Title Pending 3623

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.It is a commonplace that imagination is heterogeneous: we need to draw a series of cross-cutting distinctions even to begin any serious general discussion of the range of activities we take to be typical instances. The nature of the heterogeneity being exhibited is usually left unclear, however, and thus so are its consequences both for our understanding of imagination and for assessing certain challenges such as reductionism. Here it is argued that we can accept heterogeneity while recognizing important forms of unity among the various kinds of imaginative activity. Four distinct but compatible strategies of different strengths are considered, three of which have historical precedents in Aristotle's and Hegel's work. All of them have consequences for modern reductionist approaches to imagination, but also, more surprisingly, for standard assumptions about the epistemic asymmetry between imagination and other forms of representation such as perception and belief. Understanding heterogeneity in these ways allows us to understand the connections between the various forms of activity that philosophers and others have grouped together despite thinking they do not constitute a single natural kind, as well as to examine the extent to which current approaches are continuous or discontinuous with those of past thinkers.