Explaining Imagination

Author:   Peter Langland-Hassan (Professor of Philosophy, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
ISBN:  

9780198904380


Pages:   336
Publication Date:   28 December 2023
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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Explaining Imagination


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Overview

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Imagination will remain a mystery--we will not be able to explain imagination--until we can break it into parts we already understand. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the parts are other ordinary mental states like beliefs, desires, judgments, and decisions. In different combinations and contexts, these states constitute cases of imagining. This reductive approach to imagination is at direct odds with the current orthodoxy, according to which imagination is a sui generis mental state or processDLone with its own inscrutable principles of operation. Explaining Imagination upends that view, showing how, on closer inspection, the imaginings at work in hypothetical reasoning, pretense, the enjoyment of fiction, and creativity are reducible to other familiar mental statesDLjudgments, beliefs, desires, and decisions among them. Crisscrossing contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and aesthetics, Explaining Imagination argues that a clearer understanding of imagination is already well within reach.

Full Product Details

Author:   Peter Langland-Hassan (Professor of Philosophy, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.00cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.484kg
ISBN:  

9780198904380


ISBN 10:   019890438
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   28 December 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

1: Explaining Imagination 2: Folk Psychology and Its Ontology 3: Imagistic Imagining Part I: Imagery, Attitude Imgaining, and Recreative Imagining 4: Imagistic Imagining Part II: Hybrid Structure, Multiple Attitudes, and Daydreams 5: Conditional Reasoning Part I: Three Kinds of Conditionals and the Psychology of the Material Conditiona 6: Conditional Reasoning Part II: Indicatives, Subjunctives, and the Ramsey Test 7: Pretense Part I: Recovering Fictional Truths 8: Pretense Part II: Psychology 9: Consuming Fictions Part I: Recovering Fictional Truths 10: Consuming Fictions Part II: The Operator Claim 11: Consuming Fictions Part III: Immersion, Emotion, and the Paradox of Fiction 12: Creativity

Reviews

The centerpiece of Explaining Imagination is a brilliantly articulated theory of the imagination, a theory that challenges many preconceptions and provides what will no doubt be an orienting landmark for future work in the area [...] The book contains a number of additional treasures, including especially innovative accounts of pretense, fiction, and creativity. These other accounts [...] will no doubt have an influence that extends well beyond readers who are principally interested in questions about the metaphysical nature of the imagination. * Christopher Hill, Analysis Reviews * With arguments that are innovative, sophisticated, and provocative, Explaining Imagination provides a comprehensive defense of Langland-Hassan's reductionist approach to imagination. I myself have profited greatly from this challenge to the philosophical orthodoxy, and the discussion of the book has already begun shaping directions of future research. A must-read not just for philosophers interested in imagination, but also for those interested in more general questions about our taxonomy of mind. * Amy Kind, Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College * Explaining Imagination is a pleasure to read. Both lucid and sophisticated, it seems to anticipate every potential challenge Langland-Hassan's account might face. It also adduces arguments that are relevant not only to defending his account, but also to specific debates about the nature of imagining. Explaining Imagination is thus a significant philosophical achievement, and in my opinion, will soon be a mainstay of research into the metaphysics and psychology of imagination. * Alon Chasid, Bar-Ilan University *


Author Information

Peter Langland-Hassan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program at Washington University in St. Louis, and holds a PhD in philosophy from the CUNY Graduate Center, and a BA in philosophy from Columbia University. His published work spans the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of cognitive science, and empirical psychology. He was a co-editor and contributor to Inner Speech: New Voices (OUP, 2018).

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