Imagery and Imagination
Amy Kind
Page 6
Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu/imagery/
Ryle’s theory, which is probably the most developed of the imageless theories, was constructed in direct reaction to the Cartesian view of imagining. Ryle worries that once we think of imagining as a sort of seeing with the mind’s eye, we are inclined to suppose that there exist things, mental images, that are seen with the mind’s eye. His goal is to prevent this natural move: “the familiar truth that people are constantly seeing things in their minds’ eyes and hearing things in their heads is no proof that there exist things which they see and hear….” His defense of this claim relies in large part on an analogy: Just as the fact that a murder is staged as part of a play does not entail that there is a victim actually murdered, the fact that we see things with the mind’s eye does not entail that there are things actually seen. This analogy also leads Ryle to a positive theory of the imagination. Since an actor’s resemblance to a murderer can be explained by the fact that he is pretending to be a murderer, and pretending to murder, we can also explain the similarity between the imaginer and the observer by invoking the notion of pretense. More generally, Ryle claims that imagining is a species of pretending.
Ryle is clearly right that there are similarities between imagining and pretending; in particular, there is what we might call an “air of hypotheticality” to both activities. But despite such similarities, it seems a mistake to characterize the former sort of activity in terms of the latter. As Ryle characterizes it, pretending is typically a performance intended to convince, while imagining is the sort of pretending that typically aims at convincing oneself rather than others. But many cases of imagining involve no attempt at persuasion—even of oneself. Consider various different kinds of imagining: imagining one’s next dentist appointment, imagining the pain of having a tooth pulled, or imagining the tooth itself. In none of these imaginings must we suppose that the imaginer tries to convince herself of anything. White (1990) criticizes Ryle’s analogy between pretending and imagining in detail, elaborating numerous differences between these two types of activities. (See also Hamlyn 1994.)
Kind (2001), in addition to providing further criticism of Ryle’s account, argues more generally that any theory of imageless imagining is likely to be unsatisfactory. The argument rests on the inability of imageless theories to account sufficiently for three features of imagining: its directedness, its active nature, and its phenomenology. A theory which assimilates imagining to pretending, as Ryle’s did, can account for the active nature of imagining, and perhaps for its directedness, but not for its distinctive phenomenology. Another option available to the imageless theorist, such assimilating imagining to belief, will account for its directedness, but not for its active nature or its phenomenology. Likewise, if the imageless theorist were to assimilate imagining to sensation, he could account for its phenomenology, and perhaps for its directedness, but not for its active nature. Though Kind admits that there may be other options available to the imageless theorist, she takes her reflection on the above examples to suggest the basic difficulty that any imageless theory confronts: It seems that an adequate account of imagination must invoke some sort of mental representation in order to account for the directedness and active nature of imagining, but non-imagistic mental representations seem unable to account for imagining’s phenomenology. The invocation of imagery seems to be the only way to account for the three features of imagining in conjunction.
3. Imagination and Possibility
Now that we have reflected on the nature of the imagination, in this last section let us consider briefly the role that imagination plays in modal epistemology. Like David Hume (1739/1969), who wrote in theTreatise that “nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible,” contemporary philosophers have often associated the imaginable with the possible. Moreover, it is commonly supposed that the faculty of the imagination is an important tool in our acquisition of modal knowledge; the imagination, it is thought, serves as an epistemological guide to possibility.
Strictly speaking, the above quotation from Hume draws a connection between what we (in fact) imagine and what is possible, but philosophers have generally drawn the evidential link between what is imaginable and what is possible. Conversely, there has also been thought to be an evidential link between what is unimaginable and what is impossible; Hume claimed, for example, that our inability to imagine a mountain without a valley leads us to regard a valley-less mountain as impossible. The traditional conception of the link between imagination and possibility thus comprises the following two claims:
Unimaginability claim: if something is unimaginable, then it is impossible.
Imaginability claim: if something is imaginable, then it is possible.
Though these claims did not originate with Hume—Descartes (1642/1984), for example, famously relied on the imaginability claim in his argument for dualism, drawing the conclusion that disembodiment is possible from the premise that disembodiment is imaginable—he is the philosopher with whom they are most commonly associated. Thus, I will refer to them jointly as the Humean thesis.
