Margherita Arcangeli

EHESS-Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Institut Jean Nicod, Faculty Member

I am maîtresse de conférences (associate professor) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris), chair “Theories and practices of imagination. Philosophy and social sciences”.

I am member of the interdisciplinary project SublimAE (“The Sublime and Aesthetic Experiences”), and of the research teams “Perception, Memory, Representations” and "Fiction" at the Jean Nicod Institute.

I have been a post-doctoral researcher in SublimAE (2019/2020). I was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and associated member of the “What if?” research group (2016/2018). During the academic year 2015-2016 I was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Geneva (Department of Philosophy and Swiss Center for Affective Sciences) with a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarships for Foreign Scholars. Previously I was post-doctoral researcher at the Jean Nicod Institute, where I also had been a member of the research team “Consciousness and the self” and held a Research Fellowship (2012-2013) in the FICTION (“Fiction in emotion”) project, an interdisciplinary project at the interface between philosophy and neuropsychology.

Graduated in Philosophy at the Università di Roma Tre (B.Sc. 2006, Master 2008) under the supervision of Mauro Dorato and Massimo Marraffa, at the Institut Jean-Nicod and the Université Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC) I qualified as Doctor (2011) under the supervision of Jérôme Dokic.

My areas of research are philosophy of mind, aesthetics, philosophy of science, epistemology, and philosophy of language.

One of the more specific topic-areas of my investigation is imagination. I have been concerned with many issues: the relationship between imagination and supposition, the debate between simulationists and single-code theorists, the paradox of imaginative resistance, the propositionality/conceptuality of mental content and its truth-evaluability, the distinction between belief and acceptance and the debate on dual-process theories.
I worked on the relationship between imagination and memory, more precisely on their perspectival nature and on our capacity to mentally travel in the past and in the future.

I have recently started working on aesthetic experiences and, in particular, on the experience of the sublime.

I am also interested, on the one hand, in the debate on thought experiments and, on the other hand, in the history and philosophy of Physics. In my MA dissertation, “On the nature and function of thought experiments”, I tried to give a generalised account of thought experimentation both in philosophy and in science (Physics and Biology). In my B.Sc. dissertation I examined Ernst Cassirer’s work on Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

See my website https://sites.google.com/view/margheritarcangeli/home

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Beyond Creativity: Reflection and Practice of Imagination with Students of Technical Universities

2020 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2020

This contribution presents a course on imagination held at Politecnico di Milano. The aim of the ... more This contribution presents a course on imagination held at Politecnico di Milano. The aim of the course was to make students reflect on the role of imagination in various contexts (especially scientific and moral) and to teach them how to strengthen it to better perform as whole engineers. The pilot initiative was highly valued by the students as an innovative and meaningful way to introduce the humanities into technical mindsets.

Junkyard Symposium on "Supposition and the Imaginative Realm"

Post on the Junkyard: "Is Imagining From the Inside Just What You Imagined?"

A key notion in many discussions on imagination is that of imagining something “from the inside”.... more A key notion in many discussions on imagination is that of imagining something “from the inside”. Wollheim (1974) underlined that such a notion is so abused in philosophy, that one might not trust it. Although imagining from the inside can be intuitively interpreted as imagining involving a “point of view” or perspective within the imaginative scene, this notion deserves much more attention, since it can yield different and more technical meanings. The main goal of this post is precisely to rehabilitate this notion by disentangling three meanings which, I think, often overlap, and are even confused in philosophical debates.

Post on the Junkyard: "Only Suppose"

I am very happy to have had the chance to take a critical look at Kathleen Stock’s just-published... more I am very happy to have had the chance to take a critical look at Kathleen Stock’s just-published book Only Imagine. During the Symposium I focused on the last chapter of the book, which touches on topics that are at the centre of my philosophical interests. In “Back to the Imagination”, Stock offers a new account of supposition. In my commentary I will consider how her account relates to other views about supposition.

