Mental Images As A "Mirror Of Reality" Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 112):

Some psychologists suggest that consciousness is marked by the presence of mental images and by their use to regulate behaviour. But it is not a simple copy of experience (a "mirror of reality"), nor is it necessary for a good deal of behaviour. Some kinds of learning, conceptual processes, and even some forms of inference proceed without it.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, mental images are construals of experience as perceptual meaning.  In protolinguistic species, these are correlated with the meanings of the respective protolanguage, and in post-infant humans they are correlated with the meanings of language. The experience of mental images involves a senser sensing the contents of consciousness, prototypically through processes of visual perception or cognition (imagination).

The reason mental images are not a copy of experience (a "mirror of reality") is that meaning is a property of semiotic systems, not a property of the experience that is transformed into meaning.  That is, there is no meaning outside semiotic systems that can be copied or reflected.

One reason physicists regard Quantum theory as strange is that the Laws of Physics are seen as a "(mirror of) reality" instead of a semiotic reconstrual of experience.