Learning from imagination: Proclus in dialogue with a contemporary debate

Abstract Can we learn from imagination? This article surveys a thread from an ongoing debate in philosophy of mind and brings it into dialogue with Proclus's notion of mathematical imagination. Imagination for Proclus mediates between intellect and perception and reveals a unique level of reality borne by “intelligible matter.” By contrast, the contemporary debate, focused on concepts such as instructive versus transcendent imagining and propositional versus doxastic justification, is primarily epistemic in nature and seems not to require the fifth‐century Platonist's commitment to a distinctive level of imaginal reality. Even so, I argue that Proclus could converse fruitfully with the contemporary debate on questions about whether there is evidence accessible only to imagination and irreducible to other sources and about whether imagination is situationally responsive and able to inform belief.