Notes
1. Neville (Citation1981, pp. 160–163, emphasis added) makes a parallel distinction when he discusses, first, “synthesis in imagination, which analyzes how more basic elements are synthesized in imagination,” and, then, “the value of synthesis,” in which he asks, “why there is such a synthesis?” He answers the latter question in several ways, depending on how the question is understood.
Insofar as the question asks for purpose served by imaginative integration in experience, the answer is in terms of evolutionary adaptability leading to more successful reproduction of the species. Insofar as it asks what value is accomplished in imagination, the answer … is that it preserves some of the values in the world and reproduces them in a new experience. … Insofar as the question asks for the value peculiar to imagination as synthesis, the answer is beauty (p. 163).
2. This paragraph is taken with slight modifications from Taves (in press).