenologically differentways of imagining, which potentially correspondto our distinction between external and internalexperiential perspectives (perspectives on theworld and perspectives on oneself). However, healso gives a prima facie interpretation of the dis-tinction between objective and subjective imagin-ation, which has more to do with the way the selfis involved in our imaginings than with the dis-tinction between external and internal experi-ences. On this interpretation, Vendler’s notions ofobjective and subjective imagination arguably di-verge from ours. Let us start with Vendler’s inter-pretation of these notions (section 4.1) and thenmove to a deeper analysis of the contrast ex-amples offered by Vendler in order to motivate hisdistinction (section 4.2). In so doing, we shallshow that our construction of the objective versussubjective distinction is more helpful in order tomap the realm of experiential imagination.

4.1 Two kinds of self-involvement

Vendler (1984) suggests that the phrase “S ima-gines doing A” invites what he calls “subject-ive” imagination, while the phrase “S imaginesherself/himself doing A” can be used to describe“objective” imagination. Prima facie, Vendlerseems to interpret the distinction between sub-jective and objective imagination in terms oftwo ways in which the self can be involved inour imaginings—implicitly or explicitly.

Subjective imagination concerns cases inwhich the self is implicitly involved in the ima-gining, whereas objective imagination concerns



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cases in which the self is explicitly involved inthe imagining. This is why the phrase “imagin-ing doing A”, which does not explicitly mentionthe agent of the action A, is best used to de-scribe subjective imagination, whereas thephrase “imagining myself doing A”, which expli-citly mentions myself as the agent of the actionA, is more suitable to the description of object-ive imagination.

The self is implicitly involved in an ima-gining when it fixes the point of view internal tothe imagined scene without being a constituentof that scene. One can imagine seeing thePanthéon from the other end of rue Soufflotwithout imagining oneself as another object inthe scene. Still, the scene is imagined from aspecific point of view, as defined by a virtualself. One can also imagine seeing oneself in frontof the Panthéon. In such a case, the self is aconstituent of the imagined scene—it is expli-citly represented as a part of the imagining’scontent.

Of course, when one imagines seeing one-self in front of the Panthéon, one’s imaginingalso involves the self implicitly. One imagines ascene from the perspective of a virtual self,which is distinct from oneself as a constituent ofthe scene. As a consequence, Vendler makesclear that subjective and objective imaginationare not mutually exclusive. Commenting onVendler’s distinction, François Recanati con-curs, writing that “the objective imagination isa particular case of the subjective” (Recanati2007, p. 196).

It should be sufficiently apparent that thedistinction between implicit and explicit self-in-volvement is a matter of the imagining’s con-tent and more precisely deals with the issue ofhow the self is involved in imagination. In con-trast, the distinction between internal and ex-ternal experiential perspectives has to do withthe mode re-created in imagination, respectivelyan external and an internal experience. There-fore, the two distinctions answer different ques-tions and turn out to be orthogonal.

First, objective imagination can involvethe self either implicitly or explicitly (but notboth at the same time). This is easily seen byconsidering the Panthéon example. Peacocke

himself suggests another relevant case. He ob-serves that the phrase “imagining being seatedon a horse” is ambiguous between adopting thepoint of view of the rider (namely oneself) andadopting the point of view of someone else whocould see the rider (see Peacocke 1985, p. 23). Ifthe relevant perspective is that of the rider(namely oneself), the self need not be a con-stituent of the imagined scene—in this case(where the rider does not see any part of herbody), it is implicitly involved in the imagining.In contrast, if the relevant perspective embracesoneself as the rider, the self is explicitly in-volved; it figures in the content of the imagin-ing. However, both interpretations involvevisual (i.e., external) perspectives, so what is atstake is a distinction within objective imagina-tion rather than a contrast between subjectiveand objective imagination.14

Second, it is at least arguable that sub-jective imagination can involve the self eitherimplicitly or explicitly. Suppose that one sub-jectively imagines swimming in the ocean. Onemay re-create the internal experience of whatMarc Jeannerod & Elisabeth Pacherie (2004)call a “naked” intention (in action), which pre-cisely does not involve an explicit representationof the agent. In this case, no self is part of therepresentational content of one’s imagining. Onesubjectively imagines swimming without ima-gining the agent as such, whether oneself oranyone else. However, one might also re-create amore complex internal experience, whose con-tent embraces oneself as the agent of the actionof swimming. Accordingly, in this case, the self(oneself) is explicitly represented in the contentof one’s subjective imagining. One subjectivelyimagines a particular agent swimming; in Vend-ler’s example, that particular agent is oneself.

