Imagery essentialism is the philosophical position that only mental states that involve sensory imagination, that is, the (quasi-)sensory experience of imagery content, should qualify as imagination (Gregory, 2016; Kind, 2001). An implication of this position is that people with global aphantasia, i.e., people who are unable to use sensory imagination in all sense modalities (Zeman et al., 2025), would be labeled as being incapable of imagination. I will argue that this implication is so undesirable that it should make us reconsider imagery essentialism. Furthermore, by drawing inspiration from the works of Ryle and Wittgenstein, as well as discussing recent experimental results from aphantasia research, I will propose a competency-based account of imagination, which, albeit not going fully ‘imageless’, aims to loosen the grip that imagery (experience) currently exerts on the concept of imagination.

Keywords: imagination, imagery, imagery essentialism, aphantasia

References:

Gregory, D. (2016). Imagination and mental imagery. In A. Kind (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of philosophy of imagination (pp. 97–110). Routledge.

Kind, A. (2001). Putting the image back in imagination. Philosophy and phenomenological research, 62(1), 85-109.

Zeman, A., Monzel, M., Pearson, J., Scholz, C. O., & Simner, J. (2025). Aphantasia. Cortex, 182, 212-213.