Imagery

by Ned Block (Editor)

The "great debate" in cognitive science today is about the nature of mental images. One side says images are basically pictures in the head. The other side says they are like the symbol structures in computers. If the picture-in-the-head theorists are right, then computers will never be able to think like people. This book contains the most intelligible and incisive articles in the debate, articles by cognitive psychologists, computer scientists and philosophers. The most exciting imagery phenomena are described, phenomena that indicate that mental images can be rotated and scanned, that smaller images are harder to see than larger ones, that when mental images are made larger they eventually overflow, that the "screen" they overflow from has a determinable shape (elliptical), and that this "screen" subtends a determinate visual angle, the angle of vision of the mind's eye. Such experiments cry out for explanation. If images are pictures in the head, who (or what) looks at them? Why haven't brain scientists found them? Such questions are the subject of the great debate. IMAGERY is an excellent choice for courses in cognitive psychology, perception: artificial intelligence, computer science; philosophy of mind, of psychology and of science; minds and machines, science and society.ContributorsRoger Brown and Richard Herrnstein (on the work of Roger N. Shepard), Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, Robert Schwartz, Stephen Kosslyn, Steven Pinker, George Smith, Steven Shwartz, and Zenon Pylyshyn

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology

270 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 1981

About the author

Ned Joel Block (born 1942) is an American philosopher working in the field of the philosophy of mind who has made important contributions to matters of consciousness and cognitive science. In 1971, he obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University under Hilary Putnam. He went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an assistant professor of philosophy (1971-1977), worked as associate professor of philosophy (1977-1983), professor of philosophy (1983-1996) and served as chair of the philosophy section (1989-1995). He has, since 1996, been a professor in the departments of philosophy and psychology at New York University (NYU).

Reviews

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides a snapshot of the imagery debate from 30 years ago (which, arguably, may not be much different from the current state of affairs). Are mental representations more like “pictures” and “maps”, or are they more like “sentences”? The questions about the nature of representations are setup by Dennett and Fodor, with a philosophical slant. The chapters by Kosslyn and Pylyshyn explicate the components of an imagery system from a scientific perspective and argue (indecisively) for a depictive and symbolic representation system, respectively. Among the concepts discussed include: cognitive penetrability, tacit knowledge, analog vs. symbolic representations, spatial representations, and data structures. Overall, this book gives a nice historical background into the imagery debate; whether or not we have progressed in understanding the nature of mental imagery remains an open question.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an interesting and informative look at the pictorialist/descriptionalist debate: the debate over the question of whether or not mental images are like pictures, or if they are more like language. Some of the chapters were stronger than others, but interesting throughout.