The Philosophy of Imagination: Technology, Art and Ethics 1350277223, 9781350277229

Table of contents :
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Editors’ Introduction
Imagination, Technology, Art, and Ethics
Philosophy of Imagination across the Analytic-Continental Divide
The Book’s Layout
Part I: Imagination and Technology
Chapter 1: Technologically Related Imagination: Postphenomenology and the Art of Dibutades
Two General Approaches to the Imagination
A Third Approach: Phenomenology
Postphenomenology
Chapter 2: Can Algorithms Imagine?
Introduction
Imagination in Kant and in Algorithms
Imagination and Creativity
The Layer Model
Co-Shaping
Summary
Chapter 3: Emaginary; or Why the Essence of (Digital) Technology Is by No Means Entirely Technological
Introduction
From Imagination to Imaginary
From Imaginary to Sociotechnical Imaginary
From Emagination to Emaginary
Conclusion: Emages
Chapter 4: Techno-Activism
Introduction
Hybridity and Imagination in Engineering Studies
Scaffold: A Framework for Hybridity and Imagination
Hybrid Imagination = Hybridity + Imagination
Hybridity as Interdisciplinarity
Hybrid Imagination and the Body
Sublime Hybrid Imagination—Liminality at Its Limits
Hybrid Imagination, Technology, and Evolution
Techno-Activism in the Perspective of Hybrid Imagination
Discussion and Conclusion
Part II: Imagination and Ethics
Chapter 5: White Ignorance and the Racial Imaginary
Race in Our Social Imaginaries
White Ignorance and Denial
Hesitation and Resistance
Chapter 6: Moving in a World You Cannot See: From Imaginative Perception to Creative Moral Imagination
Imaginative Perception
Imaginative Perception and Moral Action
Moral Creativity
Chapter 7: Narrative and Imagination in Times of Global Pandemics
The Blame Narrative: A Global Story
Alternative Narratives
Conclusion
Part III: Imagination and Art
Chapter 8: Poetic Imagination and Technology: A Dialectical Assessment
Introduction
First Moment: Poetry and Technology Intertwined
Second Moment: Segregation (Art-for-Art’s-Sake)
Technology and Poetic Imagination According to Jules Verne
Third Moment: Negation of the Negation
Discussion and Conclusion
Chapter 9: Am I in Wonderland as Alice Is? The First-Person Perspective in Imaginative Art and Game Experiences
Introduction
De se Imagination and First-Person Imaginative Experiences
First-Person Perspective and de se Imagination in Art and Game Experiences
From First-Person to de se Imagination: A Transformation of the Self in Art and Game Experiences?
Chapter 10: Representation, Expression, Exemplification: Paul Ricoeur, Nelson Goodman, and the Role of Imagination in the Metaphorical Process
The Representative Illusion and the Metaphorical Process
Expression—Exemplification
Imagination and Truth
Chapter 11: Imagination and Images between Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy
Mental Images
Imagination and the Perceptual World
Imagination and Pictorial Images
Conclusion
Part IV: Imagination, the Human, and the Contemporary World
Chapter 12: Why Imagination Needs Socratic Ignorance
Introduction
Recombining Reality
Dreaming of Futures
Questioning Imaginaries with Socratic Ignorance
Imaginaries in Robotics as a Business Model
Discussion and Conclusion
Chapter 13: Ryle and Sartre against Hume’s Theory of the Imagination
Introduction
Sartre against the “Classical Conception” of the Imagination
Sartre against Hume’s Distinction between Perception and Imagination
Sartre against Hume’s Conception of Mental Images
Ryle on Descartes’ Myth
Ryle against Hume’s Criterion of “Liveliness”
Ryle against Hume’s Copy Principle
Conclusion
Chapter 14: Enactive Imagination: Its Roots and Contemporary Horizons
Introduction
What Is Enactive Imagination?
Roots of Enactive Imagination
Contemporary Horizons
Conclusion and Future Directions
Acknowledgments
Chapter 15: Phantasy and Technologically Embedded Imagination: A Phenomenological and Postphenomenological Analysis
Introduction
Phenomenology: Imagination and Phantasy
Postphenomenology between Imagination and Technologies
Conclusions
Notes
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

The Philosophy of Imagination

Also Available from Bloomsbury The Ethical Imagination in Shakespeare and Heidegger, Andy Amato Imagination: Cross-Cultural Philosophical Analyses, ed. Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead Günther Anders’ Philosophy of Technology, Babette Babich

The Philosophy of Imagination Technology, Art, and Ethics

Edited by

Galit Wellner, Geoffrey Dierckxsens, and Marco Arienti

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2024 Copyright © Galit Wellner, Geoffrey Dierckxsens and Marco Arienti, and Contributors, 2024 Galit Wellner, Geoffrey Dierckxsens and Marco Arienti have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. Series design by Charlotte Daniels Cover image: Color square geometry painted in minimal urban architecture (© Artur Debat / Getty Images) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-7721-2 ePDF: 978-1-3502-7722-9 eBook: 978-1-3502-7723-6 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Editors’ Introduction  Galit Wellner, Geoffrey Dierckxsens, and Marco Arienti 1 Imagination, Technology, Art, and Ethics 1 Philosophy of Imagination across the Analytic-Continental Divide 3 The Book’s Layout 4 Part I  Imagination and Technology13 1

Technologically Related Imagination: Postphenomenology and the Art of Dibutades  Lyat Friedman15 Two General Approaches to the Imagination 17 A Third Approach: Phenomenology 19 Postphenomenology 23

2

Can Algorithms Imagine?  Galit Wellner30 Introduction 30 Imagination in Kant and in Algorithms31 Imagination and Creativity 33 The Layer Model 35 Co-Shaping 36 Summary 38

3

Emaginary; or Why the Essence of (Digital) Technology Is by No Means Entirely Technological  Alberto Romele42 Introduction 42 From Imagination to Imaginary 43 From Imaginary to Sociotechnical Imaginary 45 From Emagination to Emaginary 48 Conclusion: Emages 50

4 Techno-Activism  Lars Botin56 Introduction 56 Hybridity and Imagination in Engineering Studies 57 Scaffold: A Framework for Hybridity and Imagination 58 Hybrid Imagination = Hybridity + Imagination 58

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Contents

Hybridity as Interdisciplinarity 59 Hybrid Imagination and the Body 60 Sublime Hybrid Imagination—Liminality at Its Limits 60 Hybrid Imagination, Technology, and Evolution61 Techno-Activism in the Perspective of Hybrid Imagination 64 Discussion and Conclusion 66 Part II  Imagination and Ethics69 5

White Ignorance and the Racial Imaginary  Celia Edell71 Race in Our Social Imaginaries 72 White Ignorance and Denial 77 Hesitation and Resistance 81

6

Moving in a World You Cannot See: From Imaginative Perception to Creative Moral Imagination  Yanni Ratajczyk86 Imaginative Perception 87 Imaginative Perception and Moral Action 91 Moral Creativity 94

7

Narrative and Imagination in Times of Global Pandemics  Geoffrey Dierckxsens and Petr Kouba98 The Blame Narrative: A Global Story101 Alternative Narratives103 Conclusion108

Part III  Imagination and Art 113 8

Poetic Imagination and Technology: A Dialectical Assessment  Hub Zwart115 Introduction 115 First Moment: Poetry and Technology Intertwined 117 Second Moment: Segregation (Art-for-Art’s-Sake) 118 Technology and Poetic Imagination According to Jules Verne 122 Third Moment: Negation of the Negation 123 Discussion and Conclusion 127

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Am I in Wonderland as Alice Is? The First-Person Perspective in Imaginative Art and Game Experiences  Arthur Cools131 Introduction 131 De se Imagination and First-Person Imaginative Experiences 133

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First-Person Perspective and de se Imagination in Art and Game Experiences 137 From First-Person to de se Imagination: A Transformation of the Self in Art and Game Experiences? 142 10 Representation, Expression, Exemplification: Paul Ricoeur, Nelson Goodman, and the Role of Imagination in the Metaphorical Process  Roger W. H. Savage145 The Representative Illusion and the Metaphorical Process 146 Expression—Exemplification 149 Imagination and Truth 152 11 Imagination and Images between Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy  Marco Arienti157 Mental Images 158 Imagination and the Perceptual World 162 Imagination and Pictorial Images 166 Conclusion 169 Part IV  Imagination, the Human, and the Contemporary World 173 12 Why Imagination Needs Socratic Ignorance  Cathrine Hasse175 Introduction 175 Recombining Reality 177 Dreaming of Futures 179 Questioning Imaginaries with Socratic Ignorance 180 Imaginaries in Robotics as a Business Model 182 Discussion and Conclusion 184 13 Ryle and Sartre against Hume’s Theory of the Imagination  Andreas Vrahimis 188 Introduction 188 Sartre against the “Classical Conception” of the Imagination 189 Sartre against Hume’s Distinction between Perception and Imagination 191 Sartre against Hume’s Conception of Mental Images 193 Ryle on Descartes’ Myth195 Ryle against Hume’s Criterion of “Liveliness”195 Ryle against Hume’s Copy Principle 197 Conclusion 199

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14 Enactive Imagination: Its Roots and Contemporary Horizons  Zuzanna Rucińska203 Introduction 203 What Is Enactive Imagination? 204 Roots of Enactive Imagination 207 Contemporary Horizons 211 Conclusion and Future Directions 214 Acknowledgments 215 15 Phantasy and Technologically Embedded Imagination: A Phenomenological and Postphenomenological Analysis  Nicola Liberati218 Introduction 218 Phenomenology: Imagination and Phantasy 219 Postphenomenology between Imagination and Technologies 222 Conclusions 224 Notes 229 List of Contributors 239 Index 243

Editors’ Introduction Galit Wellner, Geoffrey Dierckxsens, and Marco Arienti

Imagination, Technology, Art, and Ethics Some of the most creative manifestations of imagination are the result of a human interaction with art or technology, or both. Vincent Van Gogh is one of the most common examples of creative art, and Apple for creative technology. Imagination is required not only in the production of art and technology but also in experiencing, using, and viewing them. From the perspective of aesthetics, imagination therefore exhibits two complimentary facets: it plays a role in the creation of a work of art or the development of a new technology (e.g., the writing of narratives), and it is required in order to experience that work of art or technological artifact, that is, to fully appreciate the different meanings we encounter in its experience (Walton 1990; Lamarque 1996). This intersection of imagination, art, and technology is nothing new, and can be traced back to prehistory, at least from the perspective of philosophy of technology (Ihde 2017). To this “mixture” we propose to add ethics, understood as a theory of right and wrong. Again, this is not new since ethics has often been associated with the imagination by various thinkers throughout history (e.g., Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum or Paul Ricoeur). Indeed, taking the right decisions and actions is often not simply a straightforward task, but requires a certain creativity and imaginative skill, often also creative empathetic skills. In particular, imagination is studied widely in the fields of moral and political philosophy as a significant part of empathy and the understanding of others. Imagination is understood as a capacity to design social imaginaries, that is, the set of values, norms, institutions, and symbols proper to a social group and through which the members of this group imagine the social whole (Geniusas and Nikulin 2018). Today, novel technologies push us to re-think the relationships between imagination, art, ethics, and technology. Think for example of Artificial

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Intelligence (AI) systems that receive a text prompt and draw various pictures based on that text. It is as if their algorithms imagine how a collection of words can be re-elaborated into a drawing. Do they imagine? Can their output be considered art? Who can ethically claim to be the artist behind these works? And what happens when the results produce fake news? Who is ethically responsible? These developments demonstrate how the discussions of technology, art, and ethics collide and how their meeting point reflects the challenges of understanding imagination today. In today’s technology-intensive world, all these fields (and more) are applicable to the design and use of technologies in everyday life. Philosophy of technology defines as “co-shaping” a relation consisting of two complementary facets, in which imagination shapes our experiences and at the same time is shaped by our environments, technologies included. Into this co-shaping process, contemporary technologies, and especially AI, enter and transform our whole ecosystem. Yet, we should remember that imagination has always been shaped by technologies. Media technologies are frequently referred to as that which ignites imagination, for example, the traditional reading of a book leads one to imagine how the main characters look like, or the use of a camera and drawing software leads artists to create new imaginative works of art. The more traditional types of technologies, such as literature, have often been regarded as inspirational for ethics as is exemplified by the moral hero of a story for instance. Can technologies inspire ethics? So far this question is rarely raised. While technologies ignite imagination and can potentially invoke new ethical questions, the concept of co-shaping invokes the question of how imagination shapes new technologies. Imagination seems required to design an algorithm that receives as its input several words and produces as an output a series of images based on these words. Therefore, the complex process of co-shaping reveals new aspects in the long-established discussions on imagination in the context of human mind, art, and ethics. Moreover, in the co-shaping process, the environment plays an important role as we recently saw in the Covid-19 pandemic. We came to realize that technology “radicalizes” both the discussion on imagination and the world around us. Thus, the pandemic has reshaped our imagination and highlighted how imagination operates in everyday scenarios. It has further demonstrated how societal mechanisms such as lockdowns can transform our imagination. From this perspective, the concept of co-shaping can provide a framework to analyze imagination as we are facing radically new experiences.

Editors’ Introduction

3

Philosophy of Imagination across the Analytic-Continental Divide The intersection of technology, art, ethics, and imagination is further enriched from the philosophical point of view in light of the twentieth-century divide between continental and analytic traditions. Imagination is a concept which enables us to bring into dialogue different philosophical approaches identifying themselves with one of these traditions. One reason for this lies in what might at first sight appear to be a philosophical deficiency: there is no single agreed definition of imagination, given the broad and multi-dimensional nature of the concept. However, it is precisely this feature that captures the relevance of imagination for both analytic and continental philosophy. Philosophy in fact has been studying imagination because it is a significant aspect of what makes us humans; yet, our being human is expressed in various ways and in different domains. Similarly, imagination is not just one single human faculty, but includes multiple aspects of the human form of life, such as its artistic, cognitive, technological, ethical, or social dimensions. It is not surprising, therefore, that imagination has attracted the interest of different philosophical viewpoints, each of which emphasizes certain particular manifestations of the phenomenon.1 Although a rigid opposition between analytic and continental philosophy is increasingly contested, and the divide seems less relevant today, there are still several contexts in which philosophers actually engage with both approaches. In this book, we aim to draw on both traditions, and to shed light on the complex ramifications and implications of the multifarious notion of imagination. Both the analytic and the continental viewpoints understand imagination as more than a mere enabler: while it constitutes our everyday thinking and lies at the foundation of those activities, it is also enabled by them. Relying on different philosophical methodologies, each tradition introduces different meanings and definitions of that concept; yet, they often agree with each other, even if they do not state so explicitly. Phenomenologists as well as analytic philosophers of mind characterize imagination in terms of simulating or making present an absent real object, an invented unreal object, a past experience, an experience that others can have (Sartre 2004; Nichols and Stich 2003; Ricoeur 2007; Ryle 1949; see chapters by Vrahimis; Arienti). In the field of ethics, critical thinkers (Marcuse 1955) and Anglo-American ethicists (Murdoch 2001; Nussbaum 1985) have similarly pointed to the role of imagination in expanding our moral horizons by making

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us question our prejudices and moral assumptions, so that we can transcend ourselves and gain access to the perspective of others (see chapters by Edell; Ratajczyk). Likewise, in aesthetics, phenomenology (Sartre 2004), hermeneutics (Ricoeur 2007), and analytic philosophy (Walton 1990) all contend that imagination brings about a transformation in the viewer’s experience of an artwork, and allows novel meanings to be created. Finally, with regard to philosophy of technology, postphenomenology (Ihde 1973, 1986, 2009, 2015) has integrated both philosophical traditions, yet with special focus on the phenomenological (Husserl 2006; see chapter by Liberati) and psychological research (Vygotskij 2004; see chapter by Hasse) about imagination, to explore the complex intertwining among experience, imaginaries, and technology (see chapters by Botin; Hasse; Wellner). Understanding imagination as central to what makes us human opens new avenues for challenging the traditional ways of dealing with the concept. The contributors to this volume show in their chapters that things are more complex than just reducing imagination to a single aspect, or to a single philosophical problem. More specifically, the different chapters highlight that imagination is linked to processes of perception, action, and even gaming and virtuality (e.g., chapters by Rucińska; Cools), as well as to language and metaphor (e.g., chapter by Savage). The linguistic and metaphorical potential of imagination makes it a faculty that enables humans to create new meanings by way of conversations in which one meaning refers to another, through the use of metaphors or otherwise. This is precisely what allows questioning existing social imaginaries, in the sense of envisioning different social values and norms.

The Book’s Layout Part I is dedicated to imagination and technology from the perspective of philosophy of technology with a focus on postphenomenology. The first chapter by Lyat Friedman locates imagination and technology as one approach among others to imagination. It is followed by Galit Wellner’s chapter where she claims that human imagination requires technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence. Alberto Romele develops the special relations between humans and digital technologies via his notion of emagination. In parallel, Lars Botin develops his notion of hybrid imagination in order to enable us to imagine a more sustainable world.

Editors’ Introduction

5

Part I: Imagination and Technology In Chapter 1, Friedman offers five philosophical approaches to imagination: an empiricist approach regarding imagination as a depleted form of perception; a rationalist/transcendental approach that places imagination in a mediatory position between sensory input and thinking; a phenomenological approach that seeks to separate imagination from perception and memory, attributing to it an independent role; a Romantic approach that places imagination as the highest form of human intellectual and conscious achievement; and a psychoanalytic approach attributes to imagination a compensatory role, working to overcome a lack and divert unconscious desires. Finally she adds a postphenomenological approach, to maintain that technology can broaden the imagination, so that it allows us to extend our imagination in unique and unexpected ways. Chapter 2 combines imagination, art, and technology. In this chapter, Galit Wellner shows how the Kantian definitions of imagination are implemented de facto by AI algorithms to produce works of art. Then she discusses the differences between imagination and creativity and how they are manifested in AI systems. Her solution is avoiding the easy option of assigning imagination to AI algorithms. Instead, she suggests re-interpreting imagination as a distributed faculty that is shared among humans and technologies. The distribution is in the shape of layers, what she terms “the layer model,” inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of plateaus. Through the layer mechanism, the human and the technological affect each other and even transform each other. This mutual affection and transformation process is termed co-shaping. In imagination, the concept of co-shaping leads us to reconsider the Kantian definition that deals only with human actors, as well as the technological enthusiastic approach believing that AI can imagine in and of itself. Chapter 3 introduces Alberto Romele’s concept of emaginary. This concept addresses digital technology and suggests that digital technologies are wrapped in conditions of possibility of a symbolic, social, and cultural order that determine not only their uses but also their invention and design. And because the relationship between technologies and their conditions of possibility is circular, these same technologies are matrices of specific worldviews, such as the “data worldview.” In this chapter, Romele explains emaginary in light of Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus and Paul Ricoeur’s understanding of the social imaginary as a tension between ideology and utopia. He claims that sociotechnical imaginaries should be understood not only as future-oriented

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utopias but also as past-oriented ideologies. He demonstrates his concept with visual representations of Artificial Intelligence, which he terms “emages.” In Chapter 4, Lars Botin claims that humans are highly capable of imagining reality and the world and make use of technologies to enhance this capacity. At the same time technologies open for new ways and types of imagining, which makes the relation a hybrid affair. His concept of hybrid imagination denotes a way of enframing the world through and with technology. For him this is a question of actively addressing the problems and challenges that we as humanity face in relation to grand challenges such as digitalization, climate change, and migration. He maintains that we need to re-think and re-design our ways of being-in-the-world and specifically think how our being is sublime, hybrid, and technological in its essence. The core concepts of hybridity and sublimity serve to understand how to imagine more responsible and sustainable solutions in relation to the grand challenges. Theoretically and philosophically the chapter is in itself hybrid, and a result of patchworking and doing bricolage. With an outset in central perspectives within philosophy of technology—phenomenology, postphenomenology, and critical theory—it is the aim to embrace both the ethical and political dimensions of hybrid imagination. In this way, the chapter could be read as some sort of political and ethical manifest for Techno-Activism.

Part II: Imagination and Ethics In this part, the chapters focus on the ethical questions such as racial oppression, moral creativity, and imagination as part of our capacity to create a narrative identity that takes on ethical meaning. More precisely, this part opens with a chapter on how social education creates and transmits negative social imaginaries of racial oppression (Chapter 5). This part furthermore discusses imagination in the sense of moral perception, the creative skill to change one’s point of view on ethical situations and to act accordingly (Chapter 6). Finally, this part discusses imagination in the context of pandemic management, and how it may be used to create both negative blame narratives (blaming social groups for the outbreak of a pandemic) and more positive narratives of “plasticity” that allow narrative variations that give a voice to discriminated social groups in a pandemic crisis (Chapter 7). In her chapter, Celia Edell examines the role of social imaginaries in societies with a history of racial oppression. In doing so, she draws on different traditions and philosophical concepts. From continental philosophy, she finds inspiration in the idea that we inherit social imaginaries through various forms of social

Editors’ Introduction

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and cultural education, which has very real consequences for our social relations today. From the analytical tradition, she draws on epistemological theories of ignorance, arguing that social imaginaries produce active forms of ignorance. More specifically, she makes a case that social imagination and collective ignorance are mutually reinforcing in favor of white supremacy. Finally, Edell argues that this sustainable mechanism of oppression can be broken up by critical ways of imagination that assist in interrupting habits. In his chapter, Yanni Ratajczyk examines the relation between imaginative perception and moral creativity. In so doing, he discusses the work of three authors: Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, and Cora Diamond. Ratajczyk argues that in the writings of all three of these authors moral imagination is understood as imaginative perception in the sense of a capacity to shift perspective on moral situations. Ratajczyk argues further that the central examples that Murdoch, Nussbaum, and Diamond use to illustrate what they understand as moral imagination nevertheless highlight another significant aspect of moral imagination, namely morally inventive action. While moral imagination may include seeing the world from another perspective, moral imagination requires more in that includes inventive responses to moral problem, not necessarily given by changing one’s perspective only. In Chapter 7, Geoffrey Dierckxsens and Petr Kouba discuss the role of imagination in health care. More specifically, they analyze how imagination is at play in global pandemic management, drawing on Covid-19 and earlier pandemics as examples. Dierckxsens and Kouba argue that a typical reaction to a global pandemic is a phenomenon identified in scholarly literature as blame narrative. Blame narratives target certain social groups, particularly vulnerable ones, as being the source or catalyst of a pandemic outbreak (e.g., as in references to the so-called “Chinese” virus). This type of narrative is an expression of the imagination, not in the sense of a fantasy or a conspiracy, but in the sense of an expression of social imaginaries: certain social values associated with a group of people being identified as a source of disease (the systematic blaming of Roma people for spreading Covid-19 because of their nomadic lifestyle). Dierckxsens and Kouba argue further that a more positive expression of imagination may be found in what they term “imaginative plasticity.” Drawing on the works of Catherine Malabou and Paul Ricoeur, the authors make a case that imaginative plasticity is way of critically assessing pandemic management, finding creative alternative ways of responding to it that focus not just on curbing the pandemic but offer a voice to those who are most vulnerable instead of blaming them.

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Part III: Imagination and Art Part III refers to art as a broad field that includes not only fine art, such as depictive art or music, but also literature and even popular art, such as videogames. In the opening chapter of this part, Chapter 8, Hub Zwart assesses how the relation between poetic imagination and technological imagination has evolved through time. Chapter 9 by Arthur Cools focuses on the distinction between imagining from a first-person perspective and imagining about themselves. Roger W. H. Savage’s Chapter 10 deals with imagination and metaphors in the creation of artistic meaning. Finally, in Chapter 11 Marco Arienti explores how imagination is linked with images, considered both as mental images and as physical pictorial images. In Chapter 8, Hub Zwart aims to retrieve poetry as a social phenomenon, addressing the interaction between poetic imagination and technology from a dialectical perspective, trying to move beyond “bourgeois” literary criticism (e.g., the principle that literary criticism should focus on literature as a text, rather than as a practice closely connected with living society as a whole). He describes how in artisanal and agricultural societies, poetry and technology were intimately connected (the first dialectical moment). Subsequently, due to the genesis of capitalism and bourgeois ideology, poetry and technology became estranged from one another, as opposite, contrasting poles of human culture (the second moment). This polarity between poetry and technology was pushed to the extreme during the era of bourgeois aesthetics, exemplified by the slogan “art for art’s sake,” aspiring to safeguard the hyper-individualism and purity of poetry against the disruptive thrust of technological transformation, and against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, he explores and assesses the condition of contemporary poetry, where we see a resurgence of poetry as a social and collective endeavor, closely entangled with, but at the same time often antithetical to, emerging technological developments. In his chapter, Arthur Cools reflects on the role and nature of first-person imaginings in artwork and game experiences. He sets out a distinction between imagining something from a first-person perspective, that is when some object is imagined from a perspective that one might take in a perception of it, and imagining de se, that is when someone explicitly imagines about herself that they are perceiving or doing something. On the basis of this distinction, Cools argues that imagination is not engaged in the same way by different art and game experiences; instead, such experiences might involve either first-person imagination or de se imagination, depending on our interests or our relation

Editors’ Introduction

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toward the relevant artworks or games (which might for instance call for aesthetic contemplation or for active participation and play). Finally, Cools suggests that the reason why de se imagination seems to occupy a special place in our intuitions about art and game experience lies on extrinsic and contingent factors, such as our needs or preferred practices within the framework of cultural industry. In his chapter, Roger W. H. Savage focuses on Paul Ricoeur’s understanding of imagination. By doing so Savage explains how imagination enables us to use metaphors to redescribe reality, and in that sense, experience things from a different perspective. The author furthermore explores Nelson Goodman’s work and argues further that metaphors are exemplary tools for referring to reality while changing its meaning. Savage concludes that imagination and metaphor are not only meaningful in the creation of art but also in exemplary moral and political acts in that these acts often require seeing and feeling things differently or being imaginative to take a different perspective. The chapter by Marco Arienti considers how two philosophical traditions often regarded as very distant between each other, namely phenomenology and analytic philosophy, have characterized imagination and its relation with images. The issue is examined following three main threads: the nature of mental images, the interplay between imagination and the real world, and the relation between imagination and actual physical images such as pictures. Regarding these three issues, Arienti shows that there is a convergence between the two approaches, despite their obvious methodological differences. Both phenomenologists and analytic philosophers in fact advance three main ideas: first, mental images should be conceived as simulations or reproductions of perceptual experiences, rather than as inner pictures; second, imagination is integrated with actual experience in contexts like game playing or art enjoyment; third, imagination is required to transform the perception of a physical image into the experience of the depicted scene. These shared conclusions, Arienti suggests, can provide the basis for a cross-cutting philosophical view of imagination, informed by both the similarities and differences between phenomenology and analytic philosophy.

Part IV: Imagination, the Human, and the Contemporary World The last part of the book attempts to provide a fresh look on imagination as a new way of being-in-the-world. Cathrine Hasse combines anthropology and philosophy of technology to better understand how we imagine digital technologies like robots and how we can enhance such an understanding

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via what she terms “Socratic Ignorance.” Another meeting point is provided by Andreas Vrahimis, in a chapter analyzing how analytic and continental philosophy traditions practically meet and overcome the differences between the approaches at the question of imagination. This meeting point is further developed by Zuzanna Rucińska who examines the question of imagination as an intersection of Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science. The last chapter by Nicola Liberati offers yet another combination—of technology and time. Using Husserl’s notion of phantasy, Liberati explains how technologies mediated our imagination in times of the Covid-19 pandemic. In Chapter 12, Cathrine Hasse claims that new media technologies have changed not only the speed of how imaginaries spread but also our notions of what is reality and fantasy. In this process, the ability to create imaginaries has acquired a new meaning, so that imaginaries become a cultural artifact that drives a vision of the future especially in the context of technological research projects and grant applications. Hasse’s prime example is robot imaginaries classified into three categories: “where-to” imaginaries, fantasy imaginaries, and realist imaginaries. All types of imaginaries are formed based on available cultural resources that change with human activities and technological developments. She builds on phenomenological arguments that new technologies never just function as tools. Rather, human-machine relationships are mutually constitutive, in ways that fundamentally change both technology and humans. Moreover, new technologies can change our imaginaries and their function. In this contribution, she argues that we need a Socratic Ignorance that can guide us in today’s reality and expand our space for new fantastic visions in all three kinds of imaginaries. Andreas Vrahimis’ chapter starts from an historic fact, namely the 1958 Royaumont colloquium between representatives of both continental and analytic philosophy. During this colloquium, Gilbert Ryle delivered a number of quite polemical remarks against Husserl and the phenomenological tradition. However, in that context Ryle also outlined many parallels between his own analysis of the concept of imagination and the one offered by Jean-Paul Sartre. Ryle claims that Sartre, like himself, rejects (i) a conception of imagining as a kind of private witnessing, and (ii) the Humean view, according to which sensations are qualitatively different from imaginations only in terms of intensity. Vrahimis critically examines Ryle’s comparison by reconstructing the relevant arguments found in the works of both philosophers. His analysis points out some significant similarities and differences between Sartre’s and Ryle’s objections against Hume’s theory of imagination, beyond Ryle’s brief mention of Sartre at Royaumont.

Editors’ Introduction

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In her chapter, Zuzanna Rucińska illuminates the notion of enactive imagination from the perspective of Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science, which sees imagination as a form of action that is closely coupled to our bodily capacities. She describes the key characteristics of enactive imagination, and explains its roots in Rylean analytic philosophy, Sartre’s phenomenology, and Bourdieu’s pragmatism. Then she discusses examples of theoretical and applied contemporary horizons of enactive imagination research, by introducing the concept of ongoing embodied imagination and showing its potential relevance for virtual reality research. The chapter concludes with suggestions of future developments of research on enactive imagination. In Chapter 15, Nicola Liberati aims to show how imagination can be technologically embedded, by building on some ideas developed within the philosophical frameworks of phenomenology and postphenomenology. He examines the phenomenological notions of imagination and phantasy from the Husserlian tradition. He shows that phantasies play an essential role in how we experience the world, since perception is mediated by the horizon constituted by the possible phantasies the subjects can have. At the same time, the phantasies providing the constitution of objects can be shaped by technologies. Thus, it is possible to connect phantasy, imagination, and technologies in how they shape our perception of the world and the values and meanings subjects have. He further shows how during the Covid-19 pandemic technologies mediating the meetings between people are not only used, but they shape how people think in general of social meetings. For him digital mediation is not only related to the actual use of technologies to mediate physical meetings but also to the general imaginaries of what the meetings in the near future will look like.

References Geniusas, S. and D. Nikulin, eds. (2018), Productive Imagination: Its History, Meaning and Significance, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Husserl, E. (2006), Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), Vol. 11, Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media.‫‏‬ Ihde, D. (1973), Sense and Significance, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Ihde, D. (1986), Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction, Albany: SUNY Press. Ihde, D. (2009), “From Da Vinci to CAD and Beyond,” Synthese, 168 (3): 453–67. Ihde, D. (2015), “Is There a Bat Problem for Postphenomenology?” in J. K. Friis and R. Crease (eds.), Technoscience and Postphenomenology: The Manhattan Papers, vii–xvi, Lanham: Lexington Books.

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Ihde, D. (2017), “TechnoArt,” in J. C. Pitt and A. Shew (eds.), Spaces for the Future: A Companion to Philosophy of Technology, 54–61, London: Routledge. Lamarque, P. (1996), Fictional Points of View, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Marcuse, H. (1955), Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, Boston: Beacon. Murdoch, I. (2001), The Sovereignty of Good, New York: Routledge. Nichols, S. and S. P. Stich (2003), Mindreading: An Integrated Account of Pretence, SelfAwareness, and Understanding Other Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1985), “Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: Moral Attention and the Moral Task of Literature,” The Journal of Philosophy, 82 (10): 516–29. Ricoeur, P. (2007), From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. K. Blamey and J. B. Thompson, Evanston: Northwest University Press. Ryle, G. (1949), The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson. Sartre, J. P. (2004), The Imaginary, trans. J. Webber, London: Routledge. Vygotsky, L. S. (2004, January–February), “Imagination and Creativity in Childhood,” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42 (1): 7–97. Walton, K. L. (1990), Mimesis as Make-Believe, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Part I

Imagination and Technology

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Technologically Related Imagination Postphenomenology and the Art of Dibutades Lyat Friedman

Pliny the Elder recounts a story of the very first artist. It is a tale rich with vivid imagination, as Pliny gives credit to Butades for his ingenious pottery and minimizes the daughter’s creative act. Butades’ praised innovativeness is his use of Dibutades’ drawing to produce clay portraits for roofs’ gutter tiles,1 very popular at the time. Pliny tells us that modelling portraits from clay was first invented by Butades, a potter of Sicyon, at Corinth. He did this owing to his daughter, who was in love with a young man; and she, when he was going abroad, drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face thrown by a lamp. Her father pressed clay on this and made a relief, which he hardened by exposure to fire with the rest of his pottery. (1952, 373)2

Despite Pliny’s indifference to Dibutades’ imaginative originality—even her name is masked by that of her father’s—the legend comprises of all the components associated with extensive debates on the capacity or the mental activity of imagination. Is the tale about the beginning of painting imagined? Is the imagined drawing by Dibutades embedded in reality or imaginary? Did painting begin with the tracing of an outline cast by a shadow?3 The imagery, or rather, the imagined act of Dibutades drawing her lover’s facial silhouette presents questions about reality versus represented reality or the use of substitution. Does the image portray reality? Is the image of Dibutades’ lover determined by the lover’s presence or is it an independent creative act made out of her love to him? It displays the long debated studies on origins and copies. It alludes to concepts of lack and desire, giving voice to the claim that imagination is the attempt to overcome absence and loss. The question is, does Dibutades need the drawn figure so as to compensate

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for the lover’s loss, or is the image a production of a new idea inspired by her lover’s departure. Pliny’s tale poses the question of whether imagination is subordinate to the perception of reality and the memory of an experience or is an independent cognitive power. Moreover, one may ask whether the image drawn by Dibutades is determined or delimited by the lover’s silhouette or is the image of an unreal figure merely resembling the shades of light cast on the wall. Furthermore, the tale of Dibutades raises questions about rationality and irrationality: Is the drawing an act of love or is it the outcome of rational planning designed to celebrate her lover by creating an avatar? It invites us to ponder about the spontaneity or determination of imagination. It presents concerns with respect to conscious or unconscious acts and relates to matters of the subjectivity of the one who imagines. In other words, can we say that Dibutades was aware of her creative act? Did she plan her own activity and consciously designed a creative initiative? Is Dibutades an original artist giving the imagination free rein? These questions can be reduced to a few general philosophical approaches to imagination. One approach sees imagination as a depleted form of perception— an empiricist approach. Another approach places imagination in a mediatory position between sensory input and thinking—a rationalist approach as well as a transcendental one. A third approach, a phenomenological one, seeks to separate imagination from perception and memory, attributing to it an independent role. An additional approach is a romantic one which places imagination on a high plateau, bestowing it with the highest form of human intellectual and conscious achievement. In contrast, a psychoanalytic approach attributes to imagination a compensatory role, working to overcome a lack and divert unconscious desires.4 In the next section, I will first provide a short review of the first two approaches, the empiricist approach and the rational ones, that leads into exploring the mediatory role of the imagination. The following section focuses on phenomenology and considers the claim that imagination is restricted by social norms and practices. The last section will review a postphenomenological approach, so as to focus on human relations with technology. I will argue that technology can loosen social constraints. I will maintain that technology can broaden the imagination, that it allows us to extend our imagination in unique and unexpected ways. I will conclude by claiming that Dibutades’ invention of art is technologically related, making it possible to present something otherwise not perceived without her imagination.

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Two General Approaches to the Imagination The empiricist approach to the imagination is expressed by thinkers such as Plato, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume who assess the value of imagination by calculating its “accuracy” with or “distance” from reality. In that sense, imagination is viewed to be an imitation of reality, while perception is given priority over it. Perception is considered to be in a direct and immediate relation to reality. Memory is taken to be closer to reality than imagination and more accurate than imagination. The imagination is demoted to a secondary role and its worth is considered by allowing it to assist in other mental acts. It is considered to be a mere manipulation of perception, a depleted copy or diminished sensory input that should be regarded with suspicion. Thus, Plato concludes in the Republic, that imagination is “imitation [that] is far removed from the truth, for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an image” (1997, BK X 598b) and that “we’re fairly well agreed that an imitator has no worthwhile knowledge of the things he imitates” (1997, BK X, 602b). Hume writes that “the imagination is not restrained to the same order and form with the original impressions; while the memory is in a manner ty’d down in that respect, without any power of variation” (2007, 1.1.3.2).5 The second approach gives imagination an active and reproductive role of mediation. This is the view expressed by Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant, as well as others. The imagination actively produces images by uniting the senses, ideas, memories, and desires. It precedes perception and is necessary for its success. According to Aristotle, imagination, Phantasia6, is distinct from perception, as it can produce images when no perception is available. It is “that in virtue of which an image arises in us” (Of the Soul III 3, 428a1–2). It is necessary for contemplation and thought, Aristotle writes, for “when the mind is actively aware of anything it is necessarily aware of it along with an image” (Of the Soul III 8, 432a8–9). Descartes provides a complicated view of an active imagination, claiming in the Meditation that even if “none of the objects of imagination are real, the power of imagination is something which really exists and is part of my thinking” (1985, 2.29). Imagination serves as a source of his philosophical doubt and thought. According to Kant, “Imagination is a faculty for representing an object even without its presence in intuition” (1998, B151). But more importantly, imagination has an active and mediative role, as it synthesizes the sensory data to reproduce representations of reality (or non-real) in accordance with the

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rules of the understanding. Kant writes, “the imagination is . . . a faculty for determining the sensibility a priori, and its synthesis of intuitions, in accordance with the categories, must be the transcendental synthesis of the imagination” (1998, B152).7 Imagination mediates between sensibility and categories of the understanding to form a unified representation of an object for perception and thinking. As Henry Allison writes, “the imagination is on stage from the opening scene and is accorded the dignity of being a separate cognitive power mediating between sensibility and understanding” (2004, 186).8 But it is not quite independent, as it is submitted to the power of the understanding. In that respect, Gilles Deleuze argues, “phenomena are not subject to the synthesis of the imagination: they are subjected by this synthesis to the legislative understanding” (1984, 17). That is, by mediating between the senses and the understanding, imagination has a restraining regulating role. In the Critique of Judgment (2002), while keeping imagination under the power of the understanding, Kant notes that in experiencing beauty, the imagination is positioned in harmony with the understanding, allowing it free play. By being in harmony with the understanding, the imagination can operate without interference or friction. By free play, the imagination is not constrained by the rules of the understanding. Allison notes, the “imagination in its free play stimulates the understanding by occasioning it to entertain fresh conceptual possibilities, while, conversely, the imagination, under the general direction of the understanding, strives to conceive new patterns of order” (2001, 171). By not being constrained by the rules of the understanding, imagination is open to consider possibilities that are otherwise impossible. John Sallis adds, imagination “might also produce an image not yet given to sense.” The imagination is not an independent faculty of cognition, yet it is free to deflect. Dibutades’ achievement, thinkers from the first approach would argue, is an act of making a copy of an actual person. The lines drawn are a mere outlined form of perception. Dibutades’ imagination is an attempt to reconstruct an actuality that is no longer there by bringing to consciousness some elements of a depleted memory, this is Pliny’s viewpoint. Thinkers of the second point of view could argue that the drawing of the facial outline shows an abstraction of a synthesizing process of imagination which forms a shape of a single constituent (of the contour of facial lines), making it into an objective and cohesive representation. From an aesthetic point of view, the image Dibutades has drawn, while remaining within the confines of the understanding (by keeping in line with the facial contour), is a free play of lines and curves that only a vital imagination could produce.

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A Third Approach: Phenomenology The third approach gives imagination an independent function, neither subordinate nor mediative, that is separated from perception, memory, understanding, and thinking. Edward Casey writes, in the preface to a comprehensive study of phenomenology of imagination, that the “imagination is an autonomous mental act: independent in status and free in its action” (1976, ix). It is creative, spontaneous, self-generating, effortless, surprising, instantaneous, and self-sufficient.9 According to Dennis Sepper, the Romantic scholars and artists placed imagination on an utmost position, endowing it with creative capacity, not only in the arts but also in the sciences and metaphysics. The irony, Sepper writes, “is that, in trying to make imagination more fundamental and all-encompassing . . . it effectively distorted our understanding of imagination by conceiving it as creative pure and simple and setting it in opposition to rationality” (2013, 92). Thus, in modernity, irrationality is associated with imagination and rationality with science and technology. Edmund Husserl grants the imagination a distinct role in the phenomenological method of investigation, allocating freedom to his investigation. The free associations and an awareness of making something “as if it is” present—being a quasi-perception—allow him to differentiate between perception and imagination. And yet, despite Husserl’s constant reference to perception when considering imagination, its importance lies in its ability “to simulate possible experiences,” as Julia Jansen stresses (2016, 76). Similarly, for Sartre, imagination is essential to the freedom of consciousness. It is integral to consciousness, has a quasi-observation quality to it, and is spontaneous. The imagining “consciousness posits its object as nothingness” (2004, 11), he argues.10 It is at the heart of perception: a first perception. For Merleau-Ponty, James Steeves (2004) argues, imagination is central to the extensive study of the perception. It forms the ability to imagine alternative perspectives and is the basis of modes of embodiment. It allows the “horizon of all horizons” to reshape one’s experiences, Casey argues.11 Walter Benjamin writes that we should think of the “manifestations of the imagination as the de-formation of what has been formed” (1996, 280). The deformation is directed at the ideas and at nature which is of “fundamental importance for a work of art” (1996, 281).12 By deforming an experience, separating the various elements apart, one can then reposition the elements and produce a new item or artifact. Imagination, in this view, opens up the possibility

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of transforming the “horizon” of human experiences in the world. It allows one to consider different circumstances and possible practices. Michel Foucault offers another feature. For him, imagination is a faculty that allows one to explore the horizon and offer an assortment of possibilities. As such, imagination is the seat of freedom. He writes, to imagine is not so much a behavior toward others which intends them as quasi-presences on an essential ground of absence; it is rather to intend oneself as a movement of freedom which makes itself world and finally anchors itself in this world as its destiny. (1986, 68)

In the introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s essay “Dreams and Existence” (in Foucault 1968), Foucault emphasizes the imagination. As in dreams, he argues, imagination is a mode of unreality, but also a mode of actuality, as it transforms the mode of one’s presence. That is, imagination transforms the dreamer. Foucault writes: “the image is not given at the culminating moment of imagination, but at the moment of alternation” (1968, 71). It frees the self from the world of restrictions imposed on it. Like Benjamin’s de-formation, for Foucault the imagination is “iconoclastic” (72). It breaks down the fixed givens and destabilizes restrictions. Reflecting on Binswanger’s contribution to psychological therapy, Foucault maintains that “the role of psychotherapy should be to free the imaginary that is trapped in the image” (ibid). Its role is to transform regimes regulating the psyche. According to Julien Reid (2018), one can trace the notion of imagination in Foucault’s genealogy, particularly on madness. The suspicion toward the power of imagination that had begun with Plato was transformed in the Middle Ages by the Church which denounced the imagination as a form of immorality, leading to sinful deeds. Vivid imagination became dangerous and needed to be restricted and contained. In the Renaissance and the Romantic periods, imagination regained its standing, but as Sepper (2013) notes, the celebration of the imagination implied that the sciences rejected the use of imagination as a valid tool for investigation. “The modernity of the western experience of madness would be denied,” Reid contends,13 as Foucault seeks to free imagination from the regimes of self and the practices of subjectification. Foucault suggests that an unrestricted imagination is a requisite for the care of oneself. A similar critical position is expressed by Gilles Deleuze. He asks, in Difference and Repetition, “is there an imaginandum, a phantasteon, which would also be the limit, that which is impossible to imagine?” (1994, 143). That is, is there

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an imagination that is free to imagine beyond its own limitations? Though Deleuze is commenting on Kant’s Critique of Judgement, where Kant argues that the feeling of the beautiful takes place when and only when imagination is free from performing under the categories of the understanding, another limitation should be recognized. Deleuze writes, “the free play of imagination and understanding cannot be known intellectually, but only felt” (1983, 49). Free imagination may be free from the constraints of the categories, for Kant, but it is not free, spontaneous and independent of objective representations. It can only engender feelings, not imaginary images or themes to experience. In that respect, imagination is not free to imagine. In Anti-Oedipus, argues Eric Bormanis (2020), Deleuze and Guattari “bemoan the merely ‘imaginary’ consequences of desire understood as lack, which implies that they still take imagination to be a merely representational faculty” (Bormanis 2020, 427). That is, in Anti-Oedipus, imagination is only free to Oedipally imagine: to repeat the Oedipal imagery. Deleuze and Guattari adhere to Foucault’s claim that one can trace the disciplined and supervised practices of imagination. Psychoanalysis, they argue, and Freud in particular, despite celebrating imagination and inviting analysands to dream and practice free associations, set traps of Oedipal narratives. They write: “Oedipal desires are the bait, the disfigured image by means of which repression catches desire in the trap” (1983, 116). “The role of the imagination,” Deleuze writes “or the mind which contemplates in its multiple and fragmented states, is to draw something new from repetition, to draw difference from it” (1994, 76). And yet imagination is restrained by social practices and inhibitions. Cornelius Castoridis claims that the social imaginary is the foundation of human reality. Informed by Jacques Lacan’s position on the Imaginary, he gives priority to the social imaginary. According to Lacan, as early as the mirror stage (when a child acquires language), an image of oneself in the mirror, one which has unity and a totality, transforms the child and constitutes an identity, a subjectivity.14 The social imaginary, much like the image of the self, accounts for the institutions of social-historical practices and for their differences, Castoridis argues in The Imaginary Institution of Society (1987). Further, the demand for social change is formed by a radical imaginary for change. He writes, radical imaginary, “the perpetual self alteration of society is its very being, which is manifested by the positing of relatively fixed and stable forms-figures and through the shattering of these forms-figures which can never be anything other than the positing-creating of other forms-figures” (1987, 372).15

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Feminist scholars have argued that throughout history, women have been discouraged to “use” or show imaginative merits. In a groundbreaking text, The Mad Women in the Attic (1976), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that women dreaded holding a pen and writing stories and novels—those were considered masculine and unbefitting young ladies. They write: As the Romantic poets feared, too much imagination may be dangerous to anyone, male or female, but for women in particular patriarchal culture has always assumed mental exercises would have dire consequences. (1979, 55)

Women internalized such values and learned in their own writings and art to conceal “non-feminine” qualities and abilities. They learned to disguise and hide what is “unbecoming,” or what Patricia Meyer Spacks terms “subterranean challenges” (1976). They learned to write subversively so as to hide their imagination and critical perspectives, argue Gilbert and Gubar. Such practice was so commonplace that it became a subject of research for second-wave feminists, while focusing on exposing the hidden themes in these women’s works. Judith Fetterley (1978) termed the practice a re-reading and Adrienne Rich (1972) wrote about performed re-visions. These are attempts to bring to light the underlying methods of expressing one’s imagination despite the frustrations of being emasculated and while remaining undetected by hegemonic disciplinary forces. For Foucault and Deleuze, “radical imaginary” drives transformations, but at the same time, it also regulates and governs the subjectivation of individuals. Whether the imagination is born of lack, as Freud argues, is constituted by a chain of signifiers or has a socio-historical form, as Lacan and Castoridis argue, imagination has yet to be set free. Social imaginaries are in effect limited by the imagery that prompts them. Deleuze and Foucault seek an imagination that “crosses domains, orders and levels, knocking down the partitions coextensive with the world, guiding our bodies and inspiring our souls, grasping the unity of mind and nature; a larval consciousness which moves endlessly from science to dream and back again” (1994, 220). Debutades’ imaginative feat has certainly been left out of the social imagination of the West. Yet her achievement is without doubt free and unlimited by social constraints. Her accomplishment has the characteristics of radical imagination, not only imagining a drawn profile, but also imagining a new way by which imagination can express itself—a technology for expressing imagination. Her imagination “crosses domains.”

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Postphenomenology Warning against a surveillance practice of digital technologies,16 Bruno Latour entitles his essay: “Beware, your imagination leaves digital traces” (2007). The problem, he notes, is this accumulation of traces [that] has enormous effects for the entertainment industry, for specialists in marketing, advertising, intelligence, police and so on. . . . The precise forces that mold our subjectivities and the precise characters that furnish our imagination are all open to inquiries by the social science. (2007)

The threat is clear: if the social sciences concentrate on and eventually exploit digital traces users leave online, then the interests and desires of these users, their subjectivities and independence, will be standardized, commercialized, and homogenized. More importantly, their imagination will be depleted and consumed. Digital regimes of social exchanges are just as harsh and commending as the social practices Foucault and Deleuze have criticized. The imagination, which for these thinkers is a source of freedom and a trigger for transformative action, should not be placed under control and should not be supervised, argues Latour. By examining technology in a mediatory position of social standards, cultural imaginaries and norms—that which enables individuals to interpret and understand the world—one can study the implications of the co-shaping role of technology. Don Ihde’s postphenomenological research looks at technology in relation to and with individuals and their social and physical environments.17 He studies the relations of human, technology, and world. Postphenomenology “investigate[s] technology in terms of the relations between human beings and technological artifacts, focusing on the various ways in which technologies help to shape relations between human beings and the world” (Rosenberger and Verbeek 2015, 9). It investigates how technologies mediate between humans and the world and how technological operations transform the world and humans.18 That is, postphenomenology investigates how, on the one hand, technologies form conditions and practices by which individuals, as well as groups, investigate and experience the world, while, on the other hand, it investigates how humans design and construct technologies that transform the world. The relations of human beings and the world are co-shaped and co-constituted by technology. Within the context of humans, technologies, and the world, one can focus on individual subjectification or direct one’s attention to a meaningful world, not only to social and cultural matters but also to biological, ecological, and

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environmental concerns. Both Latour and Ihde investigate the ways by which technologies represent and translate humans and the world (as well as technologies).19 Ihde writes of four basic human-technology relations:20 embodiment relations, hermeneutic relations, alterity relations, and background relations. Peter-Paul Verbeek adds two additional relations, cyborg relations and augmented relations (Verbeek 2008). Embodiment relations refer to how a device is taken to be part of one’s body—like wearing glasses; hermeneutic relations refer to how a device is read and interpreted so as to indicate something about the world—like a thermometer; alterity relations refer to devices that stand as objects to be approached—like an ATM machine; background relations refer to devices that operate in the background, mostly unnoticed—like airconditioning; cyborg relations refer to devices implanted and integrated into one’s body—like artificial heart valves;21 and augmented relations refer to an added layer of information for the user—like Google glasses (yet to be put on the market). These relations express different types of interactions one has with technology by which the world is mediated or by which one conducts herself or himself in the world. Within this framework, the imagination retains its active ability, affected by technology and the world, while at the same time being a source for shaping technology and taking part in transforming the world. Ihde studies technological imaging, such as drawings, clocks, telescopes, camera obscura, CAD, to name a few, all of which display how imagination is transformed by the devices used.22 Let us examine more closely embodiment relations, as an example for our review of imagination. It is a relation by which one’s body incorporates a device in such a way that the device is felt almost indistinguishable from one’s actual body. The use of glasses is one such case, as it is easy to forget one has them on. Ihde mentions another type of embodiment, that of driving a car. He writes, “One experiences the road and surroundings through driving the car, and motion is the focal activity” (1990, 74). Adding, One embodies the car, too, in such activities as parallel parking: when well embodied, one feels rather than sees that the distance between car and curb— one’s bodily sense is “extended” to the parameters of the driver-car body. (ibid)

We can term this relation body-car relation. One is engaged in becoming-car, to use the term Deleuze and Guattari attribute with respect to becoming-woman, -child, -machine or -animal (Anti-Oedipus 1983, A Thousand Plateaus 1987). By navigating the car on the road and with respect to other cars and pedestrians,

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one feels the dimensions of one’s body-car and acts accordingly. The car becomes an extended body for the driver. Indeed, Ihde notes, “To embody one’s praxis through technologies is ultimately an existential relation with the world” (1990, 72). One is with the car. Deleuze and Guattari explain: “A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification” (1987, 237). They add, “becoming does not occur in the imagination, even when the imagination reaches the highest cosmic or dynamic level, as in Jung or Bachelard. Becoming-animal are neither dreams nor phantasies” (1987, 238). Becoming-car does not transform the driver into a car, rather the driver embodies the dimensions of the car in order to navigate it. Becoming is a process by which individuals assume an element of a person, an animal, an object, or a technological artifact. In becoming-car, one incorporates the spatial dimensions of a car into one’s self-image. Becoming is a process by which one transforms one’s embodiment and experiences a world anew. Further, Ihde argues, there is a deep desire that arises with the experience of embodiment relations. It is “a wish for total transparency” (74). One desires to have that very experience but without the technology. One desires that the technology will become unnoticeable. Ihde writes, “I want the transformation that the technology allows, but I want it in such a way that I am basically unaware of its presence. I want it in such a way that it becomes me” (ibid). It is a desire to extend the transformations technology provides to one’s body or to the actual conditions and forms by which we inhabit the world. This desire has a positive and negative effect, Ihde notes. The positive is a gradual extension of perception of new realms; the negative is a wish to escape physical limitations. It is a double-bind: “The user wants what the technology gives but does not want the limits, the transformations that a technologically extended body implies” (76). Embodiment relations magnify or amplify and reduce or place aside what is experienced through them. Thus, we can imagine along with Ihde who is technologically inspired, the mountains on the moon, a “perfect reading machine,” transparent clothing. These “images,” Ihde concludes, “belong to the extrapolated imagination of fiction, which stands in contrast to even the most minimal actual embodiment relations, which in their material dimensions simultaneously extend and reduce, reveal, and conceal” (76, my italics). Extrapolated imagination, even if fictional, unreal or non-realistic, compatible or in contrast with reality, is aroused by technological devices. By magnifying, amplifying, reducing, or placing aside experiences of one’s body, the imagination carries the feeling of the embodied relation and projects

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new and surprising possibilities. One can imagine wearing sensory keys on fingers—an embodied relation; picture apartment windows screening weather forecasts—hermeneutically inspired; think of not just pressing buttons for cash at an ATM machine, but also talking with an avatar ATM—alterity inspired; visualize changing colors on apartment walls—background inspired; envision enhancing one’s muscular strength—cyborg relation; or fancy being able to read a foreign language book as a translucent translation appears on the page (augmentationally inspired). Such imaginative instances are extrapolations of human-technology relations. Not only do technologies, and in particular digital technologies, provide us with imaginative possibilities “entangled with information systems,” as Galit Wellner argues, “relational, distributed, and computational” (2018, 62), but these relations are also the substance, material, and sensation upon which imagination flourishes. Digital technologies do not bring about the “destruction of the imagination” as Kearney dreads (1988, 229). Digital technologies in and by themselves do not commercialize imagination, as Latour warns. Rather, the work of imagination continues to de-form and re-form. It explores possibilities. It is a movement of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization.23 It dismantles the given and re-assembles the components, substantial, noetic, drawn, mechanized, or digitized. Imagine Dibutades, sitting next to her lover who is about to leave, seeing his shadow cast on the wall. Imagine Dibutades wondering how beautiful the profile is and admiring the silhouette of his facial expression. She observes an expression in the silhouette which she has not noticed on his face. A surprising and definitive expression. So, she picks a dark stone, one with a particular tone of color. She embodies the stone and draws over the silhouette, as if she were tracing with her fingers the muscles’ tones of the lover’s face. She accentuates the lines that convey the expression she has just discovered. She “reforms” the facial expression. She illuminates the emotion expressed, by deforming the mimetic image. It is a technological relation that exposes something new and surprising, unseen by a “naked eye.” Dibutades did not just make a copy of a facial silhouette or create an actuality of that which is no longer there, as some empiricists would argue, but in so doing, she was able to reveal an expression which otherwise would have gone unnoticed. She did not just express a combination of outlines and material qualities integrated into a single image, as rationalists or transcendental philosophers could argue, but in so doing, she exposed something everyday experience could not present and represent. Dibutades did not just spontaneously

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and effortlessly generate a creative visualization of her lover’s face, nor did she just form a free and conscious alternative for her experience by manipulating the shadows on the wall, as some phenomenologists would argue, but in so doing, she was able to create something new by repeating a given. Nor did she just compensate for her lover’s absence, as some psychoanalysts would argue, rather, by redrawing the lines, by crossing domains, she was able to disclose and discover a becoming-image. She transformed imagination into an art and was respectively transformed by her own technology. The drawing—and the beginning of art—uses simple and basic material technology of stones and light by which it reveals a field of “absolute pure possibilities,” one which imagination has yet to grasp, moving relentlessly from “science to dream.”

