On the epistemic value of photographs
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2):197–210 (2004)
Abstract
Many have held that photographs give us a firmer epistemic connection to the world than do other depictive representations. To take just one example, Bazin famously claimed that “The objective nature of photography confers on it a quality of credibility absent from all other picture-making” ([Bazin, 1967], 14). Unfortunately, while the intuition in question is widely shared, it has remained poorly understood. In this paper we propose to explain the special epistemic status of photographs. We take as our starting place (in §1) Kendall Walton’s startling proposal that photographs are special because they are “transparent” [Walton, 1984] — that is, that they are special because, unlike other depictive representations, they enable us literally to see their depicta.1 Walton’s proposal has not convinced many; however, it has proven surprisingly difficult to say just what is wrong about the transparency thesis. In §§2–4 we’ll rise to this challenge and show why photographs are not transparent in Walton’s sense. Finally, in §§5–7 we’ll propose and defend a novel diagnosis of what is epistemically special about photographs.Author Profiles
DOI
10.1111/j.1540-594x.2004.00152.x
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Citations of this work
Color properties and color ascriptions: A relationalist manifesto.Jonathan Cohen - 2004 - Philosophical Review 113 (4):451-506.
Depiction, Pictorial Experience, and Vision Science.Robert Briscoe - 2016 - Philosophical Topics 44 (2):43-81.
What is episodic memory if it is a natural kind?Sen Cheng & Markus Werning - 2016 - Synthese 193 (5):1345-1385.
Gombrich and the Duck-Rabbit.Robert Eamon Briscoe - 2018 - In Michael Beaney (ed.), Aspect Perception After Wittgenstein: Seeing-as and Novelty. Routledge. pp. 49-88.
References found in this work
Veridical hallucination and prosthetic vision.David Lewis - 1980 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (3):239-249.
Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism.Kendall L. Walton - 1984 - Critical Inquiry 11 (2):246-277.
Transparent pictures: On the nature of photographic realism.Kendall L. Walton - 1984 - Noûs 18 (1):67-72.