St. John’s College | Eva Brann: "On the Originals of Fictive Mental Images”

welcome to the friday night lecture at st john's college in annapolis maryland i'm the dean of the college joe mcfarland it's customary for lectures at st john's when the lecturer is a member of the community not to give an introduction because the lecture is already well known that couldn't be more true than it is tonight since our lecturer miss eva bran has been a tutor at the college for more than 60 years staying true to the spirit of our convention i'll say no more about her many accomplishments i do want to say something about our with the way we'll be conducting the lecture tonight the lecture will follow this introduction the question period will not follow immediately upon the lecture as is our norm instead we welcome any viewers a lecture to send questions uh to us to the dean's office in annapolis or to me josephmcfarland sjc.edu questions that are received within the first week of the lecture will be forwarded to miss bran she will be reading all the questions and recording her responses and we will make this virtual question period available by a link at a later date without further ado i'd like to welcome miss bran and to give you the title of the lecture on the originals of mental fictive images thank you i'll begin by asking your indulgence for speaking to you on zoom just when we all rejoice and being back together for real and soul and and body it's the physical exigency of old age and spirit i am i hope all there deeply invested in a question that rises to an enigma it is encapsulated in my title which i'll cite and the terms of which i'll explain in a preliminary way here's the title on the originals of fictive mental images so first mental images there are people for instance among cognitive scientists who deny that we have images in our minds quasi quasi-visual events that is events which occur behind rather than in front of our eyes they argue that these purported visions are thoughts that we take for sights it seems to me however that when i close my eyes i often do see pictures some are spontaneous coming on their own some are deliberate summoned by me i think that these non-believers are caught in the net of a confusion they take a postulate a demand of their own for non-existence proof i'll amplify that later together with the reason why i think they're wrong there is something sometimes in fact usually in my mind and my natural term for it is image that term is even more problematic than mental and that preoccupation i might say it's lifelong and gets more mystifying as it goes that preoccupation is what i want to lay before you now it wouldn't surprise me if some of you have sometimes wondered about it and it wouldn't surprise me if others among you couldn't bring yourself to care much i'll try my best to make you care in that preoccupation i take the word image be it a picture in the mind or picture on the wall or as some philosophers whom i feel particularly close to claim the very world itself taken as an appearance i take that word image at its words so to speak image signifies imitation copy and so cannot help but apply imply an original the term image calls for the preposition of and off calls for an object to be complete for the picture on the wall that's sometimes unproblematic on my wall there's a picture of my brother a smiling private in his uniform clearly here's what the photograph is a picture of the original once a little brat to put up with later a fraternal companion to confident but there's also another picture an engraving of a depiction of an infamous cave that the freshman among you will before long read about in plato's republic and recognize as the one you stuck in and came to saint john's in order to clamber out of now i ask you and of course myself where is the original of that it's even more curious of the imagery in my mind especially the kind that's not attached to memory that is to some reality that i've seen and remember and recall i'm a great lover of novels of narrative fiction both as a genre and in particular as a genre a kind they all have this in common the fact that most of what they report never happened writers of fictions are one and all folks who make up stories an activity commonly called lying and there are also artists painters who make works for our admiring delight so they might be called admirable deceivers or incarcerate contradictions and terms their activity might be ethically questionable but they are surely just philosophically problematic and let me say here quickly that by ethically i mean concerned with doing right and wrong and by philosophically i mean concerned with what lies behind or beneath or beyond our appearing world as particulars as instances of the genre fictions have in common precisely also the vital difference each fiction if it is a work of art reenacts in a lesser scope the creation of a sub-world with the characters indigenous to it a world made analogously to the one whose creation is reported in the scripture called the old testament there is however this enormous difference the god of the old testament is certainly an image maker though he has forbidden us to make images he has made us in his own image but we are not told how he goes about it human image makers must i'm persuaded rely on their own mental images as originals for the image making i mean the so-called original work is drawn from the artist's imagination that's partly what is so fascinating our images our mental images are dyadic in turn the originals of the image