The imagery debate: A critical assessment
Journal of Philosophical Research 21 (January):149-182 (1996)
| Abstract | No one disputes that certain cognitive tasks involve the use of images. On the other hand, there has been substantial disagreement over whether the representations in which imaginal tasks are carried out are imaginal or propositional. The empirical literature on the topic which has accrued over the last twenty years suggests that there is a functional equivalence between mental imagery and perception: when peopIe imagine a scene or event, the mental processes that occur are functionally similar in important senses to what happens when they visually perceive an analogous scene or event. What is in dispute is not this principle of equivalence, but rather what conclusions should be drawn from it about the representational medium used in imagery.The problem to be explained is what internal cognitive events transpire when people answer questions like “What color is a bee’s head?” Most people report that they imagine a picture of the insect and then look at the head in the image to determine its color. Although there is no more reason to accept these introspective reports as a good account of cognitive processes than in any other cognitive phenomena, there are many empirical results which lend credence to the idea that there are mental images of some kind.Some theorists have taken the empirical results as evidence that there exists a special, non-symbolic representational medium for imagery. Others have insisted that the imagery data can be explained best in terms of the more general, symbolic representations which are usually taken to underly higher level cognitive tasks. In this paper I shall evaluate the arguments for both imaginal and propositional representations in the hope of assessing the status of the imagery debate. I shall conclude that imaginal theories represent the most reasonable account of imagery | |||||||||
| Keywords | Cognition Data Epistemology Event Imagery | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesGianfranco Dalla Barba, Victor Rosenthal & Yves-Marie Visetti (2002). The Nature of Mental Imagery: How Null is the “Null Hypothesis”? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):187-188.
A. Ahsen (2005). A Second Report on AA-VVIQ: Role of Vivid and Unvivid Images in Consciousness Research. Journal of Mental Imagery 29 (3-4).
Catharine Abell & Gregory Currie (1999). Internal and External Pictures. Philosophical Psychology 12 (4):429-445.
John R. Pani (2002). Mental Imagery is Simultaneously Symbolic and Analog. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):205-206.
Nigel J. T. Thomas (2005). Mental Imagery, Philosophical Issues About. In Lynn Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Volume 2, pp. 1147-1153.
Andreas K. A. Georgiou (2007). An Embodied Cognition View of Lmagery-Based Reasoning in Science. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 7 (2):215-248.
Peter Slezak (2002). The Imagery Debate: Déjà Vu All Over Again? Commentary on Zenon Pylyshyn. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):209-210.
Peter P. Slezak (2002). The Imagery Debate: Déjà-Vu All Over Again? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):209-210.
Kim Sterelny (1986). The Imagery Debate. Philosophy of Science 53 (December):560-83.
Evan Thompson (2007). Look Again: Phenomenology and Mental Imagery. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6 (1-2).
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads7 ( #133,532 of 549,122 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,361 of 549,122 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