References Allison, Henry (2001), Kant’s Theory of Taste, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allison, Henry (2004), Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, New Haven: Yale University Press. Aristotle (1984), “Of the Soul,” in J. Barnes (ed.), Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. 1, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Benjamin, Walter (1996), Selected Writings, Vol. I, eds. M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings, 280–2, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bormanis, Erik (2020), “The Possibility of Productive Imagination in the Work of Deleuze and Guattari,” in K. Moser and A. Ch. Sukla (eds.), Imagination and Art: Explorations in Contemporary Theory, 425–47, Leiden: Brill. Casey, S. Edward (1974), “Toward a Phenomenology of Imagination,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 5 (1): 3–19. Casey, S. Edward (1976), Imagining: A Phenomenological Study, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Castoriadis, Cornelius (1987), The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. K. Blamey, Cambridge: Polity Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1984), Kant’s Critical Philosophy, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1994), Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton, New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1983), Anti-Oedipus, trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H. R. Lane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus, trans. B. Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Descartes, Rene (1985), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. II, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dorsch, Fabian (2016), “Hume,” in A. Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Imagination, 40–54, New York: Routledge. Fetterly, Judith (1978), The Resisting Reader, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Frasca-Rath, Anna (2020), “‘The Origin (and Decline) of Painting: Iaia, Butades and the Concept of ‘Women’s Art’ in the 19th Century,” Journal of Art Historiography, 23: 1–17. Foucault, Michel (1968), “Dream, Imagination and Existence,” Dream and Existence, trans. Williams Forrest, 31–878, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. Foucault, Michel (1986), The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, trans. Hurley Robert, Vol. 3, New York: Pantheon Books. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar (1976), The Mad Women in the Attic, New Haven: Yale University Press. Haraway, Donna (1985), “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980’s,” Socialist Review, 80: 65–108. Hayles, Katherine (1999), How We Became Posthuman, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hayles, Katherine (2005), My Mother Was as Computer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hayles, Katherine (2017), Unthought, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hume, David (2007), A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition, eds. D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Husserl, Edmund (1977), Phenomenological Psychology, trans. J. Scanlon, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Ihde, Don (1990), Technology and the Lifeworld, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ihde, Don (2012) Experimental Phenomenology, Albany: State University of New York Press. Jansen, Julia (2016), “Husserl,” in A. Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Imagination, 69–81, New York: Routledge. Kant, Immanuel (1998), Critique of Pure Reason, trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel (2002), Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kearney, Richard (1988), The Wake of Imagination, London: Routledge. Kind, Amy, ed. (2016), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Imagination, New York: Routledge. Lacan, Jacques (2005), Écrits, trans. B. Fink, New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Latour, Bruno (2007), “Beware, Your Imagination Leaves Digital Traces,” Times Higher Literary Supplement, April 6. Available online: http://www​.bruno​-latour​.fr​/node​/245 (accessed July 28, 2022).

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Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar (1986), Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Levitine, George (1958), “Addenda to Robert Rosenblum’s ‘the Origin of Painting: A Problem in the Iconography of Romantic Classicism’,” Art Bulletin, 40 (4): 329–31. Malabou, Catherine (2022), Plasticity: The Promise of Explosion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Matherne, Samantha (2016), “Kant’s Theory of the Imagination,” in A. Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Imagination, 55–68, New York: Routledge. Meyer Spacks, Particia (1976), The Female Imagination, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Pliny (1952), Natural History, Vol. IX, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plato (1997), Complete Works, eds. J. M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Reid, Julian (2018), “Foucault and the Imagination: The Roles of Images in Regimes of Power and Subjectivity,” Subjectivity, 11 (3): 183–202. https://doi​.org​/10​.1057​/s41286​ -018​-0052-3 (accessed July 23, 2022). Rich, Adrienne (1972), “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision,” College English, 34 (1): 18–30. Rosenberger, Robert and Peter-Paul Verbeek, eds. (2015), Postphenomenological Investigations, Lanham: Lexington Books. Rosenblum, Robert (1957), “The Origin of Painting: A Problem of Iconography of Romantic Classicism,” The Art Bulletin, 39: 279–90. Sallis, John (2020), Kant and the Spirit of Critique, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul (2004), The Imaginary, trans. J. Webber, London: Routledge. Sepper, L. Denis (2013), Understanding Imagination: The Reason of Images, Dordrecht: Springer. Steeves, B. James (2004), Imagining Bodies: Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Imagination, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Verbeek, Peter-Paul (2008), “Obstetric Ultrasound and the Technological Mediation of Morality: A Postphenomenological Analysis,” Human Studies, 31 (1): 11–26. Wellner, Galit (2018), “Posthuman Imagination: From Modernity to Augmented Reality,” Journal of Posthuman Studies, 2: 1. Wellner, Galit (2021), “Digital Imagination: Ihde’s and Stiegler’s Concepts of Imagination,” Foundations of Science, 27: 189–204. https://link​.springer​.com​/article​ /10​.1007​/s10699​-020​-09737-2 (accessed September 17, 2022). Zuboff, Shoshana (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, New York: Public Affair.

2

Can Algorithms Imagine? Galit Wellner

Introduction In 2018 Christies sold a painting titled “the Portrait of Edmond de Belamy” (“Belamy”) for $432,000.1 The sale attracted the public attention for the high price paid for a work of art that was created by an algorithm. There were already algorithms that produce paintings which were sold for several thousands of dollars, such as Harold Cohen’s AARON and Simon Colton’s “Painting Fool,” but Belamy was the first painting generated by an AI algorithm to reach the world auction stage. What made Belamy a breakthrough? It seems to me that it attracted attention because the AI algorithm that generated the painting demonstrated a new level of creativity. Until then, many of the painting technologies were presented as robots. A large exhibition in Paris’ Grand Palais in 2018 was titled “Artists and Robots” and was dedicated to these machines and the art created with them. Although the hardware-based robotic part is important for the production of the physical work of art into an object, the software-based algorithm is no less critical for it deals with the imaginative aspects. When the discussion was focused on robots, the key question was whether they can create art. This is a complex question that can be divided into subquestions some of which related to the nature of art (see Coeckelbergh 2017). The focus on AI leads to different questions, such as, Can algorithms imagine? This question is at the heart of this chapter. It expands to non-artistic contexts because imagination is necessary in most aspects of our lives: from understanding mathematics, to reading a novel, developing a new technology, and so on. This chapter is composed of two main sections. The first deals with the question of imagination and creativity and shows how the Kantian definitions of imagination are implemented de facto by AI algorithms. The second section

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attempts to redefine the Kantian imagination as a task distributed among humans and technologies. Their cooperation is modeled as layers that co-shape each other.

Imagination in Kant and in Algorithms Imagination has attracted the interest of many scholars throughout the history of philosophy: from Aristotle; to Descartes and Kant; to phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre; to name a few. Imagination is probably of interest not only for its functioning in dreaming and hallucination (though this is of importance) but also (and probably mainly) for its capacity to produce mental imagery. The analysis of imagination as mental imagery relies (sometimes implicitly) on the work of Immanuel Kant who defines imagination as “the faculty of representing an object even without its presence in intuition” (Kant 2010, 106). But imagination is more complex than this frequently cited definition and there are “at least three different contexts” (Horstmann 2018, 3) for Kant’s conceptualization of imagination: (1) “Empirical association” referring to the act of relating one representation to another based on past experiences. It is the ability to associate the sound of a bark with an unseen dog, also known as the reproductive imagination. The reproductive function enables the mind to connect the diverse impressions of the senses by placing a preceding perception alongside a subsequent one, thereby forming a sequence of perceptions. It needs the faculties of perception and memory as a basis for its functioning. (2) “Schematism” according to which a set of conceptual rules—the categories—can determine a spatiotemporal manifold (based on the reproductive capacities of imagination) to produce a representation of an object. This is the productive imagination that makes experience possible. Kant’s concept of productive imagination works by and through a “synthesis of intuitions according to the categories” (Kant 2010, 106). Imagination first “conjoin[s] the manifold of intuition” (ibid) and then performs on that manifold a “schematism” of concepts. Richard Kearney nicely illustrates the schematization with a pair of shoes: “In ordinary experience . . . we recognize an object—say a pair of shoes—by first forming an image of an object like the one we are now applying to the

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relevant concept (i.e. of shoeness). We can only apprehend this object in front of us as a pair of shoes because we can form other images of other pairs of shoes” (Kearney 1988, 173). Kant stresses that “the schema is clearly distinguishable from the image” (p. 121) and “cannot be reduced into any image” (p. 122). The schema functions “as a rule for the determination of our intuition, in conformity with a certain general conception” (p. 122). In other words, the schema is like a common denominator for a certain group of images.   Thus, schematism enables us to look at the sky and “see” in the clouds a face, a dog or a mountain, and even unicorns and monsters that do not exist in reality. (3) “Transcendental” imagination focused on cognitive-object-constituting function. Here imagination is regarded as a means to differentiate within the sense between those impressions that comply with general conceptual rules and those that do not comply. Kant ascribes to imagination what he calls a “transcendental function” (in the A-edition) or the capacity to give rise to a “transcendental synthesis” (in the B-edition), which is the ability to perform object-constituting actions on what is present via sense impressions in sensibility alone. (Horstmann 2018, 5) When examining AI algorithms, it turns out that some of them adhere to one of Kant’s three types of imaginations (Wellner 2018, 2021): The first type of imagination described as “empirical association” can be found in AI algorithms that are able to detect similarity between images in order to identify things like cats. To do so, AI developers do not need to predefine how a cat looks like, and detail that it should have four legs and a tail. Instead, they train the algorithm on thousands of pictures of cats and other items. When the training is successful, the algorithm should be able to differentiate between cats and dogs.2 Moreover, the dataset fits the Kantian ascription of the necessity of past experience for imagination. This process matches the reproductive imagination, but instead of a human mind that relates one representation to another, this linkage is performed by an algorithm. The second type of “schematism” can be exemplified in the AI world with Google’s Sketch-RNN. The user selects a topic, draws a doodle, and then the software completes the doodle according to the topic in almost-endless variations. Sketch-RNN follows Kant’s guidelines by taking the concept of “shoeness” or “cat-ness” and deploying it on the doodle drawn by the user.

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The “transcendental” imagination can be found in the more advanced functions of AI algorithms that combine two entities to create something new. A demonstration of Sketch-RNN showed how it combines a cat and a chair (or a pig and a truck) to create a series of wild combinations of the two (Ha and Eck 2018). These three instances show that AI algorithms can imagine in the three contexts of the Kant’s first Critique that are related to everyday experiences. The next section examines if they can imagine in the (less-frequent) creative sense.

Imagination and Creativity In contemporary discourse, imagination is often equated with creativity. In Kantian terms, the transcendental imagination is occasionally labeled as creativity or at least understood as very close to it (cf. Coeckelbergh 2017; Romele 2018). Alternatively, creativity in Kant’s writing can be located in the third Critique as a fourth type of imagination. For Jane Kneller (2007) this is a new kind of relationship between imagination and understanding, one in which the former is “freed” from the latter, what Kant calls in aesthetics the “free play of imagination” (Kant 1952, 244; Kearney 1988, 172; Kneller 2007, 11). In other words, the imagination is seen as capable of operating independently from its function of processing the materials of sensation into the products of experience via concepts a priori. The selection of the “rule” is free from prior determination (see Kneller 2007, 43). Although Kant discusses imaginative creativity in the artistic context, creativity is relevant also in the fields of science, technology development, business administration, and so on. Heidegger’s analysis of the scientific experiment in The Age of World Picture (1977) can be positioned in this direction. After being expanded to almost every field in contemporary life, the next phase is asking whether algorithms can be creative (e.g., Miller 2019). Margaret Boden (2004) answers this question by unpacking creativity into several elements. She formulates a typology to examine the creativity of algorithms: The first element is novelty, translated into a result that did not exist before. Without novelty, the result is just a mirroring or recreating (i.e., Kantian productive imagination). This element can be found in some AI algorithms, such as Shimon the robot who improvises jazz. The improvisation is not a mimic of a previous music playing and is a novel work. Similarly, Sketch-RNN produces novel results because its doodles did not exist before.

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Next is the element of surprise and it raises the bar for algorithms’ creativity. It is not enough for the results to be novel—they also need to produce a certain impact on the human user. The example here is AlphaGo, an algorithm for playing Go. When playing in 2016 against world champion Lee Sedol, the algorithm made an unexpected step at move 37. At first it was interpreted as a mistake but later it appeared that the move was the result of thousands of games that the program learned and analyzed, followed by another series of games that the program played against itself. Move 37 had a dramatic impact and it turned the course of the game. The last element is probably the most difficult for an algorithm to achieve and it involves values. Values in Boden’s framework are broad and include aesthetic and moral ones (Boden 2004, 10; Gaut 2010, 1040). Without values in the creative process, the result is simply nonsense (see Botin, in this volume). Sometimes this element is interpreted as equivalent to understanding or a meaning. Without it, AI is paralleled to a child drawing a picture. Whereas the result may look like a modern work of art, a true work of art is loaded with values and meanings (Gaut 2010, 1038, 1040). In classic art, values may be framed as the difference between drawing a face as a series of shapes and colors versus drawing a face as something that has expressions. Even if the former can be done by an algorithm, it is the latter that exhibits the unique product of a human artist (Vrahimis 2021). Some scholars seek to define art without the notions of imagination and creativity, but such definitions still require value/meaning. For example, Robert Pepperell and Michael Punt (2000) characterize art as “the skilled arrangement of matter and energy so as to add significance by invoking the presence of something that is also absent” (p. 159). Their characterization echoes Kant’s definition of imagination as the representation of an object that is absent. Yet, they add a requirement for significance, thereby accentuating the importance of value over novelty and surprise. Pepperell and Punt’s definition is intended to cover a large variety of forms of art, from prehistoric cave drawings to modern works of art, including bioart that is created by organisms like spiders,3 or by growing cells in a lab.4 Bioart would be considered art because in such works the materials are arranged by the artist in a way that produces a meaning. The difference from traditional works of art is that the physical arrangement is not performed by humans, but only the “logical.” We should remember that artists have not always arranged materials by themselves. Frequently this is performed by apprentices and assistants. Likewise, in bioart, the biological and the human cooperate so that the former physically arranges the materials and the latter produces the conceptual meaning. For example, artists Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr,

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and Guy Ben-Ary created their work “Pig Wings” by growing in their lab cells of pig bone, and then seeing in the patterns created three shapes of wings—a flying dinosaur, a bat, and an angel.5 Now replace bioart with AI art, and the end result may explain how this form of art works. Although meaning is difficult for an algorithm to achieve, there are attempts to teach algorithms how to extract meaning, mostly based on context. In textual databases, meaning can be “understood” by AI algorithms via vectors of words with which they calculate word proximity. Caliskan et al. (2017) assess the meaning production of Word-Embedding Association Tests performed on all the texts published on the internet. This form of meaning creation is based on statistical correlation. The technique enables algorithms to successfully determine that flowers are “pleasant” while insects are “unpleasant.” The same classification was effectively implemented on instruments and weapons, but when it came to persons’ names the results were unpleasant, to use their vocabulary. It turned out that European-American names and young people’s names were classified like flowers and instruments whereas African American names and old people’s names were classified like insects and weapons. These results may be quantifiably correct but are qualitatively wrong (Zou and Schiebinger 2018). Part of the explanation for the failure to produce unbiased meaning may be found in the axiom that correlation is not causation. A website dedicated to “spurious correlations” finds the ridiculously meaningless correlations, such as between the United States spending on science and suicide by hanging in the years 1999–2009, or the divorce rate in Maine and per capita consumption of margarine in the same years.6 Like in everyday imagination that AI attempts to perform, so in creativity AI algorithms endeavor to fulfill the requirements for novelty, surprise, and values, albeit the last one is only partially answered.

The Layer Model Instead of attempting to assign imagination to AI algorithms, I suggest re-interpreting imagination as a distributed faculty that is shared among humans and technologies (cf. Hayles 2017). The distributed-ness means that people and algorithms cooperate and their cooperation can be modeled as layers where each actor is “responsible” for a certain task.7 The layer model conceptualizes how actors work together, even if their efforts are not coordinated or synchronized. The layer model overcomes the limitations of Kant’s definition of imagination

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that refers solely to the human side, and does not mention technologies like books and cinema that shape (at least to some extent) what one imagines (see Stiegler 2011). Mass media technologies enable us to imagine on the collective level, that is, imagine how the prime-minister looks like although we never saw her face to face, or imagining the future of humanity in science fiction movies. Moreover, technologies participate in the imaginative process on a “molecular” level in contributing pieces of information as in the case of the cellphone that stores for us names of contact persons, calendar events, photos, and videos. We can imagine how the upcoming party might be like, based on the event invitation, names of other people invited, and pictures from last year’s party. The layer model is based on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and their notion of plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). An example of how the model works in practice is the writing process behind their joint book A Thousand Plateaus (1987): Each morning we would wake up, and each of us would ask himself what plateau he was going to tackle, writing five lines here, ten there. We had hallucinatory experiences, we watched lines leave one plateau and proceed to another like columns of tiny ants. We made circles of convergence. Each plateau can be read starting anywhere and can be related to any other plateau. (p. 2)

Deleuze and Guattari describe a creative process distributed among two human actors that yields results that are novel, surprising, and valuable. Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, my model of human-AI relations consists of layers and plateaus dominated either by a human or a technological actor (Wellner 2019). The layers/plateaus work together in a non-hierarchical manner, so that the human actor does not necessarily lead the creative process. Hence, for some, it may look like an algorithmic imagination, especially if most layers are “dominated” by the technology. But the actors are not independent, they influence each other through co-shaping. Therefore, the results of the imaginative process are always unpredictable and neither the human nor the technology can predict it. It is a joint endeavor.

Co-Shaping The layers/plateaus work together, albeit sometimes in an uncoordinated nonsynchronized manner. Through the layer mechanism, the human and the technological affect each other and even transform each other. This mutual

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affection and transformation process is termed co-shaping. The co-shaping process can be regarded as an endless feedback loop8 in which one transforms the other and vice versa. The concept of co-shaping enables us to understand how the layers are co-dependent, and specifically how in imagination we depend on other humans and on technologies. Co-shaping as a phenomenon has pushed many thinkers to develop various adjacent notions such as Gilbert Simondon’s notion of transduction, Bernard Stiegler’s notion of epiphylogenesis, or the more recent notion of lemniscate by Olya Kudina (2021) and hybrid imagination by Lars Botin (this volume). In imagination, the concept of co-shaping leads us to reconsider the Kantian definition that deals only with human actors, as well as the technological enthusiastic approach believing that AI can imagine in and of itself. The examples brought in this chapter for algorithmic imagination should be regarded as confined to certain layers which depend on human actors that operate in other layers. Now I will argue that imagination is a distributed faculty in which humans and technologies co-shape each other. In the remaining of this section, I will focus on the necessary role of the human actor in the imaginative process. Against a common view of “AI is taking over,” I will describe three “layers” that cannot be fully delegated to AI, yet they are co-shaped with it: The first layer operates when kicking off the project, may it be imagining a new technology, a new educational process, or a new work of art. A human actor is needed for selecting the mathematical formulas (e.g., with which the Portrait of Edmond de Bellamy was calculated), as well as for building other basic foundations such as the dedication of financial resources and securing the necessary computing power (e.g., servers, storage, etc.). For example, in science, imagining a black hole which cannot be seen with bare eyes is a joint work of humans and technologies (Ihde 2009). It requires the “recruitment” of scientific equipment—first to spot the black hole and then to present it to the humans involved, may they be scientists or the general public. Such an equipment as per 2019 included eight telescopes organized in a network, synchronized via algorithms, and several interconnected servers to process the data.9 Only then could the image of the bagel-like black hole have been produced. The second layer comes after the initial setup, when data is collected from multiple sources into a dataset in order to train the algorithm. Here again a human actor is essential in deciding which data should serve the training phase (D’Ignazio and Klein 2020). The data collection phase raises many questions, such as from where is the data extracted? Which types of data should be sought? And so on. The selection of sources and deciding which data is taken dictate what

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can be arranged and thus determine the final result. For example, the creators of Belamy mention that they tried collecting works of art depicting landscapes, but eventually decided to turn to portraits. The third layer functions when meaning is extracted. As we saw, this task, when performed by algorithms through statistical analysis of context, might lead to biases and a duplication of past prejudice. Yet, the meaning production layer can be partially delegated to technology. In the case of Belamy, some of the assessment was delegated to the technology. It was a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) architecture composed of two algorithms: one that generated portraits and the other assessed their quality. Only those portraits that passed the assessing algorithm would be presented to the human operator. The assessment consisted of searching for differences between human and AI-generated works. The underlying logic is that the higher the deviation from the established styles learned by the generating algorithm, the more creativity is marked by the assessing algorithm (Elgammal et al. 2017). But the final test is whether human subjects can distinguish art generated by the GAN from art generated by contemporary artists and presented in top art fairs (ibid.). This “meaning extraction” layer is mixed with humans and technologies, because the very final appreciation and judgment of the outcome is eventually done by a human actor. Such a scheme fits what Pepperell and Punt frame as a continuum between technology and imagination (2000, 141). To sum up, imagination is distributed among humans and technologies so that some layers are performed by humans, some by the technologies, and some are mixed. There is a need for a human operator to kick start the project, to point to the examples from which the algorithm can learn, and to assign meaning to the end result.

Summary Pepperell and Punt point to a paradox in algorithmic imagination, according to which “the desire to produce a machine more ingenious than ourselves both defines the human as supreme and subjects it to the terror of redundancy” (2000, 83). From a Kantian perspective, this paradox might lead to thinking that if an algorithm follows Kant’s characteristics of imagination, then human imagination reaches a new height but at the same time this human imagination is destroyed. This chapter suggests another way out, a way that seeks a new understanding of imagination that will conform to contemporary modes of operation of this faculty in AI environments.

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Examining AI technologies shows how they transform human imagination into a distributed capacity. With the concept of co-shaping, some functionality like “schematization” can be delegated to technologies, thereby enabling the human to focus on the creative development of new schemes or concepts. For instance, in Sketch-RNN, the human actors can devote their efforts to inventing new theme-concepts according to which the algorithm should complement the doodle—a cat, a spider, or the Mona Lisa. Therefore, the paradox of algorithmic imagination results in a redefinition of the concept of imagination in a way that distributes this function among humans and technologies. A careful analysis of AI’s imaginative practices directs us to conclude that both parties, the human and the technological, are engaged in the creative process. The participation of human and technological actors determines the end result and changes both actors. This is the essence of the co-shaping of imagination. When co-shaping is combined with the layer model, it means that in imagination each “actor” is responsible to a different layer, that is, a set of actions, though they may cooperate. The layer model may assist us in answering difficult questions such as the embodied aspects of imagination for AI algorithms. How can algorithms imagine if they do not have a body? In the layer model, embodiment can be regarded as another layer in the imaginative process that is contributed by the human actor. This layer can explain why there is a difference between listening to jazz in a lab versus listening in a club with live audience. An algorithm like Shimon might play the same, but a human player would probably imagine and improvise differently (cf. Hayles 2013). An AI algorithm like Shimon the robot that improvises jazz is likely to play differently in these two settings because of the different human actors. The combination of the layer model and the concept of co-shaping helps us to avoid statements in the spirit of Hubert Dreyfus’ “what computers can’t do” on one hand and of Ray Kurzweil’s singularity forecasting that “computers [will be] exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain” (Kurzweil 2000) on the other. Rather, humans are always “in the loop,” because there will always be layers where they are needed. The opposite is also true and we always need technologies (in the broadest sense, including storytelling and the like) to imagine with. It is important to acknowledge that the model is not symmetrical as humans are responsible for the creation of meaning and for the assignment of value—may it be in a single layer (such as selecting the input data) or in the combination of several ones. This asymmetry notwithstanding, AI and humans work in collaboration, one needs the other.

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References Boden, Margaret A. (2004), The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, 2nd edn, London and New York: Routledge. Caliskan, Aylin, Joanna J. Bryson, and Arvind Narayanan (2017), “Semantics Derived Automatically from Language Corpora Contain Human-like Biases,” Science, 356 (6334): 183–86. https://doi​.org​/10​.1126​/science​.aal4230. Campbell, Melinda (2021), “Unfolding the Layers of Mind and World: Wellner’s Posthuman Digital Imagination,” Foundations of Science, 2021 (March): 1–10. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/S10699​-020​-09767​-W. Coeckelbergh, Mark (2017), “Can Machines Create Art?” Philosophy and Technology, 30 (3): 285–303. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s13347​-016​-0231​-5. D’Ignazio, Catherine and Lauren F. Klein (2020), Data Feminism. The MIT Press. https://doi​.org​/10​.7551​/mitpress​/11805​.001​.0001. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Athlone Press. Elgammal, Ahmed, Bingchen Liu, Mohamed Elhoseiny, and Marian Mazzone (2017), “CAN: Creative Adversarial Networks, Generating ‘Art’ by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Norms,” no. Iccc (June): 1–22. http://arxiv​.org​/abs​/1706​ .07068. Gaut, Berys (2010), “The Philosophy of Creativity,” Philosophy Compass, 5 (12): 1034–46. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1747​-9991​.2010​.00351​.x. Ha, David and Douglas Eck (2018), “A Neural Representation of Sketch Drawings.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.03477 (2017). Hayles, N. Katherine (2013), How We Think. University of Chicago Press. https://doi​.org​ /10​.7208​/chicago​/9780226321370​.001​.0001. Hayles, N. Katherine (2017), Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Heidegger, Martin (1977), “The Age of the World Picture,” in William Lovitt (ed.), The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, 115–45, New York and London: Garland Publishing. Horstmann, Rolf-Peter (2018), Kant’s Power of Imagination: Elements in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge University Press. https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​ /9781108565066. Ihde, Don (2009), Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures, Albany: SUNY Press. Kant, Immanuel (1952), The Critique of Judgement, ed. James Creed Meredith, Oxford: Clarendon Press. https://openlibrary​.org​/books​/OL2349419M​/The​_critique​_of​ _judgement. Kant, Immanuel (2010), The Critique of Pure Reason. Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Kearney, Richard (1988), The Wake of Imagination. London: Routledge.

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Kneller, Jane (2007), Kant and the Power of Imagination‫‏‬, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kudina, Olya (2021), “‘Alexa, Who Am I?’: Voice Assistants and Hermeneutic Lemniscate as the Technologically Mediated Sense-Making,” Human Studies, 44 (2): 233–53. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s10746​-021​-09572​-9​/FIGURES​/3. Kurzweil, Ray (2000), The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, New York: Penguin Books. Miller, Arthur C. (2019), The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity, Cambridge: MIT Press. Pepperell, Robert and Michael Punt (2000), The Postdigital Membrane: Imagination, Technology and Desire, Portland: Intellect Books. Romele, Alberto (2018), “Imaginative Machines,” Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 22 (1): 98–125. https://doi​.org​/10​.5840​/techne201791369. Stiegler, Bernard (2011), Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Vrahimis, Andreas (2021), “Portraits, Facial Perception, and Aspect-Seeing,” The British Journal of Aesthetics, forthcoming. https://doi​.org​/10​.1093​/aesthj​/ayab041. Wellner, Galit (2018), “Posthuman Imagination: From Modernity to Augmented Reality,” Journal of Posthuman Studies, 2 (1): 45. https://doi​.org​/10​.5325​/jpoststud​.2​ .1​.0045. Wellner, Galit (2019), “Digital Subjectivity: From a Network Metaphor to a LayerPlateau Model,” Azimuth: Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age, 14: 55–66. Wellner, Galit (2021), “Digital Imagination: Ihde’s and Stiegler’s Concepts of Imagination,” Foundations of Science, 89: 0123456789. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/ s10699​-020​-09737​-2. Zou, James and Londa Schiebinger (2018), “Design AI so That Its Fair,” Nature, 559 (7714): 324–26. https://doi​.org​/10​.1038​/d41586​-018​-05707​-8.

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Emaginary; or Why the Essence of (Digital) Technology Is by No Means Entirely Technological Alberto Romele

Introduction In this chapter, I want to introduce the concept of emaginary. Derrida ([1978] 1967) introduced the term “différance,” which is pronounced like the French “différence” (“difference” in English), but is graphically different. His intention was to denounce and subvert traditional phonologocentrism, that is, the predilection of speech over writing. My proposed term emaginary is used mainly to indicate the fact that the contemporary philosophy of technology seems to have forgotten the conditions of possibility of non-technological order in which every technology is always wrapped. As argued elsewhere (Romele, Reijers, and Coeckelbergh 2021), the empirical turn in the philosophy of technology has ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater: by staying too close to the “things themselves,” many philosophers of technology have foreclosed themselves from looking at the “transcendentals” of technology. My intention is to subvert, or at least problematize, the predilection of materiality over the symbolic forms. Even when some contemporary philosophers of technology have proposed overcoming the limits of this “micro” approach, they have focused on those conditions of possibility of technology that are of a technological order (e.g., Lemmens 2021, who draws on Bernard Stiegler). My perspective is to also consider other transcendentals of technology, such as language, society, culture, economy, and so on. The notion of emaginary is particularly reminiscent of one of them, namely that of symbolic, social, and cultural order. Moreover, the notion of emagination addresses a particular kind of technology, namely

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digital technology. “Emaginary” then suggests that digital technologies are wrapped in conditions of possibility of a symbolic, social, and cultural order that determine not only their uses but also their invention and design. And because the relationship between technologies and their conditions of possibility is circular, these same technologies are matrices of specific worldviews, such as the “data worldview” I discussed elsewhere (Romele 2020). In this chapter I wish to present and clarify my notion of emaginary and how it evolved from previous works on the imaginary by Bourdieu and Ricoeur as well as my own work on emagination. The chapter is divided into three parts. In the first part, I present the reasons that I was led toward: the concept of imaginary and to understand the imaginary in light of Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus. In the second part, I rely on Paul Ricoeur’s understanding of the social imaginary as a tension between ideology and utopia. While sociotechnical imaginaries have often been understood as future-oriented utopias, I suggest seeing them also as past-oriented ideologies. In the third part, I properly come to the concept of emaginairy, building on my previous research on emagination (Romele 2020b). In the conclusion, I discuss visual representations of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which I call “emages.”

From Imagination to Imaginary I introduced the concept of “digital habitus” (Romele 2020b) to indicate both the structure and the effects that the use of certain digital technologies has on the constitution and the care of the self. My idea is that the digital is less like a “network” or “flatland” and more like a two-dimensional reality: one dimension of individuals, who present themselves, act, and interact in “everyday onlife,” and another dimension of algorithms, which are indifferent to these presentations, actions, and interactions. To be more precise, algorithms are interested in individuals and their presentations, actions, and interactions only to the extent that they can be reduced to data and therefore classified or clustered. This duality is similar to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus that refers to how individuals tend to incorporate not only the actions but also the desires and tastes proper to their social class. The habitus is what makes a social group or class become a group or a class; that is, what makes the single decisions and actions of each member of a social group or class, when it comes to specific objects and situations, resemble each other. In the words of the French sociologist, the habitus is a “conductorless orchestration which gives regularity, unity, and

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systematicity to the practices of a group or class, and this even in the absence of any spontaneous or externally imposed organization of individual projects” (Bourdieu 1977, 80). Bourdieu’s perspective is emancipatory. First, because every incorporation of the habitus is for him also an appropriation and therefore a personalization— just as the sportsman personalizes the athletic gesture that she shares with so many others, making her unique in her way of performing the gesture. Second, because for Bourdieu knowing one’s social determinations is the only way to be liberated from them—a liberation that is, of course, always relative and never absolute. In my research, I have taken a rather “dark” perspective: in the digital habitus, there is no liberation in sight, only the reproduction of the identical, because it is precisely the identical that algorithms are best able to predict. Moreover, the digital habitus is at the same time a reproduction of the social habitus but also a reinforcement of it. On the one hand, the digital has every interest in keeping individuals within the behaviors, tastes, and desires that characterize them as members of a certain class or group. On the other hand, by “datafying” all things and persons, the digital has ushered in the era of what has been aptly called the “übercapital” (Fourcade and Healy 2016), the capital to which all capitals finally refer and which seems to be the materialization of that meta-capital that for Bourdieu is symbolic capital, whose value ultimately coincides with social recognition. I refer to the Bourdieusian habitus as a variation of the philosophical concepts of imagination (in particular, in the sense of Kantian schematism and productive imagination). This is what the etymology of the term says in the first place (Héran 1987). Indeed, habitus comes from the Latin “habere,” just as schema comes from “echein,” which is the Greek equivalent of habere, to have. Among the ancients, the word “schema” indicated a way of being, a way of behaving, clothing, and costume. The “schematotheque” was the storehouse of theatrical accessories, and in late antiquity, this very term was used to indicate the monk’s habit. The entire Bourdieusian sociological project can be understood as a critique of Kantian transcendental philosophy, so that Bourdieu’s theory is a critique of Kantian transcendentalism within the limits of schematism. It is the social critique of taste that lies at the heart of Distinction ([2010] 1979) and whose aim is to deconstruct the Kantian idea that aesthetic judgment is, or should be, disinterested. It is no accident that a chapter in Photography ([1996] 1965) is entitled precisely “An anti-Kantian aesthetics.” However, Bourdieu’s critique of Kant remains within the limits of Kantian schematism. In the Pascalian Meditations ([2000] 1997), Bourdieu states that he

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wanted not to deny but to radicalize the critical intention of Kantian rationalism. Kant was in search of conditions of possibility—that is, sources and limits—of human rationality and he found them in transcendentalism. Bourdieu is also in search of similar limits, but he finds them not in transcendentalism but in the social reasons that make people believe, for example, that transcendentalism itself is a privileged, neutral, and absolute way of accessing truth. Bourdieu accepts Kantian schematism, but argues that schematism is always an “apriori a posteriori.” Each of us wears spectacles through which we access the world, but they are always socially determined. The habitus stands for precisely the social spectacles through which we access the world and present ourselves to the world. In my view, the metaphor of spectacles might be misleading because it is a visual metaphor; one should talk not only about spectacles but also about gloves, shoes, and underwear. In fact, Bourdieu’s habitus is always embedded and embodied. Between the different habitus—there is indeed a habitus for every social class—there are relationships of recognition and non-recognition, which translate for individuals into forms of inclusion and exclusion. The Bourdieusian notion of habitus is part of a sort of tradition that, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rehabilitated Kant and his schematism, and tried to free Kant from the then-dominant logical and psychological interpretations of Kantian theories. Of Kant’s imagination and schematism, authors such as Cassirer and Panofsky in Germany and Durkheim and Mauss in France have underlined the historical, social, and cultural dimensions. In this historicization and socialization of schematism, the shift from imagination to the imaginary is determined. The success of the concept of the imaginary in the twentieth century is thus the consequence of disaffection for the concept of imagination understood as a logical, psychological, and individual faculty (Wunenburger 2013, 5).

From Imaginary to Sociotechnical Imaginary The imaginary is a coherent and dynamic set of symbolic structures that are embodied in institutions, social relations, cultural productions, and even in technologies and their specific uses by a certain group of people. In his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (1988), Ricoeur arguably developed one of the most rigorous theories of the social imaginary. For him the social imaginary is constituted by the polarity between ideology and utopia. Ideology and utopia should not be defined in opposition to reality but in relation to it.

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Indeed, our access to social reality is always symbolically1 mediated. Ideology and utopia must be understood as the two poles of this symbolically mediated relationship that human beings, not as individuals but as social groups, entertain with the social reality to which they belong or to which they aspire. Ideology has the function of maintaining the social order, while utopia represents the attempt to disrupt it. For Ricoeur, in social life, we are always caught in an oscillation between ideology and utopia: we must cure the excesses of utopia with a bit of ideology, understood above all as an element of identity, just as we must cure the rigidity of ideology with a bit of utopia. As in the case of the hermeneutic circle, we must not abandon this circularity but inhabit it, keep it alive, and then transform the circle into a sort of spiral. The dialectic between ideology and utopia works on three levels that can be graphically described as three concentric circles in which the outermost is also the most detached from social reality, while the innermost is the closest to it. At the first level, ideology is a distortion of reality, while utopia is a completely unrealizable fantasy. At the second level, which is the level of power, ideology is a legitimation of existing power (the status quo), while utopia represents an alternative to it. At the third level, we no longer see the negative or deconstructive but rather the constructive side of these two poles of the social imaginary: ideology has the function of preserving the identity of a social group, while utopia has the function of exploring new possibilities for that social group. There are three merits of the Ricoeurian concept of social imaginary. The first is that of including both ideology and utopia in the concept. This is crucial for revealing the tendency to understand and study sociotechnical imaginaries in terms of utopia and, in particular, fantasy. The privileged object of study of some disciplines that are interested in emerging digital technologies are “limits-discourses,” that is, cultural productions such as science fiction books, videogames, and films that showcase future utopias and dystopias. Yet equally important is the study of past or present ideologies and their way of acting on technological and social reality, especially when it comes to technologies. Moreover, as will be argued in the conclusion, many fantasies that are seen as innocuous are ideologies in disguise. The second merit is that the concept helps with understanding the relation of the imaginary to reality. To say that reality, including technological reality, is always symbolically mediated is to take a stand to some extent against the empiricism that has come to dominate contemporary empirical philosophy of technology. Remembering that the imaginary has concrete effects on technological reality does not mean returning to a merely symbolic perspective

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of this reality. Whereas the debate in the philosophy of technology oscillates between simple empiricism and an equally simple “return to Heidegger,” I have proposed (Romele, Reijers, and Coeckelbergh 2021) a third way paraphrasing Heidegger’s famous sentence, so that “the essence of technology is by no means entirely technological” (Heidegger [1977] 1954, 4). For me, the imaginary is a condition of the possibility of technology, which is located alongside other conditions of possibility. The third merit of the Ricoeurian concept is to understand the move from the Kantian productive imagination to the imaginary. The imaginary is not only a social reality, but is always externalized and embodied in techniques and technologies. Therefore, I refer here to the concept of the imaginaire as proposed by the sociologist of technology Patriche Flichy ([2008] 2001), who is inspired by Ricoeur. Through his analysis, Flichy proposes understanding the process of technological innovation as a hermeneutic circle going from utopia to ideology and back. Imaginaries are also discussed by Sheila Jasanoff (2013), who defines sociotechnical imaginaries as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” (4). Yet, this definition is partial for at least two reasons. The first is that “institutionally stabilized” sociotechnical imaginaries are only a part of sociotechnical imaginaries. For example, Hilgartner (2015, 33–55) introduced the concept of “sociotechnical vanguards,” by which he denotes relatively small collectives that intentionally formulate and act to realize particular sociotechnical visions of the future that have yet to be accepted by larger collectives, such as nations. The second drawback of Jasanoff ’s definition is that sociotechnical imaginaries, even institutionalized ones, are not always about “desirable futures.” Her definition is all about a desirable future and thus functions as utopia in its positive version. But many, if not most, sociotechnical imaginaries, even those involving future technologies, are directed at ideology and the past that somehow inserts itself in the present. In the polarity between ideology and utopia and between past and future (although ideology and utopia are not entirely identifiable with past and future), Jasanoff seems to address the latter. In the perspective that I propose, however, the emphasis is rather on the repetition of the past in the present—just as the habitus is nothing other than the repetition in the present (and future) generations of those dynamics of social recognition or non-recognition that come from past generations.

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Furthermore, sociotechnical imaginaries are not only about “exceptional technologies,” and are not only about emerging and disruptive technologies, nor are they only about those “artifacts and practices that appear as marginal or paradoxical exceptions to a received sense of what empirically constitutes a technology in a given context of design” (Smith 2018). Sociotechnical imaginaries are also (and perhaps above all) about the ordinary and the power of the ordinary, that is, habits and uses of mundane technologies. Focusing on the exceptional can help return to the ordinary, but there is a risk of getting lost in a fascination with the exceptional. My concept of sociotechnical habitus enables me to refer to the imaginary that allows the installation of social and cultural dynamics from the past (e.g., dynamics of class recognition and non-recognition) to the present use or attitude toward technology. The study of the sociotechnical habitus would consist of the examination of the expectations, fears, hopes, and imaginaries that lead to social disparities and injustices in the use/access to technologies and that do not depend on the materiality of the technical object. Of course, it is not at all necessary to think that technologies are transparent in their use; on the contrary, one must recognize that technologies themselves embody, at least in part, these habitus. The term “sociotechnical,” in short, does not indicate the prevarication of the first element (the social) over the second (the technology), but the articulation between these two.

From Emagination to Emaginary In my book Digital Hermeneutics (Romele 2020b) I introduced the concept of “emagination” to indicate that our imagination is always externalized and that digital technologies are one of the privileged places where schematism takes place nowadays. I started with a brief debate between Ricoeur and Cornelius Castoriadis. Castoriadis and Ricoeur both have the merit of defending the idea of a “constituent” character of the social imaginary, that is, the imaginary is not detached, but rather operates and is effective on social reality and its constitution as such. Yet, the two authors speak of the imaginary, from two very distinct theories of imagination. According to Ricoeur, “the idea of an absolute novelty is inconceivable. There is new only as a rupture with the old: there is a pre-settled (pre-réglé) before us that we unsettle in order to settle it differently” (Castoriadis and Ricoeur 2016, 44). He continues: “we are never in a sort of shift from nothing to

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something, but from something to something, from other to other—that goes from the configured to the configured, never from the formless to the form” (46). Castoriadis advocates for a radical imaginary constitution, that is, for the possibility of absolute novelty in history and society through imagination: “The self-institution of society implies that we always work in an already settled context, manipulating and modifying the rules; but also laying down new rules, creating them. This is our autonomy” (44, emphasis mine). I argue that the notion of the imaginary in Castoriadis is still indebted to a romantic perspective in which imagination is understood in terms of absolute creativity. Ricoeur intends to get rid of this residue of romanticism that is still present in §49 of the third Kantian Critique and, in some way, in Castoriadis’ theory of the social imaginary. There is another element that seems to distinguish Ricoeur and Castoriadis. For Castoriadis, although effective on reality, the imaginary is still an internal function of human beings. By contrast, for Ricoeur the theory of “extended imagination” means that imagination does not operate mysteriously in interiore homine, but always outside, particularly in linguistic expressions such as symbols, metaphors, and narratives—Ricoeur himself is not disdainful of applying his thesis to non-linguistic domains such as architecture (Ricoeur 2016). Based on these two features of the Ricoeurian imagination of the productive imagination (its recombinatory and externalized nature), I have proposed my concept of emagination. In this chapter, I aim to articulate my earlier research on emagination with my more recent research on sociotechnical imaginaries and habitus. This allows me to move from emagination to emaginary. The notion of emagination is linked to extended mind theory. What emagination still lacks, however, is a reflection on the fact that not only is imagination always extended, but it is also always socialized. The concept of emaginary is an expansion of the concept of emagination, whose aim is to recognize the not-entirely-technological (and digital) nature of human schematism. If emagination is valid as a concept, then one must minimize the difference between humans and digital machines for two reasons. First, digital machines nowadays seem increasingly capable of “trivializing” human creativity, showing the regular patterns behind it. Second, the same technologies seem to be more and more able to be properly creative—provided that, by creativity, we mean a recombinatory capacity that, from time to time, admits some glitches that we identify with novelty from a certain “level of abstraction.” If the emaginary is a valid concept, it highlights precisely the recombinatory rather than the creative character of our imagination. The emaginary means,

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more explicitly than emagination, that we are always “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants (nanos gigantium humeris insidentes)”—as coined by Bernard of Clairvaux (and not by Google Scholar). The emaginary, being socialized emagination, shows that every creative act is the resumption of patterns that, as transcendentals and conditions of possibility of all technologically mediated acting and reasoning, always determine our acting and understanding of the world. These patterns extend both synchronically—in the direction of people who are contemporary with us, and diachronically—toward past and future generations. This is not to say that there are no novelties, but these novelties are less the result of genius than of slippage, very often unforeseen—rather like a glitch. Digital technologies and their uses are not the only places of manifestation of the emaginary. For instance, the internet is full of images of digital emerging technologies such as AI, quantum computing, cloud computing, and so on. Most of these images do not represent the technology as it is; they rather embody expectations, fears, and hopes that a social group or even an entire culture has of the technology in question. These representations are not detached from technical reality. Rather, they play an active role in both the processes of invention and innovation and in the processes of acceptance of technology in society. Once again, it is not a question of choosing between society and technology (or between representations of technology and technology itself); instead, it is a question of simultaneously understanding their intimate relationship and their mutual independence.

Conclusion: Emages My most recent research has focused on the images with which AI is represented. I am not referring to scientific images or artistic images, but rather to vulgar and popular representations of the technology. Search for “artificial intelligence” on any search engine and select the “images” option: the result will be images such as half-flesh, half-circuit brains, humanoid robots looking at and touching interactive computer screens, lines of code waving through space, and various human-robot variations of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Most of these images are stock images, which are pre-produced images sold by agency sites like Getty Images and Shutterstock. I call these images “emages.” Empirical philosophers of technology can simply ignore emages or treat them as idols, since they never represent what is actually done in research laboratories. For

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me, these images are fundamental; they embody emaginaries (fears, hopes, etc.) and, at the same time, provoke them. Moreover, they are not detached but play an active role in the processes of technological innovation. Emages speak of the future, a future in which humans and non-humans will finally be on the same level. Instead of referring to emages as expressions of “post-humanist narratives that express the apocalyptic” (Singler 2020, 14), I propose separating their content from their performativity. In other words, what interests me is not so much what emages are about, but rather what they do. My thesis is that although emages attempt to speak of the future, they provoke the past. I contend that emages have an “anesthetizing” effect, in the sense that instead of provoking engagement in the audience, they provoke a sense of obviousness, necessity, and resignation. In this context, the notion of narrative is helpful. It is commonly believed that narrative has an explicative function for science popularization, as well as the popularization of religious precepts. However, British literary critic Franck Kermode (1979) argued that narrative often has the function of separating and obscuring. He uses the parables of the Gospels as a paradigmatic example. In particular, he emphasized the following passage of the Gospel of Mark (4, 11-12): “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside, everything is said in parables so that (hina) they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven!” This passage would indicate that parables are arbitrary means of separation between insiders and outsiders, the ultimate scope of which would be to exclude the latter from the Kingdom of God. Similarly, I contend that emages have, if not the explicit function, at least the effect of separating and excluding non-experts from experts. A striking example is the use of blue, as can be seen in Figure 2, in which about 7,500 images of AI taken from Shutterstock are collected. ​ Consider the history of blue, as told by French historian Michel Pastoureau (2001). To this day, blue is the most statistically preferred color in the world. According to Pastoureau, the success of blue is not the expression of some impulse, as could be the case with red. Instead, one gets the impression that blue is loved because it is peaceful, calming, and anesthetizing. It is no coincidence that blue is the color used by supranational institutions such as the UN, UNESCO, and the European Community, as well as commercial companies such as Facebook and Meta. In Italy, the police force is blue—the reason why policemen are disdainfully called “Smurfs.” Singler (2020) also talks about the color blue, referring mainly to Grieser (2017), but traces the value of this color

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Figure 1 7,500 images for the search “Artificial Intelligence” from the catalog of Shutterstock aggregated and visualized with PixPlot. https://rodighiero​.github​.io​/AI​ -Imaginary/#. Published with the permission of Dario Rodighiero.

back to its moral and noble phase (when it became the color of the dress of Mary and the kings of France). This is certainly partly true: blue suggests security, trustworthiness, reliability, and so on. But to stop at this level is to focus on what emages promise and not on what they do. The problem with emages, with their blue backgrounds (and other plastic and figurative elements), is that they lead the viewer into forms of acceptance and resignation. They have anesthetizing effects on the general public. My idea is that these images could (or should) have quite different effects. In particular, these images could (or should) cause forms of disagreement, in the sense developed by Jacques Rancière (2004), according to which disagreement is more radical than “misunderstanding (malentendu)” or “lack of knowledge (méconnaissance).” These, as the words themselves indicate, are just failures of mutual understanding and knowledge that, if treated in the right way, can

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be overcome. In the case of disagreement, however, there is no possibility of overcoming the conflict. Yet, for Rancière, this is not necessarily bad news. Rather, conflict can be useful and constructive, as long as it is understood in terms of agonism and not antagonism. What characterizes agonism, as opposed to antagonism, is the recognition of the right of the opponent to have a voice and existence in the debate. My proposal is to extend this application of the notion of disagreement to the field of AI imagery and the digital in general and, consequently, to the whole field of communication about AI and the digital. Emages should promote the flourishing of agonistic conflict. The ethical (and political) problem with emages is, then, not the fact that they do not represent the technologies themselves. If anything, the problem is that while they focus on expectations, they do not promote individual or collective imaginative variations but rather calm and anesthetize these variations. Another way of dealing with same problem is to resort to the notion of “imaginative variations.” In Oneself as Another (1992, 159), Ricoeur describes literature as “an immense laboratory for thought experiments in which this connection [the connection between the action and its agent] is submitted to an infinite number of imaginative variations.” Similarly, I propose that we look at and judge emages not according to the logic of “reference,” but according to their capacity or inability to provoke imaginative variations at the individual and collective level. Imaginative variations can be well thought of in terms of, to use another Ricourian expression, “conflict of interpretations” (Ricoeur 1974). If the emaginary today seems to have the status of ideology, this does not mean that it cannot be unlocked and directed toward utopia. On closer inspection, privileging ideology over utopia, giving great space to the Bourdieusian concept of habitus, means not resigning oneself to ideology but equipping oneself with the means to analyze it, criticize it, and eventually overcome it. It is, in short, a way to avoid running too fast toward utopias that would be unattainable. To conclude, contrary to a tendency of contemporary philosophers to ignore emages or at best consider them idols, one of the major tasks of the philosophy of technology today should be the (empirical) analysis and (material) critique of emages, and more generally of all popular narratives of technology.

References Castoriadis, C., and P. Ricoeur (2016), Dialogue sur l’Histoire etl’Imaginaire Social, Paris: Editions de l’EHESS.

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Bourdieu, P. ([2010] 1979), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, New York and London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. ([2000] 1997), Pascalian Meditations, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. ([1996] 1965), Photography: A Middle-Brow Art, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. ([1977] 1972), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Derrida, J. ([1978] 1967), Writing and Difference, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Flichy, P. ([2008] 2001), The Internet Imaginaire, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Fourcade, M., and K. Healy (2016), “Seeing Like a Market.” Socio-Economic Review, 15 (1): 9–29. Grieser, A. (2017), “Blue Brains: Aesthetic Ideologies and the Formation of Knowledge between Religion and Science,” In A. Grieser and J. Johnston (eds.), Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept, 237–70, Berlin: De Gruyter. Jasanoff, S. (2013), “Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity,” in S. Jasanoff and S.-H. Kim(eds.), Dreamscapes of modernity, 1–33, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Kermode, F. (1979), The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heidegger, M. (1977), The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York and London: Garland Publishing. Héran, F. (1987), “La Seconde Nature de l’Habitus. Tradition Philosophique et Sens Commun dans le Langage Sociologique,” Revue Française de Sociologie, 28 (3): 385–416. Hilgartner, S. (2015), “Capturing the Imaginary: Vanguards, Visions and the Synthetic Biology Revolution,” in S. Hilgartner, C. Miller, and R. Hagendijk (eds.), Science and Democracy: Making Knowledge and Making Power in the Biosciences and Beyond, 33–55, New York and London: Routledge. Lemmens, P. (2021), “Thinking Technology Big Again. Reconsidering the Question of the Transcendental and ‘Technology with a Capital T’ in the Light of the Anthropocene.” Foundations of Science. Pastoureau, M. (2001), Blue: The History of a Color, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rancière, J. (2004), Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Ricoeur, P. (2016), “Architecture and Narrativity,” Études Ricœuriennes/Ricoeur Studies, 7 (2): 31–42 Ricoeur, P. (1992), Oneself as Another, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Ricoeur, P. (1988), Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Ricoeur, P. (1974), The Conflict of Interpretations, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

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Romele, A. (2020a), “The Datafication of the Worldview,” AI & Society. https://link​ .springer​.com​/article​/10​.1007​/s00146​-020​-00989​-x. Romele, A. (2020b), Digital Hermeneutics: Philosophical Investigations in New Media and Technologies, New York and London: Routledge. Romele, A., W. Reijers, and M. Coeckelbergh (2021), “Hermeneutic Philosophyof Technology: A Research Program,” in W. Reijers, A. Romele, and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Interpreting Technology: Ricoeur on Questions Concerning Ethics and Philosophy of Technology, IX–XXII, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Singler, B. (2020), “The AI Creation Meme: A Case Study of the New Visibility of Religion in Artificial Intelligence Discourse,” Religions, 11 (5): 1–17. Smith, D. (2018), Exceptional Technologies: A Continental Philosophy of Technology, London and New York: Bloomsbury (Kindle edition). Wunenburger, J.-J. (2013), L’Imaginaire, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

4

Techno-Activism Lars Botin

Introduction Humans are highly capable of imagining the world and making use of technology to enhance this capacity. At the same time technologies open for new ways and types of imagining, which makes the relation a hybrid affair. Hybrid imagination is a way of enframing the world through and with technology, thereby addressing the problems and challenges that we as humanity face in relation to digitalization, climate change, inequity, and migration, just to mention the most important ones. We need to re-think and re-design our ways of being-in-the-world and how this being is sublime, hybrid, and technological in its essence. This chapter will investigate the core concepts of hybridity and sublimity, and how these notions can focus on how we pave the way for more responsible and sustainable solutions in relation to the grand challenges. Theoretically and conceptually the chapter is hybrid and a result of patchworking and doing bricolage. It is written within the same time from the outset in central perspectives within philosophy of technology: phenomenology, postphenomenology, critical theory, and Foucauldian thinking. It aims to embrace both the ethical and the political dimensions of hybrid imagination, because both are necessary for actions to become and to be performed. In this way, the chapter should be read as some sort of political and ethical manifest for Techno-Activism. This is an attempt to do bricolage by inserting new concepts like TechnoAnthropocene (2020) and Techno-Activism (2021). The chapter is structured according to the concept of bricolage, where the elements in the bricolage—for example, hybridity, imagination, sublimity, technology, and body—perform in chaosmotic processes (Guattari 1995).

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Chaosmotic means that these processes are characterized by intertwined, entangled, and inseparable environments. In this way Hybrid Imagination as Techno-Activism is itself a chaosmotic process that enacts and produces new and unexpected (sublime) results and solutions.

Hybridity and Imagination in Engineering Studies In 2011 I co-authored a book A Hybrid Imagination. Science and Technology in Cultural Perspective (Jamison, Christensen, and Botin 2011). In the book we advocated for a new beginning in engineering and design studies, where social science and humanities should be given particular and serious attention to make the students become more aware of the outcomes of their technical practices and procedures. We proposed a novel mode of teaching which was and is a very pragmatic approach to the field and involves hybrid imagination. In this section, I shall elaborate on how hybridity and imagination could make sense to science, engineering, and design studies in contemporary settings. Back then we wrote: A hybrid imagination can be defined as the combination of scientific-technical problem-solving competence with an understanding of the problem that need to be solved. It is a mixing of scientific knowledge and technical skills with what might be termed as cultural empathy, that is, an interest in reflecting on the cultural implications of science and technology in general and one’s own contribution as a scientist or engineer, in particular. (Jamison et al. 2011, 4, my italics)

We focused on scientists, engineers, and designers, and how to make them think and reflect on their own practices and knowledge. We must broaden the field and focus on action and reflection as simultaneous processes in facing problems of current society and world. Engineering studies (in Denmark) have been placing importance on the framing of the profession and confining practices in an ethical framework. This goal is usually answered in an instrumental way using technology assessment models that are consequentialist in their approach. For certain we should have some sort of concrete measurement of the causes and the effects of technology, but it is not enough for us to look ahead and try to figure out what, how, and why things may become in a certain way. We need additional tools to complement consequentialism, which gives us only a limited glance into a possible future. For this reason, I have recently co-edited a volume on Technology Assessment in Techno-

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Anthropological Perspective (2021), wherein we call for a more encompassing and alternative approach to cope with fore-sighting and assessing complex and sometimes chaotic technological issues like the grand challenges we are facing. The new approach is inspired by Alfred North Whitehead’s concept of imagination, as described in The Aims of Education: “Imagination is not to be divorced from facts: it is a way of illuminating the facts. It works by eliciting the general principles which apply to facts, as they exist, and then by an intellectual survey of alternative possibilities which are consistent with those principles” (Whitehead in Jamison et al. 2011, 1). Whitehead paves the way to hybrid imagination. In the context of engineering and design studies, it is the capacity to assemble the various sensations in imaginary constructs and compositions and to acknowledge the original sensory inputs that we received during our movement.

Scaffold: A Framework for Hybridity and Imagination Given the fact that things are complex, and sometimes even chaotic, we need an ontology, epistemology, and methodology that manages to embrace this complexity. This outset is in no way singular or rooted in one position, but rather polymorph and compositional, reflecting the fragmented and kaleidoscopic reality of post-modern/post-human society. To do that we are required to imagine and set up images for appropriate technological possibilities and potentials, which eventually can result in responsible and sustainable solutions. There is no simple and straightforward technological solution to grand challenges, but rather a quest stemming from both things and societies for building frameworks that embrace and nourish the fragile and vulnerable relationship between humans, societies, technologies, and nature/world. These frameworks, or scaffolds (Botin 2020), are characterized by being hybrid in their essence, which means that they are futile, motile, mobile, metamorphic, and fragmented. This also means that the construction/composition is transcendental and boundary spanning. The notion of scaffold provides more than mere descriptive analysis. It also points to future directions.

