Without doubt, there is a great diversity of scientific images both with regard to their appearances and their functions. Diagrams, photographs, drawings, etc. serve as evidence in publications, as eye-catchers in presentations, as surrogates for the research object in scientific reasoning. This fact has been highlighted by Stephen M. Downes who takes this diversity as a reason to argue against a unifying representation-based account of how visualisations play their epistemic role in science. In the following paper, I will suggest an (...) alternative explanation of the diversity of scientific images. This account refers to processes which are caused by the social setting of science. What exactly is meant by this, I will spell out with the aid of Ludwik Fleck’s theory of the social mechanisms of scientific communication. (shrink)

The primary aim of this article is to point up an essential attitude, an anxiety even, that has inflected – and perhaps inhibited - our engagement with film. Film theory has been marked by a ‘refusal to see, a looking away’ (Mulvey & Wollen 1976, 36), and my suggestion is that this has achieved its fullest expression in those strands of film theory heavily influenced by psychoanalysis. These, in turn, have remained within a gendered conceptual framework whereby the (...) discursive or the narrative is associated with the masculine, and the image or spectacle is aligned with the feminine. This is not to reject these applications out of hand but rather to revisit this area with its blind spots in mind and to consider aspects that are perhaps at once obvious but often overlooked. (shrink)

Product mental image cues are important for consumers to perceive product quality and product value. However, little research has been done on constructing a theoretical framework of product mental image cue utilization in different situation. Based on cognitive psychology and compound cue retrieval memory theories. We examine the scope of the current cue theory in literature and analyze its shortcomings. Based on the literature review, we explore some possible research directions.

Kant’s distinction between intuitions and concepts attracts perennial interpretive interest. To the extent that they discuss the imagination at all, most Kant scholars maintain that the imagination’s primary role is to generate intuitions. This dissertation argues that “image” (Bild, Einbildung) is an overlooked technical term in Kant’s work and that images—and not intuitions—are products of the imagination. The project explains how, for Kant, the imagination (as image-maker) and the senses (as intuition-maker) make distinct but essential contributions to cognition (...) and perception. I begin by showing that “image” is a terminologically marked notion in Kant, and that the imagination is responsible for generating images (chapter 1). I call these claims the Image Thesis. I then show that for Kant, intuitions are representations that depend only on the senses for their essential features (chapter 2). I call this the Strong Independence Thesis. -/- How should we understand Kant’s ubiquitous references to the imagination, then? I argue that we should understand the imagination’s activities as image-producing activities (chapter 3). I argue that images and intuitions are fundamentally distinct representations, which I label the Distinctness Thesis. Though intuitions and images are had by both rational and non-rational beings, the capacity for consciousness or apperception found in rational beings makes a difference in the structure of images but not the structure of intuitions (chapter 4). I call this the penetration view of the imagination. With this account of images in hand, I indicate why images are a necessary ingredient in theoretical cognition for Kant (chapter 5). I call this the Image-Centric Cognition Thesis. The result is a novel account of sensibility—the counterpart of the understanding—that recognizes Kant’s systematic discussion of mental imagery. (shrink)

The third issue of the Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts is centered on a series of questions related to the nature of images. What properties characterize them? Do they exist also in our minds? What relationship do they have with phenomena such as perception, memory, language and interpretation? The authors participating in this issue have been asked to answer these and other questions starting from and in dialogue with the two philosophical perspectives that have most (...) enriched the study of our object of research since the second half of the twentieth century: analytical philosophy and visual culture studies. The first four essays address problems related to ontology (Didi-Huberman, Prinz, Bantinaki, Manzotti). In their pages the question will be asked not only about the nature of images but also about what it means for an image to represent an object or an action realistically. The second part contains discussions related to the topics of perception, appreciation and creation of pictures (Ferretti; Gavaler, Goldberg; Pigoni, Coraci, Carlenzi). The third section goes through the problems related to the very concept of representing by images (Biggs; Weichert; Derby). The last section of the issue is devoted to two cases in which images are used not so much and not only to represent something, but also to convey ethical-political values (Fasnacht; Olesiejuk). (shrink)

In this article I analyse current efforts in cognitive neuroscience to explore the organic and cognitive processes involved in problem-solving. This analysis highlights a problem with assuming that cognitive processes can be wholly explained once one has explained organic processes. Reflection on scientific performance suggests how this problem can be evaded. This reflection on performance can also provide a paradigm for future neuroscientific research leading to a more detailed account of how brain locales and activities can be correlated with conscious (...) cognitive acts. (shrink)

The paper is an introduction to the third issue of the Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts. The authors give an account of the theories that have most enriched the study of images since the second half of the twentieth century: analytical philosophy and visual culture studies. A distinction is made between the two philosophical traditions. On the one hand, in particular within the context of analytic philosophy, images have been studied as single entities in relationship (...) with both a referent and the perceptual or interpretive abilities of an observer. On the other hand, thanks in particular to the iconographic tradition inaugurated by Aby Warburg, images have been analyzed in their multiplicity, in their mutual relationship, both synchronically and diachronically. (shrink)

