Imagination as Reality
An idea core to our existence has evolved over 2400 years
A brief history of how we imagine our reality
Below is a brief historical account of the evolution of the notion that reality is a product of of our imagination, and that we, as humans, collectively construct the reality that lives in our minds.
”Imagination” as we are using it here is different from a common use of the word to mean creativity or out of the box thinking; here we use the word imagination as the boundaries of what we can perceive and interpret, and the limits of our ability to assign meaning to something we observe in our environment or concepts others explain to us.
The name of each thinker included below is linked to a major work or a modern explanation of the work.
This outline is provided as a companion piece to our post on imagination (Project + Reject), which outlines how the Guiding Narrative® serves as the internal expression of our imagination, and consequently drives our values and behavior.
Human Meaning Making & Imagination —
A 2,400-Year Lineage
Ancient Philosophy
Plato and Aristotle introduced the foundational idea that humans do not access reality directly. They established that reality is mediated by mental constructions rather than direct contact, framing imagination as the basic interpreter of experience.
Plato (c. 428–348 BCE) — Allegory of the Cave - in The Republic (c. 375 BCE)
Read onlineAristotle (384–322 BCE) — Metaphysics (c. 350 BCE)
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Enlightenment Thought
Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant argued that mind, perception, and experience actively structure the world we think we inhabit. These thinkers repositioned imagination as an organizing principle that generates meaning, rather than revealing objective truth.
René Descartes (1596–1650) — Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)
PDFJohn Locke (1632–1704) — An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
PDFDavid Hume (1711–1776) — A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740)
Read onlineImmanuel Kant (1724–1804) — Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
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Early Modern Psychology
William James recognized consciousness as a continuous, subjective flow shaped by personal experience. Reality becomes a “stream” the mind configures moment to moment. Meaning is not found but made.
William James (1842–1910) — The Principles of Psychology (1890)
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Phenomenology (1900s)
Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Schutz argued that experience is always interpretive; the world is accessed only through perception and lived experience. Phenomenology makes explicit that reality is not “out there” but produced through consciousness, perception, and the interpretive imagination.
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) — Logical Investigations (1900–1901)
PDFMaurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) — Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
PDFAlfred Schütz (1899–1959) — The Phenomenology of the Social World (1932)
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Symbolic Interactionism
Mead, Blumer, and Goffman opined that the self and social reality are created through language, symbols, and performance. Reality becomes a social accomplishment—something enacted in conversation, symbolic exchange, and mutual imagination.
George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) — Mind, Self, and Society (posthumous, 1934)
Internet Archive VersionHerbert Blumer (1900–1987) — Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969)
Internet Archive VersionErving Goffman (1922–1982) — The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)
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Theory of Mind & Cognitive Science
Premack, Woodruff, Baron-Cohen, Vygotsky, and others suggested that humans imagine other minds and that culture teaches us how to attribute meaning. What we call “reality” depends on mental models of other minds shaped by social and cultural experience.
David Premack (1925–2015) & Guy Woodruff (b. 1942) — “Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?” (1978)
Read the paperSimon Baron-Cohen (b. 1958) — Mindblindness (1995)
Internet Archive VersionLev Vygotsky (1896–1934) — Thought and Language (1934)
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