Hybrid Imagination = Hybridity + Imagination The goal in developing the notion of hybrid imagination is to produce an imagery of hybrid thinking and action that leaps and loops on routes where

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transcendency and boundaries are constantly challenged and transgressed. As I interpret the concepts of hybridity and imagination, they are intertwined and at the same time co-shaped with how our bodies-are-in-the-world. They cannot be the result of de-contextualized cognitive thinking in some ideal/ utopian void. We move, transform, and transgress in different realities that are interconnected by our bodily imagination, where the frail and docile body transmits emotions and messages on what it means to be on this path in relation to this phenomenon. The concepts of hybridity and imagination merge into hybrid imagination. This form of imagination is closely related to our senses: looking, listening, tasting, feeling, and smelling, which are both active and reflexive in the “making” of things and meanings. Hybrid imagination paradoxically breaks down the hegemony of the eye, and points at the importance of sensorial nearness and closeness to the phenomenon. We must listen, feel, taste, and smell the world and the things in the world to compose and construct technological imaginaries.

Hybridity as Interdisciplinarity Hybridity is about composition of various types of experience as well as of knowledge. It calls for inter- and transdisciplinary approaches where technical, societal, and cultural experiences and knowledge are intertwined and constantly calibrating each other. It also makes sense to talk about the need for inter- and transdisciplinary approaches and coin these approaches as hybrid. Hybrid experiences and knowledge that feed imagination are also the result of how time and temporal elements are conceived and perceived. In this perspective, time is folded, where past, present, and future are crushed and enveloped into a “body” where time is perceived and conceived as molecules that run in the same vessel simultaneously. This also means that hybrid imagination is performed in teams, and not by individuals. Team members must be tuned and toned to become part of the common hybrid body of imagination. The notion of commonness and gathering is crucial in relation to the purpose of mixing experiences and knowledge from different disciplines and domains because there is intentionality and direction at stake. In the latter part of this chapter, I shall address why we should gather and meet in the common body of hybrid imagination.

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Hybrid Imagination and the Body In post-humanism the “body” is challenging the boundaries of what is possible, thinkable, and doable. However, post-human and trans-human attempt to understand what it means to fuse with technology in hybrid constructs, and they are focusing on the enhancement and empowerment of the individual in the perspective of “singularity.” By contrast, my concept of the “body” is inclusive, emphatic, and social in its essence. The social aspects of the body are inspired by the work of Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer in Data Publics. Public Plurality in an Era of Data Determinacy (2020), where they advocate for a “shift” in how we address data in Western neo-liberal capitalist societies: “In this shift, [. . . shift the debate from questions of appropriation to the quality of relations created in our encounters] taking care of data ceases to be a question of enclosure, ownership, and control but a process in which alterity and its sphere of becoming can be understood as the commons of multiple data publics” (Mörtenböck and Mooshammer 2020, 11). Mörtenböck’s and Mooshammer’s call for a shift is exactly a response to what they call “global techno-capitalism,” which is governed by ethical and political principles like privacy, property, autonomy, and ownership. The response is the creation of a “body” of commonness, sharing, radical democracy, relations, and publics. The creational process of “alterity and becoming” is hybrid, and happens on all levels, from the individual to the societal.

Sublime Hybrid Imagination—Liminality at Its Limits We move at the boundaries of things and realities to get an imagined “picture” that is capturing what is at the margins, and thus characterized as liminal. To move in that way and to produce liminality, we have to be aware of what is at the limits and what is beyond these limits. The liminality enables us to develop the sublime. Basically, the concept of the sublime has been attached to technological development in the age of modernism, post-modernism, and post-humanism (Nye 1999; Rutsky 1999). Its existentialist and phenomenological readings have a double meaning as an almost celestial upheaval on one hand and terrifying deadly experience on the other (Burke 2008; Heidegger 2001).

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To consider hybrid imagination as a sublime endeavor is to acknowledge the hope and despair of moving on the edges with the intent of creating radical and critical scaffolds for technological ruptures. This is not a call for disruption in the sense of “burning down the house,” but rather a quest for transformation, transition, and transgression of limits and borders, where rupture is inevitable. Technology touches the limits and boundaries of complex (and sometimes chaotic) reality, and we as humans constitute as bodies at the limits, and this is exactly where hope and danger are at their apex, for example, sublime. Iain McKenzie in his reading of Foucault’s thoughts on limits and liminality states that “the liminal phase in general creates a time for playful imagination and creativity that can instill critical perspectives and attitudes. It is, though, also the time of possible alienation and lack of self-definition” (MacKenzie 2001, 13, my italics). Once again, we witness how the dialectical move and oscillation in-between opposites is the driving force of the possible and potential sublime constitutions and assemblages. To engineers and designers, it makes sense to address technology as being on the edge and constantly emerging in different realities, hence expression of the sublime.

Hybrid Imagination, Technology, and Evolution The French philosopher Jacques Ellul ([1953] 1964) wrote that technology ruptures our relation to reality and exposes us to the instrumental work of technological rationality, but at the same time technology can imaginatively bridge the gap and mend the rupture by recombining what was originally ruptured. This double work of technology has often been overlooked by critics of Ellul (and Heidegger), where the dystopian side has been emphasized. For both Ellul and Heidegger there is the mending, bridging, and combining imaginative quality that is present in technology, hence we can and should balance between the negative and the positive impact of technology. This is an ongoing process that should start at the moment we engage with the technology. Such a process enables us to realize that our relations with technology are imaginative, ubiquitous, ongoing, and eternal. Ellul writes: Yet technique, having ruptured the relations between man and man, proceeds to rebuild the bridge which links them. It bridges the specializations because it produces a new type of man always and everywhere like his duplicate, who

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Technique, which in this case is equal to technology, moves constantly and incessantly in opposite directions creating ruptures and connections. This dialectical constant and eternal movement is the generator and creator of humans where technology is the evolutionary principle, replacing Darwin’s biological evolutionary theory. In these complex evolutionary relations, our bodies are constantly broken down and rebuilt by and with technology. Consequently, a new vision of humanity arises giving a new meaning to imagination. So far, I showed how, technologically speaking, we are dialectical hybrids and our imagination is essentially technical. Although in post-modern philosophy it is banned to speak of essence, in my view, technology is essential on an ontological level, because it is decisive for any kind of evolution, innovation, development, or/ and intervention. This description of human evolution matches the double characteristics of the sublime as celestial upheaval and terrifying experience. The sublime character of human evolution requires a focus on movement and specifically how the self is constituted through liminal behavior and moving at the limits. The Danish writer and philosopher Villy Sørensen allegedly proclaimed that to become yourself you must step out of yourself. This means that you must accept a loss of control, and put yourself in the hands of what is outside, which is characterized by complexity and possible chaos. The loss of control can become dangerous and self-destructive, but also lead to redemption as was the case with Henry D. Thoreau, who built a hut in the forest (Walden) and managed to get through on the other side even though initiated by an extremely dystopian letter whom his friend and colleague Ellery Channing wrote on March 5, 1845: MY DEAR THOREAU, The handwriting of your letter is so miserable that I am not sure I have made it out. If I have, it seems to me you are the same old sixpence you used to be, rather rusty, but a genuine piece. I see nothing for you in this earth but that field which I once christened “Briars”; go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no alternative, no other hope for you. Eat yourself up; you will eat nobody else, nor anything else. (Channing [1845] 2017)

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Thoreau “ate himself up” and it was another Thoreau that stepped out of the forest a couple of years after entering it and becoming in touch with world and nature through the humble construct of the hut (Thoreau 2016). Basically, what Heidegger practiced through a lifetime in his hut in Black Forest. In this state of “ecstasis” you are caught by the forces of the outside, and in the movement toward an imaginable center (self) these forces are carried along. Non-human qualities and competencies, might that be biological and/ or technological, are installed and we manage to cope with complexity and chaos in new ways. Which again due to the ecstatic character of the movement, transgressing and challenging the limits and boundaries of stasis and “normality,” is framed within the sublime. Cross-fertilization is also the driving force in hybrid imagination, where technology is the seed/semen for the catalyst processes of constitution. We cannot think, act, or imagine without considering these processes as being the result of the workings of technology, hence technology as essential. The most problematic concept would be (bodily) imagination, which would replace the engineers’ quest for prediction and efficiency based on calculation. This different rod of fore-sighting and imagination that Heidegger introduces in . . . Poetically Man Dwells . . . ([1954] 2001) is meant for taking measures of different standards than “classical” science and applied science is used to: A strange measure for ordinary and in particular also for all merely scientific ideas, certainly not a palpable stick or rod but in truth simpler to handle than they, provided our hands do not abruptly grasp but are guided by gestures befitting the measure here to be taken. This is done by taking which at no time clutches at the standard but rather takes it in a concentrated perception, a gathered taking-in, that remains a listening. (Heidegger [1954] 1971: [p], my italics)

The gathered taking-in of concentrated perception is the crucial conceptualization because there is a double movement from the outside and the inside in the listening. We are constantly oscillating on the limits of what can be perceived and conceived. Listening is also central in the work of the German sociologist and philosopher Hartmut Rosa, who has recently introduced to the concept of Resonance (2019) as a way of dealing with the constant exponential acceleration of technology. Resonance is related to our capacities to listen and feel the vibrations of the world, and in this case listen and act with cure and care. What resonates is not mere echoes of what has been sent out in the world (Rosa 2019, 167), but rather meaningful responses that are perceived by the attentive and caring ear, that

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is concentrated perception, as Heidegger would have it. Rosa stresses the fact that Resonance is the antithesis to mechanical echo, because it is laden with meanings and values that are expressed in both ethical, aesthetical, and political forms and contents. To catch these meanings and values we must tune our technological being and becoming in relation to what resonates. Rosa is clear about the paradigmatic move which resonance requires in relation to science and technology: “Resonance might be understood as a Romantic idea insofar as the basic ambition of Romanticism is to reconcile these same divisions and oppositions with each other—it stands in opposition to the reifying concepts of a rationalism oriented toward calculation, specification, domination, and control” (Rosa 2019, 171). It is exactly the reconciliation and convergence in-between science, technics, social studies, and the arts that constitute hybrid imagination in contemporary settings.

Techno-Activism in the Perspective of Hybrid Imagination We have for more than a decade been classifying our era as Anthropocene, and I have been calling this yet another outbreak of anthropocentric hubris, because we as humans are not in the center of things and do not have the power and control of processes and developments (Botin 2021). On the contrary, we are in the Maelström (Poe 2000) of world and reality, meaning we are caught in the sublime whirl of things, that is, world, humans, non-humans (might they be our companion species and our non-organic companions). On this note I have coined our era the Techno-Anthropocene, because it is technology and “planetary technification” (Heidegger 1966), which in evolutionary processes have brought us where we are. This could be read as some sort of technological determinism, and in some ways it is. We cannot think of our being-in-the-world without technology, it is determent for our existence independent of which level or strata we imagine: geopolitical, ethical, or/and individual/relational. The question emerges whether we are doomed and/or left at the forces of technological exponential acceleration and expansion, or is there a possibility of salvation and proliferation through and with technology? The answer to this rhetorical question is affirmative, as both Heidegger and Ellul pointed out. We need to consider the devastating forces of technology, as well as the saving powers of human-technology hybridizations. This calls for yet another determent relation in between concepts and elements, namely Techno-Activism. We are in a situation of emergency on many levels: climate, migration, inequity, and so

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on where we cannot sit on our hands and leave it to future generations or rely blindly on technological innovation and development. We must place ourselves in relation to technology that opens for direct and immediate interaction, where we are both suspicious and trusting the relational qualities of this being together. This means that we must give up the naïve understanding of humans being in charge of and overseeing world and reality through our mastering and control of technology. It is not the opposite way around neither, but it will be if we do not engage critically and constructively with world and reality through and with technology, which is the way we always and already have been with technology (Stiegler 2009). The American philosopher of technology Albert Borgmann wrote: “If there is one thing that the significant philosophers of technology agree on, it is this: Contemporary culture is pervasively technological, and technology is non neutral” (Borgmann 2017, 4). It is hard if not impossible to create a strategy for activism stemming from a negation, as Robert Rosenberger writes in commenting Borgmann’s claim: “the significant philosophers of technology agree about, and only about, what technology is not” (Rosenberger 2017, 4). As I was saying, technology is determent not only for our-being-in-the-world but also for any kind of thinking, action, and imagination. We are in this sense hybrids and caught in the chiasm: “The technical inventing the human, and the human inventing the technical. Technics as inventive as invented” (Stiegler 2009, 137). What comes first—technology or the human? Or as Stiegler phrases it: “the what or the who”; is the human necessarily the “who” and technology the “what”? So, any kind of activism is always already technological (and technical). Which are the qualities of technics and technology that can inform and boost activism (and creativity)? The Dutch philosopher of technology Peter-Paul Verbeek has during the past decades been dealing with concepts like intentionality, mediation, values, and morals, when trying to grasp how technology is interdeterment for our being-in-the-world: “when a technological artifact is used, it facilitates people’s involvement with reality, and in doing so it coshapes how humans can be present in their world and their world for them” (Verbeek 2011, 7). Technologies mediate our practices/understandings/interpretations of world and reality. They place themselves in between humans and reality/world. They become/create/constitute our being as humans, which is always a hybrid and complex affair. They become/create/constitute our hybrid imagination. Stiegler asks on this notion: “This will also be the very difficulty of our question: the human / the technical. When do(es) the human / the technical begin and end?” (Stiegler 2009, 100). The answer to this intriguing question is

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that there is no beginning or ending, but a constant becoming, and “at the heart of becoming: becoming other” (Stiegler 2009, 101). Here is a direction for the movement and transformation in our being and becoming with and through technology—becoming other. It is not just me becoming other, but also technological mediation of the other that is at stake. The other in this relation is ambivalent/multivalent being both “who” and “what,” humans, companion species, technology, and world. We are posed and conditioned by and with technology in front of the other, and in this position/ condition of ambivalence, or what postphenomenology calls multistability, certain paths and routes toward the other are possible. Following AustrianIsraeli philosopher Martin Buber there are two main-paths: I/Thou and I/It (Buber [1923] 1971). The latter being the instrumental approach, where the other epitomizes as an object for exploitation and consumption, whereas the I/ Thou relation is characterized by mutuality, directness, presentness, intensity, transparency, accessibility, empathy, and inclusion. Buber is concerned with the inter-human relations, where technology plays little or no role, but following the argument of this chapter it is exactly how Techno-Activism should perform as hybrid configuration of imagination. Technology is to be considered the other because we are (in) the other.

Discussion and Conclusion Hybrid imagination is revolved toward the other, hence common enterprise in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary settings. In Ihde’s terminology it is transcending the subject and becoming post-subjectivist (Ihde and Selinger 2004). By this Ihde points at the potential of technology to become the other in collaboration with the other as human. This chiasm of intertwinement creates new agoras for action and reflection, where we together, humans and technologies, gather to meet the problems and challenges of current society and world. This is, as Rosa wrote, a romantic picture and image of “our relation to the world,” but nevertheless how we should/ought direct our common attention, intention, imagination, and force. I am calling for Techno-Activism in the age of the Techno-Anthropocene, because it is a path that could be tread if we take both humans and technologies serious in the equation and focus on the equation and the outcomes. Thoreau and Heidegger left the city and civilization to live in a simple hut, but still their connection to nature, world, and reality was mediated through that very

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hut. Thoreau’s criticism of Western world’s focus on growth and superfluous extravagancies is part of the equation as we think Techno-Activism and the Techno-Anthropocene. We need to ask critical questions and incline our bodies to what resonates in the responses stemming from the other, might that be humans, technologies, nature, and world. The inclination of our bodies is technological and a matter of hybridity. This might be read as a call for low and slow techné and to some extent it is. This does not mean that we should retract to old and bygone worlds and realities, but rather re-think through alternative approaches based on facts and imagination, how we can act, build, and construct in sustainable and responsible ways in relation to the grand challenges. I have pointed at the force of challenging and spanning the limits to find new and alternative solutions, as well as crossing the barriers in between disciplines, epistemologies, and ontologies. We need to get together, and this togetherness can only be mediated by and with technology, might that be analogous or/and digital.

References Borgmann, A. (2017), Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Botin, L. (2020), “Building Scaffolds: How Critical Constructivism and Postphenomenology Could Gather in Common Enterprise,” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 24 (1): 41–61. Botin, L. (2021), “The Chiasm: Thinking Things and Thinging Thoughts. Our Being with Technology,” in S. Lindberg and H.-R. Roine (eds.), The Ethos of Digital Environments: Technology, Literary Theory and Philosophy, 232–250, London and New York: Routledge. Buber, M. ([1923] 1971), I and Thou, New York: Howard Books. Burke, E. (2008), A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, New York and London: Routledge. Channing, E. ([1845] 2017), “Ellery Channing to Thoreau (at Concord),” in The Essential Henry D. Thoreau, Musaicum Books. https://archive​.org​/details​/aberms​ .channingweii​.1845​.05​.05. Ellull, J. ([1953] 1964), The Technological Society, New York: Vintage Books. Guattari, F. (1995), Chaosmosis and Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. ([1966] 2009), “‘Only a God Can Save Us’: The Spiegel Interview,” in T. Sheenan (ed.), Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, London and New York: Routledge.

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Heidegger, M. ([1936] 2001), “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 15–86, New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Heidegger, M. ([1954] 2001), “…Poetically Man Dwells…,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Ihde, D. and E. Selinger (2004), “Merleau-Ponty and Epistemology Engines,” Human Studies, 27 (4): 361–76. Jamison, A., S. Hyldgaard Christensen, and L. Botin (2011), A Hybrid Imagination: Science and Technology in Cultural Perspective, London: Morgan & Claypool Publishers. Mackenzie, I. (2001), “Limits, Liminality and the Present: Foucault’s Ontology of Social Criticism,” Limen, 1 (12). http://www.mi2hr/limen/limen1 (accessed August 2021). Mörböck, P. and H. Mooshammer (2020), Data Publics. Public Plurality in an Era of Data Determinacy, London and New York: Routledge. Nye, D. E. (1999), American Technological Sublime, Cambridge and London: The MIT Press. Poe, E. A. (2000), “A Descent into the Maelström,” in Tales of Mystery and Imagination, 48–61, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. Rosa, H. (2019), Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, Cambridge: Polity Press. Rosenberger, R. (2017), Callous Objects: Design Against the Homeless, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rutsky, R. L. (1999), High Techné. Art and Technology from the Machiner Aesthetic to the Posthuman, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Stiegler, B. (2009), Technics and Time, 1. The Fault of Epimetheus, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Thoreau, H. D. (2016), Walden, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Verbeek, P.-P. (2011), Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things, Chicago: The University of Chicago University Press.

Part II

Imagination and Ethics

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White Ignorance and the Racial Imaginary Celia Edell

It is no longer socially permissible to use race as an explicit justification for discrimination or social contempt. Yet Western society remains in a state of deep collective denial, locked in cycles of the same racist systems dressed up differently but serving the same ends. From mass incarceration to mass deportation, our social institutions have been structured to maintain powerful patterns of racial domination and subordination. While it is important to address institutional forms of oppression, we must also be willing to uncover how racist meanings have penetrated our collective consciousness. The ways we understand ourselves in relation to others, the affective responses we feel (or remain insensitive to) when confronted with certain realities, and our cognitive habits have all been structured by our shared representational background. This background, which is infused with meanings that precede us as individuals, has been termed the “social imaginary.”1 In linking shared imagery with affect, emotions, and desires, the social imaginary gives shape to our spatiotemporal world through affective patterns that make up our sense of ourselves and others. As argued by Cornelius Castoriadis (1987), we are immersed in a social imaginary that is shaped by our social context.2 This is what gives our world salience and significance, renders it intelligible, and habituates our responses to it. In this way, theories of the social imaginary are firmly rooted in phenomenological work on perception, the body, and social theory.3 While the concept itself cannot be entirely disentangled from its phenomenological underpinnings, its influence is wide-reaching, both forward and backward,4 within philosophy. However, theoretical divisions, not just the analytic-continental divide but distinct traditions like epistemology and social/political theory, have kept many insights from finding confluence. My aim in this chapter is to explain and connect key concepts from these approaches to explicate the role of the social imaginary in societies where whiteness has been the foundational norm.

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I begin by arguing that race has been built into the Western social imaginary. I make use of theorists from the continental tradition, including Frantz Fanon (1952) and Alia Al-Saji (2019), to argue that a racialized social imaginary (or racial imaginary) functions to uphold white supremacy by rendering as normative particular ways of thinking, seeing, and imagining. Next, I take up analytic epistemologists of ignorance, such as Charles W. Mills (2007) and José Medina (2013), to argue that the racial imaginary produces active forms of ignorance, intricately related to systems of marginalization and oppression, that maintain the racial imaginary and its existing constructions of race. What these traditions share is a concern for the way a racist society produces habits that sustain its operations. I argue that, in this context, our social imagination and collective ignorance function as mutually supportive in service of white supremacy. By making use of contributions from philosophical traditions often kept separate, we can construct a better understanding of how white supremacy is maintained. Moreover, it becomes clear that only by interrupting our habits and opening ourselves up to critical ways of imagining can we resist participating in this racist operation.

Race in Our Social Imaginaries A social imaginary does not exist purely on an intellectual or psychological plane; it is experienced as natural, as the very way we make sense of the social world and the way it structures our sensitivities (or insensitivities). It is dynamic, and constantly open to challenge or reinforcement, but operates tacitly. Theorist Moira Gatens (1996) defines “social imaginary” as those images, symbols, metaphors and representations which help construct various forms of subjectivity. [The] (often unconscious) imaginaries of a specific culture [include]: those ready-made images and symbols through which we make sense of social bodies and which determine, in part, their value, their status and what will be deemed their appropriate treatment. (Gatens 1996, viii)

There are, then, at least as many social imaginaries as there are cultures. Even further, there are multiple imaginaries within a single culture, that correspond to different kinds of socially shared significations within it. Different imaginaries will pull in different directions regarding beliefs and habits concerning difference, bodily integrity, norms of appearance, and so on, but all will have racial and

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gendered aspects. This is because gender and race are social constructions with intricate connections to various systems of collective beliefs and arrangements. In the case of some imaginaries, it will be clearer what is being racialized or sexualized, but they all operate within these frameworks in some way or another. Multiple imaginaries within one culture will “link up” in various ways, sometimes insulating them against challenge, other times creating paradoxes and opportunities for change (Gatens 1996, xi). So, the existence of multiple imaginaries within the oppressive frameworks of racialization and gender normativity makes the work of contesting a particular imaginary difficult, because in arguing against an imaginary, one can be referred to another that relies on different oppressive representations. Through a history of oppression, domination, and exploitation, particular imaginaries have already been deeply embedded within our social mapping such that we act on them, often without explicit awareness or approval. Acquired through media, education, language, and so on, our social imaginaries will take the shape of the imposing culture within which we live and coordinate meanings. This also means that histories/ legacies of oppression, domination, exploitation, and scapegoating have already been embedded in our social imaginaries. To establish that our social imagination is inherited through various forms of cultural and social education, with very real consequences for our present social relations, we may turn to Frantz Fanon’s influential book Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Fanon offers a critique of the effects of racialization on the human psyche and culture. As Al-Saji (2014, 2019) notes, racialization according to Fanon describes the political, economic, spatial, and social division of bodies as part of a project of white supremacist and colonial exploitation and domination. Fanon demonstrates the way racialization structures our imaginary and aesthetic lives; from the ways our bodies are perceived to our cognition, affects, and imaginations. This means that categories of race in our social imaginaries have been constructed to create and maintain lines of domination and privilege, and ultimately tell us very little (if anything) about the lives and bodies they mark as racially different. In our social imagination, racial identity has been set up as oppositional—“Black” and “Native” constructed as other insofar as “white” is constructed as the norm. The difference attributed to racialized groups is constructed to serve as negative mirrors for European white identity. Everything white people do not want to be themselves has been projected onto racialized identities. These constructions of race are present in our social imaginary—or, as Fanon calls it, our collective unconscious, a concept that Fanon takes up and modifies from Carl Jung.

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According to Jung (1936), the collective unconscious is a kind of objective psyche, a part of our deep unconscious mind that is genetically inherited and located in brain matter. Jung argues that this unconscious is collective in the strongest sense—it is shared by all human beings and responsible for our deepest beliefs and instincts. This would mean that all humans share a supply of innate ideas (called archetypes) that are genetically supplied, universal, ahistorical, and spontaneously produce themselves in various symbolism across different cultures and times. Jung uses this theory to make sense of the shared basic contents of religions, myths, legends, and so on. Fanon argues, against Jung, that the collective unconscious is not innate cerebral matter but acquired through media, education, stories, language, and so on. This means the collective unconscious will take the shape of the imposing (in his case, white European) culture (Fanon 1952, 152). It is the “sum of prejudices, myths, collective attitudes of a given group” (Fanon 1952, 188). Fanon’s critical version of the collective unconscious is a “constellation of postulates, a series of propositions that slowly and subtly—with the help of books, newspapers, schools and their texts, advertisements, films, radio— work their way into one’s mind and shape one’s view of the world of the group to which one belongs” (ibid: 152). The collective unconscious structures the way we see the world and its possibilities for ourselves and others. In other words, it prefigures how meaning can be made. Our racial imaginary, the representations and projections of race in our collective unconscious, persists as a cultural imposition—a view of the world acquired through the dominant culture that has been accepted through ignorance and unreflected habit. This also makes the collective unconscious a historically specific psychic structure that is open to continuous social reinforcement. I will explore the reinforcement of this racial imaginary through active forms of ignorance in my next section. The racial imaginary, or the way racialization has become embedded into our social imaginaries, functions in service of white supremacy. A powerful example of this can be pulled from Alia Al-Saji’s recent work on racializing images (2019). Racializing images, particularly in artistic and cinematic production, are an integral part of the production and maintenance of the social imaginary described by Fanon. In her account of the phenomenology of racializing vision, drawing on Fanon’s theory of racialization in the collective unconscious, Al-Saji argues that “a racial imaginary already structures the encounter with the canvas or screen in a given society and epoch; but since this imaginary is acquired and temporally dynamic, the artistic and cinematic repetition and circulation of

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racialized stereotypes both borrow from this imaginary and intensify its affective power and embodied effects, amplifying rather than interrupting its hold” (Al-Saji 2019, 477). Racializing images reproduce and amplify the structures of colonialism and white supremacy by making the racialized body the focal point of fear, surveillance, pity, or sexual violence. Very often these images relegate racialized bodies to the background, re-establishing the norms of whiteness while making racism appear mundane and irrelevant (Al-Saji 2019). In either case, racialized subjects are represented in cinematic images, artworks, literature, artifacts, and algorithms5 according to the already existing racial imaginary. Meanwhile, white subjects who consume these same racializing images see themselves represented as the dynamic, heroic, complicated, and most often main characters of the story.6 These images support white supremacy not only through their misrepresentations, or lack of representation, but through the way that certain habits of perceiving, feeling, and judging are made normative. The harmful consequences of popular media offering distorted representations of the lives and reality of Black people are well documented (e.g., Entman 2000, 2006; Williams 2009; Tucker 2007). These racializing images occur not just in art and film, but literature as well. Toni Morrison argues that insofar as “cultural identities are formed and informed by a nation’s literature” (Morrison 1992, 39), the literary construction of Blackness not only informs the social identity of Black people (as it is imposed on the group and its members), but it also informs the social identity of white people as not associated with the qualities essentialized onto Blackness. Morrison writes: For in that construction of blackness and enslavement could be found not only the not-free but also, with the dramatic polarity created by skin color, the projection of the not-me. The result was a playground for the imagination. What rose up out of collective needs to allay internal fears and to rationalize external exploitation was an American Africanism—a fabricated brew of darkness, otherness, alarm, and desire that is uniquely American. (There also exists, of course, a European Africanism with a counterpart in colonial literature). (Morrison 1992, 38, emphasis added)

Through the imaginative encounter with Blackness, white writers have been able to define themselves creatively in opposition to a fabricated African, to define modernity against a constructed Africa, temporally relegated to the past.7 AntiBlackness is embedded in the social imaginaries that produce racializing images

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(including literary images). These images function to position whiteness as desirable against all racial others. The racial imaginary structures the images that are produced within it, and these images in turn help maintain the imaginary at their source. Without needing to attribute explicitly racist intentions to any or all of those producing the artwork, cinema, and other forms of cultural production we consume, it is not difficult to see that whiteness is built into, or structurally a part of, the imagination which produces it. Morrison’s insights into the construction of Blackness also contribute to an understanding of scapegoating as it relates to the endurance of oppression. I argue that scapegoating, the unwarranted attribution of moral responsibility onto an individual or group, is a mechanism through which certain groups are trapped by systems of blame-shifting that justify oppression and the inaction of those who benefit from it. For example, whites do not need to explicitly believe in natural racial differences to believe that the Black men imprisoned at alarming rates are deserving of their punishment. The justification that a majority of young Black men are a threat to social order and deserve the punishment inflicted on them is a function of scapegoating as it is structured into our social imagination. We absorb this message from various cultural sources, and it shapes our worldview and the blind spots we maintain within it: Today, most Americans know and don’t know the truth about mass incarceration. For more than three decades, images of black men in handcuffs have been a regular staple of the evening news. We know that large numbers of black men have been locked in cages. In fact, it is precisely because we know that black and brown people are far more likely to be imprisoned that we, as a nation, have not cared too much about it. We tell ourselves they “deserve” their fate, even if we know—and don’t know—that whites are just as likely to commit many crimes, especially drug crimes. We know that people released from prison face a lifetime of discrimination, scorn, and exclusion, and yet we claim not to know that an undercaste exists. We know and we don’t know at the same time. (Alexander 2010, 182)

As a society, we know that Black men are being disproportionately targeted and punished for drug crimes, and yet we choose not to know. We are encouraged to remain ignorant. It is easier to believe that a majority of young Black men are freely choosing a life of crime than to confront the reality that our society is structured to scapegoat them. What requires more explanation is how this active ignorance works to insulate the racial imaginary and its oppressive dynamics.

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White Ignorance and Denial Our racial imaginary, or collective unconscious, can be understood to produce various forms of ignorance which perpetuate whiteness as the norm. In this section I briefly outline the framework of analysis offered by the epistemology of ignorance, with a focus on two prominent accounts that explain how distortions in our social cognition function in support of white supremacy. Our social imagination produces ignorance through the cultural imposition of a particular view of the world at the exclusion of all others. Epistemologies of ignorance grant us critical insight into the way this viewpoint is distorted to uphold racist structures. Epistemologies of ignorance are interested in more than straightforward notknowing: these accounts investigate forms of selective and strategic knowledge, and the various social processes and affective habits that support ignorance. Unlike standard epistemology—the study of knowledge and how one knows— the epistemology of ignorance is the study of the complex phenomenon of ignorance and not-knowing. According to Sullivan and Tuana, ignorance can be conceived as a gap in knowledge, an epistemic oversight, a lack or an unlearning of something previously known (Sullivan and Tuana 2007). On this framework, ignorance is understood to be socially produced and institutionalized into various social systems. Importantly, the epistemology of ignorance framework helps address ambivalent issues of oppression, such as those that do not involve hatred, or those that involve indifference toward violence or oppression. There is consensus among epistemologists of ignorance that ignorance is intricately related to various systems of marginalization, exploitation, and deprivation of groups and individuals. Ignorance is held in place through inherited systems of colonialism, racism, and domination and has the effect of excluding certain persons from exchanging, disseminating, and challenging ideas. Epistemologies of ignorance take there to be socially supported substantive cognitive norms to explain ignorance rather than merely the absence of knowledge, experience, or even the motivation to know. An important insight offered by this area of research is the notion that ignorance itself can be actively, deliberately, and strategically achieved. As Shannon Sullivan points out, there is an active verb—“to ignore”— at the root of the noun “ignorance” (Sullivan 2006, 20). Charles Mills’ concept of “white ignorance” is a central concept to the epistemology of ignorance. White ignorance refers to a cognitive distortion that

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functions to support white supremacy (Mills 2007, 15). This form of distorted social cognition can be understood as a lens through which those with white ignorance perceive the world. It not only impacts the way a person perceives others, but also their social and individual memory, group interests, and the concepts and testimony favored. For example, consider the way concepts orient us to the world. Concepts help us make sense of what we perceive and experience. Moreover, we are not constantly creating our own concepts, rather, we inherit many from our social imaginary. These concepts are not neutral but oriented toward a certain understanding. Certain concepts can cognitively disable us from establishing certain truths by forcing conclusions in a particular direction and constraining what can be seen in favor of more comfortable narratives. For example, the concept of “savage” has allowed settlers to accept certain narratives about colonial history. Denying that Indigenous peoples possessed recognizable societies, laws, property rights or sovereignty, relying instead on the idea that they were living in a “savage” pre-civilized society informed the colonial concept of terra nullius (unowned land). Without these concepts, settlers would not have been able to speak of “discovering” “empty” lands, lands that were already inhabited by millions of people. As Al-Saji (2019) demonstrated, perceptions are filtered through our racial imaginary. We find confirmation in the world of the concepts we inherit, whether the evidence is there or not. This involves managing our memory, organizing events into a narrative that is more comfortable for the dominant group. North American textbooks often inscribe history in such a way to downplay certain events, sanitize uncomfortable history, and misrepresent the past. This is all a production of our social imaginary and works to solidify its hold on us. White ignorance is an active force not limited to white people that can manifest among even those who think of themselves as anti-racist. It is a cultivated nonknowing on the part of the racially privileged (Frye 1983, 118). This cultivation is made possible by several institutional systems that support white ignorance. This is important in that it locates oppression not only in the psychology of individual people, but also in the various interconnected systems that produce and maintain ignorance about racialized people. This is not meant to diminish the individual moral responsibility of white people. It is meant to highlight that racism is not an unfortunate irregularity in an otherwise egalitarian system. Rather, white ignorance is the system; it is the norm. Against mainstream theorists in political theory, Mills incorporates a “less naïve” understanding of society and social oppression into his theory of ignorance (Mills 2007, 17). This allows Mills to shed light on oppressive conditions through the framework of

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epistemology. He conceives of racial oppression as a system maintained through white ignorance. Mills and other epistemologists of ignorance begin from the assumption that systems of domination exist and focus their theorizing on the way these systems insulate and maintain themselves against refutation, despite societal commitments to egalitarianism. Turning now to another influential theorist in the epistemology of ignorance, José Medina develops a concept of active ignorance. Active ignorance involves the convergence of three epistemic vices—arrogance, laziness, and closedmindedness—which arise in interactions between “significantly different epistemic others” (Medina 2013, 27). For an epistemic agent to be “significantly different” from oneself could mean, among other things, that the agent is significantly more socially, economically, and/or racially privileged than oneself. Specifically, Medina describes the vices of epistemic arrogance, epistemic laziness, and closed-mindedness. Epistemic arrogance is a kind of cognitive self-indulgence or superiority often present in the cognitive psychology of the powerful and privileged (ibid: 30). It involves indulgence in a delusion of “cognitive omnipotence that prevents [one] from learning from others and improving” (ibid: 31). In order to “rule without resistance,” the powerful and privileged will try to avoid knowledge which calls their own opinions and authority into question (ibid). This brings to mind, for instance, history books that downplay serious injustices against Indigenous peoples for the benefit of white comfort and to maintain widespread ignorance about the violence of white settlement. Epistemic laziness involves having the privilege of not knowing or not needing to know. This can apply to certain perspectives or entire domains with which the privileged and powerful do not need to familiarize themselves. Medina describes the domain of the “mechanisms of oppression that create marginalization, subjugation, [. . .] social death [and] physical extermination, such as genocide” as rendered invisible to those in positions of power (Medina 2013, 33). It is not necessary for their survival, as it is for the oppressed, so the privileged become epistemically lazy. As a result, a “habitual lack of epistemic curiosity atrophies one’s cognitive attitudes and dispositions. Continual epistemic neglect allows blinders to grow around one’s epistemic perspective, constraining and slanting one’s vantage point” (ibid). This kind of ignorance out of luxury is detrimental to the epistemic perspective of the privileged. It also harms those who lack the privilege and power to ignore the reality of social harms. The last epistemic vice described by Medina is closed-mindedness. This is when “one’s mental processing remains systematically closed to certain phenomena,

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experiences, and perspectives” (Medina 2013, 34). The result is eroded epistemic trust of and ability to learn from others. A closed-minded person (or group of people) pathologizes the perception, reasoning, and testimony of those whose experiences destabilize their own perspective. Like the other vices, it is a structural and systematic epistemic character flaw. For instance, Medina describes how one can become indifferent to practices of social violence (such as genocide or torture) “as a result of an active effort not to see, no matter what the evidence may be; as a result of a constant distortion and description that leads the subject to be open only to the denial of the phenomenon in question” (ibid: 35). This active effort is sometimes conscious, but often it is a cultivated habit without reflection. Active ignorance functions to maintain an epistemic insensitivity, or numbness, to circumstances and phenomena that would disrupt the status quo for those who benefit from it. It is supported by psychological mechanisms and social arrangements that prevent subjects from correcting misconceptions and acquiring knowledge because they would have to change so much of themselves and their communities before they can start seeing things differently. Active ignorance is the kind of ignorance that is capable of protecting itself, with a whole battery of defense mechanisms (psychological and political) that can make individuals and groups insensitive to certain things, that is, numbed to certain phenomena and bodies of evidence and unable to learn in those domains. (Medina 2013, 57–8)

Put differently, active ignorance protects the privileged and dominant from confronting their own positionality and role in the oppression of others. And it protects white supremacy by suppressing marginalized perspectives and protecting the peace of mind of white subjects by actively and strategically avoiding information that would challenge their comfort with the status quo of white normativity. Epistemic vice is not only a problem for individual knowers— institutions can manifest epistemic arrogance, laziness, and closed-mindedness. For example, the curriculum and education system is set up to maintain certain authorities and avoid knowledge that challenges the status quo. Not only is it not necessary for the survival of the education system to know marginalized perspectives, these perspectives may challenge the survival of the system as it currently stands. We can begin to see, now, that the imagination is imbued with ignorance, and that the ignorance helps keep the imagination in service of white supremacy. Fanon’s theory of the collective unconscious exemplifies the way racialization

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is imposed on us through our imagination—we internalize the representations and affects that dominant culture has constructed about racialized groups. Al-Saji points us to the racializing vision that accompanies and perpetuates our artistic and cinematic production. Our racial imagination reproduces representations and habits that, in turn, sustain its own hold on us—ignorance is an active disposition produced by the imaginary that functions to perpetuate the concepts and perceptions that keep us ignorant. We learn what concepts to favor, which people to fear, a version of history to accept. By prioritizing certain concepts and cognitive habits that help maintain active ignorance about the realities of racism and white supremacy, our racial imaginary continues to shape our understanding of the world and those in it. It functions as a closed circle: racial imaginary feeding into structural ignorance, ignorance perpetuating the racial imaginary.

Hesitation and Resistance Simply providing more information is not enough to change the cognitiveaffective attitudes that shape and are shaped by our social imaginaries. We require critical analysis and interrogation of the dominant social practices, beliefs, and habits. This interrogation is required in relation not only to the object of those beliefs, habits, and practices, but in relation to the subject of those beliefs, habits, and practices. In other words, we are limited by our own imaginations insofar as they have been shaped by distorted images and norms. To that end, I will bring Al-Saji’s phenomenological concept of hesitation to bear on Medina’s analytic conception of epistemic resistance. I argue that we must develop a critical distance with respect to our own social imaginaries in order to become aware of these limitations such that we can learn to expand the horizons of our social imagination. Insofar as imagination involves a kind of active participation that engages our moral sensibilities, it can be embraced or resisted. To resist the racial imaginary will involve an unwillingness to accept the conceptual repertoire it offers. Medina offers a theory of epistemic resistance to help us overcome and undermine our participation in the oppressive systems of ignorance. By “epistemic resistance,” Medina means “the use of our epistemic resources and abilities to undermine and change oppressive normative structures and the complacent cognitiveaffective functioning that sustains those structures” (Medina 2013, 3). Medina locates the possibility for change in two cognitive deficits: the inability to listen

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and learn from others, and the inability to call into question one’s perspective and process epistemic friction introduced by different perspectives (ibid: 17–18). These are closely related to the active ignorance described above, and exemplify the epistemic pitfalls carefully crafted by our social imagination that need repair. Medina’s vision for epistemic resistance consists of a sum of strategies aimed at overcoming social oppression. I will focus on the role of the imagination. While it is always individuals that imagine, they do it by relying on materials in our shared social imaginaries. Recall that I pointed to the existence of multiple co-existing imaginaries within a single society. While my focus thus far has been on a dominant racial imaginary, Medina emphasizes that imagination enables us to see the meaningfulness of others’ lives, of seeing alternatives. In this way, “imaginations with different moral and political sensibilities can function as epistemic counterpoints to each other . . . [and] by comparing and contrasting their imaginative resistances, people can become sensitive to other ways of imagining and inhabiting worlds of possible experiences” (Medina 2013, 256). Through epistemic friction, resistance to the dominant imaginary can flourish. Epistemic resistance can help us to break out of the circle of white imaginary and ignorance. However, it is not as simple as imagining alternative epistemic perspectives. Resistance requires that we give ourselves the space to notice the dominant meanings that we are resisting such that we can imagine new possibilities. Al-Saji’s phenomenology of hesitation (2014) offers a potential way to interrupt our imagination and its habits. She argues that anti-racist transformations need to occur at a perceptual-affective level of habit, not merely at the level of reflective belief. This is important if we want to challenge a racist imagination that is habituated through active forms of ignorance that cannot be remedied by additional information or rational argument. Through hesitation, the bodily awareness of affect can allow the historical, social, and habitual frame that structures one’s positionality and embodiment to be seen within experience. In other words, we can become aware of the way our experience is being shaped by our shared racial imaginary by pausing to pay attention to the phenomenological experience of our racializing affect. For example, while perceiving a cultural object, such as a film or comic book, I can learn to hesitate enough to slow down my affect, to reveal the way it is mediated by forces of sociality and historicity, structures of domination and privilege. Crucially, this requires more than hesitation alone—it requires a willingness to put oneself in uncomfortable situations so that hesitation is provoked or extended, and a reflective attitude toward one’s habits. When the privileged remain only in situations of comfort, habits will continue to be at play and there will not be an

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experience of hesitation that opens us to these imaginary forces. A willingness to stay with discomfort is necessary on Al-Saji’s account. Hesitation may not be enough to undo the influence of the racial imaginary on our habits, or remedy our ignorance, but it does offer an opportunity for these habits to be noticed and challenged. By hesitating, we can make ourselves aware of the habits of thinking, perceiving, and imagining that protect white supremacy. We can notice how we are habitually inclined to feel repulsed by certain representations and inspired by others. We can pause and consider alternative perspectives, and find epistemic counterpoints to our habitual responses. In order to challenge a racial imaginary that protects and perpetuates racism and white supremacy, we must hesitate and resist the moral and political sensibilities we inherit. In these moments of hesitation, we must imagine new social realities. Through this disruption, resistant imagination can contest the lines of exclusion and stigmatization constructed in the white imaginary and cultivate sensitivity to the suffering of marginalized subjects. This will involve working against ignorance, epistemic vice, and habits of whiteness. Instead, we must learn to be humble, engaged, open-minded, and willing to face uncomfortable truths if we are to make meaningful changes to our shared social consciousness.

References Al-Saji, Alia (2014), “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing,” in Emily Lee (ed.), Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race, 133–172, Albany: State University of New York Press. Al-Saji, Alia (2018), “SPEP Co-Director’s Address: Hesitation as Philosophical Method—Travel Bans, Colonial Durations, and the Affective Weight of the Past,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 32 (3): 331–59. Al-Saji, Alia (2019), “Glued to the Image: A Critical Phenomenology of Racialization through Works of Art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 77 (4): 475–88. Alexander, Michelle (2010), The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York: New Press; [Jackson, Tenn.]: Distributed by Perseus Distribution. https://search​.library​.wisc​.edu​/catalog​/9910095136402121. Bottici, Chiara (2019), Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary, New York: Columbia University Press. Broussard, M. (2023), More than a Glitch, The MIT Press. https://mitpress​.mit​.edu​ /9780262047654​/more​-than​-a​-glitch/. Castoriadis, Cornelius ([1987] 1998), The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey, Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Castoriadis, Cornelius (1997), World in Fragments: Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination, ed. and trans. David Ames Curtis, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Entman, R. M. (2006), Young Men of Color in the Media: Images and Impacts, Washington, DC: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Entman, R. M. and A. Rojecki (2000), The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fanon, Frantz ([1952] 1986), Black Skin, White Masks, New York: Grove Press. Frye, Marilyn (1983), The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, Trumansburg: The Crossing Press. Gatens, Moira (1996), Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power, and Corporeality, Vol. 1–1 online resource (xvi, 163 pages), London: Routledge; WorldCat​.or​g. Gatens, Moira and Genevieve Lloyd (1999), Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present, London and New York: Routledge. Irigaray, Luce (1985a), Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. G. Gill, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Irigaray, Luce (1985b), This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. C. Porter and C. Burke, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jung, Carl ([1936] 1959), Collected Works, Vol. 9, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lacan, Jacques ([1966] 2006), Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink, New York: Norton. Lennon, Kathleen (2015), Imagination and the Imaginary, New York: Routledge. Medina, José (2013), The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and the Social Imagination, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968), The Visible and the Invisible, ed. C. Lefort, trans. A. Lingis, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Mills, Charles W. (2007), “White Ignorance,” in Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (eds.), Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, 13–38, New York: State University of New York Press. Morrison, Toni (1992), Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Cambridge: Harvard University Press; WorldCat​.or​g. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1958), Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. H. Barnes, London: Methuen. Sullivan, Shannon (2006), Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege, Bloomington: Indiana University Press; WorldCat​.or​g. Sullivan, Shannon and Nancy Tuana, eds. (2007), Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, New York: State University of New York Press. Tucker, L. (2007), Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture, University Press of Mississippi. Williams, D., N. Martins, M. Consalvo, and J. D. Ivory (2009), “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games,” New Media and Society, 11 (5): 815–34.

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Williams, Damien P. (2020), “Fitting the Description: Historical and Sociotechnical Elements of Facial Recognition and Anti-Black Surveillance,” Journal of Responsible Innovation, 7 (Sup1): 74–83. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/23299460​.2020​.1831365. Williams, Damien P. (2023, June 21), “Bias Optimizers,” American Scientist, 111 (4). https://www​.americanscientist​.org​/article​/bias​-optimizers.

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Moving in a World You Cannot See From Imaginative Perception to Creative Moral Imagination Yanni Ratajczyk

In this chapter, I discuss a particular mode of moral imagination. Last decennia, philosophers have identified several ways in which imagination fulfills certain roles in moral reasoning. This ranges from imagination as a crucial part of our moral perception, as a tool to test possible scenarios or revise dominant moral understandings, or as what makes empathy possible.1 This chapter focuses on one specific role, namely imagination’s function in the personal re-envisioning of moral situations, and on the way this function was conceptualized by Iris Murdoch’s, Cora Diamond’s, and Martha Nussbaum’s notion of moral imagination as imaginative perception.2 These authors investigated how imagination gives rise to an attentive vision that we need in order to grasp the particularity of other persons and moral situations. After a discussion of their ideas, I address the examples and images they use to explain this mode of moral imagination. I argue that these images are dubious: while they should illustrate imaginative perception, they can be read as examples of moral creativity, a practice that is driven by imagination but crucially consists of concrete (patterns of) action in response to moral situations. Creativity, I will argue, fulfills its own moral role that cannot be reduced to imaginative perception. Such moral perception, however imaginative it may be, may not lead us to moral actions. Very often, there is a gap between what we see and what we do on a moral level: encountering someone in need does not tell us how to help this person. Seeing a fight happening between two other friends does not reveal how to solve it. I conclude by emphasizing the value of Murdoch’s, Nussbaum’s, and Diamond’s contributions to moral philosophy: directing one’s attentive vision to

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a person or situation is indeed a morally important effort. The fact that creativity fulfills another moral role than imaginative perception does not mean that the latter cannot be valuable for the creative process. On the contrary, it might offer a fertile starting point for moral action.

Imaginative Perception Let’s start with an example. It is the summer of 2021. A group of friends booked a cabin at the seaside. On the first evening, the after-dinner discussion hits Covid19: it turns out that Sam and Robert rejected vaccination. The discussion flares up: there is a lot of disbelief, accusations are being made, and the evening ends abruptly. The next morning, the group finds a table full of breakfast with one friend at the head who speaks up: “Let’s settle this, if we are all willing to do the good thing, we can continue our weekend as if yesterday did not happen.” There is something morally wrong or at least morally insufficient about this “solution.” The chances are high it would be regarded simplistic and empty by the others. It presupposes that all of them would immediately identify the one good thing to do, as if it would be the logical outcome of a formula that they just should be willing to follow. However, this is highly improbable. This situation is not a mathematical puzzle but an intricate case about friendship, mutual trust, and responsibility that requires more effort than “having a good will.” Murdoch would look suspiciously at this story as well. She warned against the image of morality as shopping solutions: “I objectively estimate the features of the goods, and I choose” (2001a, 8). Murdoch, evenly known as a novelist and a philosopher, opposed analytical and existential philosophies of her time, which she accused of concentrating too much on overt, will-driven action as the crux of morality but thereby neglecting inner moral contemplation. According to Murdoch, this type of moral psychology degrades morality to publicly observable acts or at least to instrumental thought directed at action, as a “matter of thinking clearly and the proceeding to outward dealings with other men” (Ibid.: 8). It posits our mental world as “inevitably parasitic upon the outer world” (Ibid.: 5). In contrast, Murdoch thinks morality essentially centers around the contemplative activity of outward-reaching attention to the world surrounding us. Murdoch borrowed the concept of attention (and its utmost moral relevance) from Simone Weil, who explained attention as a fundamental inner orientation toward others (and ultimately to God).3 Weil describes attention as an unselfing

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attitude where “(t)he soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.” (1992, 115). It is in this spirit Murdoch defines it as a central moral task “to come to see the world as it is” (2001c, 89).4 A task we can fulfill, in her words, by shifting away from the “fat relentless ego” (2001b, 51) and redirecting our attention toward the reality and individuality of others. Instead of looking at the other from an egocentered perspective, with its self-absorbed phantasies, and prejudices, we must pay selfless attention to the individuality of the other as the other. Murdoch’s famous example of such shifting attention shows a mother-in-law who revises her vision of her daughter-in-law: A mother, whom I shall call M, feels hostility to her daughter-in-law, whom I shall call D. M finds D quite a good-hearted girl but while not exactly common yet certainly unpolished and lacking in dignity and refinement. D is inclined to be pert and familiar, insufficiently ceremonious, brusque, sometimes positively rude, always tiresome juvenile. M does not like D’s accent, or the way D dresses. M feels that her son has married beneath him.

However, Murdoch remarks how M “is an intelligent and well-intentioned person, capable of self-criticism, capable of giving careful and just attention to an object which confronts her.” Therefore, M later confronts herself with her inadequate vision: “I am old-fashioned, and conventional. I may be prejudiced and narrow-minded, I may be snobbish. I am certainly jealous. Let me look again.” Here I assume that M observes D or at least reflects deliberately about D, until gradually her vision of D alters. (. . .) D is discovered to be not vulgar but refreshingly simple, not undignified but spontaneous, not noisy but gay, not tiresomely juvenile but delightfully youthful, and so on. (2001a, 17–18)

Murdoch argues that M’s changing vision of D reveals an important moral activity: “she has been doing something, something which we approve of, something which is somehow worth doing in itself. M has been morally active in the interim” (Ibid.: 19). Murdoch grasps this activity, her careful attention, in terms of perception. What M displays is a different way of seeing: a seeing that goes beyond one’s preconceptions and short-sightedness (D is not vulgar, but simple, she is not tiresomely juvenile but delightfully youthful, she is more than she seems to be; more than a daughter-in-law married to her son, etc.). According to Murdoch, imagination is crucial to changing one’s vision. It makes visible what was not before and so grounds moral will and choice: “I can only choose within the world I can see, in the moral sense of ‘see’ which implies that clear

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vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort” (Ibid.: 36). Imagination is the vehicle by which attention turns egocentric or limited perspectives into clearer vision. In The Darkness of Practical Reason, where Murdoch wrote more extensively on the nature of imagination, which she characterized as “a type of reflection on people, events, etc., which builds detail, adds colour, conjures up possibilities in ways which go beyond what could be said to be strictly factual” (48).5,6 Murdoch’s particular way of conceptualizing moral imagination, as a capacity to look beyond what is directly and easy-for-us observable, is elaborated by Martha Nussbaum in her 1985 article on the comparison between artistic and moral imagination. Nussbaum defends how moral imagination surpasses the dry facts and entails more than just acquiring more factual details about the situation but gives rise to rich, colorful, and sensitive images and descriptions of others which makes us understand them and their particularity better. She uses an example of Henry James’ The Golden Bowl, where father and daughter Adam and Maggie Verver find themselves in a new phase of their relationship as Maggie is planning to leave the parental house for her husband. Adam, Nussbaum recounts, could only approve of his daughter leaving him by seeing her as an autonomous grown woman instead of something fragile and precious he should protect. After having an image of her as “a slight sim draped ‘antique’ of Vatican or Capitoline hills,” he envisions her as “a creature consciously floating and shining in a warm summer sea” (James 1966, 476 cited in Nussbaum 519). Imagining his daughter in this way, Nussbaum explains, “is, precisely, to know her, to know their situation, not to miss anything in it—to be, in short, ‘a person on whom nothing is lost.’” Moral knowledge—in the sense of a realization of the particularity of a situation and other persons—Nussbaum says, “is not simply intellectual grasp of propositions; it is not even simply intellectual grasp of particular facts; it is perception. It is seeing a complex concrete reality in a highly lucid and richly responsive way; it is taking in what is there, with imagination and feeling” (521).7 Cora Diamond commented on Nussbaum’s article, and discussed a dialogue of Plato’s Crito, where Socrates tries to convince Crito he should not escape from prison but must await his punishment. Diamond emphasized he does not achieve this by presenting Crito a sound argument by applying moral principles to the facts of the case.8 Instead, he convinces Crito that an escape would be wrong by personifying the laws of Athens as parents and teachers whom he would betray: Then the laws will say: “Consider, Socrates, if we are speaking truly that in your present attempt you are going to do us an injury. For, having brought you

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The Philosophy of Imagination into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good which we had to give, we further proclaim to any Athenian by the liberty which we allow him, that if he does not like us when he has become of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him. (. . .) But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the state, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him. And he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong; first, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his education; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our commands are unjust; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the alternative of obeying or convincing us;—that is what we offer, and he does neither.” (Plato 1931, 51d-e)

Just as Adam can only accept Maggie’s leaving because he sees her in a novel way, Socrates helps Crito see why she should not escape. These examples show, in Diamond’s words, how “(t)he possibilities are not lying about on the surface of things. Seeing the possibilities in things is a matter of a kind of transforming perception of them” (313). Murdoch, Nussbaum, and Diamond all describe, though with their own accents, moral imagination as imaginative perception. This imaginative perception transforms our limited (egocentric, theoretic, fact-based, . . .) perspective into a fuller vision by which we see things in novel ways and discover what is morally at stake.9 This applies to the example of the summer cabin as well. One could “objectively” describe what happened there: two adults revealed they rejected a Covid-19 vaccine. But of course, this description misses at least one important moral question involved. This situation concerns more than the question of who is “right” and who is “wrong.” One crucial moral question is, instead, “How do we, being a group of friends, relate to this situation?” If this concerns a group of good friends (or persons with a fair amount of moral sensitivity), we might expect that they will direct their attention to the situation’s different layers and personalities involved. Their imaginative perception will be used to morally frame the multi-interpretable situation in a particular way. What did exactly happen between Robert, Sam, and the rest of them? Is this a matter of “lying”? “Loss of trust”?, “Unawareness”?, “Ignorance”? It is the imagination that enables the friends to frame the situation in such ways; these frames do not “come” with the situation, as if they only need to be read off.10

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However, more is needed here than framing the situation in a particular way. It is necessary to look at the realities of Robert and Sam themselves. When attention is focused on Robert and Sam, it needs to look beyond Robert and Sam as those who have displayed wrongdoing toward the others. The details of them as separate individuals who live and act in a certain way need to be envisioned. Let’s assume that Sam is concerned with the “shorter than usual” testing time of the vaccines and thinks a rejection is the best way to protect one’s family. Sam may have a family member with fragile health, whom he thinks he needs to protect from experimental medication. Or he may have a disease or physical disability that makes him evaluate certain things as risky. His situation might be totally different from Robert, who may be concerned with the amount of medication taken by the average adult, swears by “alternative” medicine, and finds support in questionable opinions circulating on social media. Note that there can be a thin line between imaginative perception and perspective-taking or empathy but that the first might entail more than the latter. The attentive vision of Sam and Robert might require more than that. As especially Nussbaum and Diamond showed with their examples, the friends might learn moral lessons by picturing Robert and Sam in very particular ways: Sam as a scaredy-cat or as a caring father; Robert as a hothead, or someone attracted to new, exciting dynamics. The details of this imaginative picturing do matter in their grasp of the situation.