we put out into the world and themselves images whose very originals are the objects of my pursuit here let me now by way of intermediate summary lay out the s ascendant series i've been establishing number one material things animate and inanimate number two dual memory images present in consciousness or accessible in some sort of metaphorical storage serving in one direction as the originals of representative works of art three the same serving in the other direction as the images of originals four these same originals mysterious and mode of being and in venue of existence possibly some sort of original images a deliberate self-contradiction to be sure in the mind of a divinity if your head is spinning you've got it straight but now i want now i want to take up briefly in order to be done with them the heretics the unbelievers with regard to images in the mind when this debate was hot back in the last century it went as i've already indicated as follows but let me interrupt myself here to say what you'd expect a lifelong journey to say for notion to be old especially in the ever oscillating world of scientifically tinged humanities is if anything a cause for confidence that old conception has staying power so reviving for you an academic debate that is a few decades out of date is excusable especially since it ended in a draw that is it ended in a draw in what is so oddly called the literature on the subject meaning a few books and oodles of articles none particularly remarkable for the literary qualities at least when i immersed myself in it when i say it ended in a draw i mean at least as far as the world of research and scholarship was concerned not for me so let me tell you in a very few more sentences what the arguments were on the two sides on the side of those who believed that mental images were misapprehension and of those like myself who thought not only that they were a real phenomenon but even that they were among the most interesting of common human experiences this was thought to be the most telling anti-argument defenders of mental images could produce no hard evidence such as science demands for their existence nothing that could be exhibited nothing that could be submitted to common inspection all they could offer was introspection so terminally internal that no fellow human being not your most intimate friend had access to it it was therefore a purported phenomenon that was terminally private unexhibitable anyone could claim anything about the contents and events of their mind the skeptics were not accusing the images of lying of making things up their best arguments were much more objective and much deeper introspection they argued which means literally looking within is in principle impossible what's looking and at what if my consciousness my active mind is looking at itself then it's seeing mind looking at itself if the mind's looking is analogous to the eyes seeing then as i think aristotle points out somewhere what it sees is never just itself simply but always itself engaged in self-viewing and that's like trying to observe what two opposed mirrors each display without putting your viewing self into the picture it's unimaginable so introspection turned out to be a big model such as sound-minded inquirers wouldn't touch with a long pole and with that the claim to be seeing pictures by looking within was thought to have collapsed what was to be said on the other side the reply was dyadic double first then there was reference to the mere experience of internal seeing either memory pictures more or less accurate or imaginary images more or less spontaneous second imaginers could produce external images of their internal visions and though the makers usually even the talented painters listen to say that the external productions didn't do justice to their original experiences which might be originally from unwritten dreams through laboriously summoned memories to artful imagery partly spontaneous partly crafted they persisted and trying incidentally why are the externalizations of internal imagery almost always defective i'll venture a guess most of us have on occasion try to retell a dream especially those so-called great dreams that recur over decades we find ourselves doing what psychologists call confabulating producing as much made up narrative as accurate recall we meant to be truthful but it proves impossible why because the dream was more atmosphere than story and atmospheres are immaterial environments highly evanescent under description if you've ever attempted such a description you will recall that you need more and more words but the more words you use the more evanescent the atmosphere gets stories i'm saying flourish as accurate narrations but atmosphere are articulation averse they're fugitive under verbiage all that's said and taken into consideration i'll declare myself on the side of mental imagery as real in fact practic a practically universal occurrence and i'll use my chief argument i'll use as my chief argument my own experience if i if i can't prove to you that i have such imagery you can't prove that i don't i'll leave out of account the laboratory evidence of brain activity that seems to be concurrent with mental events and ingenious experiments which show by time lapses that people are in fact following imagined motions those apparently highly evidential episodes actually can't prove anything the reason is that in order to call them in for that purpose you have already to have named recognized and specified mental imagery if you deny that such events exist