Visualizing Is Imagining Seeing: A Reply to White Natika Newton Analysis, Vol. 49, No. 2. (Mar., 1989), pp. 77-81. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-2638%28198903%2949%3A2%3C77%3AVIISAR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U Analysis is currently published by The Analysis Committee.
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INSIGHT AND METAPHOR
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[I] Simon Blackburn, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). [2] Donald Davidson, 'What Metaphors Mean', in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford L'niversity Press, 1984).
VISUALIZING IS IMAGINING SEEING: A REPLY TO WHITE
A
LAN R. WHITE' argues that, contrary to the assumptions of Ryle, Peacocke and Vendler, to visualize a thing is not the same thing as 'to imagine seeing it, or oneself seeing it, or that one sees it'. His central idea seems to be that visualizing a thing has only that thing as its object, whereas imagining seeing, etc., explicitly has one's self and one's act of seeing, as well as what is seen, as its object. One can 'take account of' a thing either simpliciter or as seen by oneselj 'visualize' is properly used only in the former case, 'imagine seeing', etc., only in the latter. Thus, for example, I can imagine (myself) suddenly, unexpectedly, delightfully o r disappointingly, faintly, in a daze, seeing a tree, but not visualize o r imagine a tree thus. (p. 222)
White is correct, I believe, that on two important senses of 'imagine' visualizing is not imagining seeing. But there is a third, equally important sense; I shall argue that on this sense, equating visualizing and imagining seeing is justified, because it is by generating the mental state referred to by this sense of 'imagine' that we go about visualizing. While it might be worthwhile to find substitutes for two of the three uses of the term,2 which are closely enough related to have caused much philosophical confusion, it is obviously of first importance to clarify the distinctions themselves. The first meaning of 'imagine' we can distinguish is imagining as visualizing (henceforth: 'imagine,.'). As White points out in rejecting this equation, visualizing can hardly be identified with imagining seeing if imagining is visualizing: otherwise there would be an
'
Alan R. White, 'Visualizing and Imagining Seeing', Analysir 47.4 (October 1987), pp. 22 1-4. All page references are to this article. Some writers use 'imaging' instead of 'imagining' when referring to visualizing.
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ANALYSIS
infinite regress of imaginings, and of' impossible ones, moreover, since seeing is not something that can be visualized." The second meaning of 'imagine' is, roughly, 'suppose' or 'consider the possibility of': e.g. 'Imagine that a proof is found for the Goldbach conjecture', or 'Can you imagine being [i.e. that you are] President of the United States?' (henceforth 'imagine,'). 'Imagine,' commonly takes that-clauses: one imagines, that a state of affairs is the case; 'imagine,', however, takes nominal expressions: one imagines, the objects themselves. If you try to use 'imagine,' in the latter way, the meaning tends to collapse into imagine,: 'Imagine, [that] an atom [is] emitting a photon' gets by; 'Imagine, a photon' does not, since we can't visualize such entities. Many of White's examples of the distinction between 'imagine seeing' and 'visualize' seem to be cases where the 'imagine' in 'imagine seeing' is 'imagine,' though White does not explicitly characterize this sense. E.g. he says 'One can. . . imagine oneself seeing people dying of hunger and doing nothing about it without visualizing either oneself or them,' (p. 222). I can easily imagine seeing this without visualizing, if I am simply supposing that I could do it. But White is wrong, I believe, in holding that visualizing is never to be analysed as imagining seeing, as when he states Certainly, to visualize something is, as the word suggests, t o take account in some way of its visual features; of the way it looks, did look, would o r could look u n d e r certain conditions. It may even be to imagine what I would see if I were to look o r remember what I did see when I did look. But this is not t o imagine seeing, myself seeing or, much less, that 1 see it. Imaginary sights a n d sounds a r e sights a n d sounds which I imagine to exist, not necessarily sights and sounds which I imagine seeing o r hearing o r that 1 see o r hear. (13. 222)
This is a confusing passage in part because White appears to use 'imagine' in the sense of 'visualize' - 'to imagine what I would see if I were to look' - a sense he has rejected. But the main difficulty is that while White asserts that visualizing is 'taking account in some way' of the visual features of an object, he seems to rule out the most plausible way that this can be accomplished. Visualizing is like seeing, on his view, but it is not accomplished by imagining seeing. I accept this for imagining, and imagining,, but there is a IUJhite notes that there are no terms corresponding to 'visualize' fbr other sensory modalities: we can imagine smelling or hearing things but there is no 'olfactorize' or 'auralize'. White apparently takes this fact as further evidence that bisualizing doesn't imply imagining seeing. H e hils to elaborate on this negative evidence, but it ought to give him pause. It could just as well count against his position: perhaps the reason we can d o without 'auralize' is that 'imagine hearing' can mean the same thing. For a discussion of mental imagery in nonvisual modalities see my 'Experience and Imagery', .Southrn Joztmal of Philoqbhy (l982), pp. 47-5-87.
