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On How to Be an Optimist about Imagination’s Epistemic Powers| title | On How to Be an Optimist about Imagination’s Epistemic Powers |
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| start_date | 2026/02/13 |
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| schedule | 11h30-13h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle de réunion |
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| summary | In this talk, which draws on a book project co‑authored with Kengo Miyazono, I explore the prospects for optimism about how imagination contributes to justification and knowledge. Philosophers often adopt forms of qualified pessimism that rely on preservationist assumptions about imagination: imagination may aid inquiry, but only by depending on background knowledge, inference, or other non‑imaginative capacities. I argue that this dependence assumption can be questioned. In particular, I examine whether imagination and memory might sometimes generate new propositional justification, rather than merely preserving what is already in place. After outlining the preservationist–generationist framework, the talk then examines two avenues that may support a modest but substantive epistemic optimism: cases in which imagination appears to exploit cognitively inaccessible resources, and cases in which imaginative justification seems counterfactually independent of prior justification. The aim is exploratory: to assess whether these mechanisms open room for imagination to function as an epistemically generative capacity, and thereby support qualified optimism. |
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| responsibles | Palminteri |
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Workflow history| from state (1) | to state | comment | date |
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| submitted | published | | 2026/02/11 08:42 UTC |
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