Muscular Imaginings—A Phenomenological and Enactive Model for Imagination^*

* Barely resembling its origins, it found its inspiration in a keynote, ‘Imagination and Sport,’ for the International Conference on Philosophy of Sport—University of Taiwan, Taipei, November 21–23, 2015, and a different presentation, ‘Spinning Laozi’s Empty Wheel Hub: On the Role of Imagination in Expertise,’ 48th Annual Conference; Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Hawai’i June 2–5, 2016.

Abstract

A phenomenological model (labeled ‘EC’) is developed as an alternative to current analyses of the imagination in sport philosophy, heirs to an Enlightenment notion that conceptualizes imaginings as abstract, eidetic, and representational. EC describes how Eidetic and Corporeal Imaginings (EIs & CIs) phenomenologically structure our imaginative undertakings. EIs keep the ‘ideal’ aspect, but CIs—enacted, corporeal, non-representational—are more fundamental and foundational. Sports are particularly suited to express CIs’ muscular imaginings, which result in novel performances. An enactive framework theorizes CIs as non-representational interactions.

Keywords:

• Imagination
• enactivism
• mental representation
• phenomenology
• sport

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the organizers for the invitations and the attendees for their comments and suggestions I also extend my appreciation to Mike McNamee and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback All errors, imaginary or not, are my own.

Notes

* Barely resembling its origins, it found its inspiration in a keynote, ‘Imagination and Sport,’ for the International Conference on Philosophy of Sport—University of Taiwan, Taipei, November 21–23, 2015, and a different presentation, ‘Spinning Laozi’s Empty Wheel Hub: On the Role of Imagination in Expertise,’ 48th Annual Conference; Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Hawai’i June 2–5, 2016.

1. Author’s ensō—one of hundreds drawn. It has no merit other than fitting the bill.

2. Other artistic practices, painting, sculpture, etc., to the extent that their creative vision is implemented through movement, and suitably adapted, also follow the EC model.

3. Our congruent views on the bodymind were developed and published independently at about the same time.

4. As EIs and CIs amalgamate, representational and acculturated facets combine with embodied non-representational ones.

5. With variations alongside the performance continuum acknowledged, this is more the case with experts, who rely on CIs and excel at improvising, rather than novices, who attend to rules, propositional content, and follow representational modes that mistrust their muscular epistemology.

6. William James’ (1918) Background or fringe of consciousness parallels the ‘just-passed’ and provides for the flow or continuity of our experiences while including judgment, as evinced by the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon evinces (Mangan 2007). Acting as a hinge between awareness and the subpersonal (Ilundáin-Agurruza 2016), the Jamesian version integrates Aristotelian imaginary presence with judgment and action.

7. While Epictetus likened the practice of impression-control to athletic training, Marcus Aurelius advocated that imagination be trained ‘as the awareness of what is’, another case of ‘presencing’ (Lyons 2005, 10) He proposed an analytical imagination that holistically substituted the sum of parts for the whole, and a synthetic one that appreciated the inherent mutability of things to restore ‘the dynamism to objects that are picked out and decomposed in the mode of looking at the thing-in-itself’ (Lyons 2005, 12). EIs and CIs interaction, if not strictly aligned, functionally parallels this to the extent that performance dynamics are appreciated, revealed, and executed through them.

8. Online videos show Honnold climbing walls that would make Spiderman nervous. A recommendation: El Sendero Luminoso, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = Phl82D57P58. Those afraid of heights should watch securely harnessed to the chair.

9. Outside of competition, training imprints PKRs and expands CIs. Following Dewey (1988) performers improve because practice of skill is more important than practice for skill, as the former is circumscribed to what performers already master while the latter explores adventuresome spaces. As such, training is the natural CIs locus for some sports and practices: rehearsed sports and movement activities involving very refined skills but pre-determined routines, e.g. gymnastics, synchronized swimming, exhibition martial arts, and unrehearsed but competition-specific, e.g. track and field or swimming. In these, CIs novelty occurs before competitive performance. Performers look there for practice of skills and encounter the situations where they must improvise in order to adapt to bigger challenges. As new kinetic questions are posed, even in the more constrained formats, original paths to bigger challenges are opened. Nonetheless, unpredictable events in performance or contraries’ actions in competition also bring the need to improvise even in ‘routinized’ sports.

10. Some sports do not allow for the time to deliberate, e.g. fencing. In these cases it is the history of the performer up to that point that constitutes and permits improvisation, and effective response.