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The connection between imagination and emotions is well known and finds, for example, an important place in Hume's philosophical analysis. Imagination, however, is not a unitary phenomenon and the literature distinguishes between different varieties of the imagination. Many varieties have been invoked in order to explain the capacity of imagination to evoke emotions (e.g., cognitive imagination, perception-like imagination, emotion-like imagination). The emotionality of imagination is closely related to another aspect of the imagination, namely its perspectival nature – that is, the fact that imagination somehow involves a self or “point of view”. Perspectivality might be what grounds emotionality: it would be through a specific involvement of the self that imagination shows privileged access to our emotions. Moreover, fiction is usually considered a highly conducive field for exploration of the emotionality of imagination. Emotions very similar to those we feel in real life can be generated in fictional contexts. Fiction, however, adds a paradoxical element concerning the emotions themselves: What is the nature of sadness or joy that is not linked to a real loss or a genuine satisfaction? Despite being widely acknowledged that imagination and emotion are strongly tied, several issues remain to be clarified, as that of knowing whether a specific variety explains such a link, whether there is something peculiar to this link that can be revealed by fiction, and whether emotionality is necessarily tied to the perspectivality of imagination. The present symposium aims at investigating different aspects of these open questions by gathering together scholars from different fields.
