Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Husserl’s extensive analyses of image consciousness (Bildbewusstsein) and of the imagination (Phantasie) offer insightful and detailed structural explications. However, despite this careful work, Husserl’s discussions fail to overcome the need to rely on a most problematic concept: mental images. The epistemological conundrums triggered by the conceptual framework of mental images are well known—we have only to remember the questions regarding knowledge acquisition that plagued British empiricism. Beyond these problems, however, a plethora of important questions arise from claiming (...) that mental images are structural moments of imaging and imagining. Any attempt to clarify the structure and conditions for the possibility of aesthetic experience must first provide an unambiguous account of pictorial depiction—a task unattainable through the mental images discourse. Similarly, exposing the import of the imagination for theoretical scientific inquiries (be they positive or eidetic) requires an initial explication of the structure of this consciousness; this explication, however, must address our ability to imagine non-spatially determined objects—something the conceptual framework of mental images utterly fails to accomplish. In this paper I argue against Husserl’s reliance on mental images in his phenomenological analyses of imaging and imagining and propose an alternative structural account for both. This account is free of this reliance and able to steer clear of its insidious implications for epistemology, aesthetics, and methodological reflections. By closely following the development of Husserl’s account I suggest alternative descriptions while building on Husserl’s important work. (shrink)

This book collects some of the most exciting pioneering work in perceptual and cognitive psychology. The authors' quantitative approach to the study of mental images and their representation is clearly depicted in this invaluable volume of research which presents, interprets, evaluates, and extends their work. The selections are preceded by a thorough review of the history of their experiments, and all of the articles have been updated with reviews of the current literature. The book's first part focuses on (...) class='Hi'>mental rotation; the second includes other, more complex transformations and sequences of transformations. A third part describes work on rotational transformations in the context of the perceptual illusion of &"apparent motion.&" Roger N. Shepard is Professor of Psychology, Stanford University. Lynn A. Cooper is Professor of Psychology, University of Arizona. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Recent literature have underlined the connections between children’s reading skills and capacity to create and use mental representations or mental images; furthermore data highlighted the involvement of visuospatial abilities both during math learning and during subsequent developmental phases in performing math tasks. The present research adopted a longitudinal design to assess whether the processes of mental imagery in preschoolers (ages 4–5 years) are predictive of mathematics skills, writing and reading, in the early years of primary school (ages (...) 6–7 years). The research lasted for two school years; in the first phase, the general group of participants consisted of 100 children, and although all participants agreed to be part of the research, in the second phase, there was a mortality rate of 30%. In order to measure school learning and mental imagery processes four batteries of tests were used. The mental imagery battery evaluated mental generation, inspection and transformation processes. Data underlined that the different aspects in which mental imagery processes are articulated are differently implied in some skills that constitute school learning. These findings emphasise the potential usefulness of a screening for mental imagery ability for schoolchildren to adopt effective measures to increase their mental imagery abilities. (shrink)

Sartre attacks the "illusion" that mental images are "immanent" in consciousness. After comparing sartre with husserl, I develop his view that mental images are non-Perceptual phenomena involving a relationship with something non-Present. From the impoverished, Unworldly view that results, I suggest that sartre's own view is still too attached to the perceptual analogy and conclude with the richer, Alternative view of ricoeur that imaginal fiction has a constructive role in shaping reality.

This essay investigates the influences that led J.B. Watson to change from being a student in an introspectionist laboratory at Chicago to being the founder of systematic (or radical) behaviourism. Our focus is the crucial period, 1913-1914, when Watson struggled to give a convincing behaviourist account of mental imaging, which he considered to be the greatest obstacle to his behaviourist programme. We discuss in detail the evidence for and against the view that, at least eventually, Watson rejected outright the (...) very existence of mental images. We also discuss in detail whether or not Knight Dunlap was the crucial influence on his eventual rejection of mental images. Finally we consider whether Watson's rejection of mental images was bolstered by some personal incapacity as regards imaging or whether his rejection was more like a form of 'ideological blindness'. (shrink)

In an article entitled ?The Ontological Status of Mental Images?, Robert Audi rejects the view presented in Hannay's Mental Images: A Defence, and proposes ?the property account of imaging? as an alternative. Some of the strengths and weaknesses of Audi's proposal are discussed, and a more detailed and specific version of the property account offered; it is suggested that imaging ? should be described as entertaining the thought that if one were looking at (or smelling, touching, hearing, etc.) (...) x, things would appear ? (shrink)

