# IMAGINATION- A LENS, NOT A MIRROR Nick Wiltsher **Abstract:** , general ways of thinking can still suggest substantial positions. Take the careworn conception of the ontologist’s task as “carving nature at the joints”. This metaphor suggests that (for example) the atomic parts of nature, rather than the connective tissue or the whole, are ontologically most interesting; that nature is inert and ready for dissection, and thus that its fluidity or vitality is not ontologically fundamental to it; and so forth. A different metaphor would suggest different commitments (perhaps ontologists should be botanists, not butchers). Likewise, general and abstract ways of thinking about imagination can nonetheless suggest substantial and competing commitments. The commitments we might compare can be established via attention to the distinction between explananda and explanans implied by the distinction between descriptive and explanatory lumping. In fact, this is a threefold distinction among imaginative phenomena. First, there are imaginative activities or projects: things we might try to do by imagining, such as considering possibilities, appreciating art, or identifying with others. Second, there are imaginative experiences: distinctively imaginative mental states or acts, such as visualizations, that can be employed in imaginative projects. Third, the imaginative attitude(s): the particular intentional attitude(s) distinctive of imaginative experiences.7 7. I’m assuming that experiences consist in an attitude, and a content picking out an intentio **Authors:** [[IMAGINATION: A]]