It might be useful for you people out there who don't like Facebook that I have republished this discussion thread about imagination. You can read the thread of discussions without having to sign up. All posts are copyright protected automatically (This is published in the Australian cyberlaw jurisdiction because I live in Australia). If you wish to copy, reference or reproduce any of the content below you might need the approval of Facebook.com and from each of the individuals below.
Philosophy is sexy - A Facebook discussion group
Originally published from http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=2209052640
Philosophy is sexy - A Facebook discussion group
Originally published from http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=2209052640
A friend asked me and I emailed her my reply but after I hit send, I wished I haven't because I forgot to ask her what she thinks first. Anyway you can have a go at this question.
on Saturday
Hi Anna, great avoidance but what are you really saying?
on Saturday · Delete Post
Would you recognise it if something or someone is imaginative even if you have not been taught to recognize it? How would you know if no one fostered your imagination and you are simply allowed to roam without a guide in this undiscovered country?
Could the ability for unfostered imagination be the individual's undoing or is it the other way around?
If a tourist in this imagi-nation get lost or would he/she be able to navigate in that foreign place easily, how can this act of guidance be done?
I love imagination because it is invisible until expressed. Anyone undertaking to be a guide in another's imagination is travelling blindfold and may not be the best guide because of this. Tourists will get lost.
on Saturday · Report
I think it possible that those of low 'understood' intelligence can have flourishing imagination and very intelligent and educated people sometimes exhibit signs of somewhat stilted imaginations.
But we are in the position with a child, of being helpful as a piece of environmental furniture (nurture/culture) or not. Therefore your question is a good one and important to education. That is, if a highly imaginative population is what is desired.
Great third paragraph, because I agree but also because a child doesn't know and cannot name just what this act of 'imagining' involves. You are right that in education (in which people invest so much) being imaginative is often misplaced or have not been contextualised. For example for very young children it is useful to say, 'let's imagine...' or 'what if....?' until this sort of becoming routine.
on Saturday · Delete Post
Imagination cannot be good or bad in itself but it can be misused and can lead to imagination being called fantasising while the kid missed out on facts that help with testing later. I'm not saying that fantasising is bad, on the wrong moment, it is bad or vice versa.
How then can we foster this focused imaginativeness?
Anna, yes there are intelligences that are very little understood and that imagination has big role in making sure those who have those types of intelligence utilise that specific intelligence well in many cases might have few or no formal education.
on Saturday · Delete Post
While it is true that educated people suppress their imaginings for expediency, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that these have 'naturally' deformed imaginative faculties. It might be that their imagination is not applied in the areas that the first group has given more free rein. Each of those groups has a different priority at a single moment, just as it wouldn't be fair for me to say that the people with very little formal education has no moments of clarity or rationality.
To continue with our foreigner in the imagination, how can we make sure the tourist is not lost and actually find their 'own city' and not have to be in the package tour bus to have fun in this strange place?
on Saturday · Delete Post
Besides what is wrong with being lost in imaginings? When I get confused i retreat to my own internal place that is my imagination but once I am there I know I am there. So many might not realise that they wandered.
Another interesting angle that you've put forward is that imagination is always isolated to a single thinker and cannot be entered into by another one.
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Can't it be shared? Why is this so?
I feel that asking in this way, I am challenging the idea that imagination is not fostereable. If it can be suppressed and denied, why can't it be encouraged and developed?
Imagination is, to a degree, shared, when expressed through art or shared ideas - and may then 'reproduce' by mixing with other ideas or expressed imaginations.
on Saturday · Report
It is already encouraged in some ways, as you pointed out, with 'Now, let's imagine.' Children are also encouraged to enter (ordered) areas of other's imaginings through films and books.
Perhaps what squashes or restricts imagination might be heavily promoted single ideas. Like Coca Cola makes you happy. But then if that idea itself makes people happy, is the restriction it causes to imagination so bad?
I don't see how highly promoting certain ideas in any way restricts or impedes imagination.
on Saturday · Report
on Saturday · Report
Children's imagination is almost limitless, and in my opinion, the best way to give it free range is to allow them to play with very basic things that they transform -using their imagination. Stones, flat and rounded ones, wood cut in different shapes and sized, preferably not in neat cubes, oblongs or triangles, but rough shapes, cloths of many colours, plain, old pots and pans, a sandpit, water.. Their imagination will then be allowed to soar..
And later on in adulthood those children will be creative..
