Image Imagination And Cognition

Multiple accounts of how theories of human psychology and of image-making influenced each other in a decisive period in the history of philosophy and art.

Publisher description

The first volume in the "Counterpoints" series. This text examines the relationships between perception and mental imagery, which have given rise to one of the most vigorously debated areas in psychology.

This book represents the research efforts of individuals whose scientific expertise lies in reflection on what Sartre described as reflective acts. Theory in the cognitive psychology of mental imagery, endeavors not only being able to describe the contents and nature of mental imagery, but also being able to understand the underlying functional cognition. Psychologists need not solely rely on the techniques of introspection, and the last two decades have seen highly creative developments in techniques for eliciting behavioural data to be complemented by introspective reports. This level of sophistication has provided singular insights into the relationship between imagery and other consequential and universal aspects of human cognition: perception, memory, verbal processes and problem solving. The recognition that imagery, despite its ubiquitous nature, differs between individuals both in prevalence and in kind, and the dramatic rise in cognitive science has provided the additional potential for integrating our understanding of cognitive function with our understanding of neuroanatomy and of computer science. All of these relationships, developments and issues are dealt with in detail in this book, by some of the most distinguished authors in imagery research, working at present in both Europe and the USA.

This book discusses that imagination is as important to thinking and reasoning as it is to making and acting. By reexamining our philosophical and psychological heritage, it traces a framework, a conceptual topology, that underlies the most disparate theories: a framework that presents imagination as founded in the placement of appearances. It shows how this framework was progressively developed by thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant, and how it is reflected in more recent developments in theorists as different as Peirce, Saussure, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, and Bachelard. The conceptual topology of imagination incorporates logic, mathematics, and science as well as production, play, and art. Recognizing this topology can move us past the confusions to a unifying view of imagination for the future. ​

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.