Mental imagery is an important topic in classical and modern philosophy, as it is central to the study of knowledge; since subjects can recall features of perceptual experiences in different ways and times, even modifying their structure, in this brief essay we will focus on non-perceptive mental images and to this purpose we will analyse, on the one hand, the nature of perceptive mental images ; on the other hand, NPMI generation according to different strategic conditions and (...) retrieval modalities and, so, their structural relationships with PMI. Thus, we will clarify what NPMI amounts to and, to this purpose, we will address the issue of epistemic correlation and semantic reference. As regards the former, we will adopt the notion of ‘belief’, both to describe which attitude supports the use of an NPMI and to account for its relationship with a PMI. As regards the latter, we will talk about weak ontology between an NPMI and the world, to conceive ‘the way in which’ mental imagery, despite the absence of a sensorial modification, refers to physical objects. As the subject’s mental contents determine, but do not constrain, what NPMI is like, we will deal with the ‘involvement’ of prior knowledge and the notion of meaningful space to underline that its generation is always the result of a wide process which involves perceptive visual information already processed and stored together with further mental contents. So, though some Authors consider mental imagery to be a ‘percept-like’ image and, somehow, espouse the theory of reactivation, we will pose a challenge to this theory – i.e. to what we call mental imagery standard framework – describing an NPMI in terms of configurational setting and indeterminacy. Consequently, we will propose a non-linear dynamic framework of mental imagery generation , according to which an NPMI is not reducible to a mere recalling of figural features of a perceptive image. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify Ratnākaraśānti?s epistemological theory that mental images in a cognition are false (*alīkākāravāda) in comparison with Śāntarakṣita?s criticism of the Yogācāra position. Although Ratnākaraśānti frequently uses the neither-one-nor-many argument for explaining his Yogācāra position, the argument, unlike Śāntarakṣita?s original one, does not function for refuting the existence of awareness itself as the basis of mental images. This point is examined in the first two sections of this paper by analyzing Ratnākaraśānti?s proof of the selflessness (...) of entities (dharmanairātmya) and his application of the neither-one-nor-many argument for demonstrating the falsehood of mental images. On the other hand, the last section investigates into his defense of the alīkākāravāda against Śāntarakṣita?s severe criticism of it. Here, too, we can find his tactical usage of the neither-one-nor-many argument, or more precisely, one of its variants: the neither-identical-nor-different argument. Through the above procedure, we can see how Yogācāra philosophy survived in the late period of Indian Buddhism by blending the Madhyamaka opponent?s argument with its own thought. (shrink)

The thrust of Hannay’s work is to investigate certain arguments that support a denial that mental images are objects. His choice of thinkers is eclectic and he devotes much of the book to a detailed treatment of Ryle, Shorter, Sartre and Wittgenstein with briefer notes on Hume, Berkeley and Hobbes. Ryle’s and Shorter’s analytical approach is negatively constructed and we are only told that imagining is not a way of "seeing," and hence commands no object. This inability to render (...) a positive account of imagining as Hannay demonstrates makes their arguments vulnerable. Nor can Wittgenstein offer any positive analysis of imagination since he concerns himself with a grammatical investigation of the term "imagination" with its usual language game implications. Sartre, however, does furnish a thorough descriptive analysis of the experience of imagination and affords Hannay an opportunity to offer a viable reconstruction of Sartre’s arguments. (shrink)

The theory of so-called‘mental images’, which is put forward again in contemporary cognitive psychology, is criticized by way of elaborating the distinctly different intentional structures of the mental activities of‘remembering something’and‘representing something pictorially’(by means of a painting, photo, sculpture, etc.) It is suggested that psychology in its concept and theory formation could use profitably phenomenological-descriptive analyses of the different forms of intentionality as exemplified in the paper.

This paper explores the question whether an adequate account of the facts about imagination and mental imagery must construe mental images as objects. Much of the paper is a study of Alastair Hannay's defense of an affirmative answer in his wide?ranging study, Mental Images ? A Defence. The paper first sets out and evaluates Hannay's case. The second part develops an alternative account of mental images, including non?visual images, which Hannay does not treat in detail. The (...) alternative account is analogous to the adverbial theory of perception; and it is suggested how this account, without construing mental images as objects, might accommodate the data from which Hannay argues for their objecthood. (shrink)

In contrast to Pylyshyn's view, there is no such thing as “reasoning in general.” Different types of reasoning tasks are solved with different reasoning strategies. A more specific null hypothesis is that spatial inference with mental images involves the same representational formalism as that of spatial inference with mental models. There is no evidence that this hypothesis must be rejected.

