Английский язык учебник

sciousness may be paving the way for imagination to be taken seriously.

Exercise 2. Read the text again, divide it into logical parts, and give names to each of them.

Exercise 3. Make up questions to the following an swers.

1.________________________________________

Imagination is the mental capacity for experimenting, constructing, or manipulating “mental imagery”.

2.________________________________________

The topic had become quite unfashionable in philo sophical circles by the mid twentieth century.

3.________________________________________

His viewpoint soon became widely accepted.

4.________________________________________

Such imagining seems to be more closely akin to sup posing than to visualizing.

5.________________________________________

The traditional imagery centered theories of cognition had come into question for quite different reasons.

6.________________________________________

Things changed somewhat in the 1960s, early 1970s.

7.________________________________________

Current theories of image formation hardly aspire to the central place in cognitive theory.

8.________________________________________

We are not conscious of our thought processes as such.

9.________________________________________

All conscious mental contents are imaginal/percep tual in character.

10.________________________________________

Imagination will be taken seriously.

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Exercise 1. Match the words in the left hand column with the definitions in the right hand col umn.

Exercise 2. Find the following terms in the text and convey their meaning in your own words.

Cognitive, compel, connotation, framework, instiga tor, pave, rehearse, in virtue, quasi perceptive, indis pensable.

Exercise 3. Fill in the columns with the proper deriv atives of the following words whenever possible.

Exercise 4. Put the words from the following list into the gaps making changes whenever necessary.

To aspire, instigator, relevance, to pave, to rehearse, cognitive, vicinity, indispensable, to imply, diverse

1.Psychologists who take _____ components approach focus on just such underlying mental process.

2.Aristotle expected images to play a central or even

_____ role in human cognition.

3.Here you can _____ the possibilities, map out plans, and visualize overcoming obstacles.

4.Being in our _____ he was ready to attack us.

5.These theories _____ that actually spoken language is representationally basic.

6.The question is if all of these_____ sorts of mental act could be the results of the operation of a single mental faculty.

7.Their _____ to explain conscious thought would seem to be indirect.

8.A scientific account of consciousness may thus _____

the way for imagination to be taken seriously.

9.John B. Watson was the influential _____ of the Be haviorist movement in psychology.

10.Current theories of image formation hardly_____ to the central place in cognitive theory.

Exercise 5. Arrange the following words in pairs of

(a)synonyms and (b) antonyms:

a)inception, akin, various, to appear, not new, com pulsory, to practice, guess, beginning, conjecture, diverse, trite, indispensable, to rehearse, like, de sire, deep thought, to emerge, contemplation, aspi ration;

b)relevance, to disappear, confirmation, irrelevance, to emerge, conjecture, to hide, concurrent, to de bunk, sequential.

SPEAKING AND DISCUSSION

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions on the text.

1.Why does imagination appear to have radically dif ferent senses and connotations when used in differ ent contexts?

2.What did Gilbert Ryle declare in The Concept of Mind?

3.When did his viewpoint become widely accepted and why?

4.For what reasons had the traditional imagery cen tered theories of cognition come into question?

5.Why did things change in the 1960s?

6.What happened at about the same time?

7.Imagery is still far from regaining acceptance as the fundamental form of mental representation, is not it?

8.How is imagery treated in contemporary Cognitive Science?

9.Are people frequently conscious of imagery?

10.What may be paving the way for imagination to be taken seriously once again?

Exercise 2. Retell the text using your active vocabu lary.

Exercise 3. Give a summary of the text.

Exercise 4. Translate the following abstracts about imagination and give your opinion on them.

We all know about the five senses everyone pos sesses (provided they are not unfortunate enough to be either blind or deaf). There is also the sense of balance which some scientists say is not a sense but I always include as another of our vital animal senses.

Around forty thousand years ago the culmination of billions of years of the evolution of life forms was occurring in the brains of the Homo Sapiens species. This ‘final evolution’ created a powerful new brain that allowed human beings to become aware of the wonders that surrounded them. A whole new world

had opened up for people! We had become ‘imagina tive beings’. It was our ‘seventh sense’. This ‘seventh sense’ has opened a whole new world for mankind to enjoy. It has allowed mankind to reach out beyond the very narrow animal world into a vast new uni verse to “see” the wonders of nature.

We share our other senses: sight, smell, hearing, feeling, taste, and balance with the other animals. These are the senses that are vital for animal sur vival. They are the vital contacts between the physi cal body and the environment that surrounds it. They tell us what is happening to our body and about our immediate surroundings.

They tell us whether we are in danger, our spatial orientation, whether we are hot or cold, if the food is good or bad, sweet or sour. They help us hunt for food (see, smell, listen). They warn us if another predatory animal in our vicinity is ready to attack us. All these senses are extremely vital for our well being and survival. We could not survive without them. We share these six senses with all other ani mals. They are our ‘animal senses’.