Everyday media consumption leaves no doubt that the perception of moving images from various media is characterized by experience and understanding. Corresponding research in this field has shown that the stimulus patterns flooding in on us are not only processed mentally, but also bodily. Building on this, the following study argues that incoming stimuli are processed not only visually, but multimodally, with all senses, and moreover affectively. The classical binding of a sensory organ to a medium, on whose delimitation the (...) common understanding of multimodality is based, is thus abolished. Can arguments for this assumption be found? Building on the research of cultural anthropologist Ernst Cassirer and his successors, the two American philosophers Susanne K. Langer and John M. Krois, and supported by research from the life sciences in which, in parallel, the arts also play an important role in understanding image formation, as in the work of Heinz Werner and, following on from this, in the more recent research of the child psychologist Daniel N. Stern in collaboration with mirror neuron research by the group of neuroscientists around Giacomo Rizzolatti in Parma, justifications for this will be provided. What the multimodal processing of film images is concretely based on will finally be made clear by means of an exemplary analysis of a video film by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. It aims to prove, that the prerequisites for the thesis can only lie in the fact, that both the modes of perception (visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory) as well as the medially conditioned modes of image formation are based on non-discursive, formal-abstract structures that are also processed affectively. At the same time, the analysis thus shows how the selection and composition of the vital experienced forms can provide information about the socio-culturally shaped self-image of the producer and the viewer. (shrink)

There is the tension between, on the one hand, Wittgenstein’s not giving theoretical weight to metaphor, and on the other, his exuberant use of it. On a more fundamental level, there is a straightforward contradiction between Wittgenstein’s claim of the primordial literalness of everyday language, and his stress on the multiplicity and flexibility of language-games. Wittgenstein’s problem was that he did not succeed in making his ideas on metaphor, and indeed his ideas on metaphor and images, converge with the main (...) drift of TS 227 (the so-called ‘Part I’ of the so-called ‘Philosophical Investigations’). It was this divergence, I believe, that prevented him from rounding out his later philosophy. (shrink)

As soon as you believe an imagination to be nonfictional, this imagination becomes your ontological theory of the reality. Your ontological theory (of the reality) can describe a system as the reality. However, actually this system is only a theory/conceptual-space/imagination/visual-imagery of yours, not the actual reality (i.e., the thing-in-itself). An ontological theory (of the reality) actually only describes your (subjective/mental) imagination/visual-imagery/conceptual-space. An ontological theory of the reality, is being described as a situation model (SM). There (...) is no way to prove/disprove that there is only one reality, or there are two realities (i.e., “subjective reality” and “objective reality”). So, every ontology talk/theory/imagination about the two realities is only a talk/theory/imagination – we will never know whether it is true or not. The conventionally-called “physical/objective reality/world” around my conventionally-called “physical/objective body” is actually a geometric mathematical model (being generated/mathematically-modeled by my brain) – it's actually a subset/component/part/element of my brain’s mind/consciousness/manifest-image. Our cosmos is an autonomous objective parallel computing automaton (aka state machine) which evolves by itself automatically/unintentionally – wave-particle duality and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle can be explained under this SM of my brain. Each elementary particle (as a building block of our cosmos) is an autonomous mathematical entity itself (i.e., a thing in itself). Our cosmos has the same nature as a Game of Life system – both are autonomous objective parallel-computing automata. Cosmos (as a state machine) is indistinguishable from a digital simulation – my consciousness (as something nonphysical) is not cosmos (as a state machine). If we are happy to accept randomness/stochasticity, then it is obviously possible that all other worlds in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) actually do not exist (objectively). As one metaphysical option, we can treat all other worlds as subjective only (even if they are actually objective). Under the context of this metaphysical option, we are only living in one world (i.e., the world we are currently living in; this world) – we are not living in many worlds at the same time parallelly. Under the context of this metaphysical option, there is only one possible future. The relationship among any number of elementary particles, is governed/described by Schrodinger equation. If (in theory) Schrodinger equation can’t be used to reliably forecast whether I will go to McDonald for dinner in this world (based on the current state of all elementary particles of the cosmos), then what can Schrodinger equation do? The conventionally-called “space” does not exist objectively. “Time” and “matter” are not physical. Consciousness is the subjective-form (aka quale) of the mathematical models (of the objective cosmos) which are intracorporeally/subjectively used by the control logic of a Turing machine’s program fatedly. A Turing machine’s mind/consciousness/manifest-image or deliberate decisions/choices should not be able to actually/objectively change/control/drive the (autonomous or fated) worldline of any elementary particle within this world (i.e., the world we are currently living in, under the context of MWI). Besides the Schrodinger equation (or another mathematical equation/function which is yet to be discovered) which is a valid/correct/factual causality of our cosmos/state-machine, every other causality (of our cosmos/state-machine) is either invalid/incorrect/counterfactual or can be proved by deductive inference based on the Schrodinger equation (or the aforementioned yet-to-be-discovered mathematical equation/function) only. Closed causality entails no causality. Consciousness plays no causal role (“epiphenomenalism”), or in other words, any cognitive/behavioural activity can in principle be carried out without consciousness (“conscious inessentialism”). If the “loop quantum gravity” theory is correct, then time/space does not actually/objectively exist in the objective-evolution of the objective cosmos, or in other words, we should not use the subjective/mental concept of “time”, “state” or “space” to describe/imagine the objective-evolution of our cosmos. (shrink)

