describe a place that exists only in your imagination essay

A PLACE THAT ONLY EXISTS IN MY IMAGINATION

Dated: Tuesday, March 19, 2019

By: Waniza Shakeel

There are many dreams that I have to achieve; there are many places I want to visit. There are many things that I have imagined and want to do. I want to visit the depths of the sea and view the rare the marine life.

All this because I love to play with water. I love the colors of the fish, the different types and sizes and designs of fish. I love the peace that is in the water. The darkness which transports me to another world and I feel comfortable and feel restless. The brotherhood between them attracts me towards it. I feel amazing when the sun rays try to open the water and insert in the water. I love to explore new and different species.

The sailboats, ships and submarine in the water. I love to discover and explore the diamonds and treasure. I want to collect pearls in the shells. Sea has the depth as I imagined and my imagination in according to the depths of the sea. I imagined that there are stairs that start from the depth of the sea till the moon.

I want a staircase leading to the moon. So if I’m bored and tired, I can visit the moon and enjoy, can fly to the moon and when I rest I will return to the water.

I know this cannot happen in real life but maybe I will get a chance to turn my imagination into reality. I will love to go there and the words are not enough to describe my depths of my imagination.

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50 Descriptive Essay Topics

Make your reader see, smell, hear and feel with these inspirational descriptive essay topics ! We’ve collected 50 descriptive essay topics to sprout some flowery language. Our descriptive essay topics are designed to spark creative thinking and can be modified for students in elementary, middle and high school. They are grouped by topic for easy student and teacher reference. Feel free to print the entire list for plenty of inspiration for your next descriptive essay assignment!

Descriptive Essay Topics: Place

Describe your favorite place.
Describe your ideal bedroom.
Describe the house in which you grew up.
Describe what the first house on the moon would look like.
Describe some of your favorite places in your hometown.
Describe a peaceful place that you’ve visited.
Describe a place that exists only in your imagination.
Describe a friend’s or family member’s house where you enjoy spending time.
Describe your perfect fantasy vacation destination.
Describe your favorite store.
Describe your favorite teacher’s classroom.
Describe a museum that you’ve visited recently.
Describe a place you have dreamed about that doesn’t exist in real life.
Describe a place where your pet likes spending time.
Describe an outdoor place that you know well.

Descriptive Essay Topics: People

Describe your favorite person.
Describe each of your family members.
Describe a famous person that you would like to meet.
Describe one of your friends.
Describe one aspect of someone that you like (for example: laugh, style of dress, words that the person likes to use, etc.)
Describe yourself to someone who has never met you.
Describe the average human to an alien who has never before seen a person.
Describe your pet.
Look at some old family photos and describe an older family member as he or she was when at your age.
Describe someone whom you miss.

Descriptive Essay Topics: Objects

Describe an object that is special to you.
Give a tour of one room in your house by describing the most important objects in that room.
Describe one of your favorite outfits.
Describe your favorite toy as a child.
Describe how you get around (for example: a bicycle, skateboard, sneakers, your parents’ car, the school bus).
Describe your favorite piece of furniture where you like to spend time and relax.
Describe something that you would bury in a time capsule to tell people about what life is like today.
Describe an object that has been in your family for a long time.
Choose a piece of food to eat; then, write a description of it that includes the way it looks, smells and tastes.
Describe a smartphone to a time traveler from the 1900s.

Descriptive Essay Topics: Memories

Describe your oldest memory.
Describe your best summer vacation.
Describe a memorable concert you attended.
Describe a memorable trip you took.
Describe a special time that you and your family had together.
Describe the first time you met one of your friends.
Describe a time you met someone famous.
Describe one of your happiest memories.
Describe one of your saddest memories.
Describe a time that you felt scared.
Describe a time that you felt excited.
Describe a time that something totally unexpected happened.
Describe a memory of someone whom you miss.
Describe one of your most memorable first days of school.
Describe one of your most embarrassing moments.

Looking for more essay topics? Compare and Contrast Essay Topics Cause and Effect Essay Topics Narrative Essay Topics Persuasive Essay and Speech Topics

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How to write a descriptive essay.

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Think of the last time you were completely captivated by a good story. What made it so enthralling? What caused it to take your attention from everything else? Most likely, it was the author’s use of descriptive language that helped you feel like you were actually a part of the story. You could probably imagine what it would have looked or felt like to be in each place the book described. Descriptive essays do much the same thing. They’re essays meant to engage the readers to paint a descriptive picture of the words on paper.

Let's say you are assigned to write a descriptive essay about a place, and you’re wondering where to begin. How do you make sure your essay is captivating, and passes with flying colors? In this blog, we’ll show you exactly how to write an all-star descriptive essay about a place, by covering the steps involved in writing, and the elements of how to write a great descriptive essay.

First, we will review the purpose of descriptive essays, then discuss why they are important, and we will end by sharing pro writing tips to help find the right words.

What are descriptive essays?

The goal of a descriptive essay is to be captivating, including sensory-oriented details of a person, place, experience, or object. Include this in your essay and the reader's imagination will go wherever is being described. These essays accomplish this by using vivid language, specific adjectives, and clear explanations so that the reader can personally relate. Descriptive essays are written so that readers can imagine and understand the feelings, sensations, visualizations, and sounds the author is describing.

Related how-to guide— How to write a narrative essay .

Why are descriptive essays important?

A detailed description helps readers empathize with your experience and, as an author, you can communicate this meaning. This is important because much of our academic and professional success depends on our ability to clearly, and specifically, communicate our experiences to others. We may not be writing a descriptive essay each time we communicate our experiences, but writing descriptive essays definitely strengthen our ability to convey specific details in compelling ways.

How to Use the Five Senses in an Essay | Ultius

For example, writing a descriptive essay about a place can strengthen your ability to communicate your work expertise to your next potential employer; or to write your life experiences in a compelling way in your next scholarship essay (learn how to write a scholarship essay ).

Perhaps you’d like to write your own book some day or craft your own advertising campaigns using your business degree—both of which are more successful when the reader can empathize with your writing. You’ll use descriptive language to succeed at both!

Choosing a descriptive essay topic

Descriptive essays can be written about many topics. One of the most common assignments you may receive is to write a descriptive essay about a place. Here are a few descriptive writing example topics you might choose:

Place / Topic	Purpose
Favorite vacation spot	To allow readers to understand your personal experiences
The house you grew up in	To help readers gain a background understanding of who you are and what growing up was like for you
Your place of work	Helping readers understand your daily life
Riding a New York subway	Allowing someone who has never experienced this to understand what it feels like
Driving through a snowstorm	To enlighten readers to the dangers felt during this experience

Who writes descriptive essays?

Being able to write well is a skill for any career you're pursuing whether it be business, arts, marketing, education, or even medicine!

Students in these areas will be assigned to write a descriptive essay at some point during their high school or undergraduate careers:

Language arts students
Literature and cultural studies students
Social studies students
Psychology students

Finding the right words for an engaging essay can be challenging. Plus, many students are pressed for time, juggling work, family, and extracurricular activities on top of trying to complete assignments. If you can identify, this blog will help get you started.

When your future career depends on it, you want to feel confident and proud of your work instead of overwhelmed by it. Practicing smart time management and finding the writing help you need, when you need it, is important.

Elements of a great descriptive essay

Before we dive into how to write a descriptive essay, let’s review some key elements that will help you paint a picture in writing:

Clear organization

Effective descriptive essays are clearly organized. In other words, the reader is able to easily understand why she or he is reading the essay, the place the essay will describe, and what the purpose of the description is. This is accomplished by organizing the essay into and introduction, body and conclusion.

Introduction: A captivating hook

The opening of your essay is one of the most important parts because it interests readers. Start with a captivating introductory paragraph. One way to do this is by using anecdotes to grab readers’ attention. Anecdotes are short stories that can be used literally or metaphorically to help readers relate to what you’re going to write about.

For example, an anecdote that opens an essay with descriptive words about what it’s like to be working in the middle of busy production factory might read:

“Imagine every appliance in your house is turned on—your vacuum cleaner, your blender, your fans—and imagine on top of all that, you hear airplanes and helicopters flying overhead and cars buzzing by outside. Meanwhile, you’re trying to focus on your tasks…”

This type of anecdote accomplishes two key things: First, it engages the reader and helps them personally relate to your essay by asking them to imagine. Second, it immediately clarifies the type of place you’re going to write about.

Build your essay with strong imagery. Capture the time, date, weather, and mood of the place.

The introduction paragraph should end by explaining the place the rest of the essay is going to describe and why. This includes any key setting logistics like time, specific location, and who’s involved.

Body: Full of specifics and adjectives

Anecdotes are also helpful in the body paragraphs of a descriptive essay, for the same reasons noted above. The body of a great descriptive essay about a place should be packed full of vivid, sensory language. During the body of a descriptive essay, the reader gains a clear image and understanding of the place being described, as if he or she were actually there. To accomplish this, the body paragraphs use descriptive adjectives and colorful phrases such as, “The chaotic, clashing noise was deafening,” or, “The scent of freshly fallen rain cleansed the sunlit air, and I could see the horizon for miles.”

Use one or two strong adjectives to convey descriptions in your sentences. This creates a flow throughout the entire essay. Be sure to note, not every sentence requires an adjective or adverb.

If you’re having trouble with finding adjectives and adverbs, use strong action verbs instead.

Conclusion: Reminding readers of the meaning

Just as the introduction of a descriptive essay previews what place will be written about and why, the conclusion reminds readers of what was just described and why it’s important. The key is to not sound redundant. For instance, while the introductory paragraph hooks readers and then tells them what they can expect to read, the conclusion summarizes what was written and leaves readers with thought-provoking ideas to consider, helping them to understand how the essay may relate to their lives, or why it’s important to the reader.

Revisiting the production factory introduction example, the same essay’s conclusion may summarize with a statement highlighting the essay’s takeaways, such as, “The chaos and noise of the factory made it difficult to focus, but after working there for five years, I learned how to overcome that challenge. Now I can focus in even the most noisy of places.”

Steps to writing a great descriptive essay

1) choose a topic.

Depending on the purpose of your descriptive essay assignment, you may have varying flexibility in terms of what place you can choose to write about. Nonetheless, try to choose a topic that vividly stands out in your memory. The more you can remember about a place and how it felt, the better your descriptive paper is likely to be. For example, if you’re assignment asks you to write about a place you’ve traveled to, what destination comes to mind first? Perhaps it’s a foreign country. Or, if you haven’t traveled much, it could even be a different town.

2) Observe the details

If you’re writing about a place you’re currently at or can easily visit, spend time observing the details. Watch what the scenery looks like, including colors and objects. What sounds do you hear? What’s the temperature? What scents do you notice? How do you feel being there? All these questions will help guide your descriptive flow writing process (step six).

If you’re writing about a place you visited in the past, ask yourself the same questions. Perhaps look at old photos to jog your memory. Finally, if you’re asked to describe a place you’ve never been, use your imagination to answer similar questions. The more time you take to list details about what your place feels like, the easier the next steps will be.

3) Understand why your place is important

Ask yourself why you think it is important to share this with your readers. Having a clear understanding of your essays’ importance will not only help you write your introduction and conclusion, but it will also help you stay focused on describing the details that matter most.

4) Outline and organize your writing

Now it’s time to begin the actual descriptive writing process by organizing your ideas into an outline . Your outline doesn’t have to be formal; just a simple numbered list of points to include in your introduction, body and conclusion will suffice. This will guide your writing process and keep you focused.

5) Start with the introduction

Remember step number one and three, “your topic ” and “why your place is important?” Those are the two main highlights you’ll want to make clear in your introductory paragraph. When writing your introduction, be sure it explains what you’re about to describe and why you’re going to write about it.

6) Write the body in free-flow style

The body paragraph of your essay can sometimes be the most difficult part, depending on length, a great way to start is by free-flow writing. This means that you simply start writing your detailed description of the place you’re writing about, without editing or analyzing as you write. This often helps to overcome writer’s block while making sure that all the critical details you jotted down in step two, “observe the details,” get down on paper and into the body of your essay. You’ll be able to go back later and edit the body of your paper for organization, flow and grammar. As long as you start your free-flow within the bullet points of the outline you created, the process will be relatively simple and easy.

7) Revise the body of your essay

Now it’s time to go back and be sure all the free-flow writing you just did is clear, makes sense and follows your original outline. You may need to re-arrange a few sentences or even paragraphs. This is also a great time to check for spelling and grammar errors.

Next, read the body paragraph of your essay and pretend you’re someone else reading it for the first time. How does it sound? Does it make sense and flow? If not, ask yourself what would make your descriptions more understandable for the reader. Finally, remember that not every sentence of your descriptive essay needs to sound fancy, artistic, or be long. Vary your sentence length, breaking up long sentences with short sentences to make reading easier. Use exciting language, but don’t over-do it or adjectives will lose their power.

8) Finish your essay strong

Writing a strong conclusion is key to leaving a lasting impression with your readers. A great way to conclude your descriptive essay about a place is to reiterate, in a new way, how the place you’re describing impacted you and why you believe it’s important. You can also describe what you hope readers may learn from your essay.

9) Proofread your work

You can never re-read your essay too many times. Proofread your work at least twice for spelling and grammar errors. It’s often helpful to read your writing out loud, since that slows the reading process and helps us catch errors we may otherwise overlook.

Steps for writing a narrative essay | Ultius

Also, don’t be afraid to ask a friend to proof your work. If you’re still stuck or need help, the writing center has tons of resources just for you like expert advice, essay examples, and more.

