According to this year’s list, the topic for December is Imagination. I found several pieces mentioning imagination and it’s relationship to metaphysics.
Imagination (from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Aristotle sometimes recognizes as a distinct capacity, on par with perception and mind, imagination (phantasia) (De Anima iii 3, 414b33–415a3). Although he does not discuss it at length, or even characterize it intrinsically in any detailed way, Aristotle does take pains to distinguish it from both perception and mind. In a brief discussion dedicated to imagination (De Anima iii 3), Aristotle identifies it as “that in virtue of which an image occurs in us” (De Anima iii 3, 428aa1–2), where this is evidently given a broad range of application to the activities involved in thoughts, dreams, and memories. Aristotle is, however, mainly concerned to distinguish imagination from perception and mind. He distinguishes it from perception on a host of grounds, including: (i) imagination produces images when there is no perception, as in dreams; (ii) imagination is lacking in some lower animals, even though they have perception, which shows that imagination and perception are not even co-extensive; and (iii) perception is, Aristotle claims, always true, whereas imagination can be false, false even in fantastic ways (De Anima iii 3, 428a5–16). He also denies that imagination can be identified with mind or belief, or any combination of belief and perception (De Anima iii 3, 428a16–b10), even though it comes about through sense perception (De Anima iii 3, 429a1–2; De Insomniis 1, 459a17). The suggestion, then, is that imagination is a faculty in humans and most other animals which produces, stores, and recalls the images used in a variety of cognitive activities, including those which motivate and guide action (De Anima iii 3, 429a4–7, De Memoria 1, 450a22–25). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/suppl4.html (Excerpted from METAPHYSICAL IMAGINATION? Review article – By Martin Cohen)
Plato, for paradigm example, is a thinker who seems to have embraced the imagination, or ‘insight’ as it is more usually allowed. Apart from the rather obscure analogies of the Cave and the Line, there is the passage in the famous ‘Seventh Letter’ in which ‘philosophical knowledge is not to be achieved solely by discursive, dialectical means but by a kind of vision’, as Moran puts it, rather formally. But then, warming to his theme, Moran explains: ‘From the time of the founding of the Platonic Academy at Florence in 1462 to the appearance of Bacon’s Novum Orangum Scientianum (1620) almost every major thinker discussed the question of the function of the imagination in philosophical, theological and magical knowledge.’ Indeed, Paracelsus, remarks Moran, ‘sometimes writes as if he thinks magia and imaginatio might be etymologically related terms’, before adding: ‘Sense perception and reason are the cognitive organs of the physical body; imagination that of the sidereal body.’ http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/2019/05/review-article-metaphysical-imagination.html
(Quoting The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination) Without knowledge of imagination and its functioning, on whatever level it is envisaged, many fundamental religious teachings cannot be understood. It is because of their ignorance of imagination that the Peripatetic philosophers and the theologians insisted upon “interpreting” — that is, “explaining away” – all the revelational data that does not accord with the laws of logic and reason. Others simply gave up trying to understand such things and said,“God says so,so it must be true.”But this is not to give intelligence its full credit, since there are modes of gaining knowledge of the true situation through the power of imagination, which can perceive the divine self-disclosures for what they are. https://ia801208.us.archive.org/24/items/TheSufiPathOfKnowledgeWilliamC.Chittick_201607/The%20Sufi%20Path%20Of%20Knowledge%20-%20William%20C.%20Chittick_text.pdf
The varieties of imaginative experience
What would life be like without imagination? Perhaps, in this very first question, we have found something that is impossible to imagine. Imagination infuses so much of what we do, and so deeply, that to imagine its absence is to imagine not being human. Some people, I am told, think about sex every five minutes. For them, I presume, a sudden loss of imaginative powers would be devastating. Some people (not necessarily the same ones), at certain points in their lives, think about getting married or having a child. They might imagine the sanctity of a white wedding or the horrors of having all their relatives in one place at one time, the patter of tiny feet or the exhaustion of sleepless nights. As they play, children imagine all sorts of things, and their ideas of what they want to be and do when they grow up are fundamental in their development. Most people have ambitions of one kind or another. Imagining being promoted, or seeing something you have done recognised publicly, plays an essential role in motivation. In our idle moments too, or in diverting ourselves amidst tedious tasks, we might imagine winning the lottery or our hero scoring the winning goal in a match or, more sinfully, an obnoxious colleague falling under a bus. When we meet or talk to anyone, whether we are assessing them as potential friends or enemies, lovers or colleagues, for either ourselves or others, we are imagining what they would be like in certain circumstances. But the imagination is not just involved in thinking of ourselves or other people. When I look at a painting, or read a novel, or hear a piece of music, or taste a wine, I bring my imagination to bear in its appreciation. I imagine other things to compare it with, or simply allow my imagination free flight, making no effort to control the images that spring to mind. Or in creating something myself, I may conjure up an image or images of what I want to realise. Imagination is also involved in the most ordinary experiences. When I go for a walk, I might imagine what it is like to live in a particular house I see, or if it is dark, I might suddenly imagine that there is something following me. In thinking what to cook for dinner, I imagine what I can do with the ingredients I have. In choosing clothes, I imagine what they would go with and the occasions on which I might wear them. In perceiving anything, I might imagine it transformed in some way, coloured differently, radically restructured, or simply moved to another location. And even if I do not deliberately transform it in my mind, previous or anticipated experiences may influence how I perceive it. Clearly, we talk of imagination across the full range of human experience. Indeed, it may be hard to find an experience in which the imagination is not somehow involved. But if this is so, then does ‘imagination’ really have a single sense or refer to a single faculty? Can any order at all be brought into the varieties of imaginative experience? What conceptions of imagination might be distinguished? And what philosophical issues arise, or are reflected, in our attempts to do so? https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/philosophy/imagination-the-missing-mystery-philosophy/content-section-0