Advanced medical imaging, such as CT, fMRI and PET, has undergone enormous progress in recent years, both in accuracy and utilization. Such techniques often bring with them an illusion of immediacy, the idea that the body and its diseases can be directly inspected. In this paper we target this illusion and address the issue of the reliability of advanced imaging tests as knowledge procedures, taking positron emission tomography in oncology as paradigmatic case study. After individuating a suitable notion of reliability, (...) we argue that PET is a highly theory-laden and non-immediate knowledge procedure, in spite of the photographic-like quality of the images it delivers; the diagnostic conclusions based on the interpretation of PET images are population-dependent; PET images require interpretation, which is inherently observer-dependent and therefore variable. We conclude with a three-step methodological proposal for enhancing the reliability of advanced medical imaging. (shrink)

My topic is a certain view about mental images: namely, the ‘Multiple Use Thesis’. On this view, at least some mental image-types, individuated in terms of the sum total of their representational content, are potentially multifunctional: a given mental image-type, individuated as indicated, can serve in a variety of imaginative-event-types. As such, the presence of an image is insufficient to individuate the content of those imagination-events in which it may feature. This picture is argued for, or (more (...) usually) just assumed to be true, by Christopher Peacocke, Michael Martin, Paul Noordhof, Bernard Williams, Alan White, and Tyler Burge. It is also presupposed by more recent authors on imagination such as Amy Kind, Peter Kung and Neil Van Leeuwen. I reject various arguments for the Multiple Use Thesis, and conclude that instead we should endorse SINGLE: a single image-type, individuated in terms of the sum total of its intrinsic representational content, can serve in only one imagination event-type, whose content coincides exactly with its own, and is wholly determined by it. Plausibility aside, the interest of this thesis is also in its iconoclasm, as well as the challenge it poses for the diverse theories that rest on the truth of the Multiple Use Thesis. (shrink)

In the Timaeus, Plato’s Timaeus offers an account of the sensible world in terms of “images” of forms. Often, images are taken to be particulars: either objects or particular property instances (tropes). Contrary to this trend, I argue that images are general characteristics which are immanent in the receptacle, or bundles of such characteristics. Thus, the entire sensible world can be analysed in terms of immanent general characteristics, the receptacle, and forms. Hence, for Timaeus, fundamentally, there are no sensible particulars. (...) I end by arguing that my interpretation is compatible with Timaeus’ construction of sensible entities from triangles. (shrink)

During the Fifties and the Early Sixties Hans Jonas developed a theory of man based on a series of concepts as separation of form from matter, image and symbol. By reflecting on these themes, Jonas seems to refer to the aesthetic abilities man embodies as the essence of human life. In this article I try to analyse Jonas’ thoughts on man and to determine to what extent it is possible to consider his theory as an aesthetic anthropology. (...) Eventually, I discuss what Aesthetics may win by directing its attention to this author. (shrink)

This paper proposes a parallel between the theories of pictorial representation put forward by Edmund Husserl and Richard Wollheim. By doing so, it aims to facilitate a dialogue that can provide some new elements for an appropriate understanding of threefold seeing-in. The first section offers a comprehensive interpretation of Husserl’s theory of image-consciousness. This experience is considered a threefold perceptual phantasy, different from perception and sign-consciousness. The second section presents a review of Wollheim’s theory of twofold seeing-in (...) and addresses a possible ambiguity in his notion of thing represented. Finally, the third section discusses two topics that result from this parallel: first, the characteristics of the configurational and recognitional folds in a seeing-in experience, and second, the possibility of their ‘mixture’ with phantasy. As a result, I propose a different account of threefold seeing-in: I suggest that the configurational and the recognitional folds should be considered aspects or intentions of seeing-in, and that the configurational aspect corresponds to the intention to the image-object. (shrink)

[Pre-peer review draft available to download.] Our imaginative capacities shape the making of images, while the making of images has the ability to shape our imaginative capacities. What are the connections between vision and mental visual images that allow for this traffic between the contents of our minds and external images? And how are image-makers able to exploit the distinctive powers of imagery, to extend the modes of representation that are available to us, and hence also to extend the (...) resources upon which our imaginations can draw? The chapter explores various aspects of those issues. It starts by exploring “visual imagery” as a general category; and it identifies one very striking range of cases that encompasses both suitable mental and nonmental visual images. It develops a philosophical account of what is distinctive about the range of visual images thus identified. Subsequent sections then use the resulting ideas to investigate some of the ways in which various strategies for creating visual images exploit in remarkably inventive ways possibilities that are latent within the general phenomenon of imagistic representation. (shrink)

Art plays a significant role in Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, a major part of which may be interpreted as a proposal for the revision of religious belief. In this paper, I identify within Murdoch’s philosophical writings five distinct but related ways in which great art can assist moral/religious belief and practice: art can reveal to us “the world as we were never able so clearly to see it before”; this revelatory capacity provides us with evidence for the existence of the (...) Good, a metaphor for a transcendent reality of which God was also a symbol; art is a “hall of reflection” in which “everything under the sun can be examined and considered”; art provides us with an analogue for the way in which we should try to perceive our world; and art enables us to transcend our selfish concerns. I consider three possible objections: that Murdoch’s theory is not applicable to all forms of art; that the meaning of works of art is often ambiguous; and that there is disagreement about what constitutes a great work of art. I argue that none of these objections are decisive, and that all forms of art have at least the potential to furnish us with important tools for developing the insight required to live a moral/religious life. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that images have an ontological support by which they obtain an independent existence from the mind. In accordance with the new theories of aesthetics, we will see that the object of art is taken as an object of thought. Image has an important role in the existence of the work of art; therefore the image becomes an object of thought. To show how the image is independent from the mind (...) or to show how it is not a mind-dependent object, the analysis has to start from the pre-ontological level of the work of art in order to understand the existence of images in correlation with the work of art. At the beginning there is only the object. The object is the work of art before its concretization. It is not nature; it is the natural support of art. From this point of view, the role of the image can be explored in all ontological stages of the work of art. Firstly, it can be argued that the intuition of the artist is the image of the idea underlying the work of art. The intentional image is a subjective image. Secondly, it seems that people can see or have in mind different images (representations) referring to a work of art. This is possible in time and space and implies cultural differences, historical events and so on. A question arises: what supports the intentional image? One answer put forward is that the mind is the support of the image, but it seems that the original intentional image has something that can make other intentional images possible, an infinite number of representations, in other words an infinite number of images. The aim of this paper is to show that we can talk about an original intentional image (the first idea), intentional images (the representations of the work of art in time and space), and the transcendental image which can be defined as the ontological condition for the existence of the intentional image. At the end I will argue that the transcendental image is the support or the entity which offers the ontological conditions necessary for all intentional images. -/- Tags: intentional image, transcendental image, ontology, object and subjectivity. (shrink)

