On the epistemic value of photographs (original) (raw)

The Epistemic Status of Photographs and Paintings: A Response to Cohen and Meskin

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2009

Why do photographs occupy an epistemically privileged status among types of depictions? As Jonathan Cohen and Aaron Meskin put it: "Why are photographs epistemically special in a way that other sorts of depictive representations are not? (Why, for example, do photographs but not paintings carry evidentiary weight?)" 1 Orthodoxy on this matter has it that the answer has to do with the nature of the causal relation that photographs bear to their subjects. In a series of articles, Cohen and Meskin have proposed a rich and novel answer to the above question that, as I read it, bucks this orthodoxy. Cohen and Meskin's account of photography's epistemic value, in addition to referencing the nature of the relation that photographs bear to their subjects, references viewers' background beliefs about photographs as well. 2 While this gives their account of photography's epistemic value a degree of sophistication and nuance that other ones may lack, it seems to me that what Cohen and Meskin have added thereby renders their account internally unstable. I According to Cohen and Meskin, photographs are epistemically special because "(1) token photographs are spatially agnostic sources of information, and (2) viewers hold background beliefs about the category of photographs that influence their attitudes towards the epistemic status of viewed token photographs." 3 This is a lot to unpack and (1) further decomposes into two claims. The first of these claims in (1) is that photographs are epistemically valuable because they transmit information about visually accessible properties of their subjects, such as color and shape properties, what Cohen and Meskin call 'vinformation.' 4 However, photographs are alleged by Cohen and Meskin to transmit v-information in a manner independent of their transmitting egocentric spatial information (information about where,

The epistemology of the photographic image

A short note on the epistemology of the photographic image It seems odd to justify at the beginning of the third millenium the act of taking pictures by a camera. After all the camera accompanies western civilization since mid 19 th century and took over as the major means of representing reality. And yet, even though we are not overwhelmed and shocked by the magic of the camera as did the pioneers of photography and of the cinema, among them were Antoine Claudet, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Eadweard Muybridge, George Melies, the Lumiere brothers, and many others, who have skillfully constructed strange and extremely complicated machines, we are still up to these days amazed and fascinated by pictures produced by this technology.

Photographs Are Immediate and Unadulterated Articulations of the Truth

It has been said that "a photo is worth a thousand words."1 The thought here is that a single picture is sufficient to show an idea so complicated that hundreds of words are required to do it justice If this is so, then photographs which are immediate and unadulterated articulations of the truth seen by the camera, ought to be the superb and unequaled medium for expressing truth.2 Photos contain a wealth of information which may be used effectively in historical research. Visual materials might be utilized as evidence, for illustration, for comparison and contrast, and for analytical purposes. To some degree confounding is the moderately negligible utilization of photos as primary sources in historical inquiry. Many visual clues exist which can help to explain the historical cases in specific areas. Photographs help our comprehension of an occasion by catching the scene; and if witnessing something first hand is the only way to accept something that's difficult to believe, at that point photos show reality.3 The term 'photograph examination's introduced here alludes to different visual research strategies with the appropriation of photos. The survey of the writing has portrayed that fusing a visual angle into inquire about utilizing photos is beneficial in investigations of exceptionally unique or complex marvels either subjectively or quantitatively, or both. Methods in visual research are chiefly qualitative, but often involve qualitative quantification or quantitative elements by design.4 As far as photograph examination, some visual specialists have given different ways to deal with the utilization and investigation of photos.5 As per those analysts, visual information, for example, photos can be utilized for documentation, affirmation of literary

Data vs. Matter: What Photography Can Teach us about Mental Images

The debate over the existence and nature of mental images is ages old. Through its history this debate turned quite technical and complex, but here I wish to strip it from its technical form, go back to its roots and try to shed new light on the matter with the aid of photography. Both sides of the debate on whether mental images exist can be grasped quite intuitively. The argument for the existence of mental images surely draws much of its power from intuition – we all experience mental images, we can imagine visual objects at will, have visual recollections and so on. But the case against mental images also draws from intuition – we can sense that mental images are different from other images, are “less clear”, “less stable”, elusive perhaps. This feeling is strengthened when one’s mental images are put under interrogation. If we are asked to imagine a dog, for instance, and do so, we may still find it difficult to answer questions about the looks of the dog, let alone the background against which it appears in the supposed “image”. I will suggest in this paper that mental images do not exist, or at the very least that our appeals to them are flawed and illusory, but in joining this side of the debate over the existence of mental images I will draw relatively little from the current discussions of the matter in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, and will instead make a broader appeal to photography, esp. to artistic practices that investigate vision and representation through photography. The discussion will follow these lines: I open by making some further comments on the appeals of mental images (section 1). This is important because we need to always keep in mind that abolishing mental images from our vocabulary comes at a high price. In section 2 I discuss some general features of photographs. I will use photographs to draw more attention to the difference between how photographs are experienced and how mental images are supposed to be experienced. More specifically I will suggest that mental images cannot be replaced with photographs, although we intuit them as such. In section 3 I contrast the view of photography as representation (section 3.1) and as ‘data’ (section 3.2) with the view that photography is an indexical physical sign that requires physical stratum to be actualized. I suggest we reject the view of photography as a ‘nonmaterial, representational image’, and following, suggest that the notion of ‘image’ (in ‘mental image’) is itself incoherent.

Notes on the Circulation of Epistemic Images

Artl@s Bulletin , 2021

Three cases of image circulation in the sciences, two from complex dynamics and one from microscopy, are discussed. The article deals with failed circulations, suspected errors, interdisciplinary communication, notebooks of scientists, the role of media shifts, mathematics and materiality, human perception, pictorial norms and conventions. It analyses how images circulate through different thought collectives and visual cultures. All three examples show different strategies of how images that break with visual traditions have been reintegrated into epistemic circulations and become “boundary objects” that are both robust and flexible.