Premium
Visual Imagery as the Simulation of Vision
Author(s) -
CURRIE GREGORY
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0017.1995.tb00004.x
Subject(s) - mental image , representation (politics) , mental representation , computer science , cognitive psychology , cognitive science , psychology , line (geometry) , order (exchange) , cognition , geometry , mathematics , neuroscience , politics , political science , law , finance , economics
Simulation Theory says we need not rely exclusively on prepositional knowledge of other minds in order to explain the actions of others. Seeking to know what you will do, I imagine myself in your situation, and see what decision I come up with. I argue that this conception of simulation naturally generalizes: various bits of our mental machine can be run‘off‐line’, fulfilling functions other than those they were made for. In particular, I suggest that visual imagery results when the visual system is run off‐line. I briefly review the empirical evidence and consider the philosophical implications, particularly concerning the mode of mental representation in imagery.