# Photographic Phenomenology as Cognitive Phenomenology  ## Metadata - Author: [[Cavedon-Taylor]] - Full Title: Photographic Phenomenology as Cognitive Phenomenology - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The theory of photographic phenomenology suggests that our cognitive responses, rather than the photographs themselves, shape our pictorial experiences. It argues that we typically believe what we see in photographs immediately, which creates a unique phenomenological impact. This account highlights that the way we engage with photographs is influenced by our beliefs about them, rather than the nature of photography itself. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067 - Source File: Photographic Phenomenology as Cognitive Phenomenology by Cavedon-Taylor.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Strikingly, this contrast is amplified when the picture in question is a photograph. The point is sometimes put by saying that our pictorial experiences before photographs have a peculiar affect or phenomenology to them that is absent when we consider the picto- rial experiences we have before so-called hand-made pictures, e.g. drawings, paintings, etchings and so on. Characterizing this phenomenology is no easy task, but an intuitive thought is that seeing an object in a photograph feels more like being in actual, face- to-face perceptual contact with that object than does seeing that object in a hand-made picture. Phenomenologically, seeing a photograph of a dog is more on a par with seeing a dog than is seeing a painting or drawing of a dog (which, in turn, is more on a par with seeing a dog than is seeing the word ‘dog’). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91h5m5djbdedg86cfpk98at)) > Walton’s explanation for photographic phenomenology is that photographs are ‘transpar- ent’: seeing a photograph of an object is a way of indirectly seeing that object, of a kind with seeing an object by virtue of seeing that object’s reflection in a mirror. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91ha6355ybh6ka39tmd394c)) > Currie’s explanation is that photographs are ‘traces’. Again, this is a term of art. Currie means that the state of a photograph counterfactually depends upon the state of the photo- graphed object, and in a belief-independent way. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91hbascncwgk6czpz7c8jfb)) > Walton’s and Currie’s explanations of photographic phenomenology are distinct, but they share a striking commitment. Both affirm that the correct account will reference facts about the photographic medium itself: that *photographs* are ‘transparent’ or that *pho- tographs* [are ‘traces’, respectively.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark2) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91hcm32yp0dg1n02x4g0cx4)) > The above views are representative of three types of explanation one might give for the phenomenology of photographic pictorial experience. Those accounts that, like Walton’s and Currie’s, seek an explanation in terms of the nature of the photographic medium itself, I shall call ‘realist’. The label is appropriate insofar as these accounts appeal to (putative) facts that are, in an important sense, viewer independent. Photographs are transparent, or are traces, independent of our believing them to be so. Those accounts that, like Pettersson’s and Friday’s, look to explain the phenomenon in terms of the con- tent of viewers’ beliefs about the photographic medium, I shall call ‘folk-psychological’. This label is appropriate insofar as these accounts reference (putative) facts about our ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91hkfws3a9fjr6dd8dnr0ht)) > conception of the photographic medium, and not the medium per se. Those accounts that, like Hopkins’s, seemingly reference a combination of the two, I shall call ‘hybridic’. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91hkq2tefw5qnymp1xn7n66)) > In this paper, I examine the case for a fourth type of explanation for photographic phenomenology: that the contents of the pictorial experiences we have when seeing pho- tographs are taken up into belief in a psychologically immediate, non-inferential manner, while the contents of those pictorial experiences we have before hand-made pictures are not. On this account, the phenomenology of photographic pictorial experience is a product of a common factor such experience shares with ordinary (i.e. non-pictorial) visual experience, since the latter likewise elicit belief in a psychologically immediate, non-inferential manner. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91hpgctbbbghxqrhhzmvvjd)) > The varied nature of these terms I take to be a natural consequence of these philosophers engaging in a phenomenological analysis; that is, of their undertaking to characterize, and subsequently explain, the *feel* of certain of our psychological states, i.e. what it is like, experientially, to undergo those states. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91hvajkvypjqnwkjdhm6fas)) > It is the above beliefs that viewers form about objects, on the basis of having pictorial experiences of them in photographs, which take centre-stage in the cognitive-etiological account. By contrast, the beliefs that take centre-stage in both the folk-psychological and hybridic accounts appear to be dispositional beliefs, the intentional object of which is not the particular concrete individual one sees in the photograph; rather, such beliefs appear directed towards the photographic medium itself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91j348r99aqercbxgw52z1v)) > Seemingly, we are satisfied by the mere absence of counter-evidence, rather than requiring the *pres- ence* of evidence for creditworthiness. Strikingly, it is not the case that our response to a photograph is to first be sceptical of the content of the pictorial experience we have in response to it. We do not suspend judgement in the pictorial experience, and only go on to assent to its content once we get to know a bit more about who took the photograph or > where it was displayed or published. