ABSTRACT
All healthy human beings are, from an early age onwards, able to imagine and to remember things. Imaginings and memories occur regularly and frequently, and they play important roles in our daily lives. Imaginings and memories also seem closely related to each other. Indeed, Hobbes claims that “imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations has diverse names” (Hobbes 1991, 16). This seems a fairly radical position, and is not a position that will be defended here. However, the fact that Hobbes is prepared to make such a radical claim indicates that at the very least, there must be some strong and important similarities and links between imagination and memory. This chapter will explore relevant similarities and links which obtain between the two
phenomena, and it will also discuss some important differences between the two. In considering those differences and similarities, we will encounter both metaphysical questions (i.e., questions related to the nature of imagination and memory) as well as epistemological questions (i.e., questions about how a subject might be able to know whether she is imagining or remembering, that is, how she might be able to tell imaginations and memories apart). Consideration of relevant differences and similarities will give us reason to resist Hobbes’ claim that imagination and memory “are but one thing,” but having considered the various similarities and links which do obtain between memory and imagination we should, by the end of the present chapter, also be in a position better to understand why Hobbes might have been tempted to make his overly radical claim.1
