Imaginary Presence—Merleau-Ponty and Mental Imagery

Abstract This paper aims to contribute to the growing interest in the role of imagination in Merleau-Ponty’s thought by exploring how the phenomenon of mental imagery would be characterised under Merleau-Ponty’s framework, and questioning whether or not his conception of mental imagery is of relevance to contemporary research and debates on the topic. To frame the investigation, I will introduce what I will call the problem of imaginary presence , that is, the problem of accounting for the perception-like phenomenology that accompanies acts of ‘forming’ or ‘entertaining’ a mental image. I will then pose this problem to contemporary accounts of mental imagery. Firstly, to representationalist accounts that conceive of the image as a perceptual representation in the absence of corresponding sensory stimuli and then to embodied and enactive accounts that think of imagery as a simulation or re-enactment of a perceptual experience. I argue that neither has an adequate solution to the problem of imaginary presence before presenting an alternative account of mental imagery that can be derived from Merleau-Ponty. One that overcomes the issues faced by contemporary accounts and provides a solution to the problem of imaginary presence.