Where is My Mind?

We have discussed the idea that mental images occupy space (whether they seem to or not). This leads to the next two questions:

(i) If mental images occupy space, what is this space?
(ii) What are mental images made of? That is, what is the stuff in this space?

In this section, I want to talk about what spaces I think they aren't in.

Private Space

The idea floated a few entries back was that whatever it is we experience - the image, if you like - when we imagine or remember literally occupies some kind of space. And then I wondered if that was some kind of private space, a space which no-one else can observe; if it is a separate space to the one we share with everyone else - because the 'whats' that are in it, the images etc., are not in the shared world.

If we were in the medieval period, this might have seemed reasonable; my thinking of it comes from medieval metaphysicians such as Athanasius Kircher and Fludd. But I don't think this is something we would now take seriously. So let's see what else we might say about this space for mental images.

The first thing to say is that, however one thinks about, a certain position about the actual world requires that mental images, if they exist (see later), cannot be in some other space than what we see, hear, taste, etc. If mental images exist, mental images must be spatially related to the external world. They need not be what they seem to be - but if they're anything they better be somewhere in the actual physical world.

But why assume that they have to be in the actual physical world? Couldn't they be in some other possible world? Could they be possible objects in the space of another possible world?

Possible Space

I say the 'actual physical world' because there is one type of space images might occupy that some philosophers might think is a real space. I don't think images do occupy this space, but I want to spell it out (it's also useful to introduce a current way many philosophers think). They'd occupy this real space if the following from two statements are true:

(i) Images are only possible; they are not actual in the world we share. This is not a typo or conceptual confusion: I am not confusing images and what is imagined - I mean what we experience, the representation, the image itself, is merely possible.

(ii) Modal Realism is true. 

'Modal realism' is the position that whatever is possible is real. This includes whatever is possible which is not actual. That is, whatever is merely possible is also real.

What makes something merely possible can be controversial but examples of it have included, e.g., you right now wearing something other than what you're actually wearing (whatever that is; I don't judge); the Nazis winning WWII (e.g., as imagined in Philip K. Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle'); and... I suppose... dragons, elves, unicorns... dolphins in dinner jackets.

Many contemporary metaphysicians talk of whatever that is possible, whether actual or not, as being something that occupies a possible world. For the modal realists,  the merely possible stuff, the 'non-actual' stuff, is just not in this actual world; it is in a different possible world; it has a different actuality, some of them might say. So, e.g., a resistance fighter against the fourth generation of Nazis, clothed in Henry VIII's tournament armour, is really reading an entry like this on his laptop - and, seeing the mention of unicorns, he sobs "oh! Solostick! My loyal steed. Why did you have to die?" (ok. I'm annoying myself now). He is really reading this - just not in this actual world; in another actuality, another possible world.

Just because it isn't actually real doesn't make it unreal. According to its most famous advocate, the highly influential philosopher David Lewis, each of these possible worlds is in a separate spacetime to the others. Though all things in each of them are real or exist,  nothing in one world is spatially or temporally related to anything in any other; but they are spatially or temporally related to each other - so long as they are in the same world.

I don't want to criticise the talk of possibility in terms of possible worlds; I don't even want to criticise modal realism. (Lewis has argued that modal realism is the best way of explaining our statements about what is possible; famously, he has added that the most common, and usually final, objection has been just an incredulous stare, i.e., people just staring at him in disbelief  because of what he says). With this in mind, someone might answer the question

'How can the images of my remembering and imagining occupy a different space to my body, the world around my body, etc.?'

With

'They are in the space of another possible world.'

But this would be a very confused answer. This would mean that the images are merely possible, not actual; that is what it means for something to be in another possible world. Maybe this is true of what I imagine - when I imagine a unicorn, as above, the unicorn might be possible. But if I'm experiencing anything here,  then what I'm experiencing is actual. It's in this actual world.

The thinking behind all this is part of a certain view of the world already discussed: physicalism, that everything is physical. I'll say more about the idea of physicalism as we go on - but  now, there's what it says about things in space. 

So far as I understand most people's thinking (but there's something to say even about this), a condition of something being physical is that it occupies space, and this space is the same one as that of mountains, planets, cafes and viruses.

So why not, then, have it that images are physical? Why not have them sharing the same 'spacetime' as all the physical stuff?

Biology

Along with all the matter, all the mountains, and sky, and badly worn shoes, my body and its bits seem to definitely be part of the physicial world. My body, and your body, and anyone-but-God-and-ghosts-reading-this's bodies, at least seem to be particular lumps - albeit very sophisticated and distilled lumps -  of matter. In other words, biological stuff shares the same spacetime - it is spatially related to - all the other stuff in the world.

So, if the images I experience are part of my body, then they are in same spatial world as the rest of my body. They are spatially related to other physical things. We can then say things like: when I imagine a unicorn, what I experience is three feet from the front door (because I'm standing outside the front door). The unicorn, of course, is not; there is no actual unicorn - I'm only imagining it. But the image - the mental image - of the unicorn is three feet from the door. What's so wrong with that?

I've said they do not seem that way. But at this point, we might say: so what? They just don't seem that way. That doesn't mean they aren't that way. And the alternatives seem much worse, if you think we're just physical things. The alternatives are that we have our own private space, or we can experience other actualities, or...doesn't that all seem much worse?

I say all this because if we say that we experience mental images, and we allow then that there are mental images, and we think everything that exists is physical, and so is spatially related to everything else, then mental images are somewhere. So where is this somewhere? And if we look there, what will we find? Whatever we find there - how is that related to these images?

WAIT WAIT WAIT - a panicked pedestrian is waving their arms in front of the b batmobile. This isn't how you fight crime!

What we imagine doesn't exist anywhere in space. And - neither do 'mental images'. What am I thinking?