(We should be done with the mathy posts, I think, at least for now. But forgive me if, ironically, I end up resorting to Rationality Quotes for a day or two. I'm currently at the AGI-08 conference, which, as of the first session, is not nearly so bad as I feared.)

Suppose I tell you: "It's the strangest thing: The lamps in this hotel have triangular lightbulbs."

You may or may not have visualized it—if you haven't done it yet, do so now—what, in your mind's eye, does a "triangular lightbulb" look like?

In your mind's eye, did the glass have sharp edges, or smooth?

When the phrase "triangular lightbulb" first crossed my mind—no, the hotel doesn't have them—then as best as my introspection could determine, I first saw a pyramidal lightbulb with sharp edges, then (almost immediately) the edges were smoothed, and then my mind generated a loop of flourescent bulb in the shape of a smooth triangle as an alternative.

As far as I can tell, no deliberative/verbal thoughts were involved—just wordless reflex flinch away from the imaginary mental vision of sharp glass, which design problem was solved before I could even think in words.

Believe it or not, for some decades, there was a serious debate about whether people really had mental images in their mind—an actual picture of a chair somewhere—or if people just naively thought they had mental images (having been misled by "introspection", a very bad forbidden activity), while actually just having a little "chair" label, like a LISP token, active in their brain.

I am trying hard not to say anything like "How spectacularly silly," because there is always the hindsight effect to consider, but: how spectacularly silly.

This academic paradigm, I think, was mostly a deranged legacy of behaviorism, which denied the existence of thoughts in humans, and sought to explain all human phenomena as "reflex", including speech. Behaviorism probably deserves its own post at some point, as it was a perversion of rationalism; but this is not that post.

"You call it 'silly'," you inquire, "but how do you know that your brain represents visual images? Is it merely that you can close your eyes and see them?"

This question used to be harder to answer, back in the day of the controversy. If you wanted to prove the existence of mental imagery "scientifically", rather th...

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