Humans have all these senses, although they may not be as keen as some of the other animals. We may not be able to see as good as an eagle and our nose is not as sensitive as a bloodhound, but our animal senses are sufficient for our survival. Humans, as well as all the other animals have the six senses, necessary to carry their style of life. The higher animals also have a limited imagination enough, so that they may survive and prosper, but that’s about all.

In addition to the animal senses, nature has bestowed a very special ‘seventh sense’ on human beings. It is an immensely powerful imagination. It is not a vital gift, it is a special gift.

‘Human imagination’ has allowed mankind to climb from the valley of the ordinary to the peak of the

mountain, where all of nature’s wonders lie before it. It elevated the human race to a quantum level above all other animals. It allows us to “see” deep into the secrets of nature, to think abstract thoughts, to associate marks on a paper with objects and profound ideas of other human beings, to communicate ver bally with other people, to create and listen to beau tiful music. (The other animals can also hear music, but they cannot appreciate or comprehend its mean ing or richness of its rhythms and melodies). It has increased our cognitive powers enormously.

We can look at a collection of colors dabbed on a can vas and perceive it as a beautiful painting, a work of art. It allows us to ‘see’ into the past and project into the future. It allows us to perceive the beauty of God’s creativity. It has allowed mankind to create and progress over the ages. It allows us to ‘see’ things that no other animal can. No other animal has this ‘imaginative power’. It is strictly a human sense. This ‘seventh sense’, ‘Human Imagination’ had created the ‘Mind’ of mankind!

Donald Hamilton. The Mind of Mankind

Exercise 5. Scan the following text and do the tasks below.

IMAGINATION

Aristotle sometimes recognizes imagination as a dis tinct capacity, on par with perception and mind. Al though he does not discuss it at length, nor even charac terizes it intrinsically in any detailed way, Aristotle does take pains to distinguish it from both perception and mind. In a brief discussion dedicated to imagination, Aristotle identifies it as “that in virtue of which an im age occurs in us” where this is evidently given a broad

range of application, including the activities involved in thoughts, dreams, and memories. Aristotle is, how ever, mainly concerned to distinguish imagination from perception and mind. He distinguishes it from percep tion on a host of grounds, including: imagination pro duces images when there is no perception, as in dreams; imagination is lacking in some lower animals, even though they have perception, which shows that imagi nation and perception are not even co extensive, and per ception is, Aristotle claims, always true, whereas imagi nation can be false, false even in fantastic ways. He also denies that imagination can be identified with mind or belief, or any combination of belief and perception, even though it comes about through sense perception. The suggestion, then, is that imagination is a faculty in hu mans and most other animals which produces, stores, and recalls the images used in a variety of cognitive activi ties, including those which motivate and guide action. Because he tends to treat imagination pictogra phically, Aristotle seems to regard the images used in cognitive processes as copies or likenesses of external objects. He holds this much in common with many empirically oriented cognitive psychologists. Typi cally he will suggest, in this vein, that thought re quires images, both genetically and concurrently, so that “whenever one contemplates, one necessarily at the same time contemplates in images”. His sugges tion in this direction may seem unfortunate, since for a broad range of thoughts, images, construed natu rally and narrowly as pictorial representations, seem unnecessary or even plainly irrelevant. (It is hard to fathom, e.g., what image corresponds to the thought that gerunds make for ungainly syntax – still less is clear what grounds could compel one to agree that some image or other must accompany it). Perhaps, though, his remarks should be tempered by the recog nition that Aristotle accepts the existence of a think ing god whose activity is exhausted by thinking, but

whose thinking is not plausibly regarded as imagis tic. If that is so, Aristotle could not accept the thesis that for any episode of thought t, necessarily t is or is directed upon a pictorial image. Still, Aristotle clearly expects images, so construed, to play a central or even indispensable role in human cognition.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Supplement to Aristotle’s Psychology. Copyright 2000 by Christopher Shields shields@colorado.edu

Task 1. Say whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F), and if they are false, say why.

Task 2. Pair work. Ask 6 special questions to the text while your partner will answer them.

Task 3. Develop the idea of the text using the vo cabulary.

Task 4. Give a summary of the text.

Exercise 6. Express your opinion on what famous people say about imagination.

Seeing all possibilities, seeing all that can be done, and how it can be done, marks the power of imagination. Your imagination stands as your own personal labora tory. Here you can rehearse the possibilities, map out plans, and visualize overcoming obstacles. Imagination turns possibilities into reality.

The source and center of all man’s creative power … is his power of making images, or the power of imagina tion.

ROBERT COLLIER

You see things, and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were, and I say, “Why not?”

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

We are told never to cross a bridge till we come to it, but this world is owned by men who have “crossed bridges” in their imagination far ahead of the crowd.

SPEAKERS’ LIBRARY

Our aspirations are our possibilities.

ROBERT BROWNING

Two percent of the people think, three percent of the people think they think, and ninety five percent of the people would rather die than think.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The great successful men of the world have used their imagination, they think ahead and create their mental picture, and then go to work materializing that picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, al tering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building steadily building.

ROBERT COLLIER