Sorry, I am late getting round to replying to you because I started at the bottom of replies. — Jack Cummins
However, your question is important. It does seem that materialism and realism have become fashionable. This is connected to the rise of science as at the centre of philosophy, with philosophy almost being seen as an appendix.
The rise of materialim may also be related to popular philosophy, especially thinkers like Daniel Dennett and his notion of consciousness as an illusion. But, fashions change and who knows what will come next? — Jack Cummins
The view that ideas 'a product of the mind' is open to question, as it is hard to where they come from...
..themes exist as universal constructs, possibly as independent ideas in themselves, — Jack Cummins
The author of the paper you linked to writes
…justified belief aims at truth, not imaginative capacity, or understanding. If we focus too much on having justified beliefs, it is harder for us to suspend disbelief and try to inhabit views that we don’t believe.
Thinking of metaphysics this way as split off from empirical truth perpetuates a dualism between ideas and reality, the physical and the metaphysical. The philosophers I follow don’t treat the metaphysical as ‘imaginative capacity’, but as the plumbing undergirding the intelligibility of a true belief. — Joshs
Metaphysics as Essentially Imaginative and Aiming at Understanding
Michaela Markham McSweeney
Abstract: I explore the view that metaphysics is essentially imaginative. I argue that
the central goal of metaphysics on this view is understanding, not truth. Metaphysicsas-essentially-imaginative provides novel answers to challenges to both the value and epistemic status of metaphysics.
[...]
There are other things that matter besides truth. Imagination is both intrinsically and instrumentally (in part because it can lead to understanding) valuable. Understanding is an important goal of certain kinds of inquiry. On the metaphysics-as-essentially-imaginative view, both imagination and understanding are central to what metaphysics is for. But justified belief aims at truth, not imaginative capacity, or understanding. If we focus too much on having justified beliefs, it is harder for us to suspend disbelief and try to inhabit views that we don’t believe. And there is value in doing so.
It is hard to know how ideas are constructed, in brains and beyond. — Jack Cummins
There is inner and outer aspects of experience and the interface between this is important. — Jack Cummins
'Metaphysical Imagination' - what do you think it is? How have you used it?
In the meantime, I found this: https://philarchive.org/archive/MCSMAE — Amity
“Landscape and the Metaphysical Imagination”
Hepburn, Ronald W. | from Multimedia Library Collection: Environmental Values (journal)
Hepburn, Ronald W. “Landscape and the Metaphysical Imagination.” Environmental Values 5, no. 3 (1996): 191–204. doi:10.3197/096327196776679320.
Aesthetic appreciation of landscape is by no means limited to the sensuous enjoyment of sights and sounds. It very often has a reflective, cognitive element as well. This sometimes incorporates scientific knowledge, e.g.,geological or ecological; but it can also manifest what this article will call “metaphysical imagination,” which sees or seems to see in a landscape some indication, some disclosure of how the world ultimately is. The article explores and critically appraises this concept of metaphysical imagination, and some of the roles it can play in our aesthetic encounters. (Source: The White Horse Press) — Environment and Society - Landscape and the Metaphysical Imagination
Ronnie worked alongside Donald MacKinnon and Antony Flew, both serving as important, early mentors. Other thinkers he often turned to included Kant, Marcel, and Otto. This dynamic set of influences shaped a philosophical approach which insisted upon a dialectic between perception and theory, phenomenology and analytic method, where each would be at hand to question and sometimes undermine the other.
Ronnie was wary of fixed positions, and often preferred a critical metaphysical outlook which sometimes put him at odds with other philosophers. In his exploration of the links and boundaries between the aesthetic, moral and religious, his attention was drawn to wonder, the contemplative stance, imagination, the sublime, freedom, respect for nature, and the sacred. Ronnie brought this distinctive approach together with autobiography, narrative and the shaping of the ethical life to challenge moral philosophy’s preoccupation with rules and principles in his paper ‘Vision and Choice in Morality’, his contribution to an Aristotelian Society-Mind Association symposium with Iris Murdoch in 1956. — British Aesthetics - Ronald W. Hepburn
That really resonated with a lot of my thinking. — wonderer1
I am not sure that using the term 'thing' introduces any further clarity than the word 'reality'. When you say that the topic is verbal, I would argue that a lot of it comes down to language and its limits, as Wittgenstein suggested as constituting the 'limits of one's world'. — Jack Cummins
Also, I am aware that substance dualism is far less dualistic, but even that involves interpretation. That is why I go back to the initial issue, asked by Berkley, as to whether ideas are mind-dependent. I am also aware of the relevance of the perspective of phenomenology. But, even that doesn't explain consciousness itself and whether that is the source of both what is termed as mind and matter in the dualistic split of human thinking. — Jack Cummins
Care to expand? Any examples of how metaphysical imagination is used? — Amity
The term 'surreal' in my updated title is a way of seeing ideas and symbols as being a potential shift from metaphysics as absolutes, to the scope of a tentative notion of the metaphysical imagination. — Jack Cummins
What "debate"? You haven't even stated the proposition in contention we're supposed to either be for (thesis) or against (antithesis). Please clarify ...The thread was intended to explore the debate over idealism, but with reference to semantics. — Jack Cummins
Dreamt by whom/what – isn't the dreamer more than a "dream" – or is "life just a dream" within a dream within a dream ... all the way down? And, besides, what existential-pragmatic-ethical difference does it make, Jack, if metaphysically (according to some ancient tradition) "all is maya"?The idea of the surreal was meant to point back to the idea of life as a dream. This was an obscure reference to the view of life as a dream, captured in the Hindu concept 'maya'.
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