Are Theories of Imagery Theories of Imagination? An Active Perception Approach to Conscious Mental Content
Nigel J.T. Thomas
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Source: http://cogprints.org/5018/1/im-im-cp.htm
If this interpretation is correct, this move of Kosslyn's will certainly solve the problem at hand--indeed, picture theory will become immune to any considerations that seem to favor PA theory--but the cost in theoretical parsimony seems considerable. We might legitimately wonder whether, if anything even approaching the amount of energy and ingenuity that Kosslyn and his allies have lavished on the elaboration and defense of quasi-pictorial theory were to be devoted to developing the theory of "attention based imagery", there might be anything left for quasi-pictorial theory to explain. But for the purposes of this article, Kosslyn's move to embrace two theories of imagery need not be rejected. I would merely want to insist that it is PA (or "attention based") imagery, and not pictorial imagery, that is related to the process of seeing as, and thus, as we shall see, to creative imagination.
4.2.3 Seeing As and Creativity
I want to suggest that it is precisely the mundane sense of imagination as the capacity for seeing as which forms the missing link between imagination as mental imagery and creative imagination in the arts and sciences (or, come to that, in practical affairs) (Thomas, 1997a). A plausible view of the value of works of art--where they have any beyond the mere amusement or sensuous pleasure they afford--finds it in their capacity to induce us to see things as we would not otherwise have seen them: to see fresh (or forgotten) aspects or meanings in an otherwise seemingly banal reality. This is the key, I suggest, to the association made between imagination and the artistic, and the creative in general.
The point is hardly revolutionary. As Passmore (1991 p. 54) says, "The [conceptual] boundaries between 'seeing', 'seeing as' and 'imagining' are . . . notoriously insecure". A recent philosophical reference work informs us that "what seems crucial to the imagination is that it involves . . . perspectives, new ways of seeing things, in a sense of "seeing" that need not be literal" (Hamlyn, 1994). This non-literal sense of "seeing" is, nevertheless, perfectly conventional. To say that one sees Polonius as pompous, or the Dodgers as winners, is not to say that these things are literally visible or even perceptible. The application of "imagine" and its cognates to the arts is the result of a parallel, and equally conventional, metaphorical extension of meaning. To put things crudely, "imagination", in one important sense at least, just is our name for the faculty of seeing as, and its metaphorical extensions cover a similar range. It is not an identical range, of course: We do not normally apply "see as" to cases of pure imagery, where there is no obvious admixture of current reality, neither would we use "imagine" when we want to imply that we are seeing things as they truly are. However, there are significant cases between these extremes where either expression is appropriate. Just as saying the child sees the doll as smiling is equivalent to saying that she imagines a smile on its face, so we regard the facts that Van Gough induces us to see nature as infused with dynamism, or Kafka makes us see ordinary life as absurd and terrifying, as being effects upon our imaginations.
Thus we say that imagination is necessary for the appreciation of art works. Their creation is a closely related matter. For one thing, producing worthwhile art surely depends on a sort of critical connoisseurship towards one's own productions; artists must be able to appreciate whether what they are producing, or thinking of producing, is any good, whether it conveys what is wanted. That is properly said to be a function of their imaginations. Also, of course, the artist's own vision of reality (which may be achieved in the very process of creating the art work that conveys it) is itself a matter of seeing as, and thereby imagination. These brief remarks do not, of course, constitute a fully worked out account of the place of imagination in the arts, but they are surely an improvement on the jejune default notion that creative imagination is simply a capacity for producing an abundance of unusual ideas.
Perhaps even more obviously, scientific creativity also involves seeing as, seeing the world in a particular new way, and, thereby, imagination. Scientific theories induce us to see (in literal or extended sense) aspects of the world as we would not otherwise have seen them. Only when they do this are we able to apply them, to use them to get to grips with reality. Consider Hanson's (1958) famous example of Tycho Brahe seeing the sun as rising over the horizon, whereas Kepler, the Copernican, saw the situation as Earth turning towards the sun. This initial, and, at the time, eccentric revisioning is what made Kepler's further discoveries possible. As in the arts, scientific understanding involves coming to see some aspect of reality in a particular way, and creativity depends on coming to see things in a new way. Where nature had long been seen as the harmonious creation of a benevolent God, Darwin came to see it as an arena of fierce struggle, and eventually persuaded others to see it that way too. Faraday, perhaps almost literally (Koestler, 1964), saw magnets and electrical charges as surrounded by fields of force. Of course, Kepler did not have to be actually looking at the rising sun, or at Mars up in the sky, as he calculated his orbits. Neither did Darwin have to be watching animals, or Faraday have to stare at a magnet as they worked out the details and implications of their theories (no more do painters necessarily have to have their model constantly before them as they work). But imagery is ubiquitous in scientific thinking, innovative and otherwise, even in the most abstract and mathematical fields (Shepard, 1978; Tweney, Doherty, & Mynatt, 1981; Miller, 1984). The creative scientist's distinctive ways of seeing things undoubtedly infuse this imagery, and it is in such circumstances that we speak most naturally and literally of imagination being in play.
Of course, the sophisticated imaginative abilities that are said to go into scientific discovery, or the production of works of art, even minor ones, are a long way from mundane capacities for seeing squiggles as ducks, weasels in clouds, or smiles on dolls' faces. However, if, as I have argued, a picture theory of imagery cannot explain even the latter, mundane, cases, what hope has it of illuminating the former?
5 Conclusion
In his seminal work on Romanticism, Abrams (1953) argues that a distinctive attitude to perception lies at the philosophical core of the movement. Whereas their 18th century predecessors regarded consciousness as a mirror, passively receiving the images projected into it from the outside world (Rorty, 1980), the Romantics saw it like a lamp, throwing its beams outward to illuminate the world and to constitute experience. Clearly, within these broad metaphorical terms, the information processing approach to perception, from which both pictorial and description theories of imagery derive, is a mirror theory--perceptual data flows inward to a passive, receptive consciousness--whereas PA theory and associated approaches to perception, where conscious experience arises rather from the activity of a mind reaching out into the world, fall under the lamp metaphor. Unsurprisingly, then, PA theory does a much better job of accounting for the imagination as the Romantics conceived it. They bequeathed us a concept of imagination as a faculty of mental imagery that is non-discursive and responsible for the most profound creative insights. Description theory treats all mental processes as discursive through and through, and quasi-pictorial theory does not seem to help us towards a true understanding of creativity.
I have suggested that the understanding of creative imagination might be approached through the investigation of our capacity for seeing as, but picture theory has nothing to offer us here. If it were the correct approach to imagery, it would require supplementation by a quite separate theory of seeing as, of categorical perception, (presumably to be carried out by Kosslyn's "mind's eye function"). There would be no fundamental connection between image formation and seeing as, and, therefore, no particular connection between imagery and imagination!
Perceptual activity theory accounts for imagery and seeing as via a common mechanism, but without assimilating imagery to discursive thought. Thus, if correct, it might allow us to do full scientific justice to the concept of imagination in its culturally most significant form. For historically contingent reasons, PA theory remains theoretically underdeveloped and empirically untried, but its better known rivals still face unresolved empirical problems themselves. It deserves more attention.
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