Much of the current imaging literature either denies the existence of wakeful non-mental imagers, views non-imagers motivationally as 'repressors' or 'neurotic', or acknowledges them but does not fully incorporate them into their models. Neurobiologists testing for imaging loss seem to assume that visual recognition, describing objects, and free-hand drawing require the forming of conscious images. The intuition that 'the psyche never thinks without an image.... the reasoning mind thinks its ideas in the form of images' (Aristotle) has a (...) long tradition in philosophical psychology, from Aristotle through the British empiricists to the British-empiricist-inspired introspection paradigm of Titchener. The massive shift in early experimental psychology to the introspective-antagonistic paradigm of Watson's behaviourism, may have sprung from the contrary intuition that no one thinks in mental images. In both cases, people seemed to assume that what is in one's own mind is in everybody's mind. A third, mediating, intuition - that some people do not think with conscious mental imagery -- seems to be confirmed by empirical studies on many levels. From the early imagery interviews of Francis Galton through many modern surveys, including my own, a consistent diversity of self-reports on ones own mental imagery abilities suggests that some 2-5% of people are very poor- or non-visual- imagers who, yet, maintain normal visual recognition abilities. Comparable estimates have been made in auditory and other imagery modalities. (shrink)

First described by Galton in 1880 and then remaining unnoticed for a century, recent investigations in neuroscience have shown that a condition called aphantasia appears in certain individuals, which causes them to be unable to experience visual mental imagery. Comparing aphantasia to hyperphantasia – i.e., photo-like memory – and considering the neurological basis of perceptual phenomena, we are revisiting Hume's division of perceptions into impressions and ideas. By showing different vivacities of mental phenomena and comparing them to neurological (...) research, we are stating that not only impressions and ideas differ "in the degrees of force and liveliness", but ideas and impressions amongst themselves as well. Such a gradual range of perceptions and mental images bears significant consequences for not only representational theory and historical interpretations, but linguistics and semiotics as well. (shrink)

EVER SINCE Plato declared imagining to be mere pseudo- or shadow-knowing—a form of eikasia, the lowest species of mental activity—Western philosophers have striven to put imagination in its place: a strictly subordinate place. With the exception of isolated figures such as Vico, Collingwood, and Bachelard, philosophers have denounced imagining for its digressiveness and excoriated it for its evasiveness, though sometimes surreptitiously admiring it for these very qualities. At the same time, and as part of the same deprecatory tactic, invidious (...) comparisons have been instituted between imagining and supposedly superior psychical activities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, the paradigm was pure thinking, over against which imagining appeared as deceitful and mendacious—as "the mistress of falsehood and error" in Pascal’s classic complaint. Even Kant, for all of his attention to imagination as a source of synthesis, considered the image to be "a mere set of particular qualities, determined by no assignable rule"—in contrast with the determinacy and rule-bound character of pure concepts. Kant, as much as Descartes or Pascal, Malebranche or Mersenne, Spinoza or Leibniz, would agree with Heidegger’s stern verdict that philosophical thinking is "charmless and image-poor.". (shrink)

This article explores imagination as a means of ethical re-orientation in the aftermath of atrocity. The discussion of the problem of evil is based on Hannah Arendt’s critique of Kant and her notion of ‘rootless’ rather than ‘radical’ evil. On this basis, the orienting potential of visual images is investi­gated with regard to images of violence in the media on the one hand, and, on the other, with regard to Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Then the role of verbal and (...) class='Hi'>mental images of humanity or inhumanity is discussed with reference to the Holocaust survivor Jorge Semprun’s testimony in his book Literature or Life. Finally, the biblical motif of the human being created in the image of an invisible God, the imago Dei, comes into view as an exemplary image of humanity that appears in a framework of interpretation where the invisible is mediated with the help of verbal, visual and/or mental images. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of the nature of mental imagery from a new perspective. It suggests that sign-theoretical approach as elaborated by C. S. Peirce can give a better and more comprehensive explanation of mental imagery. Our empirical findings follow the methodology of cognitive semiotics and they show that (i) properties of mental images are heterogeneous in nature; (ii) properties of mental images are dependent on the characteristics of object-stimulus; (iii) properties of mental images (...) are dependent on individual differences in imaginary capacities. This suggests that, contrary to representational accounts, mental imagery is not based on one dominant representational format. Imagery constitutes a complex system of signs consisting of several sign elements and dynamic relations. A sign-theoretical account may give a better explanation of the nature of mental imagery, as it accommodates heterogenous evidence from this experiment. (shrink)

