Too much time on my hands? …Nah. A discussion came up between me and some friends. In regard to a person’s imagination, I took the position that a person’s imagination is limited, in that I think my imagination is really only the sum of my experiences.
Any thoughts?
Right! Jolly good then…Carry on!
That sounds like an impoverished imagination. If all humans were limited ot the sum of their experiences we would all be scurrying along the African plain. Imagination allows us to see “what if” instead of “what is”. Without it, there is no progress.
When I say experiences, I mean (not limited to)things I’ve:
Aren’t these the things that both shape my life’s unique point of view, and therefore, my imagination?
If, for example, I never encountered the color “red”, and never experienced “red” through any experiences, including others’ descriptions of “red”, or even the idea of “color” or “red”, how could I imagine the concept of it?
Experiences feed into our imaginations, they do not limit our imaginations. No human being has ever experiened a 500 foot tall, bipedal lizard with radioactive breath and a penchant for flattening Tokyo. Nevertheless, somebody imagined godzilla.
If that example is too trivial for you: try to figure out how written language might have developed in a world where imagination was strictly bound by experience.
I should probably mention how my POV on this topic fit into the discussion with friends (if it’s a slow ballgame, my mind tends to wander here in the upperdeck.) It had to do with the expansion of the universe, and that I cannot imagine or even comprehend the idea that literally “nothing” exists outside the boundaries of our universe. While I can imagine darkness, I can’t imagine “nothing.”
Quote from Spiritus Mundi - “No human being has ever experiened a 500 foot tall, bipedal lizard with radioactive breath and a penchant for flattening Tokyo. Nevertheless, somebody imagined godzilla.”
When I consider Spiritus Mundi’s 1st example, I can still theorize that unrelated experiences led to imagining Godzilla. My guess is that the creator of Godzilla:
I’ve read about the existence of additional dimensions in science, but I’ve never been able to comprehend a 4th dimension. I’ve seen a model of it, but was told that it was for theoretical purposes only (i.e. for the sake of my imagination.)
Here is the requisite link to Cecil’s take on the subject, sort of. You’ll also find this tidbit:
So there is at least anecdotal evidence that one can imagine concepts that they have no experience with. And I don’t think “imagination” should just be limited to the visual, or to the physical senses in general. Physicists deal with more than three or four dimensions all the time, even if they can’t actually “see” them. Just MHO.
I would agree with the OP, and would take umbrage with any attempt to impugn my imagination. UDFan is essentially restating a long and widely held (though not to say universally accepted) philosophical viewpoint- essentially that our consciousness is a byproduct of our sensory input (give or take a bit of biology). It is possible to say that even inherent biological traits exert an environmental effect upon our consciousness. Should I get thwacked by a 2X4 in the back of the head, the brilliant flash I see is not ‘real’ per se, but a sudden incomprehensible spurt of brain activity as it gets jiggled about. Were I to ingest LSD or other psychedelic substance, the images/ thought patterns/ general hoo-ha-edness of the experience are attributable to chemistry, no external stimulation needed.
Helen Keller’s claim of sight-imagination is entirely subjective. Is it not possible that various morsels of the imaging-center of her brain were not completely unused, but fired out bits and pieces of signals to the rest of her brain? In addition, we could go on and on and on (without ever spiraling into semantics) about what ‘red’ is. As color/ sight are subjective (though the wired-kitty’s brain is tough to fit into this) how is H.K.'s claim that she imagined ‘sight’ proof that she imagined anything outside of her own experience?
Can you imagine what ultraviolet light looks like? Can you do it without ‘seeing’ any bit of color you have ever seen in the past? Can you imagine what a bee feels when it senses the magnetic lines of the Earth? Without mixing in any sensation that you have previously had? Is it possible to put forth an object that cannot be broken down into composites of other tangible things al la the Godzilla example?
I think (though knowing this MB I will be very quickly corrected) that one of the strongest criticisms of this viewpoint comes through discussions of various types abstract thought.
Here’s a simple one for ya:
You: How are you feeling today?
Friend: Absolutely awful. I have a kidney stone.
You: Gah. That’s never happened to me.
Friend: Pray you never do. It feels like a knife in my back.
You: Ack.
Here, my friends, is imagination going beyond the bounds of experience. In most cases, neither you nor the friend have ever experienced a knife in your back, front, side, or anywhere else. But you know exactly the sensation being described.
Sua
But that is not to say in actuality it feels just like a knife in the back. Since the friend has never felt a knife in the back the comparison of kidney stone=knife in the back is flawed. It could be a knife in the back(or kidney area rather) feels much worse than a kidney stone.
The friend knows what pain is, and knows what a knife is, so it is easy to make the connection and say that the pain feels similar. Definately not outside of the experience of many people I would say.
‘Exactly’ is a very strong word in this context. One may assume that one knows what a back-stabbing would feel like, one’s assumptions may even be correct, but to say that one knows what it will feel like borders on unattainable prognostication. I trust we don’t need to devolve this thread to a discussion of what knowing is, as the thread concerns itself with the imagination. Unless one can keep the idea of what being stabbed feels like in one’s mind, go through a stabbing, and have the ability to distinguish the two, I don’t think the above quote can stand as proof that a person can successfully imagine an experience/ sensation that is outside the realm of previous experience. That, however, does not mean the thought process is not possible.
Though I don’t believe that the stabbing example is a good one for this topic, there is something similar that may suffice. Sex. How many of us spent countless hours of our youth contemplating the act, bringing the full force of our imagination to bear on the topic. I can’t think of a topic that consumes more time and energy. Once we crossed the threshold and actually got some (though the Swedish Women’s Volleyball Team has yet to return my calls) how did the actual experience compare with what we imagined it would be like? I dare say that regardless of the artifice used pre-nookie, there were elements there that could not be accurately imagined without going through the actual experience. One may imagine quite a lot, imagine it in quite a lot of detail, but there is nothing that spurts into our mind from the vast crevices of our imagination that does not have roots in previous experience.
