Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination: A Critique of White
Nigel J.T. Thomas
Page 4
Source: http://www.imagery-imagination.com/white.htm
This is a view that has been defended by certain philosophers influenced by the later Wittgenstein (Dilman, 1967; Scruton, 1974; and, especially, Ishiguro, 1967). The idea is that, just as we might see X as a Y (or a Y in X) - e.g. lines on paper (figure 1A) as a duck or a rabbit, or, like Hamlet, a whale, a weasel, and a camel in a cloud - when we visualize we, as it were, see nothing-in-particular as a Y. There may be a sort of continuum stretching between cases of ordinary categorical perception, where we see something as what it unequivocally is, through examples like the duck-rabbit and the cloud, to cases of 'pure' mental imagery. The less stimulus control there is over what we experience the more likely we are to call it a case of imagining rather than perceiving, but similar processes are involved across the range. According to Ishiguro (1967) mental images are not pictures in the head or the mind. She embraces Anscombe's (1965) theory that the 'intentional objects' of perception are grammatical fictions, useful in certain linguistic circumstances but without material existence. Inasmuch as they can be said to be objects at all, mental images are the intentional objects (in this sense) of just those acts of seeing-as which have no material object. They are not things that we see (even with the 'mind's eye'), rather they are the 'intentionally inexistent' objectives at which our acts of visualization are directed. They are the things that we are, as it were, trying but (since they are not there) failing to see.
This is not the place for positive arguments for a 'seeing- as' theory of imagery, nor a detailed account of how one might work; I have tried to give these elsewhere (Thomas, 1987, forthcoming). I have brought up such theories here principally to give us a concrete sense of the possibility of a non-pictorial account of imagery. This should help to keep us from backsliding, like White, into taking what are really consequences of an implicit pictorial theory of imagery to be uncontrovertible facts that any account of imagery must recognize. Picture theory is so entrenched in our thinking, and in our very language (the very term 'mental image'), that it is easy to mistake its consequences for conceptual or 'given' truths. The fact that it is really a corrigible theory may be brought home to us only when we become aware of possible alternatives.
With this in mind, let us return to the question of whether imagery implies imagination; whether White is justified in denying that imaging is even a species of imagining. We can now tackle the second, deeper and more subtle, pictorialist assumption buried within the example of the sailor on the shore. Although he does not express the matter exactly in these terms, it is fairly clear that White considers a key difference between imagining and imaging to be that the former is inherently intentional (in the technical sense of 'about something') while the latter is not. Imagining sailor Jim might be something quite different from imagining his identical twin, sailor John, even if they are imagined to be in the same pose and both moving in the same way. But imaging the one, even in motion and in the full range of sensory modes, would, he thinks, be identical to imaging the other, so long as they both look (sound, smell and feel) the same (c.f. White, 1989). Imagining, but not imaging, can be inherently about Jim or John. Likewise (with regard to figure 1A): 'picturing or visualizing a duck-head need not differ from picturing or visualizing a rabbit-head' although imagining each in the figure would be quite different (p. 180). Thus he concludes that imaging is something less than imagining: 'To have an image of X is not necessarily to imagine anything' (p. 92). To image something does not amount to imagining it (although we may sometimes, perhaps, illustrate, to ourselves, what we imagine with some imagery).
White is surely correct about the intentionality of imagining. Imagining Jim, or the drawing as a duck, can indeed be different from imagining John, or the rabbit. Although we may both be frightened by the same shadow on the dark savannah, I might imagine it is a lion where you imagine it is a leopard. The difference inheres not in the external cause or the sensory impression, but in the different intentional objects of our imaginings. However, White provides no empirical or conceptual justification for the assumption that imaging is non- intentional, that our mental imagery itself might not be of Jim specifically.
The only likely grounds that I can see for such an assumption is an implicit residual attachment to the ancient theory of mental images as uninterpreted pictures in our heads. A picture (mental or physical) of Jim may, let us allow, be indistinguishable from one of John and some sort of interpretative process (perhaps a process of imagination) is needed to see it as a picture of anything, let alone of one or the other twin. The intentionality here is not in the picture qua picture but is all supplied by the spectator. But if experiencing mental imagery is not like looking at inner pictures then what grounds have we for thinking it involves any equivalent, isolable, non-intentional element? Certainly the other two extant theories of imagery (discussed above) have no place for any such component. If they are correct, if imaging involves essentially the same processes as does seeing-as, then it will be an inherently intentional (i.e. object directed) act, not different in kind from the acts of perceptualinterpretation which (we have suggested) may be properly ascribed to the imagination. All imaging would be 'imaging-as'.