As a contribution to a wider discussion on moral discernment in theological anthropology, this paper seeks to answer the question “What is the impact of mental illness on an individual’s ability to make moral decisions?” Written from a clinical psychiatric perspective, it considers recent contributions from psychology, neuropsychology and imaging technology. It notes that the popular conception that mental illness necessarily robs an individual of moral responsibility is largely unfounded. Most people who suffer from mental health problems (...) do not lose the capacity to make moral decisions, and mental illness on its own rarely explains anti-social or criminal behaviour. Moreover, the assumptions of some scientists, that recent developments in neuropsychology and brain imaging suggest biological determinism, must be treated with caution. (shrink)

Striving to find a simple characterization of the essence of the imagination, philosophers have argued that it consists in the power to call up before the mind mental images, either in recollection and recognition or in fancy. Wittgenstein's interest in the imagination focused upon six interrelated themes. First, the concept of imagination is associated with the concept of a mental image. Second, imagination is connected in various ways with perception. Third, the faculty of imagination is associated with (...) artistic creativity and no less so with intellectual creativity, with originality, insight and deviation from stock solutions to problems. Fourth, 'to imagine' is connected not only with intellectual creativity, but also more generally with thought, conception or supposition. Fifth, 'to imagine' is associated with false belief, mistaken memory and misperception. Finally, the imagination is connected with make‐believe, pretence, play‐acting or idle fancy. The multitude of grammatical similarities between the visual imagination and visual perception is deceptive. (shrink)

This essay is an analysis of conscious perception and conscious memory. It tries to show that percepts and mental images (roughly, experientially, the same as Hume's "impressions and ideas") are sets of particles at the perceived stimulus objects and at the remembered stimulus objects. It is thus a theory of direct perception and direct memory, and a materialism but not a central state materialism. The percept (we claim) is an "appearance" of the stimulus object particles (perceived object particles) which (...) is due to the way the particles at the perceived object are interconnected (interrelated) by the networks of stimuli-plus-neuron-impulses starting from them. The same is true of the mental image. This essay is primarily an analysis of such networks--to show, we claim, how they make the sets of object particles seem to have sense qualities and gestalts and other properties of percepts and mental images. (shrink)

The present paper develops a defense for the representational approach to memory which wilcox and Katz believe leads to logical paradoxes. It is suggested that three of the central arguments of Wilcox and Katz make sense when one ascribes to the representational theory a "human-like" model, rather is based. the fourth major argument of Wilcox and Katz, which in the present article had been labelled the "eliminative' argument, has been shown to confuse ontological assuptions with logical considerations.

General semantics and the cold war mentality, by S. I. Hayakawa.--The talking tribes, by W. Johnson.--On a certain sort of disagreement, by I. J. Lee.--Serial communication of information in organizations, by W. V. Haney.--The cultural roots of bragmatics, by C. M. Babcock.--Images of the consumer's mind on and off Madison Avenue, by M. Rokeach.--Semantics and sexuality, by S. I. Hayakawa.--The magic word in Nazi persuasion, by H. A. Bosmajian.--Freedom and commitment, by C. R. Rogers.--Bibliography (p. 63).

Buddhism has captured the imagination of many in the modern (Western) world. Recently, scientists have seemed eager to discover whether claims about Buddhist meditation can be verified experimentally. Brain research is beginning to produce concrete evidence that mental discipline and meditative practice can change the workings of the brain and allow practitioners to achieve different levels of awareness, as measurable for instance in reaction times to stimuli. The goal of this section of articles in Zygon is to address recent (...) developments in this area. The contributions address a wide array of questions, although they certainly do not cover the whole ground of what one may consider “problems” of meditation. Yet, we believe that the issues addressed here have widespread implications and that they constitute a strong argument for the richness of the meditation domain. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce's epistemological theory of mental diagrams forms the theoretical basis of his attempt to analyze diagrammatic reasoning. Two examples, one from science and another from art, are examined to test the scope of this theory. While the first example shows how scientific diagrams form part of translation processes, similar processes are demonstrated in how paintings are received. The article attempts to connect Peirce and A. J. Greimas's theory of narrative. Relating the two proves useful in allowing Peirce's (...) theory of the connection between the three normative sciences to be discussed on a new basis. (shrink)