Imaginative Perception and Moral Action Murdoch is right when she said that it is not “silent and dark within” (2001a, 13): something happens when you use your imagination to envision the case of your friend that rejected vaccination. However, even if we (rightfully) regard imaginative perception as a mental moral activity, it possesses a passive dimension that we can hardly explain away. Things morally change (improve or get worse) because we eventually make them change; we “act.” “Action” amounts to performed intentional, agential behavior, and must be distinguished from “activity”; yogurt shows the activity of bacteria, but no action. Imaginative perception is not by itself already action and it is not always the case that, after employing our imaginative perception, we know what to do. Take Murdoch’s example. M’s new vision of her daughter-in-law may lead to an awkward period where she does not exactly know how to behave. Even if we assume (as Murdoch does) that her outward behavior toward her daughter-in-law was not

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inappropriate or unrespectful, M might still wonder if (or which) change of attitude must follow from her change of perspective.11 It looks like using your imaginative perception and acting accordingly it can be two different things: specific acts might not follow directly from moral perceptions. Nevertheless, Murdoch, Nussbaum, and Diamond do not seem to make this distinction and surprisingly illustrate their reflections on imaginative perception with examples that show (patterns of) moral action. Before Murdoch focuses on the case of M and D, she tells how she “was at first tempted to take a case of ritual for instance a religious ritual wherein the inner consent appears to be the real act” (2001a, 16). In another essay (2001b, 53–4), she clarifies that she was thinking of prayer to explain the inward moral activity. For her, the transcendent focus of attention (God) that is central to prayer compares to an ethical focus of attention to the good. Nussbaum further discusses Maggie Verver’s character and shows how, throughout the novel, she develops an imaginative perception comparable to the imaginative activity of an improvising actress: if Maggie sees herself as an actress improvising her role, we must remember, too, that the actress or musician who improvises well is not free to do anything at all. She must at every moment—far more than one who goes by an external script—be responsively alive and committed to the other artists, to the evolving narrative, to the laws and constraints of the genre and its history. She must, far more than one who works from a score, be actively responsible and responsive, a person who will not let the others down. (1985, 524–5)

Diamond, inspired by this example of Nussbaum, highlights the importance of adventure in moral life by quoting the mountaineer George Malloy: The sense of adventure, expressed there, is closely linked to the sense of life, to a sense of life as lived in a world of wonderful possibilities, but possibilities to be found only by creative response. The possibilities are not lying about on the surface of things. Seeing the possibilities in things is a matter of a kind of transforming perception of them. The possibilities yield themselves only as it were under pressure. There you are, let us say, at the end of a long day’s climb, with your earlier “confident enjoyment” shattered by the finally impossible unyielding obstacle, knowing your spirit unwilling at last to tackle the alarming perpendicular wall. Mallory described how in such circumstances one’s active sense of possibilities may flow back, not as it were first with a seeing, then a doing; it is rather a moving directly into an intensity of effort of mind and body which is an intensity of awareness, the expressive response in the face of great danger and difficulty. This response is, for Mallory, analogous to the dancer’s

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response to music, involving also all of mind and body; it is analogous as well to the appreciative response to great art. Like a work of art, “(a) great mountain is always greater than we know: it has mysteries, surprises, hidden purposes; it holds always something in store for us.” (Diamond 313; Mallory, quoted in Robertson 1969, 138–9, 219, 142)

The preceding examples are spelled out to illustrate the importance of imaginative perception for morality by comparing it to essential attentive, imaginative phases in other matters. But it sounds odd to talk about praying, dramatic or musical improvising, dancing, and mountain climbing in this context, as they all crucially involve patterns of action. An improvising actress does not see her role being played; she just does her acting. The same holds for dancing: maybe the dancer will visualize some moves before or even during his performance, but it is the body movement itself that we qualify as “dancing.” And the same goes for mountaineering: even though a lot of preparation is involved (including trying to visualize the unique challenges of the surface and climate), mountaineering is essentially about conquering the heights. It is obvious that inward attention to a transcendent object is central to prayer but even so, prayer has an important overt aspect. Proper praying postures are essential in many religions (e.g., Catholics that kneel at specific times in church and Muslims that pray five times a day in different poses). Prayer and other religious rituals (e.g., baptism, marriage, burial, etc.) consist of patterns of action that are considered equally important to the mental attention involved. They may facilitate and sustain that attention but cannot be reduced to it. The examples of Murdoch, Nussbaum, and Diamond are dubious in this sense. It is not unproblematic to illustrate the moral use of imaginative perception with examples that heavily rely on action performance. It is not that the authors ignore the importance of moral action, it is rather that they seem to think the action flows directly from imaginative perception, as Murdoch suggests that “one who perceives what is real will also act rightly. If the magnetic field is right our movements within it will tend to be right” (1966, 50). However, most people will recognize a gap that regularly exists between the perception of a moral problem (however imaginative that perception may be) and a proper response to that problem. The friends in the cabin might have attentively envisioned the situation, but that does not tell them what to do with the rest of the weekend, how they must interact, or how they should reorganize their planning for the coming weeks. I suggest that those actions, just as the actions of the improvising actress or mountaineer, are to be understood as part of a moral practice that relies on but cannot be reduced to imaginative perception: moral creativity.

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Moral Creativity In aesthetics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science, creativity is a growing research topic.12 Two interesting observations of the field that are relevant here are that, first, imagination is an enabling condition of creativity (see Audi 2018; Carruthers 2002; Gaut 2003, 2010, 2014; Stokes 2014, 2016) and that, second, creativity requires action (Gaut 2014; 2018, Mulgan). Most philosophers and psychologists maintain that something is considered creative when it brings novelty and possesses value. One argument that can be traced back to Kant holds that imagination is the cognitive capacity especially suited for these new and valuable realizations since it is not limited by truth or fixed concepts and ideas. Kant stated how “in an aesthetic respect (. . .), the imagination is free to provide, beyond that concord with the concept, unsought extensive undeveloped material for the understanding” ([] 2001, 194).13 Imagination is in that sense more “free” than other cognitive capacities and fulfills, in Stokes’ words, the necessary “cognitive manipulation role that enables creativity” (2014, 162–3). Although imagination’s playfulness seems crucial in the creation of novel ideas, some authors have emphasized how creative thoughts and ideas eventually require realization in one way or another. Gaut explained how “being creative” is a success-term: “one must have actually done something creative in order to qualify and not merely have the ability to do something. In this it is like traits such as kindness, niceness, reliability and so on” (2014, 188–99). I think this observation must not be underestimated; creativity requires a certain amount of exercise or realization. On the question of whether creativity can take place in the mind alone, Audi (2018, 36) suggests that “(t)he answer is clearly yes: Shakespeare would have been no less creative if he had ‘written’ all his works mentally and never penned or communicated them.” However, I think this is an incorrect conception of creativity. We (still) value the creativity of Shakespeare and Cervantes exactly because they enriched our culture with written and performed books and plays. And even more, the creative process does not consist in the mere application of novel ideas to reality but seems to unfold during its realization. Consider painting. It is doubtful that Kandinsky, whose paintings are generally judged as highly creative, did have a total mental picture of his monumental Composition VII before painting. On the contrary, the eventual canvas was the result of over thirty preceding drawings, watercolors, and oil studies (Dabrowski 1995, 40): an essential part of the creative process lies in the creative practice itself. That does not mean overt practice is the only locus of creativity; creativity often starts from and builds on highly imaginative ideas.

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But these ideas further develop and extend during practice. The protagonistpainter of Murakami’s novel Killing Commendatore describes this as follows: This time I began with a rough draft. I stood up, grabbed a stick of charcoal, and stood before the canvas. On the blank space I created the spot where the man’s face would go. With no plan, without thinking, I drew in a single vertical line. A single line, the focal point from which everything else would emerge. (. . .) What was important was believing in myself. Believing in the power of the lines, in the power of the space the lines divided. I wasn’t speaking, but letting the lines and spaces speak. Once the lines and spaces began conversing, then color would finally start to speak. And the flat would gradually transform into the threedimensional. (2018, 626–8)

In art, we easily recognize that creativity at least partly unfolds in practice. Artistic creativity involves patterns of action that are not entirely reducible to the imaginative envisioning of new ideas. It partly moves “in a world it cannot see” (Murdoch 2001a, 19).14 Still, this does not only apply to art but even so to moral situations where we try to envision people and situations as good as we can. But then, there can be this feeling of a void (“What should I do now?”) that Murdoch too easily discards as existentialist Angst. This is the point where creativity comes into play. Back to the summer cabin. Having used the imaginative perception to frame the situation and to picture the persons involved, the friends will need to get beyond this phase and do something. That is the moment where they start to be morally creative, which would be possible on many levels. Creativity might be in place to continue the conversation in another way. They could go for a walk, as this might change the harsh dynamic of the evening before. And as so many people did in countless ways during the pandemic, they will use moral creativity to adapt their activities and schedules to the changed situation. For example, they will meet differently in the future (e.g., outdoors, replacing bar nights and bungalow weekends with outdoor activities and online conversations). But their creativity might show in even smaller acts and gestures, for example, in the way they address each other concerning this sensitive topic (the tone they use, the length and intensity of the conversations, etc.) Nussbaum gave the example of a hug between Maggie and Adam; the way it is performed—“that it is hard and long, expressive of deep passion on his side, yielding acceptance of that love on hers (. . .)”—is crucial in transforming their father-daughter bond (1985, 523). The same applies to the gestures and acts of the friends; the way they talk, ask questions, or do activities matter. And this is not primarily a matter

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of imaginative perception but of moral creativity, which consists of highly imaginative responses and actions. Recognizing this difference between imaginative perception and moral creativity does not speak against the insights of Murdoch, Nussbaum, and Diamond. They offered an important contribution to moral philosophy by conceptualizing the highly morally relevant inner activity of imaginative perception. Their examples, on their turn, seem to point at the importance of practicing creativity in moral situations. However, these two different points are not mutually exclusive. Attentive moral vision made possible by imaginative perception can possibly influence creative actions. The ways in which Robert and Sam and their decisions are perceived by their friends can impact the way the group will reorganize the rest of the weekend, their future plans, and the tonality of their conversations. Moral creativity, just as aesthetic creativity, does not take place in a vacuum: it gets nurtured by our contemplations, perceptions, and surroundings. In this way, moral creativity connects our inner and outer world via inventive moral action.

References Audi, R. (2018), “Attributing Creativity,” in B. Gaut and M. Kieran (eds.), Creativity and Philosophy, 25–41, London and New York: Routledge. Biss, M. (2014), “Moral Imagination, Perception and Judgment,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 52 (1): 1–21. Boden, M. A. (1990), The Creative Mind: Myths andMechanisms, London: Weidenfield and Nicholson. Carruthers, P. (2002), “Human Creativity: Its Cognitive Basis, Its Evolution, and Its Connections with Childhood Pretence,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 53 (2): 225–49. Currie, G. (1995), “Visual Imagery as the Simulation of Vision,” Mind and Language, 10 (1–2): 25–44. Dabrowski, M. (1995), Kandinsky: Compositions. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. Diamond, C. (1991), The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy and the Mind, Cambridge: MIT Press. Gaut, B. (2003), “Creativity and Imagination,” in B. Gaut and P. Livingston (eds.), The Creation of Art: New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics, 148–173, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gaut, B. (2010), “The Philosophy of Creativity,” Philosophy Compass, 5 (12): 1034–46. Gaut, B. (2014), “Mixed Motivations: Creativity as a Virtue,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 75: 183–202. Gaut, B. (2018), “The Value of Creativity,” in B. Gaut and M. Kieran (eds.), Creativity and Philosophy, 127–44, London and New York: Routledge.

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Gaut, B. and M. Kieran, eds. (2018), Creativity and Philosophy, New York: Routledge. Husserl, E. (2005), Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), trans. J. Brough, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. James, H. ([1904] 1966), The Golden Bowl, New York: Penguin. Johnson, M. (1993), Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Kant, I. (2001), Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. by P. Guyer and E. Matthews. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kind, A. and P. Kung, eds. (2016), Knowledge Through Imagination, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mulgan, T. (2018), “Moral Imaginativeness, Moral Creativity and Possible Futures,” in B. Gaut and M. Kieran (eds.), Creativity and Philosophy, 350–68, New York: Routledge. Murakami, H. (2018), Killing Commendatore, trans. P. Gabriel and T. Goossen, New York: Knopf. Murdoch, I. (1966, July 27), “The Darkness of Practical Reason,” Encounter, XXVII (2): 46–50. Murdoch, I. ([1970] 2001a), “The Idea of Perfection,” in I. Murdoch (ed.), The Sovereignty of Good, 1–44, New York: Routledge. Murdoch, I. ([1970] 2001b), “On ‘God’ and ‘Good’,” in I. Murdoch (ed.), The Sovereignty of Good, 45–74, New York: Routledge. Murdoch, I. ([1970] 2001c), “The Sovereignty of Good of Other Concepts,” in I. Murdoch (ed.), The Sovereignty of Good, 75–101, New York: Routledge. Murdoch, I. (1992), Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, London: Random House. Nanay, B. (2010), “Perception and Imagination: Amodal Perception as Mental Imagery,” Philosophical Studies, 150 (2): 239–54. Nussbaum, M. (1985), “Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: Moral Attention and the Moral Task of Literature,” The Journal of Philosophy, 82 (10): 516–29. Paul, E. S. and S. B. Kaufman (2014), The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plato, C. (1931), The Dialogues of Plato Vol II, ed. and trans. B. Jowett, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robertson, D. (1969), George Mallory, London: Faber. Sartre, J. P. ([1940] 2015), The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination, trans. J. Webber, London: Routledge. Stokes, D. (2011), “Minimally Creative Thought,” Metaphilosophy, 42 (5): 658–81. Stokes, D. (2014), “The Role of Imagination in Creativity,” in E. S. Paul and S. B. Kaufman (eds.), The Philosophy of Creativity, 157–84, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stokes, D. (2016), “Imagination and Creativity,” in A. Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination, 247–61, New York: Routledge. Weil, S. ([1947] 2002), Gravity and Grace, trans. E. Crawford and M. von der Ruhr, London and New York: Routledge Classics. Weil, S. ([1950] 1992), Waiting for God, trans. E. Crawford, New York: Harper Perennial.

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Narrative and Imagination in Times of Global Pandemics Geoffrey Dierckxsens and Petr Kouba

In medicine and health care, narratives function as valuable tools since several decades already (see for example Charon 2006; Charon et al. 2016). This is due to the fact that medicine as a profession embraces the idea that different narratives and narrative techniques are useful in medical practice. Moreover, health care does not only include “healing” physical bodies but also requires listening to the personal stories of the parties involved (patients, health care providers, and relatives). Narratives are relevant in health care not only in a theoretical sense, that is, as part of the diagnosis of a certain disease or condition (e.g., medical conditions can often be traced back to the life stories of patients as in childhood trauma for instance). Narratives can also be part of the treatment of medical conditions or disease, as in therapeutic sessions between patients who share their stories with health care providers (HCPs) (Zahavi and Martiny 2019). For example, an open dialogue between HCPs and patients may help patients better understand the condition they are facing and come to terms with how this feels in their bodies. Furthermore, an essential part of a narrative—any narrative whether in the context of health care or elsewhere—is imagination (cf., Ricoeur 1984; Currie 2010). This does not mean that all stories are phantasies or that all disease is psychosomatic, but simply that a certain imaginative skill is needed to tell and understand a story. Telling a story is to imagine or produce a certain sequence of events as one has experienced them. In this chapter, we propose to examine health care narrative and imagination as related to the phenomenon of a global pandemic, such as the Covid-19 outbreak. We will briefly discuss a few examples of global pandemics, including Covid-19, the SARS outbreak of 2002–4, and the swine flu (H1N1) outbreak of 2009–10. In the first part of this chapter, we will argue that all these global pandemics can be characterized by a certain kind of narrative identified as a blame narrative

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(Dry and Leach 2010; Kapiriri and Ross 2020; Pop 2021; Dierckxsens 2023). The blame narrative is defined as that which “reflects the politics of blame, which typically attributes responsibility for the sources of the outbreak [of a pandemic] to a cultural minority group” (Kapiriri and Ross 2020, 34). We could think for instance of the targeting of Asian Americans during the first Covid-19 outbreak, but we have also witnessed that of other social groups. For example, young people were blamed for spreading Covid 19 after lockdowns were established. In general, the blame narrative points to a certain social group—in a harmful and stigmatizing manner—as the source of a pandemic. When examining the extent to which imagination is involved in the blame narrative, our hypothesis is that blame narratives are an expression of a certain kind of imagination, namely social imaginaries. These imaginaries include shared social values (in this case oppressive and harmful values), which are used as a tool for stigmatizing the social identity of a minority group (e.g., “their life style” is a bringer of disease). We will also discuss more positive types of narratives that are potential responses to a pandemic crisis, by highlighting that imagination allows abandoning clichés and hearing the stories of those who are vulnerable to blame and social stigma. Social imaginaries are understood as representing the shared values and other institutional aspects of the whole of a social group (a society, nation, cultural group, and others). They are often explicitly expressed in certain types of rules or norms, as for example in political systems and decision-making (Ricoeur 1986). We argue that blame narratives are expressions of social imaginaries in that politicians and citizens refer to cultural values in their reactions to pandemic outbreaks, and sometimes they do so in violent ways. Scholars have pointed out that blaming Asian communities was a systematic phenomenon in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, to such an extent that it cumulated in incidents of violence, racism, and discrimination (Croucher et al. 2020). However, the blame narrative is not an isolated phenomenon characteristic of Covid-19 only, but an imaginative tool that is used intentionally, as well as inadvertently, to highlight a community’s values against those of another (it is a “them against us” scheme). Pointing out how blame narratives are violent expressions of social imagination is not meant to defend any conspiracy theory or to hold that pandemics are a political cover-up, but, on the contrary, to highlight a real risk of how social imagination can work in pandemic management. In the second part of this chapter, we will demonstrate how imagination also can play a more positive role in pandemic management. To do this, we will coin the term imaginative plasticity, based on Malabou’s notion of plasticity and on Ricoeur’s concept of imaginative variations (Malabou 2012; Ricoeur 1992).

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We start from the assumption that plasticity and imagination are essentially interconnected, which can take negative or positive forms. While plasticity is commonly understood as a capacity to take up a new form, which could also be a form of experience, Malabou suggests it is necessary to differentiate between constructive and destructive plasticity. Destructive plasticity develops when we are trapped in trauma. Constructive plasticity manifests itself at moments when trauma is managed and successfully overcome. Creative adaptation to a traumatic event opens up new, often previously unexpected, possibilities for individual existence and coexistence with others. Destructive plasticity is a response to a life break represented by a traumatic event, but it does not allow for a process of moving on. Here, life’s fracture is preserved and continually reiterated as an inevitable fate. It is our intention to demonstrate that imagination is involved in both destructive and constructive plasticity. Surprisingly, when Malabou distinguishes between destructive and constructive plasticity in relation to trauma, she pays virtually no attention to the role of narrativity, not mentioning imagination. Even though she discusses psychoanalysis, she does not examine the role of narrativity as such. We argue that a concept of narrative can complement her concept of plasticity (Malabou 2023). We suggest that plasticity and narrativity go hand in hand. The “blame narrative” in particular is invariably a symptom of destructive plasticity. Characterized as destructive, the blame narrative does not help to overcome any traumatic event. It stands for being stuck in it and for an endless repetition without the possibility of moving on. Constructive plasticity, on the other hand, has its narrative side, so that the narrative enables a successful overcoming of the trauma and opens a positive path to new experiences. It is not only about sharing traumatic experiences with other people through narratives, which is a healing process in itself, but also about imagining new ways of being in the social world in which mutuality, interconnectedness, and equality of all social actors are formed. Judith Butler views the Covid-19 pandemic in this way, taking it as an opportunity to seek possibilities of resistance to sexism, racism, and other forms of social injustice and inequality (Butler 2022). We suggest that it is this exploration of forms of resistance to injustice and oppression—which Ricoeur would term as seeking for imaginative variations of the existing social order—that can be understood as a social imagination. It is close to constructive plasticity not only on a theoretical level, but on a practical level as well, where human vulnerability claims a voice and organizes itself to new responses to the precariousness of life conditions. Thus, social imagination is linked to constructive plasticity to jointly overcome traumatic events and bring people out of an impasse.

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The Blame Narrative: A Global Story Health care researchers, social scientists, and scholars have identified a phenomenon known as the blame narrative (Dry and Leach 2010; Kapiriri and Ross 2020; Pop 2021; Dierckxsens 2023). This phenomenon, which typically occurs as a reaction to a pandemic outbreak, is a consistent way of blaming certain social and/or cultural groups for being responsible for the outbreak of a pandemic disease. Blame narratives may come in different forms and shapes. For example, we have seen discrimination and physical violence toward Asian populations during the first SARS pandemic in Toronto around 2002/3 (Kapiriri and Ross 2020). And forms of discrimination toward Asian Americans also emerged during the Covid-19 outbreak (Croucher 2020; Darling-Hammond 2020). Blame narratives not only occur among the general population, in the form of angry or violent reactions fueled by panic, but also among people in responsible functions, in particular policy makers and politicians. We can think of former president Trump talking about the “China virus.” In a different context, Roma people in Romania were systematically blamed by politicians for being the bringers of Covid-19 by their nomadic lifestyle, an accusation that occurred also in 2009 when Romania was facing an outbreak of the swine flu (Pop 2021). Generally speaking, despite the different cultural and social contexts in which it may occur, the blame narrative tells a persistent story of discrimination, of stigmatization, and scapegoating of certain social groups as a result of this outbreak of a pandemic.1 What is the relation between the blame narrative and imagination, if any? On first observation, it is clear that the blame narrative is not a phantasy. It is not imaginative in the sense that it would be an invented story. Although blame narratives are expressions of scapegoating that connects between cultural stereotypes and meanings on one hand and physical disease on the other. These links are far from self-evident, albeit different from conspiracy theory (Cf., Freiman 2019). It would be wrong to claim that blame narratives are “made up.” A virus is of course real, and it does spread more easily in certain places than in others for various reasons. However, the problem is not that information is invented, but rather that something is imagined in a different way, that is, as in the presentation of certain cultural values as being the origin or the carrier of a physical disease—a relation which is not real or imagined. Nonetheless, the harm this imagination causes is all the more real. A clarification of the relation between the blame narrative and imagination can be found in Ricoeur’s concept of imagination. Ricoeur has written substantially

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on imagination and distinguishes between poetic imagination, which is the kind of imagination related to literary and narrative techniques, such as metaphors (Ricoeur 2015), and practical imagination, which means having a creative capacity to choose the right action, in particular from a moral perspective (Ricoeur 1992, 2007). Yet, more important for our purposes is Ricoeur’s idea of social imaginaries, which he defines based on the same concept developed by Castoriadis (1987) as a social group’s set of potential values, norms, institutions, and symbols (Ricoeur 1986, 2007). Blame narratives typically express this kind of social imaginaries by contrasting between social values in the form of “their values” (the carriers of the virus) against “our values” (the one who we are supposedly protecting). Let’s unpack this a bit. First, blame narratives contain values emphasized in a negative and harmful way. Social values typically vary. They may be more positive communal values, such as the values of democracy, or more negative values, such as harmful social stereotypes, as when for example the Roma communities of Romania were stigmatized as being “unclean” or “itinerant” while being associated with a surge of infections (Pop 2021, 148). In fact, the “values” ascribed to the Roma community are principles of behavior that this community would supposedly display. These principles are used as “tools” of discrimination. Second, the values expressed in blame narratives are not only “out there” in the public opinion and space (e.g., on social media and as reflected by people’s behavior in the streets). They are also institutionalized in norms, that is, the political decisions made to curb a pandemic. And while there may be evidently good reasons for taking political decisions to curb a pandemic (e.g., closing sectors to stop a virus for spreading more rapidly), these decisions are not always scientifically justified. In the case of Covid-19, for example, one principle—to protect the vulnerable—repeated, and yet often resulted in unscientific and inconsistent policies, contributing to lesser trust in governmental institutions (Maeckelberghe 2021, iv50). In several cases, political decisions to curb a pandemic were not just unscientific, but also expressions of an imagined conflict of values (e.g., isolating certain communities from others [Dierckxsens 2023]). Moreover, in pandemic management, vulnerability is typically taken to be physical vulnerability, in the sense of being exposed to infection. Yet, overlooked are economical and social vulnerability, which also can increase people’s risk of being infected, as well as longer term health risks (Ibid.). We could frame it as a limited institutional sense of imagination or a focus on mainly short-term solutions.

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Third, the social imaginaries at play in blame narratives are to a certain extent symbolic as well. Surely, they are not symbols in the material sense, as are for example flags or shields that represent the identity of a nation or a community. Yet, the social values ascribed to certain social groups (e.g., a nomadic lifestyle) are symbolic in the sense that they stand for or represent something else. By drawing the attention to the identities of certain social groups, blame narratives claim to reveal objective truths. In reality, their main purpose is something else. Blame narratives are meant to target certain social groups, and to play social groups against each other. Blame narratives are ideological narratives that polarize between the outsiders (the bringers of the virus) and “our own people” (who need to be protected) (cf., Dierckxsens 2023), thereby creating an imagined chasm between two social groups. The kind of imagination we have identified as being at work in blame narratives is thus a kind of social imagination. It is not phantasy. Blame narratives are not the same as conspiracy theories. Pandemics are not invented stories used as tools of manipulation. Yet, blame narratives are social imaginaries. They express social values. Often these values are contextualized in a negative way, by stigmatizing social groups. By underlining how certain social groups supposedly are, the narrators of blame narratives aim to confirm their own social identities. This is done in a way that the blame narrators track the source of a pandemic outside of their own social community.

Alternative Narratives In the previous section we have identified social imaginaries as the types of imagination at work in blame narratives. We have argued that blame narratives are harmful and lead to forms of social stigma. One question that arises is whether there is a more positive type of imagination that could be a response and potential remedy to the harmful blame narratives, offering alternative ways of narrating. Is there a creative response to dealing with a pandemic outbreak that is more wary of social stigma? In order to find an answer to this question, consider Ricoeur’s idea of imaginative variations (Ricoeur 1992). The concept of imaginative variations means that the narrative, any narrative, implies the possibility of variations (See also Ihde 2012; Wellner 2020). Let’s take the example of literature. A novel tells the story of a character that at the end meets an unfortunate fate. Yet, it is easy to imagine a different ending for that kind of narrative, another storyline that

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would have ended differently. In the case of pandemics, we as persons have a choice to embrace different kinds of values. And even though people are always prone to a certain amount of social influence (e.g., peer pressure), we are capable of taking a critical attitude toward certain social values, especially when they are morally problematic or cause harm to people. As Ricoeur writes: [T]he narrative does not merely tolerate these variations, it engenders them, seeks them out. In this sense, literature proves to consist in a vast laboratory for thought experiments in which the resources of variation encompassed by narrative identity are put to the test of narration. (Ricoeur 1992, 148)

If we apply the idea of imaginative variations to the blame narrative, pandemic management, and health care in general, imagination can be important on different levels. In the first place, scholars in medical ethics have argued in favor of the application of imaginative techniques in nursing and health care practices (Scott 1997; Smith 2002). Anne Scott (1997), for instance, points to the significance of imagination in relations between patients, nurses, and HCPs. More specifically, she argues that skills from which health care providers can benefit include “high-quality role enactment and sensitive moral strategy” (Scott 1997, 45). Generally speaking, it has been proven important to listen to patients’ personal experiences and narratives in medical practice. As pandemic management is concerned, personal stories play in different ways. We recall the impact Covid-19, and the way it was managed by governments around the world, had in people’s personal relations for example. Families were separated because of closed borders. Elderly people were passing away in solitude because no visits were allowed in retirement homes (Dierckxsens 2023). These are just a few examples of how personal experiences have a direct impact from a pandemic outbreak. While physical distancing is undoubtedly an important strategy in pandemic management, there was often no room or attention for these kinds of personal experiences in pandemic policies, especially at the start of Covid-19. There was not room for any imaginative variations in the policies applied, in the sense that those policies were focused solely on bringing down the numbers, not on hearing the stories of vulnerable groups. In response to a pandemic outbreak, it is impossible for governments and policy makers to consider all the personal stories or individual cases that are impacted by their decisions to curb the pandemic. Nonetheless, it is important to realize that pandemic management is not just statistics alone. In a different paper, one of us (Dierckxsens 2023) has therefore argued that pandemic management would benefit for more reasonable decision-making. Now we

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wish to add to the reasonability argument the element of imagination. When dealing with a pandemic, it is important to consider not only the statistics and logistics that goes with it (e.g., arranging for vaccinations, hygienic conditions, or calculating the growth of the spread of the virus) but also reason in the ethical sense of imaginative critical assessment of the impact decisions may have on people’s lives (e.g., personal losses, being wary of social stigma, or avoiding the exclusion of certain social groups). During the Covid-19 pandemic, this kind of ethical-imaginative reason was often neglected, as well as explicit ethical debate in the public domain, resulting in inconsistent policies (Maeckelberghe 2021). Pandemic policy would therefore benefit from more reasonability, but also thinking of imaginative variations of (often too) easy solutions, which may lead to a more just narrative and provide an alternative to the blame narrative. In this chapter, we will not go into further detail about the kind of reason described above and discussed elsewhere (Dierckxsens 2023). Instead, our question at hand is what kind of (more just) narrative, inspired by imagination, can offer a response to the many types of personal and collective trauma that pandemics may cause. The question is, in other words, how we can effectively face our individual and collective traumas. To answer this question, we have suggested above that Ricoeur’s notion of imaginative variations may help us. We have argued that it is important to look at different variations, that is different personal and collective life stories that are affected by a pandemic and its management. As we will argue in the remainder of this chapter, imaginative variations to pandemic responses may find expression both in an imaginative empathic attitude toward minority groups and in creative art forms or related creative narratives (e.g., documentary films, media interviews, historical drama). To develop this idea further, we consider Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity. In The New Wounded, plasticity is closely tied to the phenomenon of trauma which is characterized as a catastrophic event (Malabou 2012, 155). Trauma is a sudden, unexpected event that brings a radical discontinuity to our lives.2 According to Malabou, trauma throws us into the void of sense. The more it is incomprehensible, the more it calls for some explanation we are desperately seeking for, even if we were to imagine it. In times of wars, terrorist attacks, and rising social inequalities, we realize that trauma has become a mass phenomenon, and not just an individual problem. As Malabou puts it: it is striking to note that today’s victims of sociopolitical traumas resent the same profile as victims of natural catastrophes (tsunamis, earthquakes, floods) or

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grave accidents (serious domestic accidents, explosions, fires). We have entered a new age of political violence in which politics is defined by renunciation of any hope of endowing violence with a political sense. (Malabou 2012, 155)

This heterogeneous combination of nature and politics, which defies understanding and deprives the victims of trauma of the possibility of naming its meaning, reached a peak at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, that came as a violent, unexpected, unpredictable, and senseless shock. In its course, the existing social life collapsed, society atomized, people became isolated, experienced social deprivation, and many social groups were thrown into poverty. All of this created an opaque situation, the complexity of which even the professional elites, not to mention the general population, were unable to comprehend. It is no wonder, then, that blame narratives took the place of rational explanations, hastily looking for the culprit of the whole situation in the realm of imagination. This hastiness was a manifestation of despair at the lack of sense that needs to be filled with the image of an opponent: foreign immigrants, inadaptable, socially different groups, or, conversely, a conspiracy of elites. Malabou, however, not only allows us to understand the motivations of the blame narrative but also outlines a way to describe its workings, as well as a positive way out of it. In fact, the blame narrative fits into the structure of what she calls destructive plasticity. It is a plasticity that is a pathological response to a traumatic event. This pathological plasticity tries to fill the semantic void of the catastrophic event, but at the same time remains in the grip of the trauma experienced. Instead of overcoming and leaving the trauma, it clings to it and condemns the person to its constant repetition. Instead of a way out of the trauma, there is a locking in of the trauma, resulting in not being able to live fully in the present and actively take on the challenges of the future. No doubt imagination plays a significant role here, but it is imagination driven by destructive plasticity which endlessly echoes the semantic void of trauma. Moreover, the detachment from reality is accompanied by a large degree of destruction. The paranoid imagination of blame narrative meets all these criteria. It shows an immobility, an inaccessibility to counter-arguments, a detachment from reality, an aggression toward others. But this kind of narrative leads nowhere and helps no one. Least of all does it help to overcome the traumatic event of which it is an expression. It is noteworthy that the functioning of destructive plasticity resonates with what Ricoeur calls pathological memory (Ricoeur 2004). According to him, the pathology of memory shows itself where memory is wounded and scarred by

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some trauma. The loss of a loved one, mourning, illness, the sudden interruption of a previously normal life, are all moments that in Ricoeur’s view show up not only at the level of individual memory but also at the level of collective memory. Ricoeur refers “to the traumatism of collective identity” (Ricoeur 2004, 78). He believes that we can speak not only in an analogical sense but in terms of a direct analysis of collective traumatisms, of wounds to collective memory. The notion of the lost object finds a direct application in the “losses” that affect the power, territory, and populations that constitute the substance of a state. (Ricoeur 2004, 78)

In contrast to destructive plasticity, which represents a pathological reaction to a catastrophic event and the associated loss of meaning, Malabou describes constructive plasticity. It appears wherever we successfully navigate catastrophic events and manage to overcome the unexpected contingencies of life. It is a manifestation of resilience that allows us to pick ourselves back up after being exposed to shock or trauma (Malabou 2012, 181). It is a manifestation of the ability to undergo disorganization and reorganize again. This necessarily requires rebuilding trust in the world after we have lost it. Likewise, it is necessary to rebuild relationships with others after they have been severed. For this reason alone, it is clear that constructive plasticity concerns not only individual but also collective existence. On both levels, constructive plasticity represents a creative alternative to the endless repetition of trauma. It does not mean that we remain untouched, or that we forget what happened. It is a metamorphosis of individual or collective identity. Constructive plasticity allows for an active transformation that brings us out of the destruction and the loss of meaning. Even though Malabou does not explicitly thematize it, narrativity and imagination are necessary elements of constructive plasticity. If constructive plasticity implies the ability to experience one’s own vulnerability and to recover from the trauma, it is easy to see how that narrativity plays a key role in our quest to find new meaning. Quite explicitly, narrativity enters Ricoeur’s field of vision, where a phenomenology of wounded memory stands alongside a phenomenology of memory that sets itself as a task. On an ethico-political level, says Ricoeur, it is our duty to recall the memories of those who have died or who are still denied the right to speak. In case of pandemic policy, this sets us up for a common project in which justice is at stake (Ricoeur 2004, 88, 89). In this context, we note that justice itself has a healing function. Sharing experiences of lived trauma through narrative, showing imaginative effort to be empathetic with others in a pandemic crisis, are healing experiences that restore trust in

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the world and bring us back into connection with our fellow human beings. Narrative is not just a repetition of the past, or a vessel for social blame, but it potentially affirms a present shared with others and opens up a shared future. What is essential is that no one remains excluded and unheard. This imperative inspires art projects, as well as other creative narratives that give a voice to stigmatized social groups. All these remind us the need to construct a different social imaginary. An example is the Romani Chronicles of Covid 19, which assemble testimonies documenting the devastating impact of Covid 19 on Romani communities in Brazil, Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia (Gay y Biasco and Fotta 2023). Another example is a qualitative sociological survey among Czech high school students during repeated lockdowns that was done by the Interdisciplinary Research Lab for Bioethics at the Prague Institute of Philosophy (unpublished). The collections of those memories strike us not only as recollections of past traumas; when describing what was wrong with anti-Covid policies, they uncover deep injustices, whether it is the structural racism that discriminates Roma people, or sheer ignorance that made feel young people as a sacrificed generation. Those testimonies, however, make it possible to imagine what could have been done better in times of Covid 19. In other words, they call for imaginative variations that could bring justice to people who were suffering from discrimination or negligence during the pandemics. Applying Ricoeur’s concept of imaginative variations, we discover possibilities of social resilience and creativity that are valuable alternatives to social stigma or false believes. Imaginative variations open our eyes to actual forms of resilience and creativity that are not acts of disobedience, but signs of constructive plasticity.

Conclusion To conclude, we claim that there is an essential relation between the capacity of creating imaginative variations and constructive plasticity. Imaginative variations enable us to imagine alternative social imaginaries, often by means of a creative medium such as a documentary film, which give a voice to vulnerable groups in a pandemic crisis. These variations offer positive narratives contra the blame narratives. These variations appear whenever we are capable of imagining that things could be different, which creates a certain distance between us and the given reality. This leap of the imagination is an act of constructive plasticity, as it allows us to overcome what strikes us as an inevitable destiny. Imaginative variations in relation to constructive plasticity not only make it possible to face

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traumatic situations in a creative way, but it also enables us to realize what is wrong with our world. A qualitatively new level of this connection between imaginative variations and constructive plasticity can be found in What World is This?, where Judith Butler develops her phenomenology of pandemics (Butler 2022). Her key motive is a critique of the structural injustices that have exacerbated the collective trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic. Exclusionary practices such as racism and sexism as well as deep class differences undermine our awareness of living in a world shared with others, where our dependence on and interdependence with others is a sign of our vulnerability. When vulnerability becomes the target of blame, pointing out socially vulnerable groups as the sources of a pandemic disease, blame narratives appear and our relations with others become destructive. This is why Butler argues for ideas of equality and social justice, but also pursues strategies of resistance that attempt to create new conditions for living in a shared world.

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Ricoeur, P. (1992), Oneself as Another, trans. K. Blamey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (2004), Memory, History, Forgetting, Blamey Kathleen & David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (2007), From Text to Action. Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. K. Blamey and J. B. Thompson, London: Continuum. Ricoeur, P. (2015), The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language, London: Routledge. Scott, P. A. (1997), “Imagination in Practice,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 23 (1): 45–50. Smith, B. (2002), “Analogy in Moral Deliberation: the Role of Imagination and Theory in Ethics,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 28: 244–8. Wellner, G. (2020), “The Multiplicity of Multistabilities: Turning Multistability into a Multistable Concept,” in G. Miller and A. Shew (eds.), Reimagining Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing Ihde, 105–22, Berlin: Springer.‫‏‬ Zahavi, D. and K. M. M. Martiny (2019), “Phenomenology in Nursing Studies: New Perspectives,” International Journal of Nursing Studies, 93: 155–62. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1016​/j​.ijnurstu​.2019​.01​.014.

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Poetic Imagination and Technology A Dialectical Assessment Hub Zwart

Introduction Few authors stand so far apart in the political spectrum of the twentieth century as Christopher Caudwell and Ezra Pound. Christopher Caudwell, pseudonym of Christopher St John Sprigg (1907–37), was a self-taught Marxist intellectual who wrote about science and poetry from a historical materialist perspective, focusing on the role of material production and labor in human history. He joined the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War and was killed in action in Spain in 1937. Ezra Pound (1885–1972) was a prominent American poet and literary critic, but also an admirer of Mussolini who made radio broadcasts in favor of fascism in Italy during the Second World War. He was arrested in 1945 and incarcerated, first in an outdoor cage (where he began writing his Pisan Cantos) and eventually in a psychiatric hospital for over twelve years. Against this backdrop it is remarkable to notice the extent to which their views on poetry seemingly converge. Caudwell’s book Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry was written (quite hastily) in 1935 (5,000 words a day) and published shortly after his death in 1937 (Thompson 1977). Pound published ABC of Reading (devoted to reading poetry) in 1934 and Guide to Kulchur in 1938.1 Like in Caudwell’s case, structure and style of Pound’s books are unconventional. They ostensibly divert from standard academic formats. In their publications, both authors contend that poetry should not be approached from an art for art’s sake (l’art pour l’art) perspective (setting it apart from everything else), but as an integral component of concrete human existence, as part and parcel of society and culture as a whole, closely entangled with technology and science, as well as with economic and material conditions.

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Caudwell adopted historical materialism as his frame of reference, as did the Dutch Marxist poet Herman Gorter (1864–1927), author of the megapoem Pan, published in 1916 (during the First World War), almost 500 pages (more than 11,000 lines of verse) about class struggle and the dawn of a future communist society (Zwart 2019, 2020). In addition, he wrote a series of essays on great poets (“De Groote Dichters,” published posthumously in 1935) analyzing the connection between highlights of world literature and societal conditions (Gorter [1935] 1952). Under capitalism, Gorter argues, bourgeois poetry and the real world of labor, industry, and technology became estranged from one another. Poetry became vestigial and survived as mere “literature.” Poetry became the art of leisure and escape, practiced by solitary individuals, separated from the world of technology and labor. Although both authors were unaware of each other’s existence, their views converged. In Pound’s writings, similar views are voiced. He consistently propounded (both in his theoretical writings and in his poems) that poetry should be part of life and that (in contrast to bourgeois romanticism) great poets tended to be worldly figures, quite up to date with political and technological developments of their era. Yet, during capitalism, poetry fell victim to what Pound refers to as “usury,” that is, the disruptive financial interests of the market. Poets became lone figures, whose poems were expropriated by profit-driven publishers and circulated as commodities. Due to Caudwell’s death his project remained unfinished, while Gorter’s essays failed to have much impact, written in Dutch by a protagonist of council communism—a radical form of communism (the Russian word “soviet” means “council”) which became marginalized during the interbellum. As Caudwell was considered too Marxist by many post-war literary critics, or as insufficiently Marxist by others (Thompson 1977; Bounds 2019), while Pound became a persona non grata (Fuller Torrey 1984), their views got side-tracked. After the Second World War, structuralism, formalism, psychoanalysis, New Criticism, and feminism became important trends in poetics and literary criticism. While Gorter, Caudwell, and Pound saw poetry as a crucial social activity and as closely connected with political and technological developments, most post-war approaches tended to convert poetics and literary criticism into esoteric, jargonheavy academic specialisms. This contribution aims to retrieve poetry as a social phenomenon, addressing the interaction between poetic imagination and technology from a dialectical perspective, trying to move beyond “bourgeois” literary criticism (e.g., the principle that literary criticism should focus on literature as a text, rather than

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as a practice closely connected with living society as a whole), thus taking up the unfinished projects of interbellum authors such as Gorter, Caudwell, and Pound. First, I will describe how, initially, in artisanal and agricultural societies, poetry and technology were intimately connected (the first dialectical moment). Subsequently, due to the genesis of capitalism and bourgeois ideology, poetry and technology became estranged from one another, as opposite, contrasting poles of human culture (the second moment). This polarity between poetry and technology was pushed to the extreme during the era of bourgeois aesthetics, exemplified by the slogan “art for art’s sake,” aspiring to safeguard the hyperindividualism and purity of poetry against the disruptive thrust of technological transformation, against the backdrop of industrial revolutions raging in industrial cities such as Paris, London, and Berlin. This will be elucidated by case studies taken from French literature (Théophile Gautier and Jules Verne). Finally, I will explore and assess the condition of contemporary poetry, where we see a resurgence of poetry as a social and collective endeavor, closely entangled with, but at the same time often antithetical to, emerging technological developments.

First Moment: Poetry and Technology Intertwined As indicated, Christopher Caudwell was a self-taught author writing in isolation, never exposed to formal education beyond the age of fifteen (Thompson 1977). An important source of inspiration for his hastily composed manuscript ([1937] 1977) was Nicolai Bukharin’s speech Poetry, Poetics and the Problems of Poetry in the U.S.S.R., presented at the First Soviet Writers Congress in 1934 (Bounds 2019). According to Bukharin (1934), whereas bourgeois aesthetics emphasizes the importance of poetic inspiration, in combination with allegedly unique poetic gifts, dialectical materialism sees poetic “production” (i.e., poetry) and the production of poetic “products” (i.e., poems) as a matter of craftsmanship, as a social activity, as part of the process of life and labor. Poets work with words, but words themselves are historical products. They are linguistic “depositories” reflecting a long history of labor and social struggle. Each word is a microcosm: a concise, abbreviated summary of the “paleontology” of language, the drama of human striving. Poetic craftsmanship includes sensitivity to this legacy. Words do not create worlds (as the Gospel of Saint John famously phrases it), but are themselves products of socio-economic settings. The technology of poetic craftsmanship is an active function within the life of society, and productive poetic skills can only be acquired through patient labor.

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In short, poetic production aligns with technological production as such. Caudwell builds on these views, adopting a historical materialist scheme. In the beginning, during the prehistoric era, all literature was poetry, and all poetry was closely entangled with the techniques of everyday practical existence. Artisanal and agricultural labor was accompanied by poetic songs. Every craft had its repertoire of songs, and artisanal poetry was closely connected with the mechanical movements of tool use. Poetry (accompanied by music) facilitated the coordination of collective activities: for example, sailors hoisting sails, weavers behind their spinning wheel, mowers mowing the grain, sawyers singing and sawing in unison, and so on.: the first moment in the dialectics of poetry and technology, when the two poles were intimately attuned to one another. The first instances of written poetry confirm this intense connection between poetry and real, material, collective existence: for example, Hesiod’s poetical instructions for farmers, Solon’s legislative maxims in meter, but also religious hymns and chants, to be sung during public festivals. Likewise, bawdy ballads, sung during carnivalesque saturnalia, or epithalamia, sung by friends and family members to accompany brides and grooms on their way to nuptial chambers, were closely connected with social existence. A similar argument is put forward by Ezra Pound. If we read Homer, he argues, we are informed in detail about how, in ancient Greek society, ships were built or medicine was practiced, and his audience shared and appreciated this practical knowledge.2 Many centuries later, in medieval feudal society, Provençal poetry, the art of the troubadours, was still very much aligned with daily existence, of which poetry was an intrinsic part. These troubadours were researchers who combined “precision of expression” with “precision of observation” (1973, 27). The poetry of wandering poets, who occasionally paid visits to feudal courts to join literary competitions, but without becoming full-fledged courtiers, were encyclopedia of the crafts and practices of everyday existence.

Second Moment: Segregation (Art-for-Art’s-Sake) Things begin to change, Caudwell argues, during what he refers to as the period of “primitive accumulation,” exemplified by Shakespeare. Poetry is still part of concrete existence, and Shakespeare’s plays provide a wealth of information concerning early modern practices and tools, such as medicine, navigation, ballistics, astronomy, and horology. Technical contrivances such as compasses, movable type (the printing press) and clock-works, all play a role (Cohen 2006).

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Multiple perspectives are given the floor, from aversion toward technology via healthy skepticism vis-à-vis “hurly-burly innovation” (Henry IV, Part I, Act V, Scene 1) up to craftful experimentalism (The Tempest). According to Caudwell, this results in a dramatic increase of the wealth and interactivity of Elizabethan language, before specialization into disciplines and professions (and their various languages) became compartmentalized due to the division of labor. The subsequent era of absolutism entails a process of segregation. Poetry becomes a divided genre, split between poetry written by courtiers (where courts become monopolies, not only of finance but also of culture) and the antithetical poetry of the study, giving voice to discontent. This segregation is pushed to the extreme during the Industrial Revolution. Now, poetry and technology represent two incompatible worlds. While science and technology give rise to dramatically disruptive socio-technological transformations, poetry becomes romantic and nostalgic. Poets withdraw into an idyllic, aesthetic, imaginary world, far removed from technology-based existence. Although most poets actually live in large industrial cities (e.g., Paris), they voice estrangement from their urban environment. Thus, bourgeois poetry becomes self-contradictory. On the one hand, the bourgeoisie is the social force driving technological innovation and industrial revolution. At the same time, bourgeois poets endorse the principle “art for art’s sake,” seeing poetry as a something which is completely removed from the industrial technological world. Romantic poetry becomes the realm of the exotic and the oriental, the Greek and Roman classical past, the idyllic and the pastoral, shying away from poetizing the emerging industrial present. Take for instance the first poem (“Preface”) of Émaux et Camées, the most celebrated volume of Théophile Gautier (1811–72), the poet who coined the slogan “l’art pour l’art” (the translation is my own): Pendant les guerres de l’empire, Goethe, au bruit du canon brutal, Fit « le Divan occidental », Fraîche oasis où l’art respire. Pour Nisami quittant Shakspeare, II se parfuma de çantal, Et sur un mètre oriental Nota le chant qu’Hudhud soupire. Comme Goethe sur son divan A Weimar s’isolait des choses Et d’Hafiz effeuillait les roses, Sans prendre garde à l’ouragan Qui fouettait mes vitres fermées, Moi, j’ai fait « Émaux et Camées ».

During the Napoleonic wars, Goethe, at the sound of the brutal canon Wrote The Western Divan, A fresh oasis where art thrives. Replacing Shakespeare with Nizami (Ganjavi) He perfumed himself with çal And noted Hudhud’s songs In an oriental meter. Like Goethe on his couch In Weimar, in splendid isolation, Collecting Hafiz’s literary roses, Without paying attention to the turmoil, Blowing against my closed windows, I composed my Émaux et Camées.

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In the folds and margins of industrial society (represented here by technology-based warfare and its monstrous canons), poetry offers a safe haven, an oasis of quietude and silence, where egocentric authors may delight in the idyllic and the oriental. Whereas the world outside is pervaded by modern Western technology, poetry remains artisanal craftsmanship, while poetic imagination conjures up idyllic or oriental landscapes, inspired by the works of poets from the ancient Greek or oriental past. The fellowship of poets resembles a guild, sharing practical skills and a common ethos, and imitating each other’s skillful practices. Although their poetry shares a common profile (detachment from industrializing society), every poet is at the same time an individualist, producing poetry with a signature of his or her own. Thus, poetic technique is placed in opposition to anonymous, science-based, industrial production. As Caudwell phrases it, poets such as Gautier excel in craftsmanship and technical competence to such an extent that it becomes skill-fetishism. According to the art-for-art’s-sake principle, poetic skill in handling rhyme and meter becomes a goal in itself: an esoteric luxury for the elite. What is obfuscated by these poets, posing as a beautiful soul (a schöne Seele in the dialectical sense) is the extent to which they are actually part of and dependent on the technological civilization they allegedly deplore, because their volumes of poetry are actually commodities, produced for a market, published by publishers (literary enterprises), using modern technologies (the printing press) to reach bourgeois audiences (whose income and purchasing abilities depend on technological innovation). The poet’s bohemian pose is part of a commercial setting: romanticism and romantic craving sell. According to Caudwell, whereas during the Restauration period the bourgeoisie allied itself with the aristocratic class, the urban bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century unequivocally took the lead as a revolutionary class, strengthening its power position via technology (via steam engines, factories, technological infrastructures, etc.), while distancing itself from the landed aristocracy, so that poetry became torn between two cultures. In terms of technological base, poets belong to and remain dependent on bourgeois culture, but in terms of ideological superstructure, they celebrate aristocratic aesthetic values incompatible with the utilitarianism and calculating rationality of bourgeois industrialism. They enjoy natural sceneries unspoiled by industrialism, thereby obfuscating the fact that industrialism and labor produce sufficient surplus value for poetic individuals to maintain their existence of

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aesthetic idleness. This explains the artificially of their nature poetry, Caudwell argues. Bourgeois poetry results in escapist genres.3 In England, Caudwell argues, poets like Byron evaded this conflict via travel, as “deserters” and egoistic anarchists, distancing themselves from bourgeois values, but unable or unwilling to associate themselves with the rising working classes. These revolutionaries rather voiced anxiety concerning the impact of modern industry and the urban masses. Byron became a fighter for freedom, but in Greece: the homeland of ancient culture. His heroism remains nostalgic and individualistic. These poets fight private battles, Caudwell argues, and as romantic figures they retain a strong element of the poseur. They want to see the destruction of their own class, but are intimidated by the prospect of proletarian rule. In fact, Caudwell argues, these romantics would later provide a model for fascist poetry, for the death drive of fascism, fighting heroic battles, voicing the glorification of a heroic death, eager to perform deeds of individual heroism, but unable to rise beyond anachronistic individualism. For France, he mentions Charles Baudelaire as an example of a romantic poet whose revolutionary element already has a “fascist tinge.” At the fascist end of the political spectrum, Ezra Pound likewise aspires to move beyond the bourgeois adages of separation and individualism. His poetry oscillates between past and present, between West and East, but what the poet-scholar Pound discovers in the libraries he consults is that poets of the past (e.g., Confucius, Marie de France, Dante, Chaucer, etc.) were men and women of the world, assuming important social and political responsibilities, aspiring to promote justice and stability, quite up to date with the scientific and technological developments of their epoch.4 Science is not at all “unpoetic” (1973, 28). Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), for instance, was not only a poet and composer, but first and foremost an abbess and a scientist, an expert in botany who corresponded with emperors and popes. Or take Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400), who was not only a prolific poet, but first and foremost a bureaucrat and diplomat who traveled through Flanders, France, and Spain and wrote a treatise on a scientific instrument, the astrolabe, praised by Harvey and reprinted during the sixteenth century (Cohen 2006). The poet as an “isolated neurotic” is a “bourgeois” aberration (Caudwell 1937). In bourgeois society, art fell victim to the market, to usury, and the goal now is to reconnect poetry with real life. Again, the messages of Caudwell and Pound, however antagonistic politically speaking, are remarkably similar.

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Technology and Poetic Imagination According to Jules Verne Jules Verne is often considered a protagonist or even propagandist of technological innovation, but on closer inspection his attitude toward technology was far more nuanced. His impressive oeuvre is a literary encyclopaedia of scientific and technological developments of his era (Zwart 2008). One of his novels, explicitly addressing the relationship (or incompatibility) of poetry and technology, was rejected by his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel (a staunch promoter of technological progress). All of Verne’s novels discuss the impact of technological innovation, in particular social and scientific practices, and Paris in the Twentieth Century (Verne 1996) zooms in on the impact of technology on poetry. The main character (Michel Dufrénoy) is a young poet who wins a prize, not in one of the many proliferating branches of the applied sciences, but in the obsolete category of “Latin verse.” The novel is set in Paris in 1960, a world pervaded by technology and science. Like in many other novels, Verne anticipates a plethora of new technologies, including cars, public urban transport systems, computers, and fax machines. Insofar as poetry still exists, poets are expected to write about chemistry, electricity, and mathematics, resulting in titles such as “Meditations on oxygen” and “Decarbonated odes.” Michel joins a small circle of marginalized scholars who still adhere to the principle art-for-art’s-sake, indulging in the writings of poets from the bourgeois past. Initially, Michel tries to connect with society by accepting a job at a theatrical depository, where plays from the past are rewritten and staged with the help of employees specialized in the art of applause: an anticipation of comedy series on contemporary television. As a bohemian poet, however, Michel inevitably fails to make use of the opportunity and finally imprisons himself in his room, working unremittingly on a volume of useless but splendid poems. His great siege of publishers miscarries (they all refuse to even read his poems) and the novel ends with the young poet starving and freezing to death at Père-Lachaise. Verne’s novel remained unpublished and unfinished. What is missing, dialectically speaking, is the negation of the negation. The hero remains a beautiful soul. Poets from the past are presented as a “Grand Army of Letters,” but modern technology can dispense with them (after having turned real soldiers into mechanics). A romantic view on poetry is coupled with a romantic (heroic) view on warfare. Michel’s prize-winning poem deals with a French general who stormed (or rather: gave the order for the storming of) Sebastopol during the Crimean War. Michel is inhibited by his conviction that poetry should be

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written in attics and devoted either to heroic military gestures or to the pangs of impossible love affairs. What is absent is the will to face the challenge of making poetry part and parcel of contemporary existence. Thus, the morale of Verne’s story is similar to the mood encountered in many poems from the nineteenth century, including the famous sonnet “To Science” by Edgar Allan Poe (1998, 116), an author who, in many other publications, displays an avid interest in scientific and technological developments of his time, and who hoped to be remembered more for his scientific ideas, captured in his prose-poem Eureka (1997), than for his literary writings: Science! Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Third Moment: Negation of the Negation To supersede the contradiction pervading bourgeois poetry, a negation of the negation is required. Instead of accepting the segregation between poetic imagination and bourgeois industrial society, between poetry and modern technology (the second dialectical moment, of estrangement and separation), poets must reconnect with society and strive for re-socialization. Instead of recording private moods and emotions, poetry should voice collective affirmative experiences. The aesthetic consciousness (Bewusstsein) of the poet must reconnect with social existence (Sein). The incorporation of new content (the lived experience under late capitalism) requires a wholesale transformation of existing poetic consciousness and its conventions and artistic standards: a reorganization of artistic practice. Poetry must discard its obsession with beautiful things (e.g., artworks such as statues and paintings from the past) and reconnect with reality as a process, fueled by technological innovation. According to Caudwell, bourgeois poets (regardless whether they represent romanticism, symbolism, or surrealism) are basically “neurotics,” unable to supersede the conflict between external reality and inner drives. The only viable therapy is to reconnect with the world of industry, technology, and labor. Thus, Caudwell argues, poetry has to choose. Either it becomes reactionary, voicing the chaotic and intoxicating confusion of modernity, distancing itself from industrial society via regression, writing about pre-modern, nostalgic themes, re-imagining life during eras when poetry still thrived, thereby becoming

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“Spenglerian” and fascist in the end. Or poetry becomes proletarian, opting for a coalition with the organizing force of the workers’ movement. Rather that safeguarding their individual artistic freedom, poets should distance themselves from bourgeois existence and contribute to the emergence of proletarian art, expressing proletarian reality and concrete proletarian experience. It is a return to the collectivism of the first dialectical moment, including the proximity of poetry to practical life of daily labor, but now at a higher level of organization and complexity, resulting in an enormous expansion of the audience of poetry, as poetic imagination is now disseminated by employing modern technologies of printing and broadcasting. The same dialectics fuels Herman Gorter’s mega-poem Pan. What was outlined in his scholarly writings (the communist revolution as the negation of the negation, superseding the divide between romantic poetry and industrial technology) is fleshed out in verse: in Pan as a twentieth-century epic about the godhead of idyllic nature who, witnessing the disruptive impact of capitalism, commits himself to the cause of the workers of the world. In terms of size and scope, Pan is comparable to Pound’s Cantos. In his youth, Gorter had made his name as the author of the neoromantic, impressionist poem May, set in an idyllic dune-scape. In Pan, devoted to class struggle and the communist revolution, he enters the world of modern chemistry and telescopes, of industrial metropolises and Faustian machines (Zwart 2019). Initially, workers are the toiling slaves of their machines, attacking them with their hammers, but eventually the revolution gains momentum and after a final battle, capitalism collapses and planet Earth becomes a giant workshop, where the workers are finally free, while beautiful machines work for them. While workers are dancing and playing, machines are buzzing, and science and poetry become one (“De Wetenschap was Poëzie geworden,” p. 398/447). Pan is a poetic laboratory and Gorter aspires to demonstrate how science and technology will be transfigured and sublimate into poetry, while poetry becomes science. In dialectical terms: the divide between technology and poetic imagination will be “sublated” (aufgehoben), as the brutal noise of factories gives way to the crystal-clear music of precision instruments: no longer owned by a privileged (bourgeois) elite, but common (universal) property. While science, technology, and poetry converge, a wonderful world organization illuminates the earth. How is the relationship between poetry and technology developing today, more than a century later? A plethora of poetic genres is emerging in the current global environment, and my explorative assessment will focus on three examples: instapoetry, ecopoetry, and Taliban poetry.

