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                STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO

                  GRADUATE GROUP IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE

                             MICHAEL J. TYE

                        Department of Philosophy
                      Northern Illinois University

                   A PICTURE THEORY OF MENTAL IMAGES

The picture theory of mental images has become a subject of  hot  debate
in  recent  cognitive  psychology.   Some psychologists, notably Stephen
Kosslyn, have argued that the best explanation of a variety  of  experi-
ments  on imagery is that mental images are pictorial.  Although Kosslyn
has valiantly tried to explain just what the basic thesis  of  the  pic-
torial approach (as he accepts it) amounts to, his position remains dif-
ficult to grasp.  As a result, I believe, it has  been  badly  misunder-
stood,  both by prominent philosophers and by prominent cognitive scien-
tists.

My aims in this paper are to present a clear statement  of  the  picture
theory as it is understood by Kosslyn, to show that this theory presents
no threat to the dominant digital-computer model of the  mind  (contrary
to  the  claims  of some well-known commentators), and to argue that the
issue of imagistic indeterminacy is more problematic  for  the  opposing
linguistic  or  descriptional  view  of mental images than it is for the
picture theory.

                         Monday, March 9, 1987
                               3:30 P.M.
                        Park 280, Amherst Campus

               Co-sponsored by:  Department of Philosophy

Informal discussion at 8:00 P.M. at a place to be announced.  Call  Bill
Rapaport  (Dept.  of  Computer Science, 636-3193 or 3181) or Gail Bruder
(Dept. of Psychology, 636-3676) for further information.

				William J. Rapaport
				Assistant Professor

Dept. of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260

(716) 636-3193, 3180

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