you can't claim that they are or aren't underlined by brain activity or that the passage of time is concurrent with internal image watching so i feel myself entitled to ask what seems to me a wonderful question and recall that to wonder as a verb means both to puzzle and to marvel what are the originals of which mental images of imaginary beings and events are the images concretely put who is the original son of laertes by any name from homus adus to james joyce's ulysses and let me confess again that the way i put my question what are the originals of the mental images of imaginary beings that they in fact assume their existence when we propose a topic for inquiry people often demand that we define our terms that seems to me pretty wrong-headed when you've defined your terms you're done but no one is any the wiser it's a dictionary maker's true business to define terms but what sensible person consults a dictionary even as good as my trusty heritage dictionary to find out what a word intends or what a thing is but when you've been given the definition of a word you've learned what people tend to understand by it and when they come across it or use it how they use it but not what the word itself means be it noun adjective or verb or what is intended what is its intended object is be it a thing quality or an action what appears to me to be the drudge work of defining your terms is very often and most unjustly imputed to socrates who hasn't so i think the slightest interest in that respectable but pedantic activity most of the college has by now read the meno and will recall that socrates requires the people he talks with to know greek for of that young slave with whom he carries on what i think of as the most momentous conversation two human beings ever had with one another the one that shows that true learning is always recall is always recollection of that slave boy socrates needs to know only one thing does he know greek the significance of that condition is that your words don't need defining since to speak the language is to know so to speak a somewhat indefinite but adequate definition what socrates is after and in this the boy proves to be a good partner to him is not what the word knowledge means but what the object this word reaches for intends namely what knowledge itself is nonetheless from sheer perversity i shall give a brief preliminary meaning for my terms not to close but to open a conversation these terms are copy image original and ascending order both of dignity and of difficulty it's a little bit as if i were you language tutor watching over you learning greek but now the language is imagineese so to speak so by copy i mean a rendering of a prototype a rendering that is in some aspect achieved by mechanical means and intended to be as near as possible identical to the prototype for example a monk's careful handwritten copy of an ancient text or a student's hurried copy of an annual essay on a xerx machine missing the last page with the grand conclusion that tends to happen by an image i mean a sort of inherently pivotal object being an imitation of something prior from one aspect and a prototype of copies on the other by an original i mean a prototype literally an object first online proto of a sort to follow type the word expresses in itself the problem of originals are they sui generous that is their own and only kind or are they merely the first of many typical instances you can see right away that there is a common case of a uniquely elevated theological condition that of the uncreated creator the uncaused cause on the answer to the question whether the material world can contain uncaused causes depend hallways of life for to say that there are unquest causes is to say that our world contains miracles and to believe in them is to believe that a divinity not only brought this world into being but is at work in a daily not only creating but maintaining it it's a possibility we should not let ourselves off from considering but now to bring me back from the wider background to my concrete case let me restate the question what is the object of the preposition of that must needs go with mental image image of what if you immerse yourself in that question you soon discover at least i did that you can't just leap on it but you have to scrabble your way through some thorny problems the greek word for problema is really an interesting term because it is a counterpart to the word question problem means literally an outwork an obstacle an outer fortification thrown out before from the greek word ballen to throw and pro before a defense against smooth entry a really good question on the unmanned is perennial it causes clarifying thought and sometimes incites an answer you can live by but never resolution and settlements what are the originals of mental images seems to me to be a really good question now problems may persist but they're not perennial not inherently irresoluble on the contrary they're meant to be resolved dissolved solved washed away you've solved a problem and that's it solved problems are not great objects of interest you receive the solution gratefully and put the problem now no longer of interest behind you much of adult life consists of solving and forgetting problems much of life's file is said or done with in the three of interest i'm talking about there is an important issue what is an image not by the definition of a word meaning but by the formulation of its essence its way of being that was a problem at least to me i wanted an answer a resolution i found one deep but