Sara Bizarro: The Puzzle of Mental Imagery

SEMINAR SERIES IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
2012-13: Session 14

The Puzzle of Mental Imagery
Sara Bizarro (University of Lisbon, LanCog Group)

7 de Junho de 2013, 15:00
Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa
Sala Mattos Romão (departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The mental imagery debate, a debate about the nature of certain allegedly pictorial mental representations, is still undecided. On one side of the debate, we have those who argue that mental imagery is propositional in its nature, or at least a lot less pictorial than we like to think, while on the other side of the debate, we have those who defend that mental imagery is essentially pictorial in nature. In this paper, an attempt is made to clarify both positions with the examples usually brought up to illustrate them. In view of these examples, some conclusions are reached. Mental imagery is said to be not very detailed and have pictorial aspects that are similar to those that exist in regular perception. Mental imagery is also said to be cognitively permeable. Elaborate encoding across modalities is said to be more efficient than within modalities, thus supporting a dual code hypothesis of mental representation.

Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa
LanCog Group (Language, Mind and Cognition Research Group)
http://www.lancog.com/
Project Online Companion PTDC/FIL-FIL/121209/2010
Instituto Filosófico de Pedro Hispano, Departamento de Filosofia da UL


ALL WELCOME!