Mental Imagery: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience - Hardcover

by Bence Nanay (Author)

Mental Imagery: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience is about mental imagery and the important work it does in our mental life. It plays a crucial role in the vast majority of our perceptual episodes. It also helps us understand many of the most puzzling features of perception (like the way it is influenced in a top-down manner and the way different sense-modalities interact). But mental imagery also plays a very important role in emotions, action execution, and even in our desires. In sum, there are very few mental phenomena that mental imagery doesn't show up in--in some way or other. The hope is that if we understand what mental imagery is, how it works and how it is related to other mental phenomena, we can make real progress on a number of important questions about the mind.

This book is written for an interdisciplinary audience. As it aims to combine philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to understand mental imagery, the author has not presupposed any prior knowledge in any of these disciplines, so any reader can follow the arguments.

Author Biography

Bence Nanay, Professor of Philosophical Psychology and BOF Research Professor, University of Antwerp

Bence Nanay is currently BOF Research Professor of Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp. He received his PhD in Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and worked at Syracuse University as a professor before moving to Europe. He is the Director of the European Network for Sensory Research. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles on the philosophy and psychology of perception. His work is supported by a large number of high-profile grants, including a two-million-Euro grant from the European Research Council. He also won the Bessel Prize of the Humboldt Foundation for his work on perception.