Art and the Mind || Pictures, Phenomenology and Cognitive Science

Hegeler Institute

Pictures, Phenomenology and Cognitive ScienceAuthor(s): Robert HopkinsSource: The Monist, Vol. 86, No. 4, Art and the Mind (OCTOBER 2003), pp. 653-675Published by: Hegeler InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27903848 .

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Pictures, Phenomenology and Cognitive Science

1. What are the questions a philosophical account of picturing should answer? Prima facie there are at least four:

Q.l What is a picture?

Q.2 What is pictorial representation?

Q.3 What is the experience pictures characteristically generate?

Q.4 What is it to understand a picture?

(I will sometimes call the form of representation in Q.2 "depiction," and

the experience in Q.3 "seeing-in.") It is generally accepted, at least amongst those who have distin

guished these questions, that Q.2 is the most important. Philosophical accounts of pictures should aim to capture the distinctive form of repre sentation pictures exhibit. However, one might answer that question by

answering one of the others. For instance, one might say what a picture is

(Q.l), and then try to define depiction as representation by pictures. This is not a promising strategy. Perhaps only pictures represent pictorially, but not all do: consider abstract paintings. More importantly, many pictures also exhibit representation of other forms. Some pictures contain writing; and others depict something, such as a dove, which then symbolizes in some

non-pictorial way something else, such as the Holy Spirit. So there are serious obstacles to construing pictorial representation as simply the representing which pictures do. Given that, it is not clear what the interest of answering Q.l could be.

The prospects are better for answering Q.2 by appeal to the other two

questions. Two popular approaches to picturing can be seen as doing just that.

Both construe depiction as essentially involving a perceptual response on our part; they differ over whether that response is recognitional or experi

"Pictures, Phenomenology and Cognitive Science" by Robert Hopkins, The Monist, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 653-675. Copyright? 2003, THE MONIST, Peru, Illinois 61354.



654 ROBERT HOPKINS

ential. The first approach has been developed by Dominic Lopes and Flint Schier (Lopes 1996, 2003; Schier 1986). It claims that pictorial represen tation engages whatever capacities are required to recognize the picture's

objects in the flesh. The upshot of the picture's engaging these capacities is that the viewer correctly identifies it as depicting that object. Thus the

approach takes Q.4 as basic. It tells us what it is to understand a picture? it is for one's recognitional capacities for the picture's object to be

engaged?and defines depiction as representation grasped in this way.

(This is certainly how Schier conceives his project; Lopes is less explicit.) The other approach is the one I favour. It starts with Q.3. It offers an

account of pictorial experience, and then construes pictorial representa tion in terms of its supporting that experience.

It is open to those who reject this second approach to deny that Q.3 admits of an answer. They might hold that there is no one experience char

acteristic of all picturing, or that for some pictures it is hard to make sense

of the idea that they are experienced in any interesting way at all. But they need not be so sceptical, and both Lopes (1996, ch. 9) and Schier (1986, ch. 10) have offered answers to Q.3, albeit as corollaries of their main

claims. In contrast, it is not likewise open to experiential theorists to reject Q.4. The concepts of representation (in general) and understanding are in

timately linked, as those of representing and experiencing are not. It may seem obvious what experiential accounts should say about pictorial un

derstanding: that to understand a given picture just is to experience it in

the way they have described. But an obvious answer is not any the less an

answer for that. Thus, although experiential theorists, myself excepted (1998, ch. 6), have not in general even noticed Q.4, it is a question they

must eventually face. And in fact, the appeal to pictorial experience can

provide at best part of an account of pictorial understanding. Neither the

experiential theorist nor the recognitionalist can construe pictorial under

standing in perceptual terms alone. Pictures are artefacts, and essentially used in acts of communication, and these facts are reflected in what it is

to grasp pictorial content. (Novitz 1977; Schier 1986; Hopkins 1998, ch. 6; Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 641]).

In what follows, I develop the debate between recognitional and ex

periential accounts of pictorial representation. In particular, I expound the

different answers Lopes and I have offered to Q.2, and try to assess some

of the strengths and weaknesses of each. But I also explore an important



PICTURES, PHENOMENOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE 655

methodological issue, one of far wider bearing, Apparently, Lopes and I

do not merely disagree over how to answer Q.2, but also over the ways in

which, and the degree to which, a satisfactory answer should draw on

empirical work. I ask whether this impression is correct, and, to the extent

that it is, which attitude is the healthier. In the next two sections, I briefly introduce my view and the methodological demands it is intended to meet.

Section 4 then explores, from the perspective of that position, where the

boundary with empirical work looks to lie. This provides an opportunity to discuss some of Lopes's objections to my position, especially his claim that I have, against my will, to undertake certain empirical commitments.

It also allows me to describe the more positive interactions between phi

losophy and the empirical disciplines for which my account allows. In sections 5-6 J turn to Lopes's view, to how it should be interpreted, and

the use it can legitimately make of empirical work. I argue that the methodological ambitions the view should have are in fact precisely those

behind my own position, and end by rejecting Lopes's arguments for his

view's success in those terms.

