Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-25T18:10:56.382Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Imaginative Vividness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2017

AMY KIND
AMY KIND*
Affiliation:
CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGEamy.kind@claremontmckenna.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

How are we to understand the phenomenology of imagining? Attempts to answer this question often invoke descriptors concerning the ‘vivacity’ or ‘vividness’ of our imaginative states. Not only are particular imaginings often phenomenologically compared and contrasted with other imaginings on grounds of how vivid they are, but such imaginings are also often compared and contrasted with perceptions and memories on similar grounds. Yet however natural it may be to use ‘vividness’ and cognate terms in discussions of imagination, it does not take much reflection to see that these terms are poorly understood. In this paper, I review both some relevant empirical literature as well as the philosophical literature in an attempt to get a handle on what it could mean, in an imaginative context, to talk of vividness. As I suggest, this notion ultimately proves to be so problematic as to be philosophically untenable.

Keywords

imaginationvividnessvivacityHumeperception
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Spring 2017 , pp. 32 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adobe. (2015) ‘Photoshop Lightroom CC and Lightroom 6 Help’. Available at: https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/lightroom_reference.pdf.Google Scholar
Armstrong, David. (1968) A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Brann, Eva T. H. (1991) The World of Imagination: Sum and Substance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Budd, Malcolm. (1989) Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Psychology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Byrne, Alex. (2011) ‘Knowing That I Am Thinking’. In Hatzimoysis, Anthony (ed.), Self Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 105–24.Google Scholar
Byrne, Alex. (2010) ‘Recollection, Perception, Imagination’. Philosophical Studies, 148, 15–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornoldi, C., De Beni, R., Giusberti, F., Marucci, F., Massironi, M., and Mazzoni, G.. (1991) ‘The Study of Vividness of Images’. In Logie, Robert H. and Denis, Michael (eds.), Mental Images in Human Cognition (Amsterdam: Elsevier), 305–12.Google Scholar
Gregory, Currie, and Ravenscroft, Ian. (2002) Recreative Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Denis, Michel. (1995) ‘Vividness of Visual Imagery and the Evaluation of Its Effects on Performance’. Journal of Mental Imagery, 19, 136–38.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel. (1969) ‘The Nature of Images and the Introspective Trap’. Reprinted in his Content and Consciousness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), 132–46.Google Scholar
Dorsch, Fabian. (2016) ‘Hume’. In Kind, Amy (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination (London: Routledge), 40–54.Google Scholar
Galton, Francis. (1880) ‘Statistics of Mental Imagery’. Mind, 5, 301–18.Google Scholar
Gendler, Tamar. (2011) ‘Imagination’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 edition), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/imagination/.Google Scholar
Gilbert, A., Crouch, M., and Kemp, S. E.. (1998) ‘Olfactory and Visual Mental Imagery’. Journal of Mental Imagery, 22, 137–46.Google Scholar
Goldman, Alvin. (2006) Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Govier, Trudy. (1972) ‘Variations on Force and Vivacity in Hume’. The Philosophical Quarterly, 22, 44–52.Google Scholar
Shinsuke, Hishitani, and Murakami, Shiho. (1992) ‘What is Vividness of Imagery: Characteristics of Vivid Visual Imagery’. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 75, 1291–1307.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. ([1651]1968) Leviathan. Edited by Macpherson, C. D.. Hammondsworth, England: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Hume, David. ([1739]1985) A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by Nidditch, P. H.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kind, Amy. (Forthcoming) ‘How Imagination Gives Rise to Knowledge’. In Dorsch, Fabian and Macpherson, Fiona (eds.), Perceptual Memory and Perceptual Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Kind, Amy. (2016) ‘Imagining Under Constraints’. In Kind, Amy and Kung, Peter (eds.), Knowledge Through Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 145–59.Google Scholar
Kind, Amy. (2013) ‘The Heterogeneity of the Imagination’. Erkenntnis, 78, 141–59.Google Scholar
Kind, Amy. (2001) ‘Putting the Image Back in Imagination’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62, 85–110.Google Scholar
Kung, Peter. (2016) ‘Imagination and Modal Epistemology’. In Kind, Amy (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination (London: Routledge), 437–50.Google Scholar
Marks, David. (1973) ‘Visual Imagery Difference in the Recall of Pictures’. British Journal of Psychology, 64, 17–24.Google Scholar
McGinn, Colin. (2004) Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McKelvie, Stuart J. (1995) ‘The VVIQ and Beyond: Vividness and Its Measurement’. Journal of Mental Imagery, 19, 197–252.Google Scholar
Nichols, Shaun, and Stich, Stephen. (2003) Mindreading: An Integrated Account of Pretence, Self-Awareness, and Understanding Other Minds. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Perky, C. W. (1910) ‘An Experimental Study of Imagination’. American Journal of Psychology, 21, 422–52.Google Scholar
Pryor, James. (2000) ‘The Skeptic and the Dogmatist’. Noûs, 34, 517–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartre, Jean Paul. ([1940]2010) The Imaginary. Translated by Webber, Jonathan. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, C. Wade. (1975) ‘The Continuity of Perceptual and Cognitive Experiences’. In Siegel, R. K. and West, L. J. (eds.), Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience, and Theory (New York: Wiley), 257–86.Google Scholar
Scarry, Elaine. (2001) Dreaming By the Book. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schwitzgebel, Eric. (2011) Perplexities of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Scruton, Roger. (1974) Art and Imagination. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Siegel, Susanna, and Silins, Nicholas. (2015) ‘The Epistemology of Perception’. In Matthen, Mohan (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 781–811.Google Scholar
Thomas, Nigel J. T. (2009) ‘Visual Imagery and Consciousness’. In Banks, William (ed.), Encyclopedia of Consciousness, vol. 2 (Oxford: Elsevier/Academic Press), 445–57.Google Scholar
Thompson, Evan. (2014) Waking, Dreaming, Being. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Traiger, Saul. (2008) ‘Hume on Memory and Imagination’. In Radcliffe, Elizabeth (ed.), A Companion to Hume (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), 58–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walton, Kendall. (1990) Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Willander, Johan, and Baraldi, Stephan. (2010) ‘Development of a New Clarity of Auditory Imagery Scale’. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 785–90.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ([1948]1980) Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. 2. Edited by Von Wright, G. H. and Nyman, Heikki. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar