Image And Mind

Kosslyn makes an impressive case for the view that images are critically involved in the life of the mind. In a series of ingenious experiments, he provides hard evidence that people can construct elaborate mental images, search them for specific information, and perform such other internal operations as mental rotation.

This book develops a theory of the nature of the cinematic medium, of the psychology of film viewing, and of film narrative.

This long-awaited work by prominent Harvard psychologist Stephen Kosslyn integrates a twenty-year research program on the nature of high-level vision and mental imagery. Image and Brain marshals insights and empirical results from computer vision, neuroscience, and cognitive science to develop a general theory of visual mental imagery, its relation to visual perception, and its implementation in the human brain. It offers a definitive resolution to the long-standing debate about the nature of the internal representation of visual mental imagery. Kosslyn reviews evidence that perception and representation are inextricably linked, and goes on to show how "quasi-pictorial" events in the brain are generated, interpreted, and used in cognition. The theory is tested with brain-scanning techniques that provide stronger evidence than has been possible in the past. Known for his work in high-level vision, one of the most empirically successful areas of experimental psychology, Kosslyn uses a highly interdisciplinary approach. He reviews and integrates an extensive amount of literature in a coherent presentation, and reports a wide range of new findings using a host of techniques. A Bradford Book

"Image and Brain attempts what is rarely seen in cognitive neuroscience: The Big Picture. To be sure, it is Kosslyn's Big Picture, but that is probably the best there is." -- Irving Biederman, William M. Keck Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Southern California. This long-awaited work by prominent Harvard psychologist Stephen Kosslyn integrates a twenty-year research program on the nature of high-level vision and mental imagery. Image and Brain marshals insights and empirical results from computer vision, neuroscience, and cognitive science to develop a general theory of visual mental imagery, its relation to visual perception, and its implementation in the human brain. It offers a definitive resolution to the long-standing debate about the nature of the internal representation of visual mental imagery. Kosslyn reviews evidence that perception and representation are inextricably linked, and goes on to show how "quasi-pictorial" events in the brain are generated, interpreted, and used in cognition. The theory is tested with brain- scanning techniques that provide stronger evidence than has been possible in the past. Known for his work in high-level vision, one of the most empirically successful areas of experimental psychology, Kosslyn uses a highly interdisciplinary approach. He reviews and integrates an extensive amount of literature in a coherent presentation, and reports a wide range of new findings using a host of techniques. A Bradford Book

A philosophical inquiry into the strengths and weaknesses of theism and naturalism in accounting for the emergence of consciousness, the visual imagination and aesthetic values. The authors begin by offering an account of modern scientific practice which gives a central place to the visual imagination and aesthetic values. They then move to test the explanatory power of naturalism and theism in accounting for consciousness and the very visual imagination and aesthetic values that lie behind and define modern science. Taliaferro and Evans argue that evolutionary biology alone is insufficient to account for consciousness, the visual imagination and aesthetic values. Insofar as naturalism is compelled to go beyond evolutionary biology, it does not fare as well as theism in terms of explanatory power.

"It is rare to find in recent structures architectural allusions that remind us of valued human experiences and teach us to prize what we may have taken for granted. Symmetry and mechanical efficiency we may find, and surface application of set architectural styles, but these make no fundamental appeal to most of us. Our more deeply rooted responses to such architectural elements as texture, contour, and scale should, Herb Greene writes in this book, be more carefully studied by architects. Greene has long been recognized as a designer of houses that excite the imagination. Now he presents a beautifully illustrated commentary on his principles and methods. Ranging from discussions of the lingering influences of Cartesian mechanism to explanations for the uninhabitability of large public housing projects, this commentary approaches the topic of organic architecture from a point of view that is philosophic as well as practical, artistic as well as historical. To explain the mysterious power of certain architectural images, Greene offers a matrix theory, relying on the teachings of Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty about the nature of perception. He shows how he applies this theory in fascinating accounts of the design processes followed in an assortment of his one-of-a-kind houses built for specific clients. The mass market also wins attention in this book, Greene presents fresh approaches to functional and aesthetic problems in subdivision housing, high-rise development, and the highway commercial strip. In the housing models the tenant is offered active encouragement to make his home uniquely expressive of his own interests and taste. All the developments offer suggestions for a positive relation to region and place. Plans and photographs of many of Greene's buildings are included, and details from several of his collage paintings are reproduced. In addition a varied selection of illustrations - including examples of advertising art, Frank Lloyd Wright house plans, and pre-Columbian Indian sculpture - accompanies his explanation of the perceptual process and its effect on our response to images." --

Image Transformations of the Brain-Mind is his latest book that addresses basic questions about SELF and CONSCIOUSNESS. Dr. Just has two major concerns—how the mind emerges from its fetal beginning and matures through adulthood to enable free will (the Supervening SELF) and how sensory image transformations of the brain-mind lead to subjective experience. This book shares numerous insights into: • Virtually transformed sensory images that feel like a little person (homunculus) in our brains. • How the Physical-SELF is transformed into the Virtual-SELF. • How the SELF in dreams feels just as real as it does in waking. • The author’s dream classifications according to type of sensory experience. • Transformative brain-mind images that underlie altered mental states and various religious experiences. • How dream memories and the 24-hour mind become waking déjà vu experiences. • Psychological and philosophical questions of autonomy and determinism.

This collection of brief essays and still briefer commentaries is a personal reflection on some topics that have been thematic in the development of my theoretical work. These essays are not meant to extend the theory into yet-uncharted territory, but rather to draw out some of its implications for clinical neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and everyday life. The point of view guiding these reflections can be found in prior works, but the discerning reader will not fail to see a departure from current models of mind and brain based on circuit board diagrams, modular and computational theories that conflict with a processual account in which the mind/brain is more like a living organism. This perspective, which is often at odds with common sense and folk psychology, has particular relevance to our concepts of the self, the inner life, subjective time, adaptive process, and the world represented in perception.