Imagination as a reflection of value-commitment

• Main Author: Edward Eugene Kleist
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2007-01-01
• Series: Ethic@: an International Journal for Moral Philosophy
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/ethic/article/view/17445

<div>Hume remarked on how our moral value-commitments set limits for what we are willing to imagine.&nbsp;Moral values also guide imagination when we envision variant scenarios and options for action.&nbsp;How do values reveal themselves through imagining? What does the manner through which values</div><div>appear tell us about the nature of values? Imagination furnishes a non-perceptual manner of arriving&nbsp;at moral determinations anchored to the irreducibly first-person experience of moral approval and&nbsp;disapproval. The commitment to one&rsquo;s values, surviving through every willingly imagined alteration&nbsp;of perspective, indicates a subjective necessity to values. At the same time, the values leaving their</div><div>trace in what we imagine, direct imagination to furnish reasons which necessitate belief and action.&nbsp;This subjective necessity generates an ideal of affective moral consistency and a criterion of suitability&nbsp;for proposed action.</div>