Are theories of imagery theories of imagination?

Can theories of mental imagery, conscious mental contents, developed within cognitive science throw light on the obscure (but culturally very significant) concept of imagination? Three extant views of mental imagery are considered: quasi-pictorial, description, and perceptual activity theories. The first two face serious theoretical and empirical difficulties. The third is (for historically contingent reasons) little known, theoretically underdeveloped, and empirically untried, but has real explanatory potential. It rejects the "traditional" symbolic computational view of mental contents, but is compatible with recent situated cognition and active vision approaches in robotics. This theory is developed and elucidated. Three related key aspects of imagination (non-discursiveness, creativity, and seeing as) raise difficulties for the other theories. Perceptual activity theory presents imagery as non-discursive and relates it closely to seeing as. It is thus well placed to be the basis for a general theory of imagination and its role in creative thought. *********************** §

[1]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Creative Cognition: Theory, Research, and Applications , 1996 .

[2]  James Robert Brown,et al.  The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences , 1993 .

[3]  Daniel Reisberg,et al.  What an image depicts depends on what an image means , 1992, Cognitive Psychology.

[4]  Drew McDermott,et al.  A critique of pure reason 1 , 1987, The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence.

[5]  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran,et al.  Three laws of qualia: what neurology tells us about the biological functions of consciousness , 1997 .

[6]  Stephen K. Reed,et al.  Structural descriptions and the limitations of visual images* , 1974, Memory & cognition.

[7]  M. J. Intons-Peterson,et al.  Sensory-perceptual qualities of images. , 1989, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[8]  D. Smith.  Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature , 1981 .

[9]  G. S. Marmor,et al.  Mental rotation by the blind: does mental rotation depend on visual imagery? , 1976, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[10]  T. Sarbin,et al.  Toward a theory of imagination. , 1970, Journal of personality.

[11]  P. E. Morris,et al.  Unfulfilled expectations: A criticism of Neisser's theory of imagery , 1978, Cognition.

[12]  Stephen M. Kosslyn,et al.  A Simulation of Visual Imagery , 1977, Cogn. Sci..

[13]  Arthur I. Miller.  Book-Review - Imagery in Scientific thought - Creating 20TH-CENTURY Physics , 1984 .

[14]  Bryant A. Julstrom,et al.  A Model of Mental Imagery , 1985, Int. J. Man Mach. Stud..

[15]  P. Dallos.  The active cochlea , 1992, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[16]  S A Hillyard,et al.  Electroretinograms reveal no evidence for centrifugal modulation of retinal inputs during selective attention in man. , 1986, Psychophysiology.

[17]  S. Kosslyn.  The medium and the message in mental imagery: A theory. , 1981 .

[18]  Stephen M. Kosslyn,et al.  Mental imagery and sensory experience in congenital blindness , 1988, Neuropsychologia.

[19]  Peter Wenderoth,et al.  Imagined stimuli: Imaginary effects? , 1985 .

[20]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  A framework for representing knowledge , 1974 .

[21]  Peter J. Burt,et al.  `Smart Sensing' in machine vision , 1988 .

[22]  E. Brann,et al.  The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance , 1991 .

[23]  Joseph S. O’Leary,et al.  The Wake of Imagination: Ideas of creativity in Western culture , 1988 .

[24]  M. H. Abrams,et al.  The mirror and the lamp: romantic theory and the critical tradition , 1953 .

[25]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  A framework for representing knowledge" in the psychology of computer vision , 1975 .

[26]  A. Marcel.  Conscious and unconscious perception: An approach to the relations between phenomenal experience and perceptual processes , 1983, Cognitive Psychology.

[27]  M. Denis,et al.  Functional Anatomy of Spatial Mental Imagery Generated from Verbal Instructions , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[28]  Joseph Jastrow,et al.  The mechanism of consciousness. , 2022 .

[29]  Clifford R. Mynatt,et al.  On Scientific Thinking , 1981 .

[30]  Zenon W. Pylyshyn,et al.  What the Mind’s Eye Tells the Mind’s Brain: A Critique of Mental Imagery , 1973 .

[31]  B. Wallace,et al.  Apparent equivalence between perception and imagery in the production of various visual illusions , 1984, Memory & cognition.

[32]  J. Fodor.  The Modularity of mind. An essay on faculty psychology , 1986 .