3:AM Magazine: "Interview: Imagination, supposition, imagine"

Interview by Richard Marshall for 3:AM Magazine. Margherita Arcangeli is a philosopher whose res... more Interview by Richard Marshall for 3:AM Magazine.

Margherita Arcangeli is a philosopher whose research centres on aesthetics, epistemology, philosophy of emotions, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. She is also a contributor to the Open Mind Project. Here she broods on what the imagination is, on the simulationist approach, on the connection between imagination and supposition, on whether the imagination is always perspectival, on thought experiments, on imagination and the acquisition of new knowledge, on imagination’s relation to the self, on imagining from the inside, on the relationship between the humanities and science, on gender bias at the academy and on whether interdisciplinary work enhances or waters down. A new mind on the block. Create some space and time – read on…

Books

Supposition and the Imaginative Realm. A Philosophical Inquiry.

Routledge, 2018

Supposition is frequently invoked in many fields within philosophy, including aesthetics, philoso... more Supposition is frequently invoked in many fields within philosophy, including aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology. However, there is a striking lack of consensus about the nature of supposition. What is supposition? Is supposition a sui generis type of mental state or is it reducible to some other type of mental state?

These are the main questions Margherita Arcangeli explores in this book. She examines the characteristic features of supposition, along the dimensions of phenomenology and emotionality, among others, in a journey through the imaginative realm. An informed answer to the question “What is supposition?” must involve an analysis of imagination, since supposition is so often defined in opposition to the latter. She assesses rival explanations of supposition putting forward a novel view, according to which the proper way of seeing supposition is as a primitive type of imaginative state.

Papers

The imaginative realm and supposition

Http Www Theses Fr, 2011

Phenomenal, bodily and brain correlates of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy

Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

The Conceptual Nature of Imaginative Content

Synthese

Imagination is widely thought to come in two varieties: perception-like and belief-like imaginati... more Imagination is widely thought to come in two varieties: perception-like and belief-like imagination. What precisely sets them apart, however, is not settled. More needs to be said about the features that make one variety perception-like and the other belief-like. One common, although typically implicit, view is that they mimic their counterparts (perception and belief, respectively) along the conceptuality dimension: while the content of belief-like imagination is fully conceptual, the content of perception-like imagination is fully (or at least partially) non-conceptual. Such a view, however, is not sufficiently motivated in the literature. I will show that there are good reasons to reject it and I will argue that both varieties of imagination involve fully conceptual contents (independently of whether either perception or belief has non-conceptual content). I will suggest an alternative way to draw the distinction between perception-like and belief-like imagination along the conceptuality dimension, according to which only perception-like imagination requires observational concepts.

At the limits: what drives experiences of the sublime

British Journal of Aesthetics, 2020

Aesthetics, both in its theoretical and empirical forms, has seen a renewed interest in the subli... more Aesthetics, both in its theoretical and empirical forms, has seen a renewed interest in the sublime, an aesthetic category dear to traditional philosophers, but quite neglected by contemporary philosophy. Our aim is to offer a novel perspective on the experience of the sublime. More precisely, our hypothesis is that the latter arises from ‘a radical limit-experience’, which is a metacognitve awareness of the limits of our cognitive capacities as we are confronted with something indefinitely greater or more powerful than us. This hypothesis better explains the negative feelings involved in the experience of the sublime and accounts for its demarcation from other experiences (for example, terrible beauty). Experiences of the sublime have an overall positive valence, though. We will explore different ways in which a subject can try to overcome the negative evaluation involved in radical limit-experiences, and suggest that only one of them is appropriate to experiences of the sublime.

