Every child in America has been told since their first day of kindergarten to “let their imagination run wild”. It has been engraved into our minds that we should dream our wildest dreams and never limit the great power that the mind has to imagine. When you think of imagination, immediately you may think of unicorns, rainbows, and other fantasies that do not have any real physical realities. In Season 3, Episode 4b of the popular children’s cartoon SpongeBob Squarepants, the main character SpongeBob gives his own philosophy on imagination. He receives a cardboard box in the mail, and turns it into a “box of imagination”, in which he and his companion, Patrick Star, have different adventures inside the box, such as climbing a mountain, so realistic
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Aristotle mentions imagination first in line 427b14-16 of De anima, stating, “For imagination is different from either perceiving or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation, or judgment without it”. While imagination is its own type of motion for Aristotle, distinct from perceiving and thinking, it occurs with sense-perception, explaining that “Imagination will be a motion taking place as a result of sense-perception in act” (428b30). For Aristotle, images are a result of the senses, therefore the images that our minds conjure up derive themselves from previous perceptions. Images occur before us in ways of memories, dreams, or thoughts (428aa1-2). The importance relationship between perception and imagination is made clear by this …show more content…
First, sensing gets closer than mental images can to existing things because while the mind can imagine things that are not physically present, it can only perceive things which are actually in front of the body. Human senses, according to Aristotle, are qualities in the physical world that humans are sensitive too. According to this definition, there is a special intimacy between sensing and the surrounding physical world that makes perception an activity which extends beyond the senses. For example, we can perceive an apple in front of us through our senses—we can smell its odor and see the red color in it that appears to us. But, we can also touch it and even taste it; we can create an experience with. Humans cannot have these interactions with these objects unless they are sensing them in reality. This same experience of cannot occur in the mind, only close copies of it can. Sometimes these mental copies are misconstrued, another way that our imagination is limited. According to Aristotle, while our senses are true, our imaginations can be very false (428a5-16). On line 428a11, he argues, “Next, perceptions are always true, while imaginings are for the most part false”. Perception then, gets the human mind closer to the physical world, because while sometimes the mind
Aristotle mentions imagination first in line 427b14-16 of De anima, stating, “For imagination is different from either perceiving or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation, or judgment without it”. While imagination is its own type of motion for Aristotle, distinct from perceiving and thinking, it occurs with sense-perception, explaining that “Imagination will be a motion taking place as a result of sense-perception in act” (428b30). For Aristotle, images are a result of the senses, therefore the images that our minds conjure up derive themselves from previous perceptions. Images occur before us in ways of memories, dreams, or thoughts (428aa1-2). The importance relationship between perception and imagination is made clear by this …show more content…
First, sensing gets closer than mental images can to existing things because while the mind can imagine things that are not physically present, it can only perceive things which are actually in front of the body. Human senses, according to Aristotle, are qualities in the physical world that humans are sensitive too. According to this definition, there is a special intimacy between sensing and the surrounding physical world that makes perception an activity which extends beyond the senses. For example, we can perceive an apple in front of us through our senses—we can smell its odor and see the red color in it that appears to us. But, we can also touch it and even taste it; we can create an experience with. Humans cannot have these interactions with these objects unless they are sensing them in reality. This same experience of cannot occur in the mind, only close copies of it can. Sometimes these mental copies are misconstrued, another way that our imagination is limited. According to Aristotle, while our senses are true, our imaginations can be very false (428a5-16). On line 428a11, he argues, “Next, perceptions are always true, while imaginings are for the most part false”. Perception then, gets the human mind closer to the physical world, because while sometimes the mind