Two paradoxes of projection

Abstract

Recently developed projective models of consciousness and its contents challenge received schemas in which all contents of consciousness are held to be well contained in the skull. Working our way into this from several angles, it becomes evident that there are inconsistencies in how we frame classes of mental contents which are arguably equivalent in being. Particular examples of imagery, of dancing and of words, are brought forward to highlight the clash in our apprehensive assumptions, focusing on possible cognitive as well as psychological costs of such inconsistency. A coherent way to blend the container and projector schemas is pointed out; yet such a blend does not support the standard claim for any kind of purely inner voice, contained but not projected. Conscious reflection may in all instances depend on projection, with reflection in imagery — visual, audible, even tactile and otherwise felt — placed just the far side of what can schematically be grasped as the sensory horizon where, in the space-time just beyond here and now, our imaginative expectations backstop recognition of here-now present things.