Awe and the Experience of the Sublime: A Complex Relationship

by Marco Sperduti, Margherita Arcangeli, and Amelie Jacquot

Frontiers in Psychology, 2020

Awe seems to be a complex emotion or emotional construct characterized by a mix of positive (cont... more Awe seems to be a complex emotion or emotional construct characterized by a mix of positive (contentment, happiness), and negative affective components (fear and a sense of being smaller, humbler or insignificant). It is striking that the elicitors of awe correspond closely to what philosophical aesthetics, and especially Burke and Kant, have called “the sublime.” As a matter of fact, awe is almost absent from the philosophical agenda, while there are very few studies on the experience of the sublime as such in the psychological literature. The aim of this paper is to throw light on the complex relationship between awe (as understood by psychologists) and the experience of the sublime (as discussed by philosophers). We distinguish seven ways of conceiving this relationship and highlight those that seem more promising to us. Once we have a clearer picture of how awe and the experience of the sublime are related, we can use it to enhance collaboration between these domains. We would be able to use empirical results about awe in a philosophical analysis of the experience of the sublime, which in turn can help us to design novel experimental hypotheses about the contexts in which we experience awe.

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A plea for the Sublime in science

In The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding, ed. S. French and M. Ivanova, Routledge., 2020

There is a growing literature on the role of aesthetic values, experiences and judgements in the ... more There is a growing literature on the role of aesthetic values, experiences and judgements in the scientific endeavour. Scientists themselves often profess being guided by aesthetic considerations in evaluating and constructing theories and other scientific artefacts. The focus in the literature, however, is on beauty experiences and aesthetic values typically tied to them, such as coherence, unity and simplicity. The aim of this paper is to broaden and enrich the debate by considering another important aesthetic category, namely the sublime. The latter has been frequently defined in contrast with the beautiful: while beauty experiences are mainly positive and pleasurable, sublimity experiences involve ambivalent feelings (they are disturbing but enlightening at the same time). We shall start by a characterisation of the sublime, which takes into account different philosophical traditions. The discussion shall lead to further examine how beauty and sublimity experiences are related, and why both can be considered aesthetic experiences. Then, we shall turn to the role the sublime may play in science. We shall deal with two sides of this issue: the sublime can be (a) an object of empirical investigation and (b) a guide in the scientific practice. The upshot of our discussion is that although both beauty and sublimity experiences can lead to judgements of truth and understanding, sublimity experiences have a relational nature that makes them apt to ground deep judgements of understanding, about the limits of human cognition.

The Two Faces of Mental Imagery

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2020

Mental imagery has often been taken to be equivalent to “sensory imagination”, the perception-lik... more Mental imagery has often been taken to be equivalent to “sensory imagination”, the perception-like type of imagination at play when, for example, one visually imagines a flower when none is there, or auditorily imagines a music passage while wearing earplugs. I contend that the equation of mental imagery with sensory imagination stems from a confusion between two senses of mental imagery. In the first sense, mental imagery is used to refer to a psychological attitude, which is perception-like in nature. In the second sense, mental imagery refers to a mental content, which can be grasped via different attitudes. I will show that failure to acknowledge the distinction between these senses of mental imagery has muddled philosophical discussion. This distinction brings much needed clarity to debates where sensory imagination and mental imagery are invoked, shedding light on issues such as the nature of imagistic mental states, and the representational powers and limits of mental imagery. I will conclude by sketching a general attitudinal account of imagination that does justice to both senses of mental imagery, outlining a promising framework for understanding imagination.

Imagination

In Handbuch Erkenntnistheorie, ed. M. Grajner and G. Melchior, Metzler., 2018

Introduction: New Perspectives on Philosophical Thought Experiments

by Adriano Angelucci and Margherita Arcangeli

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The Hidden Links between Real, Thought and Numerical Experiments

The scientist’s toolkit counts at least three practices: real, thought and numerical experiments.... more The scientist’s toolkit counts at least three practices: real, thought and numerical experiments. Although a deep investigation of the relationships between these types of experiments should shed light on the nature of scientific enquiry, I argue that it has been compromised by at least four factors: (i) a bias for the epistemological superiority of real experiments; (ii) an almost exclusive focus on the links between either thought or numerical experiments, and real experiments; (iii) a tendency to try and reduce one kind to another; and (iv) an excessive attention to the outputs of these types of experiments, more than to their processes. In this paper I support an unbiased triangular comparative analysis that focuses on the processes involved in real, thought and numerical experiments, and claim that all three types of experimentation are fundamental to scientific research. I do so by clarifying different notions of experimental processes, and by introducing a distinction between two varieties of mental simulation that play a role in them (i.e., mental models and imaginings). I then compare real, thought and numerical experiments in light of this distinction, showing their similarities, but also fundamental differences, which suggest that none of them is dispensable.

