Pretending to Ourselves

"You only live twice

Or so it seems

One life for yourself

And one for your dreams."

The purpose of this post is to challenge the view that imagined episodes qualify as experiences of the things imagined. Do those who claim to have a rich imagination live a life in addition to the one they actually live? Fortunately for most of us, actual life and imaginary life are clearly not the same. My aim is to explore some of the differences and to explain why we might sometimes be led to the mistaken conclusion that our lives are divided between the public world of perception and a private realm of what Sartre called "quasi observation" or quasi experience.

Many people would rightly argue that imagining a traumatic event can be a deeply unsettling experience, so it would seem that my argument must necessarily fall at the first hurdle. I don't deny that imagined episodes are experiences, but what they are experiences of, are not experiences of the things and states of affairs imagined but rather they are experiences of imagining those things and states of affairs.

Now it might be objected that I am twisting language, but my aim is to do precisely the reverse. When we pretend to eat a lemon we are not eating a lemon. The experience is simply an experience of pretending. And whilst this may share much in common with the actual experience, there is one obvious missing component that must be taken into account. Eating a lemon involves the perception of an actual lemon. When we pretend to eat a lemon, we elicit many of the same embodied responses — for example we might salivate more. And when we imagine eating a lemon these same responses are also triggered to some degree.

So my argument is simply this: imagining is a species of pretending. And in the same way that pretend experiences are not experiences of the things pretended, nor are imaginary episodes experiences of the things imagined.

Unlike imagining, pretending is typically an interpersonal activity. Pretending and performing are thus intimately intertwined in a way that imagining and performing are not. To pretend is to act as if something is the case when in fact the pretend condition or object is absent. To imagine is to know how to pretend. It is to know how to perform in such a way as to elicit (in oneself and others) the embodied responses that accompany perceptions of the things imagined. Just as we learn to read out loud before we learn to read in silence, so too I suggest, do we first learn to pretend in public before we learn to pretend to ourselves: to imagine. This is why I believe that it makes good sense to view imagination is a species of pretending, because imagination is parasitic upon our skills as performers; as producers and consumers of communicative actions.

It might be objected that I am neglecting something important about imagining. When we conjour up remembered episodes, colours, sounds, tastes etc. the experience (of imagining) might be thought by many to be more fulsome, more rich and more substantial than a mere deceipt, dissimulation or act of feigning. Some philosophers might even argue that imaginings have what they describe as "phenomenal character"; a term that refers to the "feel" of imagined experiences. But the point that needs to be borne in mind is that an imagined colour, texture, sound or flavour etc. has no sensory component and cannot therefore be "felt." What we might be tempted to treat as the felt component of such imagined experiences is precisely the embodied responsiveness already outlined above. Whenever we ordinarily perceive objects and states of affairs, we are subject to a whole variety of causally generated responses. And when we imagine or pretend to experience objects and states of affairs we are also subject — though to a lesser degree of course — to many of the same causal influences. Imagining and pretending are thus skills of expectation, of having learned and not forgotten what Gilbert Ryle called "perceptual lessons." Julia Tanney puts it like this:

Imaging or picturing involves knowledge how things look or sound and not having forgotten. But it does not require, what Hume seems to have thought, that in imagining Vinzelles’s gooseberry green eyes, his eyes have left a visual sense impression that occurred when my eyes were open which cause or bring about a faint sort of impression (or representation).

Tanney continues with a quote from Ryle:

All that is required is to see that learning perceptual lessons entails some perceiving, that applying those lessons entails having learned them, and that imaging is one way of applying those lessons.

Professor Adam Zeman of Exeter University has been in the media recently in relation to his coining of the term "aphantasia." Aphantasia refers to a reported inability to produce mental images, a condition (although Zeman is careful to emphasise that it is "not a disorder") that has been documented for more than a century at least. A portion of people — around 1 in 50 Zeman estimates — are subject to aphantasia.

As a scientist, Zeman's research clearly garners a fair amount of credence, but if my analysis is not mistaken then there may be reason for skepticism regarding his conclusions. Many of the people who report aphantasia are understandably distressed at their incapacity to perform the feats of imagination that others seem to be readily capable of. One aphantasiac put it like this: “I was devastated... Actually, it put me into a depression, realizing that everyone saw the world in a different way — like suddenly discovering you’re blind.”

