Who Am I · ages 8–12
Is imagining something real?
You can only imagine things you've seen. Is that true of you?
Try to imagine a colour you have never seen. Most people can hold a space where it would go, but not the colour itself — what shows up is a mixture of ones you know, or a vague gap. That is Hume’s point, and it is surprisingly hard to beat.
His claim was that every idea is a copy of something you have experienced, thinned out but not invented: a golden mountain is a mountain plus gold, both of which you have met. Nothing genuinely new can be conjured. If he is right, imagination is not creation but recombination — which would explain why every distant alien in every story has a head and eyes, and why it took centuries for anyone to think of life as a thing that need not have a body.
There is something imagination does that is harder to explain than recombination, though. You can imagine being someone else — noticing how it would feel to be them, wanting what they want. That is not simply photographing and rearranging. Warnock argued it is a basic capacity we use constantly, not a special talent, and that without it a person could not plan, or forgive, or understand anyone.
Which leaves the question that makes this a philosophical rather than a psychological topic. An imaginary friend, a story you invent, a possible future you rehearse — none of them exist, and all of them change what you do. Whether that counts as real is mostly a question about what you mean by the word, and it is one of those cases where the ordinary use of a word is doing more of the work than anyone notices.
Try it
Imagine a colour nobody has ever seen. Then notice what you actually did — mix two you know? Describe a place made of everything you know plus one impossible thing. Where does the impossible part come from?
What do you think?
Do you think there is a right answer to this question?
Talk about it
- Where do imaginary friends come from?
- Can imagining something hurt you?
- Is a story you invent less true than one you remember?
Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make
Imaginary things don't exist, so they're not real in any sense.
Then the money in your account does not exist either, since that is a set of expectations held by people. Real is doing more work in your sentence than you may have noticed.
Everything you imagine is made of things you've seen.
Hume's claim, and it is hard to find a counterexample. Try to imagine a completely new sense — a taste you have never tasted, with nothing borrowed from any other taste.
Imagining isn't doing anything, so it's a waste of time.
Every finished thing was imagined first, and you rehearse difficult conversations before you have them. Its usefulness is why it evolved, not a reason to excuse it.
What other philosophers think
- David HumeArgued that every idea is a faded copy of something you have perceived — so a golden mountain is a real mountain plus a real gold, with nothing new added.
- Jean-Paul SartreStudied imagining carefully and found that it is not a blurry perception: when you imagine a friend, they are present and absent at once, which is unlike anything else.
- Mary WarnockArgued imagination is not decoration — it is how we come to understand other people and possible futures at all.
- René DescartesNoticed a difference between imagining a shape and merely understanding it, and used it as part of his argument that the mind is not the body.
If you want to go further
- A Treatise of Human Nature — David HumeThe copy principle, and the argument that all ideas trace back to impressions.
- The Imaginary — Jean-Paul Sartre1940. A detailed study of what imagining actually is, as a state of mind.
- Imagination — Mary WarnockA short, clear book on why imagination is central to thinking rather than a hobby.
Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.