There is a long history to the belief that imagination is
conducted through the use of mental representations and this can be traced back
at least to the 4th Century BC Greek philosopher Aristotle who wrote:
“whenever one contemplates, one
necessarily at the same time contemplates in images.” This view, that treats mental imagery as the
straightforward equivalent of perceptual experience, persisted unchallenged for
more than two millennia.
Perhaps the first person to record significant divergences
in peoples’ accounts of mental imagery was Charles Darwin’s cousin: Francis
Galton. Being credited as the inventor of that infamous form of data-gathering known
as the questionnaire, Galton conducted the first ever survey of mental imagery
in 1880. He notes that significant numbers of respondents make claims to the
effect of: “If I could draw, I am sure I
could draw perfectly from my mental image.” He continues:
I have little doubt that
there is an unconscious exaggeration in these returns. My reason for saying so
is that I have also returns from artists, who say as follows: ‘My imagery is so
clear, that if I had been unable to draw I should have unhesitatingly said that
I could draw from it.’
Sadly, instead of recognising these varied accounts as evidence
of an underlying problem with the application of perceptual terminology to
mental states, Galton draws the unremarkable conclusion that different people
possess differing levels of mental-image-forming ability. In a later section he
goes on to write:
There exists a power
which is rare naturally, but can, I believe, be acquired without much
difficulty, of projecting a mental picture upon a piece of paper, and of
holding it fast there, so that it can be outlined with a pencil.
This is an extraordinary claim and it is difficult to
fathom how Galton could believe such an ability to be "acquired without much difficulty" when it is patently
obvious that artists are unanimously unable to exercise such prodigious skill.
If it were easily acquired it would, no doubt, be taught in schools at an early
age and years of disciplined observation would be unnecessary, not to mention
paper, teachers’ salaries and students’ fees.
What continues to cause great confusion and significant variance in reports, is the difficulty we encounter when attempting to investigate
or describe cognitive processes such as mental imagery via the terminology of perceptual
experience. Mental imagery ‘feels’ like perceptual experience but, for the
majority of people, it is nonetheless clearly distinguishable from it, at least
in practical terms. However, as soon as we attempt to describe this difference
we find ourselves unavoidably drawn to the use of such words as vividness,
vagueness, haziness, realism, veridicality, verisimilitude, clarity, brightness
etc, all of which derive from descriptions of phenomena available to our
senses. This has led to the repeated error, amongst scientists and philosophers
especially, not only of proceeding as if we were somehow possessed of sensory
faculties capable of observing our internal states but also of treating mental
states, and mental imagery in particular, as perceptible experiences.
“Ahh”, you say “But I can describe my mental imagery. I
have mental images and I can see them clearly. How can this richness be
explained if not by mental images?” Few people deny what
we call mental images altogether but what is under serious question –
especially since Ryle – is any similarity between what we describe as mental
images and their public equivalents: pictorial representations. Theorists
differ considerably in the degree to which they are prepared to entertain the
possibility that thoughts (of which mental images are a form) are non-representational
in nature. Many seem to agree that mental images are significantly unlike
pictorial representations but that they nonetheless serve a similar functional
role, and a representational one at that. Others agree that mental images are
functional but that they are in no way representational.
Why should it matter? There are several reasons, with potentially profound
consequences for both philosophy and science. Firstly, it is important that
scientists conduct their investigations on the basis of correct premises
otherwise their interpretations of the available evidence are, at best, likely
to be overcomplicated and, at worst, entirely false. If Copernicus had not cast
doubt upon the geocentric view of the universe then the progress of scientific
understanding would surely have been greatly impeded and the explanations and
calculations necessary to explain the misconception would no doubt have simply
compounded the initial errors. If mental states do not utilise representations
– as the vast majority of scientists believe they do – then science will very likely
be struggling needlessly to make sense of the data it gathers in the same way
that pre-Copernican astronomers once struggled to explain the bizarre
trajectories of the planets across the heavens. The scientific investment in the
assumption that our mental life is conducted through mental representations (“mentalese”)
is so widespread that it is difficult to comprehend the repercussions if the
underlying hypothesis turns out to be incorrect. Recent developments in the
theory of embodied cognition suggest that the edifice of mental representations may well come crashing down
sooner than its supporters might otherwise think.
Part V of this series of posts on the imagination looks at
some of the confusion that has arisen through what is described as “meta-representation”
and introduces a few theories of the functioning of human imagination and its
intimate interrelationships with perception, memory and consciousness.
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