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Representationalism and the phenomenology of mental imagery

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Abstract

This paper sketches a phenomenological analysis of visual mental imagery and uses it to criticize representationalism and the internalist-versus-externalist framework for understanding consciousness. Contrary to internalist views of mental imagery imagery experience is not the experience of a phenomenal mental picture inspected by the mind’s eye, but rather the mental simulation of perceptual experience. Furthermore, there are experiential differences in perceiving and imagining that are not differences in the properties represented by these experiences. Therefore, externalist representationalism, which maintains that the properties of experience are the external properties represented by experience, is an inadequate account of conscious experience.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University College, University of Toronto, 15 Kings College Circle, Toronto, ON, M5S 3H7, Canada

    Evan Thompson

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  1. Evan Thompson
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Correspondence to Evan Thompson.

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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. Representationalism and the phenomenology of mental imagery. Synthese 160, 397–415 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9086-0

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