Final words of wisdom

1) Be specific	The more specific you are, the more readers will be able to relate to your descriptions. For example, “The heat outside made me feel sluggish and exhausted” is a more effective description than, “It was so hot outside.”
2) Write first, edit later	Break writer’s block by writing unedited. You can always revisit your work later, as many times as you need.
3) Remember your adjectives	Descriptions would be lifeless without adjectives! What words can you use to make the place you’re describing come to life?!
4) Include the 5 senses	How does the place you’re describing feel, smell, look, taste and sound?
5) Read from an outsider’s perspective	Pretend you’re your instructor or friend, reading your essay. Does it flow and make sense?
6) Ask for help when you need it	Juggling work, family and other non-school obligations shouldn’t keep you from succeeding academically. Ultius is here to help by providing you with the exact resources you need to save time and put your best foot forward.

Like what you read? Check out our guide on how to write a persuasive essay .

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How to describe an imaginary place or strange land

by Janet | Jul 21, 2011 | Teaching Homeschool Writing

Stretch those creative-writing muscles! Invite children to think up and describe an imaginary place.

Summer is a season of travel, a time of sandy beaches, hypnotic sunshine, stamped tickets, and the excited laughter of children visiting out-of-the-ordinary places.

Summer vacations—and the summer months—fill our minds with those moments of wonder and imagination so natural to childhood and keep us connected to our own children.

But sometimes the household budget doesn’t stretch quite far enough for exotic adventures.

What to do?

Here’s how!

Start with a Map

Gather your family around the kitchen table with paper, pencils, pens, and an atlas. Better yet, pull out a road map of your state. As these maps are more detailed for the traveler, interstate road maps usually have the richer place names.
Study some maps, reading place names aloud. Listen for those syllables and sounds that tickle and tempt your ear, hinting at the exotic. Where I live, nearby towns, rivers, and ancient mountain ranges honor the first Americans who dwelled here. Names like “Uwharrie,” “Oconeechi,” “Saponi,” “Lumbee,” “Saxapahaw,” and “Eno” dot the landscape and tease my heart and mind.
Make a list of place names you like.
Begin to imagine an island or a country or a planet where you’d like to visit.

Set Your Imagination Loose

It’s time to describe an imaginary place! Begin to paint this strange land with colorful, descriptive words and phrases.

What color is the sky? Are there cliffs, rivers, canyons, or mountains? Name the landforms.

Are there trees or flowering plants? What do they look like? Describe and name the flowers.

Place yourself there. What does the ground feel like under your feet? Stony? Sandy? Spongy?

What kind of person —or wonderful being—could you allow yourself to be there?

Create Your World

As ideas shape themselves around your kitchen table, have your children create colorful maps and illustrated “travel guides” of their visionary worlds.

Don’t forget rich descriptions , helping your kids write and edit for an imaginary audience of would-be adventurers or vacationers. This is the magic of writing! In the creative power of words, our children are free to journey through the realms of their own sacred and unique imaginations.

As adults, what a wonderful gift we can give our kids: a love of adventure enhanced with the tools of creative writing .

Enjoy your magical travels this summer!

describe a place that exists only in your imagination essay

For over two decades, Janet Wagner taught elementary and middle school in a variety of settings. She also had the honor of helping homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. She enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students, and training dogs. You can find her at Creative Writing Ideas and Activities .

All photos from Flickr , courtesy of Creative Commons .

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Writing a Descriptive Essay About A Place - Guide With Examples

Understanding Descriptive Essays

A descriptive essay is a type of writing that aims to describe and portray an object, person, or place. The essay typically includes sensory details to help the reader imagine its contents more vividly. Descriptive essays can be written about a person , place, or other themes like nature , autumn , food , or even yourself .

A descriptive essay about a place should provide enough details for the reader to build a mental image of it. To do this, you need to include vivid descriptions and relevant information that could paint a picture in their minds.

Let's read some examples to see what a good descriptive essay looks like.

Examples of Descriptive Essay About Any Place

Here are some descriptive writing about a place examples:

Example of a Descriptive Essay About a Place

Descriptive Essay About a Place You Visited

Descriptive Essay About a Place Called Home

Descriptive Essay About a Place You Loved as a Child

Descriptive Essay About a Place of Interest I Visited

Descriptive Essay About a Favorite Place

Do you need more sample essays? Check out more descriptive essay examples t o get inspired.

Tips for Writing an Excellent Descriptive Essay About A Place

Now that you've read some examples of descriptive essays about places, it's time to learn how to write one yourself. Here are some tips on writing a great essay:

Choose The Right Topic

The topic of your essay should be something that you have a strong connection to or feeling about. It could be a place you've visited recently or a place from your childhood. Moreover, make sure that it's something that you can write about in enough detail to make your essay interesting.

Check out this blog with 100+ descriptive essay topics to get your creative juices flowing.

Gather Information

Gather as much information as possible about the topic of your essay. This will help you craft vivid descriptions and portray an accurate picture for your readers. Gather your observations, research online, and talk to people who have visited the place you're writing about.

Make sure to research the topic thoroughly so you can provide accurate and detailed descriptions. Read up as much as you can about the history of the place, and any interesting facts or stories about it.

Structure Your Essay

Outline your descriptive essay before beginning to write so all points flow logically from one to another throughout the entire piece.

Make sure to include a strong introduction and conclusion, as well as several body paragraphs that help support your main points.

Include Sensory Details

Use sensory language by including details such as sights, smells, tastes, sounds, etc. This helps to engage readers and transport them into the setting of your essay.

When writing a descriptive essay, make sure to include vivid descriptions that involve all five senses. This will help create a more engaging and immersive experience for your readers.

Use Vivid Language

Make sure to use strong and powerful words when describing the place you're writing about. Use metaphors and similes to bring your descriptions to life and make them more interesting for readers.

Proofread Your Essay

Proofreading is an important step in any writing process, especially when it comes to descriptive essays. Make sure to check for any typos or spelling errors that may have slipped through in your writing.

You also need to make sure that the flow of your essay is logical and coherent. Check if you've used a consistent point of view throughout, and make sure that all ideas are well-supported with evidence.

Follow these tips and examples, and you'll be well on your way to writing a great descriptive essay.

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Get in touch with us to hire our descriptive essay writing service now.

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How to Write a Descriptive Essay about a Place

If you’re not sure what exactly a descriptive essay is and how to write one, you’ve come to the right place. I’m Tutor Phil, and in this tutorial I’ll explain how a descriptive essay works and how to write it, step by step.

We’ll write one together, so you’ll have a great example of a descriptive essay.

What Is a Descriptive Essay?

A descriptive essay is a piece of writing in which the author describes a place, a person, an object, an animal, or a process. The purpose of a descriptive essay is to move the reader to some kind of a revelation, conclusion, or decision about the subject.

It is very important to note that a descriptive essay is not an argumentative essay. You’re not presenting an argument and doing whatever it takes to support it.

In a descriptive essay, your intention should be to describe the subject in such a way that the reader would create her own impression of it.

At the same time, your essay is not neutral because it is colored by your own perception or experience of the subject.

In other words, you are implying and suggesting, not blatantly pushing an opinion.

You want to let the reader see, hear, touch, smell, and taste the place you’re describing. And that experience should lead the reader to an appropriate impression or conclusion.

Writing a Descriptive Essay Is a 6-Step Process

Step 1. choose the subject.

Maybe your instructor has already chosen the subject for you. If not, choose a country, city, or a place within a city or a geographical location that you are familiar with.

Ideally, it is a place that you have been to and have a good memory of it. A descriptive essay about a place should not rely solely on research, in most cases.

The real value of your essay is that you know that place, and perhaps it has a special meaning for you or evokes feelings that no other place can evoke.

So, unless you have to write about a specific place where you have never been, choose a location that has a special place in your heart.

Sometimes, your subject can be a place with which you may have negative associations. But most likely, it is a beloved place that has left an indelible impression on your heart and mind.

Criteria for choosing the place

Ideally, this place should be dear to your heart
It is unique. It is unlike any other place you’ve ever been to, in at least one or two important ways
It has left a strong impression on you
Perhaps you learned something there
Perhaps something wonderful happened to you there, such as meeting your soulmate or discovering something about yourself
Ideally, it has special visual qualities that stand out in contrast to what your audience is probably used to. In other words, being visually striking is a huge plus.

I’ll give you an example. For me, one particular little spa town in Europe won me over when I first visited it many years ago. Its name is Carlsbad, or Karlovy Vary. The terms are interchangeable. One is of German origin, and the other is native Czech.

It is located in the western part of Czech Republic, not too far from the German border. It is serene, spectacular, and magical, and I’ll choose it as the subject for our sample descriptive essay.

By the way, Carlsbad, California was named after Karlovy Vary because of the similar mineral content of the underground waters found in the American cousin city.

Step 2. Pick an audience

I understand that you’re probably writing this essay to fulfill a requirement for your class. In which case, your audience is your teacher or professor.

But even if you’re writing for your instructor, you should still have a particular audience in mind because this will help you form ideas and keep your thoughts flowing.

Knowing your audience will inform your choices of what to include and what to exclude in your descriptive essay because your reader may care about some aspects of this place but not others.

Criteria for choosing an audience

Your ideal reader is someone who is most likely to be interested in this place
It is someone who is likely to enjoy reading your essay
Your ideal audience is also someone who will benefit from reading about this place and derive the most value from it

Let’s come back to our example of Karlovy Vary. As I already mentioned, it is a spa town, which means that its attractiveness lies in its therapeutic qualities.

I first visited this gem of a town back in 2004 as a result of a real academic and professional burnout. I believe I was still an undergraduate student finishing up my studies, and I also had a stressful job.

I lived in Brooklyn, which is a borough of New York City, and this metropolis is known for its stressful lifestyle.

New York has all the disadvantages of living in a large city, such as pollution and other stressors that can really suck the life energy out of its dwellers if they are not careful.

I lived in New York for 25 years, and I love this city. I don’t want to come across as totally negative about it.

But focusing on the negatives about my city in this case will help you see how I am choosing the audience for this essay we’ll be writing together in this tutorial.

You see, New York City is a direct opposite of Karlovy Vary in several critical ways.

Establishing a contrast helps define an audience

New York is noisy. Drivers here are notorious for incessant horn honking. And you can hear an ambulance or a police siren probably every 15 minutes or so.

Conversely, Karlovy Vary is super quiet. Such a crazy hustle and bustle doesn’t exist here, and drivers don’t have a reason to honk the horn all the time. It is also very rare to hear a police or an ambulance siren.

Air quality in New York is decent for a big city, but it is still relatively polluted . All the millions of cars and trucks produce way too much carbon dioxide. You can actually see the smog from some vantage points.

The air in Karlovy Vary is virtually pristine. The town is surrounded by hills, and car traffic is not allowed in the city center.

The landscape in New York is a bit monotonous and often fails to inspire. They don’t call this city “a concrete jungle” for nothing. The overall atmosphere is hardly conducive to a great mood or daily inspiration.

Conversely, Karlovy Vary offers aesthetically pleasing, relaxing, and inspiring architecture and landscape. It’s like entering a spa, only the spa is a whole town.

Now that we have this contrast, it is easy to see who might be interested in learning more about Karlovy Vary. Our ideal audience is someone who:

Lives in a big metropolis, such as NYC or another big city
Can relate to being excessively stressed out
Is aware of noise and air pollution
Would love an escape to relax and renew, even if only by reading an essay.

So, our essay becomes a sort of a virtual or a fantasy escape until an actual trip becomes possible.

Your audience might have different challenges, needs, and desires. It could be someone who:

Is nostalgic about their childhood and a place associated with it
Dreams about a perfect place to live and work
Plans a retirement location

Think of these factors when determining your audience. In the meantime, because we’ve already identified our ideal reader – a stressed out urban dweller – we can move on to the next step.

Step 3. Divide the subject into subtopics

No matter what kind of an essay you’re writing, you want to divide the main topic into subtopics. In other words, you want to create some kind of a structure that will consist of parts.

I use and teach my students to use the technique I call the Power of Three.

What this means is that instead of having just one big topic, such as one town, we can have three aspects of this town to discuss.

Incidentally, we already talked about three major differences between NYC and Karlovy Vary. These are noise levels, air quality, and landscape. So, perhaps we can use one or more of these aspects of a city as sections of our essay.

We must keep in mind that we’re not writing a comparative essay , although that’s a possibility, too.

We’re writing a descriptive essay. So, we need to find three aspects of the town that we can discuss one after another to put together a rich and detailed enough picture of this place.

Note that these three aspects correspond to the senses of hearing, smell, and sight.

Let’s make a preliminary list of such aspects of Karlovy Vary:

Quietness. Does this aspect present an interesting description opportunity? This will depend on our ability to turn it into an asset.
Air quality. This may be too specific. We may want to zoom out a little and discuss more than one natural asset of this city. Some of the others include water quality and the industries associated with it.
Landscape. This is the most conspicuous aspect of this city. The first thing you’re struck with is how beautiful this place really is. This one is definitely a winner.

If we go about writing about these three aspects of Karlovy Vary creatively, we will have three nice sections or paragraphs that will form the body of our essay.

Note that we’ll probably use more than one sensory perception, such as sight or smell, in each section. We’ll simply use one of three senses as a primary focus in each of our three sections.

It would make sense to begin the discussion of the city by describing it visually. So, this will be our primary focus in the first section.

Then, we can proceed to the sense of hearing. Why? Because our last section will be about air and water. And we should probably leave those for last because we can hear the water before we can taste it. That’s just the way it works in Karlovy Vary.

So, the primary sense perception in our second section will be hearing. And this section won’t be just about how quiet it is.

In fact, the real contrast between a big city and Karlovy Vary is the quality of the soundscape, not just the simple quietness, although it’s a part of it. So, we’ll focus on all the little sounds that make this place unique.

