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Anna Ichino
Seminar Leader and Research Student, Faculty of Arts
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Research Summary
Areas of Specialization: Philosophy of Mind, Aesthetics.
My current research focuses on imagination, with the primary aim of pointing out and clarifying its contribution to our representation of the real world. It is commonly assumed that our representation of the world basically coincides with our beliefs concerning it, and that the ways in which we look at world are, ipso facto, the ways in which we believe it to be made. However, I think that this is not (entirely) true: our representation of the world is not made up only of beliefs, but also of other different attitudes, the most important of which is precisely imagination. I think that many of our common thoughts, opinions or ideas about reality should be identified as imaginings rather than as beliefs, indeed. In my research I am defending and developing this idea through a systematic investigation of the ways and the forms in which imagination performs its doxastic role, contending with belief for our view of the world.
In the course of developing these ideas I have also studied the topics of fiction, emotions, animal cognition, perception and visual arts.