Experiencing and imagining the same things

I am going to discuss two things here. First, a follow-up from my last entry, where I stopped the madness by suggesting that it is misled to think of imagining as anything like perceiving, e.g., as imagining seeing a goat in a room as anything like seeing a goat in a room.


This is an issue I suspect I'll be chasing all over the place in my thinking  here, so I'll only write a little about it in this post; I also want to write about the practice of imagining.

What I see, I tell you; what I tell you, you imagine; but do you really make images?

Say I'm looking at a mountain against a darkening sky, hearing the screech of a sparrow-hawk in the thunder of rain and feeling a cold drop run off my heavy soaking hair. I think that what I perceive in such situations - what I see, hear, feel, etc - is to some degree complex: the mountain's shape against the sky, the screech and thunder, the cold tingle with the weight on my forehead: all of these are examples of multiple things (or those things' properties, but nevermind that distinction now) and the relations between them. I can see, hear and feel: the downpour muting the bird's screech; the mountain looming beyond the place where the sounds originate; the slow water on my neck shivering down it (even after I shut the door and go inside).

It seems correct to say that these sort of things are empirical data - at least, they are empirical data for me. They are what I report to others as being  what I am visually, aurally or haptically experiencing of the world; this is just what I'm doing now, with you as my audience. They are most of the first things I talk about when I talk about what the world is actually like.

But what about you, after you have read the description? Is what you experience, on reading this, empirical data to you? By describing these examples to you, I have not shown them to you. I have not literally brought you to a place where you can see the mountain; I have not dragged you into a rainstorm; I am not washing your hair with cold water. But if you are any good at imagining things, then you can probably imagine what it's like to see that mountain, hear that bird, and so on, and do so with whatever I describe as accompanying it.

So how can we imagine it? There seem to be two parts to imagining,  two parts common to experience in general. These are the material and the form of our imagining. There are the elements of what we experience when we imagine and then there are the various ways in which they  they are arranged. It seems as if we experience both when we imagine something but one seems less constructed, less fabricated, than the other (I'll return to that later).

Equally important is that what these are are not what they are imagined to be. When using my imagination, I experience whatever it is I experience; this may be something only 'in my head' or 'in my mind', so to speak. But that is not what I am imagining. What I imagine need not be in my head. It  need not exist.

The distinction I am making here comes from the early twentieth century philosopher, G.E. Moore. Moore argues out that when we imagine something unreal, for example, a greek monster such as the gryphon, we may have an image of it. But, whatever the status of image (or picture), the gryphon does not exist. So what we experience, the image, is not what we imagine, the monster. Obvious, right? Ok then.

The question I am curious about can be put like this: never mind the  gryphon; the gryphon is nothing; if it seems to exist, it is because I am superstitious, profoundly misled - an ancient Greek, perhaps (come from the past to the future to ask: are there any bagels left). But the image does exist. So what is the image made of?

Put in terms of material and form, we might say: what is the material of the imagination? What has its form, what are the relations between this material?

Whatever the image is made of, it needs to be able to have the form of whatever we experience when we imagine the gryphon's form. That is, if we can imagine the gryphon some way or other - as standing over there, looking in that direction, having that shape, colour, texture, then  if we  can do this by experiencing some kind of image, the image needs to be over there, have a shape, colour, texture - just as paintings, music and spider-games have the relevant profiles, sounds and soft, quick touches of what they represent. If we can imagine seeing the gryphon, then we must see an image that is gryphon-shaped.

At least, this is one way of understanding it.

We imagine seeing; we don't see images
But should we call whatever we are experiencing an 'image' when we're imagining? This means the following: when I imagine a furry golden, eagle-headed gryphon,  I'm seeing something golden, something eagle-headed, feeling something furry. But, as discussed in earlier entries, we can then ask: where are these things? Where and what is it that's golden, eagle-headed, furry? In my head? There's something furry in my head? What? My neurons are furry? What?

The nineteenth century metaphysician F.H. Bradley, not the greatest fan of the more excessive claims of his discipline, writes that 'when I smell a smell, I am not aware of the stinking state of my own nervous system.' (Quoted from philosopher Edmond Wright's paper). I don't smell my brain, right?