I recently watched for the second time Il Postino. It portrays how a very simple mind, hardly literate, discovers poetry through Neruda's acquaintance and one of his poetry books. His own imagination laid dormant, and little by little is fostered by Neruda and allowed to bloom.. The transformation is an inspiration to watch..
on Saturday · ReportBruce ClarkThe facilities of mind that are not imagination or so it seems ..intuition and memory and conscience or ethical realism.
When you say imagination, are you referring to the ability to "create" or hold vivid images in the mind?
on Saturday · Report
How do you know if someone has a good imagination? How would you test it?
Great tangent for discussion but still related, Ben.
on Saturday · Delete Post
Wouldn't a good, unusual or novel 'resolution' to a set theoretical 'problem' be a good indicator of a well-developed imagination, as a good reasoning be one for logical analysis? A really good and well-liked thriller with a breathtaking twist comes to mind.
Please keep them coming.
OMG Alma you did it again! You've read my mind, its uncanny.
on Saturday · Delete Post
One of the three ways I wrote was to allow children the blank spaces to imagine. This means providing technical assistance and to provide models, so they can 'see' (anticipate roughly) what is expected, but always be ahead of them or the challenge of the 'game' is lost.
This is called the theory of proximal development, I forgot by whom, someone look it up. This is the second way of guiding someone's imagination, IMHO I wrote about at length.
I wonder if someone could come up with the third I have in mind.
Aaron, that would be a good way of fostering to develop someone's way of thinking by providing ideas as signposts if you like but as Anna stated, by applying a too heavy a hand it could stifle them if the immature mind thinks all other ideas are not valid because the guide said so.
on Saturday · Delete Post
If a local in the imaginative country tells you a good place to eat. You would believe them and go there, right?
Let me play the staunch reductionist.
on Saturday · Report
How do you that there is such a thing as imagination? I could just say that someone came up with the solution because of hard work, perseverance and a little bit of luck. We could instead rely on the behaviorist's notion of a learned repertoire of problem solving behaviors which happened to emit at the right time.
You mean someone could have seen a potential, but through years of training is able to recognise this nugget of insight?
on Saturday · Delete Post
If so, yep. It is imagination at work. Something happens between getting that input data and turning that rough stone into a faceted beauty.
Who provided these repertoire by the way, could it be that ragtag sources, each one was learned? Where does this random sources of formative inspiration for them in their turn come from? It all goes to this place we know as imagination. Of course it is unique for each person but we all have 99% in common with each other, say 1 over 99 percent. This one percent is a clincher.
My argument hinges on the principle that the 99 percent (hard work)must provided first (by whom or by a system of thought is a matter of debate), before the extra 1% factor (inspiration) could really do its magic in someone's imagination.
on Saturday · Delete Post
I wonder if James could come up with the third. If you can think of another way to nurture the imagination please go ahead.
on Saturday · Delete Post
>>Children's imagination is almost limitless<<
on Saturday · Report
Adults' imaginations are even moreso. Look at the most imaginative creative works - all produced by adults. Children tend to imagine the same sorts of things as other children, and tend to imagine them over and over again. They're actually not as imaginative as many people seem to think. They're just more enthusiastic about it - they throw themselves completely into their fictions. Adults tend not to throw themselves so fully into their imaginings, but adults produce much more imaginative and fanciful fictions than children do.
Very well, I see that the behaviorist objection is not a promising line of inquiry. In fact behaviorism chooses to ignore whatever is going on upstairs rather than claiming it doesn't exist.
on Saturday · Report
As for how you can nurture imagination, what about the old adage that necessity is the father of invention? Throw them in a challenging situation and create a sense of urgency. They will figure it out because they have to.
If they fail, they die (or something.)
Excellent point Aaron, I really think so too about quality but thats not saying bad things about kids' imagination since they haven't had much practice as adults. Give them a break. Lets just stick to how we can allow imagination to soar to greater heights as learners according to Ben's imperative to problem solve by necessity.
on Saturday · Delete Post
Thanks Ben but it is counterproductive to put newly discovered imagination faculty to become a 'do or die' type thing.
@Josephine Cutaran Gibbs
on Saturday · Report
<<
If it can be suppressed and denied, why can't it be encouraged and developed?
>>
People have, in the past, created tools for encouraging and developing imagination. One who comes to mind is Edward de Bono.
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking
>>How is imagination different from creativity?<<
on Saturday · Report
I suppose imagination includes the ability to call vividly to mind things that one has already experienced, whereas creativity is strictly limited to novel imaginings.
on Saturday · ReportBruce ClarkI suppose imagination includes the ability to call vividly to mind things that one has already experienced, whereas creativity is strictly limited to novel imaginings.
Not so sure about that ,sounds like access to memory.