2. In Picture, Image and Experience I try to describe in some detail what a philosophical theory of pictorial representation should do. It needs to do more than simply answer the questions above. Answers to those questions, even true ones, can be more or less illuminating. The mark of an illumi

nating answer is that it yields explanations. It explains why pictorial

representation has certain features. In the book I describe six such features, which can be stated very roughly as follows: First, there is no bare depiction of particulars: anything depicting a particular must depict it as having certain properties. Moreover, depicted properties are always relatively de

terminate: one cannot, for instance, depict something as simply having a

shape: some more determinate shape than that must be ascribed.1 Second, all pictorial representation is perspectival: the depicted object is depicted from a (or perhaps several) point(s) of view. Third, only what can be seen can be depicted. Fourth, pictorial misrepresentation is possible?something can be depicted as having properties it does not in fact have; but only within certain limits?beyond a certain point misrepresentation of a par ticular or kind ceases to count as depiction of it at all. Finally, the resources

required to understand depiction are distinctive: knowledge of the appear ance of the depicted particular or kind is necessary (fifth explanandum)



656 ROBERT HOPKINS

and, given general competence with depiction, pretty much sufficient (sixth explanandum) for one to understand what a picture depicts.

These claims cohere. They hang together in such a way that already,

prior to any explanation of why they hold, they seem to describe a unified area of inquiry. They suggest that depiction is a form of representation which essentially works by capturing the appearance of things. Hence the

need for what is depicted to have such an appearance (third explanandum); for the depiction to present that appearance to a reasonably determinate

degree (first), or more precisely its appearance from a certain point of

view (second); for that appearance, although not necessarily fully preserved, to be so at least in part (fourth); and why knowledge of the thing's ap pearance is both necessary and, given some background conditions, sufficient, for one to understand what the picture depicts (fifth and sixth). So we can

already make some sense of the explananda as a set by supposing that they describe a unified, discrete form of representation. The task left us is to

give an account of what, at bottom, this form of representation is, an account

explaining why it has these six features. My experiential view of depiction is intended to be just such an account.

Rivals to that account might accept the task of explaining the six features, and try to do better at it. Or they might deny that these are really features of pictorial representation. Certainly, none of the six explananda is incontrovertible, although some defence can be offered for each. But

unless a rival view rejects altogether the thought that illuminating accounts yield explanations, it must do more than this. It must not only

reject the particular explananda, but find alternatives. And it must use

those alternative explananda to argue that it too is an account of a part of the conceptual landscape marked by contours identifiable independently of the theory itself. For it is easy enough to articulate positions which describe arbitrarily selected slices of conceptual space. When such views clash, debate tends to be sterile, a matter of stand-offs on particular cases, where one theory decrees one description of the case, its rival another.

(Compare Lopes's disagreement with Wollheim over whether trompe oeil counts as pictorial representation (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The

Monist, p. 636]). My appeal to explananda is in part intended to move the debate forward beyond such obstructions, by showing how a view could lay claim to more than merely capturing the "right" intuitions about par ticular cases.




3.1 will not here reconstruct my explanations of the six features, but I will outline the view which generated them. Doing so should flesh out the very

sketchy characterization above of the experiential approach to depiction. I start of course, with Q.3, with an account of pictorial experience.

My goal is to capture the phenomenology of that experience, and to do so

by giving an account of its content. What should we say about the content

of pictorial experience? One way to reach my answer is via a view I reject

completely. Illusionism is the view that both the content and the phenom enology of pictorial experience exactly matches that of face-to-face visual

experience of whatever is depicted. For example, to see a certain kind of

dog in a picture is to have an experience with precisely the content and phenomenology of seeing such a dog face-to-face. Illusionism is interest

ing, but wrong. It is interesting because, were it true and developed into an account of pictorial representation, it would neatly explain my six ex

plananda (Hopkins 1998 p. 40). It is wrong because our experience before pictures differs considerably from that before the depicted things. That is one reason why we don't mistake the picture for its object. What should we say instead? We should not gradually retreat from the view, watering its claims down until they become plausible. Rather, we should try to

preserve illusionism's explanatory power while starting afresh on the content and phenomenology of pictorial experience. We should construe that experience as having a quite different structure from that of seeing things in the flesh. Seeing a dog in a picture is not a matter of having a

visual experience as of a dog, not even in some diluted form. Rather, it is a matter of experiencing one thing in the light of another. This formula tion is rather woolly, but it can be given greater precision by appeal to the notion of resemblance: seeing something in a picture is seeing the latter as

resembling the former. Note that this way of introducing resemblance makes no appeal to the intuitions about pictures looking like their objects which are so often taken to be the fundamental motivation for using the notion.

In what respect are picture and object seen to resemble? The answer

lies in a property I call outline shape, and which Thomas Reid called visible figure (Reid 1764, ch. VI, ?8). One can describe this property in various ways, but Reid's characterization is both elegant and concise, and

will suffice for present purposes.2 As Reid puts it, an object's visible figure is a matter of the directions of its various parts from a point in its envi ronment. Consider, for instance, an airfield runway, and a point a few feet



658 ROBERT HOPKINS

back from, and a few feet above, the start. From that point, the runway's near left-hand corner lies in one direction, the near right-hand corner in

another. The far left-hand corner lies in a third direction, the far right-hand corner in yet another. In fact, any point on the runway will lie in a distinct

direction from the point we are considering. The visible figure of the runway, at that point, is a matter of the combined directions in which, from that point, the various parts of the runway lie. Visible figure, as the name suggests, is something we can see. We do so when we see the di

rections of the object's parts from a particular environmental point, viz. whichever such point constitutes our current point of view. This is what is

going on when, for instance, we see circles at oblique angles as elliptical, or receding parallels as converging. Our runway provides an example. Its

edges seem to converge as they recede. This is our seeing the directions in

which points on the two edges lie. The near corners lie in directions very different form one another, the far corners in directions which are much

closer together, and pairs of opposite points in between lie in directions which are ever closer together, the farther away the pair of points in question.

