Mental Images: Should Cognitive Science Learn from Neurophysiology?

Abstract

The debate over the status of mental images has been of perennial interest to philosophers; and it has recently taken a decidedly experimental turn, but with battle lines being drawn similar to those in the earlier phase of the debate. This paper aims to argue that the recent experimental evidence has been somewhat one-sided, deriving as it has pretty much from cognitive psychology. It will be argued that from that viewpoint a fairly natural theoretical elimination of mental images is possible; but it will also be argued that to do so is to close one’s eyes to theoretical considerations of a different kind, deriving from the discipline of neurophysiology. It will be speculated that, when these neurophysiological considerations are brought in, it might be possible to resurrect at least some parts of the mental image story, while remaining within a broadly physicalist framework.