Mental Imagery and Imagination
This topic studies mental imagery, the quasi-perceptual contents of the mind's eye, and imagination, our capacity to entertain non-actual scenarios.
Definition
Mental imagery is quasi-perceptual experience that occurs in the absence of the relevant external stimulus; imagination is the capacity to represent or simulate objects, situations, and experiences that are not currently perceived or believed to obtain.
Scope
This topic covers the format of mental imagery and the pictorial-versus-descriptional imagery debate, the nature and varieties of imagination, its role in make-believe and modal knowledge, and the puzzle of imaginative resistance.
Core questions
- Are mental images more like pictures or like descriptions?
- What distinguishes imagining from believing or perceiving?
- How does imagination support pretense, fiction, and modal knowledge?
- Why do we resist imagining certain morally deviant scenarios?
Key concepts
- mental image
- pictorial format
- descriptional format
- make-believe
- imaginative resistance
- modal epistemology
Key theories
- Pictorial theory of imagery
- Mental images represent in a depictive, picture-like format that preserves spatial structure, as supported by mental rotation and scanning experiments.
- Descriptional theory of imagery
- Apparent imagery effects are explained by tacit knowledge and propositional representation rather than by intrinsically pictorial images.
History
The imagery debate of the 1970s onward pitted Kosslyn's pictorial account against Pylyshyn's descriptional one over the format of mental representation. The philosophy of imagination developed in parallel, with Walton's (1990) account of make-believe and Gendler's (2000) analysis of imaginative resistance shaping work on fiction and the imagination.
Debates
- Format of mental imagery
- Whether mental images are depictive representations or reduce to propositional, descriptional ones.
- Imaginative resistance
- Why we can readily imagine fantastical scenarios yet balk at imagining that morally deviant claims are true within a fiction.
Key figures
- Stephen Kosslyn
- Zenon Pylyshyn
- Kendall Walton
- Tamar Gendler
Related topics
Seminal works
- kosslyn1994
- walton1990
- gendler2000
Frequently asked questions
- What is the imagery debate?
- It is the dispute over whether mental images are genuinely picture-like representations or are better explained as propositional, language-like descriptions.