Reid observed that objects of very different 3-D shapes might nonethe

less have visible figures (at particular points) in common, and that this is very often true of pictures and their objects (1764, ch. VI ?7). What he did not do was to make this insight central to an account of pictorial experi ence. But he could have said what I say about pictorial experience: that

seeing things in pictures is seeing the marks as resembling those things in outline shape (visible figure). A little more precisely, pictorial experience is always in part experience of resemblance in outline shape. Sometimes that is all there is to the experience. But sometimes it is not, for other re

semblances may be experienced?the most obvious example is colour?

and their being so matters both to the character of the experience, and to what, in the right context, is depicted by the marks sustaining it.

How do we get from an account of pictorial experience to one of pictorial representation? This problem for experiential accounts is mirrored by one for the recognitional theory. In both cases, what is needed is appeal to a standard of correctness, something making it right to respond to a

given set of marks, whether that response is experiential or recognitional, in one way rather than another. It is clear that both intention and causation

play a role in constituting such standards, the latter operating for pho tographs and other mechanically produced pictures, the former for pictures




of other kinds. Since it is at least open to the recognitional theorist and to me to tell exactly parallel stories here, and since as far as I can see the pressures at work on each of us are the same, I will not defend the details of my solution to these difficulties, but merely state the finished view. I think a little sympathetic spadework will allow any reader to see how it embodies all the claims above:

First the answer to Q.3, an account of pictorial experience, or "seeing-in".

Something (some particular a or something of a certain kind F) is seen in a surface iff either

(i) is experienced as resembling a/something F in outline shape, or

(ii) (i) and is experienced as resembling a/something F in some other respect(s).

We fit this into the following schematic answer to Q.2:

An item depicts a/something F iff

(1) a/something F can be seen in

and

(2) Some standard of correctness establishes that it is right to see

a/something F in P.

And this itself is filled out in more detail as follows:

An item depicts a/something F iff

(1) a/something F can be seen in

and either

(2i) (1) because someone intended that a/something F be seen therein

or



660 ROBERT HOPKINS

(2c) is the product of a system successfully intended to produce surfaces causally related to objects in such a way that those

objects can be seen in those surfaces, and (1) because is so

related to a/something F.

4. What is the relation between this view and empirical research into

picturing? I have three things to say:

(a) The account highlights one point at which we need to distinguish questions properly addressed by philosophy from those falling to the

empirical disciplines. To see this, let us first return to the illusionist view, that a pictorial representation of O supports an experience matching, in

both content and phenomenology, that we would have before O. This is an

account of seeing-in, but by plugging it into the above schema for

answering Q.2 we can turn it into an account of depiction. Now, what

should such a view say about pictorial misrepresentation? Consider, say, a drawing of Tony Blair as an elephant. Should the view say that the

picture generates an experience as of Blair as he actually is? Of course

not. It should say that the picture generates an experience as of Blair with

certain elephant features, and that this is what it depicts, provided there was the intention that it be so seen. For only thus can the view account for

all pictorial content, both which particular, if any, is represented, and

which properties are represented as instantiated. If it claimed that the

relevant experience is as of a normal Blair, it would be quite mysterious what constituted the picture's depicting something elephantine.

In making these claims, the view is providing a complete, if false, answer to a philosophical question. It is telling us what it is to see

something in the marked surface?it is to have an experience with the content

and phenomenology of seeing such a thing in the flesh. But there is a second question, one that the view does not answer. It does not tell us why we have one experience before the canvas rather than another, why, for

instance, our experience is as of an elephantine Blair rather than a normal

one; or why it is of an elephantine Blair rather than of an elephantine George W. Bush. This modesty is not a failing. No doubt there is a reason

why the canvas supports only one of these experiences. But why should

an account of seeing-in, a characterization of that experience, also have to

say how it is, in a particular case, that the surface generates one such ex




perience rather than another? Here we seem to have an instance of the

familiar distinction between causal and constitutive questions. It doesn't

follow that the causal question is not itself philosophical. But it's at least

possible that the only answers to it will be both empirical and of no philo sophical import (even if other empirical investigations are). It could be, for instance, that the factors determining what illusionistic experience a

given surface supports are many and variable, with nothing common at

anything like the level of generality philosophical claims require. Of course, I think the illusion view false. But the dialectical situation

just described is precisely the same in the case of the experienced resem blance view. It too describes an experience appropriate to a given picture's content, and thus one which, for pictorial misrepresentations, is not to be

specified by reference to how the depicted object really is, but how it would be, were it as depicted. In doing this the view restricts itself to

answering the constitutive question about seeing-in. Its answer to that

question is complete.3 The view expects the causal question to have an

answer, but does not consider that it is its job to produce it. And it expects that the right answers will come from the empirical disciplines, and sees no reason to expect those answers to have any philosophical import.

It can be hard to keep this view of the dialectical situation in focus.

