Introduction: Phenomenology of imagination

James Morley

Introduction: Phenomenology of imagination

James Morley

2005, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

visibility

…

description

4 pages

link

1 file

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2005) 4: 117–120 C Springer 2005 Introduction: Phenomenology of imagination JAMES MORLEY Clinical Psychology, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, NJ, U.S.A. (E-mail: jmorley@ramapo.edu) The power of imagination to transcend the giveness of existence in favor of its possibilities may actually define the human condition itself. What we call consciousness and culture are inseparable from imagination. Yet, imagination remains the bastard child of academic psychology – and philosophy. Rejected across intellectual history as synonymous with illusion, falsehood, and mistaken perception, imagination has persistently been given the backseat to its more privileged siblings – perception, reason, and even emotion. At best, it has been constructed as an ‘intermediary’ faculty between these other modalities. Freud likened imaginary phenomena to “mishlings” a derogatory German term for what is called in English “half-breeds.” Mishlings (people of ‘mixed race’) fit no established social categories and were therefore seen as a threat to the established ethnic order. Similarly, the complexities and delicate ambiguities of imagination slip between the lines of conventional thought and experimental methodology. Imagination is ‘subjective’ but its products may be experienced as external to the person experiencing them. Imagination is sensory and often meaningfully emotive to the extreme, yet it is not granted the ‘reality’ status of so called perceptual objects. Imagination is profoundly linked to the experience of time and space yet, when it is studied, it is usually only done so as involving temporally isolated images. Perpetually eluding the categories of conventional thought, imagination rarely is comprehended on its own terms as an integral phenomenon in its own right. Imagination is not considered real, yet few would deny that it is the very driving psychic force behind human motives – for better or worse. So we can see that there has been a good reason for this benign neglect. To take up the issue of imagination is, like the phenomenological epoché itself, to call into question our most cherished ontological assumptions regarding truth, reality, and the primacy of reason, objectivism and the dualisms inherent to these paradigms. This is not to say that philosophers have not grappled with imagination. Many have had their say in passing, but few have given it the full attention it deserves. With the rise of experimental science in the last century, imagination was cast even further into the outer darkness of intellectual irrelevance. Viewed as a confounding variable that could only inhibit the detachment and clarity of scientific objectivity, imagination was deemed the very hallmark of ‘subjective 118 JAMES MORLEY judgment’ and something to be purged from the hard-minded realism of the day. In late 19th century European culture imagination reached its most grim nadir. One could almost say that experimental method was designed to purge imagination from the process of science. In response to this eclipse, Dadaism and Surrealism openly revolted against this extreme suppression of imagination, and clinical psychoanalysis in many ways paralleled this great artistic movement. Only, however, with the advent of academic phenomenology did imagination for the first time in intellectual history begin to assume the centrality it deserves. It was one of Husserl’s greatest achievements to grant imagination (ontologically neutralized via the phenomenological suspension) a status with perception that was mutual if not equal. Husserl’s phenomenological movement is inseparable from this reassessment of imagination, yet even Husserl has been criticized for not grasping the full consequences of his own radical repositioning of imagination. Julia Jansen’s article in this volume helps us to better understand how Husserl did indeed follow-through on his great achievement in the latter stages of his career as many of his mature works are only now coming to light. Jansen outlines how Husserl’s thought culminated in a greater independence from the categories of natural scientific nomenclature and how this invigorated his approach to imagination with greater clarity and descriptive insight. This enabled Husserl to better articulate his radical claim to a certain primacy of imagination over perception. One of the conclusions that can be drawn from Jansen’s study is that although Husserl’s further autonomy from natural science granted greater rigor to his transcendental descriptions of imagination, the metaphysical neutrality of his descriptions makes possible a more fruitful exchange between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. In its beginnings, phenomenology, by necessity, defined itself in radical opposition to the paradigm of natural science. In turn, most scientists came to misunderstand phenomenology as, instead of as a new science, a non-science. Thus, across the span of the twentieth century the two disciplines missed each other – to their mutual loss. Presently there appears to be a growing spirit of humility on the part of both approaches. The remaining articles in this issue exemplify this new spirit of mutual recognition. Beata Stawarska’s essay investigates the double, phenomenological and psychological, background of Sartre’s theory of the imagination. She shows that Sartre’s theory of the imagination is situated in an inter-disciplinary research area which benefits from the combination of the descriptive analyses of Husserl with the clinical reports and psychological theories, specifically those of Pierre Janet. Janet’s observations provide a rich source of inspiration for Sartre’s thinking about the pathological forms of imaginary activity. They motivate an account of imagination as a productive rather than a merely reproductive faculty. Janet’s clinical observations on the effects of the obsessive condition on consciousness constructively influenced Sartre’s thinking about INTRODUCTION 119 imagination, and, as Sartre understood it, acted as corrective to the view developed by Husserl. Dieter Lohmar’s article expands on the phenomenological insight that imagination and perception are interwoven. He develops this with not only the philosophical support of Kant and phenomenology, but also data from clinical and experimental science. The clinical phenomenon of Charles Bonnet Syndrome (loss of vision with residual ‘imaginary’ visual phenomena) reveals the linked relation between sensation and imagination. In addition, the recent discovery of ‘mirror neurons’ is especially provocative. It has been discovered that certain neurons in the primate pre-motor cortex, activated for each animal’s own motor acts, are also activated when it perceives another primate engaged in the same motor acts. This gives empirical support to Husserl’s theory of ‘knowledge of other minds’ or intersubjectivity as a coupling of one’s bodily motility to the perceived body of an other – via sympathetic imagination. The consequences of this phenomenological interpretation of this neural activity can make a profound contribution to both philosophical phenomenology and neuroscience. Daniel Schmicking raises the issue of phenomenological methodology. Most phenomenological philosophers have used a solitary first person approach to phenomenological description. Schmiking proposes the development of a cooperative notational system, much like that developed by phonetic scholars for the collating of sounds, for the description of imaginary phenomena. This would allow for groups of phenomenologists to share descriptions and analyze each others results more efficiently. Schmiking contributes to a growing movement within phenomenology to develop a wider array of concrete empirical methods for collecting and organizing ‘qualitative’ data. This provides another example of how phenomenology can better dialogue with the experimental approaches to mind on a more level field of epistemological relevance, one that can only be of mutual benefit. In the final essay of this special issue Jonathan Cole uses a sensibility for phenomenological reflection to explore the experience of people who have suffered major spinal cord injuries. Specifically, he inquires about the role of imagination in their experience. Defining imagination as “experiences of sensory and/or motor sequences independent of peripheral sensory or central motor elaborations leading to movement,” and considering the acute withdrawal of sensory input in spinal cord injury, he finds that many patients experience hallucinations of posture and other more formed sensory and visual experiences. It is also the case that chronic pain may appear as a result of the absence of input to the brain, and as such, although undeniable in its reality, also a product of the imagination, strictly defined. Moreover, such experiences appear to be beyond simple volitional control. They are the effects of spinal injury on the brain and are played out on the field of the individual’s experience. 120 JAMES MORLEY In conclusion, this issue invites us to understand the importance of imagination to both phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. It is through the topic of imagination that phenomenology reveals its power to utterly rethink our conventional approach to imagination as some interior object. Secondly, the insights granted by the openness of the phenomenological approach to imagination may better enable neuroscientists to interpret the relevance of their own data on imagination-linked brain functions. Through these studies we may begin to bring imagination from the margins of scientific discourse into the center where it belongs.

Log In

Introduction: Phenomenology of imagination

Related papers

Related papers

Related topics