Silvana Pani is University Assistant (Doctoral Fellow) at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Salzburg, specializing in mental imagery and action theory. Her current research focuses on representational formats in action planning and performance. More broadly, she is interested in the role of imagination in decision-making.
A post by Silvana Pani
“First thing to do is in your mind create a very simple, literal freehand sketch or drawing. [...] Choose a beginning on that sketch and then describe it physically or draw it – the whole thing rather than just an element of the whole thing.”
-- Wayne McGregor, choreographer
Choreography is one of the best examples of the hurdles and miracles of trying to put a plan into action. Over and above being a usually cooperative practice, choreography requires skilled coordination of verbal instructions with sensorimotor information. Verbal instructions are one main vehicle of the choreographer’s intentions and one way for dancers to think about movements. Sensorimotor information, on the other hand, is what verbal instructions are translated into and constrained by before and during movement performance.
From deliberation to actual enactment, the nature of thought processes underlying both skilled and ordinary bodily movements (like picking up a cup) is far from clear. Philosophers have often conceived of intentions as building blocks of plans. Our planning activity is thus responsible for deliberation and practical reasoning as well as for the preliminary rehearsal of actions (not all rehearsal of action happens at the planning level, though).
The idea that intentions are propositional states figuring in practical reasoning is a traditional platitude (e.g. Bratman 1987). The idea that motor representations, qua immediate antecedents of actions, are non-propositional in nature is a more recent view and quite widely accepted (e.g. Jeannerod 2006). The question of how differently formatted contents, that is, contents that are propositionally and motorically formatted come together towards the realization of some action goal or set of goals, such as a new choreographic work, has been dubbed the “Interface challenge” by Butterfill and Sinigaglia (2014).
Two fundamental questions lie at the heart of the challenge. First, there is the content determination question (Burnston 2017; Mylopoulos and Pacherie 2019), namely, the problem of how general or distal intentions acquire the specific contents that they do at the action implementation levels. Second, there is the format coordination question, namely, how coordination between differently formatted contents is to be explained. On the assumption that choreographers’ instructions are multimodal (in most cases, they entail both verbal and non-verbal cues), it seems unlikely that we can do without propositional knowledge. And we cannot do without non-propositional sensorimotor information either, on pain of failing to represent motor nuances.
My reply to the interface challenge tries to address both aforementioned questions by introducing an underexplored distinction, that is, the distinction between general and specific images. The general/specific distinction for images squares with multiple sources of empirical evidence that, taken together, speak for the difference between general and specific images. A few studies suggest that general images are less vivid antecedents of specific images, and that the latter take longer to generate (e.g. Gardini et al. 2009). In sport psychology, specific mental imagery correlates with better outcomes than general imagery in training and sport performances, with highly skilled athletes and performers experiencing more specific imagery to strive for perfection. In clinical psychology and cognitive therapy, it’s not uncommon to recognize the importance of imagery in the development, maintenance, and treatment of psychopathology, while images that feature different degrees of detail can alternatively be considered the symptom of a dysfunction or its healing.
My hypothesis is that most actions, especially bodily movements, begin with general images of what one wishes or ought to do. General images then get specified by a process of filling-in of details that aims at preserving the realism of one’s representations (for other realistic transformations on images, see Gauker 2022). This means that, in order for planned movements to be practically enacted -- and not merely fantasized about -- the procedure of filling-in of details should be adequately constrained. Constraints on filling-in mechanisms heavily build upon theories of imagining under constraints (for a classic treatment, see e.g. Kind 2016).
In the standard case, specifications will represent means or aspects of action outcomes (for a similar proposal, see Fridland 2021). Because a range of particular motor representations might correspond to any given intention (Burnston 2017), a good theory of action should allow that intentions can at best bias us toward a range of available specifications, i.e. motor representations. Contrary to a longstanding tradition, and in line with Shepherd’s view on the double life of intentions (Shepherd 2019), I also take it that intentions can occur in more than one format and that we have no reason to believe that intentions can only be propositionally structured.
