Abstract
Sensuous imaginative content presents a problem for unitary accounts of phenomenal character (or content) such as relationism, representationalism or qualia theory. Four features of imaginative content are at the heat of the issue: its perspectival nature, the similarity with corresponding perceptual experiences, the multiple use thesis, and its non-presentational character. I reject appeals to the dependency thesis to account for these features and explain how a representationalist approach can be developed to accommodate them. I defend the multiple use thesis against Kathleen Stock’s objections but separate the putative non-presentational character of imaginative content into two elements. Loss of presentation is accounted for by the reduced representations involved in imagination and lack of potential response-dependent representational properties. Absence of commitment to reality is accounted for by representational properties characterised in terms of the absence of a certain kind of aetiology.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory |
| Editors | Fiona Macpherson, Fabian Dorsch |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Pages | 96-132 |
| Number of pages | 37 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780191787355 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780198717881 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2018 |
