A Post by Max Jones and Tom Schoonen.

If we want to use our imagination to acquire knowledge, it has to be constrained (Kind 2016). After all, if the imagination were completely unconstrained then it would be equally likely to generate truths as falsehoods; possibilities as impossibilities. Some of the constraints on the imagination are within our control. When we’re imagining whether we can visit each other this weekend, it serves us well to constrain our imagination to be reality-oriented. Yet, on other occasions, we might choose to imagine being able to instantly transport ourselves from Amsterdam to Leeds and back. Importantly, these constraints cannot be too tightly under our control: if we always imagine what we intend to imagine, imagination can’t give us anything more than was already part of our intentions (Langland-Hassan 2016).