Understanding Pictures

ISBN-13: 9780198240976 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 248 str.

Dominic Lopes

Opis

There is not one but many ways to picture the world--Australian "x-ray" pictures, cubish collages, Amerindian split-style figures, and pictures in two-point perspective each draw attention to different features of what they represent. Understanding Pictures argues that this diversity is the central fact with which a theory of figurative pictures must reckon. Lopes advances the theory that identifying pictures' subjects is akin to recognizing objects whose appearances have changed over time. He develops a schema for categorizing the different ways pictures represent--the different kinds of meaning they have--and argues that that depiction's epistemic value lies in its representational diversity. He also offers a novel account of the phenomenology of pictorial experience, comparing pictures to visual prostheses like mirrors and binoculars.

Recenzje

... Lopes writes in a very engaging and accessible way, allowing of course for the inevitably abstruse elements that any serious intellectual work must have. ... those much less versed than he can expect to come away with a better understanding of what he shows to be an interesting subject. This is philosophical writing of a very high order, to my mind. Lopes is a master of simple, intriguing and compelling arguments./ Lopes is to be congratulated on producing a first-class work in philosophical aesthetics. Clarendon is also to be congratulated on an excellent production. Clear and simple typography is matched by the convenience of footnotes at the bottom of the page, and not a single misprint that I could spot./ Gordon Graham, University of Aberdeen, The Philosophical Quarterly, April 1999.