sight and sensibility evaluating pictures jun 2005

[...]... evaluation of tactile pictures as vehicles for perceiving-in 18 Introduction The exclusion of tactile pictures is a special case of a more general exclusion As should be abundantly clear, Sight and Sensibility concerns the aesthetic and non-aesthetic evaluation of pictures as vehicles for seeing-in, to the exclusion of all other evaluations of pictures, aesthetic and otherwise Evaluations of pictures as formal... evaluation of pictures from our experiences of them and the scenes they depict It invites us to deliberate upon sight and sensibility together The pictorial evaluation thesis is a starting-point, not a conclusion, though the more we learn by assuming its truth, the more reason we have to believe it Two ambitions that overarch Sight and Sensibility spring from and unpack the pictorial evaluation thesis The... Suppose that some pictures have aesthetic merit as visual devices and also that we endorse interactionism with respect to moral and cognitive evaluation In that case we must show that pictures have cognitive and moral merit as visual representations Showing this requires an adequate conception of the visuality of pictures Chapters 1 and 2 propose a conception of our experiences of pictures that grounds... conception of the visuality of pictures Horizons This book first outlines a robust conception of the visuality of pictures and then defends a model of how to evaluate pictures as visual These aims are limited, however An acknowledgement of the book’s limitations cements any plausibility that might attach to its conclusions First, Sight and Sensibility concerns only representational pictures This is a consequence... incontestable, it is in fact false Some pictures are made of raised lines standing for objects’ outlines, and touching the raised lines typically elicits scene-presenting experiences in blind and sighted people alike (Kennedy 1993) The experiences are cases not of seeing-in but rather of perceiving-in Tactile pictures suggest that pictures are not exclusively visual and that their visuality is a special... the picture and at her Woman with Field Glasses is about our visual encounter with pictures and the scenes they depict That is a second concern of this book Introduction 3 Fig 2 Edgar Degas, Woman with Field Glasses, 1865 Photo credit: HIP/Scala/Art Resource, NY Neither concern is new Philosophers have long debated aesthetic value and evaluation, on the one hand, and experiences of pictures and depicted... rethinking the nature of cognitive and moral evaluations of pictures The choice to study the cognitive and moral evaluation of pictures is not arbitrary Interactionism with respect to the cognitive and Introduction 9 moral evaluation of pictures is hotly disputed More importantly, these disputes are not pointless: they go to the heart of what matters Autonomists may grant that pictures can be assessed for... Introduction respect of cognitive and moral evaluation, then pictures have little aesthetic merit as visual devices Alternatively, some pictures have aesthetic merit as visual devices only if we reject interactionism in respect of cognitive and moral evaluation ‘Aesthetes’ and formalists reject interactionism; critics of pictures (e.g feminist critics of the gaze) deny that pictures have much cognitive,... the picture itself and as of the scene it depicts No account of evaluating a picture as a picture will be complete if it ignores the part played by experiences of the picture and the scene it depicts This thesis invites us to see what we can learn about our experiences of pictures and the scenes they depict from the evaluation of them, and what we can learn about the evaluation of pictures from our... intentional processes of making, and as historically and socially embedded artefacts are left out Exclusion does not imply pre-eminence, however The account given in the chapters that follow is admittedly partial, and does not answer all the questions one might have about pictures and the evaluation of them Pictures are obviously much more than vehicles for seeing-in, and many are barely interesting . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h1" alt="" SIGHT AND SENSIBILITY Evaluating Pictures Sight and Sensibility presents the first detailed and comprehensive theory of evaluating pictures. Dominic Lopes confronts. visuality is sometimes a blessing and only sometimes a curse. The blessing, when it is aesthetic, must be real and not a placebo. Sight and Sensibility defends pictures along these lines. The past. ambitions that overarch Sight and Sensibility spring from and unpack the pictorial evaluation thesis. The first is to defend a view about how aesthetic and non-aesthetic evaluations of pictures interact. A