Amy Kind

Philosopher of mind @amykind argues imagination is the skill we draw on to make our hardest decisions, read the people around us, and work out who we want to become. | bit.ly/4vuIw1q Like any skill, it weakens without use, and we're using it less. If we don't make time to exercise it, we'll lose the capacity to conceive of things being other than they are, and risk being trapped in the present, unable to imagine or build a different future.

Mark your calendar for JAM, a philosophy of imagination conference celebrating 10 years of The Junkyard. April 2027 in Claremont, CA. See this week's Junkyard post for further info and details about the CFP.

Imagination & mind-blanking sit at opposite ends of the consciousness spectrum; imagination is associated with richness but mind-blankness with absence of richness. Angelica Kaufmann suggests how and why an exploration of mind-blanking proves useful for understanding imagination.

Exploring Iris Murdoch's view of imagination, fantasy, and morality, Idil Çakmur argues that Murdoch takes it be a moral imperative that we become more imaginative.

Lloyd Strickland on how Leibniz develops a logic of imagination or, more precisely, a logic of what is imaginable. As he suggests, the key to developing the account "lies in distinguishing imagination as a faculty from the objects that fall under it."

Drawing on her paper “The Role of Value in Creative Imagining”, Julia Langkau argues for a distinction among imaginings beyond the one btwn constrained/unconstrained uses of imagination: "Whether (epistemically) constrained or not, imagination may or may not be guided by values."

This week Luke Roelofs blogs about their forthcoming book, *Empathic Reason* over at The Junkyard. The book argues for "empathic rationalism" and makes the case for a tight connection between empathy and altruism and also for the epistemic indispensability of empathy.

In this week's post at The Junkyard, Miranda Anderson argues that there is a "fission-fusion dynamic" between imagination and art and then suggests that this means that our imaginative engagement with art enables us to become more critical, creative and compassionate thinkers.

In an exploration of imagination-oriented design, Monika Dunin-Kozicka asks: “how can we design things so that they trigger or afford imaginative actions to those who perceive them?”

Bruce G. Shapiro on two distinct ways that imagination operates in stage acting

Georgie Brighouse argues that consideration of aphantasia suggests that we should adopt a pluralistic account of imagination.

Though sensory imagining is often used to provide pleasure in place of a real experience, Vincenzo Grasso argues in his post at The Junkyard that there is a second pleasure involved in sensory imagining, namely, the pleasure of imaginative agency.

Ana Elisa Ulloa Labariega draws our attention to an important aspect of scientific modeling that she thinks is often obscured, namely, "its narrative character, sustained and structured through imagination."

Zachary Srivastava on whether there is a paradox of scientific fiction akin to the paradox of fiction, and he also explores what this reveals about the nature of scientific vs artistic imagination

Scholz, Liu, & Blomkvist discuss some important connections between mental imagery research & aphantasia research; they then suggest that both would benefit from interdisciplinary research/collaboration. Plus a plug for an interdisciplinary aphantasia conference at U of Glasgow.

Claiming that imagining the minds of non-human animals involves an "informed imaginative leap," Luca Marchetti explores what kind of imagination is involved in attempts to understand animal minds and what kinds of values are at stake when we make these attempts.

Zach Kohler on the essential role that imagination plays in our experience of magic

The interplay between the processes of learning and creativity is a complex matter but, as Kerry Clark argues in this post at The Junkyard, developing the skill of imagination proves beneficial for both of these processes.

Avshalom Schwartz explores the philosophical insights that can be gained by taking a philological route to the study of the origins of imagination.

In a post written while watching the Superbowl, Neil Van Leeuwen explores why we are considerably more inclined to rewatch movies and other fictions than we are to rewatch sports