Photographic Realism, Transparency, and Perception

1. Photographic Realism, Transparency, and Perception Zsolt Bátori Budapest University of Technology and Economics Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design November 27, 2012 Central European University Department of Philosophy

2. Photographic vs. Manually Produced Images • The automatic nature of the technical apparatus justifies a special representational status for photographic images. • Photographic images and realistic (even photorealistic) paintings or drawings are different in terms of the kind of realism they provide for our perception. • Photographic images are “transparent”; we literally see objects in photographs as we see them in mirrors or through eyeglasses. (Walton 1984, 1986, 1997.)

3. Photographic Transparency 1.(Walton) • The visual properties of the scene in a photograph are counterfactually dependent on the visual properties of the scene photographed. • Our visual experience is also counterfactually dependent on the visual properties of the scene we look at. • The visual properties of drawings and paintings do not depend counterfactually on the visual properties of the scene. (Preserving counterfactual dependence is an artistic choice.)

4. Photographic Transparency 2.(Walton) • Supplementary requirement for the transparency of pictorial representations: preserving real similarity relations. • Transparency Theory: Seeing and looking at photographs are visual experiences of the same kind; they are both counterfactually dependent on the visual properties of the scene, and they also preserve real similarity relations.

5. Objections to the Transparency Theory Concerning Perception Proper • The Transparency Theory entails that photographs are not representations. (Carroll 1995, 1996; Currie 1995.) • Walton: Photographs are “transparent representations”. • Photographs do not provide us with “egocentric information” about the scene we look at. (Carroll 1996; Currie, 1995.) • Walton: Egocentric information is not a necessary condition for perception proper (seeing). Looking at a scene in a confusing array of mirrors is (indirect) seeing.

6. Perception Proper • Arguments concerning transparency do not explicate what aspects of our visual experience are necessary conditions for seeing proper. • A specific position about the status of photographic representations requires arguments and decisions about the status of various aspects of perception (seeing). • Creatures with twenty eyeballs at the end of tentacles and intelligent bats: different perceptual apparatus, different “photographic” (recording) practices.

7. Seeing Pictorial Representations vs. Seeing Proper Seeing proper cannot involve pictorial representations? • Retinal images are themselves pictorial representations of the scene we look at. • Video camera outputting proper signals for the optic nerve as a prosthetic device: identical visual experience to the one people with fully functional eyeballs and visual system have. This visual experience would also include egocentric information. • Replacing retinal image with photographic image is merely replacing one pictorial representation of the scene with another.

8. The Necessity of Eyeballs and Egocentric Information • Intelligent bats don’t have eyeballs, but have a perceptual system that is functionally equivalent with our seeing. • Tentacle-eyed creatures might not always have egocentric information. • Egocentric information might be an always present aspect of human vision, but it is not a necessary condition all the time for seeing proper in case of other possible visual systems.

9. Decisions to Make • Is seeing proper restricted to processing light values (intelligent bats)? • If a visual system (tentacle-eyed creatures) does not always provide egocentric information, then the experience is not seeing proper? • Would people with video-based prosthetic device not see?