Imagination and Social Perspectives

<p>Our experience of other individuals as minded beings goes hand in hand with the awareness that they have a unique epistemic and emotional perspective on the experienced objects and situations. The same object can be seen from many different points of view, an event can awaken different emotional reactions in different individuals, and our position-takings can in part be mediated by our belonging to some social or cultural groups. All these phenomena can be described by referring to the metaphor of perspective. Assuming that there are different, and irreducible, perspectives we can take on the experienced world, and on others as experiencing the same world, the phenomenon of mutual understanding can consistently be understood in terms of perspectival flexibility. This edited volume investigates the different processes in which perspectival flexibility occurs in social life and particularly focuses on the constitutive role of imagination in such processes. It includes original works in philosophy and psychopathology showing how perspectival flexibility and social cognition are grounded on the interplay of direct perception and imagination.</p> <p>1. Imagination and Social Perspectives. Approaches from Phenomenology and Psychopathology</p><p><i>Michela Summa, Thomas Fuchs, and Luca Vanzago</i></p><p><b>Section I: Imagination and the As-If: Experiencing Multiple Realities </b></p><p>2. Imagining Oneself </p><p><i>Andrea Altobrando</i></p><p>3. Experiencing Reality and Fiction: Discontinuity and Permeability</p><p><i>Michela Summa</i></p><p>4. As-if I Were You: Imagining the Other in Aesthetic Experience from Kant to Husserl</p><p><i>Serena Feloj</i></p><p><b>Section II: Imagination and Intersubjectivity in Psychopathology</b> </p><p>5. The "As-if" Function and Its Loss in Schizophrenia </p><p><i>Thomas Fuchs</i></p><p>6. Intersubjective Expression in Autism and Schizophrenia</p><p><i>Till Grohmann</i></p><p>7. The Phenomenology of Intersubjective Reality in Schizophrenia</p><p><i>Zeno Van Duppen</i></p><p><b>Section III: Imagination and the Experience of Others</b></p><p>8. Spinoza on the Role of Feelings, Imagination and Knowledge in Sex, Love, and Social Life</p><p><i>Rudolf Bernet</i></p><p>9. Sartre and the Role of Imagination in Mutual Understanding</p><p><i>Jens Bonnermann</i></p><p>10. Intersubjectivity and Imagination. On Merleau-Ponty’s Conception of Intercorporeality as Foundation of Community</p><p><i>Luca Vanzago</i></p><p>11. The Minded Other and the Work of the Imagination</p><p><i>Anita Avramides</i></p><p>12. Empathy without Simulation</p><p><i>Matthew Ratcliffe</i></p><p><b>Section IV: The Sociality of Imagination</b></p><p>13. Collective Imagination: A Normative Account </p><p><i>Thomas Szanto</i></p><p>14. Shared imagining: Beyond extension, distribution, and commitment</p><p><i>Julia Jansen</i></p><p>15. Beyond the Dichotomy of "Social Direct Perception" and "Simulation Theory". Scheler’s Account of Social Cognition Revisited</p><p><i>Emanuele Caminada</i></p><p><b>Section V. Aesthetic, Ethical, and Socio-Political Grounds of Perspective-Taking</b></p><p>16. We-Perspective on Aesthetic Grounds: Gemeinsinn and Übereinstimmung in Kant and Wittgenstein</p><p><i>Silvana Borutti</i></p><p>17. Social Perspectivity. From the Anonymous Social Order to Individual and Social Awareness</p><p><i>Karl Mertens</i></p><p>18. The Ethico-Political Turn of Phenomenology. Reflections on Otherness in Husserl and Levinas</p><p><i>Matthias Flatscher and Sergej Seitz</i></p>