# Claude  ## Metadata - Author: [[claude.ai]] - Full Title: Claude - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: This philosophy book explores the evaluation of pictures, focusing on their aesthetic value in relation to other evaluations. The book discusses the role of experiences of pictures in evaluating them and argues for an interactive relationship between aesthetic and non-aesthetic evaluations. It also examines how certain cognitive evaluations of pictures may imply or be implied by aesthetic evaluations, particularly as vehicles for seeing-in. - URL: https://claude.ai/chat/72cc4c9d-c630-40f3-8591-3d01c34ce844 ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The puzzle seems to dissolve for pictures depicting scenes worth seeing face-to-face, like Turner's sunsets. But some pictures depicting worthwhile scenes are still more worth looking at than their subjects. As Alberti wrote, "'you can conceive of almost nothing so precious which is not made far richer and much more beautiful by association with painting.'" ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htycmqq9mw8wsy1gdasn0vng)) > • Experienced resemblance theories (Peacocke, Budd, Hopkins) say pictures depict by eliciting experiences of resemblance between salient design features and salient features of the subject. This complex content claim about seeing-in does not follow from the mimesis thesis. > • It would be surprising if the mimesis thesis implied any theory of depiction, since such theories aim to explain what the thesis takes for granted. No plausible theory of depiction makes pictorial mimesis mysterious. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htycq8qe2p2frhcfb89d0sp7)) > Lopes's Conception of Design SeeingDefinition > • Design seeing is "a visual experience of a picture as a configuration, on a two-dimensional surface, of marks, colours, and textures in virtue of which the surface depicts a scene." (p. 28) > • It involves seeing the configuration of marks, colors and textures on a picture's surface that are responsible for it depicting what it does > Supporting Quotes and Details > • Design seeing is contrasted with just seeing the picture surface: "Seeing a pictorial design face to face does not entail seeing the design as a design—it does not entail design seeing" (p. 28) > • "Design seeing is crucial to advanced picture-making abilities, since it amounts to seeing design features as responsible for seeing-in" (p. 28) > • A picture's design is distinct from its subject and content: "A picture's design properties are typically a subset of its visible surface properties. Design seeing represents a configuration of marks, colours, and textures on a two-dimensional surface in virtue of which the surface depicts a scene, but not all visible properties of a picture surface are ones in virtue of which it depicts a scene." (p. 35) > • Design seeing enables one to see how the depicted scene emerges from the picture surface: "Seeing how the illusion is pulled off requires design seeing." (p. 37) > • Lopes argues design seeing does not necessarily occur simultaneously with seeing-in: "Can properties of the depicted scene be recruited, in the other direction, to transform design seeing? ... Seeing the surface as having features which can only be seen in it as a result of seeing something in that surface cannot count as design seeing." (p. 41-42) > • Experienced resemblance theories are criticized for implying seeing-in always doubles with design seeing: "Experienced resemblance theories of seeing-in imply that seeing O in P is always phenomenally distinguishable from seeing O face to face. Seeing-in is seeing a resemblance between a design and a scene. By contrast, seeing a scene face to face is not ordinarily an experience of it as resembling a design, because there is no design to see" (p. 44) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htyczt62v1bqj4v78gnn6gzs)) > An evaluation is an eval of a picture as a picture iff it is a "picture-appropriate" evaluation - one that implies an evaluation of it as sustaining seeing-in. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htyddw7h8cvam4q85b60339z)) > As Lutz et al. (2015) put it, "dereification...consists in coming to see thoughts as mental contents rather than as accurate depictions of reality." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htyg57296me9fbhd3gczfa4m)) > the claim is not necessarily that vehicle properties are noticed as discrete introspectible objects, but as phenomenological dependencies - facets of experience whose very feel carries an implicit reference to content-conditioning mental processes. > The objection may persist that, strictly speaking, we can only be aware of vehicle and content as separate relata, not of a relation between them. But the vehicle–content relation may be experienceable as an internal, dynamic contour of phenomenality, not a third entity interposed between them. It may be apprehended as a phenomenal showing-through of the dependence of what experience presents on how it presents it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htyg31gc5xpgnv8wjw88sq6f)) > Mindfulness meditators often describe increased insight into the workings of their mind - a newfound awareness of how attention and cognitive-affective schemas shape the meaning, salience and emotional import of what they experience (e.g., Grabovac et al., 2011). We can understand these reports as describing heightened inner awareness of vehicle–content relations, of the way phenomenal character grounds representational content. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htyg4nnh314e5p5axzd40k53)) > The Case for Twofoldness in ConsciousnessPrima Facie Phenomenological Evidence > • In ordinary experience, we seem focally aware only of represented contents (objects, properties, relations) > • Perceptual experiences transparently present external scenes without foregrounding sensory vehicles > • Cognitive experiences seem to directly present propositional contents without making thought processes manifest > • However, there may be background awareness of mental processes partially constituting contents > • Attention to perceptual experiences may reveal sensory qualities as distinct from represented properties > • Introspecting cognitive experiences may uncover feelings of effort, control, or concentration as indices of mental construction > • Switches between focus on mental vehicles and intentional contents seem possible > • We can alternate between seeing a 3D scene in a picture, and attending to 2D brushstrokes composing that scene > • Likewise, we may be able to shift from immersion in experiential contents to awareness of processes orchestrating that content ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htz0b2atse6a5zs8br205yaz)) > Fit with Different Conceptions of Twofoldness > • While not a perfect match for content-vehicle or seeing-in/design twofoldness, the idea of revealing normally hidden visual processing dynamics does resonate with some broader conceptions of twofold awareness: > • It aligns with the general idea of making background structural or enabling conditions of experience phenomenologically manifest > • More specifically, it suggests a kind of fracturing of experience into its "surface" content and its "deep" neural/computational underpinnings > • This could be seen as a novel form of Gestalt shift between representational content and the mechanisms of representation > • The idea also has some prima facie fit with the "dereification" or "opacification" effects ascribed to meditation and psychedelics, in which the constructive and projective nature of experience becomes salient > • In this case, rather than content appearing as a mental construction, it would be the underlying architecture of that construction becoming transparent > • However, the analogy to content-vehicle or manner/content twofoldness is limited, as the geometric patterns seem to be features of neural processing rather than the experiential medium per se ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htz2fpje9fgev1qyjbm9c34z)) > While not a perfect match for content-vehicle or seeing-in/design twofoldness, the idea of revealing normally hidden visual processing dynamics does resonate with some broader conceptions of twofold awareness: > • It aligns with the general idea of making background structural or enabling conditions of experience phenomenologically manifest ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htz1ebcps63fvcsb2p20qvk2))