Online research in philosophy

On the Nature of Photographic Realism’ Kendall Walton argues that lack of mental-state involvement in the formation of photographic images is a quality that sets them apart from handmade images such as paintings or sketches. This paper defends and substantially develops this idea. It argues that viewers' knowledge of this objective character of the photographic process provides them with special warrant for the acceptance of first-order perceptual beliefs formed as a result of viewing photographic images. As well, it distinguishes between two different ways in which mental states can be involved in the formation of photographic images, and uses this distinction to ward off the objection that decisions about film type, composition, moment of exposure, etc. undermine the objectivity of the photographic process.

One central debate in cognitive science is over imagery. Do images constitute, or constitute evidence for, a distinctive, depictive form of mental representation? The most sophisticated advocacy of this view has been developed by Kosslyn and his coworkers. This paper focuses on his position and argues (i) that though Kosslyn has not developed a satisfactory account of depiction, there is nothing in principle unintelligible about the idea of depictive neural representation, but (ii) Kosslyn's model of imagery rescues the intelligibility of pictorialism at the cost of its explanatory power.

With admirable clarity, Pylyshyn shows that there is little evidence that mental imagery is strongly constrained to be analog. He urges that imagery must be considered part of a more general symbolic system. The ultimate solution to the challenges of image theory, however, rest on understanding the manner in which mental imagery is both a symbolic and an analog system.

This paper (1) sketches a phenomenological analysis of visual mental imagery; (2) applies this analysis to the mental imagery debate in cognitive science; (3) briefly sketches a neurophenomenological approach to mental imagery; and (4) compares the results of this discussion with Dennett’s heterophenomenology.

An introduction to the science and philosophy of mental imagery.

This paper approaches the problem of the ontology of the photographic image ‘post-digitalization’ historically, via a conception of photography as the historical totality of photographic forms. It argues, first, that photography is not best understood as a particular art or medium, but rather in terms of the form of the image it produces; second, that the photographic image is the main social form of the digital image (the current historically dominant form of the image in general); and third, that there is no fundamental ontological distinction regarding indexicality between photographically generated digital images and those of chemically based photography. ‘The anxiety about the real’ produced by digital imagery has its origins elsewhere, in the ontological peculiarities of the social form of value in societies based on relations of exchange. Distinguishing between the ‘event of capture’ and the ‘event of visualization’, it is argued that it is in its potential for an infinite multiplication of visualizations that the distinctiveness of the digital image lies. In the digital image, the infinite possibilities for social exchange generated by the abstraction of value from use finds an equivalent visual form.