'The Discipline of Imaginology': a critique

I have just read an interesting article by Stephen T Asma, Professor of Philosophy and cofounder of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture at Columbia College Chicago. It is entitled Imaginology, and in it he advocates "a new kind of approach to learning that shifts imagination from the periphery to the foundation of all knowledge."

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Asma argues that the present intellectual landscape is defined by a profound and widening schism, a structural divide between the empirical rigour of the sciences and the subjective depth of the humanities. He believes that this threatens the very foundations of cohesive discourse. He goes on to claim that this division is not merely an academic concern but a societal one, marking a deep chasm between facts and values, reason and emotion, and the objective world versus the felt experience.

His essay serves as a powerful and timely manifesto against academic fragmentation. He identifies how this separation has corroded both our educational systems and our public conversations. His diagnosis is not a dry theoretical exercise; it is vividly grounded in the ethical blind spots of modern technocracy and in the ancient, universal grammar of human expression found in the arts. To repair this perceived breach, he proposes a radical reconception of imagination, positioning it not as a peripheral artistic luxury, but as the central, embodied, world-making engine of all human cognition. His thesis reminds me of how I have lectured students about the faculty of consciousness and how this has enabled homo sapiens, unlike any animals (as far as we know), to consciously anticipate and recollect their experiences. However, while the vision is stirring and the synthesis of philosophy and cognitive science is rich, the transition from a rallying cry to a functional academic discipline requires a much deeper engagement with existing research, a resolution of the paradoxes regarding artificial intelligence, and a concrete strategy for institutional implementation that moves beyond assertive certainty.

A primary tension within the manifesto is the author’s insistence that the mythopoetic mind is a forgotten relic, a casualty of a cold, computational age. While this narrative provides a compelling rhetorical frame, it tends to overlook a half-century of robust, ongoing work that has already begun mapping the very territory the author claims is uncharted. Since the late 20th century, the affective turn in the social sciences has challenged the hegemony of pure rationalism. Fields such as cognitive linguistics have spent decades arguing that human reason is fundamentally metaphorical and inextricably tied to physical, bodily experiences. Proponents of embodied cognition suggest that our conceptual systems grow out of our sensory-motor activities, meaning that reason is never truly separate from the imagination that structures our perception of the world; echoing the work, for example, of Daniel Kahneman, one of the main people responsible for a scientific revelation that humans are not rational beings; rather, he and his colleague Amos Tversky proposed that we are susceptible to a host of heuristics and biases—mental tricks that cloud our daily judgments and decision-making abilities.

Kahneman popularised in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, the theory that divides human cognition into two distinct modes: System 1 (fast, automatic, intuitive) and System 2 (slow, analytical, effortful). System 1 operates constantly with little effort, while System 2 handles complex tasks but is lazy and tires easily; or put it another way, emotion, because it is spontaneous and 'easy' rather than rationality, which can be hard and draining, governs most human decisions. Similarly, much modern narrative psychology has demonstrated that human beings do not process reality through raw logical propositions, but through story-shaped frameworks that provide meaning to data. By framing his essay as a lone voice in the wilderness, Asma misses a vital opportunity to align with these established allies. For a new field like Imaginology to gain academic traction, it must acknowledge these foundations, transforming from a solitary provocation into a sophisticated synthesis of existing intellectual currents.

I believe this lack of grounding leads to a secondary issue regarding the theoretical elasticity of the term imagination itself. As the essay attempts to elevate imagination to a central epistemological category, it falls victim to what might be described as 'conceptual bloat'. By stretching the definition of imagination to encompass activities as disparate as complex surgery, the intimacy of lovemaking, and the technical reconfiguration of code, the term begins to lose its specific diagnostic power. If every coordinated human action or empathetic impulse is classified as imagination, the word becomes a theory of everything, which in rigorous discourse often functions as a theory of nothing.

To survive as a discipline, Imaginology must establish clear taxonomic boundaries. A necessary distinction must be made between primary imagination—the subconscious, embodied way we perceive and structure the world—and secondary imagination, which involves the conscious, creative act of thinking otherwise. Without this hierarchy, the discipline lacks the diagnostic tools required to study specific cognitive failures. Refining these definitions ensures that imagination is viewed not as a vague, mystical force, but as a structured biological process that can be analysed, taught, and measured within a curriculum.