One muddying factor is the tendency of some writers to pose crucial

questions in a way that blurs causal/constitutive distinctions. Lopes himself does so, when he introduces my Q.2 as 'about how pictures come

to represent what they do'. A second source of confusion is that some re

semblance views have indeed tried to answer the causal question. I

suspect they did so because they failed to identify clearly the various

questions distinguished above. The notion of resemblance could be used

to define depiction directly (Q.2), as representation via resemblance; to

provide an account of seeing-in (Q.3), as experienced resemblance, or

pictorial understanding (Q.4), as the noticing of resemblances; or to answer the causal question I have here set aside, by claiming that experi ences of resemblance are caused by the picture's actually resembling its

object. If one doesn't distinguish these questions, one may confusedly take the appeal to resemblance to be answering them all. Resemblance

views have received a good deal of criticism over the years, much of it

justified.4 But at least some of the criticisms collapse if we distinguish the various questions resemblance might be used to answer, and recognize



662 ROBERT HOPKINS

that it can be used selectively. In particular, while it may seem natural to

step from experienced resemblance as constitutive of seeing-in (Q.3) to

actual resemblance as its causal underpinning (the causal question), this is

entirely optional. Part of the attraction of experienced resemblance is that

it can hold even when actual resemblance does not: as is standardly the

case with properties and their perception; actual resemblance is neither

necessary nor sufficient for the experience of it (Peacocke 1987).5 More

importantly, an account of the constitutive question simply need not say

anything about the conditions causally necessary for the experience's oc

currence, as the analogy with the illusion theory makes clear.

(b) However, to seek to eschew certain questions is not to succeed in doing so. One of Lopes's claims is that I am in fact committed on empirical matters, whether I like it or not. Is this right?

The particular commitment Lopes attempts to pin on me is "a certain

view of the application of concepts to visual scenes." More precisely:

the claim that experienced resemblance in outline shape is necessary for

seeing-in entails that objects and members of kinds are identified, in the visual case, at least in part by their outline shapes, (in this issue of The Monist, p. 640).

Why should an account of seeing-in have any implications for an account

of concepts? If the distinction between causal and constitutive questions holds firm, there is no reason. Lopes, however, denies that I can restrict my claims to constitutive matters. I am committed to an answer to the causal

question, and thereby to the claim about concepts in general. For, he says,

only by taking a position on the causal question can I defend my view against certain counter-examples (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 639]). The examples are that of the Picasso portrait of Stein, and the technical drawing of a rectangular table, and their target is the claim that

experienced resemblance is necessary for seeing-in and depiction. I must

tackle these examples, and can do so only by explaining why these pictures elicit the particular experiences of resemblance I claim they do, and not

others. So I am forced, against my will, into claims about causes and concepts more generally.

I do not find these examples convincing. (Nor do I accept the sugges tion that they are representative of an enormous range of counter-examples, viz. all pictures not in conventional perspective.) I think that, although de




piction is a matter of seeing-in underwritten by some standard of correct

ness, the two can sometimes come apart (1998 ch. 6). Sometimes the

experience of seeing-in which is appropriate to a picture is nonetheless not a perfect guide to its content, in that some of what is seen in the surface is not depicted by it. Given this, Lopes needs to make claims about these pictures which apply to what we see in them, not what they depict. So

read, his claims are harder to swallow. Perhaps the Picasso doesn't depict Stein as having odd properties, but it is another thing to say that we don't see an odd Stein in it. We lose a lot of the shock of Picasso's cubist work

if we make this last claim. In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon do we see

perfectly ordinary women? Far from it. We see women with angular and

disproportionate features, with swollen, looming eyes and crude, hard faces. If we did not, the painting would not have half the impact as an ex

pression of Picasso's fear of the female. Anyone claiming that what is seen therein is quite ordinary is forced to say that its shock reduces to the fact that we see these things in marks apparently so ill-suited to the purpose. But this confines Picasso's achievement to the realm of the

technical, when in fact it is partly in the realm of content?the content of

pictorial experience, at least. As people often say, he attained a new vision of some aspect of his world, and the picture allows us to share in that vision. Likewise, then, with the Stein portrait. It may indeed be, as Lopes says, an excellent likeness. But if it is, it is so through our seeing in it Stein

with exaggerated and altered features, the deformations of which enable Picasso to distill the essence of her distinctive appearance and character.

Of course, dealing with one example does not prevent Lopes from

offering others. So, rather than considering others he does, or might, offer, let me instead try and tackle the threat that all such examples are supposed to present. Lopes suggests that they show that I must commit myself on the question why a particular surface elicits a certain experience of re

semblance, and that thus I am led into the above claims about concept application in general. My response to this is threefold.

First, whatever the strength of the counter-examples, I do not see that

causal claims could help. If it is implausible that a picture is experienced as I claim, it is no use appealing to an explanation of how the picture is suited to cause that experience. There is no inference from explanation to

phenomenon explained, in the face of independent evidence that the phe nomenon does not hold. Second, if a causal story could help, it could do



664 ROBERT HOPKINS

so whether it was general, or particular to the case in hand. If it took the

latter form, I would not be committed, in dealing with the counter-examples, to any general claim about what is required for concepts to be applied so

as to generate experiences of seeing-in. How could a yet more general claim about the application of concepts in visual experience, be it pictorial or otherwise, then follow? Third, even if I did tell a general causal story about seeing-in, it need have no consequences for seeing generally. Even

if I went so far as to claim that in pictorial contexts the application of concepts is triggered by the subject's noticing the picture's outline shape, it would not follow that in the non-pictorial case 'objects and members of kinds are

identified ... at least in part by their outline shapes'. For it could be that different factors trigger the application of the concept in the pictorial and

face-to-face cases. Of course, Lopes does not think that this is so. His

view is that pictures trigger the same capacities used to recognize things in the flesh. But this is his view, not mine, and he was trying to find ob jections to my position which do not presuppose his own account.6

(c) So, contrary to Lopes's claims, I am not committed to answering the causal

question, and my views do not entail controversial claims in cognitive psychology. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that the account

is entirely insulated from the empirical. I give two examples of the connec

tions which obtain.

