How big is a trillion? Grasping really big numbers is hard, but this week at The Junkyard Ansley Avis discusses how we can use imagination "to make these numbers more meaningful and clear for ourselves and others."

Dorothy Wade discusses her research into facets of the imagination that emerge in altered states of consciousness, research that she hopes will lead to new therapies for patients with delirium and thereby help them to cope "with the disturbing experience of the imagination going wild."

In this week's post at The Junkyard, Joshua Myers and Johannes Mahr argue that episodic construction is fundamentally compositional in nature, and they offer reasons that their Episodic Compositionality view is more plausible than an associationist alternative.

In this week's Junkyard post, Eric Peterson explores the connection between imagination and interpersonal knowledge; in doing so, he offers reasons to think that imagination might indeed have a unique epistemic end (contra some claims by Nick Wiltsher in a previous post on the blog).

Happy World Philosophy Day! The current presidents and past presidents of the APA Divisions will match up to $3,000 in donations that the APA receives today, November 20. Double your impact with a gift to the APA. Donate now: apaonline.org/donate

Ready to start thinking about summer? ☀️ Issues in Philosophy of Memory 5 is headed to Purdue June 10-12, 2026 Keynote lineup is 🔥🔥🔥. Come join us! Call for papers is live. 750 word abstracts, on any philosophical topic related to memory. Submit by Dec 20th!

Raquel Krempel discusses her work aiming to better understand aphantasic experience. This draws on studies she conducted (w/ collaborators) that compared aphantasics and controls when they were asked to describe their experiences trying to imagine and trying to remember something.

In this week's Junkyard post, Julia Minarik offers reasons to think that "machine-made images have less content than images created by human hands."

In this week's Junkyard post, Jianghao Liu attempts to bridge empirical neuroscience and philosophical accounts of imagination and awareness by defending what he calls *the attention model* of aphantasia.

This week at The Junkyard, Maria Fedorova explores the nature of psychedelic visions and argues that they are immersive mental simulations. "quasi-perceptual in terms of their phenomenology and imaginative with respect to their cognitive origin."

This week at The Junkyard, Luke Roelofs asks: What exactly do we do when we leave something to the imagination? And what is the “imagination” that things are being left to?

Sheila Pontis on how to harness the power of imagination to improve emotional well-being.

In this week's post at The Junkyard, Edvard Aviles-Meza argues that imaginative experience plays an important role in determining whether phenomenal consciousness overflows attention.

Noting the diversity of strategies that we use in empathizing with others, Sarah Vernallis argues that the roles of imagination in empathy are more varied than the standard story allows.

How can we learn through play? According to Lucia Oliveri, our learning owes to imagination. In her post for The Junkyard, she presents an argument for this claim inspired by the work of Comenius and Leibniz.

Niklas Maranca discusses his work to develop imagination games – formats that integrate perception, imagination, and reflection – towards the goal of showing how imaginative processes can be practiced, observed, and investigated in a structured yet experiential way.

Seth Goldwasser reviews Melz Owusu's *Undisciplined* -- a book that calls upon the need for radical imagination as part of its argument for the abolishment of academia as an institution.

The Junkyard returns from its summer hiatus with a post from Mark Windsor and Jakub Stejskal on the archaeological sublime and the imaginative failure it involves.

APA Pacific 2026 paper submissions are open with two new options: workshops for structured discussion of in-progress work, and lightning sessions for testing out new ideas. Colloquium and symposium options are still available as well! Submit a paper today. papers.apaonline.org

Call for Abstracts Workshop: Creative Imagination from Art to Science University of Geneva, September 29–30, 2025 Organizers: Julia Langkau and Amy Kind

Eric Peterson on the mutual reinforcement of value between imagination and free speech

I'm Dr. Annie Andrews. I’m a pediatrician, not a politician. But either way I know how to handle people who are full of sh*t. Today I am announcing my campaign for US Senate to replace Lindsey Graham. Share this if you're with me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8wM...