One might object to the last point andclaim that the self is never an object of internalexperience. One can have at best internal experi-ences of particular mental states, such as inten-14 One might object that both cases involve subjective imagination,

since the visual perspective of the rider, even if she does not seeher own body, is tied to her proprioceptive experience; see thecaveat voiced in footnote 11 above. Again, it might be that thedistinction between subjective and objective imagination hasreally to do with the distinction between re-creating predomin-antly internal and re-creating predominantly external experi-ences.



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tions in action, but never of oneself having thosemental states. However, this is a substantial claimthat certainly needs to be backed up by carefularguments. Note that the assumption that the selfcan figure in the content of an internal experienceis in principle compatible with the Humean pointthat the self cannot be introspected. Introspec-tion, conceived as a form of inner perception, isonly one type of internal experience. Perhapsthere are non-introspective cases of internal ex-perience whose explicit contents cannot be fullyspecified except by using the first-person pro-noun. For instance, one might argue that at leastsome cases of proprioception as well as internalexperiences of controlling one’s body as a wholegive us access to one’s self, or at least to theboundaries between oneself and the rest of the en-vironment.15

Consider other examples offered by Vendler.When you imagine yourself eating a lemon byimagining your pinched face, your imagining is15 For relevant discussion, see e.g., Cassam (1999), Bermúdez et al.

(1995), Bermúdez (1998), Metzinger (2003), and Peacocke (2014).

explicitly self-involving and might be fulfilled viaobjective imagination, such as visual imagination,but also via subjective imagination, such asproprioceptive imagination, at least to the extentthat it recreates an internal experience of yourbodily self. What about imagining implicitly in-volving the self? If while imagining eating alemon, the subject imagines the action of eating alemon and nothing else, she is exploiting her sub-jective imagination, insofar as she is re-creatingan agentive perspective. It seems possible to ima-gine eating a lemon via objective imagination too,for instance by re-creating a visual experience asof an action independently of any identification ofthe agent.

To sum up, while the distinction betweensubjective and objective imagination seems tocapture two forms or modalities of imagination,the distinction between two kinds of self-in-volvement, although important in itself, is lessrelevant to a taxonomy of experiential imagina-tion. The orthogonality of these distinctions isshown again in figure 2. In the following sub-


Figure 2: Explicit and implicit self-involvement in subjective and objective imagination


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section we shall further motivate our hypothesisthat Vendler’s own contrast examples are bestunderstood in terms of the independently mo-tivated distinction between internal and ex-ternal experiences.

4.2 Vendler’s examples revisited

Aside from his interpretation of subjective ima-gination as implicitly self-involving and object-ive imagination as explicitly self-involving,Vendler clearly draws our attention to two waysof imagining a given action, which have quitedifferent phenomenological profiles. In his ownwords:

We are looking down upon the ocean froma cliff. The water is rough and cold, yetthere are some swimmers riding the waves.‘Just imagine swimming in that water’says my friend, and I know what to do.‘Brr!’, I say as I imagine the cold, the saltytaste, the tug of the current, and so forth.Had he said ‘Just imagine yourself swim-ming in that water’, I could comply in an-other way, too: by picturing myself beingtossed about, a scrawny body bobbing upand down in the foamy waste. (Vendler1984, p. 43)

As some of Vendler’s other examples show, therelevant distinction is not restricted to imagin-ing actions:

In order to familiarize yourselves with thisdistinction, imagine eating a lemon (sourtaste), and then imagine yourself eating alemon (pinched face); imagine being onthe rack (agony), and then yourself beingon the rack (distorted limbs); imaginewhistling in the dark (sensation ofpuckered lips), and then yourself whistlingin the dark (distance uncertain, but com-ing closer); and so forth. (Vendler 1984, p.43)

It is not immediately clear what is common toall cases of subjective or objective imaginationin Vendler’s examples. Consider the suggestion

that the relevant distinction can be explained atthe level of the states represented by the ima-ginings. Subjective imagination would involveimagining states that cannot be imagined ob-jectively. For instance, in imagining swimmingin the water, I also imagine proprioceptive ex-periences, which (one might argue) cannot beimagined objectively. How could we visuallyimagine such experiences, which are essentiallyfelt?

However, it is not obvious that the essenceof the distinction between subjective and ob-jective imagination can be fully captured by ref-erence to the imagined states. One can imaginehaving one’s legs crossed via subjective imagina-tion, but also via objective imagination. Thefirst type of imagining is akin to proprioception(one imagines feeling one’s legs crossed), whilethe second type of imagining is akin to vision(one visualizes oneself with one’s legs crossed).Yet these imaginings are about the same bodilycondition—having one’s legs crossed.

Similarly, the very same action of swim-ming in the ocean can be imagined subjectivelyor objectively. The case of pain is more contro-versial, but if one can be visually aware thatsomeone is in pain (by observing pain-relatedbehavior), then one can imagine the very samepain state either subjectively or objectively. Thedifference between the relevant imaginings mustlie elsewhere.

