Picture, Image and Experience
A Philosophical Inquiry

This book proposes and defends an answer to the philosophical question of how pictures represent.

Robert Hopkins (Author)

9780521582599, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 December 1998

216 pages, 14 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.46 kg

"...it is a significant account for the specialist interested in late 20th-century questions about aesthetic experience." International Philosophical Quarterly

How do pictures represent? In this book Robert Hopkins casts new light on an ancient question by connecting it to issues in the philosophies of mind and perception. He starts by describing several striking features of picturing that demand explanation. These features strongly suggest that our experience of pictures is central to the way they represent, and Hopkins characterizes that experience as one of resemblance in a particular respect. He deals convincingly with the objections traditionally assumed to be fatal to resemblance views, and shows how his own account is uniquely well placed to explain picturing's key features. His discussion engages in detail with issues concerning perception in general, including how to describe phenomena that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists, and the book concludes with an attempt to see what a proper understanding of picturing can tell us about that deeply mysterious phenomenon, the visual imagination.

Introduction
1. The question
2. Some features to explain
3. Outline shape
4. A theory of depiction
5. Misrepresentation
6. Indeterminacy and interpretation
7. Visualizing
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: aesthetics [HPN]