A post by Megan Entwistle You’re reading a novel on the train. You’re engrossed in your private, fictional world of characters and intrigue. As you turn a page, you feel the person sitting next to yo...

A post by Anhui Huang Fictions are Instructions for Make-Believe Tonight I am in the mood to cook. So I open New York Times Cooking and find myself a recipe: Ali Slagle’s Sheet-Pan Feta with Chic...

A post by Antonello Caravelli One of the central concepts in my PhD research is perspective . The term is ubiquitous in contemporary discussions of imagination. We are often told that imagination al...

A post by Jonathan Mitchell One puzzle which has animated philosophers of perception from the classical phenomenologists to the present day sometimes goes under the name of the ‘puzzle of perceptual ...

A post by Petronella Randell Most of us are familiar with catastrophising; either because we do it ourselves, or because someone we know is prone to it. When going through airport security, I often i...

A post by Nick Wiltsher Sometimes, you succeed at imagining. Sometimes, you don’t. How do you, we, or anyone work out whether or not you’ve succeeded? Here’s a simple answer: establish what you were...

A post by Amy Kind Way back in 2016, Eric Peterson came to me with an unexpected idea:  What if we started a blog on imagination?  I was intrigued, but also hesitant.  Could we reall...

A post by Angelica Kaufmann “Our heart-beats, our breathing, the pulses of our attention, fragments of words or sentences that pass through our imagination, are what people this dim habitat. … In sho...

A post by Idil Çakmur There is a simplicity to a life without the imagination. An unimaginative person might be frightfully dull, but at least they have a firm footing in reality, while the imaginati...

A post by Lloyd Strickland Philosophers have traditionally drawn a sharp boundary between the province of imagination and that of logic (see for example Malebranche 1997, 87-195; Spinoza 2002, 2...

A post by Julia Langkau Suppose you are preparing for a difficult conversation with a friend. You imagine how the exchange might unfold: what you might say, how your friend might respond, and how the...

A post by Luke Roelofs What if the philosophy of imagination held the key to moral objectivity? That idea was what drew me into the sub-field in the first place, and now I’ve gone and published a b...

A post by Miranda Anderson Understanding imagination as something that is not merely brain-bound or individualistic can help to expand our ambitions for the development of technologies including arti...

A post by Monika Dunin-Kozicka Imagine the School of Imagination. If you attended such a school, you would engage in various imagination exercises and assignments every day—so that your imaginative s...

A post by Bruce G. Shapiro "There are two requisites in every systematic treatise: the author must first define his subject, and secondly, though this is really more important, he must show us how an...

A post by Georgina Brighouse Can you imagine a bright red apple sitting on a table? Or a sunset over the ocean with orange and pink clouds? These are examples of imagistic imagination. Visual mental...

A post by Vincenzo Grasso “Emma was not sleeping, she was pretending to be asleep; and while he dozed off next to her, she would grow more wakeful, dreaming other dreams. [...] Often, from the t...

A post by Ana Elisa Ulloa Labariega Imagine a mobile—the kind that hangs above a child’s bed. Glass figures suspended at different lengths, each positioned in relation to the others. The structure is...

A post by Zachary Srivastava Over the past five to ten years, there’s been a surge of interest in the role of imagination in science, particularly since the release of The Scientific Imagination , e...

A post by Christian O. Scholz, Jianghao Liu, and Andrea Blomkvist In this blog post, we will argue that aphantasia rightfully ascended from a niche curiosity to a hot topic across the cognitive scien...

A post by Luca Marchetti One of the best popular-science books I’ve read in recent years is Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us . It’s a guided tour of h...

A post by Zach Kohler There is something strange about the experience of theatrical magic. Anyone who has watched a good magic trick knows the feeling—it presents itself without fanfare, yet leaves u...

A post by Kerry Clark Introduction Imagination is used in many ways—whether in daydreaming, anticipating future outcomes, or engaging in creative works. I take imagination to be (roughly) the ment...

A post by Avshalom Schwartz   The safest general characterization of the history of imagination is that it begins with Plato. Indeed, this is a rare point of agreement between scholars—from int...

A post by Neil Van Leeuwen In the background as I write this blog, the Superbowl is on. The Seahawks currently lead 6-0 in the second quarter, which makes me vaguely happy, since I dislike the Patrio...