As interpersonal, racial, social, and international conflicts intensify in the world, it is important to safeguard the mental health of individuals affected by them. According to a Buddhist notion “if you want others to be happy, practice compassion; if you want to be happy, practice compassion,” compassion practice is an intervention to cultivate conflict-proof well-being. Here, compassion practice refers to a form of concentrated meditation wherein a practitioner attunes to friend, enemy, and someone in between, thinking, “I’m going to (...) help them.” The compassion meditation is based on Buddhist philosophy that mental suffering is rooted in conceptual thoughts that give rise to generic mental images of self and others and subsequent biases to preserve one’s egoism, blocking the ultimate nature of mind. To contextualize compassion meditation scientifically, we adopted a Bayesian active inference framework to incorporate relevant Buddhist concepts, including mind, compassion, aggregates, suffering, reification, conceptual thoughts, and superimposition. In this framework, a person is considered a Bayesian Engine that actively constructs phenomena based on the aggregates of forms, sensations, discriminations, actions, and consciousness. When the person embodies rigid beliefs about self and others’ identities and the resulting ego-preserving bias, the person’s Bayesian Engine malfunctions, failing to use prediction errors to update prior beliefs. To counter this problem, after recognizing the causes of sufferings, a practitioner of the compassion meditation aims to attune to all others equally, friends and enemies alike, suspend identity-based conceptual thoughts, and eventually let go of any identity-grasping belief and ego-preserving bias that obscure reality. We present a brain model for the Bayesian Engine of three components: Relation-Modeling, Reality-Checking, and Conflict-Alarming, which are subserved by the Default-Mode Network, Frontoparietal Network and Ventral Attention Network, and Salience Network, respectively. Upon perceiving conflicts, the strengthening or weakening of ego-preserving bias will critically depend on whether the SN up-regulates the DMN or FPN/VAN, respectively. We propose that compassion meditation can strengthen brain regions that are conducive for suspending prior beliefs and enhancing the attunements to the counterparts in conflicts. (shrink)

This paper argues that efforts to understand historically remote patterns of thought are driven away from their original meaning if the investigation focuses on reconstruction of concepts. It is simply not appropriate to be looking for an archaic concept of soul, name or dream, for example, when considering the earliest documents which attest to their writers’ beliefs about certain types of phenomena. Instead, we propose to employ the notion of cognitive complex in order to investigate some important philosophical themes in (...) Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Iranian, and Ancient Near Eastern documents. Our principal theoretical claim is that archaic thought does not work with concepts but with complexes whose salient features are an over-abundance of properties, an over-production of connections, and weakness in abstraction. The basic level of complex formation may be the most inclusive level at which it is possible to form a mental image. Specific studies are focused on ancient texts which exhibit archaic patterns of thought. In Egyptian texts, “manifestation” seems to convey something which all categories of beings are capable of becoming, being and having, assuming and leaving; the “name” was considered to be an essential component of the individual’s survival; symbolic representations, such as images and words, are causally connected to the ‘objects’ the image or word signifies. In ANE records the human etemmu was plainly the corpse or skeleton of the dead person; on the other hand it was also the shadowy, volatile image of what he was during life. In ANE records the baffling idea of the divine me referred to an entire cultural area, an acquisition of civilized life; but at the same time it is also the result of an invention, a divine decision. The complexes involved in these archaic ideas about soul, name and dream are ideas fused with their ‘objects’; they have unstable traits and prototypical instances; and are thought at the most abstract level which have concrete images. (shrink)

Crumley introduces four core areas in contemporary philosophy of the mind: the mind/body problem, mental content , mental causation, and the nature of consciousness. The book is distinctive in its further coverage of such fascinating topics as the nature of mental images, theories of concepts, and whether or not computers can think.

A natural outgrowth of Augustine's pre‐philosophical picture of language is the idea that expressions in a language fall into two broad classes: definables and indefinables. In its simplest form this conception represents definitions as intra‐linguistic substitution‐rules, the paradigm of which is analytic definition. A philosopher defending the supposition of the intelligibility of private ostensive definition might reply that there is no difficulty at all. One can have relatively persistent sensations. But neither ephemeral nor persistent sensations can function as samples. The (...) idea that a mental image can function as a sample is compelling, precisely because one can have a mental image of a sample, as when one memorizes a colour‐chart. The role of a sample in an ostensive definition is to play a role in the explanation of the use of the word being thus defined or explained. (shrink)

