Imagination in the Generation of Pictures and Interpersonal Scenarios

Abstract In Imagination, Jim Davies explains that most humans have mental imagery: an ability to make pictures in the mind without immediate perceptual input-as we do when we dream. Davies writes programs that enable computers to do something similar. Given a few words of description, a computer can generate pictures with several objects arranged in appropriate ways. Jonathan Gilmore’s Apt Imaginings is about whether engagement in works of fiction is continuous or discontinuous with how we deal with people and objects in everyday life. He argues for discontinuity. In constructing a critical framework within which to evaluate these two books, I use Kenneth Craik’s theory of mental models. Craik’s theory enables us to understand how we humans have evolved to imagine possible futures, to plan and to act in relation to them, and also to imagine what might be going on in other people’s minds.