The Puzzle of Imagistic Cognition

We often solve practical problems by means of picturing in our imaginations the motions of and interactions between objects. For instance, an experienced builder of bird houses might imagine the bird house to be built, imagine the pieces that will be needed and imagine how they should go together. The role of imagistic cognition becomes especially salient when it fails us. For instance, in wrapping a box with gift wrap, we might cut a piece of paper that we pictorially imagine to be big enough but then discover that we imagined incorrectly and that the sheet is not big enough. Surprisingly, the nature and extent of imagistic cognition has never been the subject of intensive research in either philosophy or psychology. But in view of contemporary interest in many related questions, the time is ripe to take up the question. This related research includes the structure and content of perceptual representation, scene parsing, perceptual tracking, motor control, and children`s understanding of object motion. This projects methods will be analytic and integrative. By taking account of the related research that has already been conducted in philosophy and psychology, we aim to develop a clear conceptual framework. In particular, we will clearly distinguish between imagistic representations and discursive representations, which are sentence-like representations, define the representation relation between mental images and their contents and in terms of these relations define principles of imagistic cognition. Inasmuch as imagistic cognition makes up a significant share of human problem-solving, a serious scientific study of it promises to open up new directions in many fields, including human reasoning, language acquisition and developmental and comparative psychology.

The Puzzle of Imagistic Cognition Imagistic Cognition consists in the use of mental images to solve practical problems (for example, in determining whether two parts of an apparatus will fit together). Imagistic cognition is fundamental to the abilities of animals to navigate their environment, but it has been little studied in psychology. This project aimed to elucidate the philosophical foundations of imagistic cognition in order to pave the way for empirical investigation. Fundamental questions include the following: What is the representation relation between an imagistic representation and the scene that it represents? What are the principles that govern the successful transformation of mental images in problem solving? What is the difference between mental imagery and perceptual representation, and how can the former complement and complete the latter? What is the role of episodic memory in generating mental imagery? How does mental imagery generate proposition-bearing representations (e.g. perceptual beliefs), and how do proposition-bearing representations (e.g., intentions) generate imagistic representations (e.g., those used in bodily movement)? What is the role of mental imagery in imaginative thinking more generally? The project promoted research on these topics through the support of postdoctoral fellows and one doctoral fellow, who conducted research on these topics aimed at producing ground-breaking publications in journals and presentations at professional conferences. The project also sponsored three workshops featuring accomplished researchers in the fields of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, who traveled to Salzburg from locations throughout Europe and North America. Two of the workshops lasted three days each and featured 12 participants each, and one lasted one day and featured five speakers. Psychologists and neuroscientists working on imagery were confronted with central philosophical questions that they had not previously contemplated, and philosophers discovered that their work could be informed by psychological and neuroscientific experimentation.