[33]  R. Ellis.  Questioning Consciousness: The interplay of imagery, cognition, and emotion in the human brain , 1995 .

[34]  D. Papadias,et al.  Computational Imagery , 1992, Cogn. Sci..

[35]  John Keats,et al.  The letters of John Keats, 1814-1821 , 1959 .

[36]  Yiannis Aloimonos,et al.  Active vision , 2004, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[37]  A. Damasio,et al.  Brain and language. , 1993, Scientific American.

[38]  T. Kuhn.  The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd ed. , 1996 .

[39]  B. Gulyás,et al.  Visual imagery and visual representation , 1994, Trends in Neurosciences.

[40]  W. E. Morris,et al.  The Philosophical Writings of Descartes , 1989 .

[41]  Daniel M. Merfeld,et al.  The contents of consciousness : A neuropsychological conjecture , 2001 .

[42]  Nigel J. T. Thomas.  Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination: A Critique of White , 1997 .

[43]  Z. Pylyshyn.  The imagery debate: Analogue media versus tacit knowledge. , 1981 .

[44]  Margaret B. Sutherland.  Everyday imagining and education , 1971 .

[45]  David F. Marks,et al.  Visual imagery differences and eye movements in the recall of pictures , 1973 .

[46]  T. Sejnowski,et al.  A critique of pure vision , 1993 .

[47]  M J Farah,et al.  Visual angle of the mind's eye before and after unilateral occipital lobectomy. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[48]  John Jonides,et al.  Imagery instructions improve memory in blind subjects , 1975 .

[49]  Vivian Nutton,et al.  Paracelsus. An introduction to philosophical medicine in the era of the Renaissance , 1983, Medical History.

[50]  S. Kosslyn,et al.  Field-specific deficits in visual imagery following hemianopia due to unilateral occipital infarcts. , 1997, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[51]  B. P. Halpern,et al.  Tasting and smelling as active, exploratory sensory processes. , 1983, American journal of otolaryngology.

[52]  S. Runeson.  On the possibility of "smart" perceptual mechanisms. , 1977, Scandinavian journal of psychology.

[53]  Nigel J. T. Thomas.  Experience and Theory as Determinants of Attitudes toward Mental Representation: The Case of Knight Dunlap and the Vanishing Images of J.B. Watson , 1989 .

[54]  Ruzena Bajcsy,et al.  Active and exploratory perception , 1992, CVGIP Image Underst..

[55]  A. Pressey,et al.  The Poggendorff illusion in imagination , 1974 .

[56]  R. Weisberg.  Creativity - Genius and Other Myths , 1986 .

[57]  D. J. Felleman,et al.  Distributed hierarchical processing in the primate cerebral cortex. , 1991, Cerebral cortex.

[58]  G. Horridge.  The evolution of visual processing and the construction of seeing systems , 1987, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences.

[59]  D. Chambers,et al.  Chapter 3 Images are Both Depictive and Descriptive , 1993 .

[60]  S. Kosslyn.  Scanning visual images:Some structural implications , 1973 .

[61]  Janice I. Glasgow,et al.  THE IMAGERY DEBATE REVISITED: A COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVE , 1993 .

[62]  James J. Gibson,et al.  On the Relation between Hallucination and Perception , 1970 .

[63]  S. Kosslyn,et al.  Visual Mental Imagery Activates Topographically Organized Visual Cortex: PET Investigations , 1993, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[64]  S. Bates,et al.  The Language of Imagination , 1991 .

[65]  Georg F. Springer,et al.  Imagination in Science , 1967, Molecular Biology Biochemistry and Biophysics / Molekularbiologie Biochemie und Biophysik.

[66]  L Weiskrantz,et al.  Visual capacity in the hemianopic field following a restricted occipital ablation. , 1974, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[67]  D. Levine,et al.  Visual and spatial mental imagery: Dissociable systems of representation , 1988, Cognitive Psychology.

[68]  S. Kosslyn.  Image and mind , 1982 .

[69]  A Reeves,et al.  How visual imagery interferes with vision. , 1992, Psychological review.

[70]  Z. Pylyshyn,et al.  The rate of “mental rotation” of images: A test of a holistic analogue hypothesis , 1979, Memory & cognition.

[71]  Daniel Reisberg,et al.  Can mental images be ambiguous , 1985 .

[72]  S Molotchnikoff,et al.  The centrifugal visual system of vertebrates: a century-old search reviewed. , 1989, International review of cytology.