Given certain standard assumptions-that particular sentences are meaningful, for example, and do genuinely self-attribute their own falsity-the paradoxes appear to show intriguing patterns of generally unstable semantic behavior. In what follows we want to concentrate on those patterns themselves: the pattern of the Liar, for example, which if assumed either true or false appears to oscillate endlessly between truth and falsehood.

Just as it’s possible to understand novel sentences without having heard them before, it’s possible to understand novel pictures without having seen them before. But these possibilities are often supposed to have totally different explanations: whereas the ability to understand novel sentences is supposed to be explained by tacit knowledge of a compositional theory of meaning for their language, the ability to understand novel pictures is supposed to be explained differently. In this paper I argue against this disanalogy: insofar (...) as the ability to understand novel sentences is explained by tacit knowledge of a compositional theory, I argue, so is the ability to understand novel pictures. (shrink)

More than 50 years after the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this volume assesses the adequacy of the Kuhnian model in explaining certain aspects of science, particularly the social and epistemic aspects of science. One argument put forward is that there are no good reasons to accept Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis, according to which scientific revolutions involve the replacement of theories with conceptually incompatible ones. Perhaps, therefore, it is time for another “decisive transformation in the (...) image of science by which we are now possessed.” Only this time, the image of science that needs to be transformed is the Kuhnian one. Does the Kuhnian image of science provide an adequate model of scientific practice? If we abandon the Kuhnian picture of revolutionary change and incommensurability, what consequences would follow from that vis-à-vis our understanding of scientific knowledge as a social endeavour? -/- The essays in this collection continue this debate, offering a critical examination of the arguments for and against the Kuhnian image of science as well as their implications for our understanding of science as a social and epistemic enterprise. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a syncretistic theory of depiction, which combines the merits of the main paradigms which have hitherto faced themselves on this issue, namely the perceptualist and semioticist approaches. The syncretistic theory indeed takes from the former its stress on experiential factors and from the latter its stress on conventional factors. But the theory is even more syncretistic than this, for the way it accounts for the experiential factor vindicates several claims defended by (...) different perceptualist theories. In a nutshell, according to the syncretistic theory a picture depicts its subject iff i) it is transformed into an entity-cum-meaning and ii) one has the twofold experience of seeing that subject in the picture qua noninterpreted entity, the image, just in case one consciously misrecognizes it in consciously seeing that image, for that subject resembles the image in some grouping properties (originally labelled Gestalt-qualities in psychology). By appealing to objective resemblance in grouping properties, the theory can vindicate what are nowadays taken to be the most neglected doctrines in the perceptualist camp: objective resemblance theories. By appealing, moreover, to conscious misrecognition, the theory not only squares with both the seeing-in and the recognition theories of depiction, but it also shows the grain of truth in illusion theories of depiction, since conscious misrecognition is a kind of perceptual illusion. (shrink)

In this paper, a particular case of deceptive use of images – namely, misattributions – will be taken in consideration. An explicitly wrong attribution (“This is a picture of the event X”, this not being the case) is obviously a lie or a mistaken description. But there are less straightforward and more insidious cases in which a false attribution is held to be acceptable, in particular when pictures are also used in their exemplary, general meaning, opposed to their indexical function (...) in referring to a specific event. In fact, the boundary between referential use and symbolic-exemplificative use is not always clear-cut, and it often becomes the subject of ideological dispute. The main point that this paper would like to do is that in some circumstances there is a deep-seated belief that images that are clearly misattributed could still be legitimately used to refer to the fact, even if this is not the case. This twisted epistemological stance, that I will summarize under the oxymoronic concept of “emblematic evidence”, is both the product of political and tribal polarization in the ideological debate, and the result of a shift in our understanding of what photographic images should do. (shrink)

Mythopoetry, the imagistic voice of the muses which manifests in myth and natural poetry, has been invoked as an impression of ideal curriculum with which to cherish intimate, vital experience (and to oppose its exile from educational life). In this statement, I intend to see through the pleasant surface of the label, mythopoetry, to see what image may lie just out of sight, beyond the "inspired writing" that mythopoetry implies. Beyond words themselves, meaning is found in sound and in (...) expressive representation. “Music, when soft voices die, / Vibrates in the memory” (Shelley). (shrink)

