Corso di laurea magistrale in Filosofia

Basic knowledge in the field of the philosophy of mind

The module aims to introduce and examine the nature and varieties of imagination and its role in contemporary debates on the nature of fiction, the paradox of fiction, learning from fiction, creativity and recent developments in the epistemology of science, with a special focus on scientific thought experiments, scientific models and scientific discovery. Welcome to the module in Philosophy of imagination! 

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

i) understand and explain a range of key problems, issues, and debates in the philosophy of imagination and express this understanding in clear, precise, and accessible terms;

ii) develop and articulate a range of alternative solutions to problems and issues in the philosophy of imagination in an open-minded way, drawing on module materials;

iii) develop and articulate arguments for the alternative solutions considered in relation to problems and issues in the philosophy of imagination, drawing on module material, identifying some points of weakness and some potential points for development;

iv) make a judgement about what is the best view on a particular problem in the philosophy of imagination and argue in defence of this judgement;

v) apply simple strategies for improving their work, based on critical reflection and feedback from me and from their peers.

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Students will be assessed on (1) their oral contributions in the seminars (forming 10% of the mark) and (2) a written essay question of no more than 4,000 words (forming 90% of the mark). 

• Teaching materials will be made available online on a weekly basis. 
• Core reading and recommended reading will be available online (through the library or, in exceptional cases, under the teaching materials).
• For those who cannot attend a meeting in person (for a serious reason) a regular session has been created on Webex, which you can join following this link: https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=m90db929a4660b982f8aad975a46fbf0b  

   

Imagination is a distinctive cognitive ability that has been characterised in different ways and has been assigned an important explanatory role in different philosophical contexts. This is a three-part module, and each part covers a different theme. 

Theme One is grounding: We’ll explore philosophical and psychological accounts of the nature and varieties of imagination. 

Theme Two is imagination and art: We’ll discuss the relation between imagination and art. 

Theme Three is imagination and epistemology: We’ll discuss the role of imagination in epistemology, with a special focus on scientific knowledge. 

For every meeting, you will have a selection of reading to complete. Some are essential, and you must read these in order to contribute to that meeting's discussion. Some are recommended - these will give you extra ideas, information and challenges to help develop your contribution to the meeting. Sometimes you will not be given prescribed recommended reading, but that doesn’t mean you should stop at the essential reading. It’s always recommended that you conduct your own research each week, finding your own resources to bring in and share with everyone else (the bibliographies of the texts we read are an excellent place to start). In all cases, I suggest you keep notes while doing any reading. 

 

 

Theme One: Grounding

Meeting 1: What is imagination?

Core reading:

• Walton, Kendall L. 1990. "Representation and Make-Believe." In Mimesis as Make-Believe: on the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Harvard University Press.

Recommended reading:

• Kind, Amy 2013. "The Heterogeneity of Imagination." Erkenntnis 78(1): 141-149.

Further reading:

• Currie, Gregory and Ian Ravenscroft 2002. "Family and Friends." In Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford University Press.
• Kind, Amy 2016. "Introduction." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Amy Kind. Routledge.
• Liao, Shen-yi and Tamar Gendler 2020. "Imagination", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/imagination.
• Stevenson, Leslie F. 2003. "Twelve Conceptions of Imagination." British Journal of Aesthetics 43: 238-259.
• Yablo, Stephen 1993. "Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53(1): 1-42.

Meeting 2: Imagery 

Core reading:

• Arcangeli, Margherita 2020. "The Two Faces of Mental Imagery." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101(2): 304-322.

Recommended reading:

• Gregory, Dominic 2016. "Imagination and Mental Imagery." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Amy Kind. Routledge 
• Perky, Cheves W. 1910. "An Experimental Study of Imagination." American Journal of Psychology 21: 422-52.
• Shepard, Roger N., and Metzler, Jaqueline 1971. "Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects."  Science 171: 701-03.