What one has when one imagines something or when one sees something is not something which others, by contrast with oneself cannot see. For one does not see one's mental images or visual impressions. It makes sense to talk of oneself as having a visual impression or mental image only if it also makes sense to talk of someone else having the same impression or image. To talk of things being blurred at the edge of one's (...) visual field (unlike talk of images on a photograph being blurred), of conjuring up an image of something revolving, is to introduce a new way of speaking. Idealists and solipsists attack the normal form of expression as if the mere form stated how things are; whereas the only cogent case that can be made out in their favour is a recommendation to adopt a different form in which the very same facts are represented in different guise. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is negatively impacting people’s mental health worldwide. The current study examined the effects of COVID-19 lockdown on adult women’s eating, body image, and social media habits. Furthermore, we compared individuals with and without signs of orthorexia nervosa, a proposed eating disorder. Participants were 143 women, aged 17–73 years, recruited during a COVID-19 lockdown in Canada from May-June 2020. Participants completed self-report questionnaires on their eating, body image, and social media habits during the pandemic. The (...) Eating Habits Questionnaire assessed symptoms of orthorexia nervosa. Compared to the period prior to lockdown, women with higher total orthorexia nervosa scores reported eating a lot more than usual, feeling greater pressure to diet and lose weight, thinking about food more often than usual, experiencing greater weight gain, and perceiving more pressure from social media specifically to lose weight and to exercise, compared to their healthy counterparts. We examined associations between individual EHQ subscales and perceived changes to eating and weight. Women who scored high on EHQ-Problems reported seeing more weight loss content on their social media than those who reported fewer orthorexia nervosa symptoms. Conversely, those who scored low on EHQ-Feelings reported feeling a lot less pressure to lose weight, somewhat less or a lot less pressure to lose weight or to exercise from social media specifically, and trended toward less laxative use during lockdown, compared to those who scored higher on orthorexia nervosa. And those who scored low on EHQ-Knowledge reported feeling somewhat less or a lot less pressure to lose weight than those who reported more orthorexia nervosa symptoms. Together, the findings suggest that women with symptoms of orthorexia nervosa are experiencing an exacerbation of disordered eating thoughts and behaviors during COVID-19, and that social media may be a contributing factor. (shrink)

The misconception of communication by means of language is rife in early modern, modern and contemporary philosophy, philosophy of language, theoretical linguistics, neuro‐linguistics and psychology. An investigation into the essence or nature of the imagination is an investigation into the use of the word 'imagination', for essence is expressed by grammar. Someone who insists that he can imagine a stone's being conscious is indulging in mere image‐mongery. Unlike the narrator of a fairy‐tale or fable, his putative imagining has no (...) consequences, save to stir up philosophical clouds of dust. The criteria of understanding lie in behaviour, in explanations and in the use one makes of a word or sentence, not in accompanying mental imagery. One can, for example, draw what one imagines, and this may illuminate the use of a sentence and clarify its sense. But in other cases, e.g. those of imagining another person dreaming, a wholly misleading picture may obtrude itself. (shrink)

Brain-imaging technologies have posed the problem of breaching our brain privacy. Until the invention of those technologies, many of us entertained the idea that nothing can threaten our mental privacy, as long as we kept it, for each of us has private access to his or her own mind but no access to any other. Yet, philosophically, the issue of private, mental accessibility appears to be quite unsettled, as there are still many philosophers who reject the idea of (...) private, mental accessibility. I have attempted to refute such rejections and to establish this idea on firmer grounds. My arguments in this paper show that brain imaging allows no access to our mind and that mind privacy is quite different from brain privacy, as the latter can be breached by brain imaging, whereas the former cannot. A reduction of the mind to the body inescapably fails, as there is a categorial difference between mind and body or brain, which is compatible with their inseparability. Brain imaging cannot enable one to “read” the mind or to breach our mental privacy. There is no external access to one’s mind. Each of us has exclusive access to his or her own mind. (shrink)

Hua-yen Buddhism, the pre-eminent philosophical form of Buddhism in early T'ang dynasty the China, was instrumental in laying the conceptual foundations for virtually all subsequent East Asian Buddhism. This Hua-yen legacy includes Ch' an/Zen and Pure Land, the non-philosophical forms of Buddhism that came to dominance in the centuries to follow. In this sense, Fa-tsang (643-712), the third patriarch and foremost philosopher of Hua-yen, can be considered one of the forefathers of East Asian Buddhism today. By focusing on one element (...) in Fa-tsang's thought, this essay attempts to articulate the overall character of Hua-yen thought and, in the process, to shed light on its connection to other dimensions of the Buddhist tradition. -/- In Fa-tsang's monumental Wu-chiao chang (Treatise on the Five Teachings ), the mental image of a house is taken to model the dharmakãya universe as a whole. On Fa-tsang's account, since any one part of the house - his example is a rafter - is a condition for the house as a whole, that one part through its complex relations encompasses the whole house and is therefore able to reveal it comprehensively. What he calls the "one flavor" of the dharmakãya can be fully tasted in any one part. Adopting Fa-tsang's sytematic principle and taking the concept of bodhicitta as the focal point study, this essay attempts to show the "one flavor" of Fa-tsang's Buddhist thought through the treatment he gives to the traditional idea of the "thought of enlightenment.". (shrink)

