Question 2 on Taylor/Claxton

Comment on the sentence: “One might say the same about knowledge: it must derive from experience in a way which can in principle be reproduced by others. Imagination is a private thing, the leap of a single brain from established fact to exciting novelty.”

In the beginning sentence, Taylor is comparing knowledge to the language example of how language is public not private and knowledge may be the same way. However, not everyone has access to knowledge, or, if they do, they do not utilize it very effectively. For example, many towns have public libraries but very few people use them or buy books because of how materialistic America is become. Imagination is the private one but I think that imagination can be shared through language. One can share imagination through a novel, a poem, a song, a painting and in that way, the imagination becomes public.

However, it is nice to think of imagination as "all to ourselves" which it is if we do not share it or only share certain features of it by its leaking through what we create in artwork or literature. On the turn side, imagination can still use experience if one is to imagine greater. One must experience more things in life in order to imagine more just as one must experience more in order to have a vaster knowledge. And the experience that comes with knowledge is a kind of laid back experience which seeps into the imagination while with the knowledge, we must think and remember. I think that is why imagination receives all this discredit.