First, there is no reason to think that seeing-in lies beyond the reach of empirical investigation. Some very interesting recent work by Jan

Koenderink and Andrea van Doom suggests precisely otherwise (Koen derink and van Doom 1996, Koenderink 1998). They show subjects computer pictures representing in some detail single objects of complex shape. The subjects are able to manipulate a direction indicator, within the

depicted space, so as to reveal the orientation at which small areas on the

object's surface seem to them to lie. Subjects work their way over the surface of the depicted object, indicating which orientation of the pointer best reflects that of each surface area of a given size. It is thereby possible to reconstruct mathematically the shape the subject sees the depicted object as having. One interesting result is that there is a good deal of variation across subjects in the shape of the object they see within the space, variation within the dimension of depth.




These experiments reveal a far higher degree of intersubjective variation

in seeing-in, in a particular respect, than might have been expected. This

does not undermine the experiential approach to depiction in general, nor

any particular account of seeing-in. The questions thus raised confront any view of depiction, or at least any view that ties pictorial content to some

response on our part. Rather, what the investigations do is to show that our

experience of pictures is accessible to careful empirical research.

Since these results are neutral between different characterizations of

pictorial experience, they might seem not to forge a particularly strong link to the empirical. The second sort of connection is stronger. There is no reason why the experienced-resemblance account could not be shown

false experimentally. Suppose, for instance, that convincing evidence were

adduced for our not perceiving outline shape at all, or, following the spec ulation of James J. Gibson, doing so only under very special circumstances

(Gibson 1950 p. 26). Then it would be very implausible that our experi ence of pictures, itself so common and obviously drawing very heavily on

our experience of things in the flesh, could be a matter of experienced re

semblance in that respect. So my central claim could be tested empirically. The same is true of other, more peripheral, claims of mine. To explain why

only what can be seen can be depicted, I appeal to the idea that outline

shape can only be perceived visually (1998 pp. 134-36). Lopes himself, in a very interesting paper, draws attention to empirical work which suggests otherwise (Lopes 1997; cf. Kennedy 1980, 1993). This work, much of which itself concerns picture-like representations, suggests that the con

genitally blind can grasp the outline shapes of things. A natural conclusion to draw is that outline shape is represented, not just in vision, but in tactile

experience too.

Now, I think that both these threats to my position can be deflected. Philosophical argument suggests that Gibson's claims about outline shape are wrong (Hopkins 1998 ch. 4). And the best interpretation of the results concerning the performance of blind subjects with raised-line pictures is

that they are able to form non-experiential representations of outline

shape, on the basis of their tactile engagement with the world (Hopkins 2000). But both cases, whatever the best interpretation of the empirical results, show philosophical claims and empirical work in fruitful interac

tion: the former having to acknowledge the relevance of the latter, that in



666 ROBERT HOPKINS

turn having to give philosophical considerations some weight in deciding what conclusions to draw.

This is all grist to Lopes's mill. To this extent, I agree with him that the philosophical and empirical can and should pay attention to each other. And that point is all the more compelling in the context of the

present example. For this empirical work reveals the blind actually to

have capacities which a philosopher might otherwise have assumed they could not even possibly possess. So does this leave any methodological

disagreement between us?

I am not sure. One point of unclarity is how far Lopes thinks that

empirical work can inspire and shape, rather than simply act as a confir

matory or disconfirmatory check upon, philosophical views. Another is

how far Lopes himself lives up to his precepts. It is to this, and the dis cussion of his view more generally, that I now turn.

5. The core of Lopes's account of depiction is the following claim:

depicts a/an F only if is able to engage the ability of a suitable

perceiver viewing in suitable conditions to recognize a/an F.

That is, pictorial representations engage our capacities to recognize their objects face-to-face. But what is a recognitional ability? In one

sense, the capacity to recognize a, or F-things, is simply a disposition, to

respond to a range of stimuli by correctly identifying, in some suitable

range of cases, the stimulus as a/something F. In this sense, it is incon

trovertible, radical scepticism aside, that we do have such abilities. But

this cannot be the sense of recognitional ability the definition uses, for in this sense pictures do not engage such abilities. For that ability is, inter alia, the ability to tell a/F-things from pictures of them, and thus the

picture does not engage the ability (in this sense), any more than does

anything else which is identified as not a, or not F. Instead the relevant

notion of a recognitional ability is that of some cognitive mechanism or

operation, the engagement of which is what enables us, in the face-to-face

case, to recognize what is before us as a/F. It is the causal basis of the be

havioural disposition. This is something which could be engaged in the

pictorial case, even if it is so as part of a larger processing story, the outcome




of which is not the false belief that a/something F is before us, but the true belief that a picture of such a thing is.

Unfortunately, in this sense it is not so clear that there are such

abilities. At least, it is not clear that, for each thing or class we are able to

recognize, any one cognitive mechanism, component or operation merits

that title. To avoid reifying recognitional capacities in empirically tenden tious ways, Lopes should make a more open-ended claim. What the definition

above really amounts to is this:

depicts a/an F only if there is significant overlap between the processing operations, whatever they are, involved in someone's

understanding and the processing operations, whatever they are, involved in someone's recognizing (in the flesh) a/an F.

Such open-endedness allows the claim to be initially plausible, without

second-guessing the outcome of a good deal of empirical work. Others can

do the science; Lopes's claim is that, whatever story turns out true for recog nition of a/F-things, a significantly overlapping story will turn out true for interpreting pictures of those things.

