The Picture Theory of Mental Images

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10697399
AutoresMichael Tye (0000-0003-2925-3979, autor correspondente)
Ano1988
Volume97
Fascículo4
Páginas497
Data de publicação1988-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2185413
OpenAlexW2326678932
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7

The view that mental images are significantly picture-like (hereafter the picture theory) has a long and distinguished philosophical history, including among its adherents such diverse philosophers as Aristotle, Descartes, and Locke.' Despite its widespread acceptance, the picture theory of mental images was left largely unexplained in the traditional philosophical literature. Admittedly most of those who accepted the theory held that mental images copy or resemble what they represent. But little more was said. The picture theory has become less popular in philosophy in recent years in part because it has been recognized that the claim that mental images are pictorial is really very puzzling. After all, mental images are not viewed with real eyes. They cannot be hung on real walls. They have no objective weight or color. A related reason for the diminishing support of the picture theory is that it is now widely acknowledged that a simple appeal to resemblance will not illuminate the basic thesis, since everything resembles everything in some respect or other. Moreover, it is of no real help to say that mental images closely resemble the objects that they represent, unless some account is supplied of the shared characteristics in virtue of which there is such a resemblance. There are, I think, two further reasons for the decline of the picture theory in philosophy. The first of these is that the theory has seemed to rest primarily on the evidence afforded by introspection. And today introspection is taken to reveal a good deal less about the mind than was traditionally supposed. This attitude towards introspection has manifested itself in the case of imagery in the view that what introspection really shows about imagery is not that mental images are pictorial but only that what goes on in imagery is much like what goes on in seeing. Thus, a mental image

Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · Classical Philosophy and Thought · History of Science and Medicine · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology