The process of visualizing a triangular light bulb is not really open to human introspection.

Judge against cognitive science as of 2007. True: research shows that the processes underlying visual imagery, such as forming a mental image of a new object, are largely unconscious and cannot be reached by introspection, beyond awareness of the resulting image. Mostly true: the processes are mostly inaccessible to introspection, with some debated partial access. Mixed: the research is genuinely split. Mostly false: the evidence is inconclusive, or shows meaningful introspective access that the claim overstates the absence of. False: research shows that the mechanisms of visual imagery are substantially open to introspection.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 ERIC - EJ163657 - Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes, Psychological Review, 1977 ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), abstracting Nisbett & Wilson, Psychological Review 84(3) · 1977

   “Evidence is reviewed which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes.”

2. E2 What the Mind's Eye Tells the Mind's Brain: A Critique of Mental Imagery Springer (chapter by Z.W. Pylyshyn, in Nicholas (ed.), Images, Perception, and Knowledge) · 1973

   “requires that we posit abstract mental structures to which we do not have conscious access and which are essentially conceptual and propositional, rather than sensory or pictorial, in nature.”

3. E3 Imagery and Imagination Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy · 28 March 2023

   “Nonetheless, the subjects never realized that they were seeing an image of a banana.”

4. E4 Imagery debate - Wikipedia Wikipedia · 30 April 2023

   “Although the imagery debate was a central focus of cognitive research in the 1980s, it was never conclusively resolved.”

Nisbett & Wilson's 1977 review [E1] found that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher-order cognitive processes. Pylyshyn's critique of mental imagery [E2] argues that imagery depends on abstract structures to which we have no conscious access. The finding reported in [E3], that subjects never realized they were seeing an image of a banana, bears on the limits of introspective discrimination. The imagery debate [E4] was never conclusively resolved, and the evidence's tentative wording ("may be") points to mostly rather than fully inaccessible processes.