Putting the Image Back in Imagination
Document Type
Article
Department
Claremont McKenna College, Philosophy (CMC)
Publication Date
2001
Abstract
Despite their intuitive appeal and a long philosophical history, imagery-based accounts of the imagination have fallen into disfavor in contemporary discussions. the philosophical pressure to reject such accounts seems to derive from two distinct sources. First, the fact that mental images have proved difficult to accommodate within a scientific conception of mind has led to numerous attempts to explain away their existence, and this in turn has led to attempts to explain the phenomenon of imagining without reference to such ontologically dubious entities as mental images. Second, even those philosophers who accept mental images in their ontology have worried about what seem to be fairly obvious examples of imaginings that occur without imagery. In this paper, I aim to relieve both these points of philosophical pressure and, in the process, develop a new imagery-based account of the imagination: the imagery model. Putting the Image Back in Imagination.
Rights Information
© 2001 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
DOI
10.1111/j.1933-1592.2001.tb00042.x
Recommended Citation
Kind, Amy. 2001. “Putting the Image Back in Imagination,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62: 85-109