Earlier I wrote that the psychologist Kosslyn's idea is 'that people have a mental image or mental picture in their mind when they imagine something'. But this isn't exactly right. In his Stanford entry on mental representation, Pitt writes

Kosslyn (1980) claims that the results suggest that the tasks were accomplished via the examination and manipulation of mental representations that themselves have spatial properties — i.e., pictorial representations, or images.

The idea that pictorial representations are literally pictures in the head is not taken seriously by proponents of the pictorial view of imagery (see, e.g., Kosslyn and Pomerantz 1977). The claim is, rather, that mental images represent in a way that is relevantly like the way pictures represent.

Others write about imagining, mental imaging, as being quasi-perceptual or quasi-pictorial (I cannot cite anyone at hand - but the most recent example of this is a number of discussions around papers at a conference I attended last month on 'intentionality' - particularly Eduard Marbach). We don't really see/hear/feel images - we have quasi-perceptions - quasi-seeing, quasi-hearing, quasi-touching, and so on.

What does 'quasi' mean? It could mean 'not really' or 'only sort of'  - that''s how I take its use in phiosophical discussions. In that way, it might also be interchangeable with 'pseudo-x', where it might seem, or we might have reason to think, but it is not 'x', i.e., quasi-seeing and pseudo-seeing are not seeing.

But, as dictionary.com puts it, 'quasi' means 'a combining form meaning “resembling,” “having some, but not all of the features of,” used in the formation of compound words.



So what does that mean here? What does all 'having some, but not all the features of' mean here?

I don't know what it means here.

Whatever it means, this is what we must say: to solve the puzzle about imagining, we need to reject any actual experience of images in imagining; we need to deny furry, golden, eagle-headed assemblies of neurons, or the same sorts of things which are merely in our mind. This is what we have to do if we want to get away from the wierdness I've been heading toward.

(How something 'non-golden' can have some, but not all the features of' something 'golden' in a way that it gets us 'golden-like' stuff, I don't know. If you show me the side of a dog, and then get me to imagine the side of a dog, and you say 'in the second experience, you're experiencing something like the side of a dog but in no way spatially, or shaped like, or anything in that way that people might think it's wierd' - well, okay. But - how is it like it then? Why call it 'quasi-' anything. Can you say a little more?). 

If you could do all this, you could then probably get away from having images  in some kind of space, just because you're imagining things in space. The form of what we experience needn't be in any kind of space. For example, it needn't be a spatial shape; when I imagine seeing the a side of a gryphon, I don't need to be seeing a gryphon-sided shape somewhere in space. It can just....be....eliminated by whatever it is you're using to eliminate it. Whatever that is - whatever theory you got going there for yourself. Whatever that is.

Let's change the subject now.

Books without Pictures: Practicing Imagining

Let's go back to me telling you about something I experienced, something I saw, heard, etc.

When I tell you about something I experience, and you imagine it, and seem to have some kind of complex experience of it, you're doing something nearly everyone can do (I think  Chalmers states somewhere (perhaps in Blackmore's Conversations on Consciousness) that those who deny this capacity, e.g., theorists like Pylyshyn or Dennett, might have a sort of 'image blindness'. Whether these latter theorists do deny, I don't know). I want to talk a bit about what we do here.

Imagining is something, I think, we can do innately; we don't  get given stuff and taught to use it, at some age, e.g., in school;  it's not like riding a bike, driving a car, or being interesting to cool people. It's in us and it seems to happen spontaneously. Once we understand the meaning of certain words.  then, we can imagine what people tell us. But I also think there is a skill to imagining, and this skill is something we must develop. It has to be practiced.

You would get practised at imagining what I'm describing if you read books without pictures in my language. Reading books without pictures to any degree makes you have to imagine what you're being told. There are no visual aids, no sound effects. There are just words; what you imagine depends on your ability to picture what I describe.

I don't know if you get the same practice if you've never read 'books without pictures', e.g., if everything fictional that you've ever come across is what turns up in film, television, radio or computer games, and so on – on things where the sound, sight, or touch, etc., is provided for you. In that case, although what you experience is unreal, and you know it, you don't have to make it yourself. You don't have to try and imagine it.

So, my quite stuffy-sounding point is that, if there is any practice required to imagining, and you want to be good at it, you should read books without pictures. You would then 'stretch the imagination' -l ike you stretch a muscle. And, if the mind is the brain, this may not be in any way a metaphor; it may be literally true. The imagination is a muscle – a cerebral muscle, if you like (but never mind that now).

