Our Private Images

I’ve written before about the mental images we humans construct (on July 8 and 12 of this year)—how the impression we create of an object in our mind is a fragmentary and incomplete depiction of reality. (In those postings I described how our mental image of a tree contrasts radically with what the tree really is.) After we form these images, all of our future behavior is based on that incomplete, and usually flawed, impression. In a way it’s amazing that we can function this way at all, but evolutionary experience demonstrates that these imprecise images work quite well for us. They are neither accurate nor complete, but they do the job!

So our mental image is our attempt at capturing the useful (to us) essence of the actual thing, but that image and the object are two very different and separate entities, right? Well, maybe not. The image I create in my head—that collection of electrical signals—in some sense makes the object part of me. The tree and the mental image of it may be entirely different things, and yet they are intimately bound together. In a way, I have made the tree a part of me. It can be an instructive meditation to become more conscious of the deep connection that we have with the world around us, and thus how it has become part of us.

We humans also share our images with each other. So, is the image I’ve created in my head the same as yours? I don’t think we really know, and I’d guess that in several ways they differ. Yet we both are human, we both have essentially the same kind of senses, and we use them in very similar ways. We share a similar consciousness. We also share a very descriptive language. When I describe to you my image of an oak tree and you later gaze at it or touch it, the image you then form in your head probably closely matches the one you had previously constructed from my description.

This situation is quite different in the case of a description I might paint for you of a movie I just saw. When you later watch it, you might wonder if it’s even the same movie. This brings in a whole set of emotional responses that color our images—responses that we individually have to our sensory experiences. I’m trying to stick to images of physical things here. It’s tough enough to get a handle on them, trying to keep the emotions out of it!

When we compare our human mental images to those of another species, it’s a wholly different situation. Their senses are fundamentally dissimilar. My image of a fly and that of a spider’s must be hardly comparable. Furthermore, I can’t talk to a spider to compare our respective images. A dog who howls at the moon must have a very different mental image from me, a creature who has viewed photographs taken by Apollo astronauts who once walked there.

Our images are, by definition, very private things. Mine may resemble yours, but I can’t really know what your images are like. I try to keep in mind that although our images may be very different, they are just as valid or relevant to each of us.