ABSTRACT
We can make a distinction between two kinds of imagining. For imaginings of the first kind, there is an important relation between the imagining and something of which the imagining is what might imperfectly be called a copy, or a counterpart, and in terms of which it seems we have to describe the imagining. But we must not suppose that the imagining need be anything like a replica of this other thing; we should think of it as a copy in the same way that a toy car is a copy of a real car, without it resembling a real car in all or even many respects. A better way to describe the relation would be to say that imagination simulates this other thing, borrowing a term that has recently acquired a special sense in the philosophy of mind. One advantage of this term is that it suggests that the similarities between imagining and what it simulates are similarities of function; we shall see that this is exactly where some of the relevant similarities lie. Imaginings of the second kind are not like this; they are not to be described in terms of something else, which they simulate.