Asma’s treatment of artificial intelligence reveals a particularly thorny philosophical knot that requires urgent resolution. The author initially defines imagination as a combinatorial system—the ability to take existing patterns and reconfigure them into novel possibilities. Under this functionalist definition, generative neural networks and large language models represent the ultimate expression of imagination, yet the author quickly shifts the goalposts. The manifesto asserts that because AI lacks a biological body and skin in the game—the physical vulnerability and existential risk inherent to life—it cannot truly imagine. This creates a glaring paradox that the author fails to address directly. If imagination is a pattern-based cognitive engine, then AI’s lack of a soul is irrelevant to its imaginative output. If, however, imagination requires phenomenological experience and a biological substrate, then the author’s earlier, more scientific definitions are insufficient.

To resolve this AI paradox, the author must move toward an enactive view of cognition, which posits that imagination is not just the shuffling of symbols, but a strategy for survival used by biological organisms to navigate an environment that can cause them actual harm. It is an evolutionary adaptation that has promoted the survival of the species. An AI does not imagine a chair because it has no body to tire; it merely predicts the linguistic or visual tokens associated with the concept. Human imagination, conversely, is guided by affordances, which are the physical possibilities offered by the world to a specific, vulnerable body - for our ancestors, it was the avoidance of becoming lunch for some predator. By defining imagination as an existential necessity born of physical stakes, I can argue that AI offers only a disembodied mimicry of the faculty, whereas humans engage in embodied world-making. This distinction would give Imaginology a more rigorous edge, allowing it to coexist with AI research while clearly defining what makes human thought unique, transforming the argument from a defensive stance against technology into a sophisticated inquiry into the nature of life itself.

The transition from a stirring manifesto to a concrete reality also requires navigating the deeply siloed nature of modern universities. Establishing a new department is not merely an intellectual exercise; it is a political and economic battle. The author’s proposed five-point research program is a start, but it fails to address the practical envy of the hard sciences or the gruelling competition for what always seems to be dwindling funding. To move beyond a dream, Imaginology must define its own metrics of success and explain what an experiment in imagination actually looks like. The first pillar of such a program should focus on the phenomenology of embodied simulation, mapping how mental imagery is rooted in motor-sensory pathways.

This would involve the proof that imagination is a dress rehearsal for physical action, which would distinguish human world-making from the static data processing of machines. The second area of inquiry must centre on existential intentionality and risk, studying the relationship between creativity and survival to explore how imagination is sharpened by biological stakes like fear and mortality. Furthermore, the program must address narrative affordance and social world-making by investigating how collective imagination creates the invisible structures of society, such as laws and economies. By studying how groups synchronise their imaginative frameworks, Imaginology can bridge the gap between individual psychology and macro-sociology.

The fourth pillar should involve developmental mythopoetics, focusing on how a child’s physical interaction with the world—climbing, falling, and tactile play—serves as the foundation for metaphorical thinking later in life. Finally, the programme must establish a clinical and applied branch to investigate how imagination deficits contribute to modern crises like burnout and polarisation. This would turn the theoretical into the practical, providing the how-to for institutional reform and turning the manifesto into a measurable set of pedagogical tools that can be implemented in schools and corporations alike.

Ultimately, Asma's essay is a passionate and stimulating work that, I would suggest, exposes a critical flaw in our intellectual culture and offers a provocative vision for its repair. Its greatest success lies in resurrecting imagination as a serious epistemological category, moving it from the fringes of art criticism to the centre of cognitive science. However, the vision remains partially unrealised, leaning more on assertive certainty than on a thorough grappling with deep-seated objections or the difficult realities of implementation. It functions as an excellent and necessary provocation—a compelling map of a desirable destination—, but a map is not the territory itself.

The arduous task of building a bridge across the described chasm will require a more direct engagement with the intellectual currents it dismisses and a clearer understanding of the institutional realities it must inevitably navigate. Only by refining its definitions and embracing its academic precursors can Imaginology move from a rallying cry to a transformative reality, finally closing the gap between the world we measure and the world we imagine.