"In perception, a knowledge forms itself slowly; in the [mental] image the knowledge is immediate. We see now that the image is a synthetic act which unites a concrete, nonimagined, knowledge to elements which are more actually representative. The image teaches nothing: it is organized exactly like the objects which do produce knowledge, but it is complete at the very moment of its appearance. […] Thus, the object presents itself in the image as having to be apprehended in a multiplicity of synthetic acts. Due to this fact, and because its content retains a sensible opacity, like a phantom, because it does not involve either essences or generating laws but only an irrational quality, it gives the impression of being an object of observation: from this point of view the image appears to be more like a perception than a concept." (Jean-Paul Sartre,"The Psychology of Imagination", 1940)
"It is by abstraction that one can separate movements, knowledge, and affectivity. And the analysis is, here, so far from being a real dismemberment that it is given only as probable. One can never effectively reduce an [mental] image to its elements, for the reason that an image, like all other psychic syntheses, is something more and different from the sum of its elements. […] We will always go from image to image. Comprehension is a movement which is never-ending, it is the reaction of the mind to an image by another image, to this one by another image and so on, in principle to infinity." (Jean-Paul Sartre,"The Imaginary: A phenomenological psychology of the imagination", 1940)
"[…] 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 image serves neither as illustration nor as support for thought. It is in no way different from thought […] What we ordinarily designate as thinking is a consciousness which affirms this or that of its objects but without realizing the qualities on [sic] the object. The image, on the contrary, is a consciousness that aims to produce its object: it is therefore constituted by a certain way of judgment and feeling of which, we do not become conscious as such but which we apprehend on the intentional object as this or that of its qualities. In a word: the function of the image is symbolic." (Jean-Paul Sartre, "The Psychology of Imagination", 1940)
"Thus, the object presents itself in the image as having to be apprehended in a multiplicity of synthetic acts. Due to this fact, and because its content retains a sensible opacity, like a phantom, because it does not involve either essences or generating laws but only an irrational quality, it gives the impression of being an object of observation: from this point of view the image appears to be more like a perception than a concept." (Jean-Paul Sartre, "The Psychology of Imagination", 1940)
"[…] inner images are rather psychic manifestations of the archetypes which, however, would also have to put forth, create, condition anything lawlike in the behavior of the corporeal world. The laws of this world would then be the physical manifestations of the archetypes. […] Each law of nature should then have an inner correspondence and vice versa, even though this is not always directly visible today." (Wolfgang Pauli, [letter to Markus Fierz] 1948)
"What now is the answer to the question as to the bridge between the perception of the senses and the concepts, which is now reduced to the question as to the bridge between the outer perceptions and those inner image-like representations. It seems to me one has to postulate a cosmic order of nature - outside of our arbitrariness- to which the outer material objects are subjected as are the inner images […] The organizing and regulating has to be posited beyond the differentiation of physical and psychical […] I am all for it to call this ‘organizing and regulating’ ‘archetypes’. It would then be inadmissible to define these as psychic contents. Rather, the above-mentioned inner pictures" (dominants of the collective unconscious, see Jung) are the psychic manifestations of the archetypes, but which would have to produce and condition all nature laws belonging to the world of matter. The nature laws of matter would then be the physical manifestation of the archetypes." (Wolfgang Pauli, [Letter to Markus Fierz], 1948)
"When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of 'symbolic images'. The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively [...] But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts." (Wolfgang Pauli, [Letter to Markus Fierz] 1948)
"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)
"The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'voluntarily' reproduced and combined." (Albert Einstein [in a letter to Jaque Hadamard, "The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field", 1949])
"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’, ‘auditory images’ and, in one use, ‘ideas’ 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 theatres." (Gilbert Ryle, "The Concept of Mind", 1949)
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