I would like to focus first on the notion of Experiential Imagination itself. Dokic and Arcangeli want to develop a taxonomy of Experiential Imagination, and they therefore start by exploring the mental states that fall under this category. The authors introduce the subject of their taxonomy, the Experiential Imagination, as follows (see Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 2): Experiential Imagination is first of all imagination that is experience-like. Whether all instances of imaginings are of this kind or whether there may be kinds of imagination that do not fall under this category is left open (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 2). The notion of Experiential Imagination is spelled out further by referring to Christopher Peacocke’s so-called General Hypothesis (GH):
To imagine something is always at least to imagine, from the inside, being in some conscious state (see Peacocke 1985, p. 21).
According to this definition, Experiential Imagination is imagining something from the inside, which is defined as involving “the perspective of a conscious experience” (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 3). An example would be visually imagining a white sandy beach, which involves a certain experiential perspective (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 3). The authors call this kind of imagination “X-like” imagination or “re-creating X” in imagination (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 3), with X standing for the non-imaginative mental state that is re-created (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 3). Following this terminology, visually imagining a white sandy beach is vision-like imagination or re-creating a visual experience of a white sandy beach in the imagination. The authors sum up these considerations in a brief discussion on the notion of re-creation: Experiential Imagination is, according to the authors, imagination that re-creates non-imaginative conscious states (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 3). The idea that imaginative states re-create other mental states allows Dokic & Arcangeli to ground their taxonomy of the Experiential Imagination on a classification of such re-created mental states. A taxonomy of these underlying non-imaginative mental states can therefore serve as a basis for a taxonomy of the corresponding imaginative states (this collection, p. 3). Dokic and Arcangeli do not commit themselves to any existing account that explains the imagination in terms of recreation or simulation (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 3). The notion of re-creating a non-imaginative mental state is not explored further, since “it is enough for our purposes to accept the idea that a phenomenologically useful taxonomy of imagination can be guided by a corresponding taxonomy of non-imaginative mental states” (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 3).
Even if the authors wish to remain as neutral as possible with respect to the notion of re-creation, it is important to spell it out. There are two main reasons why I think that this notion should be explored further: first, the notion of re-creation is crucial to the nature and scope of the taxonomy in which it is involved. Second, it seems to me that the authors oscillate to some extent between different notions of re-creation, rather than actually remaining neutral about it.
Concerning the first point, there seem at least three options available for understanding the idea that imaginings re-create other mental states, assuming that re-creating is not used to specify sub-personal processes but deals instead with mental states on a personal level:
(1) As a mere way of speaking to refer to x-like imaginings
(2) As the claim that imaginings re-create an experiential mode
(3) As the claim that imaginings re-create experiences as part of their contents
The first way to understand the notion of re-creating is to use it synonymously with the notion of x-like imagination. What I mean by this is that we may use the notion of re-creating X in imagination to refer to having an imagining with an x-like phenomenology. In which case, for example, re-creating a visual experience in imagination would be synonymous with having a vision-like phenomenology. Understood like this, the notion of re-creating is simply used to refer to imaginings with an experience-like phenomenology. This is merely a way of speaking or a terminological stipulation. If the notion is used like this, it does not assume or specify any relation between imagination and experience in general (or between particular imaginings and experiences). That is, using the notion in this way does not commit us to the claim that imaginings are related to or dependent on experiences in any sense. However, if the notion of re-creation is used as a mere way of speaking, it would be better to omit it from the taxonomy altogether, since it does not play any explanatory role or add any technical term. Instead, we could simply speak of x-like imagination and thereby refer to imaginings that have an x-like phenomenology.
The other two ways of spelling out the notion of re-creating are more substantial than just synonyms for x-like imaginings: in these versions, the notion of re-creation is a metaphysical notion that is used to indicate a relation between imaginings and experiences. Used like this, the notion of re-creation involves a claim about the metaphysical structure of imaginings (or the imagination), since it endorses the idea that imaginings are related to experiences in a specific way. The nature of this relation can be spelled out differently. Version (2) claims that imaginings re-create experiences in the following sense: for every type of experience there is a respective imaginative mode. There is a visual mode of imagination, an auditory mode of imagination, a proprioceptive mode of imagination, and so forth. In this sense, every type of experience is re-created by a specific type of Experiential Imagination. Version (3) claims something else, namely that different experiences are re-created as part of the contents of imaginings: if I visually imagine an object O, for example, the imagining has as part of its content a visual experience of O.