What is the status of this claim, and what sort of justification is therefore appropriate to it? One possibility is that it is a purely empirical claim, to

be justified solely by appeal to the appropriate sciences. This could be made consistent with the intention to offer a definition of depiction, something which presumably has inter alia various modal consequences, only if

Lopes thought that depiction forms a natural kind. The science would then uncover the essence of depiction for us, just as it has for heat, water and the like. However, I doubt that this reading of Lopes's position is appro

priate. For one thing, if this is his view, he might have said as much. For another, it is far from obvious that depiction could be a natural kind. At least, the fact that it is an artefact, and that philosophers have been able to

expend considerable ingenuity producing a priori accounts of its nature, both

suggest it is significantly different from the classic examples of such kinds. If we reject that reading, it seems that Lopes must be offering a more

traditional philosophical definition. He might nonetheless hope to forge a

stronger than usual connection with empirical matters in two ways. First, the definition has some empirical consequences. For if it is definitive of



668 ROBERT HOPKINS

depiction that the overlap occurs, it will at least be true of all actual

depiction that this is so. Lopes notes, as others have (Wollheim 1987, Hopkins 1997b), that something like the consequent here seems presup

posed by a good deal of vision research. And while that research does not

set out to test its presupposition, one can imagine it collapsing in various

ways, or failing to cohere with research not so based, so as to cast doubt on what is presupposed. But it is rather harder to see how the definition

might be confirmed empirically. For even research designed to test the

overlap claim, rather than assuming it, would be hard pressed to vindicate that claim as a definition of depiction, modal consequences and all. And, of course, even evidence apparently discontinuing the view is open to

reinterpretation: for instance, perhaps the pictures in question don't depict the content which is proving problematic, but represent it in some other

way. Thus in respect of this first way to forge the link to the empirical, Lopes's view seems no different from any other. For the link reduces to

the fact that the view has empirical consequences which could provide the materials for falsifying it.

The second possible link stems from the vagueness of the overlap claim. It is already clear that there is some overlap in the processing of

pictures and their objects: we use our eyes to grasp both. That cannot be the overlap Lopes has in mind, since the same is true of written descrip tions of things. And it is already clear that the overlap is not complete, otherwise we would be unable to explain how one set of processing leads to one's identifying what is before one as a picture of an object, the other to one's identifying it as the object itself. So Lopes's claim looks trivially true, until more has been said about the precise nature of the overlap. Perhaps, then, the view is tied to the empirical in the following way: only further empirical investigations can provide it with non-trivial content.

I don't think that this is a good line either. It leaves the view as nothing more than an empirical speculation. It would be hard, for instance, to see

how there could be any role for the sorts of consideration philosophy normally attends to, either in justifying the claim, or among its consequences. In

particular, offering it as definition of depiction again looks quite unmotivated. Lopes does better, I think, to help himself to something like the

methodology I sketched earlier (Section 2.). The view can do philosophi cal work by seeking to explain certain features of depiction. Its success in

doing that work will constitute a reason for believing it, as a definition of




depiction. And it can acquire non-trivial content if the overlap postulated is precisely as substantial as is required for those explanations to go

through. So the reasons for believing it will be those offered by Flint Schier. At least on one reading, Schier makes fundamental the two claims

I took as my fifth and sixth explananda, that the ability to recognize O

(that is, the recognitional ability for O in the dispositional sense identified above) is necessary, and, given certain background conditions, sufficient

for understanding depictions of O. And he infers from this to the overlap claim, as the best explanation of why these conditions on understanding obtain (1986 p. 189)7

Thus far, then, we have failed to find any difference between Lopes's view and my own, in terms of their relations to empirical work. However,

Lopes offers us more than the overlap claim. There is also his expansion ism. Perhaps that will put some methodological ground between us.

6. Expansionism seems to be the view that "in interpreting pictures, our

cognitive capacities may function in new ways, perhaps in ways never

evident in extra-pictorial perception" (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 644]). What are these new ways? In his contribution, Lopes does not offer an explicit answer, but his examples suggest he has in mind something he has claimed elsewhere, that "the dimensions of variation across which pictorial recognition is dynamic go far beyond those across

which ordinary recognition is dynamic" (Lopes 1996, p. 147). Since

'dynamic' is equivalent to 'robust' in Lopes's current parlance (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 643]), the claim is this. Though pictures work by engaging our recognitional abilities (in the non-disposi tional sense)?the overlap claim?they nonetheless engage them across a

wider range of variations than does face-to-face contact with their objects. What does this mean? Obviously, it cannot simply mean that (I)

pictures expand the range of items which engage our ability to recognize their objects: that follows trivially from the overlap claim. Nor can it just

mean that (II) those abilities can be engaged by pictures which show an

object as having properties it does not in fact have. For, given Lopes's recognition-triggering account of depiction, that is just to say that pictures can misrepresent, a truism that anyone should accept. We come closer to

the intended meaning if we say that ( ) pictorial misrepresentation can

outstrip what face-to-face recognition could cope with. This can be put



670 ROBERT HOPKINS

more precisely: for some properties G, and some particulars or kinds, we

can understand pictures as representing a or an F-thing as G, even though we would not succeed in recognizing such a thing in the flesh (were we confronted with one). However, notice that this formulation is open to any account of depiction.8 To tie the claim to Lopes's view we need to

combine ( ) with the recognition-triggering claim: (IV) for some prop erties G, and some particulars or kinds, a picture of a or an F-thing as G can engage our ability to recognize a/F-things, even though we would not

succeed in recognizing G-bearing such things in the flesh (were we con

fronted with them). So pictures reveal our recognitional abilities to be flexible in ways

which face-to-face experience cannot exploit. This is an interesting idea, but it still requires some careful treatment. For some properties, it is

highly plausible that we would not succeed in recognizing something with them in the flesh, for the simple reason that they are too uncommon or

grotesque for us to maintain our equanimity in the face of an object bearing them. Consider, for instance, meeting someone bearing the prop erties ascribed by even a moderately exaggerated caricature. Such monstrously deformed figures might frighten us out of being able to identify them. Such cases suggest that both (III) and (IV) might be true for relatively un

interesting reasons.