[73]  S. Kosslyn,et al.  Squinting with the mind’s eye: Effects of stimulus resolution on imaginal and perceptual comparisons , 1999, Memory & cognition.

[74]  M. Bozkurt,et al.  Functional anatomy. , 1980, Equine veterinary journal.

[75]  Stephen M. Kosslyn,et al.  A Processing Approach to the Dual Coding Hypothesis , 1976 .

[76]  J. Guilford,et al.  The nature of human intelligence. , 1968 .

[77]  P J Hampson,et al.  Verbal and spatial interference effects in congenitally blind and sighted subjects. , 1984, Canadian journal of psychology.

[78]  William Gooddy,et al.  Programs of the Brain , 1979 .

[79]  Ralph W. Church.  Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Supplementary Volume XXIII. Hume and Present Day Problems. , 1941 .

[80]  KENNETH GAARDER.  Transmission of Edge Information in the Human Visual System , 1966, Nature.

[81]  J. D. Smith,et al.  “Enacted” Auditory Images are Ambiguous; “Pure” Auditory Images are Not , 1989, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[82]  John Keats,et al.  Letters of John Keats , 1970 .

[83]  S. Palmer.  Hierarchical structure in perceptual representation , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.

[84]  J. Gibson.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1979 .

[85]  Michael S. Landy,et al.  Exploratory vision: the active eye , 1996 .

[86]  S. J. Segal,et al.  PROCESSING OF THE STIMULUS IN IMAGERY AND PERCEPTION , 1971 .

[87]  J. Douglas Rabb.  Imaging: An Adverbial Analysis , 1975 .

[88]  John R. Searle,et al.  The Rediscovery of the Mind , 1995, Artif. Intell..

[89]  Terence Haig Dartnall.  Perspectives on Cognitive Science: Theories, Experiments and Foundations , 1999 .

[90]  Joel L. Davis,et al.  Large-Scale Neuronal Theories of the Brain , 1994 .

[91]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  Eye Finding via Face Detection for a Foveated Active Vision System , 1998, AAAI/IAAI.

[92]  P Dallos,et al.  Outer hair cells: the inside story. , 1997, The Annals of otology, rhinology & laryngology. Supplement.

[93]  A. Paivio.  Dual coding theory: Retrospect and current status. , 1991 .

[94]  D C Van Essen,et al.  Information processing in the primate visual system: an integrated systems perspective. , 1992, Science.

[95]  Daniel Reisberg,et al.  Images contain what the imager put there: A nonreplication of illusions in imagery , 1985 .

[96]  Peter Slezak,et al.  ARTIFICIAL IMAGERY? , 1993 .

[97]  D. B. Robins,et al.  Representations, Targets, and Attitudes , 1997, Information Processing & Management.

[98]  R. Finke,et al.  Principles of mental imagery , 1989 .

[99]  Jordan B. Pollack,et al.  Fractal (Reconstructive Analogue) Memory , 1992 .

[100]  S. Kosslyn,et al.  Imagery, propositions, and the form of internal representations , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.

[101]  Geoffrey E. Hinton,et al.  Schemata and Sequential Thought Processes in PDP Models , 1986 .

[102]  Z. Pylyshyn,et al.  Vision and Action: The Control of Grasping , 1990 .

[103]  Stephen M. Kosslyn,et al.  A cognitive neuroscience of visual cognition: Further developments. , 1991 .

[104]  D. Levine,et al.  Two visual systems in mental imagery: dissociation of 'what' and 'where' in imagery disorders due to bilateral posterior cerebral lesions , 1996 .

[105]  Geoffrey E. Hinton.  Some Demonstrations of the Effects of Structural Descriptions in Mental Imagery , 1979, Cogn. Sci..

[106]  E. Gibson,et al.  On the Nature of Representation: A Case Study of James Gibson's Theory of Perception , 1983 .

[107]  Arthur C. Danto.  Concerning Mental Pictures , 1958 .

[108]  M. Farah.  Is visual imagery really visual? Overlooked evidence from neuropsychology. , 1988, Psychological review.

[109]  R. H. Fogle,et al.  The sacred river : Coleridge's theory of the imagination , 1959 .

[110]  D. Chambers,et al.  Neither pictures nor propositions: what can we learn from a mental image? , 1991, Canadian journal of psychology.

