Repository | Book | Chapter

In his chapter on Imagination,¹ Professor Ryle seeks to show that 'seeing things in the mind's eye does not involve the existence of things seen or the occurrence of acts of seeing them," and that "The question "Where do the things and happenings exist which people imagine existing?" is a spurious one." His argument appears to run as follows. When we say someone 'sees' something we mean something quite different by the word " 'see" " from what we mean when we say he sees something. The quotation marks are important. "Whereas they (people) see trees and hear music, they only 'see" and "hear" the objects of recollection and imagination." Again "A person who says that he 'sees' the home of his childhood is often prepared to describe his vision as "vivid," "faithful," "lifelike," adjectives which he would never apply to his sight of what is in front of his nose." This shows how entirely different 'seeing" is from seeing. What then is the difference between the two? To 'see" something is to imagine that one sees something. "Having a mental picture of Helvellyn is imagining that we see Helvellyn in front of our noses, and having a tune running in one's head is imagining that one has the tune being played in one's hearing."

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-15418-0_7

Full citation: