Abstract
I aim to give a new account of picture perception: of the way our visual system functions when we see something in a picture. My argument relies on the functional distinction between the ventral and dorsal visual subsystems. I propose that it is constitutive of picture perception that our ventral subsystem attributes properties to the depicted scene, whereas our dorsal subsystem attributes properties to the picture surface. This duality elucidates Richard Wollheim’s concept of the “twofoldness” of our experience of pictures: the “visual awareness not only of what is represented but also of the surface qualities of the representation.” I argue for the following four claims: (a) the depicted scene is represented by ventral perception, (b) the depicted scene is not represented by dorsal perception, (c) the picture surface is represented by dorsal perception, and (d) the picture surface is not necessarily represented by ventral perception.
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Notes
There are also many ways of raising this question. Some talk about the experience of seeing something in the picture, some talk about the (not necessarily conscious) perceptual state of seeing something in a picture. It seems that we are capable of perceiving things in pictures unconsciously. We can perceive objects in pictures even if we are not conscious of either the surface or the depicted object, as the widely discussed phenomenon of subliminal priming shows (Strahan et al. 2002; Eimer and Schlaghecken 2003; Greenwald et al. 1996). Perception can be conscious and unconscious and so can perceiving something in a picture. Thus, it seems that perceiving something in a picture does not need to be a conscious experience. I will talk about cases where we consciously see an object in the picture. But as the account of picture perception I give in this paper does not make any reference to consciousness, it can also be applied in the case of unconscious picture perception.
Gombrich’s account of our experience of pictures is inconsistent with the idea of twofoldness. As he said: “is it possible to ‘see’ both the plane surface and the battle horse at the same time? If we have been right so far, the demand is for the impossible. To understand the battle horse is for a moment to disregard the plane surface. We cannot have it both ways…” (Gombrich 1960, p. 279.)
One important consideration in favor of (1) is the following quote: “The seeing appropriate to representations permits simultaneous attention to what is represented and to the representation” (Wollheim 1980, p. 213). But it is not clear whether seeing-in only needs to “permit” simultaneous attention or it is constituted by it.
It is important to note that the question I raise here is different from the question about whether egocentric localization is a necessary condition for seeing per se (Walton 1984, 1997; Currie 1995, chapter 2, esp. p. 70; Currie 1991; Carroll 1995, p. 71; see also Warburton 1988; Cohen and Meskin 2008; Nanay 2010b). Even if egocentric localization is not necessary for seeing per se, it is still necessary for dorsal perception.
It is important to distinguish this question from one about how some pictures locate the spectator at a very specific position in relation to the depicted scene. Although this line of thought has often been made in the psychoanalytic tradition of art and film theory (especially in connection with the concept of suture), it has also been discussed in the analytic tradition (for example, in chapter 3 of Wollheim 1987; see also Hopkins 2002). The question I am addressing here is not about the localization of the spectator as dictated by the pictorial space but about the localization of the depicted objects by the spectator.
Noë emphasizes that we can localize even those objects in our egocentric space that we cannot manipulate or physically interact with, as long as we have expectations with regards to how they would change if we moved closer to it—as in the case of the object in the thick plexiglass container (see Noë 2004, chapter 3).
A possible worry about using either of the above notions of localization in egocentric space in order to argue for (b) is the following. Suppose that I’m looking at myself on CCTV and there is an apple in front of me. I can see the apple on the screen and I can also touch it. Further, I do represent the distance between the apple and myself. Doesn’t this mean that I can localize the apple in my egocentric space? If so, then it seems that the argument for (b) does not go through: we dorsally represent the depicted object. This is a complex and interesting case and I cannot address it in sufficient detail here. Note, however, that although I can touch the apple in front of me, I cannot touch the apple that is on the screen. More importantly, although I represent the distance between the apple in front of me and myself, I do not represent the distance between the apple I see on the screen and myself. If I see the apple on the screen, then the object of my perception is the apple on the screen and not the apple in front of me and what matters for egocentric localization is whether I represent the distance between myself and the object of my perception. And in this example, I do not represent the distance between the object of my perception and myself. I may represent the distance between the apple in front of me and myself (as we are in the same space) and I may also represent the distance between the depicted apple and the depicted myself (as they are in the same space), but I do not represent the distance between the depicted apple and myself. Hence, I do not localize it in my egocentric space.
