I think imagination absolutely has a an indispensable role in philosophy, and not just speaking historically or solely about Continental as opposed to Analytic. It's difficult for me to conceive of how any kind of problem solving would NOT rely to some extent on imagination.

Once you get outside a very strict realm- say the realm of simple mathematics- logic doesn't immediately supply or infer an answer...I would say it plays 'gatekeeper' for possible answers. Take as an example the kind of modal realism subscribed to by Lewis. In formulating this theory of modality, philosophers started with the problem of what modal terms REFER to, which I think is a much more complicated answer than what "red", for example, refers to. They had to come up with a picture of existence that answers their problem and is also logically consistent with other premises or methodological approaches (such as Occam's theorem). The result- that all possible worlds are equally 'real', that the world we are in is not the only 'actual' one (though it might be from our point of view), etc. was a result of imagination constrained by reason.

Logic, inference, consistency, etc. act as bounds of imagination in cases such as this but don't supply 'answers'. It can, put very simply, tell us what is wrong but cannot tell us what is right. In a sense, consistency is imagination's editor but doesn't really have any output in the realm of metaphysics especially.

Yup, that was really fun, BCrank! It was DuctTape (Ivan) who came to visit us. I got a couple of messages from him on the old forum but he never responded to my responses so I'm not sure he got them. Great to see you again as well!

Thank you for the 'cheatsheet', Cic, I would have never caught on by myself! X-)

Good to see you again, sir!

Thank you all for the welcome back - it's truly a pleasure to see so much of the old community here. I'm assuming most everyone has retained their old names (and I'm just smart enough to deduce that 'sittinwithsocrates' = 'arguingwitharistotle')(?). Has anyone undergone a full 'namelift' and completely changed from the old forum?