Maria Fedorova
University of Vienna
Several philosophers have recently argued that some of our perceptual imaginings are epistemically useful when they are properly constrained by reality. But the exact nature of imaginative constraints has remained a contentious matter. On the one hand, imaginative constraints are considered to be personal-level mental states, like beliefs or past percepts, which are readily accessible to introspection and available for conscious control. On the other hand, given the shared cognitive architecture of perceptual imagination and perception, it is argued that imaginative constraints are best understood as sub-personal-level perceptual regularities. In this paper, I suggest that the sharp distinction between the two types of constraints should be abandoned in favour of a unified view of imaginative constraints that construes them as implicit beliefs about the world embedded in the perceptual system. In essence, my proposal is an expansion of Williams’ account of imaginative constraints as generative models, which embraces the architectural approach to imaginative constraints, while remaining truthful to the idea that epistemically useful perceptual imaginings are sensitive to what we already believe or know about the world. I give two reasons for favouring this view of imaginative constraints. First, it tells us an empirically plausible story about how our beliefs about the world constrain perceptual imagination when it’s put into epistemic use. Second, it accounts for the otherwise lacking personal-level access to and control over our beliefs about the world when we exercise perceptual imagination without diminishing their role in constraining it.
Chair: tba
Time: September 11th, 14:10 – 14:40
Location: SR 1.006
SOPhiA 2026 