There is a difference between merely thinking that P and really grasping that P. For example, Jackson's (1982) black-and-white Mary cannot (before leaving her black-and-white room) fully grasp what it means to say that fire engines are red, but she can perfectly well entertain the thought that fire engines are red. The contrast between merely thinking and grasping is especially salient in the context of certain moral decisions. For example, an individual who grasps the plight of starving children thanks to (...) evocative images seems much more likely to donate for the children's benefit than someone who is merely told about their plight. This paper offers a phenomenal account of grasping according to which grasping a content (whether a proposition or concept) consists in one's thoughts about the content being constituted by phenomenal experiences of constituents of the content. This account improves on earlier phenomenal accounts of grasping (Bourget 2017a, 2018) by allowing for partial grasping and generalizing to concepts. The paper also addresses objections to phenomenal accounts of grasping, including the objection that recent developments in AI technology show that consciousness is irrelevant to grasping and understanding. (shrink)

In 2016, a multidisciplinary body of scholars within the International Commission on Stratigraphy—the Anthropocene Working Group—recommended that the world officially recognize the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch. The most contested claim about the Anthropocene, that humans are a major geological and environmental force on par with natural forces, has proven to be a hotbed for discussion well beyond the science of geology. One reason for this is that it compels many natural and social scientists to confront problems and systems (...) that transgress traditional disciplinary boundaries, and as a result, calls for interdisciplinary research are now gaining traction. Proponents of such transgressions have dubbed the new scientific order that will result “Anthropocene Science”, and rhetoric notwithstanding, such discussions exemplify how recent changes within science justify rethinking a prevailing image of how science is done, and with it, the working relationship between scholars in the humanities, natural scientists, and social scientists. (shrink)

The study zeroed in on the perception of college students who are exposed to sights of poverty in their immediate environment. The student-participants were asked to provide their perception, understanding, and behaviour towards poverty using the photographs that they took on their own. In qualitative research practice, this methodology is called photo elicitation. It was revealed, among others, that the participants have shown negative perceptions about poverty. They strongly felt bad about each photograph that they took and what these images (...) portrayed. The participants visualized their community and thereby weaved analyses and opinions that encroached on various philosophical and sociological theories. There are four interrelated dominant images that were drawn: exteriority image, dirt-poor image, victim-blaming image, and hand-to-mouth image. (shrink)

Critical notice of a collection of responses to Bas van Fraassen's The Scientific Image followed by Van Fraasen's replies. Thanks to van Fraassen, empiricism in the philosophy of science has again become a force to reckon with, his brand of 'constructive empiricism' posing a serious challenge to the realist option. In Part I of the book, ten scientific realists of various persuasions defend the view that science provides us with information about the realities behind the appearances as well as (...) the appearances themselves while in Part II van Fraassen expounds the epistemology that informs The Scientific Image and explains his claim that the correct epistemic attitude towards theories about unobservable entities is one of 'acceptance as empirically adequate' rather than 'belief as true.'. (shrink)

The role of intuition in Kant’s account of experience receives perennial philosophical attention. In this essay, I present the textual case that Kant also makes extensive reference to what he terms “images” that are generated by the imagination. Beyond this, as I argue, images are fundamentally distinct from empirical and pure intuitions. Images and empirical intuitions differ in how they relate to sensation, and all images (even “pure images”) actually depend on pure intuitions. Moreover, all images differ from intuitions in (...) their structure or format. I then turn to a question that naturally arises on the resulting view: if the imagination produces images, and if images are fundamentally distinct from intuitions, then how do intuitions relate to the imagination? I outline reasons for thinking that intuitions and their essential features do not depend on the imagination at all. Though this essay does not decisively argue for this thesis, the resulting view provides a clear account of the distinction between the senses and the imagination in Kant’s theory of sensibility. (shrink)

The overarching theme of Locke’s Image of the World, by Michael Jacovides, is that Locke’s belief in the best science of his day shapes his philosophy in important ways. Jacovides contends that “by understanding the scientific background to Locke’s thoughts, we can better understand his work” (1), including both his positions and his arguments for those positions. To a lesser extent, Jacovides’s book also treats Locke as a case study in thinking about how much scientific theory should influence (...) philosophy. While much of the science Locke relies on is incomplete or problematic, and so leads him into errors, Jacovides is sympathetic to Locke’s approach of using the best scientific theories to help develop and justify his philosophical positions. Throughout the book Jacovides shows how science – Locke’s study of medicine, and later Boyle’s corpuscularianism, and then later Newton’s physics – influence Locke’s thinking on a variety of topics. The result is an impressive account of the history of science at a critical point in its development through the lens of one of the great philosophers of that time. (shrink)

