Külpe’s Imageless But Visionary Idea: That Vivid Visual Images Are “Centrally Excited Sensations” Which Are Constructed From “Imageless Thoughts”

Abstract

In the current article, Section 1 begins with the reconsideration of Külpe’s late-nineteenth-century thesis that all problem solving is based on “imageless thoughts,” from which conscious images are constructed by vivid imagers but not by non-imagers. Section 2 proceeds by reconsidering Bühler’s refined thesis that conscious images are constructed from imageless rules, and by considering the present author’s auxiliary thesis that constructed images serve to test newly developed rules for parsing percepts and generating images. Section 3 concludes by reconsidering Külpe’s psychophysiological thesis that vivid visual images are “centrally excited sensations” which are centrifugally constructed on the retina, in accordance with generative rules in the cortex. Twentieth and twenty-first century evidence in support of these theses is summarized throughout the article, in the hope that Külpe’s visionary thoughts lead to further research and testing.