In their paper “The Heterogeneity of Experiential Imagination”, Jérôme Dokic and Margherita Arcangeli offer a taxonomy of the various mental states subsumed by them under the label Experiential Imagination. Experiential Imagination is introduced as the re-creation of non-imaginative, conscious mental states. Since experiential imaginings re-create experiential mental states, they can be classified according to the underlying taxonomy of the conscious mental states that they re-create. Dokic and Arcangeli argue that there are two types of Experiential Imagination: objective imagination and subjective imagination. Objective imagination re-creates experiences about the external world, while subjective imagination re-creates experiences about mental or bodily states of oneself. Furthermore, the authors refine the category of the objective imagination by dividing it into sensory imagination and cognitive imagination. This taxonomy of the Experiential Imagination suggested by Dokic and Arcangeli provides a structure within which to understand the vast spectrum of mental states classified as experiential imaginings by referring to the notions of subjective and objective imagination. The authors additionally suggest an attractive perspective on cognitive imaginings, which relies on the idea that these have a phenomenal character as well.
I would like to discuss three aspects of Dokic and Arcangeli’s paper and close with my own reflections on the topic. I will start with a point concerning the definition of Experiential Imagination as re-creating other mental states (section 2). Two points about the taxonomy itself will follow this discussion: the second point deals with the notions of objective and subjective imagination (section 3). A third point with which I will be concerned is the classification of cognitive imaginings within the suggested taxonomy (section 4). It is unclear whether and in what sense the notion of re-creation is helpful for delineating the suggested taxonomy of Experiential Imagination. The taxonomy faces certain issues that are partly grounded in the notion of re-creation.
Given these considerations, I will present my own take on a classification of imaginings that does not involve the notion of re-creation and is based on our pre-theoretical opinions about imaginings. In addition to this, I explore the notion of an empty perspective to describe a phenomenological difference in the perspectival character of imaginings and non-imaginative experiences (see section 5).