We are now in the position to see that wewere on the right track and that Vendler’s con-trast examples are plausibly construed as in-volving different experiential perspectives on agiven scene, either internal (perspectives on one-self) or external (perspectives on the world). Sub-jective imagination has to do with the former,and objective imagination with the latter. This iseasily seen by considering the example of imagin-ing whistling in the dark. Vendler contrasts thesubjective case, in which the subject imagines thesensation of puckered lips, with the objective case,in which the subject imagines the distance uncer-tain, but coming closer. In other words, whatVendler seems to contrast is proprioception-likeimagination with auditory imagination or, in ourterminology, an internal experiential perspectivewith an external one.



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More generally, Vendler seems to be con-cerned with the difference between, on the onehand, imagining doing an action (e.g., swim-ming, eating, whistling, etc.) or having pain(e.g., agony), where what the imaginer re-cre-ates is the relevant experience and, on the otherhand, imagining pieces of behaviour that revealthe very same experience (e.g., visualizing aneating mouth or a body in agony), where whatthe imaginer re-creates is an external perspect-ive on the relevant experience.16

Let us note that, in order to make his con-trast more realistic, Vendler gives us complexexamples, where more than one experience is in-volved. So for instance, his example of imagin-ing swimming in the ocean clearly belongs tosubjective imagination, since the re-creation ofa proprioceptive and/or agentive experience isinvolved. As Vendler suggests, though, whenyou fulfill this imagining you can also re-createvarious external experiences, such as “the cold,the salty taste, the tug of the current, and soforth”. The same is true in the case of imaginingeating a lemon. When you imagine eating alemon, you re-create in imagination an internalexperience (e.g., the proprioceptive and/oragentive experience of eating), but your imagin-ing can be accompanied by others that re-createexternal experiences (e.g., the sour taste, theyellow lemon).

The discussion of Vendler’s distinction hasled us to strengthen our taxonomy of experien-tial imagination. So far we have seen that, first,all cases covered by SenH seem to be cases ofobjective imagination (and thus covered byObjH), which involves re-creating some externalexperience. Second, all cases covered by SubjHarguably involve re-creating some internal ex-perience.

However, another important type of ima-gination emerges from the literature on imagin-

16 A similar point is made by Mike Martin when he draws a distinctionbetween “cases in which there is just an itch in the left thigh” inimagination and cases “in which one imagines some person whose be-haviour reveals that they have an itch” (Martin 2002, p. 406, fn. 35;see also Dorsch 2012). However, according to his terminology, onlythe former cases count as being “from the inside”. Very often in theliterature, the phrase “imagining from the inside” is used in this nar-row sense (to refer to subjective imagination in our terminology)more than the broad sense meant by Peacocke (which refers to ex-periential imagination as a whole).

ation, namely cognitive imagination, which hasbeen defined as belief-like and typically contras-ted with sensory or even experiential imagina-tion.

5 Cognitive imagination

Many authors contrast sensory imagination withcognitive imagination (“imagining that,” or “pro-positional imagination”), which has been definedas belief-like (Mulligan 1999; Currie &Ravenscroft 2002; McGinn 2004; Goldman 2006;Weinberg & Meskin 2006b; Arcangeli 2011a).17Cognitive imagination seems to be relativelyautonomous from sensory imagination. For in-stance, one can imagine that poverty has been re-duced in the world independently of re-creatingany visual, auditory, tactile, etc., experience. Ofcourse the autonomy of cognitive imagination rel-ative to sensory imagination echoes the autonomyof belief relative to sensory perception (one canbelieve that poverty must be reduced in the worldwithout perceiving anything).

Cognitive imagination is by essence non-sensory, but given our previous discussion, it doesnot exhaust the field of non-sensory imaginings.Re-creating in imagination some internal experi-ence is presumably non-cognitive (in the relevantsense of being belief-like), but it is non-sensory aswell. Thus we have, at least prima facie, threetypes of potentially dissociable imagination: sens-ory non-cognitive imagination (e.g., I imaginehearing a piece of music, such as Ravel’s Con-certo pour la main gauche), non-sensory non-cog-nitive imagination (e.g., I imagine having theproprioceptive experience of being one-armed),and non-sensory cognitive imagination (e.g., Iimagine that Maurice Ravel has created a pianopiece especially for me).

