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Time: 20 hours
Level: Advanced
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 Introduction Resource- This unit investigates certain philosophical issues concerning imagination, creativity and the relationships between them, and considers the conceptions and varieties of imaginative experience.
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- 1 Imagination Resource
- Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations and impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst...
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| | 2 The varieties of imaginative experience
- 2.1 Meanings of ‘imagination’ Resource
- A natural starting point is to consider the ways in which ‘imagination’ and related terms such as ‘imagine’ and ‘image’ are used in everyday contexts.
- 2.2 Twelve conceptions of imagination Resource
- Can we say anything more systematic about the different ways in which we talk of imagination? In a paper entitled ‘Twelve conceptions of imagination’ (2003), Leslie Stevenson distinguishes the following...
- 2.3 A first attempt at defining ‘imagining’ Resource
- So far I have made some preliminary remarks on the meanings of ‘imagination’ and related terms, and considered one attempt at distinguishing different conceptions of imagination. In a broad sense, ‘imagining’...
- 2.4 Gaut's analysis of imagination Resource
- Berys Gaut's main concern in his paper is to provide an account of the relationship between imagination and creativity. But in section 2 of his paper he offers an analysis of the notion of imagination,...
- 2.5 The problematic status of the imagination Resource
- Let us review the position we have reached. Stevenson's twelve conceptions of imagination suggest that ‘imagining’ might be defined as ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’. This definition...
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| | 3 Imagery and supposition
- 3.1 Imagination and imagery Resource
- From the very origins of concern with the imagination in the work of the ancient Greeks, the imagination has been associated with imagery. But what is the relationship between imagination and imagery?...
- 3.2 Imagination and supposition Resource
- To regard images as playing an essential role in imagining is to conceive of imagination as a sensory power. But as we have seen, imagining can also occur in the absence of imagery, and we might take this...
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- 4 Review Resource
- We began by considering the meanings of ‘imagination’ and related terms in everyday contexts, and then looked at the twelve conceptions of imagination that Stevenson distinguishes. This suggested a first...
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- 5 Further reading Resource
- Stevenson (2003) is a good place to start in clarifying the various conceptions of imagination, but for a fuller exploration, analysing in detail the language of imagination both historically and conceptually,...
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| | References and Acknowledgements | |
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