Come join me at the WCA in Edmonton this fall! philevents.org/event/show/1...

Felipe Morales Carbonell on imagining how, epistemic friction, and epistemic freedom

Congratulations to Dustin Locke of Claremont McKenna College, winner of the 2024 Anthony J. Lisska Prize! www.apaonline.org/page/2025pri...

Brendan Bo O'Connor reports on recent work from his lab that sheds light on the question of how co-imagining a shared future with someone else might influence social connection, and also how it might shape the phenomenology and content of what is imagined.

Tom Schoonen raises a worry for the truth-conditional condition of one prominent logic of imagination, Berto’s two-component semantics.

Cassi Vieten on how imagination can heal our relationship to the past and can also help us build a better future.

Nick Wiltsher takes a stand against the claim that imagination is valuable as a way of achieving epistemic ends; in his view, "the value of epistemic imagining must have to do with the fact that one is using imagination to pursue epistemic ends; the value inheres in the process, not in the product."

Caterina Moruzzi makes that case that imagining the future of our creative interactions with AI technologies is crucially important for proactively anticipating the transformative impact of these emerging technologies on creative education and professional practice.

Heidi Maibom and Kyle Furlane on how empathy can bring about a gestalt shift -- and more specifically, a gestalt shift that is a shift in moral orientation.

How can we achieve understanding across polarized gaps? Shannon Spaulding raises some worries for the suggestion that we should do so not by way of empathy but by way of trust.

Happy birthday to The Junkyard! It's hard for me to believe that we've been doing this for eight years, and I definitely didn't realize what I was getting myself into when it all started, but I'm so happy I decided to give it a go. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of the blog thus far!

Radu Bumbăcea on mind-reading, privacy, and virtue

Please take action to support the NEH!

In this exploration of AI creativity, Catherine Wearing explores whether we can characterize the products of generative AI as creative even if we deny that generative AI itself is creative. (Spoiler alert: Her answer is no.)

Steve Humbert-Droz argues that we can see some important connections between imagination and intelligence by looking at the debates over their definition and scope.

Katia Franco argues that exercising our imagination can help us be more honest with ourselves and thereby put us in a better position to avoid self-deception.

Zuzanna Rucińska argues that self-gaslighting is possible and that imagination plays a key role in the process.

Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa at The Junkyard on how Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz might inform contemporary debates in philosophy of mind concerning concepts and their amodal/multimodal nature.

This week at The Junkyard, we’re hosting a symposium on Rob Hopkins’ recent book: The Profile of Imagining (Oxford University Press, 2024). Today is a commentary from Margot Strohminger. junkyardofthemind.com/blog/2025/2/...

Josh Myers focuses his commentary on Rob Hopkins' *The Profile of Imagining* on the Inference Model, according to which we gain knowledge from imagination by moving between imaginings in systematic ways.

As part of The Junkyard's book symposium this week on Rob Hopkins' *The Profile of Imagining*, Seth Goldwasser explores some worries arising from the way that Hopkins characterizes spontaneity.

Rob Hopkins lays out the view he defends in *The Profile of Imagining*: "The differences between imagining and perceiving, both phenomenological and functional, are far more striking than the similarities. Overall, sensory imagining is closer to thinking than perceiving."

This week's Junkyard post provides a brief overview of a new 5 year project that aims to explore ancient conceptions of the cognitive roles of imagination through the lens of recent contemporary work on imagination.

Alfredo Vernazzani on how culture shapes our imagination, this week at The Junkyard @the-junkyard.bsky.social

The Junkyard is back! In this first post of 2025, Honey Jernquist explores where imagination is (or, at least, where we think it is...)

Super excited about this! Many thanks to the APA for this recognition of the Gould Center!

Philosophers... Often our use of terms diverges from the way empirical researchers use similar terms. Can anyone point me to papers discussing this? I'd love cites to arguments addressing what should be done in such cases - is it incumbent on us to try to conform our usage to theirs? Why/why not?

Merel Semeijn on lies, hoaxes, and Santa Claus