Philosophy Now Forum

Hello, I'm new here, but no excuses for my ignorance, except I am not omniscient! I'm here to learn, ask questions, and hopefully add now and then to discussions.

Currently I'm in an argument...someone is holding that there is no difference between knowing and imagining. I am saying there is and that difference is experience is coherent with reality as far as we can "know" reality, which is all we have. I would liken it to looking into a mirror and imagining the reflection existentially "is" oneself, and expect that reflection to consciously go have a cup of coffee; but if one is conscious the reflection is a reflection in a mirror, one "knows" it is only a reflection, and when you go to have that cup of coffee, your reflection will disappear. It seems to be akin to Bishop Berkeley's view of knowledge. Am I wrong?

Your argument doesn't really seem to touch the issue you assign yourself with (and I have no particular knowledge of Berkeley, just a scratch of something written somewhere).

I'd rather give my own argument that knowing means you have a power in foreseeing and dealing with problems. Whether this knowledge came from imagination, like mathematics which is largely made up of people's imagination, or from studying things as they occur in the environment before you, which is using ones eyes and ears etc., is largely irrelevant to knowledge. There is no singleness nor any dichotomy between knowledge and imagination because sometime knowledge is imagination and sometimes it is not.

If you'd use another word or sentence however, like "seeing is imagining", then you will perhaps enter into what you want an answer for... because, is seeing the same as imagining? Well, there may not be any simple lucid description of their differences, but by a large there is a lot of tiny differences that makes up the dichotomy. For instance, you cannot imagine pain (a reason why you cannot dream about physical pain), so pain is not imagination by principle, it is always a cause of something outside of your body. The same is tickling and other forms of direct sensation.

Now this triggers the question whether phantom-pain or other phantom-sensation is to be considered imagination or not. Because many people who loose a limb experience pain in body-parts they do not have, and by habit they may try to scratch a thumb they do not have or a foot they do not have. However, this triggers another question whether illusions are to be considered imagination or just plain deceptions; do I imagine that thing to be there or am I just being deceived and therefore not myself the cause of this thing's existence put just watching a manipulation by somebody or something else?

I could say about phantom pain that it's just a deception of your body, while imagination itself can be both a deception or not a deception. The person would normally of course find out that this isn't the case, because by studying nature, the nature of his own body, where his thumb was supposed to be. By studying this he discovers that it isn't there. In other words, it is falsifiable that the thumb exists or naught, whereas imagination itself isn't falsifiable by and of itself but needs somebody looking at it from the outside of its walls, and if somebody are looking at it like that then that somebody would by principle be knowing that the specific something isn't real. For instance, if I use my inner eye to watch my imagination's content, then obviously I exist outside of this imagination, whereas if I perceive the imagination as being in the imagination, that is, I'm not looking "at" it but "through" it, then I would not know it apart from anything else.

Best way to deal with anti-realists. Punch him in the face several times.

If he complains point out to him he shouldn't, after all he's only imagining you're hitting him.

He will probably complain that the imagined you are forcing him to imagine you causing him pain After all, never heard of a schizophrenic battle with his illusions? Are you crazy enough you'll believe that the spoon in front of you is your ancestor parents telling you that you will go to hell if you eat, and what do you make of that philosophically? Obviously the imagined psychological aggressiveness of the spoon is very much a real threat to the person ^^

esse est percipi

-Imp

Imagination is the faculty by which we place knowledge into the field of action or work.

no. Or else you'd find a lot of actions left in stupor, like reflexes, giggling, and many other involuntary actions. Imagination can emphasize things, enhance things or leave things in the lesser, and as such it can manipulate knowledge, but I'm rather not willing to place a "the" in front of "faculty" here, rather think of it as possibly aiding rather than determinably dominating.

I think it was fairly obvious I meant deliberate action. I can't see any other purpose to imagination that that of applying knowledge, or translating it into action/work. It's uncomplicated.

maybe, but this teleology does not justify itself thoroughly. My memory from listening to brain-lessons does not support this assumption. As I said, it can manipulate knowledge, but when the baby is imitating the behaviour of an adult or something else, I must ask, is this significantly caused by any speck of imagination? As I think of this as a rather deliberate act, if primitive it is still deliberate... No, I think it is more a type of reasoning caused by a large by what occurs in nature as opposed of what occurs with your imagination. The collection of memory necessary to handle such a primitive act does not need to be called imagination, as it got nothing to do with what we usually refer to as imagination, namely the conscious form.

You raise a good point, but I would have to ask be the parent of four children (one that is only 3 months) how much imagination is necessary for so the little amount of action required of an infinite, to wit: suckle, sleep, excrete. Watching our little one is a sheer joy at the moment as he learns to use his hands. You can witness a pause as he is about to get that arm and its fingers to grab hold of something before his eyes. That pause is the envisioning of the action, its not a pause involving a logical cognition, though that is developing, its more like dreaming where he sees the action required, and then attempts to reproduce that physically.

Yep, imagination is to do with manipulation of mental imagery, and that can be done for it's own sake - very commonly so actually, but none of our abilities and functions are ever there for their own sake.

All I can say is "mmm". It's hard to say that anything is pure of anything else when it comes to cognition, it all seems rather interwoven.

But we can take a hammer to it...no?

I literally don't know what that sentence, but I guess it means something like "cracking the problem" or something similar. Anywho, I'm throwing in the white towel on this one, it's too difficult to make good arguments about things so deeply technical :/ If the baby imagines it or naught I don't know. Maybe for instance the baby wasn't sitting in the right position and therefore didn't instantly know how to reach properly for you, and one can argue if the baby really is using its imagination, but of course for every millisecond it takes before it continues to reach having attained the proper position the greater the chance that imagination is taking part