I think these people have been misled. Like many artists, I would say that I have a vivid imagination. I spend a lot of my time visualising ideas, daydreaming and thinking about how things look. And like most art teachers, I have no difficulty imagining the images and objects that students discuss on a daily basis and I would say that I am quite skilled in making suggestions of how these plans might be improved or how the associated pitfalls might best be avoided. But in spite of these pleasures and skills, I have never once mistaken my imagination for perception and not do I expect to. The two are so unalike that there is no question of confusing one for the other. 

Like many people I have spoken to on this subject, I have never regarded the term "mental image" as anything other than a convenient metaphor for the ability to think of how things appear. Taken literally the term simply mischaracterises imagination by reference to a class of very specific tangible cultural contrivances that cannot possibly be formed in the mind or brain. There are no "pictures in the head," just as there are no "inner eyes" to see them.

Imagining is not an inner display of any sort. It is a skill of knowing what to expect in acts of looking, listening, tasting etc. It is the capacity moreover, of effortlessly having expectations (perceptual lessons learned) and being surprised whenever these expectations are thwarted. When we imagine eating a lemon, we do not find ourselves surprised that the imagined flavour is not as we expected. We might be disappointed that it does not have the zest of experience but that of course is one of the characteristic differences between imagining and perceiving. We can pretend to compare lemons, but only actual lemons bear comparison.

Animal Minds?

The American essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, once wrote "The ancestor of every action is a thought." Superficially this idea seems plausible enough, but on closer examination it turns out to conceal a vicious paradox. If every purposeful action necessitated a prior thought, then every act of thinking – every thought – would itself have to be initiated by a further motivating thought. This inextinguishable spiral of antecedent thoughts is sometimes known as a “Rylean regress,” named after the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle who took the view that “intelligent practice is not a step-child of theory.”

At the core of Ryle’s philosophy was the conviction that intelligent behaviours are not the result of practical knowledge but are instead instances of practical knowledge. Confusion arises because we tend to conceive of knowledge as an independent "thing" that leads to, results in or produces actions. Ryle exposed the “category mistake” implicit in this reified conception. Knowledge for Ryle is neither an entity nor a neurological region that we can point to on a fMRI scan – it is a repertoire of aptitudes, skills and dispositions. For Ryle, skillful action is a form of thinking. And if thought and action are indivisible in this way, then there need be no prior “thought processes” driving intelligent behaviour. Actions are already integrated processes of intelligent engagement with the world.

So, do animals think before they act? A Rylean analysis would suggest not. But this is not to support the view that only language users are capable of contemplating the future or of making plans. Many plans are diagrammatic objects after all. Nonetheless what it does strongly suggest is that the skills involved in planning and other sophisticated forms of future directed activity, rely upon techniques that must be learned and practiced through trial and error. In the human case this is achieved through publicly negotiated forms of communication, both verbal and nonverbal. Without such public exchanges it is extremely doubtful that any creature could ever develop the capacity to ponder with any degree of complexity or proficiency. Skills are demonstrated and tested in the unforgiving crucible of actuality, not in the cosseted ether of thought or imagination.

Evolution's Greatest Gift

Gifts can arrive carefully concealed or straight out of the box. Either way their consequences can only be envisaged but never seen from the outset.

I recently had a discussion with a philosopher in which he brought up the Wollheimian concept of "seeing-in." He claimed that an expert talent-scout working for a modelling agency would be able to see - literally perceive - potential in the face of a prospective model. Sadly the discussion was interrupted and I didn't get a chance to explore his view further.

It may be the case that he was using the term "perception" figuratively as an equivalent of "appreciation", "evaluation" or "inference". Potential in this sense is a projective notion, specifically a notion about a possible or even likely future. It's an anticipatory account, image or expectation. If I say that someone has potential, I don't mean that I literally see anything. If the person in question leaves the room, the potential I see doesn't walk out of the door with them. So to see something in this sense is not to perceive it in anything like the sense in which we might readily see the shape or size of objects around us.

Expertise may sometimes involve a degree heightened perceptual awareness developed through practice and experience. But to see indications, signs, suggestions, evidence etc. involves skills beyond those of mere perception. Even when we see dark clouds looming and say "It looks like it's going to rain" we can only say this because we know from past experience that dark clouds often precede rain and we can use this knowledge to inform our judgements about the future.