Further reading:

• Dennett, Daniel 1969."The Nature of Images and the Introspective Trap." In Imagery, edited by Ned Block. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Dennett, Daniel 1979. "Two Approaches to Mental Images."In Imagery, edited by Ned Block. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
• Hume, David 1740/2014. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kind, Amy 2001. "Putting the Image Back in Imagination." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62(1): 85-109. 
• Kosslyn, Stephen 1980. Image and Mind. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press.
• Nanay, Bence 2021. "Mental Imagery", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/mental-imagery.
• Pylyshyn, Zenon 1973. "What the Mind’s Eye Tells the Mind’s Brain—A Critique of Mental Imagery." Psychological Bulletin 80: 1-24.
• Pylyshyn, Zenon 1978. "Imagery and Artificial Intelligence." In Perception and Cognition: Issues in the Foundation of Psychology, edited by C. Wade Savage. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Tye, Michael 1991. The Imagery Debate. MIT Press.

Meeting 3: Belief-like imagination

Core reading:

• Sinhababu, Neil 2016. "Imagination and belief." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Amy Kind. Routledge.

Further reading:

• Nichols, Shaun 2006. "Just the Imagination: Why Imagining Doesn’t Behave Like Believing." Mind & Language 21(4): 459-474. 
• Nichols, Shaun 2004. "Imagining and Believing: The Promise of a Single Code." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62: 129-39.
• Peacocke, Christopher 1985. "Imagination, Experience, and Possibility." In Essays on Berkeley: a Tercentennial Celebration, edited by John Foster and Howard Robinson.  Clarendon Press.

Meeting 4: Desire-like imagination

Core reading:

• Doggett Tyler and Andy Egan 2012. "How We Feel About Terrible, Non‐existent Mafiosi." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84(2): 277-306. 

Recommended:

• Kind, Amy 2011. "The Puzzle of Imaginative Desire." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89(3): 421-439. 

Further reading:

• Currie, Gregory 2010. "Tragedy." Analysis 70(4): 632-638. 
• Currie, Gregory 2002. "Desire in imagination." In Conceivability and possibility, edited by Tamar Szabò-Gendler and John Hawthorne. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Doggett, Tyler and Andy Egan 2007. "Wanting things you don’t want: The case for an imaginative analogue of desire." Philosophers’ Imprint 7(9): 1-16.
• Kind, Amy 2016. “Desire-Like Imagination.” In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Amy Kind. Routledge.
• Mele, Alfred R. 1995. "Motivation: Essentially motivation-constituting attitudes." The Philosophical Review 104(3): 387–423.
• Salis, Fiora 2016. "The Problem of Satisfaction Conditions and the Dispensability of i -Desire." Erkenntnis 81(1): 105-118. 

 

Theme Two: Imagination and art

Meeting 5: The nature of fiction

Core reading:

• Walton, Kendall L. 1990. "Fiction and Non-Fiction." In Mimesis as Make-Believe: on the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Harvard University Press.

Recommended reading:

• Stock, Kathleen 2016. "Imagination and Fiction." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Amy Kind. Routledge.

Further reading:

• Currie, Gregory 1990. "The Concept of Fiction." In The Nature of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Friend, Stacie 2011. "Fictive Utterance and Imagining II." Supplementary volume - Aristotelian Society 85: 163-180. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Friend, Stacie 2012. "Fiction as a Genre." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society: 112: 179-209. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• García-Carpintero, Manuel 2013. "Norms of fiction-making." British Journal of Aesthetics 53(3): 339-357.
• Hopkins, R. 1992. "Review of Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, by K.L. Walton." Philosophical Books 33: 126–128.
• Stock, K. (2011) “Fiction and Imagination I,” Supplementary Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 85: 145–162.
• Wiltsher, Nick and Meskin, Aaron 2016. “Art and Imagination.” In Amy Kind (ed.),The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination (pp. 179-191). London: Routledge.
• Wollheim, Richard 1991. “A Note on Mimesis as Make-Believe.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51: 401-406.