Kant’s distinction between intuitions and concepts attracts perennial interpretive interest. To the extent that they discuss the imagination at all, most Kant scholars maintain that the imagination’s primary role is to generate intuitions. This dissertation argues that “image” (Bild, Einbildung) is an overlooked technical term in Kant’s work and that images—and not intuitions—are products of the imagination. The project explains how, for Kant, the imagination (as image-maker) and the senses (as intuition-maker) make distinct but essential contributions to cognition (...) and perception. I begin by showing that “image” is a terminologically marked notion in Kant, and that the imagination is responsible for generating images (chapter 1). I call these claims the Image Thesis. I then show that for Kant, intuitions are representations that depend only on the senses for their essential features (chapter 2). I call this the Strong Independence Thesis. -/- How should we understand Kant’s ubiquitous references to the imagination, then? I argue that we should understand the imagination’s activities as image-producing activities (chapter 3). I argue that images and intuitions are fundamentally distinct representations, which I label the Distinctness Thesis. Though intuitions and images are had by both rational and non-rational beings, the capacity for consciousness or apperception found in rational beings makes a difference in the structure of images but not the structure of intuitions (chapter 4). I call this the penetration view of the imagination. With this account of images in hand, I indicate why images are a necessary ingredient in theoretical cognition for Kant (chapter 5). I call this the Image-Centric Cognition Thesis. The result is a novel account of sensibility—the counterpart of the understanding—that recognizes Kant’s systematic discussion of mental imagery. (shrink)

The notion of ‘wise mother and good wife (WMGW)’ (Hyonmo Yangcho) is the traditional idealized image of Korean womanhood as one who serves her country and others through her roles as a mother and wife. This ideology may continue to have some significance in the lives of many first‐generation Korean immigrant women, but its potential role in the adjustment challenges these women may face while acculturating to the immigrant context in the United States has received little attention. In this (...) paper, we briefly review the historical background of the WMGW ideology and discussed the significance of focusing research attention on the role of this notion in contemporary first‐generation Korean immigrant women in the United States. We focus on the intersecting influences of gender, ethnicity, and immigrants’ generation status, which may further marginalize some first‐generation Korean immigrant mothers. We then outline possible unique challenges faced by some of these mothers due to the WMGW gender ideology, highlighting potential immigration‐related difficulties including changes in their social support networks, parenting burden, mental health, and language issues. Finally, we provide suggestions for researchers and practitioners working with U.S. Korean immigrant women. (shrink)

Saturday sets out to depict the contemporary world with its ambiguities and paradox. In the novel, like in a mirror painting, every event, character and conflict is highlighted from diverse, often contradictory, angles by the narrator's extensive commentary, flashback and reference to other books. The prevailing happiness of mass protests against the war on Iraq is countered by the recollection of mass graves, an element of Saddam's callous regime, the real terrorist threat is contrasted with national paranoia, and the Prime (...) Minister's performance of truthfulness is scrutinized by means of Paul Ekman's study of micro-expressions. The technique of dualistic depiction is further used in order to describe the characters. Reworking the idea of two sides of the same coin, McEwan offers the novel as a metaphorical study of the intricacies of human personality. Therefore, Baxter becomes simultaneously an offender and a victim, John Grammaticus turns from a successful poet into an alcoholic womanizer, and Lilian Perowne's physical and mental disintegration is contrasted with her past as a champion swimmer. McEwan's dichotomous description of the world echoes Barthes's binaries, not only in the duality itself, but also in the fact that the juxtaposition of contradictory images constitutes a more complete depiction of an event or a person. The contrast between the opposing ideas is further accentuated by the use of different jargons: the language of medicine, media, upper-class, working-class, and the like. The use of language throughout the novel seems to repeat the notion that by means of jargons people control and exclude others, highlighting their authority and constructing their position of supremacy. Saturday, which captures acutely the events of a single day in the life of a renowned neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, presents issues, such as the terrorist threat or the creation of media reality, that appear international in consciousness. The essay illustrates how, with admirable artistry, McEwan incorporates meaningful images, visually complex descriptions and different kinds of language into a diary account, for readers to enjoy a more objective comment on the contemporary world. (shrink)