Expertise is thus at least partly a condition of being acquainted with certain causal regularities. Experience and education about these regularities furnishes experts with exemplars that allow them to make more accurate predictions. But these predictions are not properties of the world. This is why even experts are often wrong, especially about long-term events.

So, to say that we see potential in a student is to hedge a bet based upon their previous achievements. It is certainly not a kind of mysterious emanation that only experts can sense. It is not a perceptible thing or energy of any kind. It is a supposition, based upon evidence and supported by experience without which the determination of potential would be impossible.

If beauty were a perceptible property of a prospective model then every perceiver - other life forms included - would have to be capable of perceiving it. I don't think anyone would be confident of that view. Beauty and meaning etc. are socially negotiated attributions. They are ideas we closely associate with certain kinds and configurations of perceptible attributes and objects.

When we give gifts we often try to conceal their identity by wrapping them. It is never the point of gift giving that the recipient should be able to predict the contents. Such a skill would render the ritual of wrapping meaningless. One of the great pleasures of wrapped gifts is the expectation they elicit, an expectation that is often most pronounced in childhood. This has two important consequences. Firstly, it encourages self control; a vital life-skill. Secondly, it encourages powers of imagination that are of inestimable value to us as a species.

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Thanks to Brian for his contributions to a previous discussion on the subject of talent that was an important prompt for this post. Major revisions, July 2021.

Imagining Itself (Part XX: Conclusion)

When I first set out to explore the subject of human imagination, more than 18 months ago, I hadn’t the faintest idea that I would be led on the journey that has culminated in these last 20 entries. I had expected to produce a total of perhaps 5 or 6 entries covering the limits of imagination, its possible evolution and some thoughts about its relation to learning and education. Instead I have encountered theories, research and discussions that have radically altered my understanding, not just of imagination but of the nature of consciousness and most especially of the indispensible role that our capacity to produce representations plays in perception, imagination and conscious action.

Complex fields of enquiry are often a source of contrasting opinions and interpretations and this is undoubtedly the case where imagination is concerned. Disagreements of this kind can be an important catalyst for closer scrutiny of the issues and more careful assessments of the available evidence. However, there are instances where the weight of opinion on a subject becomes so overwhelming that dissenting voices are simply drowned out of the conversation. In such circumstances the importance of discourse is easily overlooked and even the most questionable ideas can sometimes appear to be unassailable truths. One such theoretical presupposition that continues to command a significant amount of credence amongst scientists and philosophers is the notion that mental states necessarily involve the utilisation of representations of one kind or another, whether they be mental images, computational data structures or mental content. Nonetheless, a handful of scientists and philosophers interpret the lack of evidence for such representational states as grounds for serious doubt regarding what is sometimes called “representationalism”. As yet, no scientific study has been successful in identifying the coordinates, structure or encoding of any form of neural representation, yet for many influential researchers and thinkers the supposition is all but proven.

"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside." —Allan Bloom

The desire to press ahead in any form of enquiry is always tantalizing, but the temptation to do so in the absence of sufficient evidence should probably be resisted, especially where the theoretical foundations are as uncertain as they clearly are regarding mental representations. Where there is no need for doubt though regarding the available evidence is in our genetically acquired and culturally evolved capacities to produce publicly available representations. As I have tried to clarify at various points throughout this series of essays, as well as in associated comments, brains have evolved as essential components in complex responsive organisms and it is these processes of response, and the dispositions that underlie them, to which we should be looking for insights into the workings of cognition, not to some incompletely theorised and scientifically questionable assumptions about representational states.

With the help of various theories I have tried to expose some of the obvious flaws in representationalism and to show that important alternatives exist that provide significant explanatory potential and scope. I have also tried to show that these alternatives offer important conceptual tools for resolving problems that have stymied thinkers throughout history. No doubt some will find these claims to be overly assertive or immodest on my part. Perhaps this is the price one pays for taking an unorthodox stand on any issue. But what I hope the reader will appreciate above all else is that the subject has been considered carefully and that genuine shortcomings have been identified within the mainstream theorisation of imagination and mental states.

Through my research I have come to the conclusion that a comprehensive understanding of genetically acquired and culturally evolved representational practices is fundamental to the furtherance of our understanding of imagination, perception and consciousness. Without the ability to recognise, create or use representations it is doubtful whether consciousness of any form would be possible and certainly there would be nothing to say or even to wonder about regarding the nature of imagination.

