Dennett, Mental Images, and Images in Context

In a series of essays, collectively published as Brainstorms,' D. C. Dennett proposes to radically change our views on psychological explanation. As part of this project, he must convince us that his account of mental images is consistent with his general project. Doing so entails giving an account of mental images which reduces the main issues to questions within the domain of the experimental psychologist more particularly, the neurophysiologist but which at the same time reserves some room for all of the things that people have traditionally wanted to say about their mental images: what they looked like, and so on. It is important for him to do this because only such an analysis will fit comfortably with his more general strategy for dealing with 'philosophy of mind.' In what follows, I will argue that Dennett's proposed analysis of mental images is inadequate, and that its inadequacies raise doubts about the more general project. Before embarking on that task, it might help to give a brief sketch of Dennett's more general position. The general concept in Dennett's theory is that of intentionality. That is, his main concern is to analyze what we mean by talking about human beings as intentional systems, things with beliefs, desires, and other intentional states. With respect to intentionality, Dennett holds three apparently incompatible theses; explaining away the apparent incompatibility will serve as a fair introduction to his approach. The first thesis is that one ought to try to 'legitimize' rather than 'reduce' intentional talk about mental events (p. xvii). (This is true of at least some such talk: Dennett also wants to argue that some mentalistic concepts are so ill-defined that

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