VISL'A1,IZING IS IhlAGINING SEEING
79
third sense of 'imagine': imagining as ret ten ding.^ When one imagines in this sense, one constructs an experience for oneself, most probably by reactivating memory traces of selected past experiences. When we visualize a thing, we have an experience like the kind we have if we really see it. When we visualize intentionally, we must do something to bring this experience about. What we do, I propose, is pretend to see it: we imaginep seeing it.j. Imagining,, seeing does not require that you "put yourself in the picture" you visualize: you don't imagine seeing yourseq You construct or conjure up the experience of seeing a thing - what it is like to see it. Often that experience is one in which the object seen plays the dominant role; your own part in the event (your bodily position in relation to the object, your emotional attitude toward it, the sensations of focusing your eyes, etc.) fade into the background. Sometimes your own seeing plays a more prominent role, for example when you visualize a sculpture as it would look if you walked slowly around it, or a feared and hated enemy suddenly appearing before you. And some things can't be visualized at all because we can't imagine seeing them: try to visualize the core of an uncut apple. The inability to visualize the relative positions of organs in an intact human body, in spite of a clear verbal knowledge of these positions, has been a problem in medical schools; its solution has involved developing models to provide visual experiences which can be used for visualizing. 'Imagine ' is as distinct and fully established as 'imagine,' or 'imagine,'. kor example, a young woman who sits with a vacant expression in her eyes and a slight smile on her lips might be imagining herself on a moonlit beach with her boyfriend, and she would be neither just visualizing the scene (because her imaginary experience is more than just a visual one) nor just supposing the state of affairs to exist. She is pretending to herself that she is with her boyfriend. ('Imagine,,', like 'imagine,', takes that-clauses. But 'imagine, seeing', like 'imagine,', takes nominal expressions: when pretending that she is with her boyfriend she may pretend to see her boyfriend.) It is imagining,,, rather than imagining,, seeing that White seems to have in mind when he says that to ask someone to imagine seeing something dreadful, shocking, beautiful o r awe inspiring, may b e to ask him to imagine having a kind of experie n c e . . . (p. 223)
since ordinarily when we speak of imagining having an experience we imply a state of seeming (or pretending) to have the experience: there are many experiences I do not like to imagine, having, 'See Gilbert Kyle, The Concept of,Clind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), Chapter 8. "Imagine,,' is not exactly synonymous with 'pretend'; as the latter is commonly used it refers to overt action. Imagining,, may be best understood as pretending lo onself(or perhaps as making believe).