Imagining Itself (Part IXX: Learning Skills)

If it were the case that imagination could initiate neural growth (learning) to the same degree as experience then the question arises: how could we ever distinguish between cognitive development drawn from experience and that drawn from entertaining but infeasible flights of fancy? If there were no difference between the ways we learn from experience and the ways we learn from imagination then how could our cognitive architecture ensure that imagination didn’t simply fill our minds with a deluge of impractical nonsense? To set too much store by the inventions and indulgences of the imagination would surely risk laying down all kinds of meaningless neural networks and worse still, this would probably happen without the slightest conscious awareness. But how is this not the case and how do our minds avoid such self-deception?

It might be suggested that there must be some kind of limiting mechanism or filter at work that inhibits neural development on the basis of imaginative thought, but this need not be the case. There need be no such mechanism because - as Sartre, Ryle and others have surmised - imagination is the exercise of already formed knowledge – of prior memories, ideas and beliefs. Just as perceptual experience leaves its most indelible imprint when it is most repeated, most profound or most surprising, so too, we might suppose, does  imagination. But unlike perception, which frequently presents us with the surprising and the unpredictable, our thoughts and imaginings are rarely truly unexpected. If imagination consists of the interplay of what we already know, then the only means by which we might encounter the unexpected – and from which we might learn – is through the previously untested recombination of this knowledge and the careful pursuit and resolution of incompatible ideas and beliefs. As it happens, we are not especially skilled at this - as research into Cognitive Dissonance clearly shows.

Skills are acquired either by genetic inheritance or by active engagement with the world and never simply by imagining. So for example, it is not possible to become capable of drawing something by the agency of imagination alone because a capability is not something that imagination can ever bestow or confer. Imagination is the means by which we sharpen our skills of representation but it is not the means by which we acquire such skills – or skills of any description. Indeed, imagination would be better understood as being nothing other than the means by which we contemplate, anticipate and refine our skills of representation.

It is because representation is so fundamental to learning that imagination plays such a vital role in the improvement of skills. To acquire a skill is to be able to demonstrate it - it is to be capable of representing it to others. And these capabilities of demonstration and mimicry - of teaching and learning - have been of inestimable use to us as a species. It might be argued that to carry out a learned action is not necessarily to represent it. This is true. However, to carry out an action in the presence of onlookers is for it to be available in representational terms; as the means by which an action is ‘performed’ and as the procedure by which something might be accomplished.

To watch an action is to become capable of representing it. But, crucially, it is not necessarily to be able to represent it either faithfully or fully. Why else would we ever ask: "Can I have a go?" if the capacity to represent something (to have committed it to mind so to speak) was sufficient in and of itself?

Despite the fact that imagination cannot enable skills it can, and frequently does, allow us to improve them. It has long been known that the use of visualisation techniques in sports training can bring about measurable improvements in performance. To imagine how you could better swing a tennis racket is to imagine how you would represent the motion as a performative act. It is to deliberately engage many of the same cognitive structures as would be exercised if you were to actually perform the action. And, as many studies have shown, repeatedly exercise of these cognitive structures through visualisation causes them to become increasingly consolidated and increasingly stable.

In 2011 the results of a study were published evaluating the benefits of a variety of visualisation techniques for the rehabilitation of stroke patients. The study found “No evidence of the benefit of mental practice with motor imagery in stroke.” In other words, no matter how hard or regularly the stroke patients tried to imagine improvement in their impaired motor skills they were unable to bring about any measureable improvement. On the other hand, when visualisation techniques were combined with physical therapy, then measurable improvements did occur and visualisation helped significantly. This research lends strong support to the idea that imagination is not an enabler of capacities but is instead an important means for reinforcing and focussing skills that have already been acquired.

Imagination is an enormously important capacity – not just for capabilities that we think of as being mental, like thinking for instance - but also for our abilities to act deliberately and skilfully in the world. In fact it might be said that imagination is the very precondition of our being able to act in such skilful ways.

Imagining Itself (part XVIII: objectivity and subjectivity)

There are few better ways to engage the imagination than learning a new language. I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Germany in the last 25 years and in the 1990’s I attended evening classes in German at the Goethe Institute in Glasgow. With my background in fine art photography it was perhaps inevitable that I would be intrigued to discover that the German word for lens is “objectiv”. It shares its etymology with the English words "object" and "objective" but what I have always found curious about this word is the fact that lenses are by no means objective. Lenses possess unique properties that allow them to be used in various ways to alter the path of light, to focus it and, most notably, to produce images. We’ve come to think of images – especially photographic images - as highly realistic depictions; as truthful representations of the world, as unmediated representations even. But the only reason we might be led to this mistaken conclusion is because we have lenses in our heads which obey the very same laws of optical distortion.