I ask again, is it possible to imagine what ultra-violet light looks like - that is a color that is not a composite of other ‘normal’ colors?
Yes.
No.
It is possible to imagine it. If one imagines it as a color, it will necessarily be a member of the visual spectrum. Really, this would seem self-evident.
Frankly, from a phenomenological standpoint we imagine the entire world without ever experiencing it. You almost touched upon this with your Helen keller example, but failed to carry it to the logical conclusion. Everything we think we see, hear, taste, etc. is an “imagination” created by our brain to explain sensory data.
The “composition” argument is, I think, an illusion in and of itself. The human mind is very successful at identifying similarites and creating like groupings. Thus, if presented with a “brand new” image, we will immediately and naturally begin analyzing it for elements which correspond to things we recognize. Is a pegasus something new, or is it simply a combination of bird+horse? Does the answer seem obvious? Then what about an angel? A ghost? A probability wave? A tesseract? A black hole? An infinite series? God? Language?
Well, even if you’re imagination was limited, I doubt you’d ever experience it or find the proof of it.
I’d agree that imagination must be limited in some sense or another, as there are an infinite (or almost infinite, which is along the same arugment) variety of experiences and sensations in the universe, most of which we will never experience. If imagination is built upon experiences we’ve had, how can I even approach the endless variety of imaginary thoughts that would accompany, say, having a tail? I can grasp the rudimentary elements of it, but the subtleties that a truly visionary imagination would build upon would be lost to me.
I think it boils down to arguments on infinity. You’re perceptions are but a tiny ripple in a tidepool of the universal ocean we are part of. From these you can bring about endless reconfigurations and extrapolations, but it is still only a tiny part of the infinite (or seemingly infinite) wealth of potentialities around you. Even ignoring your surroundings, you can always imagine your experiences into subtler and subtler gradiations, infinitesimal instead of infinite.
If that made any sense at all. I’d say that anybody who claimed to come to any final judgement on this would have to have a rather inadequate imagination.
Man, almost had to break out a thesaurus for this post.
Actually, I didn’t feel it at all. I only noticed the wound on the bus back home.
Imagination is limited, but by what one knows and experiences. The thing is, your experiences are more vast than you think. In this case you know what a tail is, and you know what it feels like to have an appendage. It is only a small step from there to imaginining it slightly different and doing a tail. Now to say an alien of some sort (like a slug) that has no arms, and has never seen a tail before, he would not be able to imagine it. If they had some creatures that had tails on their planet, they would know what a tail was, but probably would have extreme difficulty imagining what it would be like to have a piece of one’s body hanging off away from the bulk of its mass.
Now for the more esoteric things such as God, or ghosts, or concepts like “other universises”, more than 4 dimensions it gets more complicated, but with some thought and history you can figure out where you gain the insight and experience to properly imagine it. (as a side note, I must say that it is entirely likely that everybody imagines it quite differently than the next person)
Creativty, I think, comes from something, nothing comes from nothing. Experience is probably the key, enviroment adds to it. Concepts have evolved gradually throughout the history of mankind, from first invisioning the gods, to thinking in terms of particles so small it takes billions and billions of them to fill up a square foot area. Many of us easily grasp things like radio, and can imagine a myraid of other similar forces because of it.
Just try to imagine the most complex thing, something you didnt know you had experiences with, and then try to come up with a base for it, and how you came to imagine such a thing. I would bet a large sum of money(hey, a dollar is 100pennies, thats alot!) that you would be able to find something in your experience that allows you to imagine what you do.
[hijack]wtf is with the board tonight? slowwwwww[/hijack]
This quesiton has been bothering me for some time lately. The problem, to me, isn’t in imagining something we haven’t experienced per se, as in the “knife in the back” and Godzilla examples, but in something…argh, I can’t exaplin it in a general case.
Consider Godzilla. We’ve seen lizards. We’ve a concept of height. We’ve read of dinosaurs. Mutations, etc etc. These are a sordid bunch of ideas we’ve experienced mashed together.
Similarly with the knife in the back. We;ve experienced pain. We know what knives are. We’ve very likely seen movies of people being stabbed and gauged their acted reactions. We’ve got a database, so to speak, of concepts to draw on.
But consider a wildly extreme example, which I am ever-so-fond of. We have a single consciousness, what we would call a consciousness, alone in a sea of nothingness. That is, this consciousness is the only existent thing. Now, apart from the question that this is or is not impossible, my question is: could it think?
My gut feeling is no. it has no experiences to draw on, it cannot mesh ideas together, and so on. However, in the religion, spirituality, and the brain thread it seems some recent research mentions that a consciousness need no object to act. Is this at odds with my “no” or what? I have thoroughly confused myself on the matter.
I don’t think a consioussness existing by itself could think per se. It might have some awareness, but It would probably be so alien to us that it may as not be considered thinking in the way that we do. Put that consiousness in a body, give it senses and put it in an enviroment that it can experience things, and a gradual process of awareness would begin, leading to thinking, and ultimately imagination and creativity.
I am not familar with the thread you mention, and will actually have to think a bit on what it would mean to be able to think without an object to act upon, but do believe that a lone consioussness would be able to imagine and think to a limited degree as long as it possessed self awareness. (if experience and say time aren’t necessary for self awareness. If it is self aware, even in a void of objects, it would be a simple step for that entity to imagine other beings similar to itself, even though it cannot see/hear/smell/touch/communicate with them. But it has the experience of being self aware as sort of a base for that concept of other.