In fact there is now some very good empirical evidence suggesting that imagery is indeed inherently intentional, that it is experienced as already interpreted, rather than being open to reinterpretation like a physical picture. Chambers and Reisberg (1985) have shown that visualizing the duck-rabbit figure as a duck differs from visualizing it as a rabbit. They briefly showed people the unfamiliar duck-rabbit figure (or another such 'ambiguous' figure, such as 1B, the Necker cube). The presentation was too brief for the subjects to see more than one of the interpretations whilst they actually viewed the figure, but they were asked to remember it so that they could later draw the figure. They were then asked them to form a mental image of it. Despite hints and much coaxing, and despite the fact that they had been familiarized with this general type of 'ambiguous figure' before the experiment began, in none of the 55 trials was any subject able to construe their image as representing anything other than what they had originally seen the figure as representing. This was not because they had failed to notice or memorize salient features of the figure when they saw it: when they subsequently made their own drawings of what they had seen the subjects soon found the alternative interpretation in their drawing (with the exception of four out of the 55 trials, where subjects were unable satisfactorily to draw the rather complex Schroder staircase figure). As 'seeing-as' theories of imagery would predict, the 'meaning' and the sensory component of imagery cannot be pulled apart. The experimental data strongly supports the well known view of Sartre (1940) that the images that we experience are always images of something.
This point is sometimes expressed by saying that images are always experienced 'under a description', but this expression may be misleading in that it again seems to insinuate a form of pictorialism, with an uninterpreted picture modified by a descriptive label which is merely contingently, if tightly, associated with it. Such a model has, indeed, been proposed to render the experimental results compatible with picture theory: Reisberg (1994a) interprets them as showing that pictorial images are always read through, or created in accordance with, what he calls a 'reference frame', a representational structure that determines what the images are experienced as being of. Although I find this explanation somewhat strained (Thomas, forthcoming), I am not concerned to reject it here, for it will not help White's argument. The point remains that even if mental images are pictures, they are not experienced as uninterpreted pictures; imagery does not occur in the absence of (interpretative) imagination.
Of course, no reading of experimental results is beyond question, but the burden of proof has surely now decisively shifted to those like White who would treat imagery as not intentional. Examples like the sailor twins and the duck-rabbit, I conclude, do nothing to show that imaging is not the species of imagining which ordinary language, as opposed to philosophers' jargon, would make it out to be.
However, there is another reason why some have thought that having imagery does not necessarily involve imagination (p.91; Scruton, 1974 p. 97). Imagery may be involved in mental episodes that we would call acts of remembering, dreaming, wishing, thinking, etc., as well as those which we would call exercises of our imagination. However, the conclusion that imagination is not involved in the former sorts of cases does not follow. These usages can be accounted for on the following model: 'imagination' is, in the first place, the name of the capacity to have imagery (as Aristotle so defined it at the beginning of the game (De Anima 428a - Hett, 1936)), but this imagery may be utilized as a general representational medium in the performance of all sorts of more specific mental functions. Wedin (1988) argues that this was how Aristotle himself regarded the matter, and White shows that Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and even, to a considerable extent, Descartes and Kant also held such a view. So does the present Poet Laureate (Hughes, 1988). Imagery is so ubiquitous in our mental life that, in most contexts, it is more useful for us to mention the particular mental task - remembering, considering, dreaming etc. - that our imagery is subserving, rather than the fact that they call for exercises of the imagination (that would be rather like referring to rockets, trees and people not as such, but as lumps of stuff). I submit that the non- theoretical occasions when we actually talk about imagining are usually when we want to refer to mental acts which do not readily fall into any of the more specific mental categories. If it is not remembering, thinking, or whatever, perhaps it is just imagining (as unidentifiable stuff is just stuff), and maybe when it is too special and rare a type of thought to have its own name it is imagining as well.
Admittedly there is an alternative convention, as found, for example, in Hartley, where imagination is not so much the power which forms the images (or 'ideas') which faculties like 'Memory', 'Understanding' and 'Will' then employ, but another faculty on a par with these, whose specific function is to call up 'Ideas and Trains of Ideas . . . in a vivid manner, and without regard to the Order of former actual Impressions and Perceptions' (Hartley, 1749 Part 1, iii). Apart from the fact that it gives rise to pseudo-pleonastic horrors like 'imagination imagery' there can be no objection to this usage. But there is no reason at all to think that it 'trumps' the conception of imagination as the basic image forming power. Mental imagery, I conclude, may always and everywhere be said to imply the operation of the imagination. At least, White has failed in his attempt to show otherwise.
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