Knowing‐How to Transform: Imagination and Unprecedented Experience Across Domains

ABSTRACT

Transformative experience has been discussed primarily in terms of changes in phenomenal and evaluative perspective that alter both our epistemic status and the core traits of who we are. This paper identifies a further form of epistemic transformation involving the acquisition of unprecedented know‐how : practical knowledge that cannot be possessed prior to acquiring the relevant capacity. The motor domain makes this form of transformation especially clear. I argue that skillful and constrained imagination can provide epistemic guidance in the face of such novelty by constructing grounded representations of unfamiliar outcomes from resources already available to the agent. More generally, I contend that unprecedented experience does not imply representational blankness.