Abstract
It is often observed that images—including mental images—are in some sense representationally ambiguous. Some, including Jerry Fodor, have added that mental images only come to have determinate contents through the contribution of non-imagistic representations that accompany them. This paper agrees that a kind of ambiguity holds with respect to mental imagery, while arguing (pace Fodor) that this does not prevent imagery from having determinate contents in the absence of other, non-imagistic representations. Specifically, I argue that mental images can represent determinate types of outlays of properties without help from any non-imagistic representations, yet can only become involved in the representation of particular objects through pairing with a non-imagistic representation of the right sort. These points are defended through reflection on the “Picture Principle,” the nature of depiction, and general principles for typing and individuating mental states.
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Notes
According to Tye, “a mental image of an F (though of no one F in particular) is a symbol-filled array to which a sentential interpretation having the content ‘This represents an F’ is affixed” (1991, p. 90). Notably, Tye provides some reasons distinct from Fodor’s for this view that I cannot address here.
In Wiltsher’s case, non-imagistic states only play a role in fixing the content of an imagining insofar as non-imagistic concepts are used in the generation of images that then inherit the content of the non-imagistic concepts (2016, p. 273).
The arguments to come assume that mental images are indeed images of a kind and thus have the same representational format as non-mental images, such as drawings, photographs, representational paintings, and other paradigmatic images. Some deny that mental images are truly imagistic in their representational format (Pylyshyn 2002, 2003). Engaging in that debate is beyond the scope of this paper. The arguments to come will not apply to views that deny that mental imagery occurs in an imagistic, pictorial, or analog format.
See Kulvicki (2015) for an argument that something very close to the Picture Principle* is true for all analog representations. Thanks to Christopher Gauker for posing the challenge concerning the space between dots in a grayscale image.
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Langland-Hassan, P. On the Ambiguity of Images and Particularity of Imaginings. Topoi (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09975-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09975-6