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.

Notes of epistemology of the images

This article has as its subject of analysis the images as they are perceived by the observer. As a heuristic symphony this work is a paradigmatic crossover of the phenomenology, the genetic epistemology and the hermeneutics, amalgamated by semiotics. In the first paragraph, a phenomenological reflection of the images is carried out, reaching a division between internal images and external images and between objective images and sign images. In the second paragraph, a genetic analysis of a thought in images is carried out, reaching a division of the sign images in signal images, index images, icon images, symbol images and sign images with its correspondingly levels of abstraction and societal. Finally, in the third paragraph, hermeneutics of the object images as a cultural unit or culturema is carried out. It ends by framing the present study in visual studies and highlighting their relevance in the context of visual culture.

An ontological turn in philosophy of photography, Proceedings of the ESA Conference 2014.

The contemporary philosophy of photography has yet to take the ontological turn that has occurred in philosophy of science and mind. There, an attempt has been made to move beyond a simplistic epistemological discourse of objectivism and subjectivism. Dispositional realism requires that one take into account surfaces, ambient conditions and the psychobiology of the observing subject in understanding knowledge. By accepting a powers ontology, whereby stimuli do not lawfully give rise to colored percepts but contingent mechanisms fallibly do, one fully embraces realism. A narrow epistemological realism is exchanged for a broader, ontological realism. The aesthetics of photography shows many cases of an epistemological bias or, if ontological ("causal"), a narrowly ontological idea of causality. Even Walton's counterfactual dependence view is basically an empiricist approach. Just as in the philosophy of mind and the discussion of perception such a viewpoint remains vulnerable. A causal realist can admit that photographic images are equivocal but affirm a deeper kind of realism that takes into account the nature of the depicted, the environmental conditions, and the photographic apparatus (and its range of sensitivities). The singular view of a photo, like a phenomenal quale, does not disclose reality always but the very characteristics of the qualia, the grain and phenomenology, give us clues. Dispositional realism moves beyond the fixation on the individual photo (quale) and insists that to surpass a stale debate between objectivists and constructivists one must recognize that any photo (as any experience) is part of a larger context wherein dispositional properties are manipulated, giving rise to sometimes unpredictable results. *

Images beyond Representation: Evidence and Depth of Meaning

Mind and Matter - Challenges and Opportunities in Cognitive Semiotics and Aesthetics [Working Title], 2021

In this article I consider images from a philosophical point of view starting from its definition and its relation to thinking. Some analogies with imagetic signs and words are established. And in doing this, I try to value seeing, not to the expense of saying or thinking, but as a way of getting in touch with images that privilege a certain way of knowing.

The particularity of photographic experience

Theoria, 2023

A common view in the philosophy of perception holds that states of seeing objects face to face have particular contents. When you see, say, a dog face to face, your visual state represents the particular dog that is in front of you. In this paper, I argue for a related claim about states of seeing objects in conventional photographs. When you see a dog in a photograph, for example, your visual state represents the particular dog that was in front of the camera when the photograph was taken, that is, the photograph's depictum. The argument in this paper proceeds in two steps. In the first step, I discuss states of seeing objects face to face. I argue that such a state represents the particular object whose surface is responsible for the optical information that the visual system uses to construct the state's attributive representational content. In the second step, I apply the result of this discussion to states of seeing objects in photographs. I argue that a state of seeing an object in a photograph has a particular content that represents the object that was in front of the camera when the photograph was taken. 10 I will explain what I mean by attributive content shortly. 11 Arguments in favor of the claim that visual states have contents have been provided, for example,

Fixing the Image: Re-thinking the 'Mind-independence' of Photographs

We are told by philosophers that photographs are ‘mind-independent’. In epistemic debates, mind-independence is viewed as essential for explaining why photographs occupy a distinct category among images. It also justifies a variety of claims about their privileged epistemic and affective status in science, forensics, popular culture and journalism. But, in the philosophy of art, this position has fuelled scepticism: if photographs are mind-independent they are not intimately bound to the intentional states of an artist. In this article I argue that we can address scepticism in the philosophy of art by overcoming dogmatism in the epistemology of photography. I offer a substantive account of the photographic process and clarify the difference between photographs as images and photographs as pictures. Using this account, I show that it is unnecessary to treat mind-independence as a defining feature of photographs. This opens space to understand that a skilled photographer can create pictures, not just images, by using objects and light sources analogous to a painter using brushes and paint.

Photographic Phenomenology as Cognitive Phenomenology

British Journal of Aesthetics, 2015

Photographic pictorial experience is thought to have a peculiar phenomenology to it, one that fails to accompany the pictorial experiences one has before so-called 'handmade' pictures. I present a theory that explains this in terms of a common factor shared by beliefs formed on the basis of photographic pictorial experience and beliefs formed on the basis of ordinary, face-to-face, perceptual experience: the having of a psychologically immediate, non-inferential etiology. This theory claims that photographic phenomenology has less to do with photographs themselves, or the pictorial experiences they elicit, and is a matter of our cognitive response to those experiences. I illustrate this theory's benefits: it is neutral on the nature of photography and our folk-conception of photography; it is consistent with photographic phenomenology's being contingent; and it accounts for our experiences of hyperrealistic handmade pictures. Extant theories of photographic phenomenology falter on one or more of these issues.

Epistemic Function and Ontology of Analog and Digital Images

The important epistemic function of photographic images is their active role in construction and reconstruction of our beliefs concerning the world and human identity, since we often consider photographs as presenting reality or even the Real itself. Because photography can convince people of how different social and ethnic groups and even they themselves look, documentary projects and the dissemination of photographic practices supported the transition from disciplinary society to the present-day society of control. While both analog and digital images are formed from the same basic materia, the ways in which this matter appears are distinctive. In the case of analog photography, we deal with physical and chemical matter, whereas with digital images we face electronic matter. Because digital photography allows endless modification of the image, we can no longer believe in the truthfulness of digital images.

Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2021

Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by arguing that they are incompatible with this commitment. In Section II, I classify accounts of photography as either single-stage or multi-stage. In Section III, I analyze the historical basis for single-stage accounts. In Section IV, I explain why the single-stage view led scientists to postulate “latent” photographic images as a technical phenomenon in early chemical photography. In Section V, I discredit the notion of an invisible latent image in chemical photography and, in Section VI, extend this objection to the legacy of the latent image in digital photography. In Section VII, I appeal to the dependency relation to explain why the notion of a latent image makes the single-stage account untenable. Finally, I use the multi-stage ac...