One might argue that cognitive imaginationis not only non-sensory but non-experiential as

17 In fact, Mulligan speaks of a judgement-like, rather than a belief-like,type of imagination, which he calls “supposition”. It is not entirelyclear whether his notion of supposition can be equated with what wecall “cognitive imagination.” Very often in the literature, suppositionis taken to be belief-like and, as such, nothing but cognitive imagina-tion (Nichols & Stich 2003; McGinn 2004; Goldman 2006). An al-ternative view is that supposition is a sui generis type of imaginationakin to acceptance rather than belief (Arcangeli 2011b). However, forpresent purposes we will skip this issue and consider only belief-likeimagination.



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well and as such lies outside the scope of GH. Ac-cording to a standard view, beliefs, even if theycan be occurrent, are not conscious experiencesstrictly speaking. On this view, an occurrent be-lief may be accompanied by various experiences(mental images, feelings, emotions, etc.), butthere is nothing it is like to have a belief.18 Nowthis view has recently come under attack byphilosophers who acknowledge the existence of adoxastic phenomenology, i.e., a kind of phe-nomenology characteristic of belief (see the de-bates on cognitive phenomenology in Bayne &Montague 2011). On this alternative view, thereis something it is like to have an occurrent belief,which is reducible to neither sensory nor affectivephenomenology. At least some occurrent beliefswould be sui generis conscious experiences.19

If the alternative view is broadly correct,some beliefs lie within the scope of GH.20 In orderto capture cognitive imagination as a putativeform of experiential imagination, let us introduceanother specific hypothesis subordinate to GH,which we call the Cognitive Hypothesis (C):

CogH =Df To imagine something cognit-ively is always at least to re-create a con-scious occurrent belief.

For instance, cognitively imagining that quantumphysics is false or that this pen is an alien in-volves re-creating the conscious occurrent beliefthat quantum physics is false or that this pen isan alien. In general, one may surmise that any-thing that can be consciously believed can be cog-nitively imagined.

We have suggested that experiential imagin-ation divides into two sub-domains only, namelysubjective and objective imagination (covered bySubjH and ObjH, respectively). In addition,sensory imagination (covered by SensH)18 See Metzinger (2003), Tye (2009), and Carruthers & Veillet

(2011). Note that the standard view can lead to different atti -tudes toward the notion of cognitive imagination. On one atti-tude, cognitive imagination exists but is non-experiential. On an-other attitude, cognitive imagination does not exist or wholly re-duces to sensory imagination (if, for instance, it is construed asauditory verbal imagination).

19 Crane (2013) defends a closely related view, according to which episodesof thinking, although not beliefs themselves, are phenomenally conscious.CogH can easily be adapted to accommodate Crane’s view.

20 In conversation, Peacocke confirmed that he intends GH to cover atleast some cases of belief-like imagination.

emerged as a species of objective imaginationand non-sensory non-cognitive types of imagina-tion (e.g., proprioception-like and agentive-likeimagination) have been described as paradig-matic cases of subjective imagination. Whatabout cognitive imagination (covered byCogH)? Is it a type of objective or of subjectiveimagination? Or should we acknowledge a thirdclass of experiential imaginings that are neitherobjective nor subjective?21

We have introduced the distinctionbetween objective and subjective imagination asthe imaginative analogue of the distinctionbetween external and internal experience. As wehave seen, many external experiences are waysof gaining information about the world, andmany internal experiences are ways of gaininginformation about oneself. Now one might claimthat belief, unlike perceptual or introspectiveexperience, is not individuated in terms of waysof gaining information. Of course some of ourbeliefs result from various ways of gaining in-formation about the world and ourselves, but itis logically possible to have a belief that is notthe result of any source of information. Does itfollow that belief as an experience is neither ex-ternal nor internal? Not really, for an externalexperience has been more fundamentally definedas being accidentally de se, whereas an internalexperience is essentially or at least normally dese. In this more fundamental sense, if belief isan experience, it is clearly an external experi-ence: one can believe all sorts of states of affairsthat do not involve or concern oneself. It followsthat cognitive imagination, as the re-creation ofan external doxastic experience, is better seenas a sub-species of objective imagination, alongwith sensory imagination. Objective imagina-tion then emerges as a heterogeneous domain,but where at least two clearly different types ofimagining can be distinguished (see figure 3).

21 Moreover, the question of whether these varieties of imagination exhaustthe field of experiential imagination remains open. In order to answer itwe would have to inquire as to whether there are other types of imagina-tion, such as desiderative or desire-like imagination (see Currie &Ravenscroft 2002 and Doggett & Egan 2007 for a positive view, andWeinberg & Meskin 2006a and Kind 2011 for a critical view), affectiveor emotion-like imagination (see Goldman 2006 for a positive view, andCurrie & Ravenscroft 2002 for a critical view) and judgement-like or ac-ceptance-like imagination (see footnote 17). For lack of space, we have todefer this inquiry to another occasion.



