Abstract
This paper continues to explore the relationship between the imagination and learning. It has been claimed by Maxine Greene, amongst others, that imagination is the most important of the cognitive capacities for learning; the reason being that ‘it permits us to give credence to alternative realities’. However little work has been done on what constitutes this capacity for the imagination. This paper draws on Husserl and Wittgenstein to frame a model of imagination that derives from the perspective of the ‘transcendental phenomenology’ of Husserl. The claim is made that by learning to be in the world in certain ways we must be able to construct imagined worlds with their own logics and presentations. This claim is supported by a discussion of the parameters required for owning and accepting to the self sensory and cognitive perceptions and beliefs. Imagination is also a necessary condition for the understanding of empathy; of grasping what it is like be another person. In this sense imagination can be better grasped through the category of ontology rather than epistemology. It can also, on the basis of ontology, be argued that understanding and acknowledging other cultures is a matter of being, imaginatively, in the other world. Some implications for approaches to teaching and learning are outlined.
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Notes
I am aware that this is not a standard reading of Wittgenstein but it is one that to me provides a grounded coherence to his thinking.
See for instance Zettle paras 638–634.
Husserl is not fully consistent in the use of the terms ‘pure phenomenology’ and ‘transcendental phenomenology’. He also refers to basic system as one of ‘pure transcendental phenomenology’. This is not the result of confusion on his part, it is rather both a reflection of the evolution of his thought and of the novelty and complexity of the ideas themselves.
The term ‘transcendental’ can be somewhat misleading. In this case as it refers to the conditions for experience or being in the world rather than to some supernatural state. For the purposes of the discussion that follows the term refers to the level of experience that transcends the immediate experience and provide the conditions for experience and ultimately being.
A full account would go well beyond the limits of this discussion but such a discussion can be found in Ideas Chapter 8.
References
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Wittgenstein, L. (1992). Last writings on the philosophy of psychology, Vol 2, trans C. g. Luckhardt & A. E. Maximilian Aue, Oxford: Blackwell.
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Heath, G. Exploring the Imagination to Establish Frameworks for Learning. Stud Philos Educ 27, 115–123 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9094-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9094-7