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Look again: Phenomenology and mental imagery

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Abstract

This paper (1) sketches a phenomenological analysis of visual mental imagery; (2) applies this analysis to the mental imagery debate in cognitive science; (3) briefly sketches a neurophenomenological approach to mental imagery; and (4) compares the results of this discussion with Dennett’s heterophenomenology.

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Notes

  1. For this debate, see the articles collected in Block (1981a, b). See also Rollins (1989) and Tye (1991).

  2. How to specify precisely what makes a representation depictive is a difficult matter. Kosslyn (1994, p. 5) defines a depictive representation as “a type of picture, which specifies the locations and values of configurations of points in a space. For example, a drawing of a box would be a depictive representation. The space in which the points appear need not be physical, such as this page, but can be like an array in a computer, which specifies spatial relations purely functionally. That is, the physical locations in the computer of each point in an array are not themselves arranged into an array; it is only by virtue of how this information is ‘read’ and processed that it comes to function as if it were arranged into an array (with some points being close, some far, some falling along a diagonal, and so on). In a depictive representation, each part of an object is represented by a pattern of points, and the spatial relations among these patterns in the functional space correspond to the spatial relations among the parts themselves. Depictive representations convey meaning via their resemblance to an object, with parts corresponding to parts of the object.” For critical discussion of this concept of depictive representation, see Pylyshyn (2002, 2003a, pp. 328–333). See also Tye (1991, pp. 33–60) for helpful clarifications.

  3. Consider the following examples: “Kosslyn’s view has great initial plausibility. For we seem to be aware of images – pictures in the mind-playing an important role in thought” (Sterelny, 1990, p. 608). “The fact that we seem to use representations in our head in the same way that we use maps and diagrams is a special case of the similarity between perception and imagination. Just as we perceive the relative locations of two cities on a real map without apparent effort or inference, so too we seem to be able to employ the inner eye to perceive these locations on an inner, memory-generated, representation” (Sterelny 1990, p. 615). “Cognitive science is rife with ideas that offend our intuitions. It is arguable that nowhere is the pull of the subjective stronger than in the study of perception and mental imagery. It is not easy for us to take seriously the proposal that the visual system creates something like symbol structures in our brain since it seems intuitively obvious that what we have in our mind when we look out onto the world, as well as when we close our eyes and imagine a scene, is something that looks like the scene, and hence whatever it is that we have in our heads must be much more like a picture than a description. Though we may know that this cannot be literally the case, that it would do no good to have an inner copy of the world, this reasoning appears to be powerless to dissuade us from our intuitions” (Pylyshyn, 2003a, p. 157). “Nobody denies that when we engage in mental imagery we seem to be making pictures in our head – in some sense. The question is: Are we really? That is, do the properties in our brains have any of the properties of pictures?” (Dennett, 2002a, p. 189).

  4. As Kosslyn, Thompson, and Ganis state in their recent case for the pictorialist view: “from the time of Plato at least up to William James... philosophers and psychologists have relied on their introspections to argue that depictive images play a functional role in psychology. If this view is correct, we will gain important insight into the nature of consciousness – given the striking correspondences between some aspects of phenomenology and the underlying representational format” (2006, p. 20).

  5. Dennett’s response to this point is that the belief may be a theorist’s belief, “but it turns out we are all theorists” (Dennett, 1998, p. 754; see also Dennett, 2002b). According to his view, perceivers tacitly believe they have pictorial representations in their heads corresponding to what they perceive, and perceptual experience is partly constituted by this belief. But this view seems misguided. Perceptual experience is directed toward the world, not toward the brain. Beliefs about what goes on in the brain are no part of ordinary perceptual experience. In particular, perceptual experience involves no commitment to the belief that we have pictures (or any other kind of representation) in our brains when we see (Noë, 2002, 2004, pp. 55–59; Noë et al., 2000).

  6. My use of Mach’s picture builds on Noë (2004, Chapter 2) and Thompson et al. (1999, pp. 194–195).

  7. Of course, picture-viewing also involves sensorimotor and mental exploration of the picture. My point, however, is that visual experience is not determinate in its contents in the way the surface of a picture is determinate in its qualitative features.

