Abstract

The thrust of Hannay’s work is to investigate certain arguments that support a denial that mental images are objects. His choice of thinkers is eclectic and he devotes much of the book to a detailed treatment of Ryle, Shorter, Sartre and Wittgenstein with briefer notes on Hume, Berkeley and Hobbes. Ryle’s and Shorter’s analytical approach is negatively constructed and we are only told that imagining is not a way of "seeing," and hence commands no object. This inability to render a positive account of imagining as Hannay demonstrates makes their arguments vulnerable. Nor can Wittgenstein offer any positive analysis of imagination since he concerns himself with a grammatical investigation of the term "imagination" with its usual language game implications. Sartre, however, does furnish a thorough descriptive analysis of the experience of imagination and affords Hannay an opportunity to offer a viable reconstruction of Sartre’s arguments.