Mental Models XXXII

"The imagination […] that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors." (Samuel T Coleridge, "The Statesman's Manual", 1816)

"It seems to be like taking the pieces of a dissected map out of its box. We first look at one part, and then at another, then join and dove-tail them; and when the successive acts of attention have been completed, there is a retrogressive effort of mind to behold it as a whole. The poet should paint to the imagination, not to the fancy; and I know no happier case to exemplify the distinction between these two faculties." (Samuel T Coleridge," Biographia Literaria", 1817) 

"The mechanism of thought consists in combinations, separations, and recombinations of representative images or symbols […] the object of thought is adaptation to environment." (Paul Carus, “Le probeme de la conscience du moi", 1893)

"It is now known that as the physical basis of any word, be it noun or verb, there is a series of mental images acquired through different senses, located in different regions of the gray cortex of the brain, and joined together in a unit by a series of association-tracts which pass in the white matter under the cortex. The word ‘concept’ long used by psychologists to denote congeries of mental images making up an idea conveyed by a single word may be adopted by the pathologist to indicate this collection of mental images. To be complete, such a concept must have all its parts intact and the connections between those parts also intact."  (Anon, "Aphasia", Psychological Review Vol. I (1), 1894)

"[…] the image is an act which envisions an absent or non-existent object as a body, by means of a physical or mental content which is present only as an 'analogical representative' of the object envisioned." (Jean-Paul Sartre, "The Psychology of Imagination", 1940)

"The crucial problem is that of describing what is ‘seen in the mind’s eye’ and what is ‘heard in one’s head’. What are spoken of as ‘visual images’, ‘mental pictures’ […] are commonly taken to be entities which are genuinely found existing and found existing elsewhere than in the external world. So minds are nominated for their theaters." (Gilbert Ryle, "The Concept of Mind" , 1949)

"We may not speak of the image as a thing, like a canvas only in our heads. But we may say that in thinking with images we are thinking analogically, or by means of representations, just as we are when we look at somebody’s portrait rather than at himself. […] The image is our attempt to reach the non-existent or absent object in our thoughts as we concentrate on this or that aspect of it, its visible appearance, its sound, its smell. […] The images themselves are not separate from our interpretations of the world; they are our way of thinking of objects in the world." (Mary Warnock, "Imagination", 1978) 

"Hard though the scientists of mental imagery try, they cannot get around the fact that the representations they deal with are like pictures. […] The methods have to assume, and the experiments continually corroborate, that having imagery is somehow like perceptual seeing, and that it is somehow like seeing pictures. […] The minimal reason for this assumption is that people do naturally talk of seeing pictures before their mind’s eye." (Eva T H Brann,"The World of Imagination", 1991)

"The most persuasive positive argument for mental images as objects is [that] whenever one thinks one is seeing something there must be something one is seeing. It might be an object directly, or it might be a mental picture. [This] point is so plausible that it is deniable only at the peril of becoming arbitrary. One should concede that the question whether mental images are entities of some sort is not resolvable by logical or linguistic analysis, and believe what makes sense of experience." (Eva T H Brann,"The World of Imagination" , 1991)