Topic:	The Nature of Imagination
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Guest:	Alison Gopnik; Professor of Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Science; University of California, Berkeley
What is it?	A lot of our thinking, and even our perception, has to do not only with what is, but what might be, and what would have been. That is, the imagination is an important part of our intellectual life. And learning to use our imaginations without losing sight of reality is part of growing up. What is the imagination, and what led Mother Nature to make it such an important part of our make-up? John and Ken discuss the imagination with Alison Gopnik, a leading scholar in the field of children’s learning.

About the Guest

Professor Gopnik's research explores how young children come to know about the world around them. The work is informed by the “theory theory” -- the idea that children develop and change intuitive theories of the world in much the way that scientists do. Most recently, she has been concentrating on young children's causal knowledge and causal learning across domains, including physical, biological and psychological knowledge. In collaboration with computer scientists, she is using the Bayes Net formalism to help explain how children are able to learn causal structure from patterns of data, and has demonstrated that young children have much more powerful causal learning mechanisms than was previously supposed.

A complete list of her recent publications is listed here.

Listening Notes

Imagination has always been something that interests philosophers—John and Ken open this episode by discussing the views on imagination held by Hume and Descartes.  After elaborating on the philosophical aspect of imagination they get some input from a scientist:  Professor Alison Gopnik, a returning guest of the show, joins John and Ken to help puzzle out the role of the imagination in childhood, in adulthood, and in philosophical discussion.   What exactly is imagination?  Gopnik offers her perspective, which differs from  that of John’s favorite philosopher, Hume.  Ken pushes Gopnik to explain why everything around us is imagined, and what makes for productive imagination.  Gopnik explains why Harry Potter exemplifies the way we construct imagined worlds, and Ken tries to sort out whether traveling at warp speed fits the model.

John, Ken, and Gopnik go on to talk about counterfactuals, or what would have happened were something to have been different than it actually was.  They debate the significance of “almosts,” and why having almost achieved something can hurt more than having not achieved it by a large margin.  Listeners add to the discussion, questioning how imagination is related to blindness, depression, inspiration, generalization, and education.  Gopnik condemns a Dickensian villain for his opposition to imagination, and our hosts remind us that Einstein wasn’t great at math; he was great at imagining.   

The show concludes with a discussion of how the role of imagination changes over the course of one’s life.  As children, we live in a free space where all we have to do is think.  Gopnik suggests and evolutionary division of labor between old and young, and explains why time spent daydreaming is far from wasted.  Ken poses one final question for Gopnik, wondering whether we can imagine the impossible.

• Roving Philosophical Reporter (seek to 4:20):   Philosophy Talk’s Polly Stryker speaks to experts in imagination—Jane Perry at UC Berkeley’s Child Studies Center, and, naturally, children.  Both Perry and the children explain the value of games, and Stryker finds out that her favorite childhood pastime is still cool.  Perry lets Stryker know what she’d say to anyone who discourages children from letting their imaginations roam free.

• Philosophy Talk Goes to the Movies (seek to 48:15):  John and Ken have a suggestion for you if you’re feeling the need to kick back and watch a film: Woody Allen’s  Matchpoint.  Though not explicitly focused on imagination, this film has lots of philosophical material to ponder, particularly regarding luck.  Beyond the basic issue of basic luck, this movie brings up the issue of moral luck—for instance, is the man that kills his lover worse than the man who might have done so but was never put into that situation?  And finally the question of whether there is any justice in the universe—find out what John and Ken have to say about it.  Then watch the film and ponder for yourself.

Additional Resources

Online Resources

• Eliasmith, Chris (ed.)  "Imagination."  Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind.

• Gopnik, Alison & L. Schulz (2004). “Mechanisms of theory-formation in young children.” Trends in Cognitive Science.  (download)

• “Imagery and Imagination.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  

• Streminger, Gerhard (Nov. 1980). “Hume’s Theory of Imagination.”  Hume Studies. (download)

Books

• Currie, Gregory and Ian Ravenscroft (2003).  Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology.

• Modell, Arnold H. (2006).  Imagination and the Meaningful Brain.

• Nichols, Shawn (ed.) (2006).  The Architecture of the Imagination: New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction.

• Sepper, Dennis (1996). Descartes’ Imagination: Proportion, Images, and the Activity of Thinking.  (Free online Ebook.)

• Steeves, James B. (2004).  Imagining Bodies: Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Imagination.