Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination: A Critique of White
Nigel J.T. Thomas
Page 6
Source: http://www.imagery-imagination.com/white.htm
6. Imaginativeness and possibility.
Let us now consider White's positive theory of imagination. This is announced in the contention that 'To imagine something is to think of it as possibly being so' (p. 184, White's emphasis; White, 1989). There is no doubt that this formula will substitute very nicely for 'imagine' in many contexts, as will 'suppose', 'pretend', 'think falsely' etc. in others. However, White is not claiming to have unearthed yet another meaning of 'imagine' but the meaning: 'I claim that one and the same sense of "imagine" is being used' in all cases (p. 187). But it is not clear that his candidate is any more universally appropriate than any of the others. For instance, as he properly insists, one may wrongly imagine something (p. 142), but while you may certainly wrongly imagine that the cat is on the mat, unless you already have unequivocal evidence to the contrary, you can hardly be wrong in thinking of the cat as possibly being on the mat: it is a possibility.
In fact White is a little less severe with his own theory than he tends to be with other candidate equivalents, such as 'suppose' for 'imagine' (see pp. 135-6) or 'imagine seeing' for 'picture' (see p. 104), where he seems to demand that any substitution should strictly preserve the surface syntactic form. He realizes that his formula will (at best) only work for cases of imagining that something, and he loosens it accordingly. To imagine something may be to think of a possible experience or occurrence (p. 187). For White, imagination is essentially the capacity to think of possibilities (logical possibilities, I take it, for physical impossibilities may be perfectly imaginable) (c.f. Rorty, 1988; Sparshott, 1990; Nozick, 1993; Johnson, 1993). But although some people may be able to think of possibilities more quickly or copiously than others (at least in particular spheres), could such an ability in itself be properly said to be 'powerful or weak, rich or poor, vivid or faint', as White (p. 185), and the world, says an imagination may be? Note that the adjectives 'rich', 'vivid' and 'faint', especially, are thoroughly appropriate to imagery.
Let us consider some of the examples which White himself adduces to support his view: 'When we try to imagine why a friend betrayed us [or] where we put the parcel . . . we are trying to think of possible answers to these questions' (p. 184). True, but anything is possible. It is possible that I threw the parcel in the sea, or that my friend betrayed me because he was bribed by Martians with a million tons of platinum. What I am trying to think of are not merely possible but probable answers, and it seems to me that I am most likely to say specifically that I am trying to imagine them, rather than just think of them, if I am thinking about the situation concretely. I will try vicariously to re-experience holding the parcel and wondering where to put it, or to experience what my friend's situation must have felt like 'from the inside'. That is to say, I will try to recall or construct appropriate imagery.
I am appealing, here, to something like the 'simulation theory' of 'folk psychology' (Gordon, 1986; Goldman, 1992a, 1992b; Harris, 1992), which holds that to predict, or retrodict, the behavior of others (or of ourselves in other than the actual present circumstances), we imagine being in the relevant situation (with the details as richly 'embroidered' as we can manage), and take note of what we then find ourselves doing, or deciding to do, in the imagined scenario. At root this idea is not just some newfangled and controversial cognitivist theory, but the time honored notion of 'putting yourself in someone else's shoes'. It is itself based upon a 'folk theory' of 'folk psychology'. The same goes, of course, for the rival 'theory theory' (Morton, 1980; Leslie, 1992), but, whether considered in its scientific or its 'folk' form, this does not make appeal to imagination, but to inference. Thus, even if we deny that the simulation theory gives a true account of how people actually do predict and retrodict behavior, we must still acknowledge that when we 'folk', use 'imagine' in these contexts, we mean 'vicariously experience', not merely 'think of possibilities'.
White also tells us that for a child to imagine a chair as a fortress amounts to the child's thinking of the chair as a fortress (p. 184). Again this is true, but has little to do with what is supposed to be the key notion of possibility. The sane child, no matter how imaginative, does not think that the chair possibly is a fortress. He knows quite well that it is a chair and that he is only playing. White says that 'An imaginative person is one with the ability to think of lots of possibilities, usually with some richness of detail' (p. 185). Would the child really be playing more imaginatively if he thought of the possibility that the fort, which is a chair, might be decorated with giant purple dandelions, or submerged under a lake of treacle? Rather it is that he imagines it appropriately, and does so in rich, sensuous, concrete detail: the angle of the chair's arm and back is 'seen' as a crenelation; the upholstery is 'seen' and 'felt' as stone, perhaps he 'hears' and even 'smells' the besieging armies and 'feels' his own fear. We may also consider him the more imaginative the less the chair really resembles a fort. A kitchen chair will call for more imagination than an armchair. A really imaginative child will not need the chair at all. All this has much more to do with imagery, or at least with seeing-as, than with possibility.
Similar points apply to the role of imagination in the arts, which White's theory is also meant to capture. Perhaps there is a 'thin' sense of 'imaginative' in which the more imaginative writer is merely the one who 'thinks of possibilities unthought of by his inferior colleagues, [and] he also, by mentioning them, leads us . . . to think, like him, of these possibilities' (p. 186), but this is not the sense in which 'imaginative' is used as a resonant term of approbation: if so, science fiction would be the acme of literature. But art, even writing, that we admire for the imagination it shows need not be fiction at all. Imaginativeness is not mere copious inventiveness. Shakespeare and Wordsworth are favorite examples of especially imaginative writers. At least, they were probably Coleridge's favorite examples, and it is Coleridge (as White seems to agree (p. 46)), who has been the chief apostle and theorist of the importance of imagination in literature. But neither Shakespeare nor Wordsworth are notable for their fictional inventions. What they, and other 'great' writers, are noted for is the acuteness and depth of their 'folk psychological' insight, and the concrete, sensuous evocative power of their writing, its capacity to induce imagery (both perceptual and emotional).
But the principal reason that imagination is thought to be particularly relevant to the arts arises from the ability of artists to see and to induce the rest of us to see aspects of reality differently or more fully than is ordinary - to see things as we otherwise might not. ('See' is used here, in a quite conventionally metaphorical way, to mean 'perceive' in its broadest sense). Art can be worthwhile without being sensuous or evoking mental imagery, but I take leave to doubt whether it can transcend mere entertainment or titillation unless it makes us see the world afresh.
The imaginativeness which may be displayed in other pursuits, I would suggest, has a similar basis, at least when the term is being used seriously for approbation (it mayjust be used to indicate a tendency to produce copious and vivid imagery, or, indeed, toward inventiveness, copious spinning of possibilities, but in such cases it does not operate as an important, culturally loaded, evaluative term). The imaginative, creative scientist is the one who sees some aspect of the world in a new way (as, for instance, Faraday saw magnets as surrounded by lines of force, or Darwin saw nature as an arena of struggle). More mundanely, the more imaginative footballer is the one who is more adept than his team mates at seeing a particular situation on the field as a potential threat or opportunity. The more imaginative detective is the one who can see some otherwise unregarded detail as a vital clue. He is not the one able to think (through imagery or otherwise) of lots and lots of possible culprits or modi operandi, so that he can spin many wild and unlikely theories of the crime. Barrow (1988) has suggested that imaginativeness is 'the inclination and ability consciously to conceive of the unusual and effective in particular contexts', but such an ability, I would contend, depends directly on having the skill (and inclination) for looking and seeing for oneself how things are. Without insight into the real situation, one may often be effective, by rote and diligence, or one may throw off original ideas that, except for the rare lucky hit, will be unworkable. Neither of these deserves praise as imaginative. Being original and effective requires us to see the world for ourselves, as it is.
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