Finally, in the third section or paragraph, we’ll talk about the air and the water, which will correspond to the senses of smell and taste, primarily.

Again, we’ll be using any sense perceptions we feel necessary to make the reader’s experience as real as possible.

And now we have our place, we know our audience, and we have our three main ideas about this place that we’ll use to structure the essay.

We can begin writing, and we’ll start with the opening paragraph.

Step 4. Write the introduction

An introductory paragraph in a descriptive essay offers you a lot of flexibility in how you choose to write it.

You can start off with a particular example of a sense perception, drop your reader in the middle of a town square, or begin with an abstract concept.

I would like to suggest an easy and practical way to do it. In the first sentence or two, pull your reader from the outside world into this particular magical place you’ve chosen to write about.

Then, focus on the place you want to describe and say something general about it that would set the context or provide a perspective.

And finally, set some kind of an expectation for what’s to follow. You can create a sense of mystery, if you like. Remember, this is not an argumentative essay. So, you have more room for creativity.

This is where we begin to put together our descriptive essay example. Let’s write our introductory paragraph.

Descriptive Essay Introduction

“When the city has worn you down, the body is tired, and the soul yearns for a respite, you can count on a little magic gem of a town that will nourish you back to life. The name of the place is Karlovy Vary, and it is nested in the heart of Europe, in Western Bohemia, a region in Czech Republic famous for its spa towns. Its beautiful architecture, therapeutic landscape, clean air, and mineral waters offer the weary a healing adventure and a feast for the senses.”

What have we done in this paragraph?

We’ve pulled the reader into the world of this small spa town. We first descended in their world of the stressful city, and then we turned their attention to its opposite. We named the town and explained where it is located.

And finally, we provided a glimpse of what to expect in this descriptive essay about this town. Now, we’re ready to write the body of the essay.

Step 5. Write the body of the essay

We know our three main sections, which in this case correspond to three sense perceptions. Each section can have more than one paragraph. It all depends on how long your essay has to be.

If you are writing an essay of about 500-600 words, then a five-paragraph structure will do the job. If you need to write 2000 words or more, then you’ll have three sections instead of just three paragraphs.

And then each section can also be divided into two or three subsections (using the Power of Three, if you like). And each subsection can be a paragraph or more.

Just remember – the more words you need, the more dividing into subtopics you must do. The key to writing more is dividing one idea into several supporting ideas. And then you simply treat each supporting idea as a tiny essay.

If you struggle with essay writing in general or need to brush it up, I recommend you read my tutorial on essay writing for beginners . This would be a great place to turn to next.

Now, let’s write out our body paragraphs. Since there’s quite a bit to cover, we’ll probably take two paragraphs per section to get the job done.

Descriptive essay body paragraphs

“When you stay in one of the pretty little hotels in Karlovy Vary, you are likely to be descending the hills towards the hot springs every morning. No matter which part of town you live in, you’ll be greeted with a magnificent sight of little hotels and spas whose architecture has a unifying 19th century style. At the same time, each building has its own character, color, and features. The town is situated on several hills, and the hotels are lined up along about four levels.

The first level is down by the river Tepla, and these hotels are only a few because most of the downtown is occupied with hot springs colonnades where people gather and drink hot mineral water. The next three levels ascend from the springs, and you can either take the stairs or even use a funicular that will take you to the highest level to the Hotel Imperial. As you exit your hotel in the morning, you are greeted with a sight of a collection of small, three to four story buildings that look like birthday cakes. They are pink, green, blue, red, turquoise, and any color you can imagine. You suddenly realize how this variety of colors and shapes strewn over the hillsides all facing you and the city center makes your head spin and makes you feel like you’ve never felt before. Your healing has begun with landscape therapy.

As you descend the stairs to reach the hot springs, you notice the abundance of oxygen in the air because it has a subtle but distinct smell, a bit like the way air smells right before a rain. Then, as you pass by another hotel, and you’ll pass more than one, a light whiff of toast and fried eggs with bacon hits you, stirring your appetite. It is customary to drink a cup of hot mineral water before you come back to your hotel for breakfast. It is called a drinking cure.

As you keep walking towards the geyser and the springs that surround it, you notice another astonishing detail. Nobody is in a rush. Nobody has anywhere to be except right here, right now. Travelers with cute little porcelain cups stroll along without a worry in the world, taking in the sights, the smells, and the sounds of the birds chirping and singing all around. Their serenity infects you. You slow down, too. You begin to look, smell, and listen. This town has got you.

Karlovy Vary is famous for its healing mineral waters that are known to alleviate gastrointestinal issues. These waters really do have magic powers. You have your little sipping cup with you, and when you reach one of the springs, you wait for your turn to fill it up, walk off, and begin sipping. The water has a very subtle smell, but its taste is pretty strong for water. It has very high mineral content and tastes salty. Most people like the taste. Some find it too strong. But one thing is for sure – by the time you’re about half way through with your cup’s content, your digestive juices have begun to stir.

The hot springs flow out through several fountains, each with its own intricately detailed colonnade. The mineral content of water bursting out of each fountain is identical. But the temperature of the water varies from really hot to mild and comfortable. Your “spa doctor” actually prescribes which fountains to use and how much to drink. Sipping the water out of a special porcelain cup with a built-in straw-like system is a special pleasure of its own. The point is not to rush but to take about 20 minutes to empty the cup. In the meantime, you have a chance to take in the magnificent serenity that surrounds and infuses you. When you’ve drunk your water, it is time to head back to your hotel and eat breakfast. You repeat this routine three times a day for the duration of your stay. By day three, you are serenity itself. By day fourteen, you are a brand new person.”

Step 6. Write the conclusion

A conclusion in a descriptive essay is, like the introduction, more flexible than a conclusion in an argumentative essay.

You can conclude your essay in any way you really want as long as you observe one rule. Just make sure you zoom out and write in more general terms.

It is not the time to add specific details and examples. This is the time to wrap things up and end on a general note.

Your conclusion can be very short – only a couple of sentences. But you can take your space and write as much or as little as you feel like. You can always go back and trim it down or beef it up.

Let’s write our conclusion.

Our Conclusion

“Upon reading this, you may feel that this town is described as some sort of a paradise. And in a way, it is, especially if you are traveling from a big city and carrying a load of accumulated stress. But it’s not until you see, touch, smell, hear, and taste it for yourself that this European jewel will become a part of your entire being forever.”

It’s okay to be a little emotional and perhaps to even exaggerate a little in the concluding paragraph. Just notice that this one is more general than any of the body paragraphs.

It also touches upon or mentions every sense perception evoked in the body of the essay.

Your Key Takeaways

A descriptive essay is much more flexible and has a lot fewer rules than an argumentative essay.
Use the five sense perceptions – sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing – to structure your essay.
You don’t have to organize your essay by sense perceptions. You can divide your place into sections and walk the reader through each one.
You can even structure your essay as a string of paragraphs that describe one particular walk or route, from beginning to end.
Our last body paragraph is a description of the process of drinking hot mineral water in Karlovy Vary. It is a perfect example of a description of a process, if you ever want to write that kind of an essay.
Don’t persuade but subtly suggest.
Show, don’t tell, whenever you can.

A Few Scenic Snapshots of Karlovy Vary’s Charm

I hope this was helpful. Now go ahead and write that descriptive essay about a place!

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

The Way How I See The World

Categories: Dream Equality

About this sample

Words: 534 |

Published: Jun 6, 2019

Words: 534 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Nielsen, T. A., & Stenstrom, P. (2005). What are the memory sources of dreaming?. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04288 Nature, 437(7063), 1286-1289.
Millward-Hopkins, J. (2021). Back to the future: Old values for a new (more equal) world. Futures, 128, 102727. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328721000367)
Schutz, A., & Schutz, A. (1976). Equality and the meaning structure of the social world. Collected Papers II: Studies in social theory , 226-273. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-1340-6_11)
Chang, T. K. (1998). All countries not created equal to be news: World system and international communication. Communication research, 25(5), 528-563. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009365098025005004?journalCode=crxa)
Shannon, G., Jansen, M., Williams, K., Cáceres, C., Motta, A., Odhiambo, A., ... & Mannell, J. (2019). Gender equality in science, medicine, and global health: where are we at and why does it matter?. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673618331350 The Lancet, 393(10171), 560-569.

Should follow an “upside down” triangle format, meaning, the writer should start off broad and introduce the text and author or topic being discussed, and then get more specific to the thesis statement.

Provides a foundational overview, outlining the historical context and introducing key information that will be further explored in the essay, setting the stage for the argument to follow.

Cornerstone of the essay, presenting the central argument that will be elaborated upon and supported with evidence and analysis throughout the rest of the paper.

The topic sentence serves as the main point or focus of a paragraph in an essay, summarizing the key idea that will be discussed in that paragraph.

The body of each paragraph builds an argument in support of the topic sentence, citing information from sources as evidence.

After each piece of evidence is provided, the author should explain HOW and WHY the evidence supports the claim.

Should follow a right side up triangle format, meaning, specifics should be mentioned first such as restating the thesis, and then get more broad about the topic at hand. Lastly, leave the reader with something to think about and ponder once they are done reading.

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Imagination

To imagine is to represent without aiming at things as they actually, presently, and subjectively are. One can use imagination to represent possibilities other than the actual, to represent times other than the present, and to represent perspectives other than one’s own. Unlike perceiving and believing, imagining something does not require one to consider that something to be the case. Unlike desiring or anticipating, imagining something does not require one to wish or expect that something to be the case.

Imagination is involved in a wide variety of human activities, and has been explored from a wide range of philosophical perspectives. Philosophers of mind have examined imagination’s role in mindreading and in pretense. Philosophical aestheticians have examined imagination’s role in creating and in engaging with different types of artworks. Epistemologists have examined imagination’s role in theoretical thought experiments and in practical decision-making. Philosophers of language have examined imagination’s role in irony and metaphor.

Because of the breadth of the topic, this entry focuses exclusively on contemporary discussions of imagination in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. For an overview of historical discussions of imagination, see the sections on pre-twentieth century and early twentieth century accounts of entry on mental imagery ; for notable historical accounts of imagination, see corresponding entries on Aristotle , Thomas Hobbes , David Hume , Immanuel Kant , and Gilbert Ryle ; for a more detailed and comprehensive historical survey, see Brann 1991; and for a sophisticated and wide-ranging discussion of imagination in the phenomenological tradition, see Casey 2000.

1.1 Varieties of Imagination

1.2 taxonomies of imagination, 1.3 norms of imagination, 2.1 imagination and belief, 2.2 imagination and desire, 2.3 imagination, imagery, and perception, 2.4 imagination and memory, 2.5 imagination and supposition, 3.1 mindreading, 3.2 pretense, 3.3 psychopathology.

Supplement: Puzzles and Paradoxes of Imagination and the Arts

3.5 Creativity

3.6 knowledge, 3.7 figurative language, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the nature of imagination.

A variety of roles have been attributed to imagination across various domains of human understanding and activity ( section 3 ). Not surprisingly, it is doubtful that there is one component of the mind that can satisfy all the various roles attributed to imagination (Kind 2013). Nevertheless, perhaps guided by these roles, philosophers have attempted to clarify the nature of imagination in three ways. First, philosophers have tried to disambiguate different senses of the term “imagination” and, in some cases, point to some core commonalities amongst the different disambiguations ( section 1.1 ). Second, philosophers have given partial taxonomies to distinguish different types of imaginings ( section 1.2 ). Third, philosophers have located norms that govern paradigmatic imaginative episodes ( section 1.3 ).

There is a general consensus among those who work on the topic that the term “ imagination ” is used too broadly to permit simple taxonomy. Indeed, it is common for overviews to begin with an invocation of P.F. Strawson’s remarks in “Imagination and Perception”, where he writes:

The uses, and applications, of the terms “image”, “imagine”, “imagination”, and so forth make up a very diverse and scattered family. Even this image of a family seems too definite. It would be a matter of more than difficulty to identify and list the family’s members, let alone their relations of parenthood and cousinhood. (Strawson 1970: 31)

These taxonomic challenges carry over into attempts at characterization. In the opening chapter of Mimesis as Make-Believe —perhaps the most influential contemporary monograph on imagination—Kendall Walton throws up his hands at the prospect of delineating the notion precisely. After enumerating and distinguishing a number of paradigmatic instances of imagining, he asks:

What is it to imagine? We have examined a number of dimensions along which imaginings can vary; shouldn’t we now spell out what they have in common?—Yes, if we can. But I can’t. (Walton 1990: 19)

Leslie Stevenson (2003: 238) makes arguably the only recent attempt at a somewhat comprehensive inventory of the term’s uses, covering twelve of “the most influential conceptions of imagination” that can be found in recent discussions in “philosophy of mind, aesthetics, ethics, poetry and … religion”.

To describe the varieties of imaginings, philosophers have given partial and overlapping taxonomies.

Some taxonomies are merely descriptive, and they tend to be less controversial. For example, Kendall Walton (1990) distinguishes between spontaneous and deliberate imagining (acts of imagination that occur with or without the one’s conscious direction); between occurrent and nonoccurrent imaginings (acts of imagination that do or do not occupy the one’s explicit attention); and between social and solitary imaginings (episodes of imagining that occur with or without the joint participation of several persons).

One notable descriptive taxonomy concerns imagining from the inside versus from the outside (Williams 1973; Wollheim 1973; see Ninan 2016 for an overview). To imagine from the outside that one is Napoleon involves imagining a scenario in which one is Napoleon. To imagine from the inside that one is Napoleon involves that plus something else: namely, that one is occupying the perspective of Napoleon. Imagining from the inside is essentially first-personal, imagining from the outside is not. This distinction between two modes of imagining is especially notable for its implications for thought experiments about the metaphysics of personal identity (Nichols 2008; Ninan 2009; Williams 1973).