To avoid this, Lopes should refine (IV) further. The shock of the gro tesque might prevent my recognizing Tony Blair with an elephant's body, but it won't obviously prevent those cognitive processes essential to rec

ognizing him from being engaged: the problems are at the level of making sense of what I'm looking at, not with my sub-personal processing oper ations. So such a case would not render the following conditional true: (V) for some properties G, and some particulars or kinds, a picture of a/an F

thing as G can engage our ability to recognize a/F-things, even though were we confronted with a G-bearing such thing in the flesh, those recog nitional capacities would not be engaged.9 Perhaps this conditional is true for interesting reasons.

Perhaps indeed. However, if this were true, it would cost Lopes's account something. The recognition theory accounts for pictorial repre sentation-as in terms of the various recognitional capacities the picture engages: to depict a as G is to engage both our capacity to recognize a and our capacity to recognize G-things (Schier 1986 p. 164). Now, above I




suggested that one explanandum for a theory of depiction is that there are

limits on pictorial misrepresentation: if one is to depict a particular at all, one cannot ascribe to it just any properties one likes. While the recogni tional theory sticks to the overlap claim, it can hope to explain this. There are limits on which recognitional capacities can be jointly engaged by a

single object seen in the flesh; and the limits on pictorial misrepresenta tion reflect these general limits on which capacities can be engaged as a

cluster (Schier 1986; Hopkins 1998 pp. 42-43). However, adding (V) to the view renders Lopes unable to run this explanation. For (V) claims that

the clusters of capacities engaged by pictures can outstrip those engaged by things seen face-to-face. What, then, does explain the limits on the

former, i.e., explain why misrepresentation has its limits? No answer is

available. There are such limits, but they are brute, peculiar to the pictorial case. For, while it is possible that science might uncover certain incom

patibilities between particular recognitional capacities pictures engage (even given the extra tolerance the pictorial realm manifests), there is no

reason to expect those explanations to be at all general. Moreover, such

explanations would anyway leave Lopes's combined view, the recognition theory plus expansionism, waiting on scientific developments to have suf

ficient content for it to do philosophical work (section 5.). This is not the only one of my explananda which Lopes fails to

explain. He discusses my objection to a recognitional explanation of my first feature of depiction, that there is no bare depiction of particulars

(Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, pp. 647-650]). The recogni tional theory can only explain this by supposing that recognitional abilities are engaged in clusters. Since the explanandum is that there is

necessarily no bare depiction of particulars, the theory must claim that

recognitional abilities are necessarily engaged in clusters. But this does not seem true. Whatever the case for us, some creatures could recognize

particulars without recognizing them as having any features, for any such

features might only be cognized at the sub-personal level.

Lopes's reply to this is that it presupposes "that recognizing a feature entails having a conscious experience of that feature." Not so. It presup

poses something rather weaker: that recognizing something involves some

event at the conscious level. It might be an experience, it might simply be the formation of an occurrent belief. This weaker presupposition is not

intended to be a claim about the concept of recognition. Rather, it is forced



672 ROBERT HOPKINS

on us by the ambitions of the recognitional theory itself. That is supposed to be an account of depiction in terms of pictorial understanding. But on

any view understanding pictures is a matter of responding to them at the

conscious level. This is not a claim dependent on the experiential theory: even Goodman would happily have accepted it. Given this, the recogni tional theory's claim should be that the recognitional capacities the

engagement of which constitutes understanding a picture, are capacities

consciously to recognize things.10 The threat I posed was that it is possible for the ability consciously to recognize a particular to be engaged without

any other abilities for conscious recognition being so. If so, there could be

pictures which engage the ability to recognize a particular without engaging any other recognitional abilities, in the sense Lopes's own theory should take as the one relevant to pictorial content.

One way to bring out this point is to consider Lopes's interesting

example of pictorial blindsight. Given the dialectical situation just described, the example misses its target. It cannot show that there can be pictorial un

derstanding without any conscious event, since the case precisely involves a conscious recognition, on the part of the subject, of the picture's content,

i.e., Clinton. Worse, Lopes's description of the case concedes the key point I need to undermine the explanatory potential of his view. For he

accepts that in such a case the only ability for conscious recognition which is engaged is that for the particular purportedly depicted (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 648]). In what I am arguing should be Lopes's own terms, then, the picture depicts nothing but that particular. Since the

possibility of such a picture is inconsistent with our explanandum, there is excellent reason to think that Lopes's explanation fails, contrary to his claim (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 649]).

Can Lopes deny that he is committed to conscious recognition? To do so would be to plant his flag a step farther from the standard cases of picturing. He was already committed to there being depiction in the pictorial blindsight case (just as my theory is committed to there not being). Now he is further committed to the possibility that something depict even though no one would ever respond to it with a conscious mental event, be it occurrent

belief or experience, reflecting what it depicts. If the sense of recognition relevant to pictorial content allows that there might be nothing in con sciousness reflecting that content, then with some pictures our interaction

with them could be confined to the sub-personal level, affecting behaviour



pictures, phenomenology and cognitive science 673

(presumably), but doing so without ever going via consciousness. I do not see that this would be depiction. It is not that such a thing could not occur.

