Imagination in Philosophy (from NYT’s “The Stone”)

From a recent essay over at The Stone on NYT.COM by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone about philosophy and the poetic imagination:

“…what makes these interpretive efforts poetic: They do not concern the ordinary significance of form in language. When we approach language prosaically, our focus is on arbitrary conventions that link words to things in the world and to the contents of thought. These links allow us to raise questions about what’s true, and to coordinate our investigations to find answers. But poetry exists because we are just as interested in discovering ourselves, and one another, in what we say. Poetry evokes a special kind of thinking — where we interpret ordinary links between language and world and mind as a kind of diagram of the possibilities of experience.”