The Imagery Debate (Phil 2160)

Mental Images and the Imagery Debate Phil 2160 Dr. J Cumby How do we represent information? Representation: physical state that functions to store information about the world What is the nature and format of mental representation? How do we represent information?...

Mental Images and the Imagery Debate Phil 2160 Dr. J Cumby How do we represent information? Representation: physical state that functions to store information about the world What is the nature and format of mental representation? How do we represent information? Heterogeneity of mental representation Joel Pearson, Stephen M. Kosslyn Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Aug 2015, 112 (33) 10089-10092; DOI:10.1073/pnas.1504933112 Mental Images What shape are a dog’s ears? How many windows are in your bedroom? If a person stands up, what is lower, their wrist or their belly button? If the letter D is turned on its back and put on top of a J, what does the combination remind you of? The imagery debate ? ? Green, spherical, fits into hand, hard, etc… The imagery debate ? ? The Imagery debate Pictorialism Descriptivism Correspondence relation Arbitrary relation This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA Aphantasia A condition characterized by the inability to voluntarily create mental images https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34039054 Shepard and Metzler (1971) Implications Refutes behaviorism Raises difficulties (not necessarily insurmountable) for modeling the mind on a digital computer Information processing as digital computation Representations stored as numerical descriptions Time taken to process information is a function of the quantity of that information. No reason why response times depend on degree of rotation Kosslyn (1973) Imaging and Perceiving The imagery debate ? ?