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Instapoetry Instapoetry as a poetic genre is a product of technological innovation: a result of social media, disseminated via platforms such as Instagram, Tumblr, and TikTok. It typically consists of concise verses, with or without rhyme schemes, using very short lines, addressing a global readership directly, via aesthetically pleasing fonts, and often accompanied by pictures or drawings. These verses are often written or projected on walls or entrances, like popular poetic graffiti of the past, albeit using electronic walls instead of material ones. Instapoetry often addresses societal topics such as immigration, domestic violence, sexual assault, gun violence, racism, and LGBTQ. Apparently, it uses contemporary technologies to challenge dominant power mechanisms. This progressive profile is questioned by critics, however. Vinu Caspar (2018) for instance argues that, although instapoetry opens the floor to newcomers, it also turns poetry into a “capitalist” endeavor, as instapoets are basically new media entrepreneurs. He sees instapoetry as a parasitic genre, whose practitioners write “substandard” verses which actually appropriate and plagiarize the work of more traditional poets, who practice their art as a time-consuming, laborintensive craft. By flooding new media with easy low-brow sentimental “drivel,” the production of genuine craftsmanship becomes marginalized. In traditional realms of poetic production, poets invest much time and energy in efforts to connect with publishing houses, often via literary agents, thereby turning volumes of poetry into commodities for the global market. This points to the tension between the craftsmanship of artisanal poetry (as a quintessentially low-tech art) and the emerging technologies of poetic publication and circulation (either via official publishing houses—turning poetry into an industry—or via commercialized social media platforms). The strength of instapoetry is its directness, arising directly from contemporary existence. At the same time, this poetry echoes the business model of social media and its entrepreneurial logic.

Ecopoetry My second case study is ecopoetry, building on a long tradition of romantic nature poetry, critical of the disruptive impacts of technological development. Contemporary ecopoetry deviates from escapist romanticism in that it explicitly voices social criticism, entailing a strong ecological message. Compared to the more convoluted nature poetry of the bourgeois era,

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ecopoetry is comparable (in terms of brevity, accessibility, and directness) to instapoetry. The Ecopoemas by Nicanor Parra ([1982] 1983) may function as exemplification. Parra is an engaged Chilean poet, often compared to the Chilean Nobel Prize laureate Pablo Neruda. His poems excel in brevity, while traditional poetic elements such are meter and rhyme (still clearly present in instapoetry) are absent. In one of these poems, he addresses the collision between global technological civilization (represented by Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize laureate in economics for his work on consumption analysis) and indigenous knowledge (represented by the Alacalufe or Kawésqar people living in Chilean Patagonia). The imperative of global neo-liberalism is: consume, never enough! Without growth, the system deteriorates. To this, everything else must be sacrificed, including indigenous cultures. The poem voices the awareness that indigenous knowledge is direly needed to face the disruption wreaked by the calculative rationality propagated by Friedman. This is taken up in the second poem which claims that the suppositions of this disruptive rationality are basically flawed, seeing planet Earth as belonging to “us” (as if humans may claim “ownership”) whereas on closer inspection we are part of and dependent on terrestrial nature as a system. In plain words, unadorned by aesthetic frills, the poet voices a basic insight concerning the disruptive impact of global technological civilization. Contrary to romantic poetry set in idyllic landscapes, ecopoetry focuses on the negative impact of human activity on the planet, highlighting climate change, ecological disruption, and mass extinction. Like in the case of instapoetry, everybody may become an ecopoet, disseminating products of poetic imagination via social platforms and the internet.

Taliban Poetry For a final example I turn to a subgenre of poetry which only recently caught attention in the West. Somewhat unexpectedly perhaps, for the Taliban forces who took control of Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul on August 15, 2021, poetry is an important medium. The Taliban represent a “prolific culture of versification” (Linschoten and Kuehn 2021, 11) and poetic production, mostly written in Pashto, entails more than mere propaganda. In Taliban poetry, the unfolding events in Afghanistan during the past decades are framed as a conflict between a native pastoral culture (shepherds living in the mountains, in small villages, and in muddy houses) and a high-tech civilization of Western invaders

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(“crusaders”), armed with drones and other technological contrivances, but operating completely out of context, without any connection with Afghanistan landscapes, languages, or cultures. Poetry has been the most important aesthetic medium in Afghan society for many centuries, and Taliban Pashto poetry contrasts the silent beauty of mountainous expanses with the technological rationalities of modern warfare (p. 17), set against a broad historical backdrop, reaching back to the campaigns of Alexander the Great and the legendary warrior-queen Malalai (p. 115), the Afghan Jeanne d’Arc who led an uprising against British imperialism in 1880. Taliban poems are primarily published on websites. Written in traditional style, they voice pastoral resistance against international technological supremacy. Taliban poets-soldiers see themselves as “vagrant shepherds” (p. 53) who confront high-tech tanks (p. 58) and artillery of invaders whose technological prowess makes them “arrogant” (p. 60, p. 146, p. 153). They accept the risk of being killed in the “trenches,” or imprisoned in a detention camp in Cuba, with its advanced “management techniques” (p. 119), because God confers great power to a poet’s pen (p. 112). “We depend on God, not on equipment,” as one of the poems phrases it (p. 140). From a Western perspective, reading Taliban poetry is a disconcerting experience because it challenges Western views about nation building and the advancement of human rights, notably of women,—replacing it with a different framework, turning the conflict into the resistance of native inhabitants against the technological powers of imperialism, bombing Afghan villages with the help of drones. Poetry, the low-tech craft par excellence, is pitted against the advanced technologies of globalization. Like in the other subgenres discussed above, this poetry easily reaches its audience, and one need not be an acknowledged poet to practice it. All authors may submit their products to websites. It is a collective rather than an egocentric genre, and most practitioners are occasional authors who do not consider themselves as poets.

Discussion and Conclusion If we compare these three subgenres of contemporary poetry we notice that, despite obvious differences, similarities can be discerned as well. While instapoetry is individualistic or even hyper-individualistic (closely connected with the poet’s personality, as a new media influencer), other subgenres have a more collective profile, such as Taliban poetry, produced by a relatively large

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number of mostly anonymous authors for whom poetizing is an occasional pursuit. A first family resemblance is that modern technologies of communication (websites, social media) provide circuits for publishing and circulating products of poetic imagination. As a result, the distance between producers and consumers of poetry is reduced, compared to the distance between newcomers and established publishing houses on the poetry market, so that these communicative channels allow poets to reach out to audiences fairly directly, compared to the procedures of selection and exclusion employed by established publishers (often involving mediation by extended networks of professional literary agents). Thus, an important structural feature of capitalism, namely the dramatic increase of distance between production and consumption, also in art (removing art works from everyday practices), is superseded. Publishers (who turn volumes into market commodities) are bypassed. Furthermore, all three subgenres thematize social and political issues, emphasizing the disruptive impact of global technological culture (due to the combination of advanced technologies with the ideological superstructure of neo-liberalism). And all subgenres are directed toward specific niche audiences. Finally, although communication technologies and media platforms are involved in the distribution of poetic products, the production of poetry as such remains a low-tech practice, open to a broad range of practitioners, much more accessible compared to other forms of art (which rely to a much greater extent on technological infrastructures and contrivances during the production stage). This is also a reason for concern, however, as these emerging publication avenues may evoke erosion of poetic craftsmanship. Instagram poetry is an instance of writing (“–gram”) emphasizing the immediacy, the here and now (“insta–”) of poetic production, compared to time-consuming artisanal practices. An important consequence of capitalism has been to eliminate the importance of artisanal knowledge and skill, replacing it by technology-based processes of mass production, rendering craftsmanship meaningless. As an antithetical response to this, other emerging genres emphasize the artisanal dimension of poetry, while retaining the connectedness with political, technological, and scientific developments. Here, neo-mannerism can be mentioned as an example. Like early modern mannerism (poised between elite Renaissance art and Baroque absolutism), it entails a spiritual quest for intensification and renewal of artistic creativity, where poetic styles (“manners”) become folds in a historical process of unfolding (Van Tuinen & Meiborg 2015). Under late capitalism,

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neo-mannerism is an exercise in retrieval, devoted to restoring the artisanal aspects of the art as a way to confront nihilism and neo-liberalism, which not only resulted in environmental disruption and mass extinction (as articulated by ecopoetry)but also in cultural destruction, erosion, and homogenization. Neo-mannerism is an erudite form of poetry, engaged in active dialogue with voices from contemporary life, but also from previous eras, with poets and artists, natural scientists, philosophers, and artisans, seeking allegiances with research fields and crafts, with politics, technology, and religion, with society at large. Opting for digital self-publishing rather than traditional publishing channels, it reposits poetry as a social form of art, fostering the artisanal dimension. Due to the ongoing proliferation of technologies of communication and dissemination, more voices than ever before can participate in the production and consumption of poetic materials. Poetry becomes increasingly inclusive. Self-publishing via websites and social platforms increasingly becomes the default, bypassing established publishers and their complicated and often questionable mechanisms of selection and exclusion. This also gives the floor to poetic voices who aim to address urgent social themes such as climate change, mass extinction, and social inequality of sexual violence, making poetry less esoteric and egocentric, and more collective and engaged. There is a drawback to this remarkable quantitative growth, however, namely the erosion of quality. The mass production and distribution of poetry, enabled by advanced technologies, threatens the artisanal dimension of poetic craftsmanship, so that the market is flooded by the superficiality of egocentric poetry entrepreneurs, at the expense of time-consuming, labor-intensive, high-quality art. The challenge of poetry as engaged craftsmanship is to retain both the component of engagement (reducing the distance between production and consumption by bypassing publishing companies while addressing urgent societal themes) and the component of craft, acquired through exercise, erudition (engagement with authors from the past), and artisanal labor.

References Bounds, P. (2019), “Soviet Literary Theory in Britain: Bukharin, West, Caudwell,” Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group, 32 (2): 17–40. Bukharin, N. (1934), “Poetry, Poetics and the Problems of Poetry in the U.S.S.R.” https://www​.marxists​.org​/archive​/bukharin​/works​/1934​/poetry​/index​.htm.

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Caudwell, C. ([1937] 1977), Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry, London: Lawrence and Wishart. Cohen, A. (2006), Shakespeare and Technology: Dramatizing Early Modern Technological Revolutions, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fuller Torrey, E. (1984), The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secret of St. Elizabeths, San Diego and New York: Harcourt. Gorter, H. ([1935] 1992), De groote dichters. Nagelaten studiën over de wereldliteratuur en haar maatschappelijke grondslagen. Verzamelde Werken VII, Bussum: Van Dishoeck/Amsterdam: Querido. Groff, L. (2021), Matrix, London: Penguin/Random House. Parra, N. (1982), Ecopoemas, Santiago: Gráfica Marginal. Poe, E. A. (1997), Eureka: A Prose Poem, Amherst: Prometheus. Poe, E. A. (1998), Collected Poems, Ann Arbor: Lowe & Hould. Pound, E. (1973), Selected Prose: 1909–1965, London: Faber & Faber. Thompson, E. P. (1977), “Caudwell,” The Socialist Register, 14: 228–76. van Linschoten, A. S. and F. Kuehn (2021), Poetry of the Taliban, London: Hurst. van Tuinen, S. and C. Meiborg (2015), “Brewing Dissonance: Conceptualizing Mannerism and Baroque in Music (with Deleuze),” Diacritics, 42 (3): 54–82. Verne, J. (1996), Paris in the Twentieth Century, New York: Ballantine Books. Vinu Caspar (2018), https://psuvanguard​.com​/challenging​-the​-insta​-poet​-community/. Zwart, H. (2008), Understanding Nature: Case Studies in Comparative Epistemology, Dordrecht: Springer. Zwart, H. (2019), “Poetry, Science and Revolution: The Enigma of Herman Gorter’s Pan,” Journal of Dutch Literature, 10 (1): 24–49. Zwart, H. (2020), “Revolutionary Poetry and Liquid Crystal Chemistry: Herman Gorter, Ada Prins and the Interface between Literature and Science,” Foundations of Chemistry. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s10698​-020​-09381​-5.

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Am I in Wonderland as Alice Is? The First-Person Perspective in Imaginative Art and Game Experiences Arthur Cools

Introduction In the debate about the role of imagination in art and game experiences, there is now more or less consensus about the following statements: (1) Artworks and games mandate their beholders/participants to imagine something; (2) the imaginative experiences of these artworks and games can be described in terms of first-person imagination; (3) the distinction between work world and game world is useful to describe different imaginative responses to games and artworks; and (4) interactive fiction experiences such as videogames or virtual or augmented realities create new forms of imaginative participation. Despite these apparently basic agreements, there are some issues central to the debate that remain unclear. First, the concept of imagination remains somehow implicit in the debate. This may be due to what Amy Kind pointed at in her introduction to The Routledge Handbook of Imagination: “the question of what imagination is [. . .] has proved remarkably difficult to answer—so much so, in fact, that many authors [. . .] explicitly refrain from even trying to do so” (Kind 2016, 1). For some authors, the concept seems to be synonymous with mental imagery. But does imagination necessarily imply mental representation and how does mental representation add something new to the visual perception in artworks or videogames? These questions have rarely been addressed. However, the confusion is not limited to the term “mental imagery.” Some authors describe the imaginative experience of an artwork or a game in terms of appreciation, immersion, and/or participation alike, thereby equating the function of imagination in artworks or games to the relations of appreciating,

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being immersed within, or participating in an artwork or a game. As such, it might not be surprising that other issues in the debate remain unresolved: How and to what extent does interactive fiction differ from more traditional forms of fiction? Do imaginative experiences of interactive fiction require reconsideration of the role of imagination in art and game experiences? In this chapter, I want to contribute to these issues with a reflection on the role and nature of first-person imaginings in artwork and game experiences. A major influence on the theory on first-person imaginative experiences of fictional works was Kendall Walton’s understanding and definition of de se imagination in Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990). His theory of imagination remains a primary reference in the ongoing debate about new interactive forms of imaginative experiences, either being challenged and contested (cf. Tavinor 2005; Alward 2006; Velleman 2008) or defended and extrapolated (cf. Robson and Meskin 2016). The notion of de se imagination is at the core of this debate, but—as I will explain in this chapter—it is too narrow and at the same time confusing: too narrow because it considers all imaginings in art and game experiences to be first-person imaginings, and confusing because it describes imagination sometimes as an imaginative experience about myself (de se imagination) and sometimes as a first-person imaginative act. Therefore, I consider two hypotheses in this paper. First, I argue that firstperson imaginative experiences can be, but do not need to be, de se imagination. In addition, I contend that the distinction between the two is important to explain the different ways imagination is implied in art and game experiences. The first hypothesis is not new: it has been discussed—though in different ways—by Gregory Currie (1995), Peter Lamarque (1981), Lambert Wiesing (2005), and Nele Van de Mosselaer (2020). The second hypothesis is important to better understand the types of co-shaping at stake in the relation between the experience of the beholder/participant, the modes of imagination, and the objects that mandate the beholder/participant to imagine. This chapter is limited to a reflection on the role and nature of first-person imaginings in artwork and game experiences. However, it inevitably presupposes a broader understanding of imagination that is not part of this chapter. As the question concerning the first-person perspective in imaginative experiences suggests, it is unclear what this first-person perspective precisely is, and it is unclear if imagining intrinsically means having a first-person perspective. Indeed, it is a matter of debate, as summarized by Dominic Gregory in “Imagination and mental imagery” (2016), whether all imaginings necessarily imply a perspective (a point of view from which something is imagined) and

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whether this perspective in imaginative experiences is intrinsically organized from an egocentric space (as is the case in visual experience). In this debate, one often starts with a simple example, for example, imagine a cat. This example brings imagination back to mental imagery: I recall a mental image of a cat. From this example, it follows that the imagined cat appears to me as looking some relevant way from a certain perspective. The problem with this approach is not only that it is unclear whether this outcome is generalizable for imagination as such (is imagination reducible to the intended act of consciously imagining something?), but also that it insufficiently clarifies what is meant by perspective (does “looking some relevant way from a perspective” necessarily imply being able to orient oneself in relation to the imagined cat in an egocentric space?). These questions are of course at the core of examining imaginative art and game experiences. The context, however, is more complicated because art and game experiences have a perceptual dimension which includes a first-person perspective. For this reason, in the first part of this chapter I will follow the argument developed by Currie regarding film: cinematic experiences do not involve de se imagination. However, I do not completely follow the distinction that Currie made between personal and impersonal imagination based on that argument. I first argue that imagining something—in the sense of recalling the mental image of a cat—implies a first-person perspective, without it being necessarilya de se imagination. Moreover, I argue that the category of impersonal imagination is broader than cinematic experiences, including all imaginative experiences based on a visual perception. As a result, in my view, the function of imagination in art and game experiences is not limited to forming mental images nor to identifying oneself with a prop from a first-person perspective. The notion of function in my approach is therefore not accidental, because it implies the idea that detailed description of the ways in which imagination contributes to art and game experiences is necessary for an adequate understanding of imagination. Therefore, in order to describe these ways, it is important to use various examples, and to complicate and compare them.

De se Imagination and First-Person Imaginative Experiences Imagination is manifold. In the empirical tradition of philosophy (e.g., David Hume), but also in transcendental idealism (e.g., Immanuel Kant), imagination has often been understood as being linked to the different senses: impressions can be recalled using imagination. Hence, imaginative experiences can be visual,

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auditory, tactile, gustatory, and/or olfactory. The imaginative modes are also manifold. They can be passive or creative, individual or collective, embodied or abstract (e.g., compare the use of a commonplace with the creation of a new metaphor or a new analogy). They can be associated and subordinated to other perceptual and/or cognitive experiences (e.g., beliefs, suppositions, desires, appreciations); they can be part of a cognitive experiment or a moral reflection or a deliberation process; or they can occur without these subordinations. Moreover, an act of imagination can be structured in various ways: the imaginative experience can have a first-person or a third-person perspective; the imaginative act can be about oneself (de se) or about something/someone else (de re); it can be conscious or unconscious. This short enumeration is only meant to show the complexity and variety of experiences we call imaginative. It is therefore important to always carefully analyze how imagination is precisely involved in different art and game experiences. In the following, I want to focus only on first-person imaginative experiences. Let me start by giving a few simple examples. While considering the possible effects of including some fragments of music in the videogame she is working on, my colleague Nele asks for my opinion about hearing the opening bars of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in her videogame the moment the user finds the key to open a virtual door and enters a new room. In my mind, I try to recall the opening bars of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. Nele shows me how the game is set up, how it is designed, which sequence of scenes it includes, what kind of options the user has, what kind of actions are required, what other sounds are part of the game, when Beethoven ninth symphony plays, and so on. I then start to reflect on the aesthetic meanings and effects of these sounds in that game. Meanwhile, and by association, I tell Nele about the idea of visiting the new philharmonic hall in Hamburg and enthusiastically describe the experience I imagine having of listening to the Berliner Philharmoniker playing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in that building. In this example, one can distinguish different imaginative experiences. The first experience is an act of auditory imagination that I consciously undertake and that is not about myself but about the opening bars of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. In my mind, I try to recall its beginning. I do not have to imagine myself listening to this music, as I am aware that I am not listening at all. My imaginative intention is directed at the opening sounds of Beethoven’s ninth symphony; but, this act is limited by my familiarity with that symphony. Without this familiarity, I would have to ask Nele to let me listen to a soundtrack. In their imagination, an expert in musicology or an adept of the works of Beethoven

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would be able to recreate more sounds of the symphony than I can. The second experience is a reflective act that I consciously undertake, which requires imagination. The reflective act is based on the visual and auditory contents of the videogame and the numerous connections between the two: between the scenes of the game, between the participant and the fictional world. Imagination is required to synthesize these connections, to evaluate their effects on the experience of the game, and to integrate each aspect within the game as a whole. Again, for this act of imagination, a first-person perspective is required that is, in part, supported by visual perception: in my imagination, I recreate the overall narrative and design of the game. However, this act is not about myself participating in the game; it is about the game experience as a whole. The third experience in which I imagine myself listening to a concert in the philharmonic hall of Hamburg is manifestly an imagination about myself being present in the Elbphilharmonie—it is a first-person and de se imaginative experience. As these examples demonstrate, first-person imagination is not necessarily de se imagination. Currie has already identified this difference by distinguishing personal from impersonal imagination: “When I imagine merely that such and such happens, without imagining that I see (or have kinds of epistemic contacts with) what happens, we have a case of impersonal imagining. When imagining involves the idea that I am seeing the imagined events, we have a species of personal imagining. (There are other kinds of personal imaginings: imagining that I am hearing something, etc.) More specifically, it is a case of imagining seeing” (Currie 1995, 166). A cinematic experience, for Currie, is first of all a visual perception of events projected on a screen and recorded from a perspective that is the camera’s view (whether or not coinciding with the perspective of one of the characters). “[T]he difference between imagining seeing and impersonal imagining is captured as a difference of scope: it’s the difference between, respectively, ‘I imagine that I see something which is a murderer,’ and ‘I see something which I imagine is a murderer’” (Currie 1995, 179). Based on this distinction, Currie convincingly objects to “the idea that cinematic works encourage us to imagine ourselves to be observers of the fictional events, placed within the world of the fiction” (Currie 1995, 166). The distinction between personal and impersonal imagining is far more relevant than the description of cinematic experiences. In fact, as Currie contends, it concerns all imaginative experiences based on a perception of something that mandates the beholder to imagine something else. These experiences are different from the simple intention of imagining something. In case of an imaginative experience based on a perception, the first-person perspective of the beholder’s

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actual perception is confronted with a perceived scene that mandates the beholder to imagine something from another non–first-person perspective. In other words, the distinction between the first-person perspective of perception and the other non–first-person perspective of the mandated imagining is part of the imaginative experience based on a perception. This distinction is intrinsic to that imaginative experience even when the beholder is not aware of it (e.g., by identifying their first-person perspective with the perspective from which they are mandated to imagine something). The category of impersonal imaginings can thus be extended to all visual image experiences, such as pictures, moving images, and videogames. Currie’s other category of personal imagining concerns all imaginings from a first-person perspective. However, I think that it is possible—within this category—to distinguish between imaginative experiences that are de se and that are not de se. When I recall the opening sounds of Beethoven’s ninth symphony in my mind, I am the person who produces this imaginative act (and this act is only possible insofar as I am familiar with this symphony). In no way do I have to imagine myself listening to Beethoven’s ninth: the object of the imaginative experience in my recollection of Beethoven’s ninth is not me, but some sounds that I try to reproduce in my mind. I want to reserve the notion of de se imagination to first-person imaginative experiences in which I imagine myself doing something (e.g., when I imagine myself sitting in the Elbphilharmonie listening to a performance of that symphony). I can imagine of myself that I see/hear/believe/etc. something, but this is not the standard firstperson imagination which can be formulated as “I imagine this or that.” Walton, however, proposes to consider all first-person imagination as de se imagination, as he states: “all imaginings involve a kind of self-imagining (imagining de se), of which imagining from the inside is the most common variety” (Walton 1990, 29). Imagining “from the inside” is imagining oneself “in a first-person manner” (Walton 1990, 28). In other words, according to Walton, “I imagine this” can be rephrased as “I imagine of myself that I believe (or see or hear . . .) this.” Sure, the examples Walton gives are fully de se imagination: “Fred imagined himself rich and famous; he was the central character of his daydream” (Walton 1990). His well-known description of children’s games of make-believe provides a clear case of de se imagination: if a child imagines a stump to be a bear, they imagine themselves to be in front of a bear each time they encounter a stump; if a child imagines a doll to be a baby, they imagine themselves to be the person who cares for the baby. The type of game of make-believe is only possible if it meets the condition of the self being involved. According to

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Walton, however, it is not necessary that the self is the object of imagination, it is sufficient to imagine the stump to be a bear in order to participate in the game. As described by Walton: “[i]maginings de se are imaginings about the imaginer himself. But I will suggest in the following section that the imaginer de se need not be a de re object of his imagining, and that it may not be appropriate to describe him as imagining, ‘of himself, that. . .’” (Walton 1990, 25). In other words, he does not distinguish between children playing a game of make-believe where they imagine a stump to be a bear (implying the imagining of themselves to be in front of a bear) and where a playmate who imagines the stump to be a bear, but does not imagine themselves to be in front of the bear. But does the latter not happen all the time in children’s games? Is it not part of children’s games of make-believe that they learn through playing the game that they are not the object of their imagination—although I imagine the stump to be a bear, I will not scream and will not run away? Walton seems to exclude this possibility from make-believe experiences. In Walton’s theory of imagination, the children’s game of make-believe is exemplary for all kinds of art and game experiences. However, the confusion between de se imagination and first-person imagination does not allow for an appropriate analysis of how precisely imagination is involved in these experiences, as we will see in the following part.

First-Person Perspective and de se Imagination in Art and Game Experiences Theories of art and game experiences rely on the basic assumption that a generally unified theory of imagination is required in order to explain different imaginative experiences. This assumption, however, leads to untenable claims, whether by defending one general definition of imagination for all art and game experiences—as Walton does in Mimesis as Make-Believe—or by defending a specific medium-related definition of imagination for each genre (e.g., de se imagination in interactive imaginative experiences, such as videogames, versus mental imagery in non-interactive imaginative experiences, such as literary fiction). In the following, I want to show that this approach is not helpful in clarifying the role of imagination in the field of artwork and game experiences. I suggest that the type of relation the beholder/participant has to the artwork or game is decisive in how imagination is involved in the experience of the artwork or game. The type of relation the beholder/participant has to the artwork or

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game can be representing, appreciating, participating, and being immersed. My claim is that in each of these relations’ imagination is required but in different ways. Let us first take an example from the classic fiction theory. I am in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and I am looking at one of his paintings of sunflowers. I see the image and in the painting I recognize the flowers Van Gogh intended to depict. This image experience does not require de se imagination. I do not have to imagine myself seeing sunflowers because I am seeing a canvas depicting sunflowers, nor do I imagine myself being in front of sunflowers because I am in a museum room in front of a painting by Van Gogh. Nevertheless, the visual experience of the canvas involves a first-person perspective: seeing the sunflowers in the painting depends on my bodily perspective in the museum room, on my focus on the painting, on my familiarity with sunflowers, on my ability to see the depiction of sunflowers in the painting. I may have a more specific, aesthetic interest in the painting: I now focus on how Van Gogh created the composition, what kind of techniques he used. Then I compare this with other paintings of Van Gogh I have seen, I consider the fact that the sunflower is a motive in Van Gogh’s works, I start wondering how he repeatedly created an image of sunflowers. I am affected by the specific way Van Gogh depicted the flowers, I start thinking how I feel about it, and how I appreciate it. In this reflection, imagination is very active; it goes in different directions. It enables me to connect this particular painting of sunflowers to Van Gogh’s works as a whole and to return from his works as a whole to this particular image, allowing the discovery of specific features of Van Gogh’s techniques, colors, and brush strokes. Moreover, imagination helps me clarify how I appreciate the image of the sunflowers. This appreciative experience of the artwork does not require de se imagination: I do not have to imagine myself appreciating Van Gogh’s painting of sunflowers. Instead, this experience ends up in a reflexive stance: I reflect upon how Van Gogh’s image of sunflowers affects me. Based on the description above, one might be inclined to conclude that the art of painting as such does not invite the beholder to de se imagination. But this is not necessarily the case. The visual experience of Van Gogh’s sunflower painting does not intrinsically prescribe me to imagine something about myself, but it could be that in front of the canvas I start imagining myself standing in front of a row of sunflowers or in a field of sunflowers. Nevertheless, there are paintings that do mandate the beholder to imagine something about themselves. In Velazquez’s painting Las meninas, the gaze of the depicted painter, stepping back behind the depicted canvas of which the beholder sees only the backside,

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exactly crosses the gaze of the beholder standing before the artwork. In fact, the gaze of the depicted painter brings the beholder in the position of the sovereign who is supposedly the depicted object on the canvas the painter is working on. Now, a whole series of de se imaginations come into play: the beholder can imagine themselves to be the object of the painter’s attention, to be the true object of the depicted canvas, to be in the position of the sovereign, to be part of the depicted world, and so on. Without these de se imaginations, it would not be possible to correctly grasp and evaluate the novelty and relevance of Las meninas in relation to Velazquez’s other court paintings, and even more with regard to seventeenth-century European visual arts. My point with these examples is to show that (1) imagination can be involved in many ways in our interaction with visual artworks, (2) that it is important to distinguish de se imagination from first-person imagination in our interaction with visual artworks, (3) that aesthetic appreciation of a visual artwork does not necessarily imply de se imagination, and (4) that the prescription to imagine something about oneself (de se imagination) is relative to specific features of an individual artwork. The situation is possibly different in a videogame context. Some authors have argued that de se imagination is required in videogame contexts and that it can thus be considered a distinctive feature of videogame experiences. In their article “Videogames as Self-Involving Interactive Fictions,” Jon Robson and Aaron Meskin argue that “a key feature of video-game fictions is their self-involving interactivity” and that “self-involving interactive fictions [are], in virtue of their interactive nature, about those who consume them” (Robson and Meskin 2016, 165). For that reason, they see “a sharp contrast” (Robson and Meskin 2016) between self-involving interactive fictions such as videogames and other kinds of fiction. The main argument is based on the claim that when playing videogames players generate fictional truths about themselves, and that they “make a variety of first-person claims concerning the games they are playing (‘I defeated the dragon,’ ‘I was killed by the creeper,’ and so on)” (Robson and Meskin 2016, 167). According to the authors, this claim holds regardless of the player being represented by an avatar in the game. The authors distinguish “two different forms of first-person imaginings” (Robson and Meskin 2016, 169). The players can imagine themselves to be identical with a particular fictional character (an avatar) and they can imagine themselves to intervene in the game world “without also imagining [themselves] to be identical with any individual (fictional or otherwise) distinct from [themselves]” (Robson and Meskin 2016). In this view, both forms of first-person imaginings are thus de se imagination.

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However, the distinction that Robson and Meskin make here does not fully consider that videogame experiences are continuously based on complex, interconnected, multisensorial perception (visual, auditory, tactile). The firstperson perspective is directed and constantly supported by this perception. As an imaginative experience, playing a videogame is thus a clear case of impersonal imagining—as Currie defines it—which does not mean that the videogame experience does not authorize de se imagination. Yet, the authorization to imagine something about oneself in a videogame is only possible because the videogame offers the participant a perspective with which they can identify, and from which they can orient themselves in the game. This perspective within the game can be—but does not need to be—an avatar in the game. It can also be the perspective from which a scene is seen. The distinction between “two different forms of first-person imaginings” (Robson and Meskin 2016, 169) is thus not very accurate. A more fundamental aspect is the distinction between the firstperson perspective of the participant playing the game and the perspective within the game that authorizes the participant to identify with and to imagine something about themselves. Moreover, the role of imagination is not limited to identifying one’s own firstperson perspective with a perspective in the game. In fact, imagination is involved in playing videogames in different ways. Its most apparent role is to fill in the gaps of the technically mediated game world and to measure, guess, and project the effects of the manual and/or bodily movements of the player. The technical setting of a videogame requires different physical elements that are separated from each other, such as a screen, a keyboard, and a mouse or a game controller (sometimes a steering wheel and/or pedals), or a headset. Playing the game is only possible by interacting with these different elements. In other words, to play the game, the participant has to establish the exact connection between how they manipulate a game controller and the changes that occur on-screen. This ability requires imagination based on a first-person perspective of a visual perception: I intentionally push a button or turn an analog stick determined to discover the connection between this manipulation and the visual effects on-screen. I see a change in the visual scene on the screen before me that mandates me to imagine how this change depends on manually manipulating the game controller. In order to establish the connection, it is not necessary that I identify myself with an avatar, nor do I have to imagine myself being present in the game world. I can just be interested in exercising the sequence of the bodily movements to achieve certain results on-screen (for instance, because this will let me win the game). Moreover, only a few changes that happen in the game world are relative

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to the manipulations done by the player; other changes are not. In other words, the player still needs a perceptual overview of the game world as a whole to identify which changes occur in this world through their manipulation of a game controller. Here, imagination is required to support the orientation within the visual representation of the game world as a whole. Again, this ability needs imagination from a first-person perspective but it does not necessarily involve de se imagination. Nevertheless, videogames do authorize de se imagination the very moment the player identifies with a perspective within the game world that mandates them to intervene in it through their manipulation of a game controller. In that moment, the player situates and projects—whether or not on behalf of an avatar—their own actions within the game world on-screen. De se imagination is thus not the only function of imagination in playing videogames and should be considered in relation to other ways in which imagination is involved in playing videogames. Tension can occur in the game world between different functions of imagination. Players who are too onesidedly engaged in their performance in the game world may lose sight of the game world as a whole and may for that reason miss essential changes (and essential meanings) in the game world. Interruptions in the game world can momentarily make the player lose control over their actions in that world, without disconnecting the player from the game world as a whole, as for instance in Mario Kart when the car I am navigating slips after being hit by a co-player’s banana peel. The same line of argumentation can show that an appreciative attitude is part of the player’s interaction with videogames. As we have seen in the example with Van Gogh’s paintings, an appreciative attitude does not necessarily require de se imagination, but playing a videogame does. Playing the game implies the identification of the participant’s first-person perspective with the perspective in the game world. With an appreciative attitude, however, imagination goes in another direction, namely that of reflecting upon the aesthetic values of the game world. In that respect, imagination continuously accompanies the player when they, more or less with pleasure, participate in the game world by projecting, anticipating, combining, and evaluating the different props and meanings appearing in the game world. Playing the game and participating in the game world are definitely required to be able to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of a videogame, and, in this regard, de se imagination is part of appreciating a videogame experience. However, this does not mean that the function of imagination in appreciating a videogame experience is reducible to de se imagination. The player’s appreciative attitude can impact their choices

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and how they intervene in the game world. While playing the videogame, an experienced player—familiar with a variety of videogames—may be particularly interested in or sensitive to the design of the game, its narratives, the representation of the game world as a whole, the atmosphere created and its effects on the player, the mechanics that support it. Yet some of these factors can also aesthetically affect the participant in a negative or even disturbing way, impeding their willingness to play. All this would not be possible without an appreciative attitude.

From First-Person to de se Imagination: A Transformation of the Self in Art and Game Experiences? In this chapter, I aimed to show that imagination is involved in different ways in art and game experiences. To do so, I followed Currie’s distinction between personal and impersonal imaginings in cinematic experiences and extended it to other imaginative experiences in the visual arts and videogames. I have distinguished de se imagination (imagining myself doing something) from imagining something from a first-person perspective. These distinctions are important to differentiate the functions of imagination in relation to various imaginative art and game experiences. Moreover, I have argued that these different functions are dependent on the type of relation the beholder/participant has with the artwork or game. Especially (but not exclusively), videogames authorize de se imagination in the beholder/participant, based on them identifying their firstperson perspective with a perspective in the game world. Since the publication of Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe, de se imagination has become central to the contemporary debate about the imaginative experiences of art and game experiences. Even for the general public, de se imagination seems an integral part of the visual arts. This is especially the case for contemporary social art movements, such as relational art, street art, artistic activism, and digital art but also in a more general way as for example became apparent in the publicity for the re-opening of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp on September 24, 2022. The re-opening intended to attract new visitors not by promoting particular artworks in the museum but by suggesting that you imagine yourself painting and soon having your paintings exhibited by the museum. One may wonder why de se imagination has received such onesided and persistent attention. Here, I have argued that de se imagination is not

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necessarily intrinsic to the experience of artworks and it is not the only function of imagination involved when playing videogames. I claim that it is necessary to consider external, contextual, and cultural assumptions in order to better understand the kind of focused attention on de se imagination today. The importance of these kinds of assumptions in relation to examining imagination already appeared in Walton’s work when he started his reflection on de se imagination with the following example: “Fred imagined himself rich and famous; he was the central character of his daydream. His fantasy is not at all atypical in this respect. [. . .] It is not surprising that so much of our imagining centers on our-selves. People are egocentric” (Walton 1990, 28). Walton emphasizes his view that imagination essentially involves imagining about oneself with an anthropological assumption: people are egocentric. But is “imagining oneself rich and famous” an adequate description of all the ways imagination is involved in the human condition? Or is it the expression of a typical imaginative projection within a particular cultural context? I suspect that the so-called evidence of de se imagination in art and videogame experiences depends on the dominance of a cultural praxis, and that it is necessary to appeal to the concept of “culture industry” (cf. as thematized in Horkheimer and Adorno 1947) to be able to articulate this cultural praxis, and show how de se imagination is induced by an economic logic of consumption. Undoubtedly, de se imagination in participative videogame experiences has a formative impact on the participant. One main implication—following from the previous reflections—is that the reflective attitude of the beholder/participant in an appreciative relation risks to be subordinated to the requirements of the game player’s interactivity in a relation of participation, and to be instrumentalized for that purpose. The effects of this transformation are manifold and far-reaching, but may not yet be fully understood: they concern the aesthetic judgment and the self-relatedness of the beholder/participant as well. De se imagination in participative videogame experiences strengthens and objectifies the imaginative projection of the self. Meanwhile, within that same experience, a deliberative attitude is required to tie the imaginative projection about oneself to the possibilities of interactivity within the videogame world. However, this attitude differs from (and does not necessary lead to) the reflection on the design and the representation of the game world as a whole (which condition and limit the imaginative projection of the self). In other words, de se imagination in participative art and videogame experiences can transform the role of imagination in appreciating these experiences. More specifically, it can replace the reflective attitude—that permits the player to evaluate the represented game

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world and their relation to that world—with an identifying attitude—allowing the player to imagine themselves in that world.

References Alward, P. (2006), “Leave Me out of It: De Re, But Not De Se, Imaginative Engagement with Fiction,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64 (4): 451–9. Currie, G. (1995), Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, New York: Cambridge University Press. Gregory, D. (2016), “Imagination and Mental Imagery,” in A. Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, 97–110, London and New York: Routledge. Horkheimer, M. and T. Adorno (1947), Dialektik Der Aufklärung, Amsterdam: Querido. Kind, A. (2016), “Introduction: Exploring Imagination,” in A. Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, 1–12, London and New York: Routledge. Lamarque, P. (1981), “How Can We Fear and Pity Fictions?” The British Journal of Aesthetics, 21 (4): 291–304. Robson, J. and A. Meskin (2016), “Videogames as Self-Involving Interactive Fictions,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 74 (2): 165–77. Tavinor, G. (2005), “Videogames and Interactive Fictions,” Philosophy and Literature, 29 (1): 24–40. Van de Mosselaer, N. (2020), The Paradox of Interactive Fiction. A New Approach to Imaginative Participation in Light of Interactive Fiction Experiences, Doctoral thesis, Antwerp: Universiteit of Antwerp. Velleman, D. (2008), “Bodies, Selves,” American Imago, 65 (3): 405–26. Walton, K. L. (1990), Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wiesing, L. (2005), Artifizielle Präsenz, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

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Representation, Expression, Exemplification Paul Ricoeur, Nelson Goodman, and the Role of Imagination in the Metaphorical Process Roger W. H. Savage

The notion that works of fiction subvert congealed practices and habits of thought invites a broader consideration of the role of imagination in human affairs. By refashioning ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, fictions broadly conceived—novels, poetry, theatrical productions, figurative and nonfigurative painting, sculpture, music, and dance, for example—augment dimensions of our experiences in ways that only they can. Works that reshape dimensions of our experiences stand as testament to their worlding power. This worlding power, I will therefore say, is indicative of how imagination is operative in works, words, deeds, and acts that surpass the real from within. By liberating the concept of representation from the idea that correspondences between mental images and existing objects and things constitute the basis of truth, Paul Ricoeur’s account of the mimetic operations that he identifies with the poetics of narrativity places the triadic relation between representation, expression, and exemplarity on stage. For him, Nelson Goodman’s account of the metaphorical exemplification of the properties possessed by a work brings to the fore the paradox of a work’s referential significance. The epoché of the real that works of fiction effect by suspending the practical order of everyday experiences has its corollary counterpart in metaphorical expressions that shatter the ostensive references of literal statements. Built on the literal ruins of a semantic impertinence, metaphorical references arise within the thickness of the imagining scene. By focusing first on the role of imagination in schematizing the predicative matrix from which new meanings are drawn, I will attribute the work’s claim to truth to its exemplification of feelings, thoughts, and actions uniquely expressed by it.

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By pairing expression and exemplification, I intend moreover to relate Ricoeur’s claim that mimesis demands more of the way that we think about truth to the way that, in the case of aesthetic experience, the work summons its rule. In the latter part of my chapter, I will explain how reflective judgment is operative in experiences in which the work expresses thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The work, I will say, expresses these thoughts, ideas, and feelings by exemplifying them. The metaphorical redescription of the real in light of a heuristic fiction has a corollary counterpart in the work’s mimetic refiguration of the practical and affective dimensions of our experiences. The work’s renewal of the field of our experiences is consequently indicative of the role imagination plays in works, words, deeds, and acts that surpass the real from within.

The Representative Illusion and the Metaphorical Process Freeing the concept of representation from the illusion of some presumed correspondence between an interior mental image and an exterior thing calls for a theory of imagination that redresses the limitations of the classical concept of truth. For Ricoeur, the illusory nature of the claim from which the representative illusion stems is most apparent in the attempt to make the interior presence of this image and the exterior presence of a real object “present to each other through some process of adequation that would define the truth of the representation” (Ricoeur 1991, 137). Martin Heidegger’s claim that the “metaphorical exists only within the bounds of the metaphysical” (cited in Ricoeur 1977, 282; see Heidegger 1975, 89, Joy 1988) lays the ground for deconstructing the system of Western philosophical thought in which this illusion figures. Within this system, the “metaphysical transfer of the sensible to the nonsensible” (Ricoeur 1977, 2811) that secures the presumed connection between them governs the metaphorical equivalences of the visible and the invisible, the sensible and the nonsensible, and perception and intellection. In turn, the metaphorical transfer of literal meanings and referents to figurative ones provides the standard for the concept of language espoused by representative thought in treating “language as Ausdruck, ‘expression’—that is, as the exteriorization of the interior” (Ricoeur 1977, 284). Ricoeur stresses that Jacques Derrida’s stroke of genius in entering the “domain of metaphor not by way of its birth but . . . by way of its death” (1977, 2852) lays bare how the metaphysical oppositions between nature and freedom, history and spirit, the sensible and the spiritual or intelligible, and the sensible and sense or meaning dissemble their metaphorical origins through

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the drift toward idealization. Primary philosophemes such as eidos, logos, and theoria defining the field of metaphysical thought consequently become vested with their purportedly “proper” meanings through erasing the traces of their metaphorical production. The creation of meaning that Ricoeur attributes to the metaphorical process stands over against the wearing-away of metaphor’s complicity with the raising up of metaphysics. For him, the semantic clash that in a metaphorical statement such as “The peace process is on the ropes” introduces a predicative impertinence that can be resolved only through the working of the imagination. The predicative assimilation of semantically incongruent terms referring respectively to diplomatic negotiations and the combative sport of boxing produces a new meaning that emerges from the literal ruins of the metaphorical statement. To see negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire agreement, for example, as if they were demolished by the storm of the warring factions’ strategic violations is therefore to grasp the intended meaning of nonliteral attributes through the semantic tension that gives rise to the imagining scene (Ricoeur 1977, 214). The “schematization of metaphorical attribution” (Ricoeur 1991, 126) that in seeing the peace process as on the ropes resolves the initial semantic impertinence constitutes the matrix of the image expressed in this way. The figure of speech that in this metaphorical statement is the icon of this image thus owes its novel force to the way that the imagination schematizes the synthetic operation through which we resolve the enigma of iconic presentation each time we draw the pertinent metaphorical meaning from the ruins of the literal one. The matrix of the new semantic congruence drawn from the initial predicative impertinence of literal attributes highlights how imagination is at work in the creation of an emergent meaning. The sudden insight into the fittingness of a bizarre predication, as in the example above where carefully orchestrated diplomatic negotiations appear in the likeness of the combative engagement of sparring opponents, attests to the competence we have to grasp the resemblance between them. Ricoeur explains that by abolishing the “logical distance between previously remote semantic fields” (Ricoeur 1991, 125), the rapprochement between them produces a new meaning across this distance. Imagination, he accordingly tells us, is the “apperception . . . of a new predicative pertinence” (Ricoeur 1991, 125) born from the ruins of literal references. The kinship between the capacity to see similarities across this logical distance and “Kant’s concept of productive imagination as schematizing a synthetic operation” (Ricoeur 1978, 145) sets the connection between the matrix of the new predicative pertinence and the imagination’s schematizing power in relief. Whereas the raising up of

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metaphysics erases the trace of the concept’s metaphorical origin, imagination animates the metaphoricity of language and its referential postulates. We catch sight of the procedure through which concepts are produced in the predicative operation engendering the likeness between distant semantic fields. Imagination, Ricoeur accordingly stresses, is at work in “the concrete milieu in which and through which we see similarities” (1978, 148). To imagine, he therefore tells us, is “to display relations in a depicting mode” (1978, 148) prior to the sedimentation of the generic relationship that has been taken to vest a concept with its “proper” meaning. Moreover, emergent meanings have their affective correlates. To see as . . . is consequently also to think as . . . and to feel as . . . in accordance with the predicative assimilation of semantically incongruent terms (Ricoeur 1978, 154–6; see Ricoeur 1977, 245). The referential postulates that for a hermeneutical discourse inhere in the linguistically mediated character of our experiences acquire their fuller amplitude in light of the metaphorical redescription of reality. Ricoeur explains that “[at] first glance, poetic language refers to nothing but itself ” (1978, 1513). By retreating into the interior recesses of poetic discourse, poetry and fictions broadly conceived signify themselves. The work’s self-signification, which I will explain in due course is the mark of its worlding power, places the real in suspense. In the case of metaphor, this epoché of the real is the “negative condition of a second-order reference . . . built on the ruins of direct reference” (Ricoeur 1978, 151; see Ricoeur 1977, 305). Language, Ricoeur tells us borrowing a phrase from Gustave Guillaume, “‘pours back into the universe’ . . . those signs which the symbolic function, at its birth, divorced from things” (Ricoeur 1991, 46). Moreover, the “soul of the verb,” he explains, “is affirmation, the saying of yes or no” (Ricoeur 1986, 33). For Ricoeur, a statement, assertion, or metaphorical utterance, for example, “finds at once its unity of signification and its capacity for truth and error” (1986, 32) in the verb’s assertion of existence and its attribution of qualities or properties to a subject. The “composite discourse” that Ricoeur tells us Aristotle “calls λόγος [logos]” (1986, 32) is accordingly the medium through which, for us, the world acquires its meaning, significance, and force. By asking whether poetic language breaks through the order of reality susceptible to positivist descriptions “to a pre-predicative, ante-predicative level” (1977, 254), Ricoeur brings the tensive structure of metaphorical truth to the fore. At this level, the power poetic discourse acquires through placing the real into suspense calls into question the “very notions of fact, object, reality, and truth as delimited by epistemology” (Ricoeur 1977, 254). The force of the tensive structure articulated by the metaphorical “is” and the literal “is not” vests the

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metaphorical statement with its power of affirmation. Ricoeur emphasizes that the only way “to do justice to the notion of metaphorical truth [is] . . . to include the critical incision of the (literal) ‘is not’ within the ontological vehemence of the (metaphorical) ‘is’” (Ricoeur 1977, 255; see 299–300). The verb “to be” acquires its grammatical mark within the structure of the analogy activated by the metaphorical statement. Hence, the “effectiveness of dead metaphors can be inflated . . . only in semiotic conceptions that impose the primacy of denomination” (Ricoeur 1977, 290) in place of a commitment to the power of language to say more. By reserving a place for the real’s redescription in light of a heuristic fiction, the conditions of reference that Ricouer tells us rule over the relation between language and reality consequently mark out the limits of the classical concept of truth.

Expression—Exemplification The notion that fictions broadly conceived redescribe or refigure reality invites some further inquiry into the place of imagination in our conception of truth. The paradox that for Ricoeur animates the concept of metaphorical reference unsettles the idea that the real can be described scientifically and verified empirically. Marked by the critical incision of the “is not,” the ontological vehemence of the metaphorical “is” acquires its bearing and force through the predicative assimilation of nonliteral attributes as discussed above. The real’s redescription in accordance with the image displayed through the metaphorical seeing as . . . thus bears the stamp of the imagination’s schematizing power. A poem, narrative, or piece of music’s ontological force—by which I mean the impact it has in awakening us to new dimensions of experience—is the mark of its worlding power. The paradoxical character of a “metaphorical concept of truth” (Ricoeur 1977, 255) consequently stands at the gateway to a renewed understanding not only of the real but also of meaning, being, and truth for which, perhaps, not even Heidegger’s concept of truth as manifestation (aletheia) suffices. Ricoeur’s reading of Nelson Goodman’s theory of denotation provides a distinctive point of access to the problematic that in the case of metaphorical attribution stems from the fact that the referential significance of the predicative operation has the force of a claim to truth. According to Ricoeur, Goodman seeks to establish a rapprochement between descriptive verbal symbols and representations of non-verbal ones within the framework of a theory of the

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symbol’s referential function. This referential function’s universality is the visà-vis of the universality of language’s, “and more generally, [that] of symbolic systems[’]” (Ricoeur 1977, 231) organizing power. Goodman accordingly anchors the intended rapprochement between verbal and non-verbal symbols in an “emphatic anti-emotionalism” (Ricoeur 1977, 231) that eschews the distinction between the symbol’s cognitive and emotive significance. Ricoeur stresses that neither linguistic descriptions nor aesthetic representations accede to the kind of immediacy that might suggest opposing an utterance’s or work’s cognitive import to an emotive one. He accordingly explains that representing and expressing do not belong to different domains, “for example, the domain of objects or events and the domain of feelings, as in an emotivist theory . . ., since representing is a case of denoting” (1977, 234), and expressing is a case of exemplifying the properties of a work. Both, he adds, are cases of “making reference” (1977, 234). For him, the “ruinous distinction of the cognitive and the emotive . . . from which that of denotation and connotation is derived” (Ricoeur 1977, 234) is thus the consequence of assigning the act of representing and the act of expressing to separate domains. The steps taken by Goodman in developing a “systematic study of symbols and symbol systems and the ways they function in our perceptions and actions and arts and sciences” (Goodman 1968, 265; cited in Ricoeur 1977, 232) lay the ground for overcoming this opposition by setting out a denotative theory of metaphorical reference. Defining denotation fairly widely “subsume[s] what art does—represent something—and what language does—describe” (Ricoeur 1977, 232). Representing is then one way of denoting that assimilates the relation between a picture and its depiction of something (depictum) “to that between a predicate and that to which it is applied” (Ricoeur 1977, 232). Representing, Ricoeur accordingly stresses, is “not imitating in the sense of resembling or copying” (1977, 232). At the same time, identifying reference with denotation only accounts for one direction of the referential operation, which consists in “applying ‘labels’ to events” (Ricoeur 1977, 2334). The second direction is the reverse of the first. Here the orientation of the referential operation acquires its force from the way that a picture, a poem, or a musical work, for example, exemplifies the properties it possesses. The reversal of direction from “symbol to thing . . . [to] thing to symbol” (Ricoeur 1977 , 233) consequently inverts the referential operation in a manner that I will explain is consistent with reflective judgment’s inversion of determinative judgment. On Ricoeur’s account, Goodman therefore treats exemplification as the obverse of denotation. Exemplification accordingly reverses the direction of denotation by depicting the properties

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or attributes that a work possesses. Ricoeur here stresses that “metaphor is a transference that affects the possession of predicates by some specific thing” (Ricoeur 1977, 234). The operation of transference through which the predicate “gray” denotes the color of a picture and the inverted operation of reference by which the gray picture exemplifies the quality (sadness, for example) it possesses place representing and expressing within the same domain. The “metaphorical possession of non-verbal predicates” (Ricoeur 1977, 234) thus constitutes an instance in which expression consists in exemplifying the properties that are the singular attributes of an individual work. Later, I will return to this pairing of expression and exemplification in relation to the communicability of the experience occasioned by a work. I will say then that in the case of music, for example, the work exemplifies feelings and moods that it expresses through the manner in which its constitutive elements cohere. That symbols and symbolic systems have a place “in the creation and comprehension of our worlds” (Goodman 1969, 265; cited in Ricoeur 1977, 232), as Goodman insists, is nowhere more evident than in the work’s worlding power. By exemplifying the properties it possesses, the work places everyday expectations and habits of thought into suspense. Ricoeur stresses that the eclipse of the referential mode of ordinary denotation toward which the theory of connotation aims is only the condition for another mode of reference through which heuristic fictions redescribe reality. He reminds us that the distinction between denotation and connotation corresponds to a comparable distinction within the tradition of logical positivism between an “explicit and implicit meaning[, which then] was treated as the distinction between cognitive and emotive language” (Ricoeur 1976, 46). According to him, “a good part of literary criticism influenced by this positivist tradition transposed the distinction between cognitive and emotive language into the vocabulary of denotation and connotation” (1976, 46). From this vantage point, only denotation is cognitive and belongs to a semantic order; connotation is “extra-semantic because it consists of the weaving together of emotive evocations, which lack cognitive value” (1976, 46). By stopping short of the idea that the depiction of a non-existent thing such as a unicorn “also helps to fashion the world” (Ricoeur 1977, 233; see Ricoeur 1978, 150), Goodman in Ricoeur’s view does not in the end account for the strategy proper to poetic discourse. If representing something that in reality does not exist falls under the aegis of its classification as a picture, for example, how, he asks, can “symbolization . . . make what it depicts” (Ricoeur 1977, 233), as in the case of null denotation, where the representation depicts such a non-existent

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thing? For Ricoeur, Goodman’s nominalist conception of language cannot finally elucidate the “air of rightness that certain . . . fortunate instances of language and art seem to exude” (1977, 239). We could ask whether, in the absence of a theory of models that accounts for fiction’s power to redescribe reality, the case of null denotation vacates the practical, cognitive, and affective impact of works of imagination such as poetry, fiction, music, painting, sculpture, and film and dramatic theatrical productions. Ricouer accordingly draws three related conclusions pertaining to the poetics of discourse. First, regarding connotation “as a set of associative and emotional effects” (Ricoeur 1977, 238), having no referential value is the unfruitful consequence of treating the distinction between denotation and connotation as a principle of differentiation without regard for the poetic function of verbal and non-verbal symbolic systems. Second, “sensa— sounds, images, feelings—that adhere to the ‘sense’” (Ricoeur 1977, 238) of a poetic statement or work are attributes and properties represented in the mode through which they are brought to expression. Expression, Ricouer here reminds us, “is the name of a metaphorical possession of the representational order” (1977, 237; see Ricoeur 1991, 137–40). Qualities felt on a work are as real as the descriptive traits articulated by scientific discourse in this regard. Heidegger’s claim that in “poetical discourse, the communication of the existential possibilities of one’s state-of-mind can become an aim in itself, and [that] this amounts to a disclosing of existence” (1962, 2055) lends further support to the idea that a work’s exemplification of its affective attributes is one if not the foremost feature of its worlding power. Third, these poetic attributes contribute to shaping the world. This third conclusion is the most incisive as regards the work’s ontological vehemence, since qualities exemplified by the work are “‘true’ to the extent that they are ‘appropriate’” (Ricoeur 1977, 238) to the novelty of the situation on which they bear.