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6 The scope of subjective imagination

As we have seen, subjective imagination involvesre-creating various ways of gaining informationabout ourselves, such as proprioceptive or agent-ive experience. Now we also have ways of gaininginformation about our own sensory experiences,as well as about our own beliefs. We seem to beable to form self-ascriptions of the form “I see x”or “I believe that p” without relying on independ-ent background beliefs. The nature of this abilityis controversial. Some philosophers claim thatboth sensory experiences and beliefs can be intro-spected (e.g., Goldman 2006). Thus, we should beopen to the possibility of re-creating in imagina-tion an introspective experience of a visual experi-ence or an occurrent belief. Other philosophers re-ject the notion of introspection altogether andconsider that self-ascription of sensory experienceor belief can follow a purely theoretical procedureknown as an “ascent routine” (see Evans 1982and Gordon 1995 for the case of belief, and Byrne2010 for suggestions about how to extend the as-cent routine to sensory experience).

The question arises as to what types of in-ternal experience can be re-created in imagina-tion, i.e., what the scope of subjective imagina-tion is. In a sense, this question is hostage to an

independent theory of internal experience, ap-propriate to sensory experience or belief. Obvi-ously, we cannot settle the matter in this ex-ploratory essay. Still, before moving to the pen-ultimate section, we would like to suggest thatphenomenologically accessible distinctionswithin the realm of imagination might be con-ceived as (usually neglected) constraints on acorrect theory of internal experience. We shallfocus on belief, but similar observations can bemade for the case of sensory experience.

There is some phenomenological evidencethat subjective imagination can capture an in-ternal perspective on at least some beliefs. Con-sider an atheist who tries to imagine what it islike to believe in God. One might argue thatthis involves re-creating some internal experi-ence of an occurrent belief in God. At least theatheist’s imagining seems different from twoother types of imagining, namely imagining be-lieving in God and imagining believing that onebelieves in God.

First, it is different from re-creating inimagination an occurrent belief in God, whichwould be an example of cognitive imagination.The latter imagining does not have belief as aconstituent of its content; one cognitively ima-gines God himself, rather than some belief in


Figure 3: The varieties of experiential imagination


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his existence. In general, an imagining that re-creates the non-imaginative state M need nothave M as part of its content; the imagining it-self is an imaginative re-creation of M, but it isnot about M (Currie & Ravenscroft 2002, p. 27;see also Burge 2005, p. 63, for the correspond-ing point about sensory imagination). In con-trast, the atheist’s imagining essentially has be-lief as one of the constituents of its content; oneimagines a particular belief in God. A relateddifference is that re-creating an occurrent beliefin God is re-creating an external experience of aGod-involving world. However, the atheistmight want to imagine what it is like to believein God without taking a stance on the presenceof God in the imaginary world. Her imagining isfocused on the belief in God, independently ofwhether it is true or false (even though as anatheist she believes it to be false).

Second, the atheist’s imagining is differentfrom re-creating an occurrent higher-order beliefthat one believes in God, i.e., imagining thatone believes in God. Intuitively, the former ima-gining is more specific than the latter (which isanother example of cognitive imagination). Ima-gining having the higher-order belief that onebelieves in God involves re-creating an externalexperience of one’s belief in God. However, theatheist is not merely imagining that she orsomeone else has a belief in God. She wants toget into the believer’s mind and re-create inimagination an internal perspective on some oc-current belief in God.

In the context of GH, the apparent exist-ence of cases of subjective imagination wherethe re-created experience is an internal experi-ence of belief can be seen as a constraint on acorrect account of the way we gain informationabout our own beliefs. The introspective ac-count can offer a straightforward explanation ofthe atheist’s imagining as involving the re-cre-ation of an introspective experience, as opposedto a mere higher-order belief, about the belief inGod. Prima facie, the ascent-routine accounthas fewer resources to give justice to the relev-ant phenomenology. It might not be impossibleto do so, though, if experiential imagination canalso re-create complex cognitive processes suchas going through an ascent routine. Again, we

have to leave the discussion for another occa-sion. It is enough for our purposes to gesture to-ward the possibility of extending the scope ofsubjective imagination to encompass more orless specific internal perspectives on beliefs,even if further argument is certainly needed.

