A conference report by Amy Kind

How do we distinguish imagination and reality?  How do visual content and social context influence pictorial meaning?  What role does mental imagery play in belief?  And how do you make room in your refrigerator when you need to fit in a bunch of leftovers after a large social gathering?  These are just a few of the many questions addressed at the Second Salzburg Workshop on Imagistic Cognition, held last week.  Organized by Christopher Gauker (University of Salzburg) and Bence Nanay (Antwerp) as part of their Puzzle of Imagistic Cognition project (jointly funded by the Austrian FWF and the Belgian FWO), the workshop brought together 12 speakers drawn from disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience for three days of productive dialogue about the nature and extent of imagistic cognition.

Since it is impossible to do justice to the rich content of all 12 talks in a brief conference report, I thought I’d use this space to talk about a few of the themes that seemed to emerge over the course of the workshop.  In particular, I’ll focus on four ideas that arose in numerous ways across the various talks.  

Goals and uses of imagistic cognition.  Construed broadly enough, it would probably be fair to say that every single one of the 12 talks fell under this theme.  From the discussion by Peter Kok (UCL) of the role of mental imagery in subjective perception to the discussion by Bence Nanay about the role of mental imagery in elaborating the content of beliefs, to the discussion by Christopher Gauker about how we use imagistic cognition to help us determine how to fit our leftovers into the refrigerator, we returned again and again to issues about the goals of mental imagery as well as to issues about the goals to which mental imagery can be put in a variety of distinct uses.  To mention just a couple of other examples:  This topic was addressed in the talk by Rebecca Chamberlain (Goldsmiths University of London), who focused on connections between imagistic cognition and skill in drawing, and it was also addressed in my discussion of imaginative accuracy, particularly by way of my argument that we should assess the accuracy of imaginings in terms of their aim.

The “grammar” of imagistic cognition.  Throughout the workshop, various talks touched on issues relating to what we might think of as the grammar of imagistic cognition.  What exactly was meant by “grammar,” and whether this notion should be understood literally or merely metaphorically, was often hotly debated in Q&A.  Such issues were especially at the forefront in talks by Kevin Lande (York University) on “Structured Images in Depiction and Perception” and Judith Fan (UCSD/Stanford) on “How do Visual Content and Social Context Influence Pictorial Meaning?”  Even when the point was not explicitly put in terms of grammar, questions repeatedly arose about the structure and format of iconic representation, and how this kind of representation was similar to or different from linguistic representation – particularly in the talk (mentioned above) by Christopher Gauker and in the talk by Jake Quilty Dunn (Washington University, St. Louis) on “Icons as Complex Analog Representations.”

Distinguishing different types of representations.  A related theme revolved around how different types of mental representations can be distinguished – either subjectively or objectively (in terms of neural structure).  One strand of this theme concerned the difference between what’s happening representationally at any given moment vs. what kinds of representations have been stored, an issue that rose to special prominence in a talk by Sara Aronowitz (University of Toronto).  Aronowitz explored this contrast by reflecting on the special kind of scrutiny to which we can subject our memories, a scrutiny that seems to differentiate them from other sorts of representations like beliefs.  In a very different way, the issue of distinguishing among mental representations came up in the talk on “Fundamental Constraints on Distinguishing Imagination and Reality” by Nadine Djikstra (UCL). Much of Djikstra’s recent research has been concerned to show how and to what extent individuals can distinguish their perceptions from their imaginings – a topic of interest at least since the famous Perky experiments in the early 20th century.  And it came up in yet another way in Christopher Gauker’s talk (mentioned above), in his distinction between language-like, gauge-like, and map-like representational formats.

Pictures and mental imagery.  A fourth theme revolved around the relationship between pictures and mental imagery.  In addition to playing a role in Judith Fan’s talk on depiction and perception (mentioned above), this theme also emerged in the talk by Tomer Ullman (Harvard) on “The Physical Basis of Imagery and Imagination.”  Central to his discussion was the notion of non-commitment in mental imagery.  Just as drawings and other pictures can be non-committal about certain visual features, Ullman reported on several studies showing that mental imagery too can be non-committal.  For example, suppose you are asked to imagine the following:  “A person walks up into a room and lights a candle in a candle holder.”  Now consider:  Which of the following features were part of your mental image:  The candle color?  The person’s age?  The person’s clothes?  While most people answer affirmatively with respect to the first question, many fewer respond affirmatively to the second and third questions.  To give one more example of how this theme arose at the conference, in talking about the role of perspective in cognition and in perception, Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers) drew our attention to the role of perspective in pictures, maps, and other representations – with a special focus on pictures that promote gestalt switches.

Of course, there were many other themes that arose over the course of the workshop – whether imagery vividness (Ullman, Djikstra) or expertise (Chamberlain, Kind) or the phenomenal nature of mental imagery (Kok, Djikstra).  And, it’s being Salzburg, there was also lots of rain, beer, and Wienerschnitzel.  Though to the best of knowledge there are no plans underway for a third installment in this series of workshops on imagistic cognition, there is no question that discussion of the kinds of issues that arose at this second workshop provide fertile ground for considerable future research.