Many different notions of possibility abound in contemporary philosophical discussion, so we should be clear that the possibility invoked by the Humean thesis is usually meant to be a very weak one, namely, logical possibility. Importantly, logical possibility far outstrips physical possibility; what is physically possible is governed by the laws of physics, but what is logically possible is governed only by the laws of logic. Were the imagination meant to be a guide to the physically possible, the imaginability claim would be immediately problematic. Many physical impossibilities seem easily imaginable: I might imagine a juggling pin remaining suspended in the air after having been thrown there, or I might imagine the eight ball remaining absolutely motionless after I hit it with the cue ball.
Ultimately, it seems that an analogy to perception motivates the Humean thesis: imagination is supposed to give rise to knowledge of possibility as perception gives rise to knowledge of the actual world. Our knowledge of the world in which we live is grounded largely in perception. But, since we have no sensory access to what is not actually the case, perception can afford us no real insight into non-actualized possibilities. In contrast, the imagination is not limited to what is actually the case. This feature of the imagination, in conjunction with the close connection between perception and imagination, is what seems to lead us to rely on the imagination for knowledge of possibility.
In fact, we need only to reflect briefly on how we typically form modal judgments to see the force of the Humean thesis. Presumably, we are convinced that it is possible for there to be purple cows, and for humans to fly unaided by machines, as a result of our imaginings: we can imagine a purple cow, and we can imagine humans flying without mechanical aid. Likewise, consider how we would determine whether round squares are possible, or whether it would have been possible for me to have been a fish. Our conviction that these are impossible states of affairs springs from our inability to imagine them. As Hart (1988) writes, “One’s own experience in settling modal questions seems to show that the imagination plays a fundamental role.”
But despite this intuitive support for the Humean thesis, there is legitimate reason to worry about it. The unimaginability claim in particular has been thought to be especially problematic. One problem derives from the fact that there is considerable variation among individuals’ imaginative capacities. Jill might be able to imagine many things that Jack cannot, in which case it would seem clear that we are by no means entitled to infer from the fact that Jack cannot imagine something that it is impossible. Fortunately, this problem can be fairly easily resolved by interpreting “unimaginable” as something like “unimaginable by any human.” Another problem is the fact that there might be features of human psychology that make certain states of affairs in principle unimaginable by any of us. But if the unimaginability of a state of affairs is due solely to some psychological limitation on our part, then we would not seem to be justified in inferring the impossibility of such a state. (See White 1990; Tidman 1994.)
Most problematic, however, is that the limitation of the possible to the imaginable, particularly on an image-based analysis of imagination, seems overly restrictive. Insofar as the imagination cannot extend to non-sensory objects and states of affairs, philosophers claim that we should not draw conclusions about impossibility based on unimaginability. For this reason, the Humean thesis is often interpreted as about conceivability rather than imaginability, where conception is supposed to be an intellectual faculty. (See Yablo 1993; Tidman 1994. But see Hart 1988 and Kind 2002 for arguments against this interpretation of the Humean thesis.)
The imaginability claim is generally thought to be less problematic than the unimaginability claim, and as such it (and/or the parallel conceivability claim) is often used in philosophical arguments. Modern-day philosophers of mind, in the tradition of the Cartesian argument mentioned above, argue that certain of our imaginings condemn type materialism. Type materialism is committed to the claim that pain, for example, is necessarily identical to a certain brain state, call it “S”. Insofar as we can imagine creatures who are in pain despite lacking biological brains (and thus S-states) altogether, it seems that it is possible for pain to be distinct from S-states. Related imaginings are brought to bear against functionalist theories of mind. To defend their theories, materialists and functionalists either argue directly against the imaginability claim, suggesting that imagining is not a reliable guide to possibility, or argue that in the imaginings in question we have not imagined what we think we have (Tye 1995). This latter point has led to a general cautionary tone in recent discussions of the connection between imagination and possibility, with many philosophers greatly restricting both the kind of imagining that can serve as an epistemic guide to modality and the kind of possibility to which imagining can serve as a guide (see Chalmers 2002 and Yablo 1993).
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