plausible plain but consequential it is given and plato's dialogue surfaced they are a visitor to athens who is versed in the tradition that originated philosophy as the inquiry into being the thought that comprehends everything that presents itself to us as positive this visitor tells what an image is in its very being it is not the definition he gives my dictionary gives this definition of an image a reproduction of the form of a person or an object the visitor in plato's dialogue doesn't define but delineates its being a definition delimits delineation only outlines an image is an object which both is and is not that of which it is the image that is of its original speaking ontologically meaning in the terminology of the account of beings this says that an image is a thing which is not what it is and is what it is not and that though it is food for ever more thinking is a highly satisfying solution to the perplexity the problem of how to get hold of the being of an image the dictionary definition was a pseudo solution because it didn't say what the form of an object was or what it meant to produce it once again that is to reproduce it the dialogue still delineation however which is not just a word meaning but an attempt to articulate the being of the thing is highly illuminating an image has a dual character it is a commingling of being a non-being and like any respectable understanding of a grand object it immediately signals trouble in avern that an image is an amalgam of being a non-being i was driven to assert is that is to attribute being to non-being moreover an opposing being and non-being i was inadvertently implying that being being is not non-being and so intimating that it is afflicted with negativity and that's a simple picture of a dog that anyone can pull up on their iphone turns out to be a thing of deep ontological perplexity but my present question having accepted a solution albeit ontologically roiled to the primary problem of saying what an image is is not thereby answered although it required these preliminaries to be even approachable this is the moment to present to you one approach a formulation and an answer to my question it may persuade you that it is a respectable inquiry not only because it was regarded seriously in a great philosophical tradition but also because at least one really interesting answer that i know of exists moreover that tradition to which i'm referring is or will soon be well known to you because it originates with plato speaking for socrates and is carried on by the so-called neoplatonus a philosophical movement that maintained the conversations of plato's academy through centuries they did that by subjecting the spontaneous and occasional thinking recorded in the platonic dialogues to something analogous to canning food the neoplaton is carved up neatly and recomposed the platonic tradition into a global system a coherently connected edifice of thought with a good shelf life the neoplatonist who particularly concerned himself with images with plotinus he lived through much of the third century of the common era the essay by protanis which is particularly to my point is called an intellectual beauty so let me report its doctrine plotinus regards his subject as on the edge of the sayable he has plenty to say so i think and this is corroborated later that he means something of great importance what he is setting forth is an invitation to an experience and moreover an ultimate experience he describes the final step of the ascent when the visionary no longer sees beauty at all sees it that is as one sees another since he has come to be in beauty it's a consummation that has an erotic aspect of penetration though maybe not i suspect that these devotees of the intellect are a little prickish in any case this intellectual seeing is a kind of merging that follows plutanus this aesthetic theory which requires speaking of the platonic eaters of the form the first thing protina says is that the form is in the mind of the artist what i ask is its way of being there it comes he says through the eyes leaving mass and size behind and it moves the soul it is form only so the eidos the platonic form is seen for what else could it mean to come in through the eyes and it's all let us see the only side more the the form brings along its own place and that place is the intellect in greek noose it is the topos edom greek for the place of forms the forms in that realm are not axioms acceptable propositions such as introduce euclid's elements but beautiful statues they are such as one might imagine to be in the souls of wise men not painted statues but real beings what are these beings like platinus refers to egyptian temples in which statues that is to say images are used rather than words one image per thing thinking these up summary summoning them is quite impossible once would they come to one who has never seen them here we have i think a familiar description of mental imagery and protinus will continue in this vein but first he reminds us that our cosmology here capital h here on earth is not intelligible because we think that way but because it is disposed as our things there capital t there beyond what then is beauty there he says it is what primarily comes to be present to view by being form and vision of the intellect this also is most adorable for seeing he refers to plato's time is in which a divine craftsman models our world on a paradigm an idea and it's adorable beauty then comes a really interesting passage in platinus a description of the inception of mental imagery