Affective Memory: A Little Help from Our Imagination

by Margherita Arcangeli and Jerome Dokic

In New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory, ed. K. Michaelian, D. Debus and D. Perrin, Routledge, 2018

When we remember a past situation, the emotional import of the latter often transpires in a modif... more When we remember a past situation, the emotional import of the latter often transpires in a modified form at the phenomenological level of our present memory. When it does, we experience what is sometimes called an “affective memory.” Theorists of memories have disagreed about the status of affective memories. Sceptics claim that the relationship between memory and emotion can only be of two types: either the memory is about a past emotion (the emotion is part of what is remembered), or it causes a present emotion (the emotion is a separable effect of the memory). We argue that there is a third option, which points to an emotional way of representing the past situation. Drawing from Peter Goldie’s account of mental narratives, we show that three levels of mental perspective are involved in memories: the perspective of the represented subject (the character, if there is one), the perspective of the representing subject (the author), and the intermediary perspective of the narrator (who may remain virtual). Affective memories are cases in which the narrator’s emotional perspective has direct implications for the author’s emotional perspective, even if the former typically differs from the latter.

The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Self

by Margherita Arcangeli, Jerome Dokic, and Marco Sperduti

In Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics, ed. F. Cova and S. Réhault, Bloomsbury, 2018

The sublime emerges in the history of philosophy as the object of an aesthetic experience very of... more The sublime emerges in the history of philosophy as the object of an aesthetic experience very often contrasted with the aesthetic experience of the beautiful. While the latter experience is mainly positive and pleasurable, the former experience is characterized by ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, the sublime involves an overwhelming vastness, or power, which disturbs and unsettles. On the other hand, the sublime poses a challenge, which is enlightening and elating. The overall experience of the sublime is also frequently associated with the feeling of the insignificance of human life, of our smallness compared to the grandeur we are confronted with. In the light of recent psychological and neuroscientific studies, we claim that the sublime gives rise to an aesthetic experience that, contrary to the experience of the beautiful, involves a diminished sense of the self. More precisely, sublimity experiences are immersive and tend to blur the distinction between the self and the world. Our claim has implications for a vexed question about the sublime, namely whether it is restricted to natural scenes or extends to artworks. We suggest that in favourable conditions, art can elicit sublimity experiences. We then offer a roadmap to test our claim within an experimental setting, with special focus on music and virtual reality devices to deal with the immersive character of sublimity experiences.

L’expérience de pensée comme récit. Le rôle crucial de l’imagination.

In Perspectives philosophiques sur les fictions, ed. C. Bouriau and G. Schuppert, 111-129, Kimé, 2018

Les expériences de pensée sont extrêmement importantes, car elles sont des produits intentionnels... more Les expériences de pensée sont extrêmement importantes, car elles sont des produits intentionnels liés au partage et à la diffusion des connaissances. De plus, les expériences de pensée sont rédigées et présentées publiquement sous forme de narrations, qui peuvent être plus ou moins détaillées et rhétoriquement colorées, et inclure des illustrations non verbales. Cette dimension narrative est un aspect plutôt négligé de l’expérimentation de pensée, mais qui a conduit des auteurs à établir un parallélisme entre les expériences de pensée et les fictions littéraires, qui sont des narrations par excellence. Dans cette contribution nous explorerons cette dimension en vue de défendre l’idée que l’imagination a un rôle important à jouer dans le processus cognitif qui sous-tend l’expérimentation de pensée.

