The case for mental imagery / Stephen M. Kosslyn, William L. Thompson, and Giorgio Ganis.
"When we try to remember whether we left a window open or closed, do we actually see the window in our mind? If we do, does this mental image play a role in how we think? For almost a century, scientists have debated whether mental images play a functional role in cognition. In The Case forMent...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Oxford University Press,
[2006]
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| Series: | Oxford psychology series ;
no. 39. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Contributor biographical information |
| Summary: | "When we try to remember whether we left a window open or closed, do we actually see the window in our mind? If we do, does this mental image play a role in how we think? For almost a century, scientists have debated whether mental images play a functional role in cognition. In The Case forMental Imagery, Stephen Kosslyn, William Thompson, and Giorgio Ganis present a complete and unified argument that mental images do depict information, and that these depictions do play a functional role in human cognition. They outline a specific theory of how depictive representations are used ininformation processing, and show how these representations arise from neural processes. To support this theory, they seamlessly weave together conceptual analyses and the many varied empirical findings from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. In doing so, they present the conceptual grounds forpositing this type of internal representation and summarize and refute arguments to the contrary. Their argument also serves as a historical review of the imagery debate from its earliest inception to its most recent phases, and provides ample evidence that significant progress has been made in ourunderstanding of mental imagery. In illustrating how scientists think about one of the most difficult problems in psychology and neuroscience, this book goes beyond the debate to explore the nature of cognition and to draw out implications for the study of consciousness. Student and professionalresearchers in vision science, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience will find The Case for Mental Imagery to be an invaluable resource for understanding not only the imagery debate, but also and more broadly, the nature of thought, and how theory and research shape the evolution ofscientific debates."--Publisher description. |
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| Physical Description: | vi, 248 pages : illustrations (some colour) ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-235) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0195179080 9780195179088 |