Thomas (2006) argues that the concepts of consciousness and imagination are much more closely connected with one another than is commonly realized; that, indeed, before the 17th century, imagination occupied a very large part of the conceptual space since taken over by consciousness.
Husserl is vulnerable to the charge that he characterizes retention primarily in terms of how it is different from other modes of consciousness – recollection, imagination, and so forth – and there is some truth in this: we do not get a truly informative account of how retention manages to present in the past in a perceptual way.
On this view, "sensibility provides the differentials to a determined consciousness; the imagination produces from these [differentials] finite (determinate) objects of intuition; the understanding produces from the relations of these different differentials, which are its objects, the relation from which arise sensible objects".
I don't know if I'll see this in my lifetime, but it would be very nice if we could understand more about consciousness and imagination and the brain.
He contends that in the Zombie argument, the "exact physical duplicate" is imagined in one way, whereas the "lacking consciousness" is imagined in another: the conceiving that goes on with respect to the relevant physical features involves perceptual imagination, whereas the conceiving that goes on with respect to the relevant phenomenal features involves sympathetic imagination.
And the truth is that with the weapons of mass destruction that are now easily available, how governments shape the consciousness, mentality and imagination of their young people is no longer a private matter.
People who use psychedelic drugs often describe "expanded consciousness", including vivid imagination and dream-like states.
Bosch captures perhaps more than any other artist the mutable world, life driven relentlessly by sex and death, and consciousness caught between imagination and the brutish facts of the flesh.