Some taxonomies aim to be more systematic—to carve imaginings at their joints, so to speak—and they, as one might expect, tend to be more controversial.

Gregory Currie and Ian Ravenscroft (2002) distinguishes creative imagination (combining ideas in unexpected and unconventional ways); sensory imagination (perception-like experiences in the absence of appropriate stimuli); and what they call recreative imagination (an ability to experience or think about the world from a perspective different from the one that experience presents). Neil Van Leeuwen (2013, 2014) takes a similar approach to delineate three common uses of “imagination” and cognate terms. First, these terms can be used to refer to constructive imagining , which concerns the process of generating mental representations. Second, these terms can be used to refer to attitude imagining , which concerns the propositional attitude one takes toward mental representations. Third, these terms can be used to refer to imagistic imagining , which concerns the perception-like format of mental representations.

Amy Kind and Peter Kung (2016b) pose the puzzle of imaginative use—on the seeming irreconcilability between the transcendent uses of imagination, which enables one to escape from or look beyond the world as it is, and the instructive uses of imagination, which enables one to learn about the world as it is. Kind and Kung ultimately resolve the puzzle by arguing that the same attitude can be put to these seemingly disparate uses because the two uses differ not in kind, but in degree—specifically, the degree of constraint on imaginings.

Finally, varieties of imagination might be classified in terms of their structure and content. Consider the following three types of imaginings, each illustrated with an example. When one imagines propositionally , one represents to oneself that something is the case. So, for example, Juliet might imagine that Romeo is by her side . To imagine in this sense is to stand in some mental relation to a particular proposition (see the entry on propositional attitude reports ). When one imagines objectually , one represents to oneself a real or make-believe entity or situation (Yablo 1993; see also Martin 2002; Noordhof 2002; O’Shaughnessy 2000). So, for example, Prospero might imagine an acorn or a nymph or the city of Naples or a wedding feast . To imagine in this sense is to stand in some mental relation to a representation of an (imaginary or real) entity or state of affairs. When one imagines X-ing , one simulatively represents to oneself some sort of activity or experience (Walton 1990). So, for example, Ophelia might imagine seeing Hamlet or getting herself to a nunnery . To imagine in this sense is to stand in a first-personal mental relation to some (imaginary or real) behavior or perception.

There are general norms that govern operations of imagination (Gendler 2003).

Mirroring is manifest to the extent that features of the imaginary situation that have not been explicitly stipulated are derivable via features of their real-world analogues, or, more generally, to the extent that imaginative content is taken to be governed by the same sorts of restrictions that govern believed content. For example, in a widely-discussed experiment conducted by Alan Leslie (1994), children are asked to engage in an imaginary tea party. When an experimenter tips and “spills” one of the (empty) teacups, children consider the non-tipped cup to be “full” (in the context of the pretense) and the tipped cup to be “empty” (both within and outside of the context of the pretense). In fact, both make-believe games and more complicated engagements with the arts are governed by principles of generation , according to which prompts or props prescribe particular imaginings (Walton 1990).

Quarantining is manifest to the extent that events within the imagined or pretended episode are taken to have effects only within a relevantly circumscribed domain. So, for example, the child engaging in the make-believe tea party does not expect that “spilling” (imaginary) “tea” will result in the table really being wet, nor does a person who imagines winning the lottery expect that when she visits the ATM, her bank account will contain a million dollars. More generally, quarantining is manifest to the extent that proto-beliefs and proto-attitudes concerning the imagined state of affairs are not treated as beliefs and attitudes relevant to guiding action in the actual world.

Although imaginative episodes are generally governed by mirroring and quarantining, both may be violated in systematic ways.

Mirroring gives way to disparity as a result of the ways in which (the treatment of) imaginary content may differ from (that of) believed content. Imagined content may be incomplete (for example, there may be no fact of the matter (in the pretense) just how much tea has spilled on the table) or incoherent (for example, it might be that the toaster serves (in the pretense) as a logical-truth inverter). And content that is imagined may give rise to discrepant responses , most strikingly in cases of discrepant affect—where, for example, the imminent destruction of all human life is treated as amusing rather than terrifying.

Quarantining gives way to contagion when imagined content ends up playing a direct role in actual attitudes and behavior (see also Gendler 2008a, 2008b). This is common in cases of affective transmission , where an emotional response generated by an imagined situation may constrain subsequent behavior. For example, imagining something fearful (such as a tiger in the kitchen) may give rise to actual hesitation (such as reluctance to enter the room). And it also occurs in cases of cognitive transmission , where imagined content is thereby “primed” and rendered more accessible in ways that go on to shape subsequent perception and experience. For example, imagining some object (such as a sheep) may make one more likely to “perceive” such objects in one’s environment (such as mistaking a rock for a ram).

2. Imagination in Cognitive Architecture

One way to make sense of the nature of imagination is by drawing distinctions, giving taxonomies, and elucidating governing norms ( section 1 ). Another, arguably more prominent, way to make sense of the nature is by figuring out, in a broadly functionalist framework, how it fits in with more well-understood mental entities from folk psychology and scientific psychology (see the entry on functionalism ).

There are two related tasks involved. First, philosophers have used other mental entities to define imagination by contradistinction (but see Wiltsher forthcoming for a critique of this approach). To give an oversimplified example, many philosophers hold that imagining is like believing except that it does not directly motivate actions. Second, philosophers have used other mental entities to understand the inputs and outputs of imagination. To give an oversimplified example, many philosophers hold that imagination does not output to action-generating systems.

Amongst the most widely-discussed mental entities in contemporary discussions of imagination are belief ( section 2.1 ), desire ( section 2.2 ), mental imagery ( section 2.3 ), memory ( section 2.4 ), and supposition ( section 2.5 ). The resolution of these debates ultimately rest on the extent to which the imaginative attitude(s) posited can fulfill the roles ascribed to imagination from various domains of human understanding and activity ( section 3 ).

To believe is to take something to be the case or regard it as true (see the entry on belief ). When one says something like “the liar believes that his pants are on fire”, one attributes to the subject (the liar) an attitude (belief) towards a proposition (his pants are on fire). Likewise, when one says something like “the liar imagines that his pants are on fire”, one attributes to the subject (the liar) an attitude (imagination) towards a proposition (his pants are on fire). The similarities and differences between the belief attribution and the imagination attribution point to similarities and differences between imagining and believing.

Imagining and believing are both cognitive attitudes that are representational. They take on the same kind of content: representations that stand in inferential relationship with one another. On the single code hypothesis , it is the sameness of the representational format that grounds functional similarities between imagining and believing (Nichols & Stich 2000, 2003; Nichols 2004a). As for their differences, there are two main options for distinguishing imagining and believing (Sinhababu 2016).

The first option characterizes their difference in normative terms. While belief aims at truth, imagination does not (Humberstone 1992; Shah & Velleman 2005). If the liar did not regard it as true that his pants are on fire, then it seems that he cannot really believe that his pants are on fire. By contrast, even if the liar did not regard it as true that his pants are on fire, he can still imagine that his pants are on fire. While the norm of truth is constitutive of the attitude of belief, it is not constitutive of the attitude of imagination. In dissent, Neil Sinhababu (2013) argues that the norm of truth is neither sufficient nor necessary for distinguishing imagining and believing.

The second option characterizes their difference in functional terms. One purported functional difference between imagination and belief concerns their characteristic connection to actions. If the liar truly believes that his pants are on fire, he will typically attempt to put out the fire by, say, pouring water on himself. By contrast, if the liar merely imagines that his pants are on fire, he will typically do no such thing. While belief outputs to action-generation system, imagination does not (Nichols & Stich 2000, 2003). David Velleman (2000) and Tyler Doggett and Andy Egan (2007) point to particular pretense behaviors to challenge this way of distinguishing imagining and believing. Velleman argues that a belief-desire explanation of children’s pretense behaviors makes children “depressingly unchildlike”. Doggett and Egan argue that during immersive episodes, pretense behaviors can be directly motivated by imagination. In response to these challenges, philosophers typically accept that imagination can have a guidance or stage-setting role in motivating behaviors, but reject that it directly outputs to action-generation system (Van Leeuwen 2009; O’Brien 2005; Funkhouser & Spaulding 2009; Everson 2007; Kind 2011; Currie & Ravenscroft 2002).

Another purported functional difference between imagination and belief concerns their characteristic connection to emotions. If the liar truly believes that his pants are on fire, then he will be genuinely afraid of the fire; but not if he merely imagines so. While belief evokes genuine emotions toward real entities, imagination does not (Walton 1978, 1990, 1997; see also related discussion of the paradox of fictional emotions in Supplement on Puzzles and Paradoxes of Imagination and the Arts ). This debate is entangled with the controversy concerning the nature of emotions (see the entry on emotion ). In rejecting this purported functional difference, philosophers also typically reject narrow cognitivism about emotions (Nichols 2004a; Meskin & Weinberg 2003; Weinberg & Meskin 2005, 2006; Kind 2011; Spaulding 2015; Carruthers 2003, 2006).

Currently, the consensus is that there exists some important difference between imagining and believing. Yet, there are two distinct departures from this consensus. On the one hand, some philosophers have pointed to novel psychological phenomena in which it is unclear whether imagination or belief is at work—such as delusions (Egan 2008a) and immersed pretense (Schellenberg 2013)—and argued that the best explanation for these phenomena says that imagination and belief exists on a continuum. In responding to the argument from immersed pretense, Shen-yi Liao and Tyler Doggett (2014) argue that a cognitive architecture that collapses distinctive attitudes on the basis of borderline cases is unlikely to be fruitful in explaining psychological phenomena. On the other hand, some philosophers have pointed to familiar psychological phenomena and argued that the best explanation for these phenomena says that imagination is ultimately reducible to belief. Peter Langland-Hassan (2012, 2014) argues that pretense can be explained with only reference to beliefs—specifically, beliefs about counterfactuals. Derek Matravers (2014) argues that engagements with fictions can be explained without references to imaginings.

To desire is to want something to be the case (see the entry on desire ). Standardly, the conative attitude of desire is contrasted with the cognitive attitude of belief in terms of direction of fit: while belief aims to make one’s mental representations match the way the world is, desire aims to make the way the world is match one’s mental representations. Recall that on the single code hypothesis , there exists a cognitive imaginative attitude that is structurally similar to belief. Is there a conative imaginative attitude—call it desire-like imagination (Currie 1997, 2002a, 2002b, 2010; Currie & Ravenscroft 2002), make-desire (Currie 1990; Goldman 2006), or i-desire (Doggett & Egan 2007, 2012)—that is structurally similar to desire?

The debates on the relationship between imagination and desire is, not surprisingly, thoroughly entangled with the debates on the relationship between imagination and belief. One impetus for positing a conative imaginative attitude comes from behavior motivation in imaginative contexts. Tyler Doggett and Andy Egan (2007) argue that cognitive and conative imagination jointly output to action-generation system, in the same way that belief and desire jointly do. Another impetus for positing a conative imaginative attitude comes from emotions in imaginative contexts (see related discussions of the paradox of fictional emotions and the paradoxes of tragedy and horror in Supplement on Puzzles and Paradoxes of Imagination and the Arts ). Gregory Currie and Ian Ravenscroft (2002) and Doggett and Egan (2012) argue the best explanation for people’s emotional responses toward non-existent fictional characters call for positing conative imagination. Currie and Ravenscroft (2002), Currie (2010), and Doggett and Egan (2007) argue that the best explanation for people’s apparently conflicting emotional responses toward tragedy and horror too call for positing conative imagination.

Given the entanglement between the debates, competing explanations of the same phenomena also function as arguments against conative imagination (Nichols 2004a, 2006b; Meskin & Weinberg 2003; Weinberg & Meskin 2005, 2006; Spaulding 2015; Kind 2011; Carruthers 2003, 2006; Funkhouser & Spaulding 2009; Van Leeuwen 2011). In addition, another argument against conative imagination is that its different impetuses call for conflicting functional properties. Amy Kind (2016b) notes a tension between the argument from behavior motivation and the argument from fictional emotions: conative imagination must be connected to action-generation in order for it to explain pretense behaviors, but it must be disconnected from action-generation in order for it to explain fictional emotions. Similarly, Shaun Nichols (2004b) notes a tension between Currie and Ravenscroft’s (2002) argument from paradox of fictional emotions and argument from paradoxes of tragedy and horror.

To have a (merely) mental image is to have a perception-like experience triggered by something other than the appropriate external stimulus; so, for example, one might have “a picture in the mind’s eye or … a tune running through one’s head” (Strawson 1970: 31) in the absence of any corresponding visual or auditory object or event (see the entry on mental imagery ). While it is propositional imagination that gets compared to belief and desire, it is sensory or imagistic imagination that get compared to perception (Currie & Ravenscroft 2002). Although it is possible to form mental images in any of the sensory modalities, the bulk of discussion in both philosophical and psychological contexts has focused on visual imagery.

Broadly, there is agreement on the similarity between mental imagery and perception in phenomenology, which can be explicated as a similarity in content (Nanay 2016b; see, for example, Kind 2001; Nanay 2015; Noordhof 2002). Potential candidates for distinguishing mental imagery and perception include intensity (Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature ; but see Kind 2017), voluntariness (McGinn 2004; Ichikawa 2009), causal relationship with the relevant object (Noordhof 2002); however, no consensus exists on features that clearly distinguish the two, in part because of ongoing debates about perception (see the entries on contents of perception and epistemological problems of perception ).

