An Introduction to the Science and Philosophy of Mental Imagery

Glossary

analog-propositional debate

at its height during the 1970s, but still unresolved today, this was essentially a dispute over what sorts of computational data structures, quasi-pictorial arrays or "propositional" descriptions, might be able to model the experimental and experiential characteristics of imagery.

description theory

also (misleadingly) known as "propositional" theory, the view that imagery consists of descriptions encoded in a language-like computational representational format.

intentionality

the property, possessed by many (perhaps all) mental states, of being about, of, or directed at something (the something in question need not necessarily exist). Physical things used by people as vehicles of communication, such as pictures and written or spoken words, are also often said to bear intentionality, but this is usually understood to be derivative, dependent upon the mental intentionality of the users.

mnemonic

a mental technique used to improve memorization of otherwise hard to remember material. Many of the most effective and most widely used mnemonics involve imagery.

perceptual activity theory

the view that the experience of imagery arises from the covert enactment of exploratory perceptual actions of the specific type that would occur during actual perceptual exploration and identification of the things being imagined. On this view, images are not appropriately modeled by computational data structures.

phosphene

a visual sensation caused by non-optical stimulation of the retina or optic nerve (e.g. the mechanical stimulation of rubbing the eyes).

quasi-pictorial theory

the view that visual mental images are appropriately modeled, computationally, as two-dimensional data arrays functionally equivalent to pictures.

retinotopically mapped

refers to the way in which several visual processing areas of the brain, most notably the primary visual cortex (V1), are structured as (rather distorted and low resolution) maps of the light sensitive retina upon which light is focused at the back of the eye. Adjacent regions of the visual cortex correspond to adjacent areas on the retina such that, during vision, the two-dimensional spatial pattern of excitation of the cortical neurons corresponds topologically to the pattern of illumination falling on the retina.