  8. This idea goes back to G.E. Moore: “When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue; the other element is as if it were diaphanous. Yet it can be distinguished if we look attentively enough, and if we know there is something to look for” (Moore, 1922, p. 25). Note that Moore here states that the visual sensation is as if it were diaphanous, but that it can be distinguished, a view in keeping with his sense–data theory of perception. H.P. Grice, on the other hand, in his expression of the diaphanous idea, implied that we cannot introspectively distinguish any sensation distinct from what we see: “such experiences (if experiences they be) as seeing and feeling seem to be, as it were, diaphanous: if we were asked to pay close attention, on a given occasion, to our seeing or feeling as distinct from what was being seen or felt, we should not know how to proceed; and the attempt to describe the differences between seeing and feeling seems to dissolve into a description of what we see and what we feel” (Grice, 2002, p. 45). For discussion of the transparency thesis, see Kind (2003), Martin (2002), Siewert (2004), and Stoljar (2004).

  9. Here I use the term “subjective character of experience” somewhat differently from Nagel (1979). Nagel introduced this term to refer to what a subject’s experience is like for that subject. What experience is like in this sense is supposed to involve both the qualitative properties of the subject’s experience (qualia) and the subject’s first-person perspective. I am using the term, however, to refer specifically to how a given type of mental activity, such as seeing or visualizing, is experienced in one’s own case. Such experience is typically not reflective or introspective. My usage of “subjective character of experience” is close to Kriegel’s (2006). He uses it to mean the implicit and nonreflective “for-me-ness” of conscious experience. For both Kriegel and me, the phenomenal character of experience is the compresence (to use his formulation) of qualitative character and subjective character (for-me-ness). On this view, every conscious mental state (every mental state with phenomenal character) is implicitly and nonreflectively self-aware. This notion of nonreflective self-consciousness is central to the accounts of consciousness in the phenomenological tradition from Brentano to Husserl to Sartre. For recent discussions, see Kriegel (2002, 2003) and Zahavi (2004, 2005a).

  10. This statement needs qualification. By “representationalism” I mean externalist representationalism. For a representationalist model of subjectivity, defined as the possession of a phenomenal first-person perspective, see Metzinger (2003). This model focuses on the phenomenal content of the first-person perspective, but does not analyze the intentionality of mental acts as these are experienced in their subjective performance. It would take me too far afield to consider Metzinger’s account here. For incisive criticism of this account from a phenomenological perspective, see Zahavi (2005b), and from an embodied dynamical perspective in cognitive science consistent with phenomenology, see Legrand (2005).

  11. Thus, Harman says, “Nor does she experience any features of anything as intrinsic features of her experience. And that is true of you too.” Similarly, Ian Gold, citing Harman, writes: “Experience, it is sometimes said, is ‘diaphanous’: one sees through it to the object or property the experience is representing. The experience itself has no properties accessible to the experiencer” (Gold 2002, p. 190).

  12. See Kind (2003, p. 230). She distinguishes between “strong” and “weak” transparency claims, whose formulations differ from mine.

  13. I do not mean to imply that all imagining is voluntary and effortful in this way. Daydreaming, reverie, and fantasy are usually not. See Sartre (2004 pp. 18–19): “In most cases, no doubt, the [mental] image springs from a deep spontaneity that cannot be assimilated to the will... But involuntary and voluntary images represent two closely related types of consciousness, of which one is produced by a voluntary spontaneity and the other by a spontaneity without will.”

  14. Dainton (2000, 2002) has criticized what he calls awareness-content dualism in theories of consciousness. Crucial to this dualism as Dainton describes it is the view that awareness is a bare act devoid of any intrinsic phenomenal characteristics. The Husserlian phenomenological differentiation of experience into intentional-act and intentional-object poles involves no commitment to this notion of bare awareness.