Books without pictures are just the sort that Alice in 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' found very dull:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'

[Alice's adventures in wonderland, Gutenberg press – without pictures]

(Well, Alice would have been happy if there were at least conversations in the books. So maybe I'm being a little unfair on her).

Maybe the only reason to read books without pictures is to practice your imagination. If you have enough of it, I suppose there's no need for them. If you have too much of a fantastic imagination, I suppose you'd want to stop reading books without pictures.

Anyhow, when you imagine something, it also has a certain degree of complexity. It is this imagined thing that others' descriptions stir up in you. But how complex is this thing you're imagining? Is it is as complex as an actual experience of what you imagine?

It might seem doubtful. Imagining what it is like to jump out of a plane, no matter how well you can imagine it, is nothing like actually jumping out of a plane. At least for most people.

(But then some people suffer terrible hallucinations, and we nearly all have dreams which seem entirely real when we have them, and even for several moments after we wake. These are not of things I remember; what I seem to be seeing or hearing, etc., never happened, and they are not happening now (we suppose). Aren't they cases of something as vivid as actual experience but purely imaginary?)

Those extreme cases aside, imagination and memory are similar. When I try to picture what something was like that I previously saw, heard, etc., the same problem occurs; I can say what I experienced but whether or not what the picture I have in mind is more complex or vivid than my description is not so clear. In reports about what I experienced earlier, there may be some guessing involved. I might just assume that my experience was like that.

What am I saying here? It may seem to you now that you had a rich and detailed experience of something earlier today. However, this does not mean you did have such an experience. It is only that you remember it that way (e.g., seeing Dennett's discussion about remembering a woman with glasses in his Consciousness Explained).

Similarly, it may seem as if my description of the following: a vast mountain range marching off into the cold pink light of an Icelandic plain comes from my having the following experience: seeing, while shivering in the cold, a vast mountain range marching off into the cold pink light, etc. But this does not mean that I have seen anything like the image (if I can call it that)  that you have from my description – or anything even remotely close. It is just my description caused you to imagine it that way.

Offensive Images

If the description of an experience and what is imagined from that description can be different, there are consequences for how we should treat description. Some people take offence at what some things others do, e.g., their lifestyle, their art, their writings. They may be right to do so, they may be wrong to do so; but there is an extra issue here when it comes to writing or any form of descriptive art. If you are offended by what someone describes to you, your offence may depend on the way you imagine it. And this need not relate to what was actually experienced by the describer. So, someone might argue this: If you are offended by what someone is writing or saying, that is a problem with you, not with them.

I don't think the author is always completely innocent here. If they do write something they don't find offensive at all, but which is offensive to you, they may do it: 

i) Without being aware that you would imagine it that way and be offended;

ii) Knowing you'd imagine it that way and be offended, but they don't care;

iii) Knowing you'd imagine it that way and be offended, but think you shouldn't be offended; or

iv) Knowing you'd imagine it that way and be offended and – yes,, you should be offended - but it's too important for this worry to stop them.

v) Knowing you'd imagine it that way and be offended and – yes,, you should be offended - and they want you to be offended.

So: if they should be aware that you'd be offended, or should care, or are wrong that you shouldn't be offended, or what they're doing isn't important enough to overcome all that – well, then I think you can shout at them.

But just make sure, beforehand, that it isn't your own imagination that's causing the offence.

Horror Films

I feel that way about horror fiction all the time. I really dislike it. I have been to very few horror films in the cinema. When I've gotten in there, I've realised that – hell, why did I decide to go to this? I don't want to spend two hours being screamed at by reels of dying non-virgins. As the lights have gone down, I've sat there thinking bitterly, toward whoever I'm with: you bastard.

But I can only remember two horror films I've ever actually been to in the cinema: A Nightmare on Elm Street 6 and Jeepers Creepers. Both were a lot of fun, and not at all terrifying. 

And the same with those I've seen on DVD or TV: Evil Dead 2, The Shining, and so on.

The horror films I did not enjoy and always think of as examples of 'why would any want to watch that' are films which I've never seen in full, but only seen bits and glimpses of them – in my friends' houses, trailers before other films (bloody Grudge 2 trailer), etc.