Imagination and Truth By suggesting that the truth to which a work lays claim confers a practical significance on the power of imagination, I want now to relate the fittingness of creative productions to the ways that works, words, deeds, and acts surpass the real from within. Elsewhere, I have argued that the imagination’s operative role in aesthetic experience authorizes transposing it laterally onto the planes of ethics and politics (Savage 2021; Savage 2019). Like works that reply to exigencies and demands as the author, artist, or composer apprehended them, deeds, acts, and

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lives that we admire commend themselves to us through the examples they set. The injunction to follow after (Nachfolge) the act is the equivalent of the work’s proposal of the meaning it renders communicable through giving this meaning a figure and a body (see Ricoeur et al. 1998, 183). The predicative assimilation that in the metaphorical process constitutes the matrix of the new predicative meaning consequently has its corollary counterpart in the schematizing operation that in the case of narrative draws together successive incidents and events as a temporal whole (see Ricoeur 1984, 64–70). That mimesis requires more of the way that we think about truth puts to the test Ricoeur’s question as to whether the “fittingness, the appropriateness, of certain verbal and non-verbal predicates, indicate that language not only has organized reality in a different way, but also made manifest a way of being of things, which is brought to language thanks to semantic innovation” (Ricoeur 1977, 239). The discovery of new ways of describing reality through the inventions of poetic discourse marks a parting of ways with Goodman’s nominalism in this regard. The aptness of figures of speech, lines, gestures, and musical turns of phrase that bring different aspects of our experiences to expression for the first time stands as testament to the truth of thoughts and feelings to which works singularly give voice. The notion of testimony for which the work provides a model brings to the fore the force of the work’s claim in expressing feelings and thoughts that open the world to us and us to the world anew. The term “testimony,” Ricouer tells us, “should be applied to words, works, actions, and to lives which attest to an intention, an inspiration, an idea at the heart of experience and history which nonetheless transcend experience and history” (Ricoeur 1980, 78). The conjunction of the work’s singularity and communicability is key to understanding how, in light of the fittingness of creative endeavors that make claims on us, mimesis “is ahead of our concept of reference, the real, and truth” (Ricoeur 1991, 153). Why, Ricoeur asks, “should we not say that the univocity of truth is exploded by mimesis—to the point that it indicates this fitness, this appropriateness” (1991, 153) of ways of rendering the world in the manners and styles that only individual works can? Should we therefore not also ask if the notion of testimony for which the conjunction of the work’s singularity and communicability is a model similarly places the fittingness of moral and political acts vis-à-vis the demands of the situations calling for them under the aegis of the kind of judgment in which the individual case summons the rule? By reversing the direction of determinative judgment, where a particular case is subsumed under a universal, the Kantian concept of reflective judgment puts into play the singularity and claim to universality appropriate to situations

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in which the case summons its rule. The exemplary value of a work or act, I previously suggested at the end of the last section, inheres in the work or act’s fittingness in response to a question, problem, or crisis as the artist or agent apprehended it. The fit of the work or act as regards the demands of the situation for which it constitutes the solution is the spring of the work or act’s force in breaking a path for new and different ways of inscribing our lives in the web of human affairs. Ricoeur reminds us that the effect of being drawn to follow the example of an exemplary moral act or life—that of St. Francis of Assisi, for instance—is “really the equivalent of the communicability of the work of art” (Ricoeur et al. 1998, 182–36). In the sphere where reflective judgment is in play, the communicability of the rule exemplified by the individual case thus rests in part on the reader, listener, spectator, or agent’s apprehension of the fit of the work or act. Thoughts, feelings, and modes of moral and political conduct to which exemplary works and acts singularly attest consequently constitutes the stakes of the claim to universality of the rule to which each alone gives voice. To what extent might a way of thinking about truth initiated by Ricoeur’s analysis of the role of imagination in the metaphorical process be applied to other domains of our engagement with the world? Aesthetic experience’s lateral transposition onto the planes of ethics and politics provides an indication of the degree to which a work’s power to renew the field of our experiences in accordance with the world it unfolds has a corollary analog in acts attesting to our power to begin something new. The revolutionary’s audacity in daring to act is comparable to that of the artist who, in responding to a problem, dilemma, or crisis as she apprehends it, produces this work. The power of invention in artistic creation accordingly has a counterpart in the capacity to reply in fitting ways to the demands of the situations in which we find ourselves. The parallel between artistic endeavors and acts that elsewhere I have attributed to their exemplary value has a limit in cases where the choice in the field of action is between gray and gray and not black and white (Savage 2021). Phronesis consequently differs from the artist’s power of invention with regard to its field of application and in light of the occasions calling for tragic wisdom. The ontological constitution of human being as always already in medias res is both the limit and the condition of the freedom inhering in our power to begin something new. The truth to which works and acts attest through surpassing the real from within is accordingly one that is fitting to the intermediary being that we are. The field of application indicated first by the referential significance of the metaphorical process and then by the way that mimesis explodes any univocal conception of truth extends beyond that opened by aesthetic experience’s

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lateral transposition onto the ethical and political planes. By drawing on the thesaurus of legal rulings comprising a system of law, for example, the verdict and sentence handed down at the end of a trial is one that must be seen to be appropriate to the situation to which it applies. Within the context of the juridical syllogism, the legal norm or rule comprises the major premise, while the facts of the case comprise the minor premise. The individuals involved and the set of circumstances in which the violation of the law occurred, however, are unique in each case. The public recognition of the suitability of procedural rulings and of the outcome of a trial is critical to the citizenry’s belief in the juridical system’s authority. Just as legal precedents acquire their normative value and force through the application of the rules exemplified by each, the fittingness of the judgment concluding the trial confers its note of rightness on the judiciary’s claim to legitimacy as representative of the state’s reasonable character. The status of historians’ representations of the past is yet a further indication of the extent to which claims to truth acquire their force in accordance with our intermediary condition. By “standing for” the past, the historian’s representation of it “as it really was” preserves the metaphorical structure of the “as” appropriate to the historical being that we are. The strategic compact between memory and forgetting that too often has been deployed to justify the violence of imperialist regimes runs counter to the duty to do justice to the past in this regard. The mode of truth commensurate with the historians’ representations as “standing for” the past is one for which the duty to remember is paramount. Taking these representations as true under the aegis of the idea of justice’s federating force thus turns the duty to remember toward the liberation of all. This liberatory project remains a real possibility thanks to the power of imagination at work in works, words, deeds, and acts that break new paths through surpassing the real from within.

References Goodman, Nelson (1968), Languages of Art, Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc. Dufrenne, Mikel (1973), The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, trans. Edward S. Casey et al., Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Heidegger, Martin (1962), Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, New York: Harper and Row. Heidegger, Martin (1971), Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter, New York: Harper and Row. Heidegger, Martin (1975), Der Satz vom Grund, Pfullingen: Günther Neske.

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Joy, Morny (1988), “Derrida and Ricoeur: A Case of Mistaken Identity (and Difference),” The Journal of Religion, 68 (4): 508–26. Ricoeur, Paul (1976), Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press. Ricoeur, Paul (1977), The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and S. J. John Costello, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ricoeur, Paul (1978), “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination and Feeling,” in Sheldon Sacks (ed.), On Metaphor, 143–59, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Ricoeur, Paul (1980), Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Lewis Seymour Mudge, Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Ricoeur, Paul (1984), Time and Narrative, Vol. 1, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, Paul (1986), Fallible Man: Philosophy of the Will, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, New York: Fordham University Press. Ricoeur, Paul (1991), A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdés, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ricoeur, Paul et al. (1998), Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, trans. Kathleen Blamey, New York: Columbia University Press. Ricoeur, Paul (2000), The Just, trans. David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Savage, Roger W. H. (2019), “Reason, Action, and the Creative Imagination,” Social Imaginaries, 5 (1) Special Issue: Varieties of Creative Imagination: 161–180. Savage, Roger W. H. (2021), Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Anthropology as Hermeneutics of Liberation: Freedom, Justice, and the Power of Imagination, New York: Routledge.

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Imagination and Images between Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy Marco Arienti

The concepts of imagination and images are often intuitively considered as somehow related. On the one hand, when asked for instance to recall through our imagination the face of a friend, we might be willing to describe what we are doing as having “a mental image.” On the other hand, the scene depicted by a pictorial image like a painting or a photograph seems to enjoy a status analogous to imaginary objects: after all, such a scene is not actually present in front of us, unlike the image’s physical surface in paper or canvas, or the wall on which it hangs. Although it seems unquestionable that when we look at a picture some scene appear to us, we would hardly concede that we see it in the sense of witnessing it. Rather, the picture seems to allow us to make as if we were seeing the depicted scene. Many philosophers have addressed images and imagination together, as cognate phenomena. In this chapter, I will compare the reflections developed within two particular philosophical approaches, namely phenomenology and analytic philosophy. The authors I will take into account are, on the one hand, the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl (2006) and Jean-Paul Sartre (2004), and, on the other hand, the analytic philosophers Gregory Currie (1995, 1999 with Catharine Abell, 2004) and Kendall Walton (1990, 1992). My intention is to show that, despite taking philosophical stances often regarded as competing, these authors share important insights about the relation between imagination and images. Such insights can be mapped into three main issues, which will occupy the three main sections of this chapter. The first section will address phenomenologists’ and analytic philosophers’ views about the nature of mental images, conceived as acts of bringing to

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mind some object by reproducing or simulating a perceptual experience of it, and not as some sort of inner pictures to be inspected by some “inner eye.” The second section will highlight the interactions of imagination and the real world: for both phenomenologists and analytic philosophers, rather than simply triggering our imagination, what we actually perceive is in many situations permeated by it, as it happens for example when we play games or enjoy art. This point paves the way to examine, in the third section, the link between imagination and pictorial images: the phenomenologists and analytic philosophers I consider claim that imagination transforms our perception of the physical marked surfaces of the picture, to make a scene appear in it.

Mental Images Phenomenologists like Husserl or Sartre and analytic philosophers like Abell and Currie appeal to different philosophical methodologies to understand mental images. For what concerns phenomenology, Husserl and Sartre pursue a descriptive approach, as they offer a theoretical framework to describe the consciousness which a subject can have of a certain object, for example the Tour Eiffel. With respect to analytic philosophy, Abell and Currie give a functionalist definition of mental images, that is a definition in terms of the functional role they play within an individual’s cognitive system. This specifically means to clarify mental images by examining their “causal relations to sensory stimulations, other mental states, and behavior” (Levin 2008). Despite this divergence in approach, however, the two philosophical positions come to the same conclusion that mental images amount to reproductions or simulations of perceptual experiences. For both phenomenology and analytic philosophy, this view results from dismissing a conception of mental images in terms of internal replicas of objects, available to be observed by an hypothetical mind’s eye. The phenomenological tradition in fact rejects the so-called illusion of immanence, which characterizes mental images by using qualifications and categories normally applied to physical stand-ins for objects. In the case of Abell and Currie, their theory of mental images is not committed to what they label “pictorialism,” namely the idea that mental images rely on some sort of internal picture-like representations of objects.

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Phantasy and Imaging Consciousness as Reproduced or Quasi Perceptions In their phenomenological enquiries, both Husserl and Sartre have distanced themselves from the earlier tradition of philosophical and empirical studies, which framed the phenomenon of mental images in terms of having full-blown copies of objects in the mind. This “naïve interpretation” (Husserl 2006, 22), as Husserl labels it, is in fact vitiated by what Sartre calls “the illusion of immanence” (2004, 5). Following the naïve interpretation, a mental image of an object like the Tour Eiffel is conceived as a sort of internal picture stored within the mind, in the same way as the actual Tour Eiffel occupies a certain location in the external world (specifically, the Champ de Mars in Paris). The mental image is not equal to the Tour itself, and yet both of them are treated as existing objects, although of a different kind, to which someone can turn their attention. Husserl and Sartre object to this view that a mental image should not be characterized as an object available to the mind’s eye. In Husserl’s words, the mental image “truly does not exist, which means not only that it has no existence outside my consciousness, but also that it has no existence inside my consciousness; it has no existence at all” (2006, 23). The phenomenological approach defines mental images in terms of the intentional attitude that a conscious individual can entertain toward objects. Such attitude consists of a distinctive type of consciousness which Husserl denominates “phantasy” (ivi, p. 1) or “phantasy consciousness” (ivi, p. 93), and Sartre calls “image” or “imaging consciousness” (2004, 7).1 As Sartre writes, “the word ‘image’ could only indicate therefore the relation of consciousness to the object; in other words, it is a certain way in which the object appears to consciousness, or, if one prefers, a certain way in which consciousness presents to itself an object” (ibidem). This point of view allows to outline the distinctive character of mental images in comparison to other forms of getting acquainted with objects, such as perceiving them. A perception of the Tour Eiffel and a phantasy image of the Tour Eiffel are not directed at two different objects, such as the Tour Eiffel and some Tour Eiffel-image, but rather they are two different intentional attitudes directed at the same object, that is, to the Tour Eiffel. For Husserl and Sartre, both perception and mental images are intuitive forms of consciousness, because they give us an object by making manifest aspects of its sensory appearance. However, they differ in their positional character, which allows to make claims about the reality of the appearing object. While perception posits such object as

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actually present, mental images do not posit it as actually present (Husserl 2006, 18). There is nonetheless a difference between how Husserl and Sartre spell out the positionality of mental images. According to Husserl, phantasy simply does not advance any positional claim with respect to the imagined object. In his words, it is a “neutralized” or “non-positional” attitude: rather than positing the unreality of the imagined object, it sidesteps entirely the question of its reality. By contrast, Sartre outlines image consciousness as a genuinely positional consciousness. Although he concedes that the image can “‘neutralize’ itself ” (2004, 12) by saying nothing about the existence of an object, this is only a possibility among other positions of the imaged object “as nonexistent, or as absent, or as existing elsewhere” (ibidem). What is fundamentally common to each of these latter positional modes is that the presence of the intended object is denied. Thus, at the heart of Sartre’s image consciousness, there is not disinterestedness about whether the intended object is or not real, as it is for Husserl, but instead a negation of the object as a present reality. As Sartre expresses his view, “the imaging consciousness posits its object as a nothingness” (ivi, p. 11). In the light of these considerations, phantasy images are characterized as making present objects which are not themselves present. Following Husserl, in fact, in phantasy an experiential act such as the perception of some object is reproduced in absence of the object; in this way, phantasy offers re-presentations of objects which could be experienced perceptually but are not there. From this point of view, Husserl often talks about phantasy in terms of “quasiperception,” or “as-if ” perception: the given object “is as though it were there, but only as though.” For instance, a phantasy image makes the Tour Eiffel present by reproducing a perceptual experience of the Tour. Differently from such a perception, through the image the Tour does not appear as being actually present; yet, the Tour still appears as if it were perceived. A related idea is outlined by Sartre with his concept of quasi-observation, which, in his words, amounts to “an observation that does not teach anything” (2004, 10). Like a perception, a mental image shows an object under a certain aspect of its appearance, corresponding to a certain perspective on it, for instance its front, its back, or its right and left sides. However, in perception, sessions of active observation extended over time always enable to progressively reveal new previously concealed aspects of an object: in Sartre’s own words, the perceived object “constantly overflows consciousness” (ibidem). By contrast, the object of a mental image “is never anything more than the consciousness one has of it” (ibidem). A mental image gives immediately to us all the aspects it can possibly

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give of an object, because it can make manifest only those aspects we already know about. For instance, the mental image we have of the Tour Eiffel can only include determinations that we know the Tour has. This means that, differently from perception, we cannot acquire genuinely new information about an object from a mental image of it; in other words, we cannot learn or make discoveries about it.

Imagery as Simulated Perception Within the field of analytic philosophy, Catherine Abell and Gregory Currie have proposed in a joint article (1999) an account of the capacity to have mental images, to which they refer as mental imagery (ivi, p. 431). In the article they call into question a view of imagery which they label as “pictorialism,” defended most notably by Stephen Kosslyn (1994). According to pictorialism, when we entertain a mental image of an object, we mentally represent such an object in a pictorial manner: this sort of internal picture created in our mind thus determines how the object is imagined. In contrast with such conclusion, Abell and Currie suggest that imagery consists in simulating the perception of the object. This idea of mental images as simulated visual perceptions is characterized in functional terms, namely in terms of which role mental images play with respect to an individual’s cognitive capacities. As Abell and Currie write, mental images provide “recreations of or substitutes for the perceptual experience of scenes and events” (ivi, p. 433). In this light, a mental image of the Tour Eiffel provides a simulated visual experience of the Tour insofar as it plays a similar role as the actual visual experience of the Tour, with respect to tasks like gathering information about how the Tour looks. The job of imagery thus is to bring us to consider, in absence of a certain object, how such object would look if we were seeing it. For mental images to perform this function, they must bear structural similarities with episodes of visual perception: as Currie writes in another paper, “the ways we notice, attend to, and get information from visual images are very like the ways we notice, attend to, and get information from things actually seen” (1995, 28). Such simulation-based approach does not necessarily imply Kosslyn’s pictorialist view of imagery. In fact, Abell and Currie’s understanding of simulation only involves a similarity between the main characteristics of the perceptual and the imaginative experiences, regardless of what causes these experiences. This does not require that what the two experiences have in

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common has to be explained by assuming that the objects of the two experiences should be structurally similar, just like an actual visible object and its pictorial representation. In Abell and Currie’s own words, “a pictorialist claims that imagery simulates, not merely vision, but the objects of vision. So a pictorialist is, if you like, a super simulationist. But super simulationism is not obligatory for a simulationist” (Abell and Currie, p. 437). Therefore, the simulationist account does not force to conceive mental images as picture-like representations of object.

Imagination and the Perceptual World For both phenomenology and analytic philosophy, imagination is not limited to mental images. As they understand it, the notion encompasses in fact also many other activities involving some engagement with material objects. In these cases, absent objects are brought to mind on the basis of what is present in our perceptual world. This insight is acknowledged by Husserl, who uses the term “imagination” as synonymous of “image consciousness,” in line with the original meaning of the Latin word imaginatio, to define how “a perceived object is designed to present and is capable of presenting another object” (p. 19). From an analytic perspective, Kendall Walton writes that “a conception of imaginative experiences as, in general, free-floating fantasies disconnected from the real world would be narrow and distorted [. . .] Most imaginings are in one way or another dependent on or aimed at or anchored in the real world” (1990, 21). Imagination thus is not utterly unconstrained and independent from perception, but rather deeply entangled with it. Since they are based on our shared perceptual reality, imaginative attitudes can also be taken in truly social contexts, as in childhood play or with the enjoyment of art, and not just as solitary exercises. In this direction, Husserl, Sartre, Currie, and Walton all point out a continuity between imagination, representational objects like pictorial images, and practices like pantomimes or games. Their idea is that certain kinds of perceptual objects, like pictorial surfaces, impersonators, or other kinds of physical standins, can drive our mind toward absent object, providing a sort of “ladder” to our imagination. However, they elaborate on this shared point differently, in the light of their distinct approaches. For instance, while Sartre and Husserl just outline the phenomenological common ground underlying the consciousness of physical pictures, mime or theatrical performances, and mental images,

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Currie aims to advance a more substantial psychological claim about how the imaginative capacity to understand mimetic behavior actually develops from the capacity to recognize pictorial images. Husserl and Walton also shed light on different aspects of how imagination allows us to go beyond what is perceptually given, while still being rooted in the perceptual world. On the one hand, Husserl focuses on the experiential character of this integration: the intervention of phantasy modifies the perception of some object, which comes to be experienced “as if ” it were a different absent object. On the other hand, Walton emphasizes the normative role of certain perceptual objects to direct imagination: within certain representational or ludic contexts, the physical configuration of such objects serves as a basis to prescribe us what to imagine.

The “Image Family” and Perceptual Phantasy In an overview of the various manifestations of imaging consciousness, Sartre includes mental images within a broad “image family” (2004, 17), which encompasses also physical pictorial images, mime imitations, caricatures, rough schematic drawings, pareidoliae, hypnagogic images. The “imaging intention” shared by all the members of this image family has two main characteristics. First, it is directed to an absent object, which is given as an “irreality.” Second, it has a mediated character: the different forms of consciousness within the image family do not present their intended object directly, but only through some “physical or psychic content” (ivi, p. 20) which “must present some analogy with the object in question” (ivi, p. 19). Such content is defined by Sartre an “analogon” (ivi, p. 18) or “analogical representative” (ivi, p. 20) for such object. The difference between the various instances of imaging consciousness lies in the degree to which their analogon is part of the perceptual world, as an observable physical object. In this respect, pictorial images and mental images stand at two extreme ends of a spectrum of progressive degradations in the materiality of the analogon. On the one side, a pictorial image makes an absent object present through a perceivable analogon which significantly resembles that object. As Sartre puts it, the portrait of a person “is, actually, a quasi-person with a quasi-face, etc” (2004, 22): the lines, forms, and colors on the picture surface “strongly organized, almost impose themselves as an image” to viewers (ivi, p. 50). On the opposite side, the analogon of mental images is not even given as an object for consciousness, since it has no “externality” (ivi, p. 53) and no autonomous perceptual reality from the imaging intention. With mental

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images, following Sartre, “when the image consciousness is annihilated [. . .] there remains no sensible residue that can be described” (ibidem). In between these two poles, there is a range of other forms of image consciousness, based on concrete analoga whose perceptual features however do not determine the appearance of the imaged object as forcefully as a pictorial surface does. In these cases, in fact, the material character of the analogon gradually “becomes more and more impoverished” (ibidem): with regard to the examples analyzed by Sartre, impersonators for mime and line schemes for schematic drawings are still quite close to physical pictorial images, while spots on walls for pareidoliae and entoptic light for hypnagogic images side more with mental images. As the correspondence between the physical analogon and the image becomes increasingly weaker, the imaging intention becomes more and more independent from the supporting perception, until, in the case of mental images, it constitutes its object in a way which is totally free from any perceptual constraint. Just like Sartre’s image family, also Husserl’s notion of perceptual phantasy (2006, 605) covers contexts in which a perceptual object originates a distinctive consciousness directed at an absent object. This distinctive kind of consciousness is in place most notably in the experience of artworks. A paradigmatic example offered by Husserl is theater. When a theatrical play is staged, the actors embody certain fictional characters and make certain fictional situations perceivable to the audience. If for instance the actress playing Juliet beats her chest and lets herself slowly fall on the ground, the audience regards these actions as the actions of Juliet stabbing herself. Pictorial images provide another instance of this attitude, especially when contemplated aesthetically: in that circumstance, we detach from the world of our actual experience to “immerse ourselves in the image,” and “live in the image world” disclosing itself on the physical picture surface. In perceptual phantasy, a phantasy consciousness directed at some absent object is intertwined with what we actually see, so that our perception takes up a different, novel value. However, this does not amount to mistake the object actually present before us for another object, as for example when we mistake a wax mannequin for a real person. Perceptual phantasy is not an instance of perceptual illusion, because, contrary to this latter, it does not involve any belief or position concerning the presence or absence of the intended object. Instead, such object is given “as if ” it were present, by virtue of a suspended attitude typical of phantasy. To put it with the words of Javier Enrique Carreño Cobos, “perceptual phantasy covers the manifold ways in which we can ‘see

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without believing in what we see’” (2013, 152). In fact, if perceptual phantasy amounted to two conflicting positional acts of consciousness, there would be an incompatibility which would necessarily result in the suppression of one of them; instead, the “as-if ” consciousness of the absent object enriches the perceptual consciousness of the present object without disrupting it.

Pretense and Games of Make-Believe Analytic authors also acknowledge an important relation between the perceptual world and imagination. An example is provided by Currie’s account of the origins of pretense, namely the imaginative ability involved in our engagement with fictional works, games, and other make-believe activities. Currie’s hypothesis is that the developmental basis of pretense behavior might be the same experiential attitude underlying the recognition of pictorial images (2004). A widely accepted characterization of this latter attitude has been given by Richard Wollheim in terms of seeing-in (1987). Seeing-in defines the non-illusory visual experience of discerning the figure of some object while seeing a marked surface, such as seeing a dancer in a frosty glass (ivi, p. 46). For Wollheim, the same kind of experiences also characterize our engagement with pictorial images. For instance, when we look at a painting of the Tour Eiffel, we see the Tour Eiffel in the canvas, which means that we have simultaneous visual awareness of both the canvas and the Tour Eiffel. In Currie’s own view, what acts as the link between seeing-in and pretense is the idea of mimetic behavior. Just as we see things in pictures, in fact, we equally can “see things in mimetic act” (2004, 221): we can readily recognize the actions or situations which are imitated through simple movements or rough gestures, as it happens for instance in the case of mime. In turn, many activities governed by pretense, like children games or theater, are based on the performance of mimetic actions. The connection between pretense, mimetic behavior, and seeing-in underlines how, in certain contexts, what is imagined depends on the characteristics of relevant acts or actual objects. It is because certain movements are performed that we are motivated to imagine certain actions or situations, rather than others. According to Kendall Walton, objects in our surroundings can play the role of “prompters” of our imaginings: they can induce us to imagine something “by being perceived or otherwise experienced or cognized” (1990, 22). The perception of an object here directs the perceiver’s imagination, as it happens with mimetic actions in Currie’s theory. In Walton’s example, Heather, a kid walking in the woods, might be prompted by a tree stump, in virtue of its shape, to imagine a

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bear. This prompting is the first move of what he calls a game of make-believe: an imagination-based practice in which certain actual actions or situations involving certain actual objects, such as seeing a tree stump or running away from it, count as imaginary actions or situations involving imaginary objects, such as spotting or running away from a bear. In most games of make-believe, the prompter itself becomes the object of the prompted imaginings: Heather’s imagining, for example, is not just originated by the stump, but it directly concerns the stump, which is imagined to be a bear. Games of make-believe, nonetheless, require more than just the fact that an actual object elicits imaginings in a perceiver. As the notion of game suggests, they have to be governed by rules. It is only by virtue of such rules that an actual object can fix which imaginings are appropriate for the game. For instance, the basic rule of Heather’s bear-game prescribes to imagine seeing a bear every time a tree stump is seen. What determines the relevant rules characterizing a game of make-believe are the actual features which a certain object has. These features in fact make the object suitable for a determinate game of make-believe. The stump is suitable for a bear-game by virtue of its shape and its dimension; because of those same features, it cannot be used as sword in a knight-game. The rules, which may or may not be explicitly stipulated, are called by Walton principles of generation, since they state how the object generates what the participants have to imagine. In virtue of these principles of generation, the object involved in a game of make-believe works as a prop, whose function is to support a game of makebelieve by mandating imaginings. Crucially, for Walton, the notion of prop in a game of make-believe can suitably apply also to representations like novels, pictures, movies, or theatrical plays, because they are designed to prescribe to imagine certain things by virtue of their relevant actual characteristics. A theatrical play for instance is meant to prescribe its audience to imagine, on the basis of what the actors do on stage, that their actions are different actions performed by fictional characters. As I will show in detail in the next section, also pictorial images prescribe, by virtue of how their surfaces look, to have a peculiar kind of imaginings.

Imagination and Pictorial Images In line with their general point about the interaction between imagination and perception, the phenomenologists and analytic philosophers considered so far

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elucidate the experience of pictorial images as a particular instance of such an interplay. According to them, pictorial images involve an imaginative shift, which transforms the perception of the physical picture surface into the experience of an absent scene. This does not mean that, to bring that scene into view, we need to form a mental image of it, based on but nonetheless distinct from what we perceive. Rather, our perception of the surface is saturated by imagination. Each author articulates this intuition in his own way. For Sartre, an imaging intention gives a novel “sense” (2004, 50) to the original perception of the picture surface, by turning its appearance into the appearance of a scene. Similarly, Husserl argues that perceptual phantasy transforms our experience of the picture at the level of “apperception”: since “the stock of what is genuinely perceived is common” (2006, 619) between the surface and the scene appearing in it, what changes is the whole meaning of our perception, re-framed so as to make visible an absent scene. Finally, following Walton’s theory of pictorial experience as “visual game of make-believe,” spectators imagine their experience of the pictorial surface to be the experience of the depicted scene.

Pictorial Experience as an Imaginative Modification of a Surface’s Perception According to both Husserl and Sartre, pictorial images give rise to an intuitive consciousness which does not deliver its objects as actually present, just like the consciousness of mental images. Differently from this latter kind of consciousness, however, the former is grounded on the perception of a material surface. Husserl defines the consciousness of pictorial images as “image consciousness,” to distinguish it from phantasy consciousness. According to him, image consciousness makes present an absent object, or in his terminology an “image subject,” through the mediation of another appearing object also not given as present, namely the “image object.” An image of the Tour Eiffel for instance re-presents the Tour Eiffel by virtue of the appearance of a high slim A-shaped tower. Such image object in turn is made visible through an actually present and perceivable image bearer with certain physical characteristics, such as the suitably marked canvas of a painting. Husserl appeals to his notion of perceptual phantasy to account for how the image object, despite not being perceptually present itself, can appear from the material bearer. The key consideration supporting such suggestion concerns the clash between the perception of the material image carrier and the appearance

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of the image object. On the one hand, the image object becomes visible starting from the same visual sensations originated by the surface of the picture. On the other hand, however, such image object is not visually integrated with the real environment in which the surface is located, but rather it appears to disclose an entirely separate space. As Husserl points out, the image object bears “the characteristic of unreality, of conflict with the actual present” (2006, 51); it is “a mere figment” (ibidem). This conflict however is not a conflict between a false perception and a veridical perception, which could not be retained together at once. When spectators contemplate the image object, they remain perceptually aware of the surface as part of their actual surroundings. Consequently, no confusion between image and reality can seriously arise. Instead, the consciousness of the image object is simply a modification or, to use Husserl’s suggestive term, an “irritation” (2006, 613) within the flow of our perception. As Patrick Eldridge remarks, “in regarding an image we do not shift between streams of experience but merely shift our attitude within the single stream of perceptual experience” (2018, 564). What is before our eyes just passes from the mode of actual presence, corresponding to the perception of the image carrier, to a neutralized position corresponding to the appearance of the image object. This shift is operated by perceptual phantasy, which allows the image object to become visible “as if ” the depicted scene were before us. Since for Husserl phantasy is anchored to the perception of a physical carrier, the appearance of the image object depends on the perceptual characteristics of that carrier, namely on how the picture surface is actually marked and colored. At the same time, yet, our perception is in turn changed by phantasy; this latter radically transforms the appearance of the perceived object, which is not taken at its face value anymore, but acquires a novel meaning. The surface of an image is not seen as a mere bunch of marks and colors, but provides a view on a scene unfolding within a three-dimensional space. Sartre too stresses that the surface of a picture cannot work as an image simply by virtue of its mere material features. With respect to what it stricto sensu offers to perception, a picture is just a canvas or a piece of paper covered with marks and color patches. An imaging intention is always necessary for a marked surface to become an image of some object: the intention “animates” (2004, 18) the surface’s features, so that “instead of existing for themselves, in a free state, they are integrated into a new form” (ivi, p. 20), and the imaged object can appear. To take Sartre’s example, “if I see Pierre in the photo, it is because I put him there. And how could I have put him there if not by a particular intention?” (ivi, p. 19)

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Pictorial Experience as Visual Game of Make-Believe In the framework of his theory of make-believe, Walton understands pictures as props in visual games of make-believe (ivi, p. 293), since, on the basis of how their surfaces are marked, they demand spectators not just to imagine about the depicted scene, but more precisely to imagine to see such a scene. Yet, so formulated, this claim can give only a partial definition of pictorial experience. In fact, it might equally accommodate other kinds of games of make-believe not involving pictures, for example reading a passage from a novel which explicitly invites readers to imagine the visual appearance of some scene. To avoid this problem, Walton puts forward a more elaborated position: a visual game of make-believe consists in imagining the actual experience of seeing the picture surface to be an imaginary experience of seeing the depicted scene. For instance, seeing a picture of the Tour Eiffel amounts to imagining our experience of the surface to be the experience of seeing the Tour Eiffel. The crucial point here is that it is not an object, namely the surface itself, that is imagined to be another object, namely the depicted scene; it is the experience of an object, namely our seeing of the surface, that is imagined to be another experience of another object, namely an experience as if we saw a certain scene. From this point of view, imagination transforms our perception of the physical picture into an experience of the depicted scene. This happens because for Walton our imagining is not just elicited by our perception, but rather it blends with such perception to give rise to “a perceptual experience that is also an imaginative one” (1992, 138). Thus, a visual game of make-believe does not amount to a succession of two separate experiences, namely a perceptual and an imaginative one, but to one single complex experience in which perception is “colored by imagining” (1992, 138). Such experience allows for a scene to become visible in the marked surface of a picture.

Conclusion Both phenomenology and analytic philosophy aim to capture the idea that imagination and images give us access to more than what is immediately present in our surroundings. Yet, one might wonder whether and why it is worth to explore these phenomena across two so different philosophical traditions, given the divergences in their approach, as well as in their theoretical interests and assumptions. Could such enquiry offer a more interesting perspective than a

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mere exercise of comparative philosophy, in order to understand imagination and images? I think there are at least two reasons in support of pursuing this cross-cutting investigation. First, notwithstanding their specific differences, phenomenological and analytic accounts come to similar general conclusions about imagination and images. Both of them maintain that imagination enables us to replicate our real experiences in an “offline” dimension, and that it can be intertwined with perceivable objects, like marked surface, so as to open up new ways of experiencing them, for example as pictorial images of absent scenes. The fact that two otherwise competing approaches provide broadly convergent insights about some issue, seems to suggest that such insights have a substantial appeal independently from subscribing to other specific philosophical commitments or assumptions. Second, a joint analysis can be valuable not only because of what phenomenology and analytic philosophy have in common, but also their differences. Each of the two approaches in fact can draw attention on philosophical issues which are overlooked by the other, broadening and enriching the scope of the account with something that would otherwise become missing. For instance, while analytic philosophy can provide conceptual tools to understand imaginative attitudes from a psychological point of view, by defining them in terms of their function as mental capacities, phenomenology can urge not to neglect the significance of imagination with respect to our firstperson lived experience. Regarding pictorial images, instead, on the one hand Walton’s notion of visual game of make-believe allows to accommodate pictures as public representations of absent scene, since the principles of generation fix which scene the spectators participating in the game should imagine when they stare at the perceivable surface; on the other hand, Husserl’s idea of perceptual phantasy reflects how the experience of such representations seems both distinctive from and akin to other instances of perceptual or imaginative experiences.

References Abell, C., and G. Currie (1999), “Internal and External Pictures,” Philosophical Psychology, 12 (4): 429–45. Carreño Cobos, J. E. (2013), “The Many Senses of Imagination and the Manifestation of Fiction: A View from Husserl’s Phenomenology of Phantasy,” Husserl Studies, 29 (2): 143–62.

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Currie, G. (1995), “Visual Imagery as the Simulation of Vision,” Mind and Language, 10 (1–2): 25–44, 1–2. Currie, G. (2004), “Pretence and Rationality: The Case of Non-Human Animals,” in Art and Minds, 133–42, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eldridge, P. (2018), “Depicting and Seeing-In: The ‘Sujet’ in Husserl’s Phenomenology of Images,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 17 (3): 555–78. Husserl, E. (2006), Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory, trans. J. Brough, Dordrecht: Springer. Kosslyn, S. (1994), Image and Brain, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Levin, S. (2008), “‘Functionalism’,” in E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato​.stanford​.edu​/entries​/functionalism/. Sartre, J. P. (2004), The Imaginary, trans. J. Webber, London: Routledge. Walton, K. (1990), Mimesis as Make-Believe, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Walton, K. (1992), “Seeing-In and Seeing Fictionally,” in Marvelous Images, 133–42, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wollheim, R. (1987), Painting as an Art, London: Thames and Hudson.

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Part IV

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Why Imagination Needs Socratic Ignorance Cathrine Hasse

Introduction Today, when we meet robots in movies like Star Trek, Star Wars, and more recently in the movies Ex Machina and Her, we experience them as lively intelligent humanlike machine creatures. Even if we recognize these movies as fiction, they merge imperceptibly with live footages of humanoid robots having conversations with people in real time. Sophia, the humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong; the Japanese Geminoid HI and Geminoid F; or Erica robots developed by Hiroshi Ishiguro at the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communications Laboratory in Kyoto, Japan, seem just as lively as any Star Wars robot. However, behind the lively robots and their intelligent conversions on-screen, we either find a simple technology like a prefabricated “script” or a person who operates the robot and speaks through it behind a screen (e.g., Sorenson et al. 2019, 155). Nevertheless, images of talking, lively, very humanlike robotic machines have spread like bushfires in the social media, proliferated on internet-based platforms and in movies. Many believe these humanoids to be a true depiction of the state of the art in robotics. Even if information is available through the same media channels about how humanlike robots are, they are mere machines, presented as lively through media manipulations; this information does not seem to change our perception of robots as humanlike (Hasse 2020). These depictions of lively robots are visions of futures—where-to imaginaries—rather than real beings. They serve as roadmaps for perceptions of future design (e.g., Hasse 2015c). The idea of having truly humanoid robots to serve our needs as manifested through new digital and social media landscapes has become part of what Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim have called Dreamscapes of Modernity (Jasanoff and Kim 2015). They regard these imaginaries from a helicopter perspective

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as sociotechnical imaginaries tied to societal distributions of power. Yet, the dreamscapes always have a human component. People dream, imagine, perceive, and create visions of “where-to” go. The “where-to” imaginaries seem to function as a new kind of imaginaries that grew up with the development of modern technologies and their demands for constant innovation. However, like other kinds of imaginaries, where-to imaginaries are tied to experiences with a material world. The concept of imaginaries comprises of an interpretation of the present, which sometimes connects with a vision of the future. Depending on our vision of the future, we have, in the present, a way of interpreting the world. Adherents of a utopian view of the future tend to interpret increasing automation as positive, and believe that this brings humanity closer to the desired future as visualized in humanlike robots. Such interpretations and imaginaries can shape our interactions with present-day robots (Sorenson et al. 2019), our regulation of present-day robots (Robertson 2014), and the design and understanding of robots in our common life-worlds (Hasse 2020). In this contribution, I argue that we need a Socratic Ignorance that can guide us in today’s reality and expand our space for new fantastic visions in three kinds of imaginaries. The first is “where-to” Imaginaries that are linked to fake news and “selling” a vision of the future as a condition for technological research projects or grant applications. Robot imaginaries are the prime example of this kind. Additional kinds of imaginaries make use of an existing reality: fantasy imaginaries and realist imaginaries. All three types of imaginaries are based on available cultural resources that change with human activities and technological developments. I build on arguments already put forward by my phenomenological colleagues that new technologies never just function as tools. Rather, humanmachine relationships are mutually constitutive, in ways that fundamentally change both technology and humans. Moreover, new technologies can change our imaginaries and their function. In philosophy of technology, and especially postphenomenology, “imagination is conceived as tightly linked to perception” (Wellner 2022, 189). Like Galit Wellner, I contend that perceptions and imaginaries change with new technologies (Wellner 2018) and bodily engagements with technology. I shall first explain the differences between “where-to” fantasy and realist imaginary. Then I shall expand with Don Ihde on how imaginaries have come to acquire a new function in the engineering science as a “where-to” imaginary. Next, I shall discuss and unfold a distinction between “where-to”

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realist and fantasy imaginaries with examples from an anthropological perspective referring to our research in robot laboratories all over Europe and a fieldwork involving shadow leopards in Cameroun. Finally, I shall explain what I mean by Socratic Ignorance and conclude that Socratic Ignorance is needed because of technological developments that deliberately blur our “where-to” fantasy and realist imaginaries, not least in robotics, and at the same time may lead us to overlook a fantastic world that exists without modern technology. To support this claim, I refer to the research in humanlike robots that I have been conducting with my colleagues in Denmark for the past twenty years.

Recombining Reality If we follow the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), imaginaries before social media could be understood in at least two ways, which both draw on an existing material reality: fantasy imaginaries and realist imaginaries. The former deals with a world many of us meet in dreams, art, and poetic tales; the latter is a reality that we have not experienced, yet we expect it to exist—now or in the past. According to Vygotsky, imagination is a basic function of human life, always firmly grounded in present environments, but at the same time also affects our future cultural environments. Not only do we store in our embodied brains what we have previously learned (memory), but we can also make use of these stored learned elements as potentials for new combinations and creative reworking in our perceptions of material surroundings (Hasse 2020). Our repertoire for making new connections is inherently cultural as far as the previously learned elements can be combined in new ways and are tied to particular cultural experiences. Anthropology has presented many examples of how humans make use of different cultural resources when they perceive the world (e.g., cultural differences in how it is natural to eat, sit, walk, and use instruments). We use these cultural resources when we project ourselves into imaginaries of the future. In other words, we are continuously recombining existing cultural resources in a creative manner to make new imaginaries. Vygotsky rejects the view that fantasy imaginary is not connected to reality. He identifies several basic ways in which the operation of imagination is associated with reality. I shall deal with the first two here, namely those concerning fantasy and realist imaginaries.

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First, in fantasy everything we make use of in imagination is “always based on elements taken from reality, from a person’s previous experience. It would be a miracle indeed if imagination could create something out of nothing or if it had other sources than past experience for its creations” (Vygotsky 2004, 13). Fantasy imaginaries appear in poetry, literature, fairy tales, legends, myths, and dreams and may incorporate strange things such as witches, flying carpets, humans with lion heads, or humanlike machines equipped with emotions and a creativity of their own. They are the result of our creative constructions, which are “nothing other than a new combination of elements that have ultimately been extracted from reality” (Vygotsky 2004, 13). Even if real elements are used— such as carpets and old women—their new combinations into flying carpets and witches are often recognized as belonging to fairy tales. Second, in realist imaginary, reality and imaginaries can be connected in a different way that is not a fantastic, but taken to be real: The second linkage between fantasy and reality . . . involves a more complex association, not between the elements of an imaginary structure and reality, but between the final product of imagination and some complex real phenomenon. When on the basis of study and stories of historians or travel, I construct a picture for myself of the French Revolution or the African desert, then in both cases the picture is the result of creative activity of the imagination. It does not reproduce what I perceived in my previous experience, but creates new combinations from that experience. (Vygotsky 2004, 16)

The African desert can be imagined when we combine our real experiences of water, sand, and so on with pictures of enormous spaces, animals that live in deserts and so forth. Such an imagination works by “the association of these elements, the product of imagination itself, not just its elements” and even “corresponds to some real phenomenon” (Ibid). Imagination, especially in the second sense of realist imaginaries, relies on other peoples’ experiences, and broadens our experiences through their experiences. We imagine what we take to be true, because we rely on our own as well as other peoples’ experiences. Vygotsky notes: If no one had ever seen or described the desert or the French revolution, then it would be impossible for us to form an appropriate image of either one. It is only because in these cases my imagination operates not freely, but directed by someone else’s experience, as if according to someone else’s instructions, that we can obtain the result we get in this case, that is, the fact that a product of the imagination corresponds to reality. (Vygotsky 2004, 17)

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For Vygotsky, rich past experiences give rise to rich imaginaries. Children in general have fewer experiences with the cultural environments of the world, and hence their imagination is less rich than that of adults (Hasse 2020). As adults, we draw on the potentials in our cultural surroundings to create new inventions that begin with the accumulated experiences of a cultural community imagining futures together.

Dreaming of Futures In our Western world of today, imaginaries (real and fantasies) have increasingly been seen as instrumental roads to future visions. Don Ihde (2006) has argued that with new technologies our imagination of the futures has also changed. Whereas in the fourteenth century European imagination was about remote places and strange creatures found in unknown parts of the Earth, these visions have gradually receded. Instead, Ihde argues, our collective imaginaries changed into visions of future machines. It guided Western design practices and a new kind of “where-to” imaginaries emerged with new technologies. This process of using technical imaginaries in design processes began around the High Middle Ages, when “a form of techno fantasy . . . began to shape the form of culture in Europe, which in turn pointed towards the saturated technological culture of today” (Ihde 2006, 126). In this period, a new type of imaginaries begins to replace the “organic” and “place-based” imaginaries of the past. Fantasy machines began to appear like ships flying with propellers, or ships that float underwater. Note that at this stage these machines are fantasy imaginaries in the Vygotskyan sense (2004). They recombine the well-known “ship” with the well-known media of “air” as the flying ships in drawings by da Vinci. People knew these machines did not exist, yet they came to be “where-to” visions directing future developments. Ihde explains: “I am hinting that a specific mode of technology-imagination or fantasy began to take hold” (Ihde 2006, 126). Designers of technology began to believe that there is a one-to-one relation between their creative imagination and the future-materialized manifestation and use. This belief is what Ihde terms “the designer fallacy” (2008). It is a false belief because the designer-inventor cannot control the materials needed to give imaginaries physical shape or the many multistable ways a new design can be put to use. This is what Ihde termed as “multistability” (see also Rosenberger 2014). Today future visions are embedded in social media, which inspire

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design processes of “where-to” even if many of these “where-to” imaginaries will never come true.

Questioning Imaginaries with Socratic Ignorance Today, more than in the fourteenth century, we need new ways to interrogate the possible futures promised by technologies in social media. I suggest using the term Socratic Ignorance to denote a certain way of questioning such futures. It is inspired by Plato’s Apology, where we meet Socrates, who is accused of corrupting the youths of Athens by misleading them to not believing in the city’s gods. Furthermore, it seems he has aroused envy in his enemies because the highest authority, the Oracle of Delphi, considers him the wisest man on Earth. He is considered the wisest man, because paradoxically he does not consider himself especially wise. However, as he continues his enquiries into the meaning of the Oracles statement, it gradually dawns on him that while many men (sic!) consider themselves wise, and they are also considered to be wise by other people, Socrates must in fact be wiser because: I am wiser than this man, for it is likely that neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he thinks he knows something, when he does not know, while I do not actually know. I don’t even think that I know. So perhaps in this one minor respect, I am wiser than he is: I don’t think I know what I do not know. (Plato, Apology 21D)

In other translations, Socrates exclaims: “I am wiser in that what I do not know, I do not even suppose that I know” (op​.ci​t. McPherran 2011, 114). In philosophy it has been debated if Socrates were ironic or not when he acknowledged his lack of moral knowledge (e.g., Bett 2011), yet the statement has been taken to be a point of departure for not taking wisdom for granted in order to ask new questions. The way I use Socratic Ignorance is not to ask questions about what we take to be the noble and the good, but rather about how we take for granted what we see in social media. It is a recommendation to meet the world as it comes before our senses with open inquiries and not suppose we know. As noted by Ann Pihlgren: “To be ignorant the Socratic way is to understand that the ideas or the knowledge that one takes for true has to be critically examined and valued” (Pihlgren 2008, 30). In the context of imagination, Socratic Ignorance means that we may think we know what belongs to the real world when we separate fantasy and realist imaginaries, respectively. Anthropology as a

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profession teaches us to question our own assumptions as we learn what matters to others (Hasse 2015b). In my professional life as an anthropologist, the first time I encountered imaginary was as a young anthropologist visiting Cameroun, where I at one point had a conversation with a man in charge of a local museum. I had spotted a small wooden box in a museum display case and asked him what it was. He explained it was a box aiding to catch shadow leopards at night in the villages. Occasionally an evil spirit would come to the village in the shape of a shadow leopard attacking people in their sleep and afflicting them with wounds and illnesses. The only way to get rid of these leopards was to chase them out was by becoming shadow leopards. Thus, the young men in the village would gather and sleep in the hut of the local medicine man who would ask them each to put their mark on a wooden stick. When they went to sleep, he would press the sticks down one by one and in doing so, the young men are transformed into shadow leopards and could hunt the evil spirit away. The man continued in his calm voice to tell me how he had successfully participated in such a hunt. The combination of human, shadow, and animal may seem like a fantasy imaginary but for the people I visited this was reality, not even a realist imaginary. This kind of reality can, to a Western perceiver, be even more fantastic than the “where-to” robots envisioned by engineers. The anthropologist Tim Ingold has argued that our false ways of separating the real world from fantasy began with modern science, and especially with the figure of Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626). Bacon preached to separate fantasy from what could be measured scientifically in the real world thereby “cutting the imagination adrift from its earthly moorings and leaving it to float like a mirage above the road we tread in our material life” (Ingold 2013, 735). Ingold criticized contemporary societies for their firm belief in standardized technology and science, and notes that we have forgotten how diverse the world can be. Even if a scientist cannot pin the dragons, witches, and shadow leopards down in taxonomic representations in the natural sciences, they still come about as real experiences to some people in particular cultural environments. They are not signs of the “where-to” creativity or future visions so desperately sought for in modern capitalist civilization. Socratic Ignorance may help us acknowledging that shadow leopards, dragons, and witches may not be fantasy but a reality in people’s lives. By questioning our own assumptions of what is real or unreal we may realize that what we find fantasy in our cultural world, may be a lived reality in other people’s worlds such as witches or shadow leopards in parts of Africa. They are, as Ingold (2013) argues, a topos in the world of participation. They

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are just everyday living experiences. Socratic Ignorance can make us realize the importance of this kind of cultural diversity.

Imaginaries in Robotics as a Business Model Our research in robotics has revealed the wealth of images of humanoid robots on social media, which we accept as “realist” imaginaries until we meet humanoid robots ourselves. When we do meet robots face-to-face—or rather body-to-body—we become disappointed because the social media robots do not correspond to reality (Hasse 2015c). The robot designers have a very ambivalent relation to media representations of their robots. Although “fake,” they embrace the public realist imaginaries as drivers of their funding efforts to finance the development of new technologies. These funding efforts are fueled by relatively easy-to-produce and disseminate movies. Assisted by cheap cameras and apps like Instagram and Facebook, the imaginaries take on a new role for the robot designers we followed in our research project.1 These imaginaries of lively humanoids are presented in social media as realist and as such, they become a business model, a way to raise funding for projects, by presenting the technologies to be much more advanced than they in fact were.2 When we followed the implementations of robots in real-life settings, the users were often very disappointed to find out how little the apparently humanlike robots could do (Bruun et al. 2015; Blond 2019). In many interviews, the robot designers acknowledged that they knew that the public had high yet unfounded expectations to the performativity of their robots. These expectations were (at least partially) fed by video clips produced by those labs for marketing purposes that showed their creations as lively, smoothly operating creatures capable of communicating sensibly with humans (Sorenson et al. 2019). Whereas Socratic Ignorance may open our minds to the reality of shadow leopards as topos being real in their own environment, the study of humanoid robots comes with several questions Socratic Ignorance can help us acknowledge. The dragons and shadow leopards belong to localized practices and grow up with them. They are created and maintained by the same actors. They are as real as they get in these settings and do not aspire for more. By contrast, the humanoid robots are usually created in one geography (e.g., a robotics lab in Korea or in Japan) and used in another geography for everyday practices (e.g., Denmark or Finland) (see Bruun et al. 2015; Blond 2019; Hasse 2015c). Through technology-mediated presence, they become “traveling imaginaries” endowed

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with promises of real-life encounters with robots. In their media gestalts, they appeal to us with the promises that they will function as they appear on the screen. At some point, according to such an imaginary, we shall walk beside robots, hold their metal hands, and have conversations with them over our own breakfast tables. Without Socratic Ignorance, we will be content to conceive lively humanoid robots as realist imaginaries. With Socratic Ignorance we can ask if depictions of humanoid robots in media are manipulated, we can ask what drives the creation in the laboratories where robots are forged, and we can ask why they are implemented (or rather attempted implemented) in peoples’ everyday lives and how implementations are linked to fake realist imaginaries. In my research I examined the differences between robots as they appear in media, as they appear in the laboratories, and as implemented in everyday lives where robot bodies meet human bodies. My colleagues and I have studied robots as conceptual imaginaries and materialized entities across all of these settings. What we have found is a pattern according to which the more time people spend with the humanoid robots the less realist do their imaginaries of robots become. Instead, media presentations of humanoids are seen as no more than “where-to” imaginaries or unrealistic fantasy worlds. Consequently, humanoid robots can be classified into three types according to the perspective from which they are examined: as a topos in engineers’ and staffs’ practiced places where machines are encountered with different functions, technical riddles, and quibbles; as unrealistic fantasy stories like Star Wars; or as visions of futures to be. People’s imaginaries of humanoid robots are not static but change over time and shift categories. It seems that Socratic Ignorance also grows out of such a shift. For example, the humanoid robots developed in Ishiguro’s lab in Japan turned out to be tele-operated in a technique known as “Wizard of Oz.” When the Danish nursing homes staff encountered the Japanese humanoids in real life, they began to ask new questions about the actual functionality of the robot (Blond 2019). They learned that there is a person who remotely controlled the robot from the other room and spoke through the robot. Its humanlike appearance was no more than a construct. Its functioning was hidden by the images flourishing on the internet and is revealed only by close bodily encounters (Bruun et al. 2015). Once the staff stopped perceiving the robot as a lively autonomous creature, they began to ask technical questions. Searching for answers to questions like why the robotic machine suddenly stopped functioning, one staff member found that the wall between the operator and the

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robotic machine was too thick for wireless signals to go through. Sometimes as little as a sunray could make a humanoid robot malfunction (Blond 2019, 196). Even the cleverly made chatbots become over time too boring for humans to have a conversation because their answers are too scripted (Bottenberg 2015, 281). This is how knowledge about humanoids turns into Socratic Ignorance about how machines work. Even so, the robot designers we encountered see the use of imaginaries presented through social media as a natural way to present their visions for the future. Like physicists, they make use of science fiction to obtain new ideas (Geelan et al. 2015; Hasse 2015a). Furthermore, the imaginaries help them get funding and are considered part of a business model, even if the developers are perfectly aware of the fact that their robots are mere fallible machines. One of them attests: So, it [the robot] is a device, it’s a different way of interaction, if you compare to a screen, but it’s always a device. I have no imaginary of robots as something different than a machine. (Alba, robot developer, REGAIN, quoted in Sorenson et al. 2019, 158)

However, we realize that robot makers are just playing by the rules of regular advertising, as they themselves point out, this is simply what sells: “Because it’s what people like. When you have an advertisement for a car, why is there always a nice girl driving it? Same thing” (ibid. pp 162).

Discussion and Conclusion When we analyze the postphenomenological Human-Technology relations (e.g., Ihde 1990, 2002; Rosenberger and Verbeek 2015), we can make use of Socratic Ignorance to question what we take for granted. This approach can eventually help us ask new questions about how technology affects imagination and how technology generates new imaginative perceptions. In the fourteenth century, there were no social media platforms to create and distribute dreamscapes of Modernity. Socratic Ignorance may have been needed to ask new questions about strange creatures in remote places at land and in the sea. If people assumed they knew all there is to know about these places, they would probably never have dared venture into seafaring but rather held back influenced by scary pictures. They would be afraid of encountering the dragons and sea monsters found on maps at the time. In fact, many actually saw sea

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monsters and mermaids with their own eyes. They were not fantasy but just as real as shadow leopards. In the shift from late Middle Ages to early Modernity, two transformations occurred: one concerning new technologies and the other related to the way monsters were presented in mappings of the world. Following Ihde, a new type of techno-fantasies was driving the sciences and as our research shows, has done so up to present days. These new imaginary drivers of science and technology shuffled elements around in what Vygotsky would call fantasy imaginaries (2004). However, in science and technologies these elements were combined and recombined over time until they became crystallized or materialized as new technologies (Ihde 2006). They became “where-to” imaginaries that helped shape a future. This reality of technology, in turn, as argued by Wellner, affected imaginaries (Wellner 2018, 45). With social media, imaginaries are not just enhanced but also profoundly change as they pendulate in a feedback loop that changes them as well as technologies (Wellner 2021). Furthermore, with the advent of low-cost technologies such as digital cameras and the easy access to media, the very production of techno-fantasies has transformed. From being a source of inspiration and a driver of scientific endeavors as in early Modernity, imaginaries have now become a business model to secure funding (or political agendas). Science fiction imaginaries are “where-to” imaginaries that have inspired robot designers to make real creations. Yet, in real life, these robots do not correspond to what we see in media. The lively artificially intelligent robots remain a fantasy, even if they might appear as real on social media (and thus inform realist imaginaries). Contrary to the reality of shadow leopards, humanoid robots are only embodied in screen encounters and remain outside of people’s practical experiences with real robots. Contrary to the reality of robotic machines, media images of lively humanoids are falsely taken to be realist imaginaries. Socratic Ignorance enables us to question our assumptions about how imaginaries correspond to reality. Rather than blaming the engineers for being deceitful (Sharkey and Sharkey 2021; Matthias 2015), I call for a Socratic Ignorance in our dealings with social media representation of future technological visions. Contrary to what was prevalent in Vygotsky’s time in the 1920s, our realistic imaginaries can no longer be taken for granted in a world of fake news that taint our realistic embodied knowledge of the world, its places and histories. Maybe this has always been the case, even all the way back to the fourteenth century, but with the proliferating access to make claims about realistic imaginaries in a capitalistic world that feed on them (including deliberately forged fake

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news), imagination, and not least “where-to” imaginary today, needs Socratic Ignorance. We need to acknowledge that we do not know where our future takes us, and that media can create false realist imaginaries. Postphenomenology, with its close analysis of human-machine relations in everyday life, can help us exercise Socratic Ignorance to expand both our notions of fantasy, “where-to,” and realist imaginaries.

