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7 - From Prediction to Imagination

from Part I - Theoretical Perspectives on the Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2020

By
Max Jones  and
Sam Wilkinson
Edited by
Anna Abraham
Anna Abraham
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Summary

This contribution explores how the predictive processing framework could be employed to explain imagination. At first sight, this framework seems well suited to explaining imagination, since a wide range of mental processes, such as perception and action, are seen as employing imagination-like generative processes. However, it faces problems with explaining distinctively deliberate, voluntary, and purposeful acts of imagination in which agents aim to generate content that departs from immediate reality. In order to explain imagination of this kind, more work is needed. We suggest that one clue might lie in understanding the role language plays in shaping and cueing imaginative episodes.

Keywords

Predictive processingimaginationimaginative constraintsactive inferencephilosophy of psychologyphilosophy of cognitive science
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination , pp. 94 - 110
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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