We have become so familiar with photographs and the ways photographic images represent the world that it might be argued that they have become the very yardstick of perception; a standard by which we judge the veracity of our sensations. Nonetheless, for an organism lacking a functioning lens-based perceptual system – a bat for instance - photographic representations are of no use whatsoever.

If you wanted to produce a viable representation for a bat (or for an echolocating alien for that matter) you would probably have to provide some kind of headphone device and play echolocation recordings at a frequency they recognise. Of course a bat would probably find the headphones uncomfortable and the experience would, no doubt,  be extremely alarming in the absence of bodily control. Nonetheless the principle is workable. Some blind people have developed the skill of echolocation and research shows that it is possible to simulate the necessary sensory input through stereo playback of audio recordings.

Lens-based images and echolocation headphone devices are examples of a profoundly interesting form of representation that depends entirely upon the characteristics of the perceptual system which it exploits. If we carefully control the system of presentation then it is possible to produce these simulating representations in such a way that they are extremely difficult to differentiate from ordinary sensations. Virtual Reality, holograms, 3D film, TV and stereograms as well as numerous optical illusions – the Ames room being a prototypical example – all exploit the characteristics of the visual system in this way.

But it would be wrong to assume that simulating representations are objective. For a representation to be objective, it must be perceiver-independent. In other words, it must not rely on any form of distortion, foible or idiosyncrasy - no matter how consistent or mathematically specifiable - in any particular perceptual system. The only form of objective representation therefore is one in which the represented object and the representation itself match one another precisely. The reason this is the case is because only matching representations are likely to be acceptable to all conceivable perceivers – bats and bat-like aliens included.

In defining objectivity, dictionary definitions frequently refer to the notion of “mind independence”. This term serves to make an important distinction between objectivity on the one hand and all forms of personal opinion, emotional colouring or subjective bias on the other. However, it would be easy to loose sight of an important fact about objectivity. An objective view is one that represents things as they actually are. It enables the description or representation of material things, actions and states of affairs in such a way that any perceiver, no matter how intelligent or perceptually well endowed, would accept such a representation as accurate and true. The only way we can go about identifying, selecting and creating such representations is through our capacities as representation-makers and this would be impossible without the contribution of our minds. So, in this limited, but vitally important sense, objectivity turns out to be inextricably mind-dependent (or else an entirely unattainable ideal).

Far from being an impoverished and partial viewpoint, subjectivity involves a rich interweaving of representational dispositions, capacities and abilities, some of which have been genetically acquired, others that have been discovered and refined through cultural innovation over millennia and perhaps even some that are unique to the experience of the individual. But whatever distinctions we might wish to draw between objectivity and subjectivity there will always be a significant overlap, because both are a product of our capacities to make and to use representations. Both require minds and both involve the capacity to identify, select and produce matching representations.

These thoughts originally emerged from a consideration of prevalent attitudes towards childhood development, imagination and fantasy. In the previous accompanying post we saw how these attitudes, especially towards fantasy, often expose a certain disdain regarding the assumed lack of “reality” or “fact” in fantasy preoccupations. Perhaps the anxiety underlying such disdain pits the subjective against the objective on a checkerboard that turns out to be little more than a puritanical invention.

The reason that imagination and fantasy (which is simply a variety of imagination in which the improbable plays a more prominent role) are so vitally important for human beings is because we are prodigious representation users and even when we find ourselves wholly immersed in the most subjective of pursuits we are nonetheless sharpening skills of representation which, despite all claims to the contrary, are fundamentally social in nature and are directed towards a richer, more varied and more intelligible understanding of the world.

Inevitably there are instances in which individuals lives as so monotonous, harsh or unbearable that they feel forced to retreat into what we might call the solace of the subjective; of thoughts and imaginings of how things might be otherwise. We all do this on occasion – perhaps more than we are willing to admit. But how other than through this capacity to daydream, to fantasise and to imagine could we ever form hopes or ideals or even conceive of the very notion of objectivity in the first place?