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UID:https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/events/dan-and-gwen-taylor-lecture-three-puzzles-about-the-imagination
URL:https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/events/dan-and-gwen-taylor-lecture-three-puzzles-about-the-imagination
DTSTART;TZID=Pacific/Auckland:20261001T173000
DTEND;TZID=Pacific/Auckland:20261001T190000
SUMMARY:Dan and Gwen Taylor Lecture: Three puzzles about the imagination
DESCRIPTION:Associate Professor Jorge Fernandez, Adelaide UniversityThe imagination is a very familiar mental faculty. After all, we use it every day. We use it, for example, to predict what will happen in the future, to create works of art, or to figure out how other people feel. However, the imagination is also quite puzzling, in several respects. It is puzzling because our ideas about what the imagination is able to do seem to be in conflict with our ideas about how some of our other mental capacities work. Here are three of those conflicts:First of all, we seem to think that we have a will, and that our imagination is subject to that will. This suggests that we cannot be mistaken about what we imagine. And yet, there does seem to be cases in which we commit precisely that kind of mistake. Secondly, we seem to think that we have a capacity for empathy, and that exercising that capacity requires putting ourselves in other people's shoes. This suggests that having empathy towards someone requires imagining that we are that person, in their situation. But that would mean that it is possible for us to be someone else. And that is not possible, since two distinct objects are necessarily distinct. Finally, we seem to think that, when we use our imagination to engage with fiction, we have the capacity to have emotions towards fictional characters. But it also seems that, in general, we only have emotions towards things that we believe to be real. And yet, we do not believe fictional characters to be real. Associate Professor Jorge (Jordi) Fernandez will put forward a counterfactual view of the content of our imaginative episodes (of the kinds of things that, properly speaking, we imagine) which can dissolve all three puzzles. The view is that, when a subject tries to imagine a state of affairs by conjuring up some experience, their imagining has a counterfactual content. What the subject imagines is that perceiving the state of affairs would be, for them, like having that experience. Associate Professor Fernandez will argue that this counterfactual view preserves the idea that imagination is subject to the will, while accommodating our intuitions about the kinds of errors that challenge this notion. Furthermore, the counterfactual view preserves the idea that empathy requires putting ourselves in other people's shoes, while avoiding the thought that it is possible for us to be someone else. And, finally, Jordi will argue that the counterfactual view preserves the idea that, when we use our imagination to engage with fiction, that use of the imagination has a rich phenomenological, perhaps even an emotional, dimension, while avoiding the idea that we ever have emotions towards fictional characters. About Associate Professor Jorge FernandezThe Philosophy programme is very pleased to host Taylor Lecturer for 2026, Jordi Fernandez, Adelaide University. Before moving to South Australia in 2007, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Macquarie University and the Centre for Consciousness of the ANU. He received his PhD from Brown University in 2003, and he briefly taught at Bowdoin College before leaving the United States to relocate to Australia. He is originally from Spain, and did his undergraduate study at the University of Barcelona. Jordi's general area of research is the intersection of philosophy of mind and epistemology. He is interested in the topics of self-knowledge and memory. With regards to self-knowledge, he is with those who believe that self-knowledge is ‘transparent’: We attribute mental states to ourselves based on our grounds for being in those states. With regards to memory, he believes that the contents of our memories are reflexive: Memories represent themselves as having a certain causal origin. His current project is focused on the imagination and, in particular, on how we should understand the contents of our imaginative episodes. Visit Associate Professor Jorge Fernandez profile page, Adelaide University Livestream informationLivestream the Dan and Gwen Taylor Lecture 
LOCATION:Burns 2, Ground floor, Arts Building, 95 Albany Street, Dunedin
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