Mental Images and Content: Empirical Psychology

Several arguments can be made in support of the idea that mental images are the bearers of meaning or content.

(1) It can be argued, on the basis of some findings in contemporary psychology (e.g., Paivio's dual code theory), that mental images are in fact linked to words. Although the meaning or designation of an image might change, mental images tend to enter into stable relations with associated words, forming idea complexes. These complexes have content. Thus, mental images have content by virtue of their associations with other mental content.

(2) Many philosophers have argued that since mental images are "vague" or indeterminate in their content, they can not function as elements in mental operations. Empirical psychologists (in the pictorialist mold) can respond that the requirement that contents be determinate is an unnecessary stricture on what sorts of things can be used to store and retrieve knowledge. Memory images, for instance, can be used to store unspecified information about some object. An often-cited example concerns recalling the number of windows on the front of one's house. If one does not know the number immediately, one recalls the image of the front of one's house in order to count them. The image is indeterminate in the sense that it stores many details of the appearance of the house, including information that may not have any immediate purpose, such as which side the downspout is on, the color of the roof, etc. The image can be used to retrieve additional determinate knowledge. Hence, indeterminate mental items such as images can play a constitutive role in thinking.

Both of these arguments, needless to say, have descriptivist rebuttals.

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