I think that imagination is the ability to grasp possibilities that may not have existed before, out of knowledge, experience, with originality. Creativity, from create, is the ability to put those imaginations into existence."I suppose imagination includes the ability to call vividly to mind things that one has already experienced, whereas creativity is strictly limited to novel imaginings."
on Sunday · Report
I think imagination is also the imagining of places, events, etc that one hasn't experienced them self, but made up. Ex. A fantasy novel, where the author uses his imagination to write the story. Creativity I suppose is putting it to use in the physical.
"Drugs and living abroad."
LoL!
21 hours ago · ReportPAGE 2>>I think imagination is also the imagining of places, events, etc that one hasn't experienced them self, but made up.<<
Yeah, that's what I said. I didn't say imagination includes ONLY the ability to vividly call to mind things one has already experienced. I said that it includes that, and then contrasted it with creativity, which is LIMITED to novel imagingings. The unspoken, but CLEARLY implied clause being that imagination INCLUDES creativity AND SOMETHING ELSE (i.e., vivid recall).
>>Creativity I suppose is putting it to use in the physical. <<
Tons of creative people never put that creativity to physical use.
18 hours ago · ReportBruce ClarkThe unspoken, but CLEARLY implied clause being that imagination INCLUDES creativity AND SOMETHING ELSE (i.e., vivid recall).
Ability is itself, if it is applied to recall it is memory,applied to creativity it is imagination.
Fadia, I'd be first to agree that's one of it's many assets/attributes/dangers!
While, I can see how imagination could be perceived to be dangerous, I have no doubt that the danger aspect is not from imagination but the inability to manage that imagination and mostly the danger could be in the application that the imagination fosters. If I were to use a linear sequence of events for the terms used here - I would rank them as follows
11 hours ago · Report
Sensory /physical stimulus (including drugs Zapp ;-))
Sensory/ physical recall (including intuition and a collective unconscious)
Imagination
dreams
creativity
rationality
logic (problem solving)
physical ability (including hard work)
physical use
outcome
If I apply John Lennon's "Imagination" to my linear sequencing, I would say that the outcome was a definite problem.
11 hours ago · Report
And
If I use Don Quixote's situation I would perhaps point my accusing finger at rationality or lack of it.
@Aaron, I like the distinction between the imagination of the child and that of the adult. I agree the latter is usually more fertile, though the former tends to be more enthusiastic. Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey is a great example of how experience is required in order to provide the imaginative capacity of the mind the material it needs to transform and create anew. The poet revisits a place, recalling the past and infusing those recollections with all the artistry and eloquence the older 'self' can muster as a result of having matured as a poet.
The very nice thing about imagination is that every person has a unique mindprint born from their past experience and "infused recollections.
Fadia,
Can I squeeze your teabag? 'Infused recollections' should become a cult phrase. Can you imagine how to meme it?Anna, I can unfortunately not take credit for that lovely term - twas Tom that provided the linguistic stimulus to my imagination. But I do love the idea of the term too. Perhaps a musical production could be launched but as funds are presently a bit low for musicals meme away to your hearts content.
Sweet thread!
I've been spending a bit much time in my imagination lately... or perhaps it's just that my imaginations have become more intensified in particular directions, causing me to recognize them as such more clearly.
I need to watch Il Postino again one of these days... I most remember the conflicts that came up over the "nude" poem, but there are other details there worth revisiting.
Zapp, I'd say the behaviorist objection has been pretty thoroughly exploded by brain scanning technology already: when people (and other primates) watch another do something, their brains "light up" in the same way as if they'd be doing it themselves. This process can either enable them to do things for themselves later on, or cathartically deal with their urge to do certain things, depending. To me that's a big part of how imagination works. But beyond that, imagination involves synthesizing together various elements of recall and originality, enabling intellectual and personal growth.
Fadia, great idea to look at imagination's role in the broader process of moving from stimulus to outcome. I might be inclined to simplify and clarify the steps along the way (e.g. combining dreams and imagination perhaps). But carefully considering the follow through steps from the imagining process to results is essential. Is that your own formulation, or is it something you've consciously borrowed from elsewhere?
Tom, perhaps you should rename your blog as "infused recollections". It could definitely work. :-)about 2 weeks ago
Hi David, I have been told that nothing on earth is an original thought but the formulation for the sequencing of events was seemingly mine. Just rearranging the thoughts and ideas of all the others here to suit my picture of the world. I am sure that it could be tidied up somewhat.
Have not yet seen El Postino. What are the main/important themes in the movie for you.about 2 weeks ago
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Updated today 5 February 2011
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