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Imagery—There's More to It than Meets the Eye

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2022

Robert Schwartz
Robert Schwartz*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, Rochester, New York
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Extract

The public image of private imagery is showing signs of a comeback. Not only does it again seem legitimate to talk about “having” images, there has been a tremendous revival of interest in the role of imagery in all aspects of cognition. But while the experimental work on imagery has been progressing nicely, there is little agreement over how best to interpret the empirical results. The newly gathered data not only has not convinced everyone of the importance of imagery, it has spawned a whole new generation of critics who are sure that imagist explanations of cognition are without merit. These critics generally do not deny that people experience images; rather they deny the significance of these phenomena for psychological theory. Some go so far as to maintain that the very notion of an imagist explanation is in principle misguided.

Type
Part IV. Imagery and Representation in Psychology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 285 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I wish to thank Margaret Atherton for her comments and criticism. After sketching out this paper I came across Kolers and Smythe (1979). There is a good deal in common between us, and their paper has a more thorough set of references to positions and claims alluded to herein.

References

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