for it becomes increasingly clear that intentionally or not that is what protinus is describing and i quote let there be in the soul a luminous image of a sphere he goes on first the container the place the exterior sphere then the imagination his word is fantasia then the front of zia of the sun and the other stars follow straightway then the earth the sea the animals some entities staying still others moving all inside a diaphanous a transparent sphere that is exactly one way of learning to see our world first cosmology that is the diurnally turning container with its fixed stars then astronomy the orbiting planets in the middle place then meteorology the disorderly zone of shooting stars and finally geography the earth fixed at the center our place but now comes the theological complement protina says hold on to this and take another such sphere into yourself and remove the mass remove also the places and the image of matter within you and don't try to take an another smaller mass but call the god who has made the mental image which you have and pray for him to come platinus had introduced these instructions by bidding us take into our thinking this cosmos without any confusion confusion gathering all into one but to me it is clear that he slides from thinking into viewing he says that being is longed for because it is the same as what he calls the beauties in greek token beauty that is and the beauty is is lovable because of this being if beauty and being are convertible in a sentence they are in fact identical and if so the more immediate question for me is what this be tokens for visibility must being be a vision that is beautiful to be beauty it is once more an old question whether transcendence or qualitatively what they ground transcendently whether the forms look like what it is they are the cause of again platinus's language says yes so he soon will speak of the vision of virtues like justice that differs from its imitation here below the imitation is discerned by those who have already seen many lucid visions the gathering of visual references ceases when the visionary is no longer looking at beauty but has now penetrated within it as alluded to before our cosmos is a beautiful image an acorn icon in the english transcription and it imitates a beautiful archetype so it is wrong to try to destroy it since it exists by nature as long as its archetype remains protinus ends as he began he must he says use this language from his need for signifying the ending of the essay implies that the intellectable place the intelligible place has not been satisfactorily explicated and that seems right to me whether intentionally or not protinus is slipped driven by his language into implying that the platonic forms behave like or even our mental images spatial and sized receivable but uncontrollable matterless but sensory shapely while evanescent protinus tacitly refers us to his essay entitled that the intellectual beings are not outside the intellect here he has choose all attributions of sensory perception to the intellect because its objects are within it and so not really objects such as sensory perception presents consequently intellectual beauty is downplayed because as internal to its position possessor it is now invisible to him moreover the realms of sensory perception and mental apprehension are here clearly distinguished he who wants to see in quotation marks intellectual beings must let sensory perception go that is the thing that we would not put between raised eyebrow corpse moreover he who wants to see and court beyond the intellectual beings so as to rise even higher in the neoplatonic system must let even those go in brief don't believe that intellecting is seeing here's my take platinus really has fallen my guess is driven by his own experience into thinking that forms can be in the human mind as mental images though of course he knows better he pulls down the platonic ideas into the field of the imagination so they become available as the archetypes of art plato would not turn but whirl in his grave the notion reappears however full-blown in the 19th century revived by the philosopher schopenhauer who thought that art was inspired by the platonic forbes mental images in their unstable feeling imbued eminently imitational way of being are almost the antithesis of intellectual beings moreover the neoplatonic non-answer simply nullifies my question usually when the thought of transcending being a thought short of an experience is lodged in our minds we understand that we are to apprehend them in the mode of mortals there may be intellects capable of pure contemplation the greek word for which is theorea but most of us must envision just to think platinus is describing an eidetic experience an experience of a form of a platonic form which means that the mental form is not attributionally transcendent but is actually so we are for the moment as he says theophoroy god bearers possessed by immortality mental imagery at its origins could not be more grandly described so back down to earth am i persuaded should you be by platinus i would like to be but that is not this positive reason why i or you should be so i must leave you with an unanswer but i hope with this sense a question that elicits such enchanting answers is worth entertaining over and over to put it as it seems to me nothing feels more expectantly free and to believe dangling and perplexity thank you

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Length: 45min 12sec (2712 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021