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Full Idea
Imagination can be made to look cognitively worthless. Once we recall its fallible but vital role in evaluating counterfactual conditionals, we should be more open to the idea that it plays such a role in evaluating claims of possibility and necessity.
Gist of Idea
Imagination is important, in evaluating possibility and necessity, via counterfactuals
Source
Timothy Williamson (Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic [2010], 6)
Book Ref
'Modality', ed/tr. Hale,B/Hoffman,A [OUP 2010], p.96
A Reaction
I take this to be a really important idea, because it establishes the importance of imagination within the formal framework of modern analytic philosopher (rather than in the whimsy of poets and dreamers).
| 24062 | Self-moving animals must have desires, and that entails having imagination [Aristotle] |
| 9098 | Mental activity combines what we sense with imagination of what is not present [Aquinas] |
| 1399 | Imagination and sensation are non-essential to mind [Descartes] |
| 17260 | Imagination is just weakened sensation [Hobbes] |
| 7721 | Locke's view that thoughts are made of ideas asserts the crucial role of imagination [Locke] |
| 21806 | Memory, senses and understanding are all founded on the imagination [Hume] |
| 7647 | The imagination alone perceives all objects; it is the soul, playing all its roles [La Mettrie] |
| 22443 | We are seldom aware of imagination, but we would have no cognition at all without it [Kant] |
| 8094 | The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye [Joubert] |
| 14769 | Only imagination can connect phenomena together in a rational way [Peirce] |
| 14628 | Imagination is important, in evaluating possibility and necessity, via counterfactuals [Williamson] |
| 6901 | Understanding is needed for imagination, just as much as the other way around [Betteridge] |
| 11081 | Imagination grasps abstracta, generates images, and has its own correctness conditions [Hanna] |