7 Some applications

In this penultimate section, we would like tobriefly illustrate how the fate of importantclaims about imagination made by philosophersand scientists depends on something like ourtaxonomy of experiential imagination. Althoughwe believe that this taxonomy has philosophicalvalue in its own right, we also would like toshow that it is connected to central issues inphilosophy and cognitive science. These issuesconcern, respectively, modal epistemology (sec-tion 7.1), cognitive resonance (section 7.2),mindreading (section 7.2), and imaginative iden-tification (section 7.4). Our discussion in whatfollows, though, can only be rather program-matic in contrast to the rest of the essay.22

7.1 Modal epistemology

Imagination has been traditionally construed asproviding evidence for modal claims. For in-stance, many philosophers since Descartes havesuggested that what can be imagined is meta-physically possible. On the other hand, imagina-tion has been shown to produce various sorts ofmodal illusions (Kripke 1980; Gendler &Hawthorne 2002). The main challenge faced byproponents of an internal relation between ima-gination and possibility (perhaps via conceivab-ility) is thus to distinguish proper and improper22 This is only a selection of issues where we think our phenomeno -

logical and conceptual distinctions are relevant. We wish we hadspace to discuss other topics of relevance to the theory of imagin -ation, such as mental time travel (Schacter & Addis 2007),dreams (Windt 2014), and mind wandering (Metzinger 2013). Forinstance, there are interesting issues having to do with the appar -ent lack of reflexivity of mind wandering episodes, and the tend-ency for the mind wanderer to identify herself with imaginedprotagonists (Metzinger 2013). A speculative hypothesis is thatthe passivity of mind wandering episodes causes various metacog-nitive errors, such as the error of confusing a case of subjectiveimagination with a genuine case of internal experience, whichleads the imaginer to self-identify with the subject of the ima-gined mental state. Again, we have to leave this fascinating issueto another occasion.



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uses of imagination, i.e., those uses thatprovide, and those that do not provide, evid-ence for modal claims. One might suggest, forinstance, that proper uses of imagination re-quire a certain format that other uses lack(Nichols 2006; Weinberg & Meskin 2006b).

In our view, there is an additional cri-terion that must be taken into account in thesedebates, which concerns the type of non-imagin-ative state that is re-created by the relevantimaginings. It might be that only some types ofimagination are internally related to modalproperties. For instance, it is not clear that cog-nitive imagination is essentially related to pos-sibility. Assuming the correctness of our claimthat cognitive imagination re-creates belief, thefact that one can cognitively imagine that p isno more evidence that p is possible than themere fact that one believes that p. After all, onecan believe all sorts of metaphysically im-possible states of affairs (such as that Hesperusand Phosphorus are distinct celestial bodies).

The challenge is then to identify the typesof imagination, if any, that are essentially or atleast reliably related to what is metaphysicallypossible. One hypothesis, voiced by Dokic(2008), is to focus on types of imagination thatre-create states of (actual or potential) know-ledge. On this hypothesis, some uses of imagina-tion are guides to possible contents becausethey are guides to the possibility of knowing. Tothe extent that sensory perception is commonlythought to be a source of knowledge, sensoryimagination could be reliably linked to the pos-sibility of what is imagined in this way (see alsoWilliamson 2008).

This is not to say that cognitive imagina-tion has no role to play in providing evidencefor modal claims. Just as belief can be groundedon sensory perception and thereby be countedas knowledge, a single imagining might re-createnot only belief and perception separately, butthe complex mental state of believing that p onthe basis of suitable sensory evidence (see Dokic2008). The resulting imagining would be neitherpurely sensory nor purely cognitive, but to theextent that it re-creates a non-imaginative stateof knowledge, its content might be bound towhat is metaphysically possible.

7.2 Cognitive resonance

If we are right, there is a phenomenologically ac-cessible distinction between objective and subject-ive imagination. What it is like to visually ima-gine an action or a painful experience is typicallydifferent from what it is like to subjectively ima-gine acting or having pain. However, this distinc-tion is rarely made explicit in the scientific literat-ure on the neural underpinnings of imagination.Let us consider the case of action. It has been aremarkable discovery that observing and execut-ing an action involve (at least sometimes) thesame resonance system in the brain, and moreprecisely the same “mirror neurons,” correspond-ing to types of action such as grasping, reaching,or eating (Rizzolatti et al. 1996; Rizzolatti et al.2001). What about imagining an action? MarcJeannerod claims that “imagining a movement re-lies on the same mechanisms as actually perform-ing it, except for the fact that execution isblocked” (Jeannerod 2006, p. 28). Does this claimconcern objective imagination, subjective imagin-ation, or both? On the one hand, his notion of“motor imagery”, defined as “the ability to gener-ate a conscious image of the acting self” (p. 23),strongly suggests that he is talking about subject-ive imagination. Motor imagery seems to underliethe imaginative recreation of an internal experi-ence of action, such as the intimate experience wehave while executing an action or controlling ourbodily movements. On the other hand, Jeannerodmakes clear that the “action representations” in-volved in motor imagery can also operate duringaction observation (p. 39). To the extent thatvisually imagining an action is analogous to ob-serving an action, one may surmise that objectiveimagination too involves the relevant action rep-resentations.23

What we would like to know, of course, iswhich action representations are common to bothobjective and subjective imagination of an action,and which action representations are specific to23 There is also the interesting case of observing one’s own action in a mir-

ror. The question here is whether the observer is aware that she is ob-serving her own action. If the answer is negative, then the re-creation ofthe relevant experience belongs to objective imagination. If the answer ispositive, as for instances when one uses visual information to controlone’s action (think of a man shaving in front of the mirror), then the re-creation of the relevant experience may also belong to subjective imagin-ation (see footnote 11).