What is the relationship between imaginings and mental imagery?

Historically, mental imagery is thought to be an essential component of imaginings. Aristotle’s phantasia , which is sometimes translated as imagination, is a faculty that produces images ( De Anima ; see entry on Aristotle’s conception of imagination ; but see Caston 1996). René Descartes ( Meditations on First Philosophy ) and David Hume ( Treatise of Human Nature ) both thought that to imagine just is to hold a mental image, or an impression of perception, in one’s mind. However, George Berkeley’s puzzle of visualizing the unseen ( Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous ) arguably suggests the existence of a non-imagistic hypothetical attitude.

Against the historical orthodoxy, the contemporary tendency is to recognize that there is at least one species of imagination—propositional imagination—that does not require mental imagery. For example, Kendall Walton simply states, “imagining can occur without imagery” (1990: 13). In turn, against this contemporary tendency, Amy Kind (2001) argues that an image-based account can explain three crucial features of imagination—directedness, active nature, and phenomenological character—better than its imageless counterpart. As a partial reconciliation of the two, Peter Langland-Hassan (2015) develops a pluralist position on which there exists a variety of imaginative attitudes, including ones that can take on hybrid contents that are partly propositional and partly sensorily imagistic. (For a nuanced overview of this debate, see Gregory 2016: 103–106.)

Finally, the relationship between mental imagery and perception has potential implications for the connection between imagination and action. The orthodoxy on propositional belief-like imagination holds that imagination does not directly output to action-generation system; rather, the connection between the two is mediated by belief and desire. In contrast, the enactivist program in the philosophy of perception holds that perception can directly output to action-generation system (see, for example, Nanay 2013). Working from the starting point that imagistic imagination is similar to perception in its inclusion of mental imagery, some philosophers have argued for a similar direct connection between imagistic imagination and action-generation system (Langland-Hassan 2015; Nanay 2016a; Van Leeuwen 2011, 2016b). That is, there exist imagery-oriented actions that are analogous to perception-oriented actions. For example, Neil Van Leeuwen (2011) argues that an account of imagination that is imagistically-rich can better explain pretense behaviors than its propositional-imagination-only rivals. Furthermore, Robert Eamon Briscoe (2008, 2018) argues that representations that blend inputs from perception and mental imagery, which he calls “make-perceive”, guide many everyday actions. For example, a sculptor might use a blend of the visual perception of a stone and the mental imagery of different parts of the stone being subtracted to guide their physical manipulation of the stone.

To remember , roughly, is to represent something that is no longer the case. On the standard taxonomy, there are three types of memory. Nondeclarative memory involves mental content that is not consciously accessible, such as one’s memory of how to ride a bike. Semantic declarative memory involves mental content that are propositional and not first-personal, such as one’s memory that Taipei is the capital of Taiwan. Episodic declarative memory involves mental content about one’s own past, such as one’s memory of the birth of one’s child. (See the entry on memory for a detailed discussion of this taxonomy, and especially the criterion of episodicity.) In situating imagination in cognitive architecture, philosophers have typically focused on similarities and differences between imagination and episodic declarative memory.

There are obvious similarities between imagination and memory: both typically involve imagery, both typically concern what is not presently the case, and both frequently involve perspectival representations. Thomas Hobbes ( Leviathan : 2.3) claims that “imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse consideration has diverse names”. In making this bold statement, Hobbes represents an extreme version of continuism, a view on which imagination and memory refer to the same psychological mechanisms.

The orthodoxy on imagination and memory in the history of philosophy, however, is discontinuism, a view on which there are significant differences between imagination and memory, even if there are overlaps in their psychological mechanisms. Some philosophers find the distinction in internalist factors, such as the phenomenological difference between imagining and remembering. Most famously, David Hume sought to distinguish the two in terms of vivacity —“the ideas of the memory are much more lively and strong than those of the imagination” ( Treatise of Human Nature : 1.3; but see Kind 2017). Others who have adopted a phenomenological criterion include René Descartes, Bertrand Russell, and William James (De Brigard 2017). Other philosophers find the distinction in externalist factors, such as the causal connection that exists between memories and the past that is absent with imagination. Aristotle uses the causal connection criterion to distinguish between imagination and memory ( De Anima 451a2; 451a8–12; see De Brigard 2017). Indeed, nowadays the idea that a causal connection is essential to remembering is accepted as “philosophical common sense” (see the entry on memory ; but see also De Brigard 2014 on memory traces). As such, it is unsurprising that discontinuism remains the orthodoxy. As J. O. Urmson (1967: 83) boldly claims, “One of these universally admitted distinctions is that between memory and imagination”.

In recent years, two sets of findings from cognitive science has given philosophers reasons to push back against discontinuism.

The first set of findings concern distortions and confabulations. The traditional conception of memory is that it functions as an archive: past experiences are encapsulated and stored in the archive, and remembering is just passively retrieving the encapsulated mental content from the archive (Robins 2016). Behavioral psychology has found numerous effects that challenge the empirical adequacy of the archival conception of memory. Perhaps the most well-known is the misinformation effect, which occurs when a subject incorporates inaccurate information into their memory of an event—even inaccurate information that they received after the event (Loftus 1979 [1996]).

The second set of findings concern the psychological underpinnings of “mental time travel”, or the similarities between remembering the past and imagining the future, which is also known as mental time travel (see Schacter et al. 2012 for a review). Using fMRI, neuroscientists have found a striking overlap in the brain activities for remembering the past and imagining the future, which suggest that the two psychological processes utilize the same neural network (see, for example, Addis et al. 2007; Buckner & Carroll 2007; Gilbert & Wilson 2007; Schacter et al. 2007; Suddendorf & Corballis 1997, 2007). The neuroscientific research is preceded by and corroborated by works from developmental psychology (Atance & O’Neill 2011) and on neurodivergent individuals: for example, the severely amnesic patient KC exhibits deficits with remembering the past and imagining the future (Tulving 1985), and also exhibits deficits with the generation of non-personal fictional narratives (Rosenbaum et al. 2009). Note that, despite the evocative contrast between “remembering the past” and “imagining the future”, it is questionable whether temporality is the central contrast. Indeed, some philosophers and psychologists contend that temporality is orthogonal to the comparison between imagination and memory (De Brigard & Gessell 2016; Schacter et al. 2012).

These two set of findings have given rise to an alternative conception that sees memory as essentially constructive, in which remembering is actively generating mental content that more or less represent the past. The constructive conception of memory is in a better position to explain why memories can contain distortions and confabulations (but see Robins 2016 for complications), and why remembering makes use of the same neural networks as imagining.

In turn, this constructive turn in the psychology and philosophy of memory has revived philosophers’ interest in continuism concerning imagination and memory. Kourken Michaelian (2016) explicitly rejects the causal connection criterion and defends a theory on which remembering, like imagining, centrally involves simulation. Karen Shanton and Alvin Goldman (2010) characterizes remembering as mindreading one’s past self. Felipe De Brigard (2014) characterizes remembering as a special instance of hypothetical thinking. Robert Hopkins (2018) characterizes remembering as a kind of imagining that is controlled by the past. However, the philosophical interpretation of empirical research remain contested; in dissent, Dorothea Debus (2014, 2016) considers the same sets of findings but ultimately concludes that remembering and imagining remain distinct mental kinds.

To suppose is to form a hypothetical mental representation. There exists a highly contentious debate on whether supposition is continuous with imagination, which is also a hypothetical attitude, or whether there are enough differences to make them discontinuous. There are two main options for distinguishing imagination and supposition, by phenomenology and by function.

The phenomenological distinction standardly turns on the notion of vivacity: whereas imaginings are vivid, suppositions are not. Indeed, one often finds in this literature the contrast between “merely supposing” and “vividly imagining”. Although vivacity has been frequently invoked in discussions of imagination, Amy Kind (2017) draws on empirical and theoretical considerations to argue that it is ultimately philosophically untenable. If that is correct, then the attempt to demarcate imagination and supposition by their vivacity is untenable too. More rarely, other phenomenological differences are invoked; for example, Brian Weatherson (2004) contends that “supposing can be coarse in a way that imagining cannot”.


	Variable	Atypical
	Typical	Typical
	Typical	Typical
	Typical	Atypical
	Typical	Variable
	Variable	Atypical
	Typical	Typical
	Typical	Atypical

Table 1. Architectural similarities and differences between imagination and supposition (Weinberg & Meskin 2006).

There have been diverse functional distinctions attributed to the discontinuity between imagination and supposition, but none has gained universal acceptance. Richard Moran (1994) contends that imagination tends to give rise to a wide range of further mental states, including affective responses, whereas supposition does not (see also Arcangeli 2014, 2017). Tamar Szabó Gendler (2000a) contends that while attempting to imagine something like that female infanticide is morally right seems to generate imaginative resistance, supposing it does not (see the discussion on imaginative resistance in Supplement on Puzzles and Paradoxes of Imagination and the Arts ). Gregory Currie and Ian Ravenscroft (2002) contend that supposition involves only cognitive imagination, but imagination involves both cognitive and conative imagination. Alvin Goldman contends that suppositional imagination involves supposing that particular content obtains (for example, supposing that I am elated) but enactment imagination involves “enacting, or trying to enact, elation itself.” (2006: 47–48, italics omitted). Tyler Doggett and Andy Egan (2007) contend that imagination tends to motivate pretense actions, but supposition tends not to. On Jonathan Weinberg and Aaron Meskin (2006)’s synthesis, while there are a few functional similarities, there are many more functional differences between imagination and supposition (Table 1).

There remain ongoing debates about specific alleged functional distinctions, and about whether the functional distinctions are numerous or fundamental enough to warrant discontinuism or not. Indeed, it remains contentious which philosophers count as continuists and which philosophers count as discontinuists (for a few sample taxonomies, see Arcangeli 2017; Balcerak Jackson 2016; Kind 2013).

3. Roles of Imagination

Much of the contemporary discussion of imagination has centered around particular roles that imagination is purported to play in various domains of human understanding and activity. Amongst the most widely-discussed are the role of imagination in understanding other minds ( section 3.1 ), in performing and recognizing pretense ( section 3.2 ), in characterizing psychopathology ( section 3.3 ), in engaging with the arts ( section 3.4 ), in thinking creatively ( section 3.5 ), in acquiring knowledge about possibilities ( section 3.6 ), and in interpreting figurative language ( section 3.7 ).

The variety of roles ascribed to imagination, in turn, provides a guide for discussions on the nature of imagination ( section 1 ) and its place in cognitive architecture ( section 2 ).

Mindreading is the activity of attributing mental states to oneself and to others, and of predicting and explaining behavior on the basis of those attributions. Discussions of mindreading in the 1990s were often framed as debates between “theory theory”—which holds that the attribution of mental states to others is guided by the application of some (tacit) folk psychological theory—and “simulation theory”—which holds that the attribution of mental states is guided by a process of replicating or emulating the target’s (apparent) mental states, perhaps through mechanisms involving the imagination. (Influential collections of papers on this debate include Carruthers & Smith (eds.) 1996; Davies & Stone (eds.) 1995a, 1995b.) In recent years, proponents of both sides have increasingly converged on common ground, allowing that both theory and simulation play some role in the attribution of mental states to others (see Carruthers 2003; Goldman 2006; Nichols & Stich 2003). Many such hybrid accounts include a role for imagination.

On theory theory views, mindreading involves the application of some (tacit) folk psychological theory that allows the subject to make predictions and offer explanations of the target’s beliefs and behaviors. On pure versions of such accounts, imagination plays no special role in the attribution of mental states to others. (For an overview of theory theory, see entry on folk psychology as a theory ).

On simulation theory views, mindreading involves simulating the target’s mental states so as to exploit similarities between the subject’s and target’s processing capacities. It is this simulation that allows the subject to make predictions and offer explanations of the target’s beliefs and behaviors. (For early papers, see Goldman 1989; Gordon 1986; Heal 1986; for recent dissent, see, for example, Carruthers 2009; Gallagher 2007; Saxe 2005, 2009; for an overview of simulation theory, see entry on folk psychology as mental simulation ).

Traditional versions of simulation theory typically describe simulation using expressions such as “imaginatively putting oneself in the other’s place”. How this metaphor is understood depends on the specific account. (A collection of papers exploring various versions of simulation theory can be found in Dokic & Proust (eds.) 2002.) On many accounts, the projection is assumed to involve the subject’s imaginatively running mental processes “off-line” that are directly analogous to those being run “on-line” by the target (for example Goldman 1989). Whereas the “on-line” mental processes are genuine, the “off-line” mental processes are merely imagined. For example, a target that is deciding whether to eat sushi for lunch is running their decision-making processes “on-line”; and a subject that is simulating the target’s decision-making is running the analogous processes “off-line”—in part, by imagining the relevant mental states of the target. Recent empirical work in psychology has explored the accuracy of such projections (Markman, Klein, & Suhr (eds.) 2009, section V; Saxe 2005, 2006, 2009.)

Though classic simulationist accounts have tended to assume that the simulation process is at least in-principle accessible to consciousness, a number of recent simulation-style accounts appeal to neuroscientific evidence suggesting that at least some simulative processes take place completely unconsciously. On such accounts of mindreading, no special role is played by conscious imagination (see Goldman 2009; Saxe 2009.)

Many contemporary views of mindreading are hybrid theory views according to which both theorizing and simulation play a role in the understanding of others’ mental states. Alvin Goldman (2006), for example, argues that while mindreading is primarily the product of simulation, theorizing plays a role in certain cases as well. Many recent discussions have endorsed hybrid views of this sort, with more or less weight given to each of the components in particular cases (see Carruthers 2003; Nichols & Stich 2003.)