The ecologist today finds scarce ground safe from controversy. Decisions must be made about what combination of data, goals, methods, and theories offers them the foundations and tools they need to construct and defend their research. When push comes to shove, ecologists often turn to philosophy to justify why it is their approach that is scientific. Karl Popper’s image of science as bold conjectures and heroic refutations is routinely enlisted to justify testing hypotheses over merely confirming them. One of (...) the most controversial theories in contemporary science is the Neutral Theory of Ecology. Its chief developer and proponent, Stephen Hubbell, presents the neutral theory as a bold conjecture that has so far escaped refutation. Critics of the neutral theory claim that it already stands refuted, despite what the dogmatic neutralists say. We see the controversy through a Popperian lens. But Popper’s is an impoverished philosophy of science that distorts contemporary ecology. -/- The controversy surrounding the neutral theory actually rests on a methodological fault. There is a strong but messy historical link between the concepts of being neutral and being null in biology, and Hubbell perpetuates this when he claims that the neutral theory is supplies the appropriate null for testing alternative theories. What method is being followed here? There are three contenders: -/- Null hypothesis testing tests for whether a there is a pattern to be explained. Null modeling tests for whether a process is causally relevant to a pattern. Baseline modeling apportions relative responsibility to multiple processes each relevant to a pattern. -/- Whether the neutral theory supplies an appropriate “null” depends upon whether null hypothesis, null modeling, or baseline model is intended. These methods prescribe distinct inference patterns. If they are null hypothesis testing or null modeling, the neutralists’s reasoning is invalid. If they are baseline modeling, the justification of a crucial assumption remains opaque. Either way, the neutral-null connection is being exploited rhetorically to privilege the neutral theory over its rivals. Clarifying the reasoning immunizes us against the rhetoric and foregrounds the underlying virtues of the neutralist approach to ecology. -/- The Popperian lens distorts theoretical development as dogmatism. Lakatos’s view of science as the development of research programmes clarifies the epistemology of the neutral theory. Focusing philosophical attention on the neutralist research programme illuminates (1) the synchronic uses of the neutral theory to make predictions and give descriptions and explanations; (2) its diachronic development in response to theoretical innovation and confrontation with data; (3) its complex relationships to alternative theories. For example, baseline modeling is now seen to be its primary explanatory heuristic. The justification for baseline modeling with the neutral theory, previously hidden from view, is seen in the logic of in the neutralist research programme. (shrink)

I criticize Kuhn’s (1962/1970) taxonomic incommensurability thesis as follows. (i) His argument for it is neither deductively sound nor inductively correct. (ii) It clashes with his account of scientific development that employs evolutionary theory. (iii) Even if two successive paradigms are taxonomically incommensurable, they have some overlapping theoretical claims, as selectivists point out. (iv) Since scientific revolutions were rare in the recent past, as historical optimists observe, they will also be rare in the future. Where scientific revolution is rare, (...) taxonomic incommensurability is rare, and taxonomic commensurability is common. For these reasons, taxonomic commensurability rather than incommensurability should be advanced as an image of science. (shrink)

In searching for the origins of current conceptions of science in the history of physics, one encounters a remarkable phenomenon. A typical view today is that theoretical knowledge-claims have only relativized validity. Historically, however, this thesis was supported by proponents of a conception of nature that today is far from typical, a mechanistic conception within which natural phenomena were to be explained by the action of mechanically moved matter. Two of these proponents, Hermann von Helmholtz and his pupil Heinrich Hertz, (...) contributed significantly to the modernization of the conception of science. Paradigmatic for their common contribution to this development is the way in which they employed the concept of image. By considering the origin and the different meanings of this concept we may trace a line of development which begins with Helmholtz's original claim that a universally and forever valid theory provides a unique representation of nature. It continues with the realization that the status of scientific knowledge is capable of revision; and it arrives at Hertz's admission that a variety of theories over a domain of objects is possible, at least at times. (shrink)

The article explores the striking coincidences in Heidegger's and Blanchot's account of the image as death mask. The analysis of the respective theories of the image brings forth two radically divergent conceptions of thinking as "laying patent" (Heidegger) and of thinking as "laying bare" (Blanchot).

The hope of finding new methods of predicting the course of historical processes could be connected with the recent developments of the theory of self-organisation, also called synergetics. It provides us with knowledge of constructive principles of co-evolution of complex social systems, co-evolution of countries and geopolitical regions being at different stages of development, integration of the East and the West, the North and the South. Due to the growth of population on the Earth in blow-up regime, the general (...) and local instability of development is increasing. The social world seems to go towards a unity, a sustainable commonwealth through pulsations rather than monotonously. It goes via alternation of disintegration, even if partial, and getting more powerful integrations of structures. There is a path of multiple reduction of temporal and material expenses, a path of a resonant excitation of desirable and — no less important — feasible in a given social system structure. In the case of the right topology of integration of geopolitical structures an arising whole organisation can accelerate its tempo of evolution. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This paper investigates the degree to which information theory, and the derived uses that make it work as a metaphor of our age, can be helpful in thinking about God’s immanence and transcendance. We ask when it is possible to say that a consciousness has to be behind the information we encounter. If God is to be thought about as a communicator of information, we need to ask whether a communication system has to pre-exist to the divine and impose (...) itself to God. If we want God to be Creator, and not someone who would work like a human being, ‘creating’ will mean sustaining in being as much the channel, the material system, as the message. Is information control? It seems that God’s actions are not going to be informational control of everything. To clarify the issue, we attempt to distinguish two kinds of ‘genialities’ in nature, as a way to evaluate the likelihood of God from nature. We investigate concepts and images of God, in terms of the history of ideas but also in terms of philosophical theology, metaphysics, and religious ontology. (shrink)

Christopher Gauker argues that no concept can be extracted from perceptual experience and that imagistic thought cannot draw boundaries between one kind and another. Here, it is argued, on the contrary, that images have extension and are consequently Fregean concepts. Hume’s theory of abstraction as indifference is offered as an account of extra-sensory concepts. Finally, it is argued that modern theories of sensory data processing run parallel to Kant’s idea of synthesis as a pre-condition for perception.

