Imagery

Most philosophers prior to the twentieth century thought of mental images as inner pictures, along lines suggested by introspection. But there are obvious differences between mental images and pictures. The former have no objective size or shape, for example. These differences have led some philosophers to argue that mental images are more like linguistic descriptions. The descriptional view of images is also taken by some cognitive psychologists. Other psychologists maintain that the pictorial conception of images provides the best explanation for the results of a number of intriguing experiments on imagery.