PX and PhD Research - Cecily Whitely: "Aphantasia, imagination and dreaming"

In this episode, we interview Cecily Whitely, a PhD student at the LSE who recently published an article with the title "Aphantasia, imagination and dreaming" (2021). In her article, she test a recent philosophical theory of dreaming as a type of imagination by looking at the empirical research on aphantasic patients, i.e. people who are not able to voluntarily create mental images. Through this appeal to medical enquiry, Whitely shows the inadequacy of the standard philosophical view of dreaming as a form of imagination and proposes her own amended account of dream. The discussion with the author raises interesting questions about dreaming and imagination, but also regarding the interplay of science and philosophy and the role of philosophers of science in the progress of both the disciplines. The paper can be found here - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01526-8