When I am looking at an apple, I perceptually attribute certain properties to certain entities. Two questions arise: what are these entities (what is it that I perceptually represent as having properties) and what are these properties (what properties I perceive this entity as having)? This paper is about the former, less widely explored, question: what does our perceptual system attribute properties to? In other words, what are these ‘sensory individuals’. There have been important debates in philosophy of perception about (...) what sensory individuals would be the most plausible candidates for which sense modalities. The aim of this paper is to ask a related question about picture perception: what is the sensory individual of picture perception? When we look at a picture and see an apple depicted in it, what kind of entity do we see? What do we perceptually attribute properties to? I argue that the most straightforward candidates (ordinary objects, sui generis sensory individuals, no sensory individuals) are all problematic and that the most plausible candidate for the sensory individuals of picture perception are spatiotemporal regions. (shrink)

This article aims at defending the old theory of iconological dualism that opposes ‘handmade’ pictures to photographic pictures. I defend a new version of that theory, according to which photographs always enable viewers to have singular thoughts on the things photographed, while handmade pictures by themselves never enable viewers to have singular thoughts but only enable them to have what I call ‘thoughts by depiction’. To this end, I defend the old theory according to which singular thoughts require a special (...) relation—called ‘acquaintance’—between the thinker and the object thought about. I put this traditional view forward thanks to a new version of the classic spy argument for the acquaintance constraint on singular thoughts. (shrink)

According to the standard view of pictorial reference, a picture produces singular thought in virtue of both its appearance and its history. Zeimbekis (2010) challenges this view, arguing that the perception of the picture's appearance does not contribute to the production of singular thought. The paper defends the standard view from Zeimbekis' challenge, specifying the roles of appearance and history in pictorial reference. While knowledge about the picture's history allows one to identify the standpoint from which to see the scene (...) depicted, the perception of the picture's appearance exploits that standpoint to single out individuals in that scene. (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)

The main objective of this paper is to understand the logic role played by photographs in thoughts about entities known only through photographs. I will contrast two general interpretative lines: photography as knowledge by acquaintance and as knowledge by description. The analyses of those interpretations will take into account possible relations with discussions about metaphysics of time and episodic memory. Throughout the paper I will criticize the treatment of photography as acquaintance, based on John Zeimbekis' interpretation. In its treatment as (...) acquaintance, photography would play the logical role of a demonstrative that points to a particular entity in the past, through the causal route that links the photograph to its referent. The criticism of this concept has as its starting point the distinction between the causal referent of the photograph and its representational content. The thesis here developed is that the photographic content would not be sufficient to determine the numerical identity of the referent. Thus, it will be proposed a shift of the logic role played by photography from a referential role to a predicative. Photograph would exemplify phenomenal properties attributed to an entity known only by description. (shrink)

Kendall Walton argues that photographs are transparent; we literally see the things depicted in them, not just the depictions. This intriguing claim has endured numerous criticisms from those I call the ‘egocentrists’, according to whom seeing—literal seeing—requires the conveyance of egocentric information; to count as seeing something, a visual experience of that thing must impart some information, however spare, about its position relative to the viewer. Since photographs fail to convey such information, the egocentrists claim, Walton’s transparency thesis fails. This (...) paper considers several ways this egocentric condition on seeing has been developed and shows that none of them is persuasive. Seeing, I argue, does not require the conveyance of egocentric information. As such, and barring other problems, Walton’s transparency thesis stands. The paper closes with a speculative discussion of the kinds of empirical and action-guiding considerations that motivate egocentrism. (shrink)

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. (shrink)