References Bett, Richard (2011), “Socratic Ignorance,” in Donald Morrison (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, 215–36, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blond, Lasse (2019), Dances with Robots: Understanding Social Robots in Practice Research Output, PhD thesis, Aarhus: Aarhus University. Bottenberg, Francis (2015), “Searching for Alterity: What Can We Learn from Interviewing Humanoid Robots?” in Peter-Paul Verbeek and Robert Rosenberger (eds.), Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays in Human-Technology Relations, 175–90, New York: Lexington Books. Breazeal, Cynthia (2002), Designing Sociable Robots, Cambridge: MIT Press. Bruun, Maja, Cathrine Hasse, and Signe Hanghøj (2015), “Studying Social Robots in Practiced Places,” Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 19 (2): 143–65. Geelan, D., V. Prain, and C. Hasse (2015), “A Dialogue Regarding ‘the Material Co-Construction of Hard Science Fiction and Physics’,” Cultural Studies of Science Education, 10 (4): 941–9. Hasse, Cathrine (2015a), “The Material Co-Construction of Hard Science Fiction and Physics,” Cultural Studies of Science Education, 10 (4): 921–40. Hasse, Cathrine (2015b), An Anthropology of Learning, Dordrecht: Springer Verlag. Hasse, Cathrine (2015c), “Multistable Roboethics,” in J. K. B. O. Friis and R. P. Crease (eds.), Technoscience and Postphenomenology: The Manhattan Papers, 169–88, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Hasse, Cathrine (2020), Posthumanist Learning, London: Routledge. Ihde, Don (1990), Technology and the Lifeworld, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ihde, Don (2002), Bodies in Technology, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ihde, Don (2006), “The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination,” in J. R. Dakers (ed.), Defining Technological Literacy: Towards an Epistemological Framework, 121–32, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ihde, D. (2008), “The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination,” in P. Kroe, P. E. Vermaas, A. Light, and S. A. Moore (eds.), Philosophy and Design: From Engineering to Architecture, 51–59, Holland, The Netherlands: Springer.

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Ingold, Tim (2013), “Dreaming of Dragons: On the Imagination of Real Life,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19 (4): 734–52. Jasanoff, Sheila and Sang-Hyun Kim (2015), Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Matthias, Andreas (2015), “Robot Lies in Health Care: When Is Deception Morally Permissible?” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 25 (2): 169–92. Mcpherran, Mark L. (2011), “Socratic Religion,” in D. Morrison (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, 111–37, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pihlgren, Ann S. (2008), Socrates in the Classroom. Rationales and Effects of Philosophizing with Children, PhD diss., Stockholm University. “Plato, Apology 21D.” https://www​.platonicfoundation​.org​/apology/. Robertson, J. (2014), “Human Rights vs. Robot Rights: Forecasts from Japan,” Critical Asian Studies, 46 (4): 571–98. Rosenberger, Robert (2014), “Multistability and the Agency of Mundane Artifacts: From Speed Bumps to Subway Benches,” Human Studies, 37 (3): 369–92. Rosenberger, Robert and Peter-Paul Verbeek, eds. (2015), Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human-Technology Relations, New York: Lexington Books. Sharkey, Amanda and Noel Sharkey (2021), “We Need to Talk about Deception in Social Robotics!” in Ethics and Information Technology, 2020. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​ /s10676​-020​-09573​-9. Sorenson, Jessica et al. (2019), Perspectives on Robots, REELER Report, REELER Research Repository. https://responsiblerobotics​.eu​/research​/perspectives​-on​ -robots/ (accessed May 3, 2021). Vygotsky, Lev S. (2004, January–February), “Imagination and Creativity in Childhood,” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42 (1): 7–97. Wellner, Galit (2018), “Posthuman Imagination: From Modernity to Augmented Reality,” Journal of Posthuman Studies, 2 (1): 45–66. Wellner, Galit (2021), “Where Is the Learning in Machine Learning?” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 25 (3): 523–540. https://doi​.org​/10​.5840​/ techne2021253145​Wellner, Galit(2021)Where Is the Learning in Machine Learning? In Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology Volume 25, Issue 3, 2021 523-540 https://doi​.org​/10​.5840​/techne2021253145 Wellner, Galit (2022), “Digital Imagination: Ihde’s and Stiegler’s Concepts of Imagination,” Foundations of Science, 27 (1): 189–204, 1–16. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/ s10699​-020​-09737​-2.

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Ryle and Sartre against Hume’s Theory of the Imagination Andreas Vrahimis

Introduction Gilbert Ryle and Jean-Paul Sartre were among the most prominent figures in philosophy after the Second World War. Both contributed, in different ways, to the emergence of the opinion that philosophy was divided into analytic and continental counterparts. After A. J. Ayer (formerly Ryle’s student) published a critical review of Sartre’s L’être et le néant in 1945, Sartre refused to engage in dialogue with him.1 Ryle, Ayer, and other Oxford philosophers soon made polemical declarations concerning the shortcomings of “continental philosophy,” and the gulf which separates it from its analytic counterpart.2 At first glance, Ryle’s presentation at the 1958 Royaumont colloquium, titled “Phenomenology vs. The Concept of Mind,” squarely opposes analytic philosophy to the continental phenomenological tradition.3 Ryle attributes “the wide gulf [. . .] between Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy” (189) to the latter’s ignorance of “the massive developments of our [sic] logical theory” (189).4 He vehemently opposes Husserl’s “idea of philosophy as the Mistress Science” (Ryle [1962] 2009, 189), claiming that “Husserl wrote as if he had never met a scientist—or a joke” (189). Ryle asserts the superiority of the organizational structures of Oxbridge colleges, which he juxtaposes to the institutional insularity of continental philosophy. He claims that the latter leads to the formation of dogmatic schools under the tutelage of a master.5 Nevertheless, Ryle’s paper also identifies some points of commonality between the phenomenological tradition and his own perspective. Contrary to what his paper’s title suggests, Ryle plainly states that The Concept of Mind could be described as “a sustained essay in phenomenology” (Ryle [1962] 2009, 196), and

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even talks of his work as “my phenomenology” (202). At the outset of his career Ryle was keenly interested in the phenomenological tradition.6 He lectured on this topic at Oxford, and wrote some of the earliest Anglophone responses to Husserl and Heidegger. Nonetheless, in his autobiography, Ryle (1970, 9) states that he subsequently abandoned this early interest. Despite declaring his lack of interest in existentialism (9), Ryle did have something positive to say about Sartre at Royaumont.7 This concerns one specific similarity between Sartre’s and Ryle’s views on the imagination: We are all strongly tempted to think of the human mind as a sort of private chamber, and to think of the things that we visually and auditorily imagine as, somehow, authentic occupants of this private chamber. Imagining then comes to be misconstrued as a special brand of witnessing, the objects of which happen to be internal and private to the witness. Sartre, in his L’imaginaire [. . .] (1940), was partly concerned to attack this same conceptual misconstruction. There was another, connected conceptual mistake which I, like Sartre, tried to expose. Hume, and many others, maintained that the difference between what is seen and what is visualised, between “impressions” and “ideas,” was a difference in degree of intensity. So, presumably, very faint noises, such as barely heard whispers, would have to be auditory images or “ideas”; and merely imagined shouts would have to be actually heard whispers. Which is absurd. (Ryle [1962] 2009, 200–1)

By contrast to his aforementioned polemics against phenomenology, Ryle’s very brief commentary on Sartre’s views on the imagination clearly involves unequivocal agreement.8 The remainder of this chapter further examines Ryle’s suggestion in the above quote. I begin by analyzing Sartre’s objections to the two aspects of the “classical” early modern view of the imagination cited by Ryle. In light of Ryle’s commentary above, I focus more specifically on Sartre’s arguments against Hume’s theory of the imagination.9 I then turn to Ryle’s objections against Hume’s account in The Concept of Mind. Throughout this analysis, I point to some significant similarities and differences between Sartre’s and Ryle’s views that are omitted from Ryle’s brief mention of Sartre at Royaumont.

Sartre against the “Classical Conception” of the Imagination Before developing his own theory of the imagination, Sartre ([1936] 2012) undertook the task of rejecting a series of traditional errors involved in what

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he calls the “classical conception” of the imagination. This was first laid out in his 1936 The Imagination, and is further developed in his 1940 The Imaginary (mentioned above by Ryle). The first book engages in the critical task of clearing the way toward a proper (phenomenological) understanding of the act of imagining. The second book focuses on the question of that which is imagined, defending a view derived from Husserl’s work.10 Having objected to competing accounts, Sartre develops his own Husserlian position, putting forth what he calls a “phenomenological psychology” of the imagination. As Ryle (2009, 201) correctly notes, Sartre sees that the “classical conception” assumes that imagining entails somehow having an image before one’s consciousness. This conception is connected to what Sartre calls the “naïve metaphysics of the image” (2012, 6), insofar as it involves reifying the mental image, that is, “making of the image a copy of the thing, which then exists as a thing” (6).11 Sartre terms this assumption “thingism (chosisme)” (6),12 and traces it back to Descartes.13 He argues that “thingism” is a false assumption, responsible for the failure of all later attempts to account for the psychology of the imagination.14 By contrast to Sartre ([1936] 2012), who considers multiple historical variants of the “classical conception” in detail, Ryle’s critique, both in The Concept of Mind (1949, 249–51, 271–2) and at Royaumont (Ryle [1962] 2009, 201), is primarily directed against Hume’s account of the imagination. Sartre and Ryle agree that Hume’s viewpoint presupposes a version of Cartesian “thingism” (though Ryle does not employ this terminology). According to Sartre ([1936] 2012, e.g., 8), Descartes and Hume assume that the imagination is a mental faculty that deals with the perception of mental images. This “classical conception” of the imagination in terms of mental images has a series of correlates which guide subsequent philosophical and psychological debates on the topic, roughly up to Sartre. On the one hand, Cartesian “thingism” raises the problem of distinguishing between imagination and perception. On the other hand, it leads to various impasses concerning the relation between images and thought. Sartre thinks that, while early modern philosophers and later psychologists are all “thingists,” they develop conflicting proposals on how to resolve these problems. In Sartre’s view, the problems generated by “thingism” are insurmountable, and all previous attempts to resolve them have ultimately failed. In response to the latter problem of the relation between mental images and thought, Sartre detects a threefold divergence among early modern theories. Descartes’ dualist account posits that mental images belong to the domain of the res extensa, and must therefore be strictly separated from pure thought.

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This dualist position raises further obstacles, such as the problem of mindbody interaction. Sartre argues that, despite the various impasses derived from Descartes’ view, early modern philosophers did not abandon his “thingism.” Instead, they revised their accounts of the relation between images and thought. Further divergences come from Leibniz and Hume who looked toward opposite directions in formulating their alternative solutions to this problem. While Descartes separated images from thoughts, Leibniz eliminated images by subsuming them into the realm of thought. Conversely, Hume reduced thoughts to mental images. This chapter will focus on Hume’s theory of images, a view which Sartre calls “panpsychologism” ([1936] 2012, 18). Sartre argues that, since he maintains Descartes’ fundamental assumption concerning mental images, Hume’s position (like Leibniz’s) is a modified Cartesianism: while “Descartes posits both the image and thought without the image; Hume keeps only the image without thought” ( 19). In other words, Hume’s attempt to purify images from the incursion of thought stems, in Sartre’s view, from Descartes’ earlier attempt to separate images from thought. In Sartre’s view, the three possible trajectories traced by Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume exhaust the logical possibilities concerning the relation between images and thought. He argues that every subsequent attempt to account for this relation fails due to an unwitting acceptance of Descartes’ metaphysical assumption of the existence of reified mental images. By clearing away this assumption through an array of objections (against not only the early modern theorists, but also subsequent psychological and philosophical accounts), Sartre sought to pave the path for his own positive account of the imagination. In what follows I will focus on Sartre’s specific arguments against Hume’s position, which are only part of his overall argument against the “classical conception.”15

Sartre against Hume’s Distinction between Perception and Imagination Part of Sartre’s critique of Hume is directed against his account of the distinction between mental images and perception. The relevant problem is raised by two incommensurable viewpoints. On the one hand, according to Sartre, “brute intuition” (2012, 82) tells us that the differences between images and perceptions are immediately recognizable.16 On the other hand, however, without further ado, the “thingist” assumption posits images as ontologically indistinguishable

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from perceptions. Theorists of the imagination that proceed from the latter assumption vainly attempt to harmonize it with the ordinary pre-predicative ability to distinguish images from perceptions. Hume’s attempt involves blurring the distinction between impressions and ideas. He holds that impressions and ideas are distinguished only qualitatively, in terms of the degree of their force or liveliness: “image and perception are identical in nature but differ in intensity. Perceptions are ‘strong impressions’, images are ‘weak impressions’” (Sartre [1936] 2012, 84). Hume thus assumes that perception and imagination are the same type of mental activity, different only in degree of liveliness, “intensity,” or “strength.” Sartre (84) commends Hume for acknowledging that the difference between perception and imagination is immediately recognizable, rather than being, for example, the result of applying a judgment to the sensible contents of consciousness. Hume thus comes closer than most early modern philosophers to conceding the insight that Sartre wants to lay stress on, that is, the immediate pre-theoretical grasping of the difference between images and perceptions. However, instead of jettisoning the aforementioned incompatible Cartesian hypothesis that images are on par with perceptions, Hume insists on maintaining it, and is thus led to a series of problems. Sartre argues that Hume’s qualitative differentiation between strong and weak impressions does not hold up to introspective scrutiny.17 In other words, Sartre criticizes Hume for offering an inaccurate description of the relevant phenomenology, despite his apparently central reliance on appeals to introspection.18 Sartre interprets Hume’s description of qualitative “force” and “liveliness” as involving three factors: “stability, richness, and precision” (Sartre, 84). For Sartre most of our perceptions, especially those that we are not focusing on (e.g., those at the margins of our field of vision), do not display such phenomenological qualities. Sartre further raises the oft-repeated objection that some perceptions can be faint, while some images can be vivid. Sartre’s particular twist to the objection concerns the minimum intensity required for an impression to come to consciousness: given that there is such a “threshold” (84), minimally faint perceptions and images that come to consciousness should have appeared as phenomenologically indistinguishable, if we follow Hume’s flawed reasoning. Sartre instead maintains that they do not appear thus. Sartre’s main point of contention against Hume again concerns a mismatch between his description and the way we actually perceive and imagine. He claims that there must be a more substantial phenomenological differentiation between imagining and perceiving than Hume allows. Were there not, it would

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be common to confuse the two: “if we made use only of intensity in order to distinguish image from perception, error would be frequent” (85). It is usually relatively easy to introspectively distinguish what one imagines from what one perceives. With regard to this ability, error is the exception, not the rule. Furthermore, contrary to Hume’s view, the relevant errors do not result from confusing imagination for perception or vice versa. Sartre acknowledges that in some, but not all, cases of faint perception one is indeed justified in doubting whether one is misperceiving. One example that Sartre considers is that of misrecognizing a perceived figure, for example mistaking “a tree trunk for a man” (85). In such cases, Sartre notes, I am not confused as to whether I am imagining or perceiving. Rather, this is “a false interpretation of a real perception” (85). These limit cases do not normally lead us to question whether we are perceiving or imagining. We do not normally doubt, regarding the same experience, whether we are perceiving a very faint color or imagining a very vivid one. Therefore, according to Sartre, difference in intensity is not an adequate criterion for differentiating between perceiving and imagining.

Sartre against Hume’s Conception of Mental Images Further problems derived from the “thingist” assumption concern the relation between images and thought. Hume’s effort to reduce thought to mental images fails, Sartre argues, precisely because it begins from the assumption that images are pure “sensible contents,” that is, “something irreducible, incomprehensible, given” as well as “irrational” and “inert” (2012, 107), from which all thought has been extruded. Qua copies, these inert images purportedly replicate, and thus redouble, our perceptions of things. Because of this redoubling function of images, Sartre (109) claims that Hume’s account of the relation between images and thought entails a purely passive reception of images by thought. Ryle later characterizes this type of relation as a sort of “witnessing” ([1962] 2009, 201), in which thought is taken to be a passive receptor, rather than actively contributing to imagining. Hume thus fails to see that imagining involves a free and spontaneous act of creation by consciousness. While already outlined in The Imagination (Sartre [1936] 2012, 107–15), the objection to Hume is most clearly stated in Sartre’s The Imaginary. Here, Sartre again indicts Hume for failing to provide a phenomenology of imagining, as his account “is contradicted by the data of introspection” ([1940] 2004, 6), which show imagining to involve spontaneity and creativity, as opposed to pure

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passivity.19 In imagining, the awareness of an image is always accompanied by a spontaneous creative act by consciousness. Sartre proposes that this characteristic of images is one of the criteria that differentiate imagination from perception: A perceptual consciousness appears to itself as passive. On the other hand, an imaging consciousness gives itself to itself as an imaging consciousness, which is to say as a spontaneity that produces and conserves the object as imaged. [. . .] The consciousness appears to itself as creative, but without positing as object this creative character. ([1940] 2004, 14)

Whereas, in Sartre’s account, Hume correctly sees perception in terms of passive sensible contents received by consciousness, he overextends this view when he applies it to the imagination.20 He thus overlooks a fundamental phenomenological difference between imagining and perceiving, which does not concern mere qualitative differences, but rather has to do with the constitutive role played by different types of intentionality in each case.21 Sartre argues that in the case of perception, the content of consciousness is identical to the object toward which consciousness is intentionally directed. Conversely, imagining essentially involves a mismatch between content and object. Sartre ([1940] 2004, 12) claims that the content of consciousness, that is, the image, refers to an object that is either absent, non-existent, or with regard to which questions of existence or non-existence are suspended (e.g., in Husserlian epoché).22 While perception is a type of observation of the relevant object, imagination is what Sartre calls a “quasi-observation” (8) of its (missing) object. The perceived object is placed within a network of infinite relations (8), and thus perceptual observation is a means of acquiring further knowledge about the object and its relations. By contrast, images can only be involved in a finite and quite small number of relations (9–10), all of which are consciously apprehended (16). Knowledge of these relations is presupposed by the act of imagining. Images are created by consciousness, and all that goes into creating an image must necessarily already be known prior to its creation. Sartre illustrates this by the example of reading: I can learn something new by perceiving the writing on a page, but I cannot possibly read something I do not already know in a page that I imagine (10). Even if Hume were to acknowledge that imagining involves creativity and spontaneity, his commitment to associationism would force him to seek such elements among impressions, that is, what Sartre, via Husserl, calls the “contents” of consciousness.23 By contrast, in Sartre’s Husserlian view, creativity

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and spontaneity are to be found in the way in which consciousness is directed toward, and constitutive of, its contents. According to Sartre, Hume’s attempt to reduce thought to mental images fails to account for this crucial aspect of the phenomenology of imagining, and must therefore be rejected.

Ryle on Descartes’ Myth Similarly to Sartre, Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949) criticizes a traditional philosophical account of mental images traceable back to Descartes. Its overall target is what Ryle calls “Descartes’ myth” (11), the dualist doctrine that “every human being is both a body and a mind” (11). Ryle’s critique famously relies on his notion of a “category mistake” (which is traceable back to e.g. Husserl).24 Ryle diagnoses basic category mistakes behind all talk of the mental as a kind of occult chamber in which activity takes place. He goes through a list of “mental” concepts, including volition, emotion, sensation, and imagination, diagnosing and attempting to correct the various errors that stem from Descartes’ myth. Talk of “mental images” relies upon such Cartesian misconceptions. Mental images are supposed to be “fleshless beings” (245) occupying the “clandestine habitats” (245) of minds. Activities like seeing or hearing “in the mind’s eye” or “in one’s head” (245), in line with Descartes’ myth, are customarily accorded the special status of being “mental,” that is, of being somehow “stored” in the person who has them. The term “in” is here a metaphor used in a “special sense” (199) so as to designate a person’s mind as a type of “repository which is permitted to house objects that something called ‘the physical world’ is forbidden to house” (199). Philosophers are thereby misled into conceiving of the imagination as a faculty that deals with such private “mental images.” Having rejected Descartes’ myth at the outset of the book, Ryle further criticizes its application to the imagination. He argues that it is mistaken to see the imagination as a type of inner seeing or hearing that is directed toward visual or auditory images that are somehow stored in the mind.

Ryle against Hume’s Criterion of “Liveliness” By way of developing his overall critique of mental images, Ryle puts forth a series of objections to Hume’s theory of the imagination. Like Sartre, Ryle criticizes Hume’s confusion between imagination and perception:

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His mistake was to suppose that “seeing” is a species of seeing, or that “perception” is the name of a genus of which there are two species, namely impressions and ghosts or echoes of impressions. There are no such ghosts, and if there were, they would merely be extra impressions; and they would belong to seeing, not to “seeing.” (Ryle 1949, 250)

Ryle thus accuses Hume of inadequately distinguishing between perception and imagination (e.g., between perceptual vision, or seeing, and imaginary visualization, or “seeing”). Hume’s distinction between impressions and their “ghosts” leads him astray insofar as he problematically misconstrues the imagination as a faculty that deals with the latter. In Ryle’s view, Hume has overlooked an alternative for clearly distinguishing the imagination from perception, to which we shall soon return. Ryle is overall in agreement with Sartre when he attributes Hume’s confusion to his conception of perception and imagination as two species of the same genus. Terminologically, Ryle’s account is an improvement on Sartre’s. Ryle avoids the phrasing of Sartre’s somewhat confusing claim that Hume identifies perception with imagination (2012, 84). Ryle argues that Sartre’s term of “identity” is misleading, since what he seems to mean is that Hume takes perception and imagination to belong to the same broader category. Despite the different terminology, however, Sartre and Ryle are in fact making the same claim. Hume clearly sees that impressions are distinct from their “echoes,” yet also maintains that there is no absolute criterion by which “simple inspection” (Ryle 1949, 249) could decide whether something is seen or “seen.” Hume is thus forced to come up with the relative criterion of qualitative “liveliness.” This vague pseudo-criterion, Ryle argues, gives rise to insurmountable obstacles. As shown above, Sartre simply assumes that Hume’s talk of “liveliness” refers to “intensity.” By contrast, Ryle sees that Hume’s criterion is ambiguous. Thus, Ryle’s criticism hinges on the way Hume’s qualitative criterion is construed. One possibility is to interpret Hume’s talk of “liveliness” as concerning the degree of vivacity of impressions. Yet this would not achieve the intended goal: “A person may picture vividly, but he cannot see vividly. One ‘idea’ may be more vivid than another ‘idea’, but impressions cannot be described as vivid at all” (Ryle 1949, 250). Though we may usually meaningfully talk of vivid visualizations of something imagined, in Ryle’s view we would not ordinarily talk of seeing something vividly. Vivacity is a quality applicable to the imagination, but not to perception.

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Another possible interpretation is that “lively” means “intense,’ ‘acute,’ or ‘strong’” (Ryle 1949, 250), as Sartre (2012, 84) plainly assumes. This would result in the reverse error: “while sensations can be compared with other sensations as relatively intense, acute or strong, they cannot be so compared with images” (Ryle 1949, 250). For example, though the quality of loudness may be applicable to a perceived sound, it would not be applicable to an imagined sound. In other words, an imagined sound cannot be described in terms of its intensity, though it could be described in terms of its vivacity or faintness. Intensity can be a qualitative characteristic of perception, but not of the imagination. Therefore, as Ryle points out, there are clear differences between various ways in which one can legitimately talk about imagined and perceived things. Intensity and vivacity can be ascribed, respectively, solely to perception and to the imagination. Yet neither is applicable to a comparison between the two. The fact that Hume ambiguously talks of degrees of “liveliness” in both cases covers up the underlying differences and misleads philosophers into misconceptions of the imagination as a type of inner “seeing.”

Ryle against Hume’s Copy Principle Hume’s theory further involves construing the objects of inner “seeing” as “ghosts” of impressions, or what Ryle also critically refers to as “shadowsensations” (1949, 271). Instead, Ryle offers his positive account of imagining as a form of pretending. This entails that no seeing or hearing takes place during “seeing” or “hearing.” One analogy Ryle draws here is that between a murder and a mock-murder. Hume’s view that imagining and perceiving are species of the same genus would be analogous to the absurd claim that a murderer and a mock-murderer (e.g., an actor playing a murderer) alike are species of the genus murderer. As Ryle clarifies, “pretending to murder entails, not murdering, but seeming to murder. As mock-murders are not murders, so imagined sights and sounds are not sights or sounds. They are not, therefore, dim sights, or faint sounds” (250–1). As illustrated by the analogy, Hume’s assumption that perceiving and imagining are comparable is misleading. If the assumption is dropped, then the qualitative criterion of “liveliness” clearly becomes inapplicable to both perceiving and imagining. Ryles’ analogy illustrates two further errors made by Hume. The first concerns Hume’s copy principle, according to which it would be impossible to imagine a

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“shadow-sensation” without first having perceived the original sensation from which the image is copied. Like Sartre, Ryle concedes that perception must place an epistemic constraint placed onto the imagination, even while rejecting Hume’s misconception of their relation. In the case of the actor pretending to be a murderer, the act of pretending to murder would obviously presuppose some knowledge concerning the act of murdering. It would nonetheless be absurd to conceive of the pretend-murder as a type of “mild or faint” (251) murder, less intense or vivid than the real thing; a pretend-murder is no murder at all! Analogously, the fact that imagination presupposes knowledge acquired through perception does not necessarily entail that the two belong to the same genus.25 The second mistake illustrated by the analogy concerns the relation that perception and imagination hold to their objects. While in the case of perception one can readily point to an object that causes the impression, in the case of imagination the object seems elusive (and has therefore misled philosophers into thinking of it as a kind of mental entity displayed before the theater of the mind). Sartre’s conception of “quasi-observation” had sought to account for this by emphasizing the creative activity of spontaneous consciousness which constitutes the content presented to consciousness. Content-object relations are thus substantially different in the cases of imagination and perception. Diverging somewhat from Sartre’s account, Ryle simply claims that imagining involves no object. The difference is largely terminological: while Sartre follows Husserl in differentiating between “content” and “object,” Ryle does not use this terminology.26 Ryle would nonetheless partly agree with Sartre, in that they both reject the reification of what Sartre calls the imagined “content.” They both agree that, contrary to the Cartesian assumption, there is no such thing or object as a mental image.27 In rejecting the existence of an imagined object, Ryle draws an analogy between imagining and pretending. While in the case of murder it would make sense to look for the victim, a mock-murder is obviously victimless. Similarly, “There is no answer to the spurious question, ‘Where do the objects reside that we fancy we see?’ since there are no such objects” (Ryle 1949, 251). Imaginary “smelling” does not involve having mock-objects, that is, copies of the original smells, before “the mind’s nose” (252). The imagined smell is not “an internal smell replica” (252). Coming methodologically closer to Sartre, Ryle appeals to the relevant phenomenology in emphasizing the discrepancy between perceiving and imagining a smell. The experience of imagining, or “smelling,” a smell is quite different to actually smelling a smell. Imagining does not involve accurately, though more faintly, replicating some original object.

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With respect to this latter issue, Ryle (253–5) suggests that philosophers’ focus on the replication of what is perceived by what is imagined may be partly derived from cases where perceiving a likeness, for instance a portrait, conjures an image of what it is alike to, for instance the portrait’s sitter.28 While the portrait itself can be thought to be a lifelike image of its sitter, this does not require that “it should be an accurate replica of the contours or colouring of the subject’s face” (254). Instead, we think of a portrait as lifelike when it causes us to imagine its sitter. Of course, perceiving the portrait is not necessary for me to imagine its sitter. The portrait can nonetheless help prompt my imagination. Analogously, though perception may prompt the imagination, this does not necessitate that what is thereby imagined replicates the perceived object. Thus Ryle too rejects what Sartre would call Hume’s “thingism,” that is, the view that imagining involves special objects, called mental images, which are copies of perceived objects.

Conclusion So far, we have observed some striking similarities between Sartre’s and Ryle’s accounts of the imagination. They both direct their objections against a view that they see as Cartesian in origin, namely that imagining consists in a sort of viewing of mental images. As shown above, Sartre and Ryle not only broadly agree in their rejection of mental images as objects of the imagination, but also reject the confusion involved in conceiving of the imagination as a sort of inner perception. Though they differ in their terminology, and in some of the details of their arguments, they both criticize Hume’s criterion for distinguishing the imagination from perception along similar lines. Later commentators have noted that, despite other significant methodological divergences, in their accounts of the imagination Ryle and Sartre employ descriptive methods.29 Where Turner (1968, 22) emphasized the unacknowledged role played by linguistic analysis in Sartre’s phenomenology, Ricoeur (1981, 168) conversely noted the unacknowledged importance of lived experience for Ryle’s linguistic analysis. Regardless of how one construes their methodological differences, there is a specific difference between Sartre’s and Ryle’s appeals to phenomenology that matters when it comes to their critique of Hume. Despite Hume’s various appeals to introspection, scholars have disagreed as to whether Hume’s qualitative criterion of “liveliness” should be interpreted as pertaining to

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a phenomenological description.30 As we have seen above, Sartre assumes that it should be, and therefore accuses Hume of mischaracterizing the phenomenology of imagining. By contrast, Ryle does not make this assumption when he questions the linguistic applicability of terms like “liveliness” to either perception or the imagination. The validity of Ryle’s, and not Sartre’s, objection therefore remains detached from the aforementioned scholarly disagreement over the interpretation of Hume. Later scholarship (Turner 1968; Bunting 1970; Snoeyenbos and Sibley 1978; Ricoeur 1981; Hanney 1971; Courtney 1971; Morgan 1974; Danto 1981, 15; Deutscher 2015; Gusman 2016) has tended to read Sartre alongside Ryle as representatives of a particular thesis against mental imagery.31 Ryle’s Royaumont commentary on Sartre can thus be seen as having paved the path for subsequent debates in which his and Sartre’s position were considered to be quite close. Even if Ryle’s (2009, 200–1) comments are made in the midst of an attempt to establish the existence of a divide between “analytic” and “continental” philosophy, they (possibly inadvertently) succeeded in creating a small niche within debates in the philosophy of the imagination in which the overall divide did not remain predominant. Unfortunately, the existence of such niches, as the example of Ryle and Sartre suggests, is not incompatible with the persistence of an overall divide.32

References Amalric, J. L. (2014), “D’une Convergence Remarquable Entre Phénoménologie et Philosophie Analytique: La Lecture Ricoeurienne des Thèses de Sartre et Ryle sur l’Imagination,” Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies, 5 (1): 82–94. Ayer, A. J. (1977), Part of My Life: The Memoirs of a Philosopher, New York: Harcourt Brace Janovich. Brandl, J. L. (2002), “Gilbert Ryle: A Mediator between Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 40 (S1): 143–51. Bunting, I. A. (1970), “Sartre on Imagination,” Philosophical Studies, 19: 236–53. Courtney, R. (1971), “Imagination and the Dramatic Act: Comments on Sartre, Ryle, and Furlong,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 30 (2): 163–70. Danto, A. C. (1981), “Nausea and Noesis: Some Philosophical Problems for Sartre,” October, 18: 3–19. Deutscher, M. (2015), “‘Imagine! Sartre with Ryle’,” Parrhesia, 24: 150–72. Dorsch, F. (2018), “Hume on the Imagination,” Disputatio: Philosophical Research Bulletin, 7 (8): 1–20.

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Glendinning, S. (2006), The Idea of Continental Philosophy: A Philosophical Chronicle, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gusman, S. (2016), “The Phenomenological Fallacy and the Illusion of Immanence: Analytic Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology Against Mental Reification,” Diametros, 48: 18–37. Hannay, A. (1971), Mental Images: A Defence, New York: Humanities Press. Hatzimoysis, A. (2014), The Philosophy of Sartre, Durham: Acumen. Marion, M. (2018), “Was Royaumont Merely a Dialogue de Sourds? An Introduction to the Discussion Générale,” Philosophical Inquiries, 6 (1): 197–214. Morgan, K. P. (1974), “A Critical Analysis of Sartre’s Theory of Imagination,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 5 (1): 20–33. O’Connor, J. K. (2012), “Category Mistakes and Logical Grammar: Ryle’s Husserlian Tutelage,” Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale, 16(2): 235–50. Overgaard, S. (2010), “Royaumont Revisited,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 18 (5): 899–924. Ricoeur, P. (1981), “Sartre and Ryle on the Imagination,” in P. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, 167–78, La Salle: Open Court. Rogers, B. (2002), Ayer: A Life, New York: Grove Press. Ryle, G. ([1962] 2009), “Phenomenology vs. the Concept of Mind,” in Collected Papers: Critical Essays, Vol. 1, 179–96, Oxon: Routledge. Ryle, G. (1949), The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson. Ryle, G. (1970), “Autobiographical,” in O. P. Wood and G. Pitcher (eds.), Ryle: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1–15, New York: Anchor Books. Sartre, J. P. ([1936] 2012), The Imagination, trans. K. Williford and D. Rudrauf, London: Routledge. Sartre, J. P. ([1940] 2004), The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination, trans. J. Webber, London: Routledge. Small, R. (1981), “Ryle and Husserl,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 12 (3): 195–210. Snoeyenbos, M. and E. Sibley (1978), “Sartre on Imagination,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 16 (4): 373–89. Thomasson, A. L. (2002), “Phenomenology and the Development of Analytic Philosophy,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 40 (S1): 115–42. Thomasson, A. L. (2007), “Conceptual Analysis in Phenomenology and Ordinary Language Philosophy,” in M. Beaney (ed.), The Analytic Turn: Analysis in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology, 270–84, London: Routledge. Thomasson, A. L. (2018), “Categories,” in E. N. Zalda (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato​.stanford​.edu​/entries​/categories/. Turner, R. (1968), “Sartre and Ryle on the Imagination,” South African Journal of Philosophy, April: 20–8.

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Vrahimis, A. (2013a), Encounters between Analytic and Continental Philosophy, Hampshire: Palgrave. Vrahimis, A. (2013b), “‘Was There a Sun Before Men Existed?’ A. J. Ayer and French Philosophy in the Fifties,” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 1 (9): 1–25. Vrahimis, A. (2013c), “Is the Royaumont Colloquium the Locus Classicus of the Divide between Analytic and Continental Philosophy? Reply to Overgaard,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 21 (1): 177–88. Vrahimis, A. (2022), Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy, London: Palgrave. Wisdom, J. O. (1951), “Review of the Concept of Mind, by Gilbert Ryle, and the Emotions: Outline of a Theory, by Jean-Paul Sartre,” International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 32: 62–7.

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Enactive Imagination Its Roots and Contemporary Horizons Zuzanna Rucińska

Introduction This chapter will illuminate the notion of enactive imagination from the perspective of the Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science. In general, Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science proposes that cognition is grounded in, constrained, and regulated by extra-neural structures like perceptual and sensorimotor systems, and that dynamic interaction between agents and their physical and social environments constitutes cognition. Enactivism, in particular, emphasizes the active role of the agent and the environment in co-constituting cognition. It recognizes the crucial interdependency between an autonomous agent and the world she inhabits, and looks at the interactions taking place between the brain, the body, and the environment, and not at manipulations of mental representations, to account for cognitive processing. Enactivists also think that perception and action are inextricably linked together. This will hold for imaginative processes as well: enactivists see imagination as a form of action closely coupled to our bodily capacities and history of interactions. This chapter will start with a description of the key characteristics of enactive imagination against the background of standard approaches to imagination as found in philosophy of mind. Next, it will explain the roots of enactive imagination, focusing on Gilbert Ryle’s analytic philosophy, JeanPaul Sartre’s phenomenology, and Pierre Bourdieu’s pragmatism. The chapter will then discuss examples of theoretical and applied contemporary horizons of enactive imagination research. It will introduce the concept of ongoing embodied imagination—the idea that, to make sense of some action, imagination substantially involves the body in three ways: it utilizes past embodied history,

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present sensorimotor processes, and makes anticipations of the future—and show the potential relevance of this concept for virtual reality research. The chapter will conclude with suggestions of future developments of research on enactive imagination.

What Is Enactive Imagination? Imagination is not a unitary concept. In philosophy of mind, there is a heterogeneity of meanings that the concept of imagination captures, ranging from a state of mind that allows us to have counterfactual thoughts, to a cognitive mechanism that processes mental pictures. Theorists of imagination may find that they talk past each other, when one focuses on the cognitive architecture of motor imagery while another on the phenomenology of having an image. There is no consensus on whether imagination is a mental state, a cognitive mechanism, an ability, a capacity, or a skill (Kind 2020), or even if it exists at all (Nanay 2010). At the same time, there is a plethora of distinctions made in the literature about different kinds of imagination and their role in cognition, such as a distinction between creative and recreative imagination (Currie and Ravenscroft 2002), S- (suppositional) imagination and E- (enactment) imagination (Goldman 2006), or A- (attitude) imagination versus I- (imagistic) imagination (LanglandHassan 2020). Amy Kind (2013) has argued that when philosophers invoke the notion of imagination to explain various phenomena, like engaging with fictions, pretend playing, understanding and predicting behaviors of others, or providing justification for our actions, the thought is that there is something special about imagination itself that can do the explanatory work. The problem is that imagination is not a single mental activity to begin with. It is therefore best to think of imagination as an umbrella term (Hacker 2013), and to focus on one of its faces and the role it might play in understanding or explaining a specific cognitive phenomenon. In short, there is a plethora of accounts on what imagination is (and is not). Within that variety, there is the enactivist approach to imagination. Enactivists claim that imagination is a form of action, performed in the world and not in one’s head. They consider imagination to be an embodied activity, which integrates perception and action in an ongoing dynamical pattern. Imagination is accomplished by agents in playacting, and should be thought of as a skillful practice, not as a mental representational mechanism that manipulates counterfactual contents. What makes enactivist approach to

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imagination a particularly valuable one to consider is the fact that it integrates phenomenological thought, findings from embodied cognitive science, and neuroscientific empirical data (Gallagher and Rucińska 2021), and so, it can offer a rich and unified picture of imagination for philosophy and cognitive science. This will be elaborated on more below. It is worth noting that imagination is not yet richly described by enactivists, because this is a phenomenon for which enactivist explanations are not tailormade. Traditionally, enactivism gives an account of basic forms of cognition such as perception and direct forms of action, and describes the activities of simple biological systems in their environments (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991). This is not to say enactivist ideas cannot reach phenomena of “higherorder” cognition, which might entail some forms of imagining; it is also not to say that imagination is always a “higher-order” capacity that is off limits to enactivist explanations (Rucińska and Weichold, under review). What is more, enactivist approaches to imagination are treated with suspicion, insofar as, according to the orthodox research tradition in philosophy of mind, imagination is a representational phenomenon. Even the entry to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the topic of imagination starts by saying: “To imagine is to represent without aiming at things as they actually, presently, and subjectively are” (Liao and Gendler 2018). However, enactivism challenges the orthodox views on cognition and representationalism. There are four key characteristics of enactive imagination that require further analysis. These are the following: imagination is (a) enacted, (b) embodied, (c) based on perception of affordances, and (d) non-representational. Below it will be clarified what each of these characteristics mean. First, imagination is enacted. This means that imagination is “something that requires active participation, a form of action and interaction” (Medina 2013, 319). Available proposals of enactive imagination (Medina 2013; Hutto 2015; Hutto and Myin 2017; Ilundáin-Agurruza 2017; Gallagher 2017) treat imagination as a form of action that is strongly integrated with perceiving, and that involves embodied sensorimotor processes. For example, to visually imagine a room is to enact or re-enact seeing that room (Medina 2013). It is not creating a picture-like mental image of the room, or having a mental model of it. The imagining is accomplished in the motoric act of rehearsing seeing a room. Second, imagination, according to enactivists, is also constrained by the way the body is—thus, it is strongly embodied. To say that imagination is strongly embodied is to say that imagination is actively shaped by the structure of our visual systems (O’Regan and Noë 2001), and is densely textured in a cross-modal

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(kinesthetic, tactile, nociceptive, olfactory, or gustatory) way (Ilundáin-Agurruza 2017). This means that the body itself, and not body representations, play an active role in shaping how and what we imagine. This is a subtle but important difference with respect to what some of the other proponents of embodied imagination claim. There are many accounts of embodied imagination in the literature, which reflect multiple senses of “embodiment” in the philosophical and cognitive science literature, and those accounts can even involve concepts such as B-formatted representations or motor-related neural simulations (for an overview, see Rucińska and Gallagher 2021). For example, Goldman and De Vignemont’s (2009) notion of embodied imagination refers not to the body as such, but only to body-formatted representations. However, strongly embodied view gives a clear explanatory role to the body itself (not body representations), and stresses that imaginings are both rooted in motor processes and explicit performances. Third, imagination is strongly integrated with perceiving and our embodied capacities for perception. For example, we cannot imagine something being both red and green all over, “which might indicate that such a situation is impossible. However, it could equally be a result of our limited embodied perspective. A creature with two visual systems might think otherwise” (Jones and Schoonen 2018). Our perceptual capacities shape what affordances, or possibilities for action relational to our body, we see in our environment, and also what we can imagine.1 This allows for re-conceiving imagination as affordance-based, namely as a form of perception of possibilities for future actions. In fact, imagination is a form of “active engagement with possibilities” (Gallagher 2017, 191, 193). Affordance-based imagining starts with material engagement found in embodied doing. It involves embodied action and interaction with objects (toys or props), manipulation of which allows us to see their possibilities for action. As enactivism is rooted in phenomenology (Varela et al. 1991), according to which the perceptual and the imaginative capacities are not opposed to one another, seeing a possibility for action (an affordance) can be meaningfully cashed out as anticipating something as happening. The anticipation can be seen as a kind of imagining itself, as the future anticipated action is not yet there (Gallagher and Rucińska 2021). What the implications of this view are will be discussed in the last section. Fourth, a characteristic feature of enactivism is non-representationalism. While the challenge to representationalism is most clearly visible in the more radical forms of enactivism (Hutto and Myin 2017), which argue that sensory imaginings are stripped from representational contents, already in Varela et al.

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([1991] 2017) we see that in general the main tenets of enactivist thought are anti-representational. Varela et al. aim for a middle path between the Scylla of cognition as the recovery of a pregiven outer world (realism) and the Charybdis of cognition as the projection of a pregiven inner world (idealism). These two extremes both take representation as their central notion: in the first case representation is used to recover what is outer; in the second case it is used to project what is inner. [Varela et al.’s] intention is to bypass entirely this logical geography of inner versus outer by studying cognition not as recovery or projection but as embodied action. (2017, 172)

Thus, to say that imagination is not representational is to focus on the important role that imagination plays in our online worldly engagements, and show that the function of imagination is not just to allow for counterfactual thinking but to shape our creative online responses to the world. However, this does not deny that the enactivist imagination can also make sense of offline engagements—this will be discussed in the following section. First, let us consider the rich tradition in which enactive imagination is grounded.

Roots of Enactive Imagination The enactive approach to imagination as discussed above uses resources from both modern advancements in cognitive science and insights from traditional analytic and continental philosophical literature. In line with analytic tradition, enactivists are concerned with providing an account of imagination by analyzing the role and nature of representations, language and concepts, as inspired by the philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein on language games and Gilbert Ryle on the concept of imagination. However, enactivism is also concerned with the experiencing subject, and builds its ideas on the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on perception, Martin Heidegger on an object being “ready-to-hand,” Edmund Husserl on time and protention, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy of the mental image. Finally, the enactivist idea that cognitive processing (including imagining) incorporates the physical as well as the social environments builds on the works of pragmatists and practice theorists; for example, on John Dewey’s concept of the situation, Charles Peirce’s viewpoint that “just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body, we ought to say that we are in thought, and not that thoughts are in us” (1868, 149), George Herbert Mead’s idea of the internalized other, and Pierre

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Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. While it is not possible in this chapter to get into the details of how all of these thinkers influenced enactivist thought (for a useful overview, see Gallagher 2017), this chapter will showcase the influence of just one philosopher from each of these traditions on enactivist concept of imagination: analytic philosopher Gilbert Ryle, phenomenologist Jean-Paul Sartre, and practice theorist Pierre Bourdieu. The philosophies of these three thinkers serve as direct inspiration to some of the key tenets of the enactivist thought on imagination.

Philosophy of Gilbert Ryle Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind ([1949] 2009) inspires the idea that one’s act of imagination cannot be separated from the act of playacting. Ryle’s example is that of pretend playing to be a bear by gnashing one’s teeth and walking on all fours. Ryle asks: Where is the imagining taking place? According to the standard view that he criticizes, the child is imagining to be a bear “only if he sees pictures in his mind’s eye of his furry paws, his snowbound den and so on (. . .) His noises and antics may be a help to his picturing, or they may be special effects of it, but it is not in making these noises, or performing these antics, that he is exercising his imagination, but only in his ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, ‘smelling’, ‘tasting’ and ‘feeling’ things which are not there to be perceived” (Ryle [1949] 2009, 233–4). But does it make sense to say that the imagining of being a bear is something that happens prior to, or outside of, this playacting? According to Ryle, it does not: “Put as bluntly as this, the doctrine is patently absurd,” he says (ibid.). Such a picture reinvokes unnecessarily the idea of a Cartesian theater whereby we first play out what happens in the “mind’s eye,” before acting in the real world. But, according to Ryle, this perpetuates a dualism between cognition being in the head, and mindless behavior executed in the world. Instead, Ryle advances a view that we can be mindfully interacting in the world. We do things with heed. This is also true of imagining. Ryle opposes the idea of imagination being a “special mental faculty”; imagination is also to be cashed out as a heedful process happening in the world. Thus, the roaring and the gnashing of the teeth just is to imagine what it is to be a bear, in action. Ryle’s position is endorsed also by Shaun Gallagher, when he explains that enactive imagination is “accomplished in the playacting” (2017, 193).

Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre An important point for the enactivists about the nature of mental imagery is already found in Sartre’s philosophy. Sartre ([1940] 2004) proposes that mental

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imagery is a process of consciousness, and not a “picture” found in consciousness. Sartre explains that the illusion that there is something like an image (a thing, a portrait) in one’s mind (which he calls the “illusion of immanence”) is the result of a reifying reflection that has been adopted by psychologists, philosophers, and common sense. Imagining, however, does not produce a thing; it produces a relation. As Sartre explains, imagining is the relation of consciousness to the object [the object being, for example, his friend Pierre—added comment]; in other words, it is a certain way in which the object appears to consciousness, or, if one prefers, a certain way in which consciousness presents to itself an object. (. . .) The expression “mental image” gives rise to confusion. It would be better to say “consciousness of Pierre-asimaged” or “imaging consciousness of Pierre”. (2004, 7)

Simply put: the image is not a thing in the head. Even “mental rehearsal,” done in detachment from explicit action (done offline, as it were), is not just a representation in the head. As explained by Gallagher and Rucińska (2021), “(f)or Sartre, just as for contemporary neuroscience, what we call a reproduction of an image in memory, or the production of an image in the imagination involves the re-enactment (or novel enactment) of perceptual processes” (p. 4528).2 Sartre’s viewpoint that the image is not in the head resonates with recent neuroscientific findings that enactivists rely on, which is that motor imagery is also not to be conceived of as pictorial representations but as processes (Jeannerod 1997; Driskell et al. 1994; Guillot et al. 2012; see also Gallagher and Rucińska 2021). For instance, inspired by Sartre, enactivists propose that mental rehearsal of a climbing route is both visually complex and densely textured in a cross-modal way: kinetic, tactile, kinesthetic, nociceptive, even olfactory and gustatory dynamics are pertinent. Motoric processes and implicit body-schematic processes associated with motor control are activated in such imaginings, even if there is no explicit movement to be seen (Gallagher and Rucińska 2021). Sartre also proposed that “visual impressions that constitute an immobile form are joined by properly kinesthetic sensations (of skin, muscles, tendons, joints) that silently accompany them” (2004, 76). In the context of sport, imagining what to do next and what move to engage in is to actively re-enact those movements in imagery that already involve habitually acquired cross-modal motoric and peripheral processes, which are connected to action-oriented vision, bodily posture, or tactile sensory stimulation. Thus, Sartre’s philosophy of imagination forefronts the enactivist

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thought that imagining is integrated with perception and action in an ongoing dynamical pattern.

Philosophy of Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (2000) has advanced the thought that constant exposure to social practices has shaped our dispositions for interpreting our surroundings and making sense of the world. He called this socially shaped disposition for sense-making habitus. Against the background of habitus formation, we are able to enact our surroundings in a way that is socially appropriate, but also creative. This is relevant to understanding how imaginative re-enactments work in cases like pretend play, and to understanding why imagination is closely tied to social practices. For instance, praxeological enactivist theory of pretense (Weichold and Rucińska 2022) proposes that all phenomena of pretense consist of alternative sense-making, which is in various ways related to and interwoven with ordinary social practices. We can see affordances for pretend actions in interacting with objects. For example, a piece of wood can be interpreted as a pretend “sword” in the context of playing knights. Following Bourdieu’s practice theory, our shared history of social practices allows for the pretend performance to be intelligible to others, and even to ourselves. This means that our pretend and imaginative play is not detached from the social practices in which our imaginative practices have developed. In fact, even in creative play, one also emulates social practices—albeit not the ones that are typical. For example, when playing a lion, a chair affords to be a good “lion’s den,” and not an object to sit on. While it is often said that such play requires imagination to guide one’s creative play, enactivists can emphasize here the fact that creativity should be understood “not as the agent’s inherent skill to think symbolically or counterfactually, but through interactions and immersion within a variety of sociocultural practices and a skill to flexibly shift between and combine them” (Rucińska and Aggerholm 2019, see also Weichold and Rucińska 2021). Thus, while imagination is said to be needed in order to account for having controlled experiences in the absence of appropriate stimuli (Currie and Ravenscroft 2002), as is the case in pretend play, with reference to Bourdieu’s practice theory we can explain better how one’s imagining that is part of pretend play continues to be situated and shaped by sociocultural practices, and how we can all understand each other and make sense of pretend actions together, without invoking complex cognitive mechanisms.

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Contemporary Horizons Having provided an overview of the key characteristics of enactive imagination (Introduction) and situating its roots in analytic, phenomenological, and pragmatist thought (What Is Enactive Imagination?), this section will consider the immediate contemporary horizons of research on enactive imagination. Those horizons expand to both theory and practice. Specifically, it will briefly introduce a more precise theoretical notion connected to enactive imagination to be developed in future research, namely ongoing embodied imagining, and explain what role it can play in advancing our knowledge. While there are many areas for this concept to play a useful role (including sport, education, or healthcare), this section will particularly focus on its merits for advancing research on virtual reality.

Ongoing Embodied Imagining Ongoing embodied imagining (henceforth: OEI) proposes that imagination is a process that substantially involves the body in three ways, across three different timescales. The key idea of OEI is that these timescales come together and should be considered jointly, when making sense of an action. A good example of such ongoing embodied imagining takes place in the case of a cat that is lurching back and forth, before jumping over or across a barrier. The cat’s actions engaged in preparation to jump simultaneously involves three action streams along three timescales. First, there is a diachronic timescale, where perceptual-motor processes are involved in re-enacting and rehearsing the past: the cat activates its rooted sensorimotor processes and know-hows from past experiences of jumping (one might even speak of neural reuse—see Anderson 2010). The second timescale is a synchronic one, whereby we are dealing with motor activation of movementrelated motor systems to account for the present engagements. The cat engages in actual bodily motions of scanning the surrounding environment, where the occurrent sensorimotor processes are unfolding. The third one is a “futureoriented” timescale that involves predictive processes that anticipate future possibilities for action (see Kirchhoff 2018 on predictive processing involved in imagination): the cat’s actions involve anticipating where and how to jump, prospecting the most optimal performance. Importantly, according to OEI, these three activities are not separate; they are part of the same mindful action. When engaged in ongoing embodied imagination, we reuse the perceptualmotor system in the act of prospecting future actions.

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OEI also holds that explicit movement can further infuse our imaginings and bring forth new imaginative experiences. OEI follows here the key insight of enactive imagination that imaginative processes are not only grounded in embodied motor activations but are actively shaped by ongoing bodily participation with one’s physical environment that utilizes explicit movements and motor performances (Rucińska and Gallagher 2021). For instance, we can find OEI in rehearsal and in other explicitly embodied activities, such as in marking and blocking that are part of dancing and theatrical routines (Gallagher 2021). Marking is a form of an abbreviated hand gesture (such as finger rotation) that allows one’s imagining to be anchored in specific bodily affordances. Blocking refers to designing the performative space, such as thinking about how to position actors and props on a scene. Blocking resembles the premises of extended/distributed cognition, as the blocking arrangements constrain the imagining in a specific situation where imaginative rehearsal is part of the acting. These processes are also grounded in embodied motor activations, but the particular focus here is on the explicit movement, which infuses the imaginings of the performers and creates the affordances for actions that further constrain their imaginings. The explanatory power of OEI lies in the fact that it involves the actual body (not body representations) in the strong sense: the body shapes and maintains imaginative processes in a way that cannot be uncoupled from the ongoing interactions with the environment. This has interesting implications for practical research in different fields. Let us consider, as a particular case, the potential role of OEI for virtual reality research.

Advancing Virtual Reality Research OEI can be meaningfully applied to virtual reality (VR) research in order to better understand how explicit interaction with virtual tools, virtual props, and virtual avatars can allow discovering and creating new fictional possibilities for action. I will discuss two potential benefits of considering OEI in the context of VR: (1) re-thinking the role imagination plays in our virtual engagements, and (2) explaining better how we get to be more immersed in the virtual worlds. The enactive way of thinking about imagination can inspire a new way of thinking about virtual reality and the role of imagining with respect to it. Typically, the role for imagination in VR is considered to be either fundamental or limited. The camp is divided into two. On the one hand, there are fictionalists (e.g., van de Mosselaer 2020), who think that VR is a space of fictions that we must

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represent in imagination: they think that engaging with a virtual environment requires bringing to mind, in imagination, unreal virtual scenarios. On the other hand, there are digital realists (e.g., Chalmers 2022), who think that there is no essential role for imagination to play in VR, as we can directly perceive or engage with the digital environment at hand. OEI thesis opens up a third possibility: the role of imagination in VR engagements is to anticipate actions. The new hypothesis is that perception of virtual affordances, or possibilities for action of what is yet to come in the virtual world, is imaginative in the relevant, anticipatory sense: seeing a possibility for action is anticipating something as happening. As the future anticipated action is not yet there, the anticipation can be seen as a kind of imagining itself (Gallagher and Rucińska 2021). Virtual affordances, or action possibilities of the virtual environment, become possibilities for actual engagement thanks to our capacity for OEI.3 What one imagines in the virtual reality will be constrained by one’s bodily possibilities (movements one can make and the kinesthetic sensations that accompany them) and by one’s specific past bodily actions that have honed their skills. Thus, the proposal is that the virtual movement involves an activation of sensorimotor processes that would be involved, and would constrain, one’s actual movement if one were actually moving. This shows that we bring our embodied experiences with us into our virtual engagements. Following OEI, we can also get a new answer to the question: “how can we get more immersed in the VR?” Typically, the answer to this question is that we must provide a better, more accurate representation of a reality. OEI, however, promotes the idea that virtual environments are rich sources of affordances offering many possibilities for action, with which we can interact. So, to get immersion in the VR, we need to open up more affordance spaces in virtual worlds that will allow us to actively engage with them. The virtual environment does not have to imitate the real one in the best way; it simply needs to provide many action possibilities for an embodied agent. For instance, compare playing a roller coaster simulator game and a game such as Beat Saber. The former might be a perfect simulation of the external world, but it still makes many players nauseous, presumably as what they see in the VR does not match their real embodied proprioception. The latter might not be a good simulation, but as it opens up many action opportunities for breaking the blocks, inviting physical movement, it might be considered a more immersive game. OEI helps to explain that once we perceive virtual entities as persistent and rich sources of affordances, and conceptualize them as environments or worlds that are directly actionable, we can account for immersion in the VR in a new and better way.

