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Inspecting Images

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Edmond Wright
Edmond Wright
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Oxford
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Extract

The inspectability of after-images has been denied. A typical claim is Ilham Dilman's: ‘I cannot say my apprehension of the after-image I see has changed but not the after-image itself’, for, he says, appearance and reality are one as regards the after-image. His reason is that this is a logical consequence of the fact that other people have no possible basis for correcting what I say about the after-image I see.

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Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 58 , Issue 223 , January 1983 , pp. 57 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1983

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References

1 llham Dilman, ‘Imagination’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 41 (1967), 19-36 (see p. 25).

2 2D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968); George Pitcher, A Theory of Perception(Princeton University

4 4H. von Helmholtz, ‘Concerning the Perceptions in General’, in Perceptual Learning and Adaptation, P. C. Dodwell (ed.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, W0). 15-45 (see PP. 20–21).

5 James J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968).

6 Robert J. Richards, ‘James Gibson's Passive Theory of Perception: A Rejection of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies’, Phil. &Phen. Research 37 (1976–1977), 218-333.

7 R. M. Boynton, ‘The Visual System: Environmental Information’, in Handbook of Perception, vol. I, Edward C. Carterette and Morton P. Friedman (eds) (New York and London: Academic Press, 1974), 285–307.

8 James J. Gibson, ‘The Perceiving of Hidden Surfaces’, in Studies in Perception, Peter K. Machamer and Robert G. Turnbull (eds) (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1978), 422–434.

9 John Heritage (personal communication) has told me of experiments with autistic children that show a double shock response to a single loud noise, indicating severe malfunction in the sensory presentation.

10 James J. Gibson, George A. Kaplan, Horace N. Reynolds, Jr, and Kirk Wheeler, ‘The Change from Visible to Invisible: A Study of Optical Transitions’, Perception and Psychophysics 5 (1969), 113–116.

11 Pitcher, op. cit.,44ff.

12 Alfred J. Ayer, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1964), Ch. I.

13 J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford University Press, 1976), 31.

14 J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 44-45; J. R. Smythies, Analysis of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan y Paul, 1951), 39ff. Mackie makes no reference to Smythies.

15 Douglas Odegard, ‘Perception’, Dialogue 17 (1978), 72–91 (see p. 88).

16 Loc. cit.

17 William M. Mace, ‘James J- Gibson's Strategy for Perceiving: Ask Not What's Inside Your Head, But What Your Head's Inside Of’, in Perceiving, Knowing and Acting: Towards an Ecological Psychology, Robert Shaw and John Bransford (eds) (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1977), 43–65 (see p. 62).

18 Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), 203.

19 R. J. Hirst, The Problems of Perception (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 173; with G. M. Wyburn and R. W. Pickford, Human Senses and Perception (Edinburgh, 1964), 260;‘Science and Anti-Science in the Philosophy of Perception’, in Studies in Perception (eds) Machamer and Turnbull, op. cit., 377–401 (see pp. 397ff).

20 B. Hermelin, ‘Coding and the Sense Modalities’, in Early Childhood Autism, L. Wing (ed.) (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1976), 137.

21 Wright, ‘Illusion and Truth’, Phil. &Phen. Research, 39, (1979), 402–432 (see pp. 425–429).

22 Wright, ‘Perception: A New Theory’, American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977), 273–286 (see p. 274).

23 Pylyshyn, op. cit.

24 Pylyshyn, 12.

25 Antony Flew, ‘Facts and Imagination’, Mind 65 (1965), 392–399 (see p. 396).

26 Daniel C. Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psycholocgy (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978), 168.

27 Peter McKellar, Imagination and Thinking (New York: Basic Books, 1957), f 37ff.

28 H. H. Price, ‘Appearing and Appearances’, American Philosophical Quarterly I (I964), 3-19 (see P-18).

29 See Wright, ‘Perception’, 277-281. Virgil C. Aldrich is, I believe, arguing for the same distinction in his recent article in this journal:‘Mirrors, Pictures, Words, Perceptions’, Philosophy 55 (1980), 39–56 (see p. 56). See also Wilfred Sellars, ‘Is Consciousness Physical?’, The Monist 64 (1981), 66–90.

30 John P. Frisby, Seeing: Illusion, Brain and Mind (Oxford University Press, 1979).

31 Roger N. Shepard, ‘The Mental Image’, American Psychologist 33 (1978), 125–137 (see p. 135).

32 Frank Jackson, Perception. A Representative Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1977).

33 Allan Paivio, ‘The Relationship Between the Verbal and Perceptual Codes’, in Handbook of Perception, vol. 8, Edward G. Carterette and Morton P. Fried man (eds) (New York: Academic Press, 1978), 375–397.

34 John R. Beech, ‘Image Scanning: More Problems for Pure Propositional Accounts of Visual Imagery’ (forthcoming in Cognitive Psychology); John R. Anderson, who once shared Pylyshyn's views, is now far less sure:‘Arguments Concerning Representations for Mental Imagery’, Psychological Review 85 (1978), 249–277. See also John T. E. Richardson, Mental Imagery and Human Memory (London: Macmillan, 1980).

35 Hide Ishiguro, ‘Imagination’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 41 (1967), 37–56. See the pertinent criticisms of Ishiguro in Reynold Lawrie, ‘The Existence of Mental Images’, Philosophical Quarterly 20 (1970), 253–257.

36 Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘The Problem of the Speckled Hen’, Mind 51, (1942), 368–373.

37 Robert Audi, ‘The Ontological Status of Mental Images’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 348–361.

38 A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975).

39 R. N. Shepard and J. Metzler, ‘Mental Rotation of Three-dimensional Objects’, Science 171 (1971), 701–703.

40 Since this article was written, Stephen Michael Kosslyn's book, Image and Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980) has appeared, in which he argues for the Dual Coding approach. In his recent exchange with Pylyshyn (Psychological Review January 1981), it is plain that Pylyshyn has not yet taken the point that mental imagery can be experienced as non-objectified.