For almost any form of representation, however it operates, and whatever

responses it demands from us, we can imagine an analogue of those responses at the sub-personal level. The problem is rather that nothing buried so deep in our inner workings could constitute a form of representation, in the sense in which language, pictures and other external symbols all represent, albeit in different ways. An essential tie to communication, to the realiza tion that others are conveying things to one via symbols, would be broken.

The only other option open to Lopes is to deny the explanandum: there can be depiction of a particular without any properties being pictorially ascribed to it. As I have said, if he retains the tie between consciousness and recognition, his own blindsight case already commits him to this. If

he rejects the "no bare depiction" explanandum, it will be hard for him to accept that any of the other explananda are true either, save for those con

cerning pictorial understanding which, I suggested (section 5), really motivate the whole recognitional view. We might see Lopes as thereby solving both the difficulties I have recently posed. For there can be no problem ex

plaining the limits on misrepresentation, or the impossibility of bare depiction, or for that matter anything else, if there are no such things to explain.

We might. I do not take such a rosy view. If these aren't the features of depiction it is at least amongst a theory's tasks to explain, what are?

What are we to say about the striking unity the six apparently exhibited

(section 2)? It is not in doubt that there could be a form of representation fitting Lopes's account, for that view is not incoherent. But why think that there is, and that standard pictures, which do have all the features I've

described, exhibit it? These are the questions I find myself wanting to ask the recognition theorist. And it is to gain the ability to avoid or answer these questions that I am motivated to think that depiction turns on expe rience, and that the experience is one of resemblance in outline shape.

Robert Hopkins University of Sheffield

Notes

1. This statement is particularly rough-and-ready: those in search of more precision should consult Hopkins 1998 pp. 24-27.

2. In Hopkins 1998 ch. 41 offered a different characterization of this property. Lopes summarizes that characterization very neatly in his paper.



674 ROBERT HOPKINS

3. Lopes is quite wrong to imply (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 638]). that the account surrenders its ambition of stating sufficient conditions for seeing-in.

4. See, for instance, Goodman 1969 ch. 1; Walton 1973; Lopes 1996 ch. 1. 5. Above I noted that the view should concentrate on experienced resemblance to the

object with whatever properties the picture ascribes to it, not whatever properties it actually has. I am now emphasizing a different point: that what matters is, not that the marks resemble such a thing, but that they be experienced as doing so.

6. If Lopes overlooks the possibility here it is probably because he glosses concepts as "representations in virtue of which particulars and members of kinds are identified" (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 640]). If the thought is that concepts are exhausted by their role in such identifications, then this use of the term restricts any properties asso ciated with the concept to those standardly used in identification. If we use 'concept' this way, I simply deny that concepts are applied in understanding pictures. Rather, what is applied therein are mental representations which incorporate, but are not exhausted by, concepts in Lopes's sense.

7. Schier also offers sketch explanations of the facts that all depiction is perspectival and none is bare depiction of particulars (p. 164 n. 21).

8. This includes the experienced resemblance view, despite any suggestion to the contrary implicit in Lopes's claim that recognition is 'robust* since it operates beyond the limits of similarity (Lopes 2003, [in this issue of The Monist, p. 644]).

9. In effect, this is to rewrite (IV), which deploys both senses of 'recognitional ability', the causal basis sense for the pictorial case, the dispositional sense for the face-to-face situation, so that it only uses the former sense throughout.

10. That is, given our earlier (?5) clarification of notions of a recognitional ability, the relevant capacities are the causal bases of dispositions to conscious events of recognizing (either that this is O, or that it is a picture of O).

References

Gibson, J. J., 1950. The Perception of the Visual World. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press. Goodman, Nelson, 1969. Languages of Art, 2nd ed' . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hopkins, Robert, 1997a. "Review of Lopes 1996." British Journal of Aesthetics 37, 3, pp.

283-86.

_, 1997b. "El Greco's Eyesight: Interpreting Pictures and the Psychology of Vision." Philosophical Quarterly vol. 47, no. 189, pp. 441-58.

_, 1998. Picture, Image and Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _, 2000. 'Touching Pictures." British Journal of Aesthetics, January 2000.

Koenderink, Jan J., 1998. "Pictorial Relief," pp. 1076-86. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society of London, 356.

Koenderink, Jan J. and van Doom, Andrea J., 1996. "How to Probe Different Aspects of Surface Relief," pp. 115-30. Studies in Ecological Psychology (EWEP4). Delft Uni versity Press.

Lopes, D., 1996. Understanding Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. _, 1997. "Art Media and the Sense Modalities: Tactile Pictures." Philosophical

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_, 2003. "Pictures and the Representational Mind." The Monist, vol. 86, no. 4.

Kennedy, John M., 1993. Drawing and the Blind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

_, 1980. "Blind People Recognizing and Making Haptic Pictures," in M. Hagen, ed. The Perception of Pictures, vol. II. Boston, MA: Boston University Press, pp. 263-303.

Novitz, D., 1977. Pictures and Their Use in Communication. The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff. Peacocke, C, 1987. "Depiction." Philosophical Review 96, pp. 383-410. Reid, Thomas, 1764. Inquiry into the Human Mind. Schier, F., 1986. Deeper into Pictures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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