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

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.)

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?