Imagination and Experience

Jérôme Dokic and Margherita Arcangeli develop a taxonomy of the mental states classified as experience-like imaginings in their paper “The Heterogeneity of Experential Imagination”. Experience-like imaginings are thought to re-create experiences. Therefore, the taxonomy of the Experiential Imagination suggested by the authors mirrors a taxonomy of the underlying, re-created experiences. In this commentary, I will focus on the notion of re-creation that is invoked, and argue that this notion must either be fleshed out further or omitted from the taxonomy. Two further points follow this discussion: first I will discuss the idea of different kinds of self-involvement in objective and subjective imagination and suggest an alternative view. Then I raise some doubts about the classification of cognitive imaginings as experiential imaginings. To summarise, I will suggest an alternative interpretation of these findings by claiming that we can obtain a useful taxonomy of imaginative states based on our pre-theoretical opinions. Furthermore, I will explore the idea that experiential imaginings involve an empty point of view.