Visualizing and Imagining Seeing Alan R. White Analysis, Vol. 47, No. 4. (Oct., 1987), pp. 221-224. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-2638%28198710%2947%3A4%3C221%3AVAIS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y Analysis is currently published by The Analysis Committee.
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VISUALIZING AND IMAGINING SEEING
EVERAL recent, philosophically perceptive, writers have alleged that to visualize or picture something, for example a face, a tree or a mountain - or, what they have wrongly supposed is the same, to imagine it - is to imagine either seeing it or oneself seeing it or that one sees it. Thus, Ryle says that '"having a mental picture of Helvellyn" or "having Helvellyn before the mind's eye" or what he also calls "imagining", "imaging" or "picturing" Helvellyn is actually a special case of imagining, namely imagining that we see Helvellyn in front of our noses' ([3] p. 256; cp. pp. 248, 251, 256,266,273); Vendler says 'imagine the battlefield from above or the statue sideways' is elliptical for 'imagine seeing the battlefield from above or the statue sideways' ((41 p. 47; cp. pp. 51,59, 60); and Peacocke says that to imagine a tree implies at least 'to imagine the sort of experience one has when one sees a tree' and also to 'Supposeimagine . .. that the experience is a perception of a tree' ([I] pp. 23, 28; [ 6 ] seems to equate imagining a scene with imagining visual experiences). Plausibility is added to this view, first, by the fact that the experience of visualizing may be like that of seeing. For Aristotle and Hobbes imagining was the having of a weak or decaying sensation. Ryle argued that 'a person picturing his nursery is like that person seeing his nursery' ([3] p. 248) and another philosopher has said that 'in visualizing I am as it were seeing' ([7] p. 35). Psychologists frequently suggest that the difference between visualizing and seeing is only one of degree and that both have the same physiological basis (121 passim). Secondly, we report what we visualize or picture, just as we often report what we experience in memory, illusions, hallucination or dreams, in terms of 'seeing' in quotes; for example 'I still see the look of horror on her face', 'I just can't see him without a beard'. Though these writers either move about indifferently between or explicitly equate imagining, for example, a face or a tree and visualizing or picturing it - a move which I think is mistaken - I shall concentrate on the idea of visualizing and argue that even in this more plausible version the common view is mistaken. Two preliminary remarks are in order. First, it is at least clear that the use of 'imagine' in the analysis of visualizing a face or a tree as imagining seeing, oneself seeing or that one sees the face or the tree cannot itself be visualizing. For one reason, though one can, perhaps, visualize oneself seeing - or at least looking at - a face or a tree, to visualize a face or a tree is not to visualize or picture oneself seeing it, since one need not, and usually does not, come into the picture at all. For a second reason, to visualize a face or a tree cannot imply to visualize seeing, an experience of seeing or that one
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222 ANALYSIS sees the face or the tree. A face or a tree is something one can picture, either in one's mind or on paper, but neither seeing, an experience of seeing or that one sees a face or a tree is picturable either in one's mind or on paper. The second preliminary remark is that whatever the relation between visualizing something and imagining seeing, oneself seeing, or that one sees it, the latter clearly does not imply the former. One can say to someone in a surprised encounter 'Just imagine seeing you here', but not 'Just visualize you hereY,much less 'Just visualize seeing you here'. T o say 'Inever imagined seeing you here (or that I would see you here)' is not to say anything about visualizing. One can also imagine oneself seeing people dying of hunger and doing nothing about it without visualizing either oneself or them. And one can imagine that one sees one's friend in the distance without visualizing him in the distance. I t is significant that though imagining hearing, smelling, touching (or oneself hearing, etc., or that one hears, etc.) is as common as imagining seeing (oneself seeing or that one sees), that 'hear', 'smell' and 'touch' in quotes are as common as 'see', and that imagining sounds, smells and feelings is as common as imagining sights, yet there is no 'auralize', 'olfactorize' or 'tangiblize' co-ordinate with 'visualize'. Certainly, t o visualize something is, as the word suggests, to take account in some way of its visual features; of the way it looks, did look, would or could look in certain conditions. I t may even be t o imagine what I would see if I were t o look or to remember what I did see when I did look. But this is not t o imagine seeing, myself seeing or, much less, that I see it. Imaginary sights and sounds are sights and sounds which I imagine to exist, not necessarily sights and sounds which I imagine seeing or hearing or that I see or hear. T o say 'You can imagine the colour, smell, state of the body after it had been three months in the water' is not t o say 'You can imagine seeing, smelling (yourself seeing or smelling, or that you see or smell) the state of the body. . .'. Analogously, to remember, describe, picture or paint, the visual features of something is to remember, describe, picture or paint, what it looks like, but it is not to remember, describe, picture or paint, seeing, my seeing, or that I see it. When describing what one visualizes, or imagines, one often speaks of the characteristics of what one 'sees' ('hears', etc.), but not of the characteristics of one's 'seeing' ('hearing', etc.). 'This is how I see it' describes what is 'seen', not the 'seeing'. I can imagine (myself) suddenly, unexpectedly, delightfully or disappointingly, faintly, in a daze, seeing a tree, but not visualize or imagine a tree thus. I can imagine seeing a scene through the eyes of another, but I d o not try to visualize anything either through my own eyes or through the eyes of another, though I can visualize it as it would look t o this or that person from this or that angle. Vendler tries to avoid this sort of objection by arguing that, for example, 'Imagine seeing the Eiffel Tower through binoculars' - which, he admits,
