Depiction is the form of representation distinctive of figurative paintings, drawings, and photographs. Accounts of depiction attempt to specify the relation something must bear to an object in order to depict it. Resemblance accounts hold that the notion of resemblance is necessary to the specification of this relation. Several difficulties with such analyses have led many philosophers to reject the possibility of an adequate resemblance account of depiction. This essay outlines these difficulties and argues that current resemblance accounts succumb to (...) them. It then develops an alternative resemblance account, drawing on Grice's account of nonnatural meaning and its role in determining sentence meaning to argue that something depicts an object if it bears intention-based resemblances to the object that jointly capture its overall appearance. In addition to solving the metaphysical problem of what it is for something to depict an object, this account also sheds significant light on the epistemological issue of how we are able to work out that something depicts an object. This essay argues that our ability to work out that something depicts an object results from both our more general ability to identify intentions from the products of communicative behavior and our knowledge of stylistic conventions. This account avoids the difficulties that face rival attempts to analyze depiction in terms of resemblance. It also clarifies and explains the features that distinguish depictive from nondepictive representation. (shrink)

We offer an ecological (Gibsonian) alternative to cognitive (im)penetrability. Whereas Pylyshyn explains cognitive (im)penetrability by focusing solely on computations carried out by the nervous system, according to the ecological approach the perceiver as a knowing agent influences the entire animal-environmental system: in the determination of what constitutes the environment (affordances), what constitutes information, what information is detected and, thus, what is perceived.

Summary Is it possible to discover the critical realist foundations of Gestalt theory in Berlin comparative musicology (vergleichende Kunstwissenschaft) associated above all with Erich M. von Hornbostel? The balance of natural science explanation and phenomenal experience is a useful model for overcoming Eurocentrism in comparative ethnomusicology, relying both on third-person tools and indigenous music systems. This paper uses Gestalt critical realist epistemology and methodology and a portrayal of the strata making up the understanding of a musical act with chemico-physical, phenomenal (...) and cultural components to create an “amphibian” ethnomusicology. Using this framework it is possible to understand Hornbostel and Sachs’ musical instrument classification system and Hornbostel’s account of “primitive” music as strata in a Gestalt explanatory system. The potential binding agent through the strata is isomorphism. (shrink)

In recent papers [1997, in press] I have explored how two seemingly conflicting paradigms inform the conception and study of picture perception. The dominant paradigm, one especially favored by vision theorists, claims that seeing a pictorial representation of an object is, with qualifications, like seeing the object itself. The picture, being a geometrically sanctioned projection of its object, resembles it, or otherwise serves as a mimetic surrogate, “re-presenting” what it depicts [Danto, 1982]. Accordingly, pictorial representation is at its best when, (...) as in trompe l’oeil paintings, viewers can not tell the picture, the stand in or substitute, from the real thing. An alternative paradigm, the symbolic model, championed most forcefully by Nelson Goodman [1968], focuses attention on syntactic and semantic features of pictures. On this account, pictures are importantly allied with other forms of representation, including languages, maps, and music notation, and picture perception is to be understood in this context. (shrink)

In recent papers [1997, in press] I have explored how two seemingly conflicting paradigms inform the conception and study of picture perception. The dominant paradigm, one especially favored by vision theorists, claims that seeing a pictorial representation of an object is, with qualifications, like seeing the object itself. The picture, being a geometrically sanctioned projection of its object, resembles it, or otherwise serves as a mimetic surrogate, “re-presenting” what it depicts [Danto, 1982]. Accordingly, pictorial representation is at its best when, (...) as in trompe l’oeil paintings, viewers can not tell the picture, the stand in or substitute, from the real thing. An alternative paradigm, the symbolic model, championed most forcefully by Nelson Goodman [1968], focuses attention on syntactic and semantic features of pictures. On this account, pictures are importantly allied with other forms of representation, including languages, maps, and music notation, and picture perception is to be understood in this context. (shrink)

While there is now considerable anxiety about whether the psychological theory presupposed by virtue ethics is empirically sustainable, analogous issues have received little attention in the virtue epistemology literature. This paper argues that virtue epistemology encounters challenges reminiscent of those recently encountered by virtue ethics: just as seemingly trivial variation in context provokes unsettling variation in patterns of moral behavior, trivial variation in context elicits unsettling variation in patterns of cognitive functioning. Insofar as reliability is a condition on epistemic virtue, (...) we have reason to doubt that human beings possess the cognitive materials required for epistemic virtue, and thereby reason to think that virtue epistemology is threatened by skepticism. We conclude that while virtue epistemology has resources for addressing this challenge, exploiting these resources forces tradeoffs between empirical and normative adequacy. (shrink)

The Necker cube and the productive class of related stimuli involving multiple depth interpretations driven by corner-like line junctions are often taken to be ambiguous. This idea is normally taken to be as little in need of defense as the claim that the Necker cube gives rise to multiple distinct percepts. In the philosophy of language, it is taken to be a substantive question whether a stimulus that affords multiple interpretations is a case of ambiguity. If we take into account (...) what have been identified as hallmark features of ambiguity and look at the empirical record, it appears that the Necker cube and related stimuli are not ambiguous. I argue that this raises problems for extant models of multistable perception in cognitive neuroscience insofar as they are purported to apply to these stimuli. Helpfully, similar considerations also yield reasons to suggest that the relevant models are well motivated for other instances of multistable perception. However, a different breed of model seems to be required for the Necker cube and related stimuli. I end with a sketch how one may go about designing such a model relying on oscillatory patters in neural firing. I suggest that distinctions normally confined to the philosophy of language are important for the study of perception, a perspective with a growing number of adherents. (shrink)