A number of philosophers have suggested that the mechanisms underlying subjects’ capacity to engage in mindreading are those that enable engagement in pretense behavior (Currie & Ravenscroft 2002; Goldman 2006; Nichols & Stich 2003; for an overview of recent discussions, see Carruthers 2009.) According to such accounts, engaging in pretense involves imaginatively taking up perspectives other than one’s own, and the ability to do so skillfully may rely on—and contribute to—one’s ability to understand those alternate perspectives (see the entry on empathy ). Partly in light of these considerations, the relative lack of spontaneous pretense in children with autistic spectrum disorders is taken as evidence for a link between the skills of pretense and empathy.

Pretending is an activity that occurs during diverse circumstances, such as when children make-believe, when criminals deceive, and when thespians act (Langland-Hassan 2014). Although “imagination” and “pretense” have been used interchangeably (Ryle 1949), in this section we will use “imagination” to refer to one’s state of mind, and “pretense” to refer to the one’s actions in the world.

Different theories of pretense disagree fundamentally about what it is to pretend (see Liao & Gendler 2011 for an overview). Consequently, they also disagree about the mental states that enable one to pretend. Metarepresentational theories hold that engaging in pretend play requires the innate mental-state concept pretend (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith 1985; Friedman 2013; Friedman & Leslie 2007; Leslie 1987, 1994). To pretend is to represent one’s own representations under the concept pretend. Behaviorist theories hold that engaging in pretend play requires a process of behaving-as-if (Harris 1994, 2000; Harris & Kavanaugh 1993; Jarrold et al. 1994; Lillard & Flavell 1992; Nichols & Stich 2003; Perner 1991; Rakoczy, Tomasello, & Striano 2004; Stich & Tarzia 2015). Different behaviorist theories explicate behaving-as-if in different ways, but all aim to provide an account of pretense without recourse to the innate mental-state concept pretend.

Philosophical and psychological theories have sought to explain both the performance of pretense and the recognition of pretense, especially concerning evidence from developmental psychology (see Lillard 2001 for an early overview). On the performance side, children on a standard developmental trajectory exhibit early indicators of pretend play around 15 months; engage in explicit prop-oriented play by 24 months; and engage in sophisticated joint pretend play with props by 36 months (Harris 2000; Perner, Baker, & Hutton 1994; Piaget 1945 [1951]). On the recognition side, children on a standard developmental trajectory distinguish pretense and reality via instinctual behavioral cues around 15–18 months; and start to do so via conventional behavioral cues from 36 months on (Friedman et al. 2010; Lillard & Witherington 2004; Onishi & Baillargeon 2005; Onishi, Baillargeon, & Leslie 2007; Richert and Lillard 2004).

Not surprisingly, the debate between theories of pretense often rest on interpretations of such empirical evidence. For example, Ori Friedman and Alan Leslie (2007) argue that behavioral theories cannot account for the fact that children as young as 15 months old can recognize pretend play and its normativity (Baillargeon, Scott, & He 2010). Specifically, they argue that behavioral theories do not offer straightforward explanations of this early development of pretense recognition, and incorrectly predicts that children systematically mistake other acts of behaving-as-if—such as those that stem from false beliefs—for pretense activities. In response, Stephen Stich and Joshua Tarzia (2015) has acknowledged these problems for earlier behaviorist theories, and developed a new behaviorist theory that purportedly explains the totality of empirical evidence better than metarepresentational rivals. Importantly, Stich and Tarzia argue that their account can better explain Angeline Lillard (1993)’s empirical finding that young children need not attribute a mental concept such as pretend to someone else in order to understand them as pretending.

The debate concerning theories of pretense has implications for the role of imagination in pretense. Behaviorist theories tend to take imagination as essential to explaining pretense performance; metarepresentational theories do not. (However, arguably the innate mental-state concept pretend posited by metarepresentational theories serve similar functions. See Nichols and Stich’s (2000) discussion of the decoupler mechanism, which explicitly draws from Leslie 1987. Currie and Ravenscroft (2002) give a broadly behaviorist theory of pretense that does not require imagination.) Specifically, on most behaviorist theories, imagination is essential for guiding elaborations of pretense episodes, especially via behaviors (Picciuto & Carruthers 2016; Stich & Tarzia 2015).

Most recently, Peter Langland-Hassan (2012, 2014) has developed a theory that aims to explain pretense behavior and pretense recognition without appeal to either metarepresentation or imagination. Langland-Hassan argues that pretense behaviors can be adequately explained by beliefs, desires, and intentions—including beliefs in counterfactuals; and that the difference between pretense and sincerity more generally can be adequately characterized in terms of a person’s beliefs, intentions, and desires. While Langland-Hassan does not deny that pretense is in some sense an imaginative activity, he argues that we do not need to posit a sui generis component of the mind to account for it.

Autism and delusions have been—with much controversy—characterized as disorders of imagination. That is, the atypical patterns of cognition and behavior associated with each psychopathology have been argued to result from atypical functions of imagination.

Autism can be characterized in terms of a trio of atypicalities often referred to as “Wing’s triad”: problems in typical social competence, communication, and imagination (Happé 1994; Wing & Gould 1979). The imaginative aspect of autism interacts with other prominent roles of imagination, namely mindreading, pretense, and engagement with the arts (Carruthers 2009). Children with autism do not engage in spontaneous pretend play in the ways that typically-developing children do, engaging instead in repetitive and sometimes obsessional activities; and adults with autism often show little interest in fiction (Carpenter, Tomasello, & Striano 2005; Happé 1994; Rogers, Cook, & Meryl 2005; Wing & Gould 1979). The degree to which an imaginative deficit is implicated in autism remains a matter of considerable debate. Most radically, Gregory Currie and Ian Ravenscroft (2002) have argued that, with respect to Wing’s triad, problems in typical social competence and communication are rooted in an inability to engage in imaginative activities.

Delusions can be characterized as belief-like mental representations that manifest an unusual degree of disconnectedness from reality (Bortolotti & Miyazono 2015). Particularly striking examples would include Capgras and Cotard delusions. In the former, the sufferer takes her friends and family to have been replaced by imposters; in the latter, the sufferer takes himself to be dead. More mundane examples might include ordinary cases of self-deception.

One approach to delusions characterize them as beliefs that are dysfunctional in their content or formation. (For a representative collection of papers that present and criticize this perspective, see Coltheart & Davies (eds.) 2000). However, another approach to delusions characterize them as dysfunctions of imaginings. Currie and Ravenscroft (2002: 170–175) argue that delusions are imaginings that are misidentified by the subject as the result of an inability to keep track of the sources of one’s thoughts. That is, a delusion is an imagined representation that is misidentified by the subject as a belief. Tamar Szabó Gendler (2007) argues that in cases of delusions and self-deceptions, imaginings come to play a role in one’s cognitive architecture similar to that typically played by beliefs. Andy Egan (2008a) likewise argues that the mental states involved in delusions are both belief-like (in their connection to behaviors and inferences) and imagination-like (in their circumscription); however, he argues that these functional similarities suggest the need to posit an in-between attitude called “bimagination”.

3.4 Engagement with the Arts

There is an entrenched historical connection between imagination and the arts. David Hume and Immanuel Kant both invoke imagination centrally in their exploration of aesthetic phenomena (albeit in radically different ways; see entries on Hume’s aesthetics and Kant’s aesthetics ). R.G. Collingwood (1938) defines art as the imaginative expression of feeling (Wiltsher 2018; see entry on Collingwood’s aesthetics ). Roger Scruton (1974) develops a Wittgensteinian account of imagination and accords it a central role in aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment.

In contemporary philosophy, the most prominent theory of imagination’s role in engagement with the arts is presented in Kendall Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990). (Although Walton uses “fictions” as a technical term to refer to artworks, his conception of the arts is broad enough to include both high-brow and low-brow; popular and obscure; a variety of specific arts such as poetry and videogames; and—as Stacie Friend (2008) clarifies—both fictive and non-fictive works.) Walton’s core insight is that engagement with the arts is fundamentally similar to children’s games of make-believe. When one engages with an artwork, one uses it as a prop in a make-believe game. As props, artworks generate prescriptions for imaginings. These prescriptions also determine the representational contents of artworks (that is, “fictionality”, or what is true in a fictional world). When one correctly engages with an artwork, then, one imagines the representational contents as prescribed.

Out of all the arts, it is the engagement with narratives that philosophers have explored most closely in conjunction with imagination (see Stock 2013 for an overview). Gregory Currie (1990) offers an influential account of imagination and fiction, and Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen (1996) discuss literature specifically. Indeed, this research program—despite many criticisms of Walton’s specific theory—remains lively today (see, for example, papers in Nichols (ed.) 2006b). For example, Kathleen Stock (2017) argues that a specific kind of propositional imagination is essential for engagement with fictions. In dissent, Derek Matravers (2014) argues that, contra Walton, imagination is not essential for engagement with fictions.

Philosophers have also done much to articulate the connection between imagination and engagement with music (see the entry on philosophy of music ; see also Trivedi 2011). Some philosophers focus on commonalities between engagement with narratives and engagement with music. For example, even though Walton (1990, 1994a, 1999) acknowledges that fictional worlds of music are much more indeterminate than fictional worlds of narratives, he maintains that the same kind of imagining used in experiencing narratives is also used in experiencing various elements of music, such as imagining continuity between movements and imagining feeling musical tension. Similarly, Andrew Kania (2015) argues that experiencing musical space and movement is imaginative like our experience of fictional narratives. Other philosophers draw parallels between engagement with music and other imaginative activities, namely as understanding other minds ( section 3.1 ) and interpreting metaphor ( section 3.7 ). As an example of the former, Jerrold Levinson (1996) argues that the best explanation of musical expressiveness requires listeners to experience music imaginatively—specifically, imagining a persona expressing emotions through the music. As an example of the latter, Scruton (1997) argues that musical experience is informed by spatial concepts applied metaphorically, and so imaginative perception is necessary for musical understanding (but see Budd 2003 for a criticism; see also De Clercq 2007 and Kania 2015). Stephen Davies (2005, 2011) and Peter Kivy (2002) notably criticize the imaginative accounts of engagement with music on empirical and theoretical grounds.

Other imaginative accounts of engagement with the arts can be found in entries on philosophy of film and philosophy of dance . Indeed, imagination’s aesthetic significance extends beyond the arts; philosophical aestheticians have recognized the role of imagination in appreciating nature (Brady 1998) and in appreciating mundane objects, events, and activities (see the entry on aesthetics of the everyday ).

Philosophers have sought to clarify the role of imagination in engagement with the arts by focusing on a number of puzzles and paradoxes in the vicinity. The puzzle of imaginative resistance explores apparent limitations on what can be imagined during engagements with the arts and, relatedly, what can be made fictional in artworks. The paradox of emotional response to fictions (widely known as “paradox of fiction”) examines psychological and normative similarities between affective responses prompted by imaginings versus affective responses by reality-directed attitudes. The paradox of tragedy and the paradox of horror examine psychological and normative differences between affective responses prompted by imaginings versus affective responses by reality-directed attitudes. Finally, the puzzle of moral persuasion is concerned with real-world outputs of imaginative engagements with artworks; specifically, whether and how artworks can morally educate or corrupt. For more detail on each of these artistic phenomena, see the Supplement on Puzzles and Paradoxes of Imagination and the Arts .

The idea that imagination plays a central role in creative processes can be traced back to Immanuel Kant ( Critique of Pure Reason ), who takes artistic geniuses as paradigmatic examples of creativity. On Kant’s account, when imagination aims at the aesthetic, it is allowed to engage in free play beyond the understanding available to oneself. The unconstrained imagination can thereby take raw materials and produce outputs that transcend concepts that one possesses.

While the precise characterization of creativity remains controversial (see Gaut & Kieran (eds.) 2018; Paul & Kaufman (eds.) 2014), contemporary philosophers typically conceive of it more broadly than Kant did. In addition to creative processes in the aesthetic realm, they also consider creative processes in, for example, “science, craft, business, technology, organizational life and everyday activities” (Gaut 2010: 1034; see also Stokes 2011). As an example, Michael Polanyi (1966) gives imagination a central role in the creative endeavor of scientific discovery, by refining and narrowing the solution space to open-ended scientific problems (see Stokes 2016: 252–256). And, in addition to creative processes of geniuses, contemporary philosophers also consider creative processes of ordinary people.

With this broadened scope, contemporary philosophers have followed Kant’s lead in exploring the role of imagination in creativity (see Stokes 2016 for an overview). Berys Gaut (2003) and Dustin Stokes (2014) argue that two characteristic features of imagination—its lack of aim at truth and its dissociation from action—make it especially suitable for creative processes. Peter Carruthers (2002) argues that the same cognitive resources, including imagination, underlie children’s pretend play and adults’ creative thinking. Specifically, Carruthers hypothesizes that children’s play evolutionarily developed as precursors to and practices for adults’ creative thinking.

There are two points of disagreement regarding the role of imagination in creative processes. First, philosophers disagree about the nature and the strength of the connection between imagination and creativity. Kant takes imagination to be constitutive of creativity: what makes a creative process creative is the involvement of imagination aiming at the aesthetic (see also A. Hills & Bird forthcoming). Gaut and Stokes, by contrast, thinks there is only an imperfect causal connection between imagination and creativity: while imagination is useful for creative processes, there are creative processes that do not involve imagination and there are imaginings that are uncreative (see also Beaney 2005). Second, philosophers disagree about the type of imagination involved in creative processes. By hypothesizing a common evolutionary cause, Carruthers suggests that the same imaginative capacity is involved in pretense and in creativity. By contrast, perhaps echoing Kant’s distinction of productive versus reproductive imagination, Currie and Ravenscroft (2002) sharply distinguish recreative imagination, which is involved in pretense and mindreading, from creative imagination.

