Imagination,
Mental Imagery, Consciousness, and Cognition: Scientific, Philosophical and Historical
Approaches
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Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination: A Critique
of White.
by
Nigel J.T. Thomas Ph.D.
California State University, Los Angeles.
[Article published inThe
Journal of Philosophical Research, 1997 (22) 95-127.]
This article defends tradition and common sense against a widespread and
rarely questioned contemporary philosophical orthodoxy that underpins the
entrenched and exorbitant "lingualism" of so much 20th century thought, and
leads the way to extreme doctrines like cognitive relativism and eliminative
materialism. It also plugs what might otherwise have seemed to be a significant
hole in the argument of my Are Theories of Imagery
Theories of Imagination? (which I regard as my main positive contribution
so far to the understanding of the mind). For a relatively brief overview
of the situation in cognitive theory and consciousness studies, as I see
it, see A Stimulus to the Imagination.
Click here to view the full
article:
Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination: a Critique of
White.
Earlier drafts of this article, one entitled "The White Images
of Imagery and Imagination: A Critique and an Alternative", were formerly
available on the net. Please make any citations to the published version.
- N.J.T.T.
Abstract of:
Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination: a Critique of
White.
Traditionally 'imagination' primarily denotes the faculty of mental imagery,
other usages being derivative. However, contemporary philosophers commonly
hold it to be a polysemous term, with several unrelated senses. This effectively
eliminates this culturally important concept as an appropriate explanandum
for science, and paves the way for a thoroughgoing eliminative materialism.
White* challenges both these views of
imagination, arguing that 'imagine' never means
'suppose', 'believe', 'pretend' or 'visualize', that imagery may occur without
imagination, and that the true sense of 'imagine' is (roughly) 'think of
as possibly being so'. I defend a version of the traditional view. The
disseverance of imagination from imagery is motivated by an implicit version
of the theory of mental images as pictures. Other contemporary scientific
theories of imagery do not entail it. I defend a view of imagery as arising
from the interpretative aspect of perception ('seeing-as') and connect this,
and our contemporary concept of imagination, to the root Aristotelian concept
of phantasia. This captures the association between imagination
and creativity, and reveals the coherence of the concept, much more plausibly
than White's theory.
*Alan R. White (1990): The Language of
Imagination. Oxford: Blackwell.
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