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ANALYSIS
although I can consider their logical possibility without distress. White's reference to 'imagine,,' is unmistakeable in the following: There is a difference, overlooked by Ryle, between a child who looking at her doll imagines,,, that she sees a smile on its face and a child who thinking about her doll in absentia imagines, visualizes or pictures her smiling. (p. 223)
But while he clearly refers to imagining in these examples, elsewhere his meaning seems ambiguous. b h e n he says 'One can imagine seeing people dying of hunger and doing nothing about it', does he hold that one is imagining seeing something dreadful, and hence is imagining having a kind of experience? Understood this way, 'imagine' in 'imagine seeing' here sounds like 'imagine,,'. But in that case, it is hard to see how one could imagne having the experience without visualizing the central element of the experience, the dying people, since seeing the people is part of the experience. On the other hand, White may, as I proposed earlier, intend to refer to imagining,. Then, of course, one could suppose that one could see dying people and do nothing, and also suppose that one would then have a certain kind of experience, without visualizing the dying people and without having, in any imaginary or pretend way, the experience. To be consistent, therefore, White must be using 'imagine seeing' in two very distinct senses in the passages under discussion. Since neither sense can involve 'imagine,', because seeing cannot be visualized, he is committed to the third sense which I am calling 'imaginep'. But in that case, his claim that visualizing is never imagining seeing is at best weakened, since his most plausible arguments involve only 'imagine,' and 'imagine,', and at worst refuted, since his attempt to show that visualizing is in n o sense imagining seeing works only if 'imagine,,' is illegitimate. I try to show this in what follows. White attempts to drive a wedge between 'imagine,, seeing' and 'visualize' There may be many things 1 cannot imagine (myself) seeing and not reporting on or being overjoyed or disgusted at, but I can easily visuali~e them without imagining myself reporting, enjoying or beirig disgusted. (p.
223)
But if I am right about imagining then this statement is not obviously true. If visualizing somet%ing is imagining,, seeing it, then if there is something that 'I cannot imagine (myself) seeing and n o t . . . being disgusted at', then I can not visualize it without imagining(,,, myself being disgusted. If 'visualize' is 'imagine, seeing', the only case in which the above (dependent) conditions! could be false is the one in which the first 'imagine' is 'imagine,'. But this would mean that I cannot consider the possibility of seeing the thing and not being disgusted - i.e. that I rule it out in advance as impossible. In that case, I could not consistently imagine, seeing the thing - that is, pretend to see it or construct
81 an imaginary experience of seeing it - without disgust being part of that experience, since that is what I avowedly believe the experience of seeing it must be like. The plausibility of White's claim depends upon the illegitimacy of 'imagine,' as I have defined it. But in that case the argument begs the question, as he has no other argument to cast doubt on its legitimacy, and I have supported it independently. So White has not shown that visualizing is never imagining seeing. White's claim (p. 223) that imagining a tree and imagining seeing a tree are distinct holds if imagining, is what is in question in either or both cases (this is the answer to Berkeley's argument for idealism). But the claim does not hold if 'imagining a tree' is imagining, as White surely intends it to be, and 'imagining seeing a tree' is understood as imagining as I have argued it should be. P"
Imagining,, a tree is, as White says, to take account in some way of its visual features: of the way it looks, did look, or could look under certain circumstances'. And I have argued that the way in which we do take account of these things when visualizing (as against imagining,) is by imaginingp seeing a tree." VISUALIZING IS IMAGINING SEEING
Long Island University, C.W. Post Center,
Brookville, NY 11548, U.S.A.
6 1am grateful to the Editor for many helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
IMAGINARY IMAGINING
ATIKA NEWTON (ANALYSIS, this issue) objects to my denial N ( ANALYSIS 47.4, October 1987, pp. 221-4) that to visualize something is to imagine seeing it by manufacturing three alleged senses of 'imagine', namely, 'visualize', 'suppose' and 'pretend'. She suggests that in the first two of these alleged senses my thesis is correct, but mistaken in the third. I shall show that all three of these senses of 'imagine' exist only in her imagination. (1) 'Imagine' never means 'visualize'. Though any occurrence of 'visualize' is grammatically replaceable by 'imagine', as in 'visualize X, X as Y, X in certain conditions, or X I h g ' , but not vice-versa, as in 'imagine X to be Y, that X is Y, what, why, where, when, who X is', the substitution of 'imagine' for 'visualize' does not give the