De l'autre côté du miroir de l'imagination : Imagination et imagerie mentale

Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique, 2017

L'imagination est un sujet très débattu au sein de la philosophie contemporaine. Une question spé... more L'imagination est un sujet très débattu au sein de la philosophie contemporaine. Une question spécifique concerne le périmètre de l'imagina-tion et s'attache à étudier quels phénomènes mentaux nous pouvons légi-timement considérer comme imaginatifs. Selon une idée répandue, l'imagerie mentale est une figure de l'imagination qui présente des similarités avec la perception — ce qui a été appelé « imagination sensorielle ». Dans cette contribution, nous remettons en cause cette idée, plus tenue pour acquise qu'analysée. À travers une discussion des thèses défendues par Alan White, l'un des rares auteurs qui soutiennent que l'imagerie mentale n'est pas imaginative, nous montrerons qu'il convient de distinguer deux sens de la notion de l'« imagerie mentale ». Si selon un premier sens, l'imagerie men-tale peut être assimilée à l'imagination sensorielle, il faut faire remarquer que selon le second sens, l'imagerie mentale ne constitue pas un phénomène spécifiquement imaginatif. Nous montrerons en outre comment le fait de négliger la distinction entre les deux sens embrouille les discussions sur l'imagination, quand l'imagerie mentale est invoquée. Notre hypothèse est que cette distinction est la clé d'une meilleure compréhension du domaine de l'imagination.

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Beyond Creativity: Reflection and Practice of Imagination with Students of Technical Universities

2020 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2020

Junkyard Symposium on "Supposition and the Imaginative Realm"

Post on the Junkyard: "Is Imagining From the Inside Just What You Imagined?"

Post on the Junkyard: "Only Suppose"

3:AM Magazine: "Interview: Imagination, supposition, imagine"

Supposition and the Imaginative Realm. A Philosophical Inquiry.

Routledge, 2018

The imaginative realm and supposition

Http Www Theses Fr, 2011

Phenomenal, bodily and brain correlates of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy

Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

The Conceptual Nature of Imaginative Content

Synthese

At the limits: what drives experiences of the sublime

British Journal of Aesthetics, 2020

Awe and the Experience of the Sublime: A Complex Relationship

by Marco Sperduti, Margherita Arcangeli, and Amelie Jacquot

Frontiers in Psychology, 2020

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A plea for the Sublime in science

In The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding, ed. S. French and M. Ivanova, Routledge., 2020

The Two Faces of Mental Imagery

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2020

Imagination

In Handbuch Erkenntnistheorie, ed. M. Grajner and G. Melchior, Metzler., 2018

Introduction: New Perspectives on Philosophical Thought Experiments

by Adriano Angelucci and Margherita Arcangeli

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The Hidden Links between Real, Thought and Numerical Experiments

Affective Memory: A Little Help from Our Imagination

by Margherita Arcangeli and Jerome Dokic

In New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory, ed. K. Michaelian, D. Debus and D. Perrin, Routledge, 2018

The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Self

by Margherita Arcangeli, Jerome Dokic, and Marco Sperduti

In Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics, ed. F. Cova and S. Réhault, Bloomsbury, 2018

L’expérience de pensée comme récit. Le rôle crucial de l’imagination.

In Perspectives philosophiques sur les fictions, ed. C. Bouriau and G. Schuppert, 111-129, Kimé, 2018

De l'autre côté du miroir de l'imagination : Imagination et imagerie mentale

Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique, 2017

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Interacting with Emotions: Imagination and Supposition

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2017

A widespread claim, which I call ‘the Emotionality Claim’ (EC), is that imagination but not suppo... more A widespread claim, which I call ‘the Emotionality Claim’ (EC), is that imagination but not supposition is intimately linked to emotion. In more cognitive jargon, imagination is connected to the affect system (i.e., the mechanisms that produce emotional responses), whereas supposition is not. EC is open to several interpretations which yield very different views about the nature of supposition. The literature lacks an in-depth analysis of EC which sorts out these different readings and ways to carve supposition and imagination at their joints. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap. I shall argue that existing readings of EC fail to properly account for the emotional asymmetry between imagination and supposition. The tendency is to start from narrow conceptions of both imagination and supposition. I shall argue for a novel interpretation of EC pivoting on different ways a mental state can connect to the affect system.