In the history of technologies and materials the transfer from soft to hard plays a central role. From a dialectic point of view it seems to be a clear-cut matter of one overpowering the other, yet conceptually things are more convoluted. What we call the chiastic model of history is driven by the exchange of empowerings where the one inhabits the other. By taking the most antithetical examples of materiality from architectural history, the plastic and the lithic, we begin to (...) understand the psychological aspects of this exchange: a history of dreams, imagination and even hallucination. The technologies involving the plastic offer an enormous array of such imagery, which we start to analyze as part of a fundamental aspect of technology itself. Using the notion of the pharmakon, as developed by Derrida and Stiegler, we study its ambiguities: technology by its nature is both remedy and poison, cure and addiction. Accepting this ambivalence is the explicit goal of pharmacology, which makes the history of soft and hard one of prosthetic extension as much as of mimetic absorption. We will be guided by two architectural fantasists to investigate the what we call the pharmacology of architecture, J. G. Ballard’s fantasy of a house automaton in the case of the plastic, and G. B. Piranesi’s hallucinations of a reversed archeology in that of the lithic. (shrink)

This article seeks the origin, in the theories of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Descartes, and Berkeley, of two-stage theories of spatial perception, which hold that visual perception involves both an immediate representation of the proximal stimulus in a two-dimensional ‘‘sensory core’’ and also a subsequent perception of the three dimensional world. The works of Ibn al-Haytham, Descartes, and Berkeley already frame the major theoretical options that guided visual theory into the twentieth century. The field of visual perception was the first (...) area of what we now call psychology to apply mathematics, through geometrical models as used by Euclid, Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham, and Descartes (among others). The article shows that Kepler’s discovery of the retinal image, which revolutionized visual anatomy and entailed fundamental changes in visual physiology, did not alter the basic structure of theories of spatial vision. These changes in visual physiology are advanced especially in Descartes' Dioptrics and his L'Homme. Berkeley develops a radically empirist theory vision, according to which visual perception of depth is learned through associative processes that rely on the sense of touch. But Descartes and Berkeley share the assertion that there is a two-dimensional sensory core that is in principle available to consciousness. They also share the observation that we don't usually perceived this core, but find depth and distance to be phenomenally immediate, a point they struggle to accommodate theoretically. If our interpretation is correct, it was not a change in the theory of the psychology of vision that engendered the idea of a sensory core, but rather the introduction of the theory into a new metaphysical context. (shrink)

First described by Galton in 1880 and then remaining unnoticed for a century, recent investigations in neuroscience have shown that a condition called aphantasia appears in certain individuals, which causes them to be unable to experience visual mental imagery. Comparing aphantasia to hyperphantasia – i.e., photo-like memory – and considering the neurological basis of perceptual phenomena, we are revisiting Hume's division of perceptions into impressions and ideas. By showing different vivacities of mental phenomena and comparing them to neurological research, we (...) are stating that not only impressions and ideas differ "in the degrees of force and liveliness", but ideas and impressions amongst themselves as well. Such a gradual range of perceptions and mental images bears significant consequences for not only representational theory and historical interpretations, but linguistics and semiotics as well. (shrink)

In their reviews of The Kuhnian Image of Science: Time for a Decisive Transformation? (2018), both Markus Arnold (2018) and Amanda Bryant (2018) complain that the contributors who criticize Kuhn’s theory of scientific change have misconstrued his philosophy of science and they praise those who seek to defend the Kuhnian image of science. In what follows, then, I would like to address their claims about misconstruing Kuhn’s theory of scientific change. But my focus here, as in (...) the book, will be the evidence (or lack thereof) for the Kuhnian image of science. I will begin with Arnold’s review and then move on to Bryant’s review. (shrink)

The analysis of multimodal argumentation in advertising is a crucial and problematic area of research. While its importance is growing in a time characterized by images and pictorial messages, the methods used for interpreting and reconstructing the structure of arguments expressed through verbal and visual means capture only isolated dimensions of this complex phenomenon. This paper intends to propose and illustrate a methodology for the reconstruction and analysis of “double-mode” arguments in advertisements, combining the instruments developed in social semiotics, pragmatics, (...) and argumentation theory. An advertisement is processed through a five-step path. The analysis of its context, text genre, and images leads to a first representation of the messages that it encodes both pictorially and verbally (step 1). These first semantic representations are further enriched by including their polyphonic articulations and presuppositions (step 2), their explicatures (step 3), and their dialogical functions and illocutionary forces (step 4). These pragmatic steps retrieve the commitment structure of the ad, which allows a further argument analysis conducted through argumentation schemes (step 5). (shrink)

We investigate the fundamental relationship between philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of nature, arguing for a position in which the latter encompasses the former. Two traditions are set against each other, one is natural aesthetics, whose covering philosophy is Idealism, and the other is the aesthetics of nature, the position defended in this article, with the general program of a comprehensive philosophy of nature as its covering theory. Our approach is philosophical, operating within the framework of the ontology of (...) the process of the production of art, especially the views of Antonin Artaud, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Deleuze, and Guattari. We interrogate Dilthey and Worringer while outlining an ontology of art based on the production of nonhuman images and a nonpersonal experiential field of nature. (shrink)

