Online research in philosophy

Congenitally blind people can make and understand ‘tactile pictures’ – representations form of raised ridges on flat surfaces. If made visible, these representations can serve as pictures for the sighted. Does it follow that we should take at face value the idea that they are pictures made for touch? I explore this question, and the related issue of the aesthetics of ‘tactile pictures’ by considering the role in both depiction and pictorial aesthetics of experience, and by asking how far the experience of those engaging with representations through touch can approximate to that of those engaging with them through sight.

According to R. G. Collingwood in The Principles of Art, art is the expression of emotion--a much-criticized view. I attempt to provide some groundwork for a defensible modern version of such a theory via some novel further criticisms of Collingwood, including the exposure of multiple ambiguities in his main concept of expression of emotion, and a demonstration that, surprisingly enough, his view is unable to account for genuinely creative artistic activities. A key factor in the reconstruction is a replacement of the concept of expression with that of interpretation: what artists do is to interpret, rather than express, their initial emotions, in creative ways that may go far beyond their initial impulses. Thus more broadly the paper attempts to show that the concept of interpretation is just as central to understanding artistic creativity as it is in the analysis of the critical appreciation of artworks.

Artworks have at least some necessary content properties, as do abstract entities such as propositions. But no concrete item, whether an object, event, process etc., could have any necessary content property. So no artwork could be identical with a concrete item. Hence artworks must be abstract. I also argue that artworks are only contingently connected with concrete items, just as propositions are only contingently linked to their linguistic tokens.

, George Dickie offers an account of artistic principles comprising both a description of their character and a description of the role they play in the evaluation of artworks. According to the former, artistic principles state that certain individual properties of artworks, in isolation from other properties, are always artistic merits; according to the latter, artistic principles serve as premises from which we infer that artworks have artistic merit. I argue not merely that Dickie 's account fails, but that any account comprising either component of Dickie's account fails. Because not every account of artistic principles need comprise either of Dickie's components, the success of my argument will not rule out every possible account. But it will rule out many, and it will place tight constraints on the rest—tight enough, I believe, to raise worries about whether principles play any role in the evaluation of art.

The focus of this paper is on E. H. Gombrich's claim that pictorial perception is a case of illusion. My aim is to point out that, on the one hand, the interpretation of this claim that is widely accepted in pictorial theory is not supported by Gombrich's analysis of pictorial perception; and, on the other hand, that the interpretation of the claim that I see as more compatible with Gombrich's analysis is not consistent with relevant facts about our relation to pictures. However, I will argue, Gombrich's elaboration of the claim of illusion is significant to the extent that it highlights important aspects of the system of pictorial representation.

The representational content or subject matter of a picture is normally distinguished from various non-representational components of meaning involved in artworks, such as expressive, stylistic or intentional factors. However, I show how such non subject matter components may themselves be analyzed in content terms, if two different categories of representation are recognized--aspect indication for stylistic etc. factors, and normal representation for subject matter content. On the account given, the relevant kinds of content are hierarchically structured, with relatively unconceptualized lower level aspectual contents encoding or symbolizing higher level conceptualized representational subject matter. Such an account is strongly supported by the latest findings of cognitive science regarding levels of conceptualization. The paper also demonstrates how the account given is compatible with the actual pictorial competence of normal viewers of visual artworks.

Certain simple thoughts about pictures suggest that the contents of pictures are closely bound to vision. But how far can the striking features of depiction be accounted for merely in terms of the especially visual contents which belong to pictures, without considering, for example, any issues concerning the nature of the visual experiences with which pictures provide us? This article addresses that question by providing an account of the distinctively visual contents belonging to pictures, and by using that account to explain many notable general facts about depiction. Some implications of the resulting framework for the main stream of current theorizing about pictorial representation are also discussed.

A content theory of art would identify an artwork with the meaningful or representational content of some concrete artistic vehicle, such as the intentional, expressive, stylistic, and subject matter-related content embodied in, or resulting from, acts of intentional artistic expression by artists. Perhaps surprisingly, the resultant view that an artwork is nothing but content seems to have been without theoretical defenders until very recently, leaving a significant theoretical gap in the literature. I present some basic arguments in defence of such a view, including the following. Content views of linguistic communication are ubiquitous, so why should they not be applicable in artistic cases as well? Also, propositional accounts of language involve two kinds of content (the proposition expressed by a sentence, plus the worldly state of affairs it represents), both of which kinds can be used in explaining artworks. In addition, the differing modal properties of artworks and concrete artefacts can be used to show that artworks could not be, or include, such physical artefacts.

The degree of justification for a judgment of artistic value is normally directly proportional to the size of the comparison class that is brought to bear in making that judgment. If that comparison class is very small or nonexistent, justified judgments are unlikely or impossible. So which artworks, if any, are comparable? The claim that evaluative comparisons can be made among artworks within a fine-grained category—abstract expressionist paintings, for example—is relatively uncontroversial. But is there any way that we can compare artworks that have only a very coarse-grained category in common (such as two works of visual art), or that are in completely different coarse-grained categories (such as a symphony and a sculpture)? I argue that both very similar and very different artworks can be compared evaluatively. Comparisons within fine-grained categories are common, and reflection on critical practices shows us that they depend crucially on qualitative assessments of artistically valuable properties. Once qualitative assessment is recognized as underwriting artistic criticism, it follows that even rough-grained categorization provides no essential barrier to comparison, securing the possibility of well-justified evaluations of disparate artworks.