Whether I like it or not, I often think of myself as somewhere other than here. I don't live only in the present. I'm not a tree either: I'm not rooted to this spot; I have been in at least one other place, even if it is only where I was born. So when I think about myself, who and what I am, I do not think only of myself at this moment in this place. Instead, I think of myself as I am at different times and places.
I am not all here in another important way: many things that occupy my thoughts and a lot of situations in which I see myself are not real – or, at least, are not obviously real. I think about the future, I imagine it, I worry about it, but I never, in doing so, am actually there in it; I don't even know if I will be in it. I might think of tomorrow as another dull guilt-ridden day in my home-town but it might not be. It might be nothing for me because I might die tonight. Tomorrow might never come.
I also remember scenes, books and films which are entirely fictional. And I day-dream. I imagine conversations I should have had, killer lines I should have said, relationships I ought to have avoided, and situations I would like to be in; yet, although I think of myself as in them, I know that these can never occur. Still, I fill some of my time with them, often for the pleasure of doing it, but I sometimes even when doing so can only cause me pain. The imagination is not always under one's control (or....else....I'm a masochist).
When I do imagine some of these scenarios, or worry about the future, or relive the past, I can get lost. I can forget where I am now. I'm walking down a street thinking about the last time I was in Cork - who I talked to, what we said - and I'm imagining what I could have said otherwise, then I realize I've already walked by my destination at the bank. I was so obsorbed in my reminiscence that I hadn't noticed.
This is something that commonly happens to all of us, but I still find certain features of it curious. I don't find my failure to notice the bank curious; one could easily think of that as a failure - the failure to notice something - a failure to experience something. What I find more curious is what, we might say, I was experiencing when I was so distracted. What do I experience when I am so deeply remembering or imagining? Do I experience anything at all?
Pictures in the Head
According to the psychologist Kosslyn, when people imagine things there really is something they are aware of. And what they are aware of is something like their perception of the external world. There are features to what we imagine that are not just hearing our own voices describing them (internally or externally), i.e., imagining is more like looking at pictures than thinking with words. There is something it is like to imagine something which is not just saying what you imagine. (e.g., Kosslyn, S. Thompson, W.L. 2006. 'The case for mental imagery.' Oxford, Oxford University Press)
The idea is that people have a mental image or mental picture in their mind when they imagine something, and we seem able to do things with that image which we can do with objects in the world: we seem able to stand back from it,change our perspective on it, add features to it, and even discover features of it which are not obvious when we first think it. Try it for yourself to see if you agree, e.g., imagine a blue square. Cover it in red polka dots. Next, put a rabbit on it. Now, what colour is the rabbit? How big is it in comparison to the blue square? Now put a leprachaun beside the rabbit - which is bigger? What's the leprachaun's expression? Imagine the leprachaun laughs - what does it sound like? How does the rabbit react?
Whatever it is that might happen when we imagine something, it does seem as if we have mental images or sensations when we remember. But how are such images and sensations related to what we perceive, i.e., to what we see, hear, and so on? The seventeenth-century philosopher David Hume thought that the sensations or experiences which we have when we imagine or remember something are distinguishable from those of perceptions by being less vivid than what we perceive. Other thinkers actually deny Kosslyn-type positions, i.e., that we have some kind of experience when we imagine or remember; I'll discuss that below. But if we do experience something when we imagine or remember, it may seem as if there is at least a difference in vividness. But I do not think so, for the following reason.
Many people who suffer particularly traumatic events often report remembering the events so vividly that it as if they are seeing what happened, hearing what happened, feeling what happened all over again. One example is discussed on 2007's BBC radio 4's 'The Memory Experience': a fire officer suffering post-traumatic stress disorder after a particular fire suddenly found himself reliving it - hearing the sirens, seeing the lights - when he saw a flashing blue light in his back garden (I think it was a faulty burglar alarm 'The Making of Memory: Is it Better to Forget Trauma?'). Chicago Public Radio's 'This American Life' (October 23rd, 2009) tells the story of a man who escaped arrest by the law for murder – but didn't escape his own conscience; in the years following, he could not forget his crime, and sometimes 'replayed' the events so vividly that it seemed to him as if the images of it were playing on the blank wall of his room, even though he was awake (I lump dreaming under imagining in this discussion).
Under vivid memories, I would also add in another very unusual and famous class of sensation and experience, one which is famous in contemporary literature on consciousness - phantom limbs. This is where an amputee still feels the amputated limb as if it is still there, even though it is gone. Again, what could only be something remembered seems to be perceived.
So what we remember seems to be something that could be as vivid as what we perceive - but there is also what we experience when we are only imagining, when what we may sense of experience is not happening and never was happening. People also report powerfully vivid experiences of what seems to them to be real but which is not, i.e., hallucinations (e.g., see the opening chapters in Julian Jaynes' 'The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'). A most common kind of hallucination is auditory hallucination, in particular hearing voices (information and support on this, see the 'Hearing Voices' website; also, recent research suggests this is more common than one might think (BBC, 18th September, 2006)).
Another example might seem obvious: what we experience when we dream. Unless we believe that we literally travel to some other place when we dream, we are experiencing things which are not actually in the world around us now, and in many cases never were - but still, we often believe they are happening.
Lastly, there are numerous illusions which show phantom motion, colour, that seem to be of seeing things out there - on the computer screen, etc - which are just not there (see Michael Bach's webpage).
All of these situations seem to be demonstrating that, first, when we remember or imagine something, it can be just the same as actually perceiving it; this suggests that we experience something like what we see, hear, taste, etc., when we imagine things. In addition, as with the guilt-ridden man or people who know what they're seeing is an illusion, we can know what we are imagining or remembering is not really perceiving it, yet still it can be as vivid as it.
What about where you voluntarily imagine or remember? Can you remember the blue of this summer's sky? Have you ever had that experience where you can suddenly remember exactly the touch of someone you once loved? Can you recall the taste of refresher bars or your own blood? (I take it you're not tasting either of these right now). Or let's be more mundane: do you remember the circle you had to draw with a compass in maths class? I can see myself now: sticking its tip into the paper and turning it unevenly in my hand. The spike is barely stuck into the paper; the gold-coloured metal is cool and the pencil scrapes and wobbles along the page.
This resemblance is not so clear when you voluntarily remember or imagine; in this case you might think that there is a difference in the vividness of remembering/imagining and perceiving. But don't you still experience something in these cases - in some way taste, hear, see, when you remember or imagine? When you imagine seeing a square box, you may not be seeing an actual square box - that is, something that is sitting somewhere in the world - what you see may not be very clear, but isn't there in some way an actual square? Aren't I in some way experiencing a square?
There are problems with that.
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