ABSTRACT
According to the Acquaintance Principle, aesthetic judgement about X implies perceptually experiencing X. Recently, the Acquaintance Principle has been dismissed as too strong and attempts to weaken it by appealing to imagination in order to save the Acquaintance Principle may be jeopardised by the objection that imagination can’t give you any new information. I argue that this objection does not apply if we appeal to mental imagery (rather than imagination) as the basis of aesthetic judgements. As long as aesthetic judgement is based on mental imagery, it can be perfectly legitimate. The most plausible version of the Acquaintance Principle is that aesthetic judgement about X implies perceptually experiencing or having mental imagery of X.