Meeting 6: The paradox of fiction

Core reading:

• Friend, Stacie 2020. "Fiction and Emotion: The Puzzle of Divergent Norms." The British Journal of Aesthetics 60(4): 403-418.

Recommended reading:

• Cova and Teroni 2016. "Is the Paradox of Fiction Soluble in Psychology?" Philosophical Psychology 29(6): 930-942.

Further reading:

• Adair, Heather V. 2019. "Updating Thought Theory: Emotion and the Non-Paradox of Fiction." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100/4: 1055-1073.
• Carroll, Noel 1997. "Art, Narrative, and Emotion." In Emotion and the Arts, edited by Hjort, Mette & Laver, Sue. Oxford University Press.
• Currie, Gregory 1995. "The Moral Psychology of Fiction." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73: 250-259.
• Friend, Stacie 2003. "How do I really feel about JFK." In Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts (pp. 35-53), edited by Matthew Kieran and Dominic McIver Lopes. London: Routledge.
• Meskin, Aaron and Weinberg, Jonathan M. 2003. "Emotions, Fiction and Cognitive Architecture." British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (1): 18-34.
• Moran, Richard 1994. "The Expression of Feeling in Imagination." Philosophical Review 103: 75-106.
• Moyal-Sharrock, Daniéle 2009. "The Fiction of Paradox: Really Feeling for Anna Karenina." In Emotions and Understanding: Wittgensteinian Perspectives, edited by Ylva Gustafsson, Camilla Kronqvist & Michael McEachrane. Palgrave-Macmillan.
• Radford, Colin 1975. "How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary 49: 67-80.
• Tullmann, Katherine, and Buckwalter, Wesley 2014. "Does the Paradox of Fiction Exist?" Erkenntnis, 79: 779-796.
• Walton, Kendall L. 1978. "Fearing Fictions." The Journal of Philosophy 75(1): 5-27.
• Walton, Kendall L. 1997. "Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime: On Being Moved by Fiction." In Emotion and the Arts (pp.37-49), edited by Mette Hjortand Sue Laver. Oxford University Press.
• Wilson, Catherine 2013. "Grief and the Poet." British Journal of Aesthetics 53: 77-91.

Meeting 7: Imagination and learning from fiction

Core reading:

• Currie, Gregory, Wimmer, Lena, Ferguson, Heather and Heather J. Ferguson 2021. "Testing correlates of lifetime exposure to print fiction following a multi-method approach: Evidence from young and older readers." Imagination, Cognition and Personality 41(1): 54-86.

Recommended reading:

• Currie, Gregory 2016. "Imagination and Learning." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Amy Kind. Routledge.

Further reading:

• Kathleen Stock 2007. "Sartre, Wittgenstein and learning from imagination." In Philosophy and Conceptual Art, edited by Peter Goldie and Elizabeth Schellekens. Clarendon Press.
• Currie, Gregory, Wimmer, Lena, Friend, Stacie, and Ferguson, Heather 2022. "The Effects of Reading Narrative Fiction on Social and Moral Cognition: Two Experiments Following a Multi-Method Approach." The Scientific Study of Literature. Available at: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/186023/
• Wimmer, Lena, Friend, Stacie, Currie, Gregory Paul Heather J. Ferguson 2021. "Reading Fictional Narratives to Improve Social and Moral Cognition: The Influence of Narrative Perspective, Transportation, and Identification." Frontiers in Communication. Language Sciences 5: 1-19.

Meeting 8: Human and machine imagination and creativity 

Core reading:

• Gaut, Berys 2003. "Imagination and creativity." In The creation of art: new essays in philosophical aesthetics (pp. 148-173), edited by Berys Gaut and Pasley Livingston. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Recommended reading:

• Boden, Margaret 1998. “Creativity and artificial intelligence.” Artificial Intelligence 103(1): 347-356.

