After the behavioralist theory exemplified a conceptualization of imagination devoid of
mental imagery, scientific models of imagining built their foundation on this claim. Amy Kind
finds this understanding to not only be counterintuitive but also insufficient in establishing the
basic qualities of imagining. In response, in her paper, Putting the Image Back in Imagination,
Amy Kind posits her imagery model which states that mental images are essential to imagining.
In the early stages of her paper Kind asserts how common linguistical practice has
bundled the experience of imagining with supposition; however, supposition does not fulfill the
three features of imagination: directedness, activity, and phenomenology. While directedness
accounts for the representation of an external perception in the mind and activity refers to the
agency exemplified by the formulation of images by a practitioner of imagining, the
phenomenological aspect is best described through its differentiation from belief or supposition.
Although these phenomena have directedness and activity, since they are not necessarily tied to
perceptual experience, unlike imagining, there is a clear misunderstanding in the common notion
of imagining as supposition due to its distinct phenomenological character. Where imageless
accounts of imagination contradict at least one of the basic traits, Kind claims that her imagery
model can fulfill all these prerequisites without any additional reliance on further distinctions of
mental or physical faculties.
Kind makes a point to highlight how the active nature of imagination does not discredit
the automatic or reflexive modes imagining can take. This not only calls into question her idea of
active imagining, but also spurs the question of why perception is not labeled as the same type of
agent driven practice. Kind claims that imagination is never something that merely happens to an
agent, such as in the case of perception, due to the dynamic image formation whether practiced
willfully or not. Because perception passively registers sensory stimuli no matter the degree of
attention or focus rather than constructing these internal representations, it lacks this necessary
active engagement beyond surface level motor functions (Kind 2001, 91-92).
In a similar vein, a common objection to Kind’s imagery model is the assertion that
imagining is a form of pretending and therefore not reliant on mental representations (Kind 2001,
97). Although there are notable similarities between imagining and pretending, such as mutual
occurrence and detachment from actuality, there a clear distinction in their experiential qualities
since an act of pretending lacks any phenomenological character to begin with (Kind 2001, 97).
For example, while there is no way to experience a rectangular circle and therefore no ability to
represent the shape in the imagination, it is possible to pretend a circle is rectangular without any
external validation or congruence. This exemplifies the inescapable shortcomings when
equivocating pretending and imagining.
There is a similar conflict when an opponent of the imagery model rejects Kind’s claim
on the grounds of its apparent complicity with the individuate claim. The individuate claim
asserts that a particular representational imagery determines what type of exercise imagining is
practiced; however, Kind rejects the interrelated nature of these two essentialist understandings.
In her rebuke, Kind does limit the exercise of imagining to a certain corresponding
representation but rather shows how a single mental image can account for a multitude of
specific imaginings (Kind 2001, 101-102).
Because no reductive account of imagination offers a satisfactory fulfillment of
directedness, activity, and phenomenology and no other counter-tactic beyond a reductive
approach has been articulated, Kind’s imagery model and the essentialist claim are the only
conceptualization of imagination that do not invalidate the intuitive judgments we have made
about our own faculties.
