El debate central en filosofía de la imagen se articula en torno a la oposición entre un enfoque semiótico, que considera a la imagen como un determinado tipo de signo, y uno perceptualista, que se orienta hacia la captación de imágenes y la caracteriza en su relación con la percepción sensible. Se señalan algunas dificultades de dicha articulación y se analiza el enfoque hermenéutico y la ontología heideggeriana de la imagen para mostrar cómo puede contribuir a renovar el debate, afectando (...) incluso su pregunta conductora. (shrink)

How is it possible for a picture to depict a picture? Proponents of perceptual theories of depiction, who argue that the content of a picture is determined, in part, by the visual state it elicits in suitable viewers, that is, by a state of seeing-in, have given a plausible answer to this question. They say that a picture depicts a picture, in part, because, under appropriate conditions of observation, a suitable viewer will be able to see a picture in the (...) picture. In this article, I first argue that this answer is in conflict with the way in which some of the most influential perceptual theories of depiction – Robert Hopkins's version of the experienced resemblance theory and Dominic Lopes's version of the recognition theory – construe seeing-in. I then formulate a version of the recognition theory that avoids this conflict and show how it can explain the depiction of pictures. (shrink)

A common view in the philosophy of perception holds that states of seeing objects face to face have particular contents. When you see, say, a dog face to face, your visual state represents the particular dog that is in front of you. In this paper, I argue for a related claim about states of seeing objects in conventional photographs. When you see a dog in a photograph, for example, your visual state represents the particular dog that was in front of (...) the camera when the photograph was taken, that is, the photograph's depictum. The argument in this paper proceeds in two steps. In the first step, I discuss states of seeing objects face to face. I argue that such a state represents the particular object whose surface is responsible for the optical information that the visual system uses to construct the state's attributive representational content. In the second step, I apply the result of this discussion to states of seeing objects in photographs. I argue that a state of seeing an object in a photograph has a particular content that represents the object that was in front of the camera when the photograph was taken. (shrink)

In a recent book, Immagine, Alberto Voltolini offers a rich and carefully written discussion of theories of depiction, which have drawn so much attention in recent Anglophone philosophy. Although Voltolini’s book has indisputable virtues, it also makes some questionable formal choices. The present essay presents a formal analysis of the book.