These two notions of re-creation yield different taxonomies with different metaphysical underpinnings: a taxonomy based on (2) differentiates imaginings according to their mode, while a taxonomy based on (3) classifies imaginings according to their contents. If re-creation is understood as specified in (2), such that for every experience-type there is an imaginative type that re-creates this experience-type, this is a different metaphysical claim to the one sketched in (3). As such, one could claim that there is one type of imagination that re-creates various experience-types by taking them up as parts of their contents. The nature of the relation called re-creation therefore has consequences for what is taxonomised: this can be, for example, the mode or the content of an imagining. Neglecting this notion (if it is considered to be a substantial metaphysical notion) therefore means neglecting the metaphysical basis of the taxonomy. Thus, it seems to me that from a methodological point of view it is indeed important to clarify which notion of re-creation is in play.
The second worry I want to raise about the notion of re-creation is that the authors do not in fact remain neutral with regard to this notion. First, it seems that the notion of re-creating that the authors have in mind is not only a synonym for the expression x-like imaginings. One reason to think so is that Dokic and Arcangeli use the notion of re-creation in crucial definitions such as, for example, to formulate the various versions of the General Hypothesis. One example is as follows:
SensH: To imagine something sensorily is always at least to re-create some sensory experience. (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 4)
If to re-create some sensory experience is synonymous with having an imagining with a sensory phenomenology, the hypothesis and its variants are no longer interesting claims. This indicates that the notion is more than what I called a mere way of speaking, but instead refers to (and thereby stipulates) a relation between imaginings and experiences or imagination and experience in general.
Additionally, it seems to me that the suggested taxonomy oscillates between different notions of re-creation. On the one hand, Dokic and Arcangeli sometimes seem to sympathise with the mode-sense of the notion of re-creation (as in (2)). When introducing the distinction between objective and subjective imagination, they claim, for example, that this distinction is concerned with the mode of the experience and not with the content (Dokic & Arcangeli this collection, p. 9). I address this point in more detail in section 3, below. On the other hand, Dokic and Arcangeli employ the General Hypothesis and develop various variants of it. As a reminder, the General Hypothesis claims that “to imagine something is always at least to imagine, from the inside, being in some conscious state” (Peacocke 1985, p. 21). This thesis is put forward by Christopher Peacocke (1985, p. 21) and Michael Martin (2002), who call it the “Dependency Thesis” (Martin 2002). It is usually considered to be a claim about what an imagining represents (see e.g., Dorsch 2012, pp. 294 and pp. 314; see also Paul Noordhof’s exploration and criticism of the thesis in Noordhof 2002). The idea behind these claims is that imaginings are experiential in nature because what we imagine in the imagining are experiences: “sensory imagining is experiential or phenomenal precisely because what is imagined is experiential or phenomenal” (Martin 2002: 406). This means that my visual imagining of an object O represents an experience of O and therefore is experiential. The General Hypothesis hence seems to imply, at least implicitly, a specific conception of re-creation: it endorses the idea that imaginings involve experiences as part of their contents, which is the notion of re-creation I formulated in version (3). Therefore, this view is not neutral about the nature of re-creating: relying on the General Hypothesis brings with it a certain commitment about the notion of re-creation involved (given that one adopts the suggested reading of the General Hypothesis and its variants).
In this section, I (1.) discussed three interpretations of the notion of re-creation that I take to be the most relevant in the given context, since they are alluded to by the authors. It seems that the notion of re-creation needs to be fleshed out further if it is to play some explanatory role in the taxonomy (otherwise it can be dismissed); and (2.) argued that the background assumptions of the taxonomy are committed to differing interpretations of the notion of re-creation. Therefore, the authors do not remain neutral about the notion of re-creation that is involved here but seem to implicitly adopt different notions of re-creation. One way of solving these issues would be to address them and commit to a specific notion of re-creation. Another solution would be to eliminate the notion of re-creation from the taxonomy, which is what I will suggest in the final section of this commentary.