Mental imagery doesnstrongtstrong work like that, p. 1 - New York.pdfVIP

Mental imagery doesnt work like that, p. 1 1. NAME OF AUTHOR OF TARGET ARTICLE: ZENON PYLYSHYN 2. WORD COUNTS: ABSTRACT: 62; MAIN TEXT: 3,397; REFERENCES: 557; TOTAL: 4017 3. TITLE: MENTAL IMAGERY DOESNT WORK LIKE THAT 4. AUTHORS: STEPHEN M. KOSSLYN, WILLIAM L. THOMPSON, GIORGIO GANIS 5. INSTITUTIONAL ADDRESSES (FOR ALL): DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, WILLIAM JAMES HALL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 33 KIRKLAND STREET, CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 6. EMAIL CONTACT: smk@ 7. HOME PAGE URL: /~kwn/ 8. ABSTRACT: This commentary focuses on four major points: 1) Tacit knowledge is not a complete explanation for imagery phenomena, if it is an explanation at all. 2) Similarities and dissimilarities between imagery and perception are entirely consistent with the depictive view. 3) Knowledge about the brain is crucial for settling the debate. 4) It is not clear what sort of theory Pylyshyn advocates 9. MAIN TEXT AND REFERENCES FOLLOW Mental Imagery Doesnt Work Like That Mental imagery doesnt work like that, p. 2 Pylyshyn has done a service by assembling in one place his arguments against depictive theories of imagery. Although his basic points are essentially the same as those he presented in Pylyshyn (1981), our responses have been augmented by recent developments in cognitive neuroscience. In this brief reply, we focus only on what we take to be the most central points of Pylyshyns arguments. But first, lets try to be clear on what we take to be the central issue: Does visual mental imagery rely (in part) on a distinct type of representation, namely one that depicts rather than describes? By depict we mean that each portion of the representation is a representation of a portion of the object such that the distances among portions of the representation correspond to the distances among the corresponding portions of the ob