Alberto Voltolini (2021) has recently claimed that mirrors are bona fide pictures, for they are grasped via what he identifies as the defining characteristic of a picture: a certain seeing-in experience. Voltolini refines the somewhat elusive concept of seeing-in, originally described by Wollheim, and then demonstrates its applicability to mirror experience. However, in this paper, I contend that Voltolini's improved version of seeing-in does not aptly describe the experience of viewing mirrors. In fact, according to the first aspect of Voltolini’s (...) reconceived seeing-in, the configurational fold of a seeing-in experience must be an enriched perception of the picture’s vehicle that grasps how the vehicle’s elements are perceptually arranged. But, contra Voltolini, I argue that this does not hold true for the experience of looking at mirrors. Indeed, when looking at mirrors, we don't perceive the configuration as an organizational structure; our visual system does not represent, even unconsciously, the properties of the mirror’s configuration as such. Mirror experience does not include an enriched perception of the picture’s vehicle; it does not grasp how the vehicle’s elements are perceptually arranged. My argument proceeds in two directions: firstly, through a phenomenological analysis of mirror experience and secondly, by corroborating these phenomenological observations with evidence from perceptual psychology. Thus, I conclude that if mirrors are to be considered bona fide pictures, it is not because they elicit a (reconceived) seeing-in experience. (shrink)

In The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality (2022), Grant Tavinor claims that VR is a technologically fancy kind of picturing and, more specifically, that VR headsets elicit proper seeing-in experiences. According to Tavinor, seeing a virtual environment through a stereoscopic headset elicits the same twofold experience as ordinary pictures: users simultaneously perceive the three-dimensional depicted scene – the virtual environment – and the bidimensional surface responsible for displaying such a scene. In this critical note, I argue that this is a wrong (...) characterization of the visual experience VR stereoscopic headsets elicit. I maintain that VR visual experiences are not twofold, but onefold. When using a VR headset, we do not perceive the configuration as an organizational structure; our visual system does not represent, even unconsciously, the properties of the configuration as such. My argument proceeds in two directions: first, through a phenomenological analysis of VR experience, and, second, by corroborating these phenomenological observations with evidence from perceptual psychology. I conclude that, if VR environments are to be considered bona fide pictures, it is not because they elicit a twofold seeing-in experience. (shrink)

Questo articolo si confronta con la seguente domanda: possono le menti degli altri animali essere oggetti legittimi di apprezzamento estetico? Nel rispondere, sostengo (a) che la mente di altre specie animali è qualcosa che possiamo effettivamente apprezzare; (b) che oggetto dell’apprezzamento in questi casi è duplice: da un lato, apprezziamo l’idoneità alla funzione (fitness for function), le peculiarità, le differenze e le sottigliezze del funzionamento delle altre menti e, dall’altro, apprezziamo l’attività immaginativa attraverso la quale cerchiamo di metterci nella prospettiva (...) dell’altro animale; e (c) che, come conseguenza di (b), la natura del nostro apprezzamento è anch’essa duplice: da un lato, è un’esperienza delle qualità estetiche che emergono da ciò che sappiamo sul funzionamento delle altre menti e, dall’altro, traiamo piacere dallo sforzo immaginativo in cui ci impegniamo nel cercare di metterci nella prospettiva dell’altro animale. (shrink)

Can static pictures depict motion and temporal properties? This is an open question that is becoming increasingly discussed in both aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. Theorists working on this issue have mainly focused on static pictures of dynamic scenes and streaky images – such as futurists’ paintings or long-exposure photographs. And yet, we could ask: if there is some success in creating an illusory impression of movement in a static image - as is the case in optical illusions of (...) movement, such as Bridget Riley’s Fall (1963: Tate, London), or Kitaoka’s Rotating Snakes Illusion - is this to say that such static images depict movement? As far as I know, no one working on the depiction of motion has specifically and systematically tackled motion-based illusions nor tried to answer this question. This paper considers two cases of optical illusions of movement and concludes that one of them is involved in the depiction of movement. While the declared goal of my analysis is to answer a quite circumscribed question, it is also the occasion to tackle motion-based illusions tout court - to account for the complex visual experiences they elicit and related phenomenology. Moreover, this account has interesting consequences for theorizing depiction and pictorial experience in general. In particular, it constitutes a counterexample to resemblance theories of depiction. (shrink)

Evolutionary aesthetics (EA) investigates the origins and evolution of aesthetic preferences and artistic behaviors, along with the underlying capacities that support these preferences and behaviors. EA is a multidisciplinary approach that intersects various disciplines – e.g. evolutionary psychology, biology, neurosciences, art history, archeology, anthropology, philosophical aesthetics – providing a comprehensive framework for understanding the deep-rooted biological and evolutionary underpinnings of human aesthetic preferences and artistic expressions. Central to EA, in fact, is the exploration of when, how and why aesthetic preferences (...) and artistic behaviors originated in human history, as well as understanding whether these behaviors are evolutionary adaptations, by-products of evolutionary processes, or nonbiological cultural products (Killin 2021; Richards 2022). (shrink)

Pictures are created objects that have the function of generating a perceptual experience. In this sense, they are “experiential artifacts” (Terrone forthcoming). The experience elicited by pictures – usually visual (but for non-visual pictorial experience see e.g. Lopes 1997) – is a composite perceptual experience, in which the “perception” of the depicted scene (which is not in front of us) is generated by and experienced along the perception of the marked surface (the object that is actually in front of us). (...) This experience is usually called a “pictorial experience”. A philosophical analysis of such an experience amounts to answering the following questions: How should we describe the phenomenology of pictorial experience? What is it like to experience pictures? How should the “perception” of the depicted scene be characterized? Is it really a form of perception? How does it relate to the perception of the marked surface? (shrink)