  15. Kriegel (2004) interprets this implicit self-awareness as a form of marginal or peripheral awareness. This view can also be found in Gurwitsch (1964). The problem with this view is that it treats one’s nonreflective awareness of one’s experiences on the model of one’s implicit awareness of objects in the background of perception. Various arguments can be given to show, however, that experiences are not given as objects to self-awareness and that prereflective self-consciousness does not have a subject/object structure. See Thompson (2007) and Zahavi (2005a).

  16. Notice I say that the experience is not the object of another higher-order phenomenally conscious mental state. The reason is that I do not wish to beg the question against the higher-order thought theory of consciousness. According to this theory, a conscious mental state is one that is the object of an accompanying higher-order cognitive state that is not itself a conscious state. Thus, this theory attempts to explain intransitive consciousness (a mental state’s being a conscious mental state) in terms of transitive consciousness (a mental state is intransitively conscious just in case one is transitively conscious of it, and to be transitively conscious of it is to have an accompanying higher-order thought that one is in that very state). This theory is meant to be a substantive hypothesis about what intransitive consciousness is, not a phenomenological description. My point above, however, is a phenomenological one: It is that experience involves an implicit self-awareness that is not a function of conscious reflection or introspection. The higher-order thought theory is free to acknowledge this phenomenological point, but would aim to explain or analyze implicit self-awareness in terms of transitive consciousness and accompanying (nonconscious) higher-order thoughts. I think such accounts are unsuccessful, but I do not intend to argue for this point here. For the higher-order thought theory, see Rosenthal (1997). For rebuttals of the higher-order thought theory on behalf of a one-level account of consciousness as intransitive self-consciousness, see Kriegel (2003) and Zahavi and Parnas (1998).

  17. There is a large phenomenological literature on whether this activity of making features of experience explicit and available for phenomenological consideration is primarily descriptive or interpretive, and whether it must involve an objectifying (and hence distorting) form of reflection. For some recent discussions, see Poellner (2003); Stawarska (2002); and Zahavi (2005a).

  18. This distinction is between what Husserl calls Gegenwärtigung (presentation) and Vergegenwärtigung (re-presentation).

  19. The claim that imagination is a necessary constituent of pictorial experience is controversial. Now classic discussions are Walton (1990) and Wolheim (1980, 1987). For recent discussions, see Levinson (1998); Lopes (1996); Hopkins (1998); Stock (2006); and Wolheim (1998).

  20. Cf. Searle (1983, pp. 45–46): “If, for example, I see a yellow station wagon in front of me, the experience I have is directly of the object. It doesn’t just ‘represent’ the object, it provides direct access to it. The experience has a kind of directness, immediacy and involuntariness which is not shared by a belief which I might have about the object in its absence. It seems therefore unnatural to describe visual experiences as representations... Rather, because of the special features of perceptual experiences I propose to call them ‘presentations.’ The visual experience I will say does not just represent the state of affairs perceived; rather, when satisfied, it gives direct access to it, and in that sense it is a presentation of that state of affairs.”

  21. Here we touch upon the complexities of internal time-consciousness, which are beyond the scope of this paper.

  22. For this notion of the “neutrality modification” applied to belief, see Husserl (1983, Section 109, pp. 257–259). For discussion of the role that neutralization plays in imagination, see Marbach (1993, pp. 75–76).

  23. See Sartre (2004, p. 57): “The image is defined by its intention. It is the intention that makes it the case that the image of Pierre is consciousness of Pierre. If the intention is taken at its origin, which is to say as it springs from our spontaneity, it already implies, no matter how naked and bare it may seem, a certain knowledge: it is, hypothetically, the knowledge (connaissance) of Pierre... But the intention does not limit itself, in the image, to aiming at Pierre in an indeterminate fashion: he is aimed at as blond, tall, with a snub or aquiline nose, etc. It must therefore be charged with knowledge (connaissances), it must aim through a certain layer of consciousness that we can call the layer of knowledge. So that, in the imaging consciousness, one can distinguish knowledge and intention only by abstraction. The intention is defined only by the knowledge since one represents in image only what one knows in some sort of way and, reciprocally, knowledge here is not simply knowledge, it is an act, it is what I want to represent to myself... Naturally, this knowledge should not be considered as added to an already constituted image to clarify it: it is the active structure of the image.”

