ABSTRACT
If I ask you to imagine the sun setting over the sea, you will easily comply; and there is nothing creative about this familiar image. But while imagination and creative behavior come apart, it is nonetheless true that some of our most creative minds are also some of our most imaginative minds. This chapter attempts to identify some of the central ways that they relate by asking what roles imagination plausibly plays in human creativity. For purposes of this discussion, a liberal characterization of the concept of imagination can
be assumed. Imagination is typically, though not always, a voluntary mental activity that involves mental representation of subjectively nonpresent objects and events. It often involves an image, sensory in character, but perhaps it need not. That is, perhaps there is imageless propositional imagination.