Imagination plays a role in the acquisition of knowledge. Many philosophical arguments call on imagination when they appeal to metaphysical modal knowledge (see the entry on epistemology of modality ; the papers collected in Gendler & Hawthorne (eds.) 2002; and Kung 2016 and Strohminger & Yli-Vakkuri 2017 for overviews). The kind of thought experiments that are regularly used in scientific theorizing is also plausibly premised on imaginative capacities (see the entry on thought experiments ). As already discussed, people use imagination to understand the perspectives of others ( section 3.1 ). Moreover, people often make decisions via thinking about counterfactuals, or what would happen if things had been different from how they in fact are (see the entries on causation and counterfactual conditionals ). However, the phenomenon of transformative experience has recently called into question which kind of imaginary scenarios are truly epistemically accessible. (For a representative collection of papers that explore different epistemic roles of imagination, see Kind & Kung (eds.) 2016a.)

Broadly speaking, thought experiments use imaginary scenarios to elicit responses that (ideally) grant people knowledge of possibilities. A special, but prominent, type of thought experiment in philosophy concerns the link between imagination, conceivability, and metaphysical possibility. René Descartes famously offered a modal argument in the Sixth Meditation , reasoning from the fact that he could clearly and distinctly conceive of his mind and body as distinct to the real distinctness between them. The current prevalence of similar modal arguments can be verified by entries on zombies and dualism . These modal arguments all rely, in some way, on the idea that what one can imagine functions as a fallible and defeasible guide to what is really possible in the broadest sense.

Pessimists, notably Peter Van Inwagen (1998: 70), doubt that imagination can give us an accurate understanding of scenarios that are “remote from the practical business of everyday life”, such as those called upon in philosophical modal arguments. Optimists typically take it as a given that there is some connection between imagination and metaphysical modal knowledge, but focus on understanding where the connection is imperfect, such as when one (apparently) imagines the impossible. To just give a few examples, Saul Kripke (1972 [1980]), Stephen Yablo (1993), David Chalmers (2002), Dominic Gregory (2004), Timothy Williamson (2007, 2016), Peter Kung (2010), and Magdalena Balcerak Jackson (2018) have each developed a distinctive approach to this task. For example, Kripke adopts a redescription approach to modeling (some) modal errors: in some cases where one is apparently imagining the impossible, one is in fact imagining a possible scenario but misconstruing it as an impossible one. On this diagnosis, in such cases, the error resides not with imaginative capacities, but with the capacity to describe one’s own imaginings.

Other thought experiments are scoped more narrowly; for example, scientific thought experiments are intended to allow people to explore nomic possibilities. Galileo ( On Motion ) famously offered a thought experiment that disproved Aristotle’s theory of motion, which predicts that heavier objects fall more quickly. In this thought experiment, Galileo asked people to imagine the falling of a composite of a light and heavy object versus the falling of the heavy object alone. When one runs the thought experiment—that is, when one elaborates on the starting point of this imaginary scenario—one notices an incoherence in Aristotle’s theory: on the one hand, it should predict that the composite would fall more slowly because the light object would slow down the heavy object; on the other hand, it should also predict that the composite would fall more quickly because the composite is heavier than the heavy object alone. While it is incontrovertible that imagination is central to thought experiments, debates remain on whether imagination can be invoked in the context of justification (Gendler 2000b; Williamson 2016) or only in the context of discovery (Norton 1991, 1996; Spaulding 2016).

The role of imagination in counterfactual reasoning—and, in particular, the question of what tends to be held constant when one contemplates counterfactual scenarios—has been explored in detail in recent philosophical and psychological works (Byrne 2005; Williamson 2005, 2007, 2016). Williamson suggests that

When we work out what would have happened if such-and-such had been the case, we frequently cannot do it without imagining such-and-such to be the case and letting things run. (2005: 19)

It is imagination that lets one move from counterfactuals’ antecedents to their consequents. Williamson (2016) argues that our imaginings have evolved to be suitably constrained, such that such counterfactual reasoning can confer knowledge. Indeed, he argues that if one were to be skeptical about gaining knowledge from such a hypothetical reasoning process, then one would be forced to be (implausibly) skeptical about much of ordinary reasoning about actuality. Developing an idea anticipated by Williamson (2007), Margot Strohminger and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri (forthcoming) argue that the same imaginative mechanisms that capable of producing metaphysical modal knowledge are also capable of producing knowledge of other restricted modalities, such as nomic and practical modality. In parallel, Amy Kind (2016c, 2018) argues that imaginings can confer knowledge when they are guided by reality-sensitive constraints, in a manner akin to computer simulations.

Thinking about counterfactuals is just one way that imagination can factor into mundane decision-making. Neil Van Leeuwen (2011, 2016a, 2016b) and Bence Nanay (2016a) have recently started to elaborate on the connection between imagination and actions via decision-making. Although neither authors focus on the epistemic status of imagination, their accounts of decision-making seem to suggest that imagination is used to gain practical knowledge about the probability and value of actions’ possible outcomes.

At the same time, the recently prominent discussion of transformative experiences calls into question the extent to which imagination can be epistemically useful for making life-altering decisions. L.A. Paul (2014, 2015, 2018; see also Jackson 1982, 1986; D. Lewis 1988) argues that some types of knowledge—especially de se knowledge concerning one’s values—are inaccessible by imaginings; only actual experiences can confer these types of knowledge. For example, one cannot really know whether one wants to become a parent without experiencing being a parent because parenthood itself can transform one’s values. If one cannot reasonably imagine oneself with radically different values, then plausibly one cannot appropriately imagine the values associated with the outcomes of one’s actions. As such, despite their epistemic worth in ordinary contexts, imaginings might not help in making life-altering decisions.

Finally, imagination might play a role in interpreting figurative language. The exact role ascribed to imagination varies greatly from theory to theory. In part, this variation arose from a longstanding debate in philosophy of language concerning the divide between literal and figurative language: while some imaginative theories of figurative language (such as Walton 1990) accept a strong divide, others (such as Lepore & Stone 2015) reject it. Although this controversy cannot be avoided entirely, it is worth reiterating that the present aim is only to highlight the possible role(s) that imagination might play in the psychology of irony, metaphor, and nearby linguistic phenomena.

Despite immense differences between them, numerous theories of irony have converged on the idea that interpreting irony involves imagination. Kendall Walton (1990) treats ironic and metaphoric speech as props in momentary games of make-believe. On Walton’s theory, imagination is central to understanding and interpreting such figurative speech. Herbert Clark and Richard Gerrig (1984) and Gregory Currie (2006) connect irony to pretense, but without further linking all cases of pretense to imaginative capacities. Elisabeth Camp (2012) similarly endorses a role for pretense in the interpretation of irony and the related case of sarcasm. Finally, this idea that interpreting irony involves imagination is corroborated by psychological research: irony recognition is difficult for neurodivergent individuals who lack imaginative capacities (Happé 1991)—specifically, in individuals with Asperger’s syndrome, who have deficits with meta-representation—and in individuals with schizophrenia, who have deficits with theory-of-mind (Langdon et al. 2002).

Again, despite immense differences between them, numerous theories of metaphor have also converged on the idea that interpreting metaphor involves imagination (see the entry on metaphor ). The first family of theories focus on imagination’s role in pretense. As mentioned earlier, Walton (1990) takes metaphors to be props in momentary games of make-believe. Walton (1993, 2000) and David Hills (1997) further develop this idea. (Importantly, Walton (1993) notes that interpretation of a metaphor may not involve actual imaginings, but only the recognition of the type of imaginings prescribed.) Andy Egan (2008b) extends the idea to account for idioms. These theories remain controversial: in particular, Camp (2009) and Catherine Wearing (2011) have offered forceful criticisms. The second family of theories focus on imagination’s role in providing novel perspectives. While Camp (2009) criticizes the first family of theories, she also acknowledges a role for imagination. On her account, pretense and metaphor typically involve distinct types of imaginings: pretense-imaginings allow one to access counterfactual content, but metaphor-imaginings allow one to re-interpret actual content from a novel perspective. Indeed Camp (2007) argues that the kind of imagination involved in interpreting metaphors is also used to interpret similes and juxtapositions. The third family of theories focus on imagination’s role in providing mental images. Paul Ricoeur (1978), Richard Moran (1989), and Robyn Carston (2010) all propose theories on which mental imagery plays an important role in processing metaphors. Outside of philosophy of language, James Grant (2011) argues that metaphors are prevalent in art criticism because they prompt readers’ imaginings.

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–––, 1994a, “Listening with Imagination: Is Music Representational?”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , 52(1): 47–61. doi:10.2307/431584
–––, 1994b, “Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes , 68: 27–50. doi:10.1093/aristoteliansupp/68.1.27
–––, 1997, “Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime: On Being Moved by Fiction”, in Hjort and Laver (eds.) 1997: 37–49.
–––, 1999, “Projectivism, Empathy, and Musical Tension”, Philosophical Topics , 26(1–2): 407–440. doi:10.5840/philtopics1999261/231
–––, 2000, “Existence as Metaphor?”, in Anthony Everett and Thomas Hofweber (eds.), Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence , Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, pp. 69–94.
–––, 2006, “On the (So-called) Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance”, in Nichols (ed.) 2006b: 137–148. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199275731.003.0008
Wearing, Catherine, 2011, “Metaphor, Idiom, and Pretense”, Noûs , 46(2): 1–26. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00819.x
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–––, 2006, “Puzzling Over the Imagination: Philosophical Problems, Architectural Solutions”, in Nichols (ed.) 2006b: 175–202. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199275731.003.0010
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

The Junkyard , a scholarly blog on imagination
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Imagery and Imagination
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Imagination
PhilPapers collection of papers on Imagination

Acknowledgments

No one can have an encyclopedic knowledge on a topic as vast as imagination. The previous iteration of the entry could not have existed without the help of Paul Bloom, David Chalmers, Gregory Currie, Tyler Doggett, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Shaun Nichols, Zoltán Gendler Szabó, Jonathan Weinberg, Ed Zalta, an anonymous referee, and—most of all—Aaron Norby. This iteration of the entry could not exist without the help of Tyler Doggett, Elisabeth Camp, Felipe De Brigard, Anna Ichino, Andrew Kania, Amy Kind, Peter Langland-Hassan, Aaron Meskin, Kengo Miyazono, Eric Peterson, Mark Phelan, Dustin Stokes, Margot Strohminger, Mike Stuart, Neil Van Leeuwen, Jonathan Weinberg, Nick Wiltsher, and two anonymous referees.

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What Is Sociological Imagination: Definition & Examples

Charlotte Nickerson

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Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

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The term sociological imagination describes the type of insight offered by sociology; connecting the problems of individuals to that of broader society.
C. Wright Mills, the originator of the term, contended that both sociologists and non-academics can develop a deep understanding of how the events of their own lives (their biography) relate to the history of their society. He outlined a list of methods through which both groups could do so.
Mills believed that American society suffered from the fundamental problems of alienation, moral insensibility, threats to democracy, threats to human freedom, and conflict between bureaucratic rationality and human reason, and that the development of the sociological imagination could counter these.

What is Sociological Imagination?

Sociological imagination, an idea that first emerged in C. Wright Mills’ book of the same name, is the ability to connect one’s personal challenges to larger social issues.

The sociological imagination is the ability to link the experience of individuals to the social processes and structures of the wider world.

It is this ability to examine the ways that individuals construct the social world and how the social world and how the social world impinges on the lives of individuals, which is the heart of the sociological enterprise.

This ability can be thought of as a framework for understanding social reality, and describes how sociology is relevant not just to sociologists, but to those seeking to understand and build empathy for the conditions of daily life.

When the sociological imagination is underdeveloped or absent in large groups of individuals for any number of reasons, Mills believed that fundamental social issues resulted.

Sociological Imagination Theory

C. Wright Mills established the concept of sociological imagination in the 20th century.

Mills believed that: “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” the daily lives of society’s members and the history of a society and its issues.

He referred to the problems that occur in everyday life, or biography, as troubles and the problems that occur in society, or history, as issues.

Mills ultimately created a framework intended to help individuals realize the relationship between personal experiences and greater society (Elwell, 2002).

Before Mill, sociologists tended to focus on understanding how sociological systems worked, rather than exploring individual issues. Mills, however, pointed out that these sociologists, functionalists chief among them, ignored the role of the individual within these systems.

In essence, Mills claimed in his book, The Sociological Imagination , that research had come to be guided more by the requirements of administrative concerns than by intellectual ones.

He critiqued sociology for focusing on accumulating facts that only served to facilitate the administrative decisions of, for example, governments.

Mills believed that, to truly fulfill the promise of social science, sociologists and laypeople alike had to focus on substantial, society-wide problems, and relate those problems to the structural and historical features of the society and culture that they navigated (Elwell, 2002).

Mills’ Guidelines for Social Scientists

In the appendix of The Sociological Imagination, Mills set forth several guidelines that would lead to “intellectual craftsmanship.” These are, paraphrased (Mills, 2000; Ellwell, 2002):

Scholars should not split work from life, because both work and life are in unity.

Scholars should keep a file, or a collection, of their own personal, professional, and intellectual experiences.

Scholars should engage in a continual review of their thoughts and experiences.

Scholars may find a truly bad sociological book to be as intellectually stimulating and conducive to thinking as a good one.

Scholars must have an attitude of playfulness toward phrases, words, and ideas, as well as a fierce drive to make sense of the world.

The sociological imagination is stimulated when someone assumes a willingness to view the world from the perspective of others.

