I offer a theory of art that is based on science. I maintain that, as any other human activity, art can be studied with the tools of science. This does not mean that art is scientific, but aesthetics, the theory of art, can be formulated in accord with our scientific knowledge. I present elucidations of the concepts of aesthetic experience, art, work of art, artistic movement, and I discuss the ontological status of artworks from the point of view of scientific (...) philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency, mind-wandering is not—though this does not mean that mind-wandering cannot involve mental agency at (...) all. This personal-level difference in agency and purposiveness has, furthermore, the consequence that instances of mind-wandering do not constitute unified and self-contained segments of the stream of consciousness—in stark contrast to focused daydreams. Besides, the two kinds of mental phenomena differ in whether they possess a narrative structure, and in how we may make sense of the succession of mental episodes involved. (shrink)

The principal aim of my thesis is to provide a unified theory of imagining, that is, a theory which aspires to capture the common nature of all central forms of imagining and to distinguish them from all paradigm instances of non-imaginative phenomena. The theory which I intend to put forward is a version of what I call the Agency Account of imagining and, accordingly, treats imaginings as mental actions of a certain kind. More precisely, it maintains that imaginings are mental (...) actions that aim at the formation of episodic representations, the content of which is directly determined by what we want them to represent. My defence of this version of the Agency Account happens in two stages. On the one hand, I try to show that it is both extensionally adequate and explanatorily illuminating with respect to those mental states or projects which are clear instances of either imaginative or non- imaginative phenomena. And on the other hand, I seek to demonstrate that the most plausible alternative to the Agency Account - namely the Cognitive Account according to which it is distinctive of imaginings that they are non-cognitive phenomena and thus to be contrasted with perceptions, judgements, and so on - is bound to fail as a unified theory of imagining. The dissertation contains five main parts. In the first, I specify in more detail what a unified account of imagining has to achieve and, in particular, which phenomena it is supposed to capture. The second part presents the Cognitive Account, thereby focussing on Brian O'Shaughnessy's sophisticated version of it while the third part is reserved for the evaluation and rejection of the Cognitive Account. In the fourth part, I develop my version of the Agency Account of imagining. And the fifth and last part is concerned with the accommodation of potential counterexamples to it. (shrink)