From prediction to imagination

Abstract

This contribution explores how the predictive processing framework could be employed to explain imagination. At first sight, this framework seems well suited to explaining imagination, since a wide range of mental processes, such as perception and action, are seen as employing imagination-like generative processes. However, it faces problems with explaining distinctively deliberate, voluntary, and purposeful acts of imagination where agents aim to generate content that departs from immediate reality. In order to explain imagination of this kind, more work is needed. We suggest that one clue might lie in understanding the role of language plays in shaping and cueing imaginative episodes.