What imagination teaches

An investigation of the imagination, as both a mental process and a capacity to acquire knowledge about the world and other minds. It is argued that imagination is a unique mental process, whose primary feature is the capacity to construct and manipulate sets of mental representations. This feature unifies the diverse activities we call imaginings into a single class. In addition, use of this capacity in a rule-based way, under the constraint of prior beliefs, can help us acquire knowledge of everyday facts. An examination is then made into the limitations of such a capacity. It is argued that imagination can aid in rational decision-making, even in cases which may involve substantial transformation of the agent. Finally, a case is made that we can improve our capacity to gain knowledge of the mental states of others by careful application of imagination.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Ortiz-Hinojosa, Sofia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alex Byrne.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107091

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/107091