ABSTRACT
I begin with four basic claims about imagination that enjoy near universal agreement and that help us to situate imagination within our cognitive architecture. Interestingly, however, even these claims proceed largely by distinguishing imagination from other aspects of our mental life rather than by giving us a positive characterization of it. As we will see, there is considerably more consensus on the issue of what imagination is not than there is on the issue of what imagination is. First, almost everyone agrees that
1 Not every use of the word “imagine” or its cognates in ordinary language corresponds to an exercise of imagination.
