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Abstract

This paper outlines a ‘perceptual account’ of depiction. It centrally contrasts with experiential accounts of depiction in that seeing something in a picture is understood as a visual experience of something present in the picture, rather than as a visual experience of something absent. The experience of a picture is in this respect akin to a veridical rather than hallucinatory perceptual experience on a perceptual account. Thus, the central selling-point of a perceptual account is that it allows taking at face value the intuitive claim that we see things in pictures. Preserving this claim has a potential cost, however: we need to postulate that some kind of thing, T, is present in the realm of the picture, and it is not straightforward to find a plausible type of entity to play this role. The paper examines three alternative choices of T; T may be a material object, a visual appearance or a universal.

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Notes

  1. For central versions of the experiential account, see Budd (1992), Gombrich (1977), Hopkins (1998), Peacocke (1987), Walton (1990), and Wollheim (1980, 1998).

  2. Claude Monet. Londres, le Parlement. Trouée de soleil dans le brouillard. 1904. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

  3. Plato famously provides a resemblance account of art generally (see Cratylus and Republic books II, III and X). With regard to depiction specifically, Budd (1993), Hopkins (1998) and Peacocke (1987) defend an ‘experienced resemblance account’, according to which pictures are experienced as resembling their depicta.

  4. The notion of ‘seeing-in’ is originally used by Wollheim (1980) to refer to the experience of seeing something in a picture as this is understood by him. I here intend the notion to have a broader meaning without commitment to Wollheim’s particular theory, as has become common practice in the literature. For a useful general elaboration of seeing-in, see Hopkins (1998, pp. 15–22).

  5. Wiesing presents an account of visual representation in general and not only an account of depiction in particular. I limit my attention to the latter for present purposes.

  6. This is not an exhaustive distinction. For discussion, see Wiesing (2010, pp. 30–33).

  7. For a defence of each of the two latter options, see e.g. Bricker (1996, 2000).

  8. A related view is presented by Blumson (2010), who argues for a type of semiotic account that uses a possible worlds semantics to describe the content of pictures.

  9. How to understand this claim is debatable. A reading to which I am sympathetic is provided by Salmon (1996), who explains that a merely possible object can have the property of being identical to the Houses of Parliament.

  10. This is argued by Wollheim, who holds that a photograph may depict Hamlet, although it is a photograph of Laurence Olivier (Wollheim 1980, pp. 208–209).

  11. This commitment is often combined with a naïve realist or relational view of perceptual experience, according to which we are related to particulars in perception; see e.g. Campbell (2002). However, as Johnston (2004) argues, a relational view is also compatible with holding that the objects of perception are properties.

  12. Håkon Gullvåg, Queen Sonja, 2010. Oslo Town Hall.

  13. For discussion of how portraits generally may succeed in capturing a person’s essence or “air”, see e.g. Freeland (2007).

  14. Honoré Daumier, Fatherly Discipline, 1851–1852. The Art Institute of Chicago.

  15. See Hopkins (1998, pp. 122–158) for discussion.

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Aasen, S. Pictures, presence and visibility. Philos Stud 173, 187–203 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0475-4

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