Imagination

An imagination is a content represented in the mind, which goes back to a perception or consists in a mental processing of perceived content. An imagination can result in something that is not present in reality or could even never be present; it is then also called an imagination. In the same way, however, imaginations can also represent realistic future-related expectations, or they can be based on memories. Furthermore, they can be more vivid models of an abstractly given description; in this context, the question has been discussed whether conceptions play a role in language comprehension for the meaning of words and sentences (this was denied in Frege's philosophy of language, for example, but is widely assumed today). In contrast to the term or concept, which are structures permanently laid down in the mind (dispositions), ideas (at least in the narrower sense) are concretely occurring phenomena in the mind.

Insofar as the ideas are based on previously experienced perceptions, they can be assigned to certain sensory modalities; a special role is played here by the visual (pictorial) imagination (which gives the word "imagination" its name, from the Latin imago "image"). In addition, imaginations of other modalities are possible, for example of smells or tastes, of movement sequences etc. Imaginations can occur involuntarily, but they are often spoken of as a form of active mental simulation. An example of such a voluntary simulation is the "mental rotation" of an object, which is much studied in psychology and is based on visual and motor ideas.

It is characteristic of an idea that it can exist relatively independently of attitudes to the thing in question: The notion of imagination is neutral to whether the content in question is desired or not. Unlike what one believes, something imagined need not necessarily have an effect on what one believes to be true or how one will act.

In philosophy, since Aristotle (and his concept of phantasia), many different variants of a concept of imagination have been developed. In Descartes, imagination appears as a content of mind with sensual qualities in contrast to abstract understanding. In Brentano's and Husserl's phenomenology, Vorstellung is treated as opposed to judgment or even to conceptual meaning. In philosophy, "Vorstellung" is sometimes encountered in meanings that do not correspond to everyday language - for example, John Locke, who in his Essay on Human Understanding deals with the origin of "ideas" from experience, also includes direct perceptions in the same term. The German philosophical concept of "Vorstellung" has received one of its most authoritative coinages through tradition as a translation of Locke's idea, but not its only one.