An example of McGregor’s tasks for dancers involved in movement creation goes as follows:
First thing to do is in your mind create a very simple, literal freehand sketch or drawing – in your mind. Choose a beginning on that sketch and then describe it physically or draw it – the whole thing rather than just an element of the whole thing. So it has duration. The third part of this is to discard the geometry (of the object that you drew) and replace that with colour. Then do another one (quoted in May et al. 2011).
McGregor invites dancers to conjure up sketchy images of allegedly novel movements. Dancers have to imagine (a sketch of) the whole thing before they try to visualize parts or elements of the creation, such as the exact fingers’ position or the color of certain imagined shapes. Only after the general image of the movement comes into existence is it possible to delve into its details.
Another key tool in the joint work of choreographers and dancers is the practice of marking – when subjects mimic movements with their bodies or hands for the purposes of rehearsing, communicating, and demonstrating choreographies to others (e.g. Kirsh 2011, Burnston 2021). I think that this practice offers interesting insights into the nature of images at play in action planning and performance. In marking, bodily movements are mapped out and sketched by each dancer without many of the details that would come with actually and effortfully performing the choreographic sequence. I believe that marking could be conceived as the sequencing of map-like representations that may or may not be filled in with specifications depending on the function they are constructed to serve or the stage of action they are to guide.
The advantages of map-like representations are known (e.g. Camp 2007). Content-wise, maps can be more or less rich in detail, and they can be enriched along the way. After all, digital maps can be zoomed in and out to serve our purposes. As for the format question, propositional components might be either integral to one’s imaginings or, perhaps more provocatively, might be built upon non-propositional descriptions (i.e. map-like representations) for the purposes of interpersonal communication. And yet, when images are too general or too specific, they may fail to have equivalent verbal counterparts. For example, there is no explicit evidence in computational models of motor control encoding highly specific sensorimotor details that internal representations are linguistic structures (see, for example, Wolpert and Ghahramani 2000).
To solve (or dissolve) the interface challenge, all we can hope for is a solution that minimizes the points of format interlock. Tentatively conceived as map-like representations, mental images have, by my lights, all the resources to do the job of minimizing the points of format interface. I will leave an explanation of why this proposal may fare better than other views for another occasion. Here I have just sketched (or marked) some thoughts.
Please get in touch if you are an expert of choreographic practices and want to share your work and ideas!
References
Bratman, M. (1987). Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, Cambridge University Press.
Burnston, D. C. (2017). Interface problems in the explanation of action. Philosophical Explorations, 20(2), 242-258.
Burnston, D. C. (2021). Anti-Intellectualism for the Learning and Employment of Skill. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 12, 507-526.
Butterfill, S. A., & Sinigaglia, C. (2014). Intention and motor representation in purposive action. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88(1), 119-145.
Camp, E. (2007). Thinking with maps. Philosophical perspectives, 21, 145-182.
Fridland, E. (2021). Intention at the Interface. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 12(3), 481-505.
Gardini, S., et al. (2009). Cognitive and neuronal processes involved in sequential generation of general and specific mental images. Psychological Research PRPF, 73, 633-643.
Gauker, C. (2022). On the Difference Between Realistic and Fantastic Imagining. Erkenntnis, 87(4), 1563-1582.
Jeannerod, M. (2006). Motor cognition: What actions tell the self (Vol. 42). OUP Oxford.
Kind, A. (2016). Imagining under constraints. Knowledge through imagination, 145-59.
Kirsh, D. (2011). How marking in dance constitutes thinking with the body.
May, J., et al. (2011). Points in mental space: an interdisciplinary study of imagery in movement creation. Dance Research, 29(supplement), 404-432.
Mylopoulos, M., & Pacherie, E. (2019). Intentions: The dynamic hierarchical model revisited. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 10(2), e1481.
Shepherd, J. (2019). Skilled Action and the Double Life of Intention. Philosophy and phenomenological research, 98(2), 286-305.
Wolpert, D. M., & Ghahramani, Z. (2000). Computational principles of movement neuroscience. Nature neuroscience, 3(11), 1212-1217