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In short, OEI suggests a different role for imagination to play in the VR. While fictionalists think that imagination is needed to account for counterfactuality and fictionality of VR, and realists think that there is no substantial role of imagination to play in the VR, OEI proposes that the role of imagination in the VR is to enable rehearsing experiences and anticipating actions. This is part of a capacity for skillful engagement with the virtual world. OEI can also be applied to explain how feelings of immersion in virtual realities can be achieved and strengthened. This new thesis can help to properly justify the positive role of explicit bodily engagements within virtual environments, and explain how seemingly “disembodied” interactions in the VR still allow one to immerse in it, as they continue to involve bodily processes. In short, this thesis may bring the body into the VR in a substantive way. This will have interesting practical consequences. Without getting into detailed considerations here, we can foresee the impact that OEI thesis may have on developing VR tools for healthcare contexts, where acting in adaptive VR simulations is used to teach new life skills. For instance, VR simulations are already used to help overcome disabilities and phobias, or strengthen communication skills (Ma and Zheng 2011), but OEI can help to further inform the design of those simulations. It can also inform novel virtual intervention strategies for those who experience difficulties with social interaction (e.g., some on the Autism Spectrum Disorder), by suggesting that we create virtual environments where one can act on social affordances one by one. OEI may also have an impact on the development of sport training, where VR simulations require strategic use of the athlete’s body, and so provide a good platform to study the question of embodiment in the virtual world.

Conclusion and Future Directions To summarize, enactive imagination proposes that imagining is something that we do: imaginative processes are not only grounded in embodied motor activations but are shaped by ongoing bodily participation with one’s environment, or active engagement with possibilities that the environment or situation affords. Enactive imagination allows us to see new affordances in situations, and does not invoke representational mechanisms. Ongoing embodied imagining (OEI) further promotes an account of imagination that is grounded in neural and motor processes and utilizes explicit motor performances, substantially involving the body in three ways across different timescales. It shows that imagining is always embodied and coupled to the

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situation: it is a kind of doing that involves temporality, affect, and a form of knowledge that is not separate from movement. OEI will have interesting implications for design of virtual worlds, and has potential effect on shaping other technologies as well. Some follow-up questions for future direction of enactive imagination include the following: Can enactive imagination ever surprise us? Can enactive imagination justify our beliefs? Can enactive imagination explain propositional and counterfactual thinking and scale up to higher-order phenomena? And finally, what ethical and political questions does the concept of enactive imagination inspire? With respect to this latter issue, for instance, if our embodiment actively shapes our imagining (as OEI predicts), then our embodiment does not cease to make an impact on how we see affordances, and which possibilities for action (including virtual possibilities for action) unfold themselves. Since we all have different bodies, we will not see the virtual affordances the same way, which suggests that (a) ethically speaking, we are not all equal in the virtual world— and perhaps we need to create tailored VR environments and affordances for different people, and (b) politically speaking, we might need to make sure that there is equal distribution of, and fair access to, virtual resources for all. Future research should study these and other questions connected to the impact of enactivist imagination to societies, education, and arts.

Acknowledgments This research was funded by the FWO grant “Enactive Approaches to Pretending,” grant number 12J0419N. I would like to thank Marco Arienti and Geoffrey Dierckxsens for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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Ma, M. and H. Zheng (2011), “Virtual Reality and Serious Games in Healthcare,” in Advanced Computational Intelligence Paradigms in Healthcare 6: Virtual Reality in Psychotherapy, Rehabilitation, and Assessment, 169–92, Berlin: Springer. Medina, J. (2013), “An Enactivist Approach to the Imagination: Embodied Enactments and ‘Fictional Emotions’,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 50 (3): 317–35. Nanay, B. (2010), “Perception and Imagination: Amodal Perception as Mental Imagery,” Philosophical Studies, 150 (2): 239–54. O’Regan, J. K. and A. Noë (2001), “A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24 (5): 939–73; discussion 973. Peirce, C. S. (1868), “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2 (3): 140–57. Rucińska, Z. and K. Aggerholm (2019), “Embodied and Enacted Creativity in Sports,” in M. Cappuccio (ed.), Handbook of Embodied Cognition and Sport Psychology, 669–94, Cambridge: MIT Press. Rucińska, Z. and S. Gallagher (2021), “Making Imagination Even More Embodied: Imagination, Constraint and Epistemic Relevance,” Synthese, 199 (3–4): 8143–70. Rucińska, Z. and M. Weichold (2022), “Pretense and imagination from the perspective of 4E cognitive science: introduction to the special issue,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 21 (5): 989–1001. Ryle, G. ([1949] 2009), The Concept of Mind, London: Routledge. Sartre, J.-P. (2004), The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination, (Original: 1940, l’Imaginaire: Psychologie Phenomenologique de l’Imagination), trans. J. Webber, London: Routledge. Sartre, J.-P. (2012), The Imagination (Original: 1936. L’Imagination), trans. K. Williford and D. Rudrauf, London: Routledge. Sartre, J.-P. (2018), Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, trans. S. Richmond, London: Routledge. Van de Mosselaer, N. (2020), The Paradox of Interactive Fiction: A New Approach to Imaginative Participation in Light of Interactive Fiction Experiences, PhD diss., University of Antwerp. Varela, F. J., E. Thompson, and E. Rosch ([1991] 2017), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Revised), Cambridge: MIT Press. Weichold, M. and Z. Rucińska (2022), “Pretense as Alternative Sense-Making: A Praxeological Enactivist Account,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 21 (5): 1131–1156.

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Phantasy and Technologically Embedded Imagination A Phenomenological and Postphenomenological Analysis Nicola Liberati

Introduction This chapter aims to show how imagination can be technologically embedded, by building on some ideas developed within the philosophical frameworks of phenomenology and postphenomenology. The two related yet distinct notions of imagination and phantasy are usually considered fundamental elements in phenomenology. For example, it is well known that phantasy grounds the possibility for eidetic variations (Michels 2020). However, the relation between imagination, phantasy, and technologies is not very well explored, and, usually, imagination is left outside of the reach of philosophy of technology because of its “abstract” and “free” connotation (Aldea 2013). This work addresses phantasy and imagination starting from the Husserlian tradition. Through the interpretation made by Geniusas of the Husserlian text, it is possible to show that perception requires a deep intertwinement between those two faculties. Thanks to this intertwinement, the effect of technologies on phantasy and imagination can be better understood. More precisely, this text shows that phantasies play an essential role in how we experience the world, since perception is mediated by the horizon constituted by the possible phantasies the subjects can have.1 At the same time, the phantasies providing the constitution of objects can be shaped by technologies. Thus, it is possible to connect phantasy, imagination, and technologies in how they shape our perception of the world and the values and meanings subjects have.

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A concrete example of this connection can be given with reference to how our lives have changed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, we have been facing an unprecedented scenario where people are forced to be restricted in their movements for health reasons. In the Covid-19 shaped world, technologies mediating the meetings between people are not only used, but they shape how people think in general of social meetings. The digital mediation of others has become part of the imaginaries that people now have about meetings in general, like for work (Karl, Peluchette, and Aghakhani 2021), education (Teräs et al. 2020), conferences (Honavar 2021; Hacker et al. 2020), and even for meetings among friends (Quinones and Adams 2021). Thus, digital mediation is not only related to the actual use of technologies to mediate physical meetings, but also to the general imaginaries of what the meetings in the near future will look like. The kind of technological turn within imagination suggested by this chapter has direct effects on how we look at these technologies, since they affect how people make meaning of their life by shaping their phantasy. How much can phantasy and imagination be embedded within technology? How much technologies are playing a role in the kind of imagination we have and how we use our “free fantasizing”? This chapter is divided into two main sections. The first section focuses on phenomenology and imagination by showing how imagination and phantasy are analyzed by phenomenology and what are the elements that are useful for our analysis. The second part relates to introducing technologies by focusing on postphenomenology.

Phenomenology: Imagination and Phantasy Imagination is a fundamental element in Husserl’s phenomenology. It plays an essential role in his Ideas I (Elliott 2005; Husserl 1950), and its importance can be traced back also to earlier writings (Edmund 1970; Husserl 1975). The Husserlian analysis of phantasy and imagination clearly generates a rupture with the Kantian tradition. While Kant sees imagination as part of perception, Husserl divides the two faculties (Geniusas 2022; Kant 1999, A120). This difference leads many phenomenologists to criticize the Husserlian approach, since it seems not to give enough details on the productive imagination (Depraz 1998; de Santis 2019; Doyon 2019; Sallis 1992; Ricoeur 2024). Following these critical analyses, phantasy in phenomenology is considered as “just” a way to reproduce an object in an “as-if ” modality, and

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we cannot use any aspects of phantasy within perception (Mendoza-Canales 2018).2 Another aspect that needs to be clarified, since it is different from other approaches, is that Husserl’s imagination (in the sense of the image consciousness [Bildbewusstsein]) and phantasy [Phantasie] are two distinct elements (Katz 2016). According to Husserl, imagination, as highlighted by the term imago, relates more to visual images, while phantasy is linked to the term fantasia, which refers to the Greek term “φαντασία” related to a much broader spectrum of experiences including phantasies and dreams. The first element of this distinction is image consciousness [Bildbewusstsein]. As Katz and Lotz clearly show in their analysis of Husserl’s text (Katz 2016; Lotz 2007; Todorovic 2021), image consciousness is based upon different contrasts and frictions generated in the act of perceiving an image. When a subject looks at a picture, three elements have to be considered to understand the image consciousness generated by it: the physical image, the image object, and the image subject (Husserl 1980; de Warren 2010; Thiel 1997). The “physical image [das physische Bild]” is the physical thing the subject looks at, such as the canvas and the physical colors on it. The “image object [das Bildobjekt]” is the object appearing in the painting, such as a man wearing an armor and a laurel crown or a creature half human half horse. The “image subject [das Bildsubjekt]” is the “real” object that might exist in the actual world, like Julius Caesar, an historical person who lived in ancient Rome and crossed the river Rubicon, or the inexistent object “centaur.” Image consciousness is generated by the presence of these three elements and by the contrasts deriving from the interactions between them. According to Husserl, the picture works as a door to another world where someone has to “look into [Hineinsehen]” (Lotz 2007; Sandoval 2020; Liberati 2015b) in order to perceive the entities “living” in it. The contrast between what “exists” in the external world and within the painting generates the image consciousness. As it can be highlighted, this contrast is produced through the existence of a physical image like a painting, since a spectator needs a physical image to have an image depicted or represented on a canvas. In the case of phantasy, on the other hand, the subject does not deal with any physical image, but an individual produces the images directly without any need for “replicas” or “mediations” (Geniusas 2022; Husserl 1980, XXIII:LI). Thus, it is evident that there is a clear distinction between image consciousness and phantasy, at least in terms of what is needed by these faculties. Image consciousness must rely on a physical image that works as a pointer to the fictional world. In contrast, phantasy does not require such a physical element.

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While imagination and phantasy differ in some aspects, they both present an object “as if ” it were real, and so they radically differ from perception. The moment a subject looks at a painting, the image object visible inside the painting is an object “as if ” it were real. The positional act related to the existence of this object is “suspended,” since it is about an object in the fictional world of the painting, just like in the case of a person imagining something in pure phantasy. For this reason, both image consciousness and phantasy provide something different than perception. However, even if perception differs from these two faculties, it would be wrong to think of the latter as completely disjointed from the former. Instead, the three can interact, because phantasy and imagination can provide the “resources of sense” from which the perception grounds its meaning. As Geniusas highlights, “perception and imagination cooperate at the level of meaning-constituting consciousness” (Geniusas 2022, 56). The act of perception is directly related to the constitution of the objects through passive synthesis, thanks to a kind of “memory” structured through the subject’s experiences. As Husserl shows in Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis and Experience and Judgement (Husserl 1939, 1966) the object is generated passively through a process of typification, which is related to the passive synthesis of the object and the past experiences of the subject.3 Thus, the process generating the objects is related to the horizons of meanings provided by our past experiences in junction with the links constituted by the objects around us. The subjects’ past experiences can be enriched by elements coming from the possible imaginaries they have. Thus, this nexus integrates perception, phantasy, and imagination together since they all provide the horizon of meanings related to the objects.4 Even if imagination and phantasy provide objects “as if ” they were real, they can still provide the elements constituting the horizon of meanings of objects. For example, imagine a person behind a bench, of whom the only upper half of the body is visible. The “object” of our experience is pre-given to us according to past experiences. Thanks to similarities with objects previously experienced, the person would be given to us as a human being hidden by a bench, assuming we experienced such an object regularly in the past. However, if our past experiences are related to objects in phantasy, these objects provide the background of meaning needed for the experience. For example, if we have phantasies like centaurs, the object perceived will not be provided as a human being hidden by a bench, but as a centaur, where the bench hides the bottom non-human part of the body. For this reason, Depraz takes phantasy in the

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Husserl’s phenomenology as productive, since it provides the potentialities and different perspectives the subjects are related to, and it directly shapes the world where the subjects live (Depraz 1998). Husserl never talks about imagination in the terms we are introducing in this article since, as we have shown, he takes imagination and phantasy as two different ways to provide objects. Especially, Husserl refers to imagination always in relation to the suspension of the positing act of the subjects. However, instead of focusing just on the positionality and the “as if ” connotation, we can extend his intuition and think of phantasy and imagination as providing the imaginaries and possible experiences grounding the life of people, and the framework under which the experiences of the world fall within.

Postphenomenology between Imagination and Technologies Postphenomenology finds its roots in the phenomenological approach, by using the framework of phenomenology to the study of technologies. Many authors have already explored in detail the connections between “traditional” phenomenology and “Post”-phenomenology (Mykhailov and Liberati 2022; Zwier, Blok, and Lemmens 2016). Postphenomenology clearly states that humans and technologies cannot be considered as unrelated. One shapes the other, and so technologies deeply constitute what human beings are, with respect to the way they think, act, and value things around them (Kudina and Verbeek 2018; Liberati 2021a; de Boer, te Molder, and Verbeek 2018; Verbeek 2008; G. P. Wellner 2015; Rosenberger 2017). Moreover, many researchers show how phenomenology and postphenomenology allow promoting the idea that objects become almost “alive” when related to human and non-human subjects (Mykhailov and Liberati 2022). Postphenomenology has already focused on imagining technologies (Ihde 2007). Thus, it has been shown how they do not only shape the images people can perceive, but even the imaginaries and the world where they live, and so they shape directly the kind of world people can have phantasies about (Romele 2020, 2016). Technologies provide a horizon that generates a sense of meaning to the objects around. For example, radiotelescopes do not only make perceivable objects which would not be perceived by the naked eye, but they also provide a background of objects and imaginaries which frames how we perceive the world around.

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However, imagination has not been directly addressed in its relation to technologies, and it is not yet addressed as a technologically embedded faculty (Wellner 2018; Liberati 2021b; G. Wellner 2022, 2021). There are almost no studies on how imagination and phantasy are technologically embedded.5 Can we think of how imagination and phantasy intertwine with the effects of technologies in a postphenomenological perspective by focusing on the phenomenological interpretation of imagination and phantasy? In phenomenology, imagination and phantasy are not usually examined in relation to technologies. However, two central elements can be used to show the influence of technologies on imagination and phantasy. First, physical images relate to the technologies used in a society, even in Husserl’s philosophy. For example, the analysis of the “image consciousness” is related to the kind of image a subject can perceive, such as a painting of an object, and such a physical image is related to the type of technologies used to produce it (Liberati 2021b). A painting with traditional oil colors and a digital painting generated using digital devices have different physical images, and so they structure a different kind of image consciousness in the perceiving subject. Thus, in principle, image consciousness is related to the kind of technologies a subject has in society, because of their relation with the physical image. To take another example, an object in Augmented reality is perceived differently from the same object depicted in an oil painting (Liberati 2018). Second, phantasy can also be related to technologies. Phantasy is an important part of perception even if it is not the same faculty and does not rely on the same elements. It is true that phantasy cannot provide objects in the same modality of perception according to the phenomenological perspective, but it is also true that it can produce the background experiences through which the meanings of the objects arise through typification. The world is not given to us merely through our perceptual capability, but phantasy and the imaginaries we have profoundly affect how we perceive the world: they provide the material through which people make sense of their lives, and a modification in imagination and phantasy directly impacts how we perceive the world. Moreover, as we have shown, technologies do not provide only perceptual objects but also imaginaries which affect how we look at the world. Thus, even if phantasy might be in principle unrelated to the use of technologies, technologies still affect phantasy by exposing the subjects to specific scenarios and possible phantastic objects that structure the horizons of objects. By opening novel perspectives that directly affect our imaginaries, technologies change how we perceive the world where we live and who we are through imagination and phantasy.

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To come back to the example of the Covid-19 pandemic mentioned in the introduction, the restrictions imposed forced society to use digital technologies as a reliable way to “keep in touch” and as a valuable substitution for physical meetings (de Boer and Verbeek 2022). In the light of the intertwinement among imagination, phantasy, and technologies, it is clear that the use of a technology that can provide a visual “image” of others through digital mediation, and the inclusion of digital technologies in the imaginaries people use to refer to meeting with others has repercussion on phantasy and imagination in general. First, since digital technologies provide digital images as physical objects, the image consciousness related to them is directly linked to the use of novel technologies. Second, these technologies do not offer only perceptual objects, but they also open the door to new phantasies, which affect the horizon of meanings on which people’s activities are founded. The meaning of “meeting with others” then is directly based on the technologies used through their effects on phantasy. Thus, these digital technologies do not only provide the perception of others in a mediated way, but they provide a background for imagination and phantasy to build the horizon of meanings.

Conclusions This chapter focused on imagination and phantasy and their relation to technologies. In the first section, the text showed how imagination and phantasy are analyzed in phenomenology. Imagination and phantasy are different since the former needs a physical image while the latter does not, but they both provide objects “as if ” they were real, and so they both provide objects with a different positionality from perception. Moreover, despite their differences with perception, they all provide the background founding the horizon of meanings for the generation of objects in general. In the second section, the chapter focused on the effects of technologies through the use of postphenomenological work on perception. Even if postphenomenology does not focus on the role of technologies on imagination, it enables to understand how technologies play an essential role in structuring perception in general. We showed then how it is possible to introduce technologies within the action of imagination and phantasy, and we took into account the effects of these technologies in the generation of a horizon of meanings for perception.

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This chapter proposes the idea that the introduction of novel technologies brings about profound changes that affect imagination and phantasy in general. Thus, this introduction does not impact only the “quality” of the life of people, but it has a deep repercussion on the imaginaries people can have and the horizon of experiences on which the constitution of the world around us is grounded. These findings open a pathway to the analysis of how our horizon of meanings gets modified, by analyzing the way technologies shaped society in terms of the type of images provided and in terms of the phantasies and imaginaries emerging from them.

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Notes

Editors’ Introduction 1 This book does not aim at mapping imagination according to either the analytical or the continental tradition. The goal is to present a philosophical thinking that is not indebted to a specific tradition, although traditions do inspire and shape the contributors’ arguments. In a sense we follow the pragmatist tradition that preceded the divide and today cannot be easily classified as continental or analytic.

Chapter 1 1 Of course, Pliny is not unique in dismissing women throughout history. What is worth noting in this particular case, is that seventeeth-century artists, inspired by the legend, gradually erased Dibutades’ artistic achievement from their drawings and replaced her figure with that of a “genuine” male artist. They could not imagine a women artist or a woman innovator. For a discussion of the diminished role of Dibutades see: Rosenblum, “The Origin of Painting.” 1957; Levitine, “Addenda to Robert Rosenblum’s ‘The Origin of Painting.’” 1958; 329–31; Rosenblum, Robert. 1957. “The Origin of Painting: A Problem of Iconography of Romantic Classicism,” The Art Bulletin, 39, 1957, 279–90; Frasca-Rath, “The Origin (and Decline) of Painting: Iaia, Butades and the Concept of ‘Women’s Art’ in the 19th Century,” 2020. 2 Pliny, Natural History, Vol. IX, BK 34, sec. 151, p. 373. He adds: “It was from these that the ornaments on the pediments of temples originated. Because of Butades modellers get their Greek name of plastae” (ibid, sec. 153). 3 Of course, Plato’s tale of the cave uses the same imagery, but it is not art Plato seeks to investigate, rather, it is the question of truth. 4 For a general review of the notion of imagination in philosophy see, Casey, Edward (1976), Meyer Spacks Particia (1976), Kearney Richard (1988), Sepper (2013), Kind Amy (2016). 5 As Fabian Dorsch concludes, for Hume, “the imagination does not provide us with access to modal truths about external reality” (2016, 49). 6 Phantasia does not mean imagination exactly, but has been so translated. Aristotle argues that illusions and dreaming are also part of the imagination.

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7 Samantha Matherne adds, it is a “‘threefold synthesis’ of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition” (2016, 58) that generates objective representations. In the third Critique, the imagination has somewhat a different role than the one given in the first Critique. An aesthetic experience (of beauty) is one in which the imagination has a “free play” and is not constrained by the rules of the understanding. The imagination and the understanding stand in harmony. 8 For an extensive review of imagination as mediation in Kant, see Henry Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, 2004. There are numerous texts analyzing Kant’s Critique of Reason, particularly helpful here were the texts of Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy, 1984 and John Sallis, Kant and the Spirit of Critique, 2020. 9 Casey, 1974, 1976. 10 Despite positioning imagination as independent and significant, Sartre in effect diminishes its role. 11 See Casey, 1976, 158. 12 One should of course mention the German Romantics, such as, Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling, as well as other Romantics and Surreal writers, who situated the imagination in a high position with respect to other cognitive faculties and prioritized art over other investigative activities. 13 Reid, 2018, page 20 on the e-copy. 14 Lacan writes: “the mirror stage in this context as an identification, in the full sense analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image—an image that is seemingly predestined to have an effect at this phase, as witnessed by the use in analytic theory of antiquity’s term, ‘imago.’” (2005, 76). Adding, “for imagos . . . seems to be the threshold of the visible world” (77). The process of identification takes place when the chain of signifiers and fragmented images a child has experienced of her or his body and environment are integrated, crystalized, and “synthesized” into a single gestalt, generating a self, an I, that will serve as a core of one’s psychic structure. 15 Thus, according to Castoridis, imagination can only resist given social imaginaries. It cannot construct new forms. 16 See Shoshana Zuboff, 2019, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. 17 For example, Ihde, 1990; 2012. 18 Kathrine Hayles’ work centers around the question of the transformations taking place in humans’ cognitive abilities and the new understanding we have of human cognition in the digital age. For example: How We Became Posthuman, 1999; My Mother was as Computer, 2005; Unthought, 2017. Catherine Malabou’s notion of plasticity addresses this issue in Plasticity (2022). 19 For example, Latour and Woolgar, 1986, Laboratory Life. 20 See in particular chapter 5, “Program One: A Phenomenology of Technics” (1990). 21 Inspired by Donna Haraway’s 1985 “A Manifesto for Cyborgs.” 22 See Galit Wellner’s 2021 article entitled “Digital Imagination: Ihde’s and Stiegler’s Concepts of Imagination,” for a review of Ihde’s and Stiegler’s notions of

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imagination. Wellner offers a layered model for imagination, which along with digital technologies produces endless possibilities for humans to find meanings in. 23 Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedupus, 1983, as well as other writings.

Chapter 2 1 https://www​.christies​.com​/features​/A​-collaboration​-between​-two​-artists​-one​ -human​-one​-a​-machine​-9332​-1​.aspx (accessed January 22, 2022). 2 https://mac​hine​lear​ning​mastery​.com​/how​-to​-develop​-a​-convolutional​-neural​ -network​-to​-classify​-photos​-of​-dogs​-and​-cats/ (accessed January 16, 2022). 3 https://www​.nytimes​.com​/2018​/10​/19​/arts​/design​/tomas​-saraceno​-palais​-de​-tokyo​ .html (accessed January 23, 2022). 4 For example, “Pig Wings” by Catts, Zurr, and Ben-Ary https://www​.moma​.org​/ collection​/works​/110251 (accessed January 23, 2022). 5 Ibid. 6 https://tylervigen​.com​/spurious​-correlations (accessed January 17, 2022). 7 It is a coincidence that some AI algorithms also operate by the logic of layers. For example, in image recognition, one layer is in charge of identifying light and dark pixels, another identifies edges and simple shapes, next are the more complex shapes and finally the layer that identifies images like human faces. 8 Instead of “loop” this process can be described as a spiral (see Campbell 2021). The spiral movement nicely illustrates the movement from one layer to another, be it a technological layer or a human plateau. 9 https://www​.bbc​.com​/news​/science​-environment​-47873592 (accessed January 17, 2022).

Chapter 3 1 For me “symbolic” is not only “social values” but also concerns the cognitive and bodily schemes of access to the world. It includes values, language, desires, aesthetic judgments, tastes, and so on.

Chapter 5 1 In this chapter I take the terms “social imaginary” and “social imagination” to be largely interchangeable. Both refer to the patterns by which our reality is made available to us. As I will clarify, there can be multiple social imaginaries within

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a single society. Social imagination refers, more broadly, to the way our shared meanings give shape to our experiences. Bottici (2019) argues that this goes both ways and makes use of the term “imaginal” to refer to images that exist between imagination and imaginary, that is, the product of individual faculties and social context, as well as a complex interaction between the two (Bottici 2019: 5). As a concept, it is indebted to the work of Jean-Paul Sartre (1958), Jacques Lacan (1966), Merleau-Ponty (1968), Luce Irigaray (1985a, 1985b), Cornelius Castoriadis (1987), Moira Gatens (1996), and Genevieve Lloyd (1999). For example, Lloyd and Gatens (1999) trace the social imaginary back to Spinoza. Kathleen Lennon (2015) begins her examination of the imaginary with Hume and Kant before working through its contemporary phenomenological, psychoanalytic, and feminist instantiations. In Tech, the content of our racial imaginary is embedding algorithms with biases that then perpetuate or cause discriminatory harm to racialized people. See: Meredith Broussard’s recent work (2023) on algorithmic bias and the use of predictive policing software by police departments, and Damien Patrick Williams’ recent work on bias in AI tools such as facial recognition systems (2020) and ChatGPT (2023). Williams and Broussard both articulate how the datafication of racial imaginaries is contributing to the perpetuation of racialized violence, marginalization, and inequality. For example, the 2011 film The Help, a fictional story told though the perspective of a white character, that portrays a group of Black domestic workers catapulting the white protagonist to a new stage in life in midst of 1960s racism. Stories like this effectively dilute and simplify racial issues and perpetuate offensive stereotypes about Black people, all while presenting a feel-good representation for whites. See: Alia Al-Saji (2019) for more on the notion of temporal projection, by which “the racialized body . . . is cast as perpetually past, coming ‘too late’ to intervene in the meaning of its own representation” (Al-Saji 2019, 475).

Chapter 6 1 For a good introductory and overview, see Biss (2014). 2 There has been a lot written in the continental, and more recently, in the analytic tradition on the exact relation between imagination and perception (see, e.g., Husserl 2005, Sartre 2015; Currie 1995; Nanay 2010). The authors I discuss here do not make elaborate claims on the nature and interrelation of these faculties but presuppose a phase of moral perception in the process of moral reasoning and argue how this phase is morally crucial and imaginative.

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3 “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer” (Weil 2002, 117). 4 Murdoch’s moral philosophy can be considered a Plato-inspired moral realism that pictures moral life as a pilgrimage from an egocentric, self-obsessed condition to the understanding of the true reality of the good. 5 Interestingly, Murdoch contrasts imagination with phantasy and links phantasy with the self-absorbed knowledge of the other that the imagination overcomes, and so makes a distinction between “egoistic fantasy and liberated truth-seeking creative imagination” (1992, 321). 6 Although this is a very particular way of understanding moral imagination, it resembles the widespread conception of imagination as that what makes present what is not and it appeals to more recent insights that imagination has an instructive next to a transcendent use (King and Kung2016, 1). 7 With “feeling,” she seems to refer to sensitivity rather than to actual emotions. 8 Diamond discusses this example against William Frankena’s take of it in his handbook Ethics. She accuses him of “moral obtuseness” since he presents this dialogue as one of “bringing principles and rules to bear on the facts of the case.” Diamond problematizes he “does not envisage as a possibility that any moral thinking goes on in what one takes to be the facts of the case, how one comes to see them or describe them” (1991, 310). 9 Note that, in their conception, “perception” is not strictly distinguished from other mental faculties but is seen as intertwined with contemplation and understanding. Imaginative perception thus already involves moral understanding in their view. 10 See Johnson (1993, ch. 2), on how even basic moral concepts as “lying” are imaginatively constructed and apprehended. 11 Murdoch tells us that M “behaves beautifully to the girl throughout, not allowing her real opinion to appear in any way.” However, it is difficult to believe that M displayed the same overt behavior before and after her revelation. It is hard to conceive, for instance, that she would have given the girl sincere compliments or that she would have been truly interested in her stepdaughter’s occupations when she felt “her son has married beneath him” (2001a, 17). 12 I do not have the ambition to review the philosophical debate of creativity here. For a good introduction, see, e.g., Gaut (2010); Paul and Kaufman (2014); and Gaut and Kieran (2018). 13 Kant associated productive imagination resulting in inventive creativity only with the groundbreaking work of the artistic genius. Nowadays, creativity is generally recognized in other (if not all) domains of life and mundane, daily behavior, referred to as, for example, “psychological creativity” (Boden 1990) or “minimal creativity” (Stokes 2011). 14 Murdoch uses this metaphor, different from my usage, to characterize the omnipotence of the human will in the existentialist view of moral action (2001, 38).

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Chapter 7 1 We note that the phenomenon of blaming certain social groups as the bringers of disease and the cause of pandemics is not just typical of our time, but is a recurring phenomenon throughout history. We can think for example of the Jewish populations that were blamed during the period of the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. 2 The temporal aspects of catastrophic events are examined elsewhere (Malabou 2015; Kouba 2021).

Chapter 8 1 A collection of shorter essays on poetry and literary criticism can be found in Selected Prose 1909-1965 (Pound 1973). 2 Homer “had the advantage of writing for an audience each of whom knew something of a ship,” while “Every man who does his job really well has a latent respect for every other man [including poets] who does his job really well” (Pound 1973, 31). 3 Herman Gorter compares the situation of romantic bourgeois poets with Roman poets of the golden era (Virgil, Horace, etc.). While Virgil came from a land-owning family in Cisalpine Gaul, Horace was a supporter of the republican camp, led by Brutus. He fled from the battlefield of Philippi (where Marc Antony and Octavian were victorious against Brutus and Cassius), but his family’s estate was confiscated by Octavian (by now Augustus) for the settlement of veterans. Apparently, Virgil’s family faced a similar fate. Therefore, these two youngsters took to poetry. Maecenas, acting as Augustus’ Minister of Culture, became their patron, but the contradiction of their position (as half-hearted supporters of imperial rule) became visible in the ambiguities of their work. On the one hand, Virgil composed the Aeneid, in support of imperial power. On the other hand, he wrote the Georgics, in praise of idyllic rural life and its artisanal techniques, with which he familiarized himself as owner of a villa given to him by Maecenas. 4 See for instance Lauren Groff ’s recent novel Matrix (2021) about the life of poetessabbess Marie de France.

Chapter 10 1 Ricoeur explains that it “is in this twofold context that the equivalence of the two transfers is asserted. . . . The first transfer is determinative . . . for Western thought, the second ‘gives the standard for our representation of the nature of language’” (Ricoeur 1977, 281–2).

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2 Ricoeur asks whether a style of thought more subversive than that of Heidegger’s would “support the universal suspicion of Western metaphysics with a more heightened suspicion directed at what in metaphor itself is left unsaid” (1977, 284). He accordingly explains that “the non-stated in metaphor is used, worn-out metaphor. Metaphoricity functions here in spite of us, behind our backs so to speak. The claim to keep semantic analysis within a metaphysically neutral area only expresses ignorance of the simultaneous play of unacknowledged metaphysics and worn-out metaphors” (Ricoeur 1977, 284). 3 Ricoeur remarks that for Roman Jacobson, the “poetic function consists essentially in accentuating the message as such at the expense of the referential function” (Ricoeur 1977, 209). 4 Ricoeur comments “that the choice of the term label is appropriate to the conventionalist nominalism of Godman—there are no fixed essences giving a tenor of meaning to verbal and non-verbal symbols” (1977, 233). 5 According to Heidegger, “only because the ‘senses’ [die ‘Sinne’] belong ontologically to an entity whose kind of Being is Being-in-the-world with a state-of-mind, can they be ‘touched’ by anything or ‘have a sense for’ [Sinn haben für] something in such a way that what touches them shows itself in an affect” (1962, 176–7). The world, Heidegger tells us moreover, “is the ever-nonobjective to which we are subject” (1971, 44; see Dufrenne 1973). 6 Aesthetic judgment, Ricoeur accordingly explains, is “‘merely’ reflective because the transcendental subject does not determine any universally valid objectivity, but instead only takes into account the procedure the mind follows in the operation of subsumption, proceeding in a way from below to above” (2000, 95).

Chapter 11 1 Husserl distinguishes phantasy and image consciousness as two different types of consciousness: whereas the former only corresponds to mental images, the latter is tied to a specific understanding of “imagination,” which will be examined deeper in the next sections. Sartre by contrast does not make this distinction; for him thus mental images involve the same kind of imaging consciousness as other instances of “the great ‘irrealizing’ function of consciousness, or ‘imagination’” (2004, 3), like material images.

Chapter 12 1 See project REELER (Responsible and Ethical Learning with Robotics) (https:// responsiblerobotics​.eu/ , https://responsiblerobotics​.eu​/research​/perspectives​-on​ -robots/).

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2 We have since learned that our European findings in robotics may have been part of a larger trend, a kind of “Silicon Valley Culture,” where investors are lured into making big investments through media presentations, which are presenting false pictures of the state-of-the-art technology. For instance, Elizabeth Holmes the founder of Theranos (see https://www​.nytimes​.com​/2022​/01​/03​/technology​/ elizabeth​-holmes​-guilty​.html ; https://www​.theguardian​.com​/technology​/2022​/jan​ /04​/elizabeth​-holmes​-verdict​-analysis).

Chapter 13 1 See Rogers 2002, 193. Cf. Ayer (1977, 284–5). See also Vrahimis (2013b, 2022). 2 See Glendinning (2006, 69–84); Vrahimis (2013a, 110–62, 2013c, 2022). 3 See also Glendinning (2006, 69–74); Overgaard (2010); Vrahimis (2013a, 110–59; 2013c); Marion (2018). 4 See also Glendinning (2006, 72). 5 See Vrahimis (2022). 6 See Small (1981); Thomasson (2002); Brandl (2002); Vrahimis (2013a, 114–43). 7 An earlier comparison of Ryle’s views in The Concept of Mind with Sartre is undertaken by Wisdom (1951). 8 See Deutscher (2015, 156). 9 As both Turner (1968, 20) and Morgan (1974, 20–1) emphasize, Hume is central among the multiple targets of Sartre’s critique. 10 See also Gusman (2016, 28–32). 11 See Gusman (2016). 12 See Morgan (1974, 21). 13 More well known is Sartre’s later attribution to Hume of a variant of this view, namely “the illusion of immanence” (Sartre [1940] 2004, 5), which involves thinking of “consciousness as a place peopled with small imitations” (5). 14 Gusman (2016) points to the similarity of Sartre’s critique of “thingism” with later analytic discussions of the “phenomenological fallacy” in the philosophy of mind— the latter being traceable back to Ryle’s (1949) account of the imagination. 15 For an overview of Sartre’s arguments, see e.g. Morgan (1974). 16 See Morgan (1974, 23). 17 On the complex relation between introspection and Sartre’s phenomenology, see e.g. Turner (1968, 21–2). 18 See e.g., Dorsch 2018, 3–5. 19 See Morgan (1974, 22, 31); Deutscher (2015, 154). 20 See Morgan (1974, 31). 21 See also Hatzimoysis (2014, 83–93).

Notes 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

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See Morgan (1974, 21–2). See also Morgan (1974, 21–2). See Thomasson 2018; O’Connor 2012; Vrahimis 2013a, 131–3. See also Morgan (1974, 28–9). Indeed, Morgan (1974, 26–8) detects various parallels between Sartre’s account of quasi-observation and Ryle’s views. See also Deutscher (2015). Sartre ([1940] 2004) also engages in an extensive discussion of portraiture. See also Turner (1968, 22); Amalric (2014, 84-85). Ricoeur (168) points to Ryle’s employment of a linguistic version of Husserl’s method of imaginative variation. This similarity is also addressed in more recent debates concerning the relation between ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology (e.g., Thomasson 2007, 276–80). Some scholars have contested the phenomenological reading, interpreting Hume’s criterion in functionalist terms; others have argued that the two interpretations are compatible; see also e.g., Dorsch (2018, 4, fn. 3). Morgan (1974, 20) and Danto (1981, 15) point to Ryle’s behaviorism as a crucial differentiating factor. Hanney (1971) detects multiple further differences between Ryle and Sartre. This chapter was first presented at the “Imagination across the ContinentalAnalytical divide” conference jointly organized by the University of Antwerp and Fordham University of New York City in 2017. I am grateful to all those present for their helpful questions and comments. I also owe many thanks to Galit Wellner, Geoffrey Dierckxsens, and Marco Arienti for their editorial work.

Chapter 14 1 “Affordance” is a notion from Ecological Psychology (Gibson 1979) that captures the relational aspect between animal’s perception and its action in the world. For instance, a sponge affords grasping and squeezing to a human, whereas it affords walking over it to an ant. 2 For more on the role of bodily processes in Sartre’s philosophy of imagination and Sartre’s commentary on Husserl’s distinction between hyle (sensation) and morphe (intentional apprehension), see, for instance, Sartre (2012, 2018). 3 This proposal walks a different road between fictionlism and realism. Once seen as possibilities for action, virtual affordances are no longer “fictions” or representations in the traditional sense. However, “digital realism” does not capture enactivist proposal either, as virtual affordances are not reducible to the digital world. The “middle path” as described by Varela et al. ([1991] 2017) best captures the idea that the virtual world is enacted.

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Chapter 15 1 Such a shaping activity of phantasy and imagination is not only on the creation of objects and world but also entails the generation of values and meanings in what is around us. 2 The following sections show how perception and phantasy can be intertwined. 3 Passivity in Husserl is used to take into account the “activity” of the objects. Instead of having a relation between the subject (S) and object (O) where only the subject is active, Husserl introduces the idea that even the object is active in its own way (Biceaga 2010; Husserl 1966; Ferrarin 2006; Liberati 2021a, 2015b; Mykhailov and Liberati 2022). Especially in his texts, Husserl shows how the objects constitute themselves, and they present themselves to the perceiving subject. Thus, to show the link connecting the subject and the object, instead of having just one arrow originating from the subject and directed toward the object S→O We also have an arrow coming from the object and directed toward the subject to show how the object is not inert but it acts SO 4 Phantasy and imagination shape the way people perceive the world as perception does by structuring the way the object is generated through the passive typification activity. 5 Novels like the ones in science fiction narratives can generate such a background experience as well which train us to perceive possible aspect of society and the implementation of technologies. (Bonfiglioli 2021).

Contributors

Marco Arienti obtained a PhD in philosophy at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, where he is currently a member of the Center for European Philosophy. His research revolves around the nature of image representations. He has published on the experience of images and their relation with imagination. Lars Botin is Associate Professor in techno-anthropology at the Department of Planning, Aalborg University/Copenhagen, Denmark. His research interests are hybrid in their inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, ranging from art, architecture and design, health informatics and social media. He focuses on human-technology relations in postphenomenological and posthuman perspective, hence concerned with cross-sections in philosophy of technology. His most recent works are Postphenomenology and Architecture (2021) and Technology Assessments in Technoanthropological Perspective (2021). Arthur Cools is Professor in contemporary philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Antwerp, Belgium. He publishes in the field of French phenomenological philosophy, philosophy of literature and aesthetics. He recently co-edited Levinas and Literature (2021) and the special issue “Arts, Ontology and Politics in Aesthetic Investigations” (2023). His main research interests include the distinction (and the relation) between fiction and nonfiction, personal and impersonal imaginings, selfhood and experiences of estrangement. Geoffrey Dierckxsens is Head of the Interdisciplinary Research Lab for Bioethics (IRLaB) at the Department of Applied Philosophy and Ethics of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is deputy head of the same department. He has published internationally in journals such as Topoi, the Journal of Medical Ethics and Philosophy Today. Celia Edell is a Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQSC) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy department at the University of British Columbia. She holds

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a PhD in philosophy from McGill University where she was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellow. Edell’s research lies at the intersection of feminist theory, social epistemology, and ethics with a special focus on guilt, blame, and group oppression. Lyat Friedman is a senior lecturer at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Her research interests focus on phenomenology, cultural studies, psychoanalytic theory, gender studies, and philosophy of technology. Her book, In the Footsteps of Psychoanalysis (2013, published in Hebrew), is being translated into English. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled: “What is a Question?” Cathrine Hasse is Full Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark at the Department of Education. She heads the research group Future Technologies, Culture and Learning, engaging in research on educational technologies, gender studies, and cultural learning processes. She is the author of Posthumanist Learning (2020) and An Anthropology of Learning: On Nested Frictions in Cultural Ecologies (2015), and an active participant in the 4S network of Science and Technology Studies with several workshops on postphenomenology and anthropology. Petr Kouba works as a senior researcher at the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy which belongs to the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences. He is also a senior advisor and founding member of the Interdisciplinary Research Lab for Bioethics at the same institute. He specializes in social ontology and philosophy of medicine, psychiatry in particular. Nicola Liberati is Associate Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in the Department of Philosophy. His research interests focus on postphenomenology and phenomenology to address the societal challenges emerging digital technologies present. He transculturally collaborates with Artists and Curators in Asia and Europe and has published on Digital Intimacy, AR, AI, and Robotics. One of his last papers is “Digital Intimacy in China and Japan” published in Human Studies. Yanni Ratajczyk is a fellow PhD fellow at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, funded by the Scientific Research Foundation— Flanders (FWO). His main research interests are moral imagination, moral

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creativity, moral phenomenology, and the philosophy of Iris Murdoch and John Dewey. Alberto Romele is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France. His research focuses on digital hermeneutics and the technological imaginaries of artificial intelligence. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Philosophy & Technology, and of the scientific council of the Fonds Ricoeur. He is the author of two monographs: Digital Hermeneutics: Philosophical Investigations in New Media and Technologies (2019) and Digital Habitus: A Critique of the Imaginaries of Artificial Intelligence (2023). Zuzanna Rucińska is a senior postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation— Flanders (FWO) at the Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is currently working on a project “Understanding virtual reality through ongoing embodied imagining.” She was a guest editor at Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, editing the special issue “Pretense and imagination from the perspective of 4E cognitive science” (2022). Her research interests include pretend and imaginative play, forms of creativity, embodied and enacted cognition, theory of affordances, as well as application of those theories to the fields of virtual reality, sport, and mental health (see zuzannarucinska​.c​om). Roger W. H. Savage is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in hermeneutics, aesthetics, and politics. His books include Hermeneutics and Music Criticism, Music, Time, and Its Other: Aesthetic Reflections on Finitude, Temporality, and Alterity, and Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Anthropology as Hermeneutics of Liberation: Freedom, Justice, and the Power of Imagination. He also edited Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason: Poetics, Praxis, and Critique and Paul Ricoeur and the Lived Body. Roger W. H. Savage is a founding member and past president of the Society for Ricoeur Studies. Andreas Vrahimis is Assistant Professor at the Department of Classics and Philosophy at the University of Cyprus. His research focuses on the History of Analytic Philosophy and its different relations to the broader context of the History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (including the various traditions sometimes bundled under the heading of “Continental” Philosophy, e.g., Phenomenology or Critical Theory). A number of his publications explore

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the purported divide between Analytic and Continental Philosophy, including two monographs, titled Encounters between Analytic and Continental Philosophy (2013) and Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy (2022). Galit Wellner is a senior lecturer at Holon Institute of Technology (HIT), Israel, and adjunct professor at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Galit is a postphenomenologist who studies the relations between humans and digital technologies. Her book A Postphenomenological Inquires of Cell Phones was published in 2016, and since then she has published numerous articles, book chapters, and edited volumes. In her recent works she focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. She consults the Israeli ministry of Innovation, Science and technology on the regulation of AI. Hub Zwart is Professor of philosophy and Dean of Erasmus School of Philosophy (Erasmus University Rotterdam). His research develops a philosophical (dialectical) perspective on contemporary science. Special attention is devoted to the dialectical relationship between science and genres of the imagination (drama, poetry, cinema, novels, music). He recently published Continental Philosophy of Technoscience (2022).

Index aesthetic  4, 8, 18, 33, 44, 73, 94, 117, 119–20, 123, 126–7, 134, 138–9, 141–3, 150, 152, 164 aesthetic creativity  96 aesthetic experience  146, 154 affordance(s)  205–6, 210, 212–15 agonism  53 algorithm  2, 5, 30, 32–5, 37–9, 43–4 algorithmic imagination  36–9 Allison, Henry  18 alterity  24, 26, 60 analytic philosophy  3–5, 7, 9–11, 157–8, 161–2, 166–7, 169–70, 203, 207–8, 211 analytic-continental divide  3, 71, 188–9, 200 anthropology  9, 177, 180 appreciation  138, 139, 141–3 Aristotle  17, 31, 148 art  1–2, 5, 8–9, 16, 19, 22, 27, 30, 34–5, 37–8, 75, 93, 95, 105, 108, 115–22, 124–5, 128–9, 131–4, 137–8, 142–3, 150, 152, 154, 158, 162, 175, 177 artificial intelligence  1–2, 4, 6, 43, 50, 52, 185 Audi, Robert  94 becoming  24–5, 60, 64, 66 becoming-image  26–7 Benjamin, Walter  19, 20 bias  35, 38, see also discrimination bioart  34–5 blame narrative  6, 7, 99–106, 108–10 Boden, Margret  33–4 Borgmann, Albert  65 Bormanis, Eric  21 Bourdieu, Pierre  5, 11, 43–5, 53, 203, 208, 210 bricolage  6, 56 capitalism  8, 60, 116–17, 123–5, 128, 181, 185 Casey, Ed.  19

Castoriadis, Cornelius  21, 22, 48–9, 71, 102 Caudwell, Christopher  115–21, 123 climate change  6, 56, 64, 126, 129 collective activities  118 collective consciousness  71 collective experiences  123 collective identity  107 collective ignorance  7, 72 collective imagination/imaginaries  36, 53, 179 collective trauma  105, 109 collective unconscious  73–4, 77, 80 continental philosophy  3, 6, 10, 188, 200 copy  17, 18, 26, 150, 190, 197–9 co-shaping  2, 5, 23, 36–9, 132 COVID-19  2, 7, 10, 11, 87, 90, 98–102, 104–6, 108–9, 219, 224, see also pandemic creative narrative(s)  105, 108 creative skill/capacity  1, 6, 102 creative technology  1, 17 creativity  15–16, 19, 27, 33–4, 36, 39, 49–50, 87, 177–9, 194, 198, 204, 210 creativity (artistic)  95, 105 creativity (moral)  94–6 critical theory  6, 56 Currie, Gregory  98, 132–3, 135–6, 140, 142, 157–8, 161–3, 165, 204, 210 data  5, 17, 37, 39, 43, 60, 193, 205 de se imagination  132–43 deformation  19 Deleuze, Gilles  5, 18, 20–5, 36 Descartes, René  17, 190–1, 195 desire  5, 15–17, 21, 23, 25, 38, 43–4, 71, 134, 176 destructive plasticity  100, 106, 107, see also plasticity dialectical materialism, see materialism dialectics  118, 124 Diamond, Cora  86, 89, 90, 92–3

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Dibutades  15–16, 18, 26, 27 digital habitus  43–4 digital mediation  11, 219, 224 digitalization  6, 56 disagreement  52–4, 200 discrimination  71, 76, 99, 101, 102, 108 distributed  5, 26, 31, 35–9, 212 doubt  17, 22, 193 dreams  20–2, 25, 27, 176–8, 220 dreamscape  175–6, 184 ecopoetry  124–6, 129, see also poetry emages  6, 43, 50–3 emaginary  5, 42–3, 48–50, 53 embedded imagination  218, 219, 223 embedded imaginaries  73–5 embodied imagination  10, 11, 25–6, 39, 47, 134, 203–6, 211, 214 embodiment  19, 24–5, 39, 82, 206, 214–15 empiricism  5, 16, 17, 26, 46–7 enactive imagination  10, 204, 214 epistemic vice  79–80, 83 ethics  1–3, 6, 53, 56, 57, 60, 64, 92, 104–5, 152, 154–5, 215, see also politics exemplification  126, 145–6, 149–52 expectations  48, 50, 53, 151, 182 expression  145–6, 149, 151–3 extrapolated imagination  25, 132 fantasy  176–81, 183, 185–6, see also phantasy feminism/feminist theory  22, 116 Fetterley, Judith  22 first-person perspective  132, 140, 142 first-person imagination  136 formative  143 Foucault, Michel  20–3, 61 free associations  19, 21 free play  18, 33 freedom  19–21, 23, 76, 121, 124, 146, 154, 164, 193, 218–19 freedom (artistic)  124 game  8–9, 34, 46, 131–7, 139–43, 158, 162, 165–7, 169–70, 213 games (language)  207 Gaut, Berys  34, 94 Gilbert, Sandra  22

Goodman, Nelson  9, 145, 149–53 Guattari, Felix  5, 21, 24–5, 36 Gubar, Susan  22 habit  7, 48, 71–2, 74–5, 77–83, 145, 151 habitus  5, 43–5, 47–9, 53, 208, 210 Heidegger, Martin  31, 33, 47, 60, 61, 63–4, 66, 146, 149, 152, 189, 207 Hermeneutic(s)  4, 24, 46–8 hesitation  81–3 historical materialism, see materialism Hobbes, Thomas  17 horizon(s)  11, 20, 218, 222, 225 horizon of meanings  221, 224–5 Hume, David  10, 17, 133, 189–200 Hume’s copy principle  197–9 Husserl, Edmund  4, 10, 19,  31, 157–60, 162–4, 167–8, 188–90, 194–5, 198, 207, 218–23 hybrid imagination  4, 6, 37, 56–61, 63–6 hybridity  6, 56–9, 67 identify (oneself)  133, 136, 140 identify (things)  32, 87, 140–2, 144, 150 ideology  5, 8, 43, 45–7, 53, 117 ignorance  7, 72, 74, 76–83, 90, 108, see also Socratic Ignorance Ihde, Don  23, 25, 66, 176, 179, 184–5, see also postphenomenology image(s)  2, 8, 9, 15–17, 20, 21, 25, 26, 31–2, 37, 50–2, 58, 66, 72, 74–6, 81, 86, 87, 89, 106, 136, 138, 146–7, 149, 152, 157, 167–70, 175, 178, 182, 183, 185, 189–200–200, 204, 209, 220–4, see also mental images; pictorial images imagery  15, 21, 22, 53, 58, 71, 131, 161–2, 204, 209, see also mental imagery imaginary/imaginaries  1, 4–7, 10–11, 15, 20–3, 43, 45–9, 52, 58–9, 71–5, 81–2, 99, 102–3, 108, 119, 157, 166, 169, 175–86, 190, 193, 196, 198, 219, 221–5, see also racial imaginary; social imaginary imaginative variations  53, 100, 103–5, 108–9 imitation  17, 21, 25, 163 impersonal imagining  133, 135–6, 140, 142

Index instapoetry  124–7 interactive  50, 131–2, 137, 139 Jansen, Julia  19 Kandinsky, Wassily  94 Kant, Immanuel  15, 17–18, 21, 30–8, 44, 45, 47, 49, 94, 133, 147, 153, 219, 230, 232–3 Kearney, Richard  26, 31–3 Lacan, Jacques  21–2, 230, 232 lack  5, 15–16, 21–2, 49, 52, 61, 75, 77, 79, 106, 151, 180, 189 Latour, Bruno  23–4, 26 layers  5, 32, 35–9, 90, 231 Leibniz, G. W.  191 Locke, John  17 make-believe  132, 136–7, 142, 165–7, 169–70 Malabou, Catherine  7, 100, 105–7 materialism (historical)  116 materialism (dialectical)  117 memory  5, 16–19, 31, 39, 78, 106–7, 155, 177, 209, 221 mental image(s)  8, 9, 133, 145–6, 157–64, 167, 190–1, 193, 195, 198–9, 205, 207, 209, 235 mental imagery  31, 131–3, 137, 161, 200, 208–9 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice  19, 207, 232 metaphor  4, 8–9, 45, 49, 72, 102, 134, 145–55, 192, 234–5 metaphorical  4, 145–55 Mimesis  132, 137, 142, 146, 153–4 moral action  86, 87, 91–3, 96, 234 moral creativity  6, 7, 86, 93–7 moral perception  6, 86, 92, 233 Murakami, Haruki  95 Murdoch, Iris  1, 3, 7, 86–96, 231–5 narrativity  100, 107, 145 negation  65, 122–4, 160 neo-mannerism  128–9 novelty  33–5, 48–9, 94, 139, 152 Nussbaum, Martha  1, 3, 7, 86, 89–93, 96 origin  15–17, 101, 146, 148, 165, 199

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pandemic  2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 95, 98–109, 219, 224, see also COVID-19 performative space  212 phantasy  10, 11, 101, 103, 159–60, 163–5, 167–8, 170, 218–22, see also fantasy phenomenology  4, 6, 9, 11, 14–16, 19–23, 56–6, 74, 82, 107, 109–10, 157–8, 162, 169–70, 176, 186, 188–9, 192–3, 195, 198–200, 203–4, 218–19, 222–4 physical images  9, 223 pictorial images  8, 158, 162–70 picture(s)  2, 9, 26, 32–4, 36, 60, 66, 94–5, 125, 136, 150, 157–8, 161–70, 178, 184, 196, 204, 208–9, 220 plasticity  6, 7, 100, 105–9 Plato, C.  17, 20, 89, 90, 180 Pliny  15–16, 18 poetic imagination  8, 102, 115–17, 119–128 poetry  8, 115–29, 145, 148, 152, 178 politics  99, 106, 129, 152, 154, see also ethics Portrait of Edmond Belamy  30 postphenomenology  4, 6, 11, 15, 23, 56, 176, 186, 218–19, 222, 224 Pound, Ezra  115–18, 121, 124 pragmatism  11, 203 psychoanalysis  21 racial imaginary  71–83, 232 radical imaginary  21–2, 49 rationality  16, 19, 45, 61, 120, 126 reflective  82, 135, 143, 146, 150, 153–4, 235 Reid, Julian  20, 163–4 repetition  20–1, 47, 74, 100, 106–8 representation  6, 17–8, 21, 31, 34, 43, 50, 71–5, 81, 83, 131, 141–3, 145–6, 149–52, 155, 162–3, 166, 170, 181–2, 185, 203–9, 212–14 resistance  79, 81–82, 89, 100, 109, 127 responsibility  76, 78, 87, 99 Ricoeur, Paul  1, 3–5, 7, 9, 43, 45–53, 98–108, 143–54, 199–200, 219 robot  9, 10, 30, 33, 39, 50, 175, 181–85 romanticism  49, 64, 116, 120, 123, 125 Rosa, Hartmut  63

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Rosenberger, Robert  23, 179, 184, 222 Ryle, Gilbert  3, 10, 11, 188–200, 203, 207, 208 Sallis, John  18, 219 Sartre, Jean Paul  3, 4, 10–11, 19, 31, 157–60, 162–4, 167–8, 188–95, 199–200, 203, 208–9 scaffold  58, 61, 67 schematism  31–5, 48–9, see also Kant, Immanuel science fiction  36, 46, 184–5 screen  26, 60, 74, 135, 140–1, 175, 183–85 segregation  118, 119, 123 sensory input/data  5, 16, 17, 58, 158 Sepper, Dennis  19, 20 social imaginary/imagination  1, 4–7, 21–22, 43, 45–6, 48–9, 71–8, 81–2, 99, 100, 102–03, 108 Socratic Ignorance  10, 176, 177, 180–6 spontaneity  16, 193–5 Steeves, B. James  19 Stiegler, Bernard  36–7, 42, 65, 66 stock images  50 Stokes, Dustin  94 sublime/sublimity  6, 56–7, 60–4

Taliban poetry  124–27 techno-activism  6, 56, 57, 59, 61, 63–7 techno-anthropocene  56, 64, 66, 67 technological imagination  8 technology  1–6, 8–10, 16, 115–20, 122–4, 128–9 transcendental philosophy/approach  5, 16, 18, 26, 44 transformative action  23 trauma  98, 105–09 truth  17, 45, 63, 76, 78, 83, 88, 94, 103, 139, 145–6, 148–9, 152–5 unbecoming  22 utopia  5, 43, 45–7, 53, 59 Verbeek, Peter-Paul  23, 24, 65, 184, 222, 224 Verne, Jules  117, 122–3 videogame  8, 46, 131, 134–43 virtual reality  11, 204, 212–14 Vygotsky, Lev  4, 177–9, 185 Walton, Kendall  1, 4, 132, 136–7, 142, 157, 162–3, 165–7, 169–70 white ignorance  71, 73, 75, 77–79, 81, 83

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