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Mental Imagery
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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What are mental images? Traditionally, philosophers have taken them to be representations of a certain kind. In common with all representations, they are seen as the kinds of thing that can be coloured, noisy, odorous, palpable or tasty, depending upon what they are representations of. But, in The Concept of Mind, Professor Ryle argues that this view of mental imagery is incoherent. Anything, he says, that really is coloured or noisy and so on, must, in principle, be locatable, which mental images are not. He concludes that they cannot be the kinds of thing that the traditional view asserts them to be. Indeed, he goes further: he maintains that everything that exists has at least one of the properties mentioned in the above list and that, since mental images fail in this regard, they do not exist.
Unfortunately, Professor Ryle's arguments in support of his contention that mental images are unlocatable are not conclusive. He assumes that if one can show that mental images are not locatable in ordinary space, they are not locatable in principle.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1976
References
1 Ryle, Gilbert (1949) The Concept of Mind, Ch. 8, Peregrine.Google Scholar
2 Smart, J.J.C. (1963), Philosophy and Scientific Realism, Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
3 A full description of this experiment can be found in Lycos, K. “Images and Imaginary”, (1965) Australian journal of Philosophy, XLIII, page 321-338.Google Scholar
4 Here, of course, I mean the typical or standard kind of experience. I am not interested in the multifarious different kinds of experience that sometimes accompany sight: aches, pains, nausea, etc.
5 Squires, J. (1968) “Visualizing”, Mind LXXVII, page 58-67.Google Scholar
6 Grice, H. P. (1961), “The Causal Theory of Perception”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian SocietySup. Vol. XXXVGoogle Scholar. I should like to acknowledge a considerable debt to Grice. His account of perception greatly influenced my account of imagery.
7 Perhaps I should remark that I am not claiming that mental images never provide and evidence for any knowledge claims at all. This is false. All that I wish to say is that they provide no evidence for a certain very restricted set of knowledge claims, namely those knowledge claims that are earmarked by a genuine visual perception.