These partially hidden films have caused me more offence than the others; I have hated them. The most immediate example I can think of is this: Tales from the Crypt. I've never seen this in full, but the single scene I've seen makes me think there's something wrong with some people. Not something wrong with me, mind – other people.

When I was a kid, I had a friend called Tim. Tim loved horror films. He watched them all the time (which seems to have worked for him; he went on later to become a very successful Goth in Dublin). I wouldn't watch them because, if I remember correctly, my public position was that they were cheap, boring and stupid. I think many of those Tim watched were probably close to that; he watched any he could lay hands on, and he was quite clear that there were many duds. But as I wouldn't watch them with him, and he didn't seem to care, the situation was fine; we remained friends (we just didn't have much in common).

When we met in school, or in a café, Tim would bring up any of the films that particularly affected him. As a result, we would talk about the ones which would bother him enough to make him want to talk about them. He'd describe some scene and I'd ask him to tell me what happens next. And he would tell me. Most of the time what he told me would freak me out. I wouldn't show it though. After all, it wasn't like I was watching it – so it shouldn't frighten me.

So I got a verbal description of most of the horror genre in the '80s; at least, all of those allowed in Ireland. Here are the films I can remember that we discussed: Re-animator, From Beyond, Shocker, all the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' series, Poltergeist, the House series (that's the one with the skull with wings). From the description of these films, I decided that horror films were terrifying, and people who could watch them were either very brave or lacking imagination. (Otherwise, how could they stand it, watching these things?)

I've seen some of these films since. Those I've seen weren't frightening – and probably, if I'd seen them then, I'd have gotten used to seeing them.

This is probably true of Tales from the Crypt as well. Tim and I never discussed that – I think because it was just another horror; not a dud, maybe, but it didn't stand out. But what happened with that film is this: I called into Tim one summer afternoon. He was watching horror films in the sitting room with the curtains closed (it was really bright outside). Somehow or other he left the film on while he went somewhere else (I think his stepmother was calling him). As I waited, I stood and looked at the film. I didn't know what it was; it looked like one of the bad romantic comedies also loved by Tim. And what I saw was this:

A teenage boy and girl are trapped on a wooden pallet in the middle of a lake. They are terrified, as some of their friends who were in the water have been eaten by some kind of black oil slick. It seems to have disintegrated them when it does it.

 The story then switches to something like a scene  from the cheap teen romances also popular then (all of which seemed to be named after Beatles songs). It is night. The girl is asleep, turned over on her face on the pallet. The boy is awake and tries to make a move on her. She wakes up and he draws back, embarrassed; but she turns toward him, terrified and whimpering. And her face is half-eaten away. The oil-slick is under the pallet and has gotten at her through the pallet's wooden boards.

Well.

Hell.

For days, I was sick to my stomach. The images of that scene flashed through my head. And there was also something else, what I can only call a prompt or a compulsion to imagine further into what was so horrifying; something in me wanted to take the brief material of that scene and imagine more of what was so awful about it. This showed a marked difference in seeing, hearing etc. such things, on the one hand, and reading about them on the other.

With a single flash of an image, this film sent something cold to sink down through me. However, this does not mean it helped develop my imagination. Why it frightens or horrifies me is because what I'm seeing, hearing, etc., is frightening or horrific. I don't need to imagine the frightening thing; I don't have to 'picture' it and I don't have to use elements of my previous experience. The experience is happening now. The picture is there on the screen.

However, there is also the further urge to imagine further. The possibilities of what doing this might turn up was far more worrying for me than the original scene. And its something related to this which is why I hated these films. I have a capacity, maybe even a compulsion, to imagine things, and I am inspired by what I encounter in my day to day life. I think this came from reading too many books, and not watching enough films. (This might be true of a lot of people). I enjoy it a lot of the time. But these bits of horror films make imagining unpleasant, and I resent the films for it.

Even though it might have nothing to do with the film itself. The film-makers probably didn't make this film thinking 'some over-imaginative kid is going to see just a single scene of this and be absolutely terrified and disturbed' - and end up watching a lot of romantic comedies in the cinema instead (Which are terrible in their own way).

Anyway, ech...horror fiction.  Why watch it (why not?).

Images, imagining and remembering

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.