Regarding V1, to me it seems more like the least, rather than most, relevant part of the vis hierarchy for imagery (see pic and also doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...). This fits the quasi-sensory view, but I'm honestly not sure if I'm communicating it well enough given the backlash I get on it.

Am curious about this debate because I feel like lesion studies would be fairly conclusive evidence that V1 is not necessary for mental imagery anyway. It can still be depictive without EVC (but "depictive" != "identical to a retinal image experience"). From doi.org/10.31234/osf...

I love phenomenological reports, and collect them too, but I just can't see how any would get past this argument which we've discussed before (originally from psycnet.apa.org/record/1989-...)

Kind (2017) philarchive.org/rec/AMYIV

Can only validate something as a measure of imagery if you have something that gives you ground truth that imagery has occurred. Can't do that without resolving what it means to 'see' a mental image first. Excerpt from Richardson (1988), in "Vividness and unvividness" psycnet.apa.org/record/1989-...

New preprint tries to resolve this: osf.io/86c9r_v1 Mental images potentially involve the parts of experience that change when the rabbit-duck illusion flips, not the parts that remain stable. We often use "see" to refer to both parts: "I see a rabbit" vs "I see hues/shades", causing confusion.