Mental imagery: pulling the plug on perceptualism

Abstract

What is the relationship between perception and mental imagery? I aim to eliminate an answer that I call perceptualism about mental imagery. Strong perceptualism, defended by Bence Nanay, predictive processing theorists, and several others, claims that imagery is a kind of perceptual state. Weak perceptualism, defended by M. G. F. Martin and Matthew Soteriou, claims that mental imagery is a representation of a perceptual state, a view sometimes called The Dependency Thesis. Strong perceptualism is to be rejected since it misclassifies imagery disorders and abnormalities as perceptual disorders and abnormalities. Weak Perceptualism is to be rejected since it gets wrong the aim and accuracy conditions of a whole class of mental imagery–projected mental imagery–and relies on an impoverished concept of perceptual states, ignoring certain of their structural features. Whatever the relationship between perception and imagery, the perceptualist has it wrong.

Mental Imagery and Poetry

“…Martin 2002), mental imagery is a representation of a perceptual state. For a critical discussion on perceptualism about mental imagery, see Cavedon-Taylor (2021), which also mentions non-perceptualist views, including the views that mental imagery is a cognitive state, that it is a merely sensational state, and that it is a sui generis state. Proponents of non-perceptualist views can nevertheless agree that mental imagery and perceptual states are similar in terms of content and phenomenology.…”

Defending (perceptual) attitudes

“…16 16 Some, however, seem to deny this analysis: “an intriguing fact […] is that the phenomenal difference between what we foveate and what we visually imagine is much more pronounced than the phenomenal difference between what we see at the periphery of our visual field and what we visually imagine” (Noordhof, 2002, p. 446). Against the reduction of imagination to perception, see Cavedon‐Taylor (2021). …”