Blur as Vagueness: Seeing Images Vaguely and Seeing Vague Images; Perception and Representation

Abstract

What is the point of examining the role of vagueness in perception? Pictures are visual items whose use depends on their perceptual properties. Their perceptual character can be established either through their generation, partly through eyesight, or their ability to be seen. Pictures can represent, among their possible uses, partly by virtue of their visibility. As a result they possess a twofold status, they can be seen and the viewer can also see in them or, imaginatively, through them—he can recognize actual objects of experience or conventionally encoded information, and be aware and even come to believe he does. What is the value of the distinguishing between perception and depiction, image and picture? Since one might consider the processing of mental images to constitute the ground zero of visual cognition, it is a relevant domain to examine in order to explore whether vagueness is possible in any form and role. With the linguistic standard of vague predicates as a starting point, this possibility becomes inseparable from the possibility of different kinds of contents linked to different categorizations. The case of blurred images is instructive because it challenges the emphasis on representation based on assumptions of precision and a single kind of content.