Further reading:

• Boden, Margaret 2014. “Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: A Contradiction in Terms?” In The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays, edited by Elliot S. Paul and Scott B. Kaufman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gaut, Berys 2010. “The Philosophy of Creativity.” Philosophy Compass 5(12): 1034-1046.
• Jordanous, Anna and Bill Keller 2012. “What makes a musical improvisation creative?” Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies 6(2): 151-175. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265215169_What_makes_a_musical_improvisation_creative
• Moruzzi, Caterina 2021. “Measuring creativity: an account of natural and artificial creativity.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11:1.
• Moruzzi, Caterina 2017. "Creative AI: Music Composition Programs as an Extension of the Composer’s Mind." In Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Vincent Müller. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
• Nanay, Bence 2014. "An Experiential Account of Creativity." In The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays, edited by Elliot S. Paul and Scott B. Kaufman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wellner, Galit 2021. “Digital Imagination, Fantasy, AI Art.” Foundations of Science. [Section 2].

 

Theme Three: Imagination and the epistemology of science 

Meeting 9: Scientific thought experiments

Core reading:

• Gendler, Tamar Szabó. 2004. “Thought Experiments Rethought—and Reperceived.” Philosophy of Science 71 (5): 1152-63. 



Recommended reading:

• Norton, John D. 1996. “Are Thought Experiments Just What You Thought?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (3): 333-66.

Further reading:

• Nersessian, Nancy J. 1992. “In the Theoretician’s Laboratory: Thought Experimenting as Mental Modeling.” PSA (East Lansing, Mich.) 2: 291-301.
• Salis, Fiora, and Roman Frigg. 2020. “Capturing the Scientific Imagination.” In The Scientific Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Meeting 10: Scientific models

Core reading:

• Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2019. “Models, Fictions, and Conditionals.” In The Scientific Imagination, edited by Arnon Levy and Peter Godfrey-Smith: New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Recommended reading:

• Salis, Fiora and Frigg, Roman 2020. "Capturing the Scientific Imagination." In Peter Godfrey-Smith and Arnon Levy (eds.) The Scientific Imagination. Oxford University Press.

Further reading:

• Morgan, Mary S. 2004. “Imagination and Imaging in Model Building.” Philosophy of Science 71 (5): 753–66.

• French, Steven. 2020. “Imagination in Scientific Practice.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science10 (3).
• Stuart, Mike 2019.“Everyday Scientific Imagination: A Qualitative Study of the Uses, Norms, and Pedagogy of Imagination in Science.”  Science & Education 28(6), 711-730.
• Stuart, Mike and Nersessian, Nancy 2019. “Peeking Inside the Black Box: A New Kind of Scientific Visualization.” Minds and Machines 29: 87-107.

Meeting 11: Imagination and scientific discovery through artificial intelligence

Core reading:

• Stuart, Mike 2019. “The Role of Imagination in Social Scientific Discovery: Why Machine Discoverers Will Need Imagination Algorithms.” In Scientific Discovery in the Social Sciences, edited by Mark Addis et al. (pp. 49-66), Springer: Heidelberg. 

Recommended reading:

• Bailer-Jones, D. M. 1999. "Creative Strategies Employed in Modelling: A case study." Foundations of Science 4(4): 375-388.

Further reading:

• Arfini, Selene, Bertolotti, Tommaso, Magnani, Lorenzo 2019. "The Antinomies of Serendipity: How to Cognitively Frame Serendipity for Scientific Discoveries." Topoi 39(4): 939-948. 
• Copeland, Samantha 2019. "On serendipity in science: discovery at the intersection of chance and wisdom." Synthese 196(6): 2385-2406.
• Cornell, J., et. al. 2020. "Modelling Serendipity in a Computational Context’. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.0440.
• Moruzzi, Caterina 2021. "Measuring creativity: an account of natural and artificial creativity." European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11:1.