  24. Because of these characteristics of imagining – the determination of its content by knowledge and intention, as well as the essential unexplorability of the imagined object – Sartre describes the intentional attitude of imagining as one of “quasi-observation,” by which he means an attitude of observation, but an observation that does not teach anything (Sartre, 2004, p. 10). As McGinn (2004, pp. 19–20) notes, this formulation should be modified to allow for the possibility of cognitive enhancement (for example, problem solving) by imagining.

  25. Pylyshyn routinely conflates this hypothesis with the substantive hypothesis that all cognition involves the same propositional format, namely, a “language of thought.” But to pretend that the language of thought hypothesis does not have its own deep conceptual problems (where does the semantics of the symbols come from?), analogous to those that dog pictorialism, is sheer bluster.

  26. Sartre already announced this dynamic and relational conception of imagery in 1940, at the beginning of his phenomenological study, The Imaginary. There he used phenomenological analysis to expose what he called “the illusion of immanence,” by which he meant the cognitive illusion of taking mental images to be pictorial items in consciousness. One form this illusion can take is supposing that the qualities of the object one imagines also belong to one’s mental image, or as we would say today, confusing properties of what is represented with properties of the representing. But Sartre went further than this familiar point. He argued that a mental image properly understood is not a content contained in consciousness, but rather an intentional act of consciousness: “The word “image” could only indicate therefore the relation of consciousness to the object; in other words, it is a certain way in which the object appears to consciousness, or, if one prefers, a certain way in which consciousness presents to itself an object. To tell the truth, the expression “mental image” gives rise to confusion. It would be better to say “consciousness-of-Pierre-as-imaged” or “imaging-consciousness-of-Pierre.” As the word “image” is long-standing, we cannot reject it completely. But, to avoid all ambiguity, I repeat here that an image is nothing other than a relation” (Sartre, 2004, p. 7). Sartre compromised this insight, however, by falling back into treating imaging consciousness as a species of picture-viewing. See Stawarska (2001).

  27. Not all forms of phenomenology would not describe their mode of access to phenomena in this way. To equate phenomenology with one particular way of doing phenomenology would be a leveling misrepresentation. Different ways of doing phenomenology are appropriate in different contexts. In this respect, phenomenology is no different from science or philosophy overall.

  28. Dennett writes: “[O]f course experimenters on illusions rely on subjects’ introspective beliefs (as expressed in their judgments) about how things seem to them, but that is the agnosticism of heterophenomenology; to go beyond it would be, for instance, to assume that in size illusions there really are visual images of different sizes somewhere in subjects’ brains (or minds), which of course no researcher would dream of doing” (Dennett, 2003). In this last statement, we see the same bias toward interpreting first-person reports as expressions of belief about what is going on in the brain or mind considered as a subpersonal cognitive system. Goldman, (2004) usefully terms this sort of interpretation “architecturally loaded” (because it interprets subjects as expressing beliefs about their subpersonal cognitive architecture), and writes: “The following... seems like a reasonable rule of thumb: ‘When considering an introspective report, and a choice is available between an architecturally loaded interpretation of the report and an architecturally neutral interpretation, always prefer the latter.’ This is just the opposite of Dennett’s practice. His proclivity is to interpret ordinary introspective reports in architecturally loaded terms” (Goldman 2004, p. 12).

  29. Versions of this paper were presented to the Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto; the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen; the Syracuse Philosophy Annual Workshop and Network (SPAWN), Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University; and the Centre de Recerche en Epistémologie Appliqué (CREA), Ecole Polytechnique. I am thankful to the audiences on these occasions for their comments and critcisms. Special thanks are due to Ned Block, Diego Cosmelli, Jun Luo, Uriah Kriegel, Alva Noë, Pierre Livet, Brian Cantwell Smith, Joel Walmsley, and Dan Zahavi.

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Thompson, E. Look again: Phenomenology and mental imagery. Phenom Cogn Sci 6, 137–170 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9031-1

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