Expérience de pensée

L’Encyclopédie Philosophique, 2017

Le vocabulaire philosophique a récemment consolidé l’utilisation du terme « expériences de pensée... more Le vocabulaire philosophique a récemment consolidé l’utilisation du terme « expériences de pensée » pour désigner des expériences conduites dans le « laboratoire de la pensée » et réalisées grâce à nos capacités d’imagination. Cette pratique, que l’on observe aussi bien dans les disciplines philosophiques, que dans les sciences, est cependant plus ancienne que le terme qui sert à la décrire. Que faut-il alors entendre exactement par « expérience de pensée » ? Pour répondre à cette question il est utile de partir d’exemples concrets. Nous nous proposons d’en détailler deux : une expérience de pensée scientifique et une expérience de pensée philosophique (§1). La discussion des caractéristiques des expériences de pensée nous amènera à aborder deux autres questions importantes, à savoir celle de leur fonction (§2) et de leur indispensabilité (§3).

The distinctive role of executive functions in implicit emotion regulation

by Marco Sperduti, Margherita Arcangeli, Prany Wantzen, Stéphane Lemaire, and Makowski Dominique

Several theoretical models stress the role of executive functions in emotion regulation (ER). How... more Several theoretical models stress the role of executive functions in emotion regulation (ER). However, most of the previous studies on ER employed explicit regulatory strategies that could have engaged executive functions, beyond regulatory processes per se. Recently, there has been renewed interest in implicit forms of ER, believed to be closer to daily-life requirements. While various studies have shown that implicit and explicit ER engage partially overlapping neurocognitive processes, the contribution of different executive functions in implicit ER has not been investigated. In the present study, we presented participants with negatively valenced pictures of varying emotional intensity preceded by short texts describing them as either fictional or real. This manipulation was meant to induce a spontaneous emotional down-regulation. We recorded electrodermal activity (EDA) and subjective reports of emotion arousal. Executive functions (updating, switching, and inhibition) were also assessed. No difference was found between the fictional and real condition on EDA. A diminished self-reported arousal was observed, however, when pictures were described as fictional for high-and mild-intensity material, but not for neutral material. The amount of down-regulation in the fictional condition was found to be predicted by interin-dividual variability in updating performances, but not by the other measures of executive functions, suggesting its implication even in implicit forms of ER. The relationship between down-regulation and updating was significant only for high-intensity material. We discuss the role of updating in relation to the consciousness of one's emotional state.

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Thought Experiments in Model-Based Reasoning

In "Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science", ed. L. Magnani et T. Bortolotti, Springer, 2017

Thought experimentation is at least as old as Western philosophy. Scholars have made much use of ... more Thought experimentation is at least as old as Western philosophy. Scholars have made much use of it in many disciplines. For instance, philosophical discussions on ethics, morality, knowledge, and language abound with thought experiments. Likewise, great scientific developments, such as in physics and mathematics, have been achieved via thought experimentation. This is true even long before the introduction of the term, between the late seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. But what is a thought experiment? Although giving a clear answer to this question is a very complicated task, it is quite common to consider thought experiments as pieces of reasoning about imaginary cases mainly performed with the aim of increasing our knowledge or understanding of the world. In this chapter, I review the lively debate on thought experiments. First, I introduce some famous examples and detail six of them
(Sect. 21.1). Second, I give some historical back ground (Sect. 21.2). Then, I focus on three of the main questions asked in the literature, namely: What is a thought experiment? (Sect. 21.3), What is the function of thought experiments? (Sect. 21.4), How do thought experiments achieve their function? (Sect. 21.5). These issues will lead to tackle other important points, such as the relationship between real and thought experimentation, the differences between philosophical and scientific thought experimentation, the role played by intuitions and imagination in thought experimentation.