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subjective imagination. Here as elsewhere, wethink that phenomenological considerations canat least guide scientific investigations into theneural underpinnings of our ability to imagine ac-tions, whether imaginatively observed or imagin-atively executed.

7.3 Mindreading

We also think that much of the once-hot debatebetween the “theory theory” and the “simula-tion theory” of mindreading has missed the dis-tinction between objective and subjective ima-gination, or at least its significance. Mindread-ing is often described as involving ways of “put-ting oneself in another person’s shoes” (Gold-man 2006). However, as many have observed,that colloquial phrase can be used to refer totwo different projects. One might try to under-stand either what one would do if one were inthe other’s situation or what the other will do.The difference between these meanings has beenconceived as depending on whether one per-forms the right “egocentric shift” and succeedsin mimicking the other’s mind (Gordon 1995). Ifwe are right, there is another distinction thatiscrucial to simulation-based mindreading,namely the objective versus subjective imagina-tion distinction. We might perform the rightegocentric shift but imaginatively re-create onlythe other’s external experiences. For instance,we might imaginatively adopt the other’s visualpoint of view and try to understand what he orshe is actually seeing. In doing so, though, weimaginatively adopt a perspective that is notnecessarily the other’s perspective. Visual per-spectives can be shared. It is only if we re-cre-ate at least some of the other’s internal experi-ences that we imaginatively adopt a perspectivethat can only be that of the agent. Unlike ex-ternal experiences, internal experiences cannotbe shared.

Why is it important for the success ofmindreading that the mindreader re-creates alsointernal experiences of the other person? Let usconsider the case of pain. To the extent thatboth objectively and subjectively imagining an-other person in pain may trigger the same res-onance (affective) mechanisms, we can argue

that they are on par with respect to the ima-giner’s understanding of the other’s experience(Gallese 2003). We surmise that the relevantdifference between objectively and subjectivelyimagining the same painful experience concernsthe dynamics of mindreading. Recreating an in-ternal perspective on pain will spontaneouslygive rise to other subjective imaginings in-volving the recreation of the mental con-sequences of pain in the other. Objective ima-gination of another person in pain will likely de-velop in different directions. For instance, if were-create a visual experience as of someone inpain, we will be inclined to re-create othervisual experiences of the consequences of pain.More generally, someone who would be able tore-create only external experiences of painwould be blind to the internal consequences ofpain. In contrast, subjective imagination prom-ises to yield a better view of the other’s innerlife as it unfolds in time.

7.4 Imaginative identification

In this essay, we did not explicitly mention anintriguing phenomenon in the field of imagina-tion, namely our ability to imagine beingsomeone else, or imaginative identification. Forinstance, we can imagine being Napoleon seeingthe desolation at Austerlitz and being vaguelyaware of one’s short stature (Williams 1976, p.43). Recanati calls such cases “quasi-de se ima-ginings”:

I will, therefore, coin the term ‘quasi-de se’to refer to the first person point of viewtype of thought one entertains when oneimagines, say, being Napoleon. The type ofimagining at stake is clearly first personal,yet the imaginer’s self is not involved […].The properties that are imaginatively rep-resented are not ascribed to the subjectwho imagines them, but to the personwhose point of view she espouses. (Re-canati 2007, pp. 206–207)

How can an imagining be both first-personaland not genuinely (but only “quasi”) de se? Ifwe can imagine being Napoleon just by recreat-



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ing his visual experience of the desolation atAusterlitz, it is not obvious that quasi-de seimagination is necessarily first-personal. Sincevisual perspectives can be shared, our visualimagining can re-create anyone’s perspective. Inother words, objective imagination (i.e., the re-creation of external perspectives) would not besufficient to generate quasi-de se imaginings.Perhaps Recanati implicitly ties quasi-de seimagination to subjective imagination so thatimagining being someone else involves the recre-ation of at least some internal experience.Again, in contrast to external perspectives, in-ternal perspectives cannot be shared. For in-stance, a subject imagining to be Napoleonmight, on the one hand, see in imagination thedesolation at Austerlitz (i.e., an external per-spective is re-created) and, on the other hand,be vaguely aware of his short stature and hishand in his tunic (i.e., an internal, propriocept-ive perspective is re-created).

