Thinking through the Imagination

 Aesthetics in human cognition (Pt. 1)

Human imagination

Human imagination is an essential element of the human psyche, it empowers us to interpret artworks, create music, envision the future and enables science to continue progressing in order to improve our lives. Above all it is a unique aspect of our humanity: as a thinking process it facilitates the interaction of sense, emotion, and creativity, fostering fertile ground where new ideas and forms of human endeavour can grow and flourish. It has the power to transcend beyond our embodied existence.

In modern Western culture imagination has often been marginalised in favour of pure reason and embodied sensual experience. Too often the imagination has been relegated to mere fantasy and emotionalism. This notion can be traced back to Socrates's suggestion that imaginative poetry does not enliven but rather corrupts young minds. Modernism has separated affective and emotional components of cognition from the logical, analytic, and rational processes of thought. This emphasis on separation can be largely attributed to Descartes' 'Meditations' in a type of mind-body dualism which underpins much of Western modernist thought. This is what became known as Cartesian mentalism that represented thought as an abstract mental impression of the natural world as experienced by, but separated from our embodied sensibilities. Thus, in Western Enlightenment thinking, there is a disjunction of sensibility and understanding; a dualism of body and mind.

Thinking through 

It must be emphasised that the outgrowth of imagination in Western thought has remained an enigma but is essentially a part of a process of 'thinking through' conscious experience. The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, in his 'Critique of pure Reason', initiated a radical departure from this separation of sense and understanding, or reason and imagination. Although Kant highlighted the 'imaginative imperative' he failed to realise imagination's full creative potential. Moreover, he failed to understand its central role in creativity. The natural world has order and continuity and, as such, gives certainty, which enables us to make inferences, such as predictive inferences, about what is and what can be. Thus, human embodied experience is fertile ground for the growth of abstract conceptualisations to grow. 

Carrying across

Abstract conceptualisations are characterised by spacial, temporal, and visceral relations. For example, analogies and metaphors play a vital role in human construction of imaginative concepts and abstract meaning. For example, metaphor and analogy are mental devices that 'carry across' ideas to other situations that are different but have some similarity to embodied experiences. This transference allows the human mind to generate associations from embodied experience to generate novel symbols, signs and relationships. In most instances they will give clarity and give depth of meaning by way of comparison. For example, when you say that, "I am feeling down today." the statement imposes a temporal and spacial dynamic to this abstract expression of language . Thus, the human mind structures the imagination by using forms of space and time to make sense of the seemingly random stimuli. Our interaction with the world is not just a matter of  'knowing', 'thinking,' and 'understanding' but is an outgrowth of embodiment: of thinking through sensual interaction with objects. Our minds use forms of space and time to gather and organise what would otherwise be random stimuli in the environment. 

Organisation

Kant, maintained that imagination was a schematising process. Schema are products of imagination, they mediate between the world of objects and concepts. Concepts are essentially the imagined rules by which schema are constructed. Schema act like flexible structures that link images or ideas in the form of stories or scenes. Imagination is what comes before understanding and sense, the subject of which is both productive and reproductive. However, our empirical observations are not necessarily pure because we use judgement and schema to render thoughts in terms of images and concepts. Thus, schema act as a bridge between sense and understanding. A schema can be both a process and a product. 

Abduction is one of several types of imaginative reasoning processes that Kaag identified. It is a type of inference that moves toward a logical conclusion when presented with two arguments that both seem to be true. It relies on one's ability to listen and respond to the natural ordering of the world. It simply amounts to a type of guesswork, not necessarily based on random associations but it is more to do intuitively with what is normally expected in similar situations. Abductive thinking lends itself to the ability of the mind to bring order to perception (as anchored in embodied cognition). In other words, because there is order in nature (embodied experience) there is also order in cognition. Thus, the more one is attuned to the patterns of nature the more one is consistently more able to make inferences in the form of a viable hypothesis. Hypotheses are predictive inferences that are constructed in reference to the possible relationships that emerge from multiple embodied experiences. Thus, what the imagination necessitates is a sense of order and continuity in the natural world.

Relationship

Kaag maintained that the dualism of mind-body of the Enlightenment is a false separation. In contrast there is a type of triadic synechism, or a underlying principle of mind and being: Kaag outlines three logical/epistemological processes:' sensing', 'responding', and 'adapting' that operates in an organised and purposeful manner. Imaginative and complex systems can arise from simple natural systems in an organised and seemingly purposeful manner. These processes also correspond to Woolley's (me) three levels of cognition: perception (sensing), comprehension (responding), and metacognition (adapting) in a likewise purposeful manner. Whereas Kaag focusses on imagination and creativity Woolley's categories relate to the ability to form mental imagery to achieve comprehension of the written or spoken word. Essentially Woolley's triadic relationship functions in a similar way. 

Kaag illustrates another triadic relationship:

"The prologue of the Gospel of John reflects Pierce's philosophy of mind and leads naturally to a development of agape. John opens with a description of the co-emergence of logic, in the form of the Word (logos), and being. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made ... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." Here, it seems appropriate to describe the Word as the logos, the order and relation of things. If human logic has the ability to apprehend the ordering of reality, its ability rests on the logos that girds both the imaginative mind of the human being and the purposiveness of being in its most general form... Thus all matter is really mind."  

Conclusion

The imagination has long been the dark horse of western intellectualism, the substance of which has been relegated to Romanticism and pure fantasy. Kaag's book is a bridge that spans the spectrum of language from metaphor, creativity and reason. It addresses the short-comings of Enlightenment thinking with its separation of mind and body. At the end of the day innovation and scientific progress rely on imaginative thinking. It is in the of metaphor and image schema that moves us towards aesthetic and imaginational structures which give rise to creativity. 

This current discussion should give some traction to this blog series dealing with metaphoric and 

symbolic meaning.

The book:

J. Kaag (2014). Thinking through the imagination: Aesthetics in human cognition. New York: Fordham University Press.

My books are listed and hyperlinked on the side panel on the right of this blog.