Why the Imagery Debate Won't Go Away

Abstract

In this chapter, we summarize the theoretical and empirical history of the imagery debate. We argue that the debate about the nature of mental imagery has lasted so long in part because it taps into much more general issues, which bear on the nature of theories of cognitive functions. The imagery debate has focused on whether depictive representations are used in cognition, but the depictive and antidepictive camps have often failed to engage each other, in part because they have asked questions at different levels of analysis. Depictive theories have focused on the nature of internal representation and processing, which has resulted in their embracing computational and neuroscientific evidence to explain data from experiments and to produce empirical predictions. In contrast, antidepictive theories have tended to focus on competence, developing abstract explanatory principles couched in the language of formal logic, with little attention to processing per se. Rather than being in direct conflict, the two sorts of theories often can complement each other.