AIM Framework glossary
Imagination
Canonical definition
Imagination is the generative operation of Conscious Cognition, the operation by which a candidate Hypothesis is constructed from Knowledge held in the Memory Store and delivered into the representable Hypothesis Space . Imagination scores nothing; the first probability a constructed Hypothesis carries is one Ground-Resolution has assigned it. It is recruited by an open question, which may be presented or set. Where the Belief Register holds no posterior adequate to an Object, whether that Object is one the perceptual field supplies or one the Individual has assembled from the Memory Store and set as a question, or where the context diverges from what the stored posterior predicted, the absence of an adequate Hypothesis is itself the activation condition, and the search for one is what Imagination performs. Recruitment may be endogenous as well as exogenous. Its reach is bounded by the Memory Store, a Hypothesis whose constituent Knowledge is absent from the Memory Store cannot be assembled and is unavailable rather than improbable. Creative counterfactual engagement, where the constructed Hypothesis is not resolved against evidence and so carries no posterior at all, and the endogenous expansion of that is the condition of possibility for truth-discovery are the same operation: Ground-Resolution carries no term for what a Hypothesis is about, so construction proceeds under one rule whether the assembled Hypothesis describes a state of affairs that can obtain or one that cannot. The two cases diverge downstream of the generative operation, in reach against the Memory Store bound, in how available the evidence bearing on them is, since Ground-Resolution scores on what reaches the Thinker and a Hypothesis whose disconfirming evidence is out of circulation is scored on whatever else reaches it, and in whether the search terminates by resolution or by Boredom. Without Imagination, would be static and any Hypothesis not already in would remain orthogonal indefinitely, making truth-discovery impossible in domains where the true generative Hypothesis is not supplied exogenously. AIM Vocabulary Acquisition is a socially-transmitted accelerant for the imaginative operation, supplying pre-formed candidate Hypotheses that the engine would otherwise have to construct from first principles.
Explanation
Imagination is what the mind does with a question it has not yet answered. The question can come from the world or from the Individual: something in front of you that nothing already held explains, or something you have put to yourself out of what you already know. Either way the search for an answer begins, and that search is the construction of a candidate out of what you already know. Without it, an Individual could only think thoughts already present in their repertoire; with it, genuinely new Hypotheses can enter thinking and be tested against evidence. The limit is what is in the Memory Store, you cannot assemble a guess out of pieces you have never encountered. Imagination is the generating half of the one thinking engine. Ground-Resolution is the weighing half, and I-Override is the weighing half run deliberately on the question of why you want what you want, which is why I-Override runs Imagination in order to widen the list. Imagining something that could not happen and working out how to make something happen are the same operation. An Individual assembling a scene in which they fly through the clouds and an Individual assembling a route by which one device is connected to another are each building a candidate out of Knowledge already held, against a question set from the inside rather than one the world put in front of them, and nothing in the operation registers which of the two it is running. The connection can be tried, so the candidate meets evidence quickly and either becomes Belief or is dropped. The flight is disconfirmed just as readily, by everything the Individual already knows about their own body. Both are cases in which the evidence is close at hand. Where it is not, and what bears on a constructed Hypothesis is out of circulation while what other Individuals appear to hold is not, the posterior settles on the second, and the Hypothesis can be carried high, held as Belief, and experienced as real, because being experienced as real is what holding a Belief at high posterior is. That is the architecture operating as specified rather than failing. Engaging with fiction, running a thought experiment, and planning a future scenario are all this operation. The same operation, running beneath the Belief-formation process, is what allows entirely new explanations (including true ones previously absent from conceptual vocabulary) to enter the mental repertoire.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.