[111]  J. Keenan,et al.  Imagery in the congenitally blind: how visual are visual images? , 1983, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[112]  N H Kerr,et al.  The role of vision in "visual imagery" experiments: evidence from the congenitally blind. , 1983, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[113]  William Blake,et al.  The complete writings of William Blake : with variant readings , 1969 .

[114]  G. Reeke.  Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind , 1991, Artif. Intell..

[115]  A. D. Ritchie.  The Dictionary of Philosophy , 1945, Nature.

[116]  Clayton Eshleman,et al.  In defense of Poetry , 1971 .

[117]  Imre Lakatos,et al.  The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes , 1978 .

[118]  Steven Pinker,et al.  Reinterpreting Visual Patterns in Mental Imagery , 1989, Cogn. Sci..

[119]  D. Hebb.  Concerning imagery. , 1968, Psychological review.

[120]  Percy Bysshe Shelley,et al.  Shelley's Prose: Or the Trumpet of a Prophecy , 1988 .

[121]  Zenon Iy. Pylyshyn.  9. Imagery and Artificial Intelligence , 1978 .

[122]  Y. Tsal,et al.  Disambiguating Ambiguous Figures by Selective Attention , 1985 .

[123]  Robert R. Holt,et al.  Imagery: The return of the ostracized. , 1964 .

[124]  R. Shepard,et al.  Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects , 1971, Science.

[125]  John Cocking,et al.  Imagination: A Study in the History of Ideas , 1992 .

[126]  W Gerbino,et al.  Mental image reversal and verbal recoding: When ducks become rabbits , 1993, Memory & cognition.

[127]  Allen Newell,et al.  Human Problem Solving. , 1973 .

[128]  P. Carpenter,et al.  Mental rotation and the frame of reference in blind and sighted individuals , 1978, Perception & psychophysics.

[129]  R. Haber,et al.  Contemporary theory and research in visual perception , 1970 .

[130]  S. Kosslyn.  Image and Brain: The Resolution of the Imagery Debate , 1994, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[131]  K. Sterelny.  The Imagery Debate , 1986, Philosophy of Science.

[132]  John R. Anderson.  Arguments concerning representations for mental imagery. , 1978 .

[133]  A Chatterjee,et al.  Cortical blindness and visual imagery , 1995, Neurology.

[134]  Dana H. Ballard,et al.  Animate Vision , 1991, Artif. Intell..

[135]  M. Peterson,et al.  Mental images can be ambiguous: Reconstruals and reference-frame reversals , 1992, Memory & cognition.

[136]  Herbert Freeman.  Machine Vision: Algorithms, Architectures, and Systems , 1988 .

[137]  Bernard J. Baars.  When Are Images Conscious? The Curious Disconnection between Imagery and Consciousness in the Scientific Literature , 1996, Consciousness and Cognition.

[138]  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran,et al.  Theories of Perception. , 1951 .

[139]  G. E. M. Anscombe,et al.  The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature , 1965 .

[140]  R. Cummins,et al.  The lot of the causal theory of mental content , 1997 .

[141]  M. Tye.  The Debate about Mental Imagery , 1984 .

[142]  Peter Slezak,et al.  Can images be rotated and inspected? A test of the pictorial medium theory , 1991 .

[143]  Edmund Jacobson,et al.  Electrophysiology of mental activities. , 1932 .

[144]  Peter E. Morris,et al.  Imagery and consciousness , 1983 .

[145]  G. Ryle,et al.  The concept of mind. , 2004, The International journal of psycho-analysis.

[146]  K. Pribram.  Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing , 1991 .

[147]  Stephen Michael Kosslyn,et al.  Information representation in visual images , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[148]  P. A. Kolers,et al.  Procedures of mind. , 1984 .

[149]  Ulric Neisser,et al.  Anticipations, images, and introspection , 1978, Cognition.

[150]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Object vision and spatial vision: two cortical pathways , 1983, Trends in Neurosciences.

[151]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[152]  Gregory Currie,et al.  Visual Imagery as the Simulation of Vision , 1995 .

[153]  Robert H. Logie,et al.  Stretching the Imagination: Representation and Transformation in Mental Imagery , 1996 .

[154]  Ellis Morgan Craig.  The role of mental imagery in the free recall of deaf, blind and normal subjects , 1971 .

[155]  John Tyndall,et al.  Scientific Use of the Imagination , 1870 .