A post by Hannah Fasnacht «Wie geht’s?» fragte die Trauer die Hoffnung. «Ich bin etwas traurig», sagte die Hoffnung. «Hoffentlich», sagte die Trauer. —Franz Hohler “How are you?” Sadness asked ...

A post by Irene Lonigro According to a venerable philosophical tradition, imagination builds upon experiences we have already had (Nagel, 1974; Paul, 2014). I cannot imagine what it feels like to tas...

A post by Reza Hadisi In one of his commentaries, al‑Shahrazūrī (d. ca. 1288) cites and elaborates on an enigmatic passage from Suhrawardī (d. 1191), the founder of the Ishrāqī philosophical movement...

A post by Ansley Avis “It’s one banana, Michael, what could it cost, $10?” -Lucille Bluth , Arrested Development Imagine an elephant. Got it? Perfect. How many toenails does it have? Your ele...

A post by Dorothy Wade In my work as an intensive care psychologist, I frequently hear from patients about the vivid and frightening experiences they undergo. Bombarded by hallucinations and delusion...

A post by Joshua Myers and Johannes Mahr. Imagination and episodic memory are intimately linked. Imagination draws on previous experience—when picturing yourself on a beach in Portugal sipping mango ...

A post by Eric Peterson In a recent post on this wonderful blog, Nick Wiltsher discusses three interrelated claims of which he is increasingly sympathetic towards.  These are: (1) Imagination...

A post by Raquel Krempel Imagine an apple. Nothing happened? You probably have aphantasia. This is a common way of introducing and thinking about aphantasia. On the web, images such as Figure 1 (bel...

A post by Julia Minarik And someday there will be a more complete machine. One’s thoughts or feelings during life – or while the machine is recording – will be like an alphabet with which the image ...

A post by Jianghao Liu Please imagine a red Gala apple. Is it darker or lighter than a cherry? Most of us can easily conjure a mental image, a perceptual-like experience that feels almost as if we we...

A post by Maria Fedorova In a series of interviews conducted by T. C. Swift and his colleagues on psilocybin (the psychoactive compound in “magic” mushrooms) experiences of cancer patients suffering ...

A post by Luke Roelofs There’s a common idea that sometimes the best aesthetic choice is to “leave something to the imagination”, where that primarily means not presenting it explicitly. Sometimes...

A post by Sheila Pontis The pace of global change has only grown in recent years, spiraling uncertainty about the present and future. Discouraging news reported daily increases feelings of anxiety, ...

A post by Edvard Aviles-Meza Have a look at Raphael’s School of Athens (figure 1 below). During a quick glance, do you see each of the individuals depicted? Surely, you wouldn’t recognize them at...

A post by Sarah Vernallis Empathy is an imaginative activity. When we succeed in empathizing, we come to understand what it is like for another person. But what role, exactly, does the imagination pl...

A post by Lucia Oliveri Imagine a world destroyed by a thirty-year-long war, the most devastating war that seventeenth-century Europe had ever seen. Imagine standing in front of a destroyed land, lik...

A post by Niklas Maranca Insight into the structure and approach of a practice-based PhD project on imagination This text traces a path from practice to research. It opens with three short scenes ...

A post by Seth Goldwasser I never had the pleasure of meeting or speaking with Dr. Melz Owusu before his passing, which occurred after I had cited interest in reviewing his book. I’m deeply saddened ...

A post by Mark Windsor and Jakub Stejskal Many of us are inexorably drawn to material remains of humanity’s deep past: we like to read about new archaeological finds and observe them up close in sit...

A post by Eric Peterson Free speech is either a civil liberty essential for a flourishing liberal democracy or a threat to that very democracy, depending on who you ask. There are many arguments that...

A post by Felipe Morales Carbonell Note: This is a side-piece to a longer essay I am working on, which focuses on how imagination can help us learn how to do things or how to act. The topic here is ...

A post by Brendan Bo O’Connor Our future is not a foregone conclusion. It’s actively constructed at the horizon of the present. In a moment when the world feels divisive and isolating, I’d like to sh...

A post by Tom Schoonen It's been almost ten years since a great burst of logics of imagination appeared (depending on when you start counting, of course). The idea behind these formalisations is th...

A post by Cassandra Vieten As a psychologist and researcher, my career has focused on how people change. In particular, I have investigated the experiences, practices, and environments that transform...

A post by Nick Wiltsher Here are three related claims to which I’m increasingly sympathetic: (1) Imagination has no distinctive epistemic ends. (2) The epistemic ends that can be pursued using imag...