Sociological investigators should not be afraid, in the preliminary and speculative stages of their research, to think in terms of imaginative extremes, and,

Scholars should not hesitate to express ideas in language that is as simple and direct as possible. Ideas are affected by how they are expressed. When sociological perspectives are expressed in deadening language, they create a deadened sociological imagination.

Mills’ Original Social Problems

Mills identified five main social problems in American society: alienation , moral insensibility, threats to democracy, threats to human freedom, and the conflict between bureaucratic rationality and human reason (Elwell, 2015).

1. Threats to Democracy and Freedom

The end result of these problems of alienation, political indifference, and the economic and political concentration of power, according to Mills, is a serious threat to democracy and freedom.

He believed that, as bureaucratic organizations became large and more centralized, more and more power would be placed into the hands of a small elite (Elwell, 2006).

2. Alienation

Mills believed that alienation is deeply rooted in how work itself works in society; however, unlike Marx, C. Wright Mills does not attribute alienation solely to the means of production, but to the modern division of labor .

Mills observed that, on the whole, jobs are broken up into simple, functional tasks with strict standards. Machines or unskilled workers take over the most tedious tasks (Elwell, 2002).

As the office was automated, Mills argued, authority and job autonomy became the attributes of only those highest in the work hierarchy. Most workers are discouraged from using their own judgment, and their decision-making forces them to comply with the strict rules handed down by others.

In this loss of autonomy, the average worker becomes alienated from their intellectual capacities and work becomes an enforced chore (Elwell, 2015).

3. Moral Insensibility

The second major problem that C. Wright Mills identified in modern American society was that of moral insensibility. He pointed out that, as people had lost faith in their leaders in government, religion, and the workplace, they became apathetic.

He considered this apathy a “spiritual condition” that underlined many problems — namely, moral insensibility. As a result of moral insensibility, people within society accept atrocities, such as genocide, committed by their leaders.

Mills considered the source of cruelty to be moral insensibility and, ultimately, the underdevelopment of the sociological imagination (Elwell, 2002).

4. Personal Troubles

Personal troubles are the issues that people experience within their own character, and in their immediate relationships with others. Mills believed that people function in their personal lives as actors and actresses who make choices about friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within their control.

As a result, people have some issue on the outcomes of events on a personal level. For example, an individual employee who spends most of his work time browsing social media or online shopping may lose their job. This is a personal problem.

However, hundreds of thousands of employees being laid-off en masse constitutes a larger social issue (Mills, 2000).

5. Social and Public Issues

Social and public issues, meanwhile, are beyond one”s personal control. These issues pertain to the organization and processes of society, rather than individuals. For example, universities may, as a whole, overcharge students for their education.

This may be the result of decades of competition and investment into each school”s administration and facilities, as well as the narrowing opportunities for those without a college degree.

In this situation, it becomes impossible for large segments of the population to get a tertiary education without accruing large and often debilitating amounts of debt (Mills, 2000).

The sociological imagination allows sociologists to distinguish between the personal and sociological aspects of problems in the lives of everyone.

Most personal problems are not exclusively personal issues; instead, they are influenced and affected by a variety of social norms, habits, and expectations. Indeed, there is often confusion as to what differentiates personal problems and social issues (Hironimus-Wendt & Wallace, 2009).

For example, a heroin addiction may be blamed on the reckless and impulsive choices of an addict. However, this approach fails to account for the societal factors and history that led to high rates of heroin addiction, such as the over-prescribing of opiate painkillers by doctors and the dysregulation of pharmaceutical companies in the United States.

Sociological imagination is useful for both sociologists and those encountering problems in their everyday lives. When people lack in sociological imagination, they become vulnerable to apathy: considering the beliefs, actions, and traditions around them to be natural and unavoidable.

This can cause moral insensitivity and ultimately the commitment of cruel and unjust acts by those guided not by their own consciousness, but the commands of an external body (Hironimus-Wendt & Wallace, 2009).

Fast Fashion

Say that someone is buying themselves a new shirt. Usually, the person buying the shirt would be concerned about their need for new clothing and factors such as the price, fabric, color, and cut of the shirt.

At a deeper level, the personal problem of buying a shirt may provoke someone to ask themselves what they are buying the shirt for, where they would wear it, and why they would participate in an activity where they would wear the shirt over instead of some other activity.

People answer these questions on a personal level through considering a number of different factors. For example, someone may think about how much they make, and how much they can budget for clothing, the stores available in the community, and the styles popular in one”s area (Joy et al., 2012).

On a larger level, however, the questions and answers to the question of what shirt to buy — or even if to buy a shirt at all — would differ if someone were provided a different context and circumstances.

For example, if someone had come into a sudden sum of wealth, they may choose to buy an expensive designer shirt or quit the job that required them to buy the shirt altogether. If someone had lived in a community with many consignment shops, they may be less likely to buy a new shirt and more likely to buy one that was pre-owned.

If there were a cultural dictate that required people to, say, cover their shoulders or breasts — or the opposite, someone may buy a more or less revealing shirt.

On an even higher level, buying a shirt also represents an opportunity to connect the consumption habits of individuals and groups to larger issues.

The lack of proximity of communities to used-clothing stores on a massive scale may encourage excessive consumption, leading to environmental waste in pollution. The competition between retailers to provide the cheapest and most fashionable shirts possible results in, as many have explored, the exploitation of garment workers in exporting countries and large amounts of co2 output due to shipping.

Although an individual can be blamed or not blamed for buying a shirt made more or less sustainably or ethically, a discussion of why an individual bought a certain shirt cannot be complete without a consideration of the larger factors that influence their buying patterns (Joy et al., 2012).

The “Global Economic Crisis”

Dinerstein, Schwartz, and Taylor (2014) used the 2008 economic crisis as a case study of the concept of sociological imagination, and how sociology and other social sciences had failed to adequately understand the crisis.

The 2008 global economic crisis led to millions of people around the world losing their jobs. On the smallest level, individuals were unable to sustain their lifestyles.

Someone who was laid off due to the economic downturn may have become unable to make their mortgage or car payments, leading to a bank foreclosing their house or repossessing their car.

This person may also be unable to afford groceries, need to turn to a food bank, or have credit card debt to feed themselves and their families. As a result, this person may damage their credit score, restricting them from, say, taking out a home ownership loan in the future.

The sociological imagination also examines issues like the great recession at a level beyond these personal problems. For example, a sociologist may look at how the crisis resulted from the accessibility of and increasing pressure to buy large and normally unaffordable homes in the United States.

Some sociologists, Dinerstein, Schwartz, and Taylor among them, even looked at the economic crisis as unveiling the social issue of how academics do sociology. For example, Dinerstein, Schwatz, and Taylor point out that the lived experience of the global economic crisis operated under gendered and racialized dynamics.

Many female immigrant domestic laborers, for example, lost their jobs in Europe and North America as a result of the crisis.

While the things that sociologists had been studying about these populations up until that point — migration and return — are significant, the crisis brought a renewed focus in sociology into investigating how the negative effects of neoliberal globalization and the multiple crises already impacting residents of the global South compound during recessions (Spitzer & Piper, 2014).

Bhambra, G. (2007). Rethinking modernity: Postcolonialism and the sociological imagination . Springer.

Dinerstein, A. C., Schwartz, G., & Taylor, G. (2014). Sociological imagination as social critique: Interrogating the ‘global economic crisis’. Sociology, 48 (5), 859-868.

Elwell, F. W. (2002). The Sociology of C. Wright Mills .

Elwell, F. W. (2015). Macrosociology: four modern theorists . Routledge.

Hironimus-Wendt, R. J., & Wallace, L. E. (2009). The sociological imagination and social responsibility. Teaching Sociology, 37 (1), 76-88.

Joy, A., Sherry Jr, J. F., Venkatesh, A., Wang, J., & Chan, R. (2012). Fast fashion, sustainability, and the ethical appeal of luxury brands. Fashion theory, 16 (3), 273-295.

Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination . Oxford University Press.

Spitzer, D. L., & Piper, N. (2014). Retrenched and returned: Filipino migrant workers during times of crisis. Sociology, 48 (5), 1007-1023.

How imagination can help people overcome fear and anxiety

Experimental Psychologist & Cognitive Neuroscientist, Coventry University

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Almost everyone has something they fear – maybe it’s spiders, enclosed spaces, or heights. When we encounter these “threats,” our hearts might begin to race, or our hands may become sweaty. This is called a threat fear response, and it exists to help us avoid potential pain.

Most of us only feel scared when a threat is present. But when the threat fear response happens even when a threat isn’t present, it can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), phobias, or anxiety. These disorders may often be treated using exposure therapy, but a new study found that something as simple as using your imagination can help people overcome fear.

Overcoming fear

Many fear-related disorders are treated using exposure therapy . This helps people “unlearn” a threat fear response by breaking the association between the “trigger” (an image or sound that causes the threat fear response) and harmful consequences of the threat, by presenting patients with the trigger but without the consequences.

For example, during therapy, soldiers with PTSD might listen to loud noises using headphones without actual exposure to a combat situation. Eventually, the person learns to separate the trigger from the expected threat outcome, and the threat fear response is reduced or eliminated.

However, exposure therapy can’t always be used for treatment, especially in cases where re-exposure could be overwhelming, or unethical (such as in cases of abuse). Some treatment methods, such as guided imagery (where therapists ask patients to form mental images to replace physical triggers), have been promising in treating fear disorders.

Imagination (the conscious simulation of something in our mind) allows patients to immerse themselves with a triggering stimulus in a controlled way, at their own pace, which is why it could be a promising new form of treatment.

How does imagination work?

Imagination is the mental simulation of things and events that are not currently being perceived. When we see the world, we construct a mental version of what we’re perceiving based on incoming sensory information and prior experience. These internal representations can become memories, or can be used to imagine future or fictitious scenarios.

Read more: Could we one day heal the mind by taking control of our dreams?

Imagination uses brain regions like the visual cortex and auditory cortex (which give our brain information from what our senses are experiencing or have experienced), and memory retrieval regions like the hippocampus (which help us use previous experiences to predict what might happen next). It uses a similar network of brain regions as perception and memory do.

Imagination and fear

When we encounter something we fear, we experience both a neural response (memory and sensory processing brain regions activate) and a physiological response to this potential threat, such as getting sweaty palms or a faster heartbeat. Imagining a threat stimulus activates emotional processes in response to the threat with a highly similar network of brain regions as when the threat stimulus is actually in front of us.

But because there’s no immediate danger when the threat is imagined, repeatedly imagining it will help detach the stimulus from the expected threat since none appears. This weakens the brain’s association between stimulus and expected outcome. As a consequence, it also reduces the neural and physiological effects that happen in response.

What researchers have found

In order to study the impact of using imagination as exposure therapy , researchers taught 66 participants to fear a relatively innocuous threat, by being administered a small electric shock upon hearing either a low or high tone. Participants were then divided into three groups.

The first group was given traditional exposure therapy, where they listened to the same sounds again, without receiving a shock. The second group was asked to imagine hearing the same sounds, also without receiving a shock. Finally, the third group just listened to bird songs and rain (also without the shock), to test the effectiveness of exposure and imagination treatment.

Afterwards, the researchers played the same sounds associated with the threat (electric shocks) to the participants. Researchers measured whether the brains of participants in each group showed a threat fear response using functional magnetic resonance imaging . They then used these measurements to compare which brain regions were activated during the tests – and how strong the response was – between the three groups.

The researchers found that using imagination to reduce threat fear response worked. When subjects were re-exposed to the threat, both their threat-related brain activity and physiological responses were reduced. These reductions were equally effective as those of the exposure therapy group. The third control group that listened to bird songs and rain still had the same threat fear response upon re-exposure.

The future of treatment

This isn’t the only research that shows imagination can have similar effects to the real thing. For example, merely imagining situations has been used to increase happiness , help people feel more connected to significant others, and increase trust in strangers. What’s more, imagination can be trained .

The possibilities for cognitive therapies using imagination are seemingly endless. And since it’s a low-cost procedure (in terms of time, money, and risky outcomes), we look forward to seeing these interventions further developed and integrated into current therapies.

However, you shouldn’t attempt imagination and guided imagery therapy on your own. Always follow the advice and guidance of professional medical experts. There is some evidence that using imagination in the case of uncertain memories of abuse can lead to distorted, false memories and increased negative symptoms.

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Summary. The term sociological imagination describes the type of insight offered by sociology; connecting the problems of individuals to that of broader society. C. Wright Mills, the originator of the term, contended that both sociologists and non-academics can develop a deep understanding of how the events of their own lives (their biography ...
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What are descriptive essays?

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Elements of a great descriptive essay

Clear organization

Introduction: A captivating hook

Body: Full of specifics and adjectives

Conclusion: Reminding readers of the meaning

Steps to writing a great descriptive essay

2) Observe the details

3) Understand why your place is important

4) Outline and organize your writing

5) Start with the introduction

6) Write the body in free-flow style

7) Revise the body of your essay

8) Finish your essay strong

9) Proofread your work

Final words of wisdom

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Stuck with writing?

About The Author

How to describe an imaginary place or strange land

Start with a Map

Set Your Imagination Loose

Create Your World

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Examples of Descriptive Essay About Any Place

Tips for Writing an Excellent Descriptive Essay About A Place

Choose The Right Topic

Gather Information

Structure Your Essay

Include Sensory Details

Use Vivid Language

Proofread Your Essay

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Writing a Descriptive Essay Is a 6-Step Process

Step 2. Pick an audience

Step 3. Divide the subject into subtopics

Step 4. Write the introduction

Step 5. Write the body of the essay

Step 6. Write the conclusion

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