The paradox of fiction: Emotional response toward fiction and the modulatory role of self-relevance

by Marco Sperduti, Margherita Arcangeli, Makowski Dominique, Prany Wantzen, Stéphane Lemaire, Jerome Dokic, and Pascale Piolino

For over forty years, philosophers have struggled with the " paradox of fiction " , which is the ... more For over forty years, philosophers have struggled with the " paradox of fiction " , which is the issue of how we can get emotionally involved with fictional characters and events. The few neuroscientific studies investigating the distinction between the processing of real and fictional entities have evidenced that midline cortical structures and lateral fronto-parietal regions are more engaged for real and fictional entities, respectively. Interestingly, the former network is engaged in autobiographical memory retrieval and self-reference, processes that are known to boost emotional reactivity, while the latter underpins emotion regulation. Thus, a possible modulation of the emotional response according to the nature (real or fictional) of the stimulus is conceivable. To test this hypothesis, we presented short emotional (negative and positive) and neutral video as fictional or real. For negative material, we found that subjective emotional experience, but not physiological arousal measured by elec-trodermal activity, was reduced in the fictional condition. Moreover, the amount of personal memories linked to the scenes counteracted this effect boosting the subjective emotional response. On the contrary, personal memories elicited by the scenes, but not fiction, modulate the emotional response for positive material. These results suggest that when a stimulus triggers a personal memory, the emotional response is less prone to be modulated by contextual factors, and suggest that personal engagement could be responsible for emotional reaction toward fiction. We discuss these results in the emotion regulation framework and underline their implications in informing theoretical accounts of emotion in the neuroscientific domain and the philosophical debate on the paradox of emotional response to fiction.

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Voyage mental dans le temps : quand l’imagination nous engage

by Margherita Arcangeli and Jerome Dokic

In "Anticipation, prédiction, temporalité", ed. A. Berthoz and C. Debru, Editions Odile Jacob, 2015

The Two Faces of Mental Imagery

Real, Thought and Numerical Experiments: the Experimental Triangle

Beyond the Mirror of (Sensory) Imagination

The Sublime and the Arts

Intentionalism, Transparency, and Imaginative Phenomenology

A philosophical enquiry into our experience of the sublime and beautiful (especially in the arts)

The sublime emerges in the history of philosophy as an aesthetic experience very often contrasted... more The sublime emerges in the history of philosophy as an aesthetic experience very often contrasted with the beautiful. While the experience of the beautiful is mainly a positive and pleasurable experience, the experience of the sublime is characterized by ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, the sublime confronts us with an overwhelming vastness, or power, which disturbs and unsettles, though there is no real danger. On the other hand, the sublime posits a challenge, which is enlightening and elating. Moreover, while there is no doubt that artworks can elicit the experience of the beautiful, it is more controversial whether they can elicit the experience of the sublime, which seems primarily evoked by natural scenes. In this talk I shall look more closely at what the experience of the sublime amounts to by taking into account hints from both philosophy and neurosciences. I shall also be concerned with the question when art does elicit sublime, if it can, by keeping an eye out for music.

Memory and the Self: Philosophical Perspectives

Mental time travel and engaged imagination

On Two Ways of Imagining an Action

The semantic emotion hypothesis

Is imagining from the inside just what you imagined?

Hot imagination, cold supposition? A different view

There is More to The Content

The Imaginative Realm and Supposition

Wonder is Still Wonder: A cognitive Approach to Thought Experiments

Is There a Place for Supposition in Imagination?

Through the Imagining-Glass and What We Found There

A Cognitive Approach to Thought Experiments: There is More to the Argument

Arcangeli, M. (2014): Review of Kuzmičová, A. (2013). Mental Imagery in the Experience of Literary Narrative: Views from Embodied Cognition (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 177p)

by Margherita Arcangeli and Anezka Kuzmicova

Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics, 2014

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Margherita Arcangeli

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