The former focuses on the distinguishing characteristics of the mind (thought); the latter on the distinguishing characteristics of the senses (matter). They are, therefore, inseparable and complimentary.
The most famous Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) gave a lecture on October 11, 1928 titled, "Imagination, Inspiration, Evasion," dealing with a poet´s handling of all three with respect to reality.
Imagination for Lorca signifies aptitude for discovery: imagination fixes and gives life to fragments of sensible reality. Imagination is limited by sensible reality; what does not exist is unimaginable. Imagination needs objects, with logical relationships between them, orderliness, limit.
Sensible reality is richer than what imagination discovers. Therefore, the poet wants to free himself from mere imagination with its limits. As a result, while using imagination as his first step in his writing, he passes from imagination to inspiration. Inspiration discovers what Lorca calls the "poetic fact," that which has its own life, laws, and logic, independent of outside, sensible reality. The poetic fact forms an "evasion" or escape from sensible reality and inhabits a different reality. Passage to this poetic reality takes place through the road that inspiration offers by operating on unusual happenings or else through the pathway of the subconscious. See F. Garcia Lorca, Obras completas [Complete Works], vol. 3, pages 259-61.
You may say, dear Marwan, that a poet is not scientific and lacks expertise on imagination. This particular poet, however, has made imagination one of the main themes of his poetry and theatre.
All three of us have been referring to sensible reality, so in order to set the limits between the senses and the imagination, we need to be precise about what sense perception is. It is common to think in terms of the mere five Aristotelian senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, when what we should really be considering is the eleven senses of contemporary science, including thermoception, proprioception, nociception, equilibrioception, and chemoception. If we enrich our conception of the senses, we broaden our notion of imagination. Both psychology (science) and art would profit.
We have only considered reality outside the psyche, but just as there are different grades of sensory perception, so there are different forms of imagining. What about optical illusions and hallucinations, Marwan? Do you consider them forms of imagination?
The most obvious optical illusion is the sky and the heavenly bodies. German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey writes that looking at the sky and its celestial contents gives us a sense of unreality. What we can touch with our hands seems most real; what we cannot touch but can only see appears less real. Is this imagination? I leave it to you.
What about hallucinations? German phenomenologist Max Scheler (1874-1928), in his essay "The Idols of Self-Knowledge," Selected Essays (Northwestern Univerity Press, 1973), pp. 46-47, distinguishes what he calls "natural perception" from hallucination. In natural perception, the brain conditions only "perceiving" as a real act with this nature as opposed to representing, judging, etc., and also the choice of this real content over other equally real contents to be perceived. In hallucination, the brain conditions the content first (and not its selection from other possible contents) and second the production of that quality of appearance connected with natural perception. We merely think we perceive without in fact perceiving . Is this not imagination too?
What about dreams? Dilthey thinks that in dreams, the dreamer seems more real to himself than the content of the dream. I think, though, that this is true only of SOME dreams. Have you never awakened in the middle of a nightmare, a bad dream? Your heart is racing because you took its contents as horribly real. Isn´t this imagination or is it?
Very well articulated, my friend, Nelson! I had Ralph Waldo Emerson on mind when I wrote this. In other words: the Me (the soul, apprehended by imagination and ideas; I'm not sure about hallucinations here—but they reflect absence of sense, anyway) and the Not-Me (the body, apprehended by the common senses in the Aristotelian vogue. Matter (body) is apprehended by sense; the soul by imagination. Much respect!
Freud, Adler, Jung and their students would argue the presence of sense in hallucinations and dreams. Merleau-Ponty would reject the mind-body duality. He said precisely, "Je suis mon corps" [I am my body]. This type of monism is very common nowadays in Western philosophy, although I will not vouch for its truth. However, I respect your dualism, which generated your conception of imagination. I am trying to situate the concept of imagination in the context of contemporary science and philosophy (without forgetting literature).
Dear Professor Marwan M. Obeidat,
Imagination is a perception of reality hence there is a probability that imagination and reality may reconcile.
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