Any topic concerning mental activities is quite interesting,
although it requires really a lot of time.
Maybe I'm going off topics as usual anyway it seems to me that the
problem of the so-called "visual imagining", is quite far from being a
geometry problem, that is why I personally prefer to set aside all the
'x' and 'y' (and 'z' if you think tto a 3d space) we can meet by
approaching literature on that topic.
But someone may have some special attraction in the geometrical
psychology of our times, where the mind is thought as an euclidean or
cartesian space.
I do think that to use the word 'visual' referring to the ability to
imagine something is quite reductive, because often while imagining,
since our re-creation of things is quite alive and vivid, we are really
'feeling' something in a way which is wider and more powerful of the
mere seeing. Yet, above all, what hurts to me is, that such an
analitical way upon which the ideology of 'seeing' is based, hides a
'simple realism' which cannot be accepted by a 'thinking human being'
(like me for example ;))) )
Just flying thoughts,
Now have to export something,
best regards,
Paolo
Karen Bardsley wrote:
>
> Dear fellow list members,
>
> Perhaps it is just me, but I sensed from recent remarks that there has been
> a certain scarcity of discussion on this list of late. I only just
> returned to it after a six month hiatus, during which I mustered a vain
> attempt to get my e-mail house in order. Now, that it is relatively free
> of backlog, I thought I might be so bold as to jump in and offer a
> potential topic for discussion that takes the form, I am afraid, of a
> reader's poll.
>
> I wondered if folks would be kind enough to share with me
> their intuitions on an issue that has been discussed on this list before,
> namely the idea of "imagined seeing". I have been thinking about the
> possibility of imagined seeing for some time, and although I am pretty sure
> that our filmgoing experiences probably do not involve anything that can be
> adequately described by this term, I remain curious over an issue that was
> well brought out in Samuel Guttenplan's review of _Film Theory and
> Philosophy_ and which figures prominently in contemporary debates in
> analytic philosophy of film: can we imagine that we see x without imagining
> anything about ourselves and our relation to x? (e.g. does imagining seeing
> Mt. Rushmore involve imagining that "I see Mt. Rushmore" or that " I am in
> South Dakota" or, more simply, that "The sculpture is seen
> from the foot of the mountain?")
>
> Should we perhaps coin another term such as "visual
> imaginings" that can refer the imagination of the physical appearance of
> something without any reference at all to an observer? Would such an act of
> imagination be possible?
>
> I guess providing a detailed answer to this question would require the
> posting of doctoral theses, and this I do not encourage. I am interested
> in intuitions on this, however, especially since my advisor and mine differ
> somewhat on this question.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Karen Bardsley
> Montreal, Canada
>
> P.S. If this issue has been done to death in my absence, kindly disregard
> this missive.
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