We would like to thank Anne-Sophie Brüggen for her very interesting comments on our paper. In what follows, we try to respond to what we see as the central points raised in her discussion.
In our target paper, we use a notion of re-creation in order to set up a sophisticated taxonomy of experiential imagination. We also profess a certain neutrality with respect to this notion. Anne-Sophie Brüggen argues that our neutrality is only apparent, and that we in fact oscillate between two substantial notions of re-creation, which have quite different implications for the ontology of imaginings.
Our professed neutrality concerns only the subpersonal underpinnings of imagination. We do not want to commit ourselves to the view that imaginings and their non-imaginative counterparts share neural or functional resources. We do not explicitly vindicate any neutrality with respect to the notion of re-creation at the personal level. However, we intend to be neutral at that level too, in the following respect. In our account, the phrase “X re-creates Y” should be used synonymously with the phrase “X is Y-like”, to mean that an imagining of type X has a phenomenal character analogous to the phenomenal character of a non-imaginative state of type Y. For instance, visual imagination is visual-like in the sense that its phenomenal character is more similar to visual perception than, say, auditory perception or belief. In general, what matters for our purposes is that there is a systematic correspondence between the imaginative and the non-imaginative realms; the metaphysical nature of this correspondence is left open.
Now, Brüggen raises an interesting question, namely whether (notwithstanding our intentions) our account shows an oscillation between two different metaphysical conceptions of re-creation. On the first (mode-based) conception, there are different imaginative modes corresponding to kinds of experience in the non-imaginative realm. On the second (content-based) conception, which Brüggen attributes to Mike Martin, all imaginings belong to a single imaginative mode but represent different kinds of experience as part of their contents.
Brüggen suggests (following Martin’s 2002 interpretation) that Peacocke’s General Hypothesis (1985) already carries a commitment to the content-based conception. We disagree. The phrase “imagining being in some conscious state” (Peacocke 1985, p. 21) does not obviously entail that the conscious state is represented in the content of the imagining. It is compatible with taking the expression “being in some conscious state” to be a modifier of “imagining”, just as the internal accusative “a song” is a modifier of “singing” in “singing a song”. Perhaps we are wrong about Peacocke’s intentions, but we insist that our use of the General Hypothesis can be metaphysically neutral in this sense.
What about the mode-based conception of re-creation? We concede that some of our formulations, especially when we introduce the distinction between objective and subjective imagination, evoke such a conception. As it happens, we have both rejected the content-based conception in other works (Dokic 2008; Arcangeli 2011a, 2011b). However, many aspects of our taxonomy can be re-formulated in terms more amenable to the latter conception. For instance, the distinction between objective and subjective imagination might be construed as a distinction between imaginings that represent external experiences and imaginings that represent internal experiences as part of their contents. Whether all aspects of our taxonomy can be re-formulated in this way is indeed something that should be explored further.
Brüggen eventually recommends getting rid of the notion of re-creation, and going for a purely phenomenological taxonomy based on pre-theoretical intuitions. It is worth contrasting our methodology with hers. In many respects, our taxonomy rests on well-identified phenomenological types. For instance, all visual imaginings are clearly unified under a single phenomenological type. The latter can then easily be related to a kind of experience in the non-imaginative realm, namely visual experiences. In other cases, identifying non-imaginative counterparts is more difficult because the relevant imaginings do not form a well-identified phenomenological type. We agree with Brüggen that there may not be a phenomenology of objective (as opposed to subjective) imagination. Still, there is no need to introduce a metaphysically-loaded conception of re-creation (either mode-based or content-based) to ground the distinction between objective and subjective imagination. It is enough that phenomenological contrasts can be drawn between particular cases of objective imagination and particular cases of subjective imagination in various domains. This is exactly how Vendler (1984) introduces the distinction in the domain of imagining actions. At this point, our method departs from phenomenology and becomes abductive and speculative. In our view, the best explanation of the relevant phenomenological contrasts is that the imaginings correspond to different kinds of experience in the non-imaginative realm, namely external and internal experiences. We need not rely exclusively on pre-theoretical intuitions. Our taxonomy is indeed grounded in particular phenomenological contrasts, but it is also informed by (controversial) theoretical notions, such as the notion of an external (as opposed to an internal) experience.