ABSTRACT
The activity of supposing is without doubt one of the most important forms of the imagination. This chapter discusses the relationship between sensory and cognitive imagination. It focuses on some dimensions considered helpful for distinguishing these varieties of imagination, such as the presence of mental imagery and propositionality. The chapter explores how other dimensions reveal commonalities between sensory and cognitive imagination (e.g., relationship with the will and truth), supporting the idea that imaginings form an ontologically coherent whole. This idea is somewhat questionable, insofar as it may be argued that sensory and cognitive imagination have essentially distinct natures due to their re-creating mental states of different kinds (i.e., perception and belief). The chapter shows that this worry is misguided, since imaginings have distinctive features in common that group them together into a single kind, and, most importantly, they do not preserve some of their counterparts’ features that make them different kinds.