In this paper, I will examine the aesthetic implications of the theories which regard the city as an image. Essentially, I will focus on the positions of the two practitioners, Kevin Lynch and Juhani Pallasmaa, who are an urban planner and an architect respectively, in order to confront two very different approaches to the ‘image’; namely, an empirical approach and a phenomenological one. I am interested in what the city becomes when it is looked upon as an (...) class='Hi'>image and I will reflect on the experiences of the city‑image in its various aspects. The aim of this discussion is an attempt to outline certain research areas for exploring the aesthetics of the city centred on the image, with the practitioners’ theories enabling us to widen the scope of this exploration. (shrink)

Neuroscience investigates how neuronal processing circuits work, but it has problems explaining experiences this way. For example, it hasn’t explained how colour and shape circuits bind together in visual processing, nor why colours and other qualia are experienced so differently yet processed by circuits so similarly, nor how to get from processing circuits to pictorial images spread across inner space. Some theorists turn from these circuits to their electromagnetic fields to deal with such difficulties concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, privacy, (...) and causality. They include Kohler, Libet, Popper, Lindahl, Arhem, Charman, Pockett, John, McFadden, Fingelkurts, Maxwell, and Jones. They’re classifiable as computationalist, reductionist, dualist, realist, interactionist, epiphenomenalist, globalist, and localist. However, they’ve never been analysed together as a whole, which hinders evaluations of them. This article tries to rectify this. It concludes that while field theories face challenges, they aren’t easily dismissed, for they draw on considerable evidence and may avoid serious problems in neuroscience concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, causality, and ontology. (shrink)

Brand image constitutes one of the most salient, over-defined, heavily explored and multifariously operationalized conceptual constructs in marketing theory and practice. In this Chapter, definitions of brand image that have been offered by marketing scholars will be critically addressed in the context of a culturally oriented discussion, informed by the semiotic notion of iconicity. This cultural bend, in conjunction with the concept’s semiotic contextualization, are expected both to dispel terminological confusions in the either inter-changeable or fuzzily differentiated (...) employment of such terms as brand image, symbol, icon, as well as to address the function of brand image at a deeper level than a mere construct to be operationalized in quantitative studies of purchase drivers. This shift in focus is coupled with a critical turn from the cogito-centric view of the consuming subject through the cognitivist lens of the AI metaphor as decision-making centre at the origin of largely conscious meaning-making, in favor of a psychoanalytically informed approach that considers figurativity as an essential process whereby brand image is formed. In these terms, brand image will be intimately linked to brand images as figurative multimodal expressive units and rhetorical tropes, as figurative syntax, that are responsible for shaping an idiolectal brand language, as well as to distinctive levels of iconicity as textual condition of possibility of a brand language. In order to understand the role of iconicity as fundamental condition of brand textuality, rather than just a procedure for spawning brand images, the discussion is contextualized in a wider framework involving the culturally situated source of brand images, how they become correlated with brand image concepts and how correlations between brand images and brand image result in brand knowledge structures (Keller 1998). This opening up of the discussion on iconicity is enacted against the background of what I call the Brand Imaginarium which involves: (i) a critical engagement with the dominant cognitivist perspective in branding research that prioritizes individual memory in brand knowledge formation, through a cultural branding lens that involves two additional types of memory, viz. communicative and cultural (ii) a critical engagement with the cognitivist perspective on brand knowledge formation that prioritizes conscious processing of stimuli (as ‘brute facts’, rather than as already semiotized expressive units) in a cognitive mechanism from which the faculty of imagination has been expelled, by restoring the importance of imagination in brand knowledge formation, and, concomitantly, by showing that the highly figurative language of brands may not be researched thoroughly unless imagination is posited anew as processing correlate (iii) the adoption of an expansionist approach to the role of the imaginary in brand knowledge formation, from cognitive (or psychic) faculty, to a more sociologically inclined process of inter-subjective mirroring, and concomitantly as imaginary social significations (Castoriades 1985) that are shared by culturally conditioned and habituated subjects that engage in meaningful cultural practices, rather than individual processing monads. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by the (...) power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought. (shrink)

Whereas intersectionality presents a fruitful framework for theoretical and empirical research, some of its fundamental features present great confusion. The term ‘intersectionality’ and its metaphor of the crossroads seem to reproduce what it aims to avoid: conceiving categories as separate. Despite the attempts for developing new metaphors that illustrate the mutual constitution relation among categories, gender, race or class keep being imagined as discrete units that intersect, mix or combine. Here we identify two main problems in metaphors: the lack of (...) differentiation between positions and effects and the problem of reification. We then present a new metaphor that overcomes these two problems: a basket of apples. We argue that considering social positions as the diverse properties of different apples avoids reification by considering categories as properties and not as objects themselves, and at the same time it allows us to think about the effects dimension from a plural and contextual approach. With this shift, we propose a reframing of the discussion in debates on intersectionality theory on the relation among categories, their in/separability and fragmentation. (shrink)

The idea that God creates out of Himself seems quite attractive. Many find great appeal in holding that a temporally finite universe must have a cause, but I think there’s also great appeal in holding that there’s pre-existent stuff out of which that universe is created—and what could that stuff be but part of God? Though attractive, the idea of creation ex deo hasn’t been taken seriously by theistic philosophers. Perhaps this is because it seems too vague—‘could anything enlightening be (...) said about what those parts are?’—or objectionable—‘wouldn’t creating out of those parts lessen or destroy God?’ Drawing from Stephen Kosslyn and Michael Tye’s work on the ontology of mental images, I respond to the above questions by developing a theory on which God creates the universe out of His mental imagery. (shrink)