It has been argued that instead of two visual subsystems, we need to talk about three: the ventral, the ventrodorsal and the dorsodorsal. Thus, what has been taken to be one single dorsal subsystem should be divided into two: one responsible for manipulating objects (dorsodorsal) and one responsible for localizing in egocentric space (ventrodorsal) (Rizzolatti and Matelli 2003). My strategy was to show that we do not localize depicted objects in our egocentric space. Thus, the argument I presented in this section, rephrased using the terminology of the three visual subsystems framework, aimed to show that our ventrodorsal visual subsystem does not represent the depicted object.
It is interesting to note that there are occasions where we do not represent the picture surface. Taking aside various anecdotes of insects that tried to fly through the canvas of a still-life, the obvious examples are trompe l’oeil paintings. If we are genuinely fooled by the trompe l’oeil, then we would readily try to reach through the canvas—we would not be aware of the surface. It is a controversial question whether trompe l’oeil paintings count as genuine instances of depiction (Wollheim 1987; Wollheim 1998; Levinson 1998; Feagin 1998; Lopes 2005). Whether or not they do, seeing trompe l’oeil paintings (that is, the experience of being fooled by them, see Lopes 2005 for a detailed analysis of our experience of trompe l’oeil paintings) is not a twofold experience, as we are supposed to be unaware of the fact that it is a picture at all that we are looking at. In other words, being fooled by trompe l’oeil paintings is not seeing-in (but this does not imply that trompe l’oeil paintings are not pictures).
An interesting related phenomenon is anamorphosis: when a surface, or part of a surface, is designed in such a way that one can see something in it only from a specific angle—as in the case of Holbein’s Ambassadors, where the skull can only be seen from a very oblique angle. Note that the problem I am discussing here is importantly different from the problem of anamorphosis. In the case of anamorphosis, the depicted object can only be seen from an oblique angle, whereas the Pirenne problem is about how it is possible that the depicted object that can be seen head on can also be seen from an oblique angle.
This, in itself, says nothing about (d), as ventral representation is not identical to recognition, but only feeds into the latter.
It is important to note that this problem does not arise if the surface of X is the same as that of Y, as they most often are when we look at reproductions of paintings. I will take it for granted in what follows that the two surfaces are different and distinguishable.
These observations can be reproduced by anyone with a poster and a digital camera. In experimental conditions, similar results were shown. See Pirenne (1970) and Sedgwick and Nicholls (1993). Koenderink et al. (2004) seem to suggest the opposite, but it is important to note that the experiments in Koenderink et al. (2004) are supposed to demonstrate that we “always see an object depicted in a frontoparallel pose […] as facing us squarely, whatever the angle of view” (p. 526). In contrast, what I am interested in is not whether we experience the depicted scene as “facing us sqarely,” but whether our experience of the spatial relation between the depicted objects is distorted. And Koenderink et al. (2004) do not talk about how our experience of the spatial relation between the depicted objects changes.
Matthen said that he would be open to such claim though—personal communication.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Dom Lopes, Mohan Matthen, Joshua Johnson, Nola Semczyszyn, and two anonymous referees. I gave a version of this talk at the 45th Cincinnati Philosophy Colloquium in 2008 and received very useful feedback, especially from Greg Currie, Noel Carroll, John Kulvicki, Mark Rollins and Jesse Prinz.
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Nanay, B. Perceiving pictures. Phenom Cogn Sci 10, 461–480 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9219-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9219-x