In what sense would subjective imagina-tion be first-personal, then? One view is thatthe quasi-de se case somehow derives from thegenuine de se case, in which we imagineourselves having various external and internalexperiences. On this view, there is an asymmet-rical dependence between quasi-de se and genu-ine de se imagination: even if the former is notmerely a type of the latter, imagining beingsomeone else having such-and-such experiencesdepends on the ability to imagine oneself havingthese experiences.

However, our account of subjective ima-gination suggests an alternative view, accord-ing to which the identity of the subject neednot be built into a subjective imagining. Con-sider the case of action again. The constraintimposed on subjective imagination, that theimagined perspective on the action can onlybe that of the agent, leaves open whose self isinvolved. That the action is my action, orsomeone else’s, is an additional fact in theimaginary world. In other words, subjectiveimagination can be neutral as to the identityof the self that occupies the relevant internalperspective. As a consequence, the same neut-ral imagining can give rise to either quasi-dese or genuine de se imagination, depending on

the imaginary project at stake.24 Subjectivelyimagining oneself swimming and subjectivelyimagining another person swimming both reston the same type of imagining, i.e., the recre-ation of an internal experience of the action ofswimming. We take this neutrality to be a po-tential advantage for our analysis of subjectiveimagination. Subjective imagination can beseen as a basis for the introduction of a notionof self that is conceptually on a par with otherselves. In this respect, imagination acts as anantidote to solipsism.

8 Conclusion

In this essay, we have tried to clarify what itmeans to claim that imagination is experien-tial. As we have seen, the notion of experien-tial imagination is not unitary and refers to avariety of phenomena. We have focused ourattention on four aspects of this notion.

• First, experiential imagination broadlymeans that different kinds of experientialstates are re-created in the imagination (al-though we have remained silent about theprecise way in which the experiential statesare re-created).

• Second, the distinction between externaland internal experiences, which is inde-pendently motivated in the literature onnon-imaginative mental states, has givenrise to a helpful sub-division of experientialimagination into two different ways of ima-gining: objectively and subjectively. PaceVendler, we have argued that this contrastcannot be straightforwardly aligned withtwo ways in which the self is involved inour imaginings (respectively, explicitly, orimplicitly).

• Third, the literature commonly acknow-ledges two other varieties of imagination,namely sensory and cognitive imagination.

24 The notion of imaginative project comes from Williams (1976). Ima-ginings are particular mental states, whereas imaginative projectscan bind several imaginings in a coherent endeavour of imaginativeworld-making. The distinction is relevant even when a single imagin-ing is at stake. Typically, an imaginative project will impose con-straints, e.g., of an intentional or stipulative sort, on what is the casein the imagined world in addition to what is explicitly represented inan imagining.



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We have pointed out that they should beconsidered as two sub-varieties of objectiveimagination, insofar as they both re-createexternal experiences (respectively, the fivesenses and at least some occurrent beliefs).

• Fourth, we suggested, more tentatively, thatsubjective imagination too may be furtherdivided. There would be, on the one hand,the imaginative re-creation of non-cognitivenon-sensory internal experiences (e.g.,proprioception, agentive experiences, intro-spection, feeling pain) and, on the otherhand, the imaginative re-creation of cognit-ive non-sensory internal experiences (e.g.,ascent routines).

Of course, more has to be said about the pre-cise domain of experiential states that can bere-created in the imagination, beyond thosethat we have introduced in this essay. Anotherquestion is whether there is something likenon-experiential imagination. It might well bethat, at the end of the journey, every type ofimagining can be shown to belong to experien-tial imagination. This would have to includethe state of imagining being a descendant ofNapoleon, which, as we have seen, Waltonrates as non-experiential. For instance, onemight suggest that it is the state of imaginingbelieving that one is a descendant of Napoleon(understood as representing in imagination aworld in which one is a descendant of Napo-leon).

Eventually, an analysis of experientialimagination on the lines suggested aboveshould throw light not only on imaginationper se, but on connected phenomena. As wehave tried to illustrate, we believe that tradi-tional and contemporary discussions about therelationship between imagination and possibil-ity, the nature of mindreading, and the abilityto imagine being someone else, often rely onoversimplified conceptions of imagination, andthat a more fine-grained taxonomy of experi-ential imagination is needed. We suspect thatour taxonomy is beneficial to still other ap-plications of the notion of imagination, but wehave to leave the task of justifying our suspi-cion to another occasion.

Acknowledgements

We thank the audience of the workshop “Selfand Agency” in Liège (April 2014) for valuablefeedback, two anonymous referees, and the edit-ors Thomas Metzinger and Jennifer Windt formost helpful comments on earlier drafts of thisessay.



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