Topics Mind

Question I can see images and hear sounds inside my head at command. How is our mind able to perceive these things without them being real? I can create whatever image I want, and recall sounds, but I don't understand where or how this information is stored in the brain, and how we can see or hear it.

Accepted:
November 13, 2006

Comments

There are several different questions you may be raising here. One is how we can imagine something that doesn't exist, like a unicorn: aren't we then saying the same thing is both real and unreal? The short answer is that they are not the same thing: unicorns are not real, but imaginative experiences of unicorns are. Another question is how a physical brain can contain or even generate experiences. This is the general mind-body problem: a tough nut to crack. And there is also a third question. Even if we don't worry about how the mind can have experiences when there is an external cause -- say the experience of a horse when we look at one -- we might worry about how it has the power to generate an experience of something is has never seen, like a unicorn: where does this content come from? This too is an interesting question. Some philosophers answer that we make things up in our imagination by putting together bits and pieces of what we have seen -- say combining the general shape of a horse with the horn of a narwhale.

It might help to distinguish between imagination and perception. There's a sense in which what I perceive is not up to me. Although I can control what I see by turning my head, opening or closing my eyes, or taking off my glasses, once I've done those kinds of things, what I see as a result is out of my control. If someone orders me to see an elephant in the middle of my living room, it's not clear how I could carry out that command (aside from calling the zoo and asking if they deliver). On the other hand, I can easily imagine an elephant in my living room. Though as Peter Lipton mentioned, some philosophers (e.g., Locke, Hume) thought that what we can imagine is limited to what we can cobble together from materials acquired through perception.