In this essay, we have tried to clarify what it means to claim that imagination is experiential. As we have seen, the notion of experiential imagination is not unitary and refers to a variety of phenomena. We have focused our attention on four aspects of this notion.
First, experiential imagination broadly means that different kinds of experiential states are re-created in the imagination (although we have remained silent about the precise way in which the experiential states are re-created).
Second, the distinction between external and internal experiences, which is independently motivated in the literature on non-imaginative mental states, has given rise to a helpful sub-division of experiential imagination into two different ways of imagining: objectively and subjectively. Pace Vendler, we have argued that this contrast cannot be straightforwardly aligned with two ways in which the self is involved in our imaginings (respectively, explicitly, or implicitly).
Third, the literature commonly acknowledges two other varieties of imagination, namely sensory and cognitive imagination. We have pointed out that they should be considered as two sub-varieties of objective imagination, insofar as they both re-create external experiences (respectively, the five senses and at least some occurrent beliefs).
Fourth, we suggested, more tentatively, that subjective imagination too may be further divided. There would be, on the one hand, the imaginative re-creation of non-cognitive non-sensory internal experiences (e.g., proprioception, agentive experiences, introspection, feeling pain) and, on the other hand, the imaginative re-creation of cognitive non-sensory internal experiences (e.g., ascent routines).
Of course, more has to be said about the precise domain of experiential states that can be re-created in the imagination, beyond those that we have introduced in this essay. Another question is whether there is something like non-experiential imagination. It might well be that, at the end of the journey, every type of imagining can be shown to belong to experiential imagination. This would have to include the state of imagining being a descendant of Napoleon, which, as we have seen, Walton rates as non-experiential. For instance, one might suggest that it is the state of imagining believing that one is a descendant of Napoleon (understood as representing in imagination a world in which one is a descendant of Napoleon).
Eventually, an analysis of experiential imagination on the lines suggested above should throw light not only on imagination per se, but on connected phenomena. As we have tried to illustrate, we believe that traditional and contemporary discussions about the relationship between imagination and possibility, the nature of mindreading, and the ability to imagine being someone else, often rely on oversimplified conceptions of imagination, and that a more fine-grained taxonomy of experiential imagination is needed. We suspect that our taxonomy is beneficial to still other applications of the notion of imagination, but we have to leave the task of justifying our suspicion to another occasion.
Acknowledgements
We thank the audience of the workshop “Self and Agency” in Liège (April 2014) for valuable feedback, two anonymous referees, and the editors Thomas Metzinger and Jennifer Windt for most helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.