Dan and Gwen Taylor Lecture: Three puzzles about the imagination
The imagination is a very familiar mental faculty. After all, we use it every day. For example we use it 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.
Associate Professor Jorge (Jordi) Fernandez from Adelaide University will put forward a view that 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.
Date: Thursday 1st October 2026.
Time: 5.30 to 7pm.
Location: Online via livestream.
Cost: FREE.
Find out more about this public philosophy lecture on the human imagination, including how to access the livestream.