This article was inspired by the Body Image Summit on 21 June 2000 in London at which a panel, headed by Tessa Jowell, Minister for Women, led a discussion among representatives of the media and British fashion industry. The aims of the Summit were to consider the effects of advertising images on teenage girls and women and to develop a consensus from within these industries to incorporate a social and ethical awareness in their promotional activities. A negative reaction to (...) this forum was the main result. In this article I offer both a sociological and psychoanalytically based discussion of the problem of body image for women. I also consider how society and women themselves could begin to counteract the pernicious effects of being sold unrealistically thin, ideal images of womanhood continually perpetrated by consumerism. (shrink)

My case study of Heart of Darkness analyzes the role of image schemas in shaping narrative macrostructures and in organizing literary metaphor systems. Assuming that we can reconstruct global story meaning from local image-schematic metaphors, I propose a model in which compound gestalts represent major aspects of the plot-defining macrostructure. It emerges as salient textual cues progressively add up to a scaffold of image-schematic elements that represent the event's overall texture, its "plot-gene". The rich metaphor system of (...) Heart of Darkness throws into relief the amazing range of literary functions rooted in this image-schematic plot-gene, including plot mnemonics, inference, metaphor networks, and clustering of propositional knowledge, megametaphor, focalizing and viewpoint effects, irony, as well as mood contours. Progressing toward a cognitive model of narrative, I will argue that reading involves a mental simulation of how image schemas interact topologically to produce emergent effects. I dub the imagistic substrate of this simulation the "mental (story) sketchpad," following Baddeley (1986). (shrink)

To what extent are visual fantasies constrained by our perceptual experience of the real world? Our study exploits the fact that people’s knowledge of the appearance of individuals from the early 20th Century derives predominantly from viewing black-and-white media images. An initial experiment shows that mental imagery for individuals from this period are experienced as significantly less colourful than imagery for individuals from the era of colour media. A second experiment manipulated whether participants were instructed to explicitly imagine using (...) colour or not . Results show that colour manipulation only influences imagery for black-and-white era individuals, with no comparable effect on imagery for colour era individuals. This finding is replicated in a third experiment that includes an additional control condition of imagining generic characters . Again, only imagery for black-and-white era individuals is affected by the colour manipulation. Overall these results provide evidence for long-term perceptual specificity effects in mental imagery. We argue that visual fantasies can be constrained by surface features of underlying representations in memory, even when imagining something we have never directly perceived. (shrink)

The article deals with the role of public addresses delivered by the US first lady Michelle Obama in forming the presidential image. Special attention is paid to communicative strategies, stylistic and lexico-grammatical means used in public addresses for influencing the electorate. It is shown that both Obama and his spouse’s speeches play an important role in the electorate consciousness manipulation in the USA.

This paper explores the public perception of energy transition pathways, that is, individual behaviors, political strategies, and technologies that aim to foster a shift towards a low-carbon and sustainable society. We employed affective image analysis, a structured method based on free associations to explore positive and negative connotations and affective meanings. Affective image analysis allows to tap into affective meanings and to compare these meanings across individuals, groups, and cultures. Data were collected among university students in Norway (n (...) = 106) and Germany (n = 125), two countries that differ with respect to their socio-political contexts and histories concerning energy and energy systems. A total of 25 energy transition pathway components were presented to the participants who generated one free association to each component by indicating the first that came to mind when thinking of the component. Participants evaluated their associations by indicating whether they considered each association to be positive, negative, or neutral. These associations were coded by two research assistants, which resulted in 2650 coded responses in the Norwegian sample and 2846 coded responses in the German sample. Results for the two samples are remarkably similar. The most frequent type of association is a general evaluation of the component, for example concerning its valence or its importance. The second most frequent types of association are requirements needed to implement the component (e.g., national policies) and consequences of the component (e.g., personal or environmental consequences). Individual behaviors (e.g., walking) elicited thoughts about consequences and requirements, but also about the prevalence of such behaviors. Associations in response to technologies (e.g., carbon capture and storage) mainly referred to some descriptive aspect of the technology. Evaluations of the free responses were predominantly positive, but some components also elicited negative associations, especially nuclear power. The free associations that people generate suggest that they have vague and unspecific knowledge about energy transition pathways, that they process them in an automatic and intuitive rather than deliberative manner, and that they have clear affective evaluations of the presented components. (shrink)