VISUALIZING AND IMAGINING SEEING
223
cannot be equivalent to 'Imagine the Eiffel Tower through binoculars' - really means 'Imagine looking at the Eiffel Tower through binoculars' ([4] p. 50). But this is not so. To imagine seeing something with the naked eye is not to imagine looking at it with the naked eye. T o ask someone to imagine seeing something dreadful, shocking, beautiful or awe inspiring, may be to ask him to imagine having a kind of experience, but t o ask him to imagine a dreadful, shocking, beautiful or awe inspiring scene itself is not. There may be many things I cannot imagine (myself) seeing and not reporting on or being overjoyed or disgusted at, but I can easily visualize them without imagining myself reporting, enjoying or being disgusted. There is a difference, overlooked by Ryle ([3] p. 248), 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. One reason for Ryle's assimilation of imagining or visualizing something to imagining seeing or that one sees it may be a false analogy which he draws with recalling something. He says 'I recall only what I myself have seen, heard, done and felt, just as what I imagine is myself seeing, hearing, doing and noticing things' ( [3] p. 273). But, first, though I may recall only what I myself have seen, etc., I do not in recalling what I have seen have to recall seeing or myself seeing it. Secondly, I can imagine others, as well as myself, seeing, hearing, doing and noticing things without in so imagining, imagining myself seeing them seeing, hearing, doing and noticing these. T o 'see' or 'picture' oneself or someone else as so and so, e.g. as a violinist or a vice-chancellor, as a satyr or a naiad, is to imagine oneself or another as these, not to imagine seeing oneself or another as these. Peacocke suggests that his analysis of imagining or visualizing a tree as imagining the experience of seeing a tree is strengthened by its analogical analysis of imagining a pain in one's foot in terms of imagining the experience of feeling a pain in one's foot ([1] p. 31). But the important difference between imagining a tree and imagining a pain is that whereas there is a difference between a tree and seeing a tree and, therefore, a difference in imagining these two, there is n o difference between a pain and feeling a pain and, therefore, no difference in imagining the two. The analogy between imagination and memory, which has been pressed by almost every philosopher from Aristotle to Ryle, Vendler and Peacocke, is helpful here. When I try to visualize my friend without a beard, not because I am trying to imagine him without a beard but because I am trying to remember him without it, i t is him without his beard that I am trying to remember, not (my) seeing him without it. I t is his face, not my experience of his face, I am trying to recall. And when I finally say 'I can see it clearly now' or 'Its only a blank', it is my success or failure in recalling his
2 24
ANALYSIS
face, not any experience of seeing his face, which I am marking. The fact that I describe my memories of what I have seen in such terms as 'I can see it now as clearly as if it were yesterday' suggests that I am remembering or recalling vividly those scenes, not that I am remembering or recalling my seeing of them.' I may be able to remember my friend's face without his beard, but not be able t o remember seeing him without it, though I realize that if I can recall him without it, I must at some time have seen him without it. I may remember the experience of seeing him without it as being a shock or a pleasure, as being frequent or rare, but these are not characteristics of him without his beard. In trying to remember his face without a beard, I am trying to remember how it did look, not my seeing it. So in trying to imagine a bearded face without the beard, I am trying to imagine how it would look, as contrasted with how a remembered face did look, not my seeing either. What the use of visual language, e.g. 'I can see it clearly now', 'I see him in my mind's eye', etc., shows is not that to visualize something is to imagine the experience of seeing or that one sees, but that the experience of visualizing seems like the experience of seeing. T o suppose that visualizing a tree is imagining an experience like seeing a tree rather than having an experience like seeing a tree is to make a transposition analogous to that which Bertrand Russell made in moving from the assumption that in seeing the sun one has an image of the sun t o the conclusion that in supposedly seeing the sun what one really sees is this image of the sun. There is, I conclude, a clear difference between imagining or visualizing a tree which I imagine seeing, myself or someone else seeing, or that I see, and imagining or visualizing a tree which I do not imagine seeing, myself or someone else seeing, or that I see.
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[ I ] C. A. B. Peacocke, 'Imagination, Experience and Possibility: A Berkeleian View Defended', in Essays on Berkeley, ed. J . Foster and H. Robinson, 1985. [ 2 ] A. Richardson, Mental Imagery, 1969. [3] G . Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 1949. [4] Z . Vender, The Matter of Minds, 1984. [6] R. Wollheim, 'Imagination and Pictorial Understanding', Proc. Aristotelian Soc. Suppl. 60 (1986). [7] Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self, 1973.
In fact my memory image of the scene will not be the same as m y original perception of it. I see myself with my friends in memory, but I did not see myself in the original group. Cp. Wittgenstein, Zettel, s. 650; Sartre, L'Zmaginaire, 11.5.2.