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91j7fgvvbpavtbxhfzd5h2w)) > The claims above are best encapsulated in the idea that the withholding of judge- ment is not our *default* response towards photographs; rather, withholding judgement is something we do only in special circumstances, circumstances in which we take ourselves (wrongly or rightly) to possess counter-evidence for the photograph’s creditworthiness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91jbhzgte35zwcnxxp239k0)) > How can all this explain the quasi-perceptual phenomenology of photographic pictorial experience? Here is how: by reference to a common-factor shared by ordinary perceptual experience and photographically-induced pictorial experience. For, ordinary perceptual experience also elicits belief in a psychologically immediate, non-inferential manner. Indeed, the latter is arguably a hallmark of perceptual knowledge. As Alan Millar puts it: ‘If you know perceptually that something is a bottle of milk then it simply strikes you that ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91jh27wm14pma8f5qjeshff)) > [a certain way.’](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark16)16 [Keith Hossack similarly writes: ‘We are not normally conscious of any inference in perception. When we know by seeing, usually the only mental act that occurs is the visual experience itself.’](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark17)[17](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark17) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91jhbt6q3hvtnw9hn35ntha)) > Ordinary face-to-face perceptual experiences and the pictorial experiences we have before photographs share phenomenology with respect to the ‘immediacy’ of their uptake into belief. So, we are more shocked, or embarrassed, or aroused by photographic pornography than that of the hand-made variety because, seeing a pornographic scene in a photograph, we find ourselves having uptake of the experience’s content, whereas this is not the case when seeing a com- parable pornographic scene in a hand-made picture, all else being equal (at least not with- out some further knowledge of the picture, e.g. who made it, where it is displayed, etc.). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91jnbbwq6dvyacateyynm41)) > The cognitive-etiological account sidesteps such controversies. In advancing no claims about the nature of the photographic medium, and no claims about the nature of our beliefs about the photographic medium, it has a distinct advantage over realist, folk-psy- chological and, in particular, hybridic theories. Whatever challenges the account must face, it at least does not require its defenders to take a stand on these challenging issues. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91jv3pbv7fgwrbx8e3mwkdw)) > This illustrates a key point: the phenomenology in question is merely *typical* of having a pictorial experience before a photograph. It is not a necessary feature of > photographic pictorial experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91k7zbs9vj1gg6gs8f7sttn)) > Still, the viewer is seeing a photograph, which, if transpar- ency is true, say, entails that the viewer is in perceptual contact with the photographed object. It is just that the viewer fails to realize this. (Compare the situation with one in which a subject fails to realize that they are seeing, face to face, a violin, and wrongly takes themselves to be seeing, face to face, a *trompe l’oeil*. What they see is a violin, despite their false belief.) It is doubtful that the pictorial experiences in such cases will involve photographic phenomenology, though such cases involve undergoing pictorial experience before a photograph. So, according to the transparency theory, the pictorial experiences of viewers in the described circumstances cannot fail to exemplify photographic phenom- enology, since, according to that view, by virtue of seeing a photograph it is made true that the subject sees the photographed object. Whether or not transparency itself is an acceptable claim, its account of photographic phenomenology is not. No account of photo- graphic phenomenology should have the consequence that viewers of photographs, so long as they see an object in a photograph, of *necessity* undergo photographic phenomenology. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91kcs0bbgvs16rhz5fmtt7n)) > This requires some comment, which I provide below. The point I wish to emphasize at present is that by treating the phenomenology of photographic pictorial experience as contingent, the theory has a benefit over realist accounts; it can accommodate the possibility of situations in which a subject sees an object in a photograph and yet fails to undergo photographic phenomenology. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91kfakqr84vkr6m39gm71es)) > strictly speaking, there is *no* dis- tinctive ‘photographic’ phenomenal character possessed by the pictorial experiences one has before photographs. Instead, what sets the phenomenology of one’s experiences before photographs apart from the phenomenology of one’s experiences before hand-made pic- tures is immediate endorsement of the content of one’s pictorial experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91kh86xvqan1ehvrve46hp1)) > [Framed in such a way, the theory may be thought obviously false, since it might be read as claiming that the pictorial nature of photographs has nothing whatsoever to do with their phenomenological impact on viewers. Consider testimony. On a widely endorsed theory of testimonial justification, the assertions of others are taken up into belief just as immediately and spontaneously as are the contents of one’s perceptual experiences.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark18)18 [If this theory of testimony is right, then the hearing of testimony should, according to the view developed here, result in a feeling of quasi-perceptual contact with the events testified. Yet it is obvious that uptake into belief of a testified content does not result in perception-like contact with the events described.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark19)[19](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark19) > However, the account I am exploring here does not hold it is the spontaneous uptake into belief of a content that is the explanans. Rather, it talks of the spontaneous act of uptake of a content already packaged in sensorial form, i.e. the content of one’s pictorial experience. It is the psychologically immediate endorsement *of pictorial expe- rience* that is explanatory, not the uptake into belief of content *tout court*. Photographic phenomenology is the mental event: non-inferential uptake into belief of pictorial experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91kk7d9c0m7nmstendaxqnk)) > This is because the theory claims that the phenomenology is not, in fact, peculiar to, but is merely typical of, such experiences. In particular, because the account claims the phenomenology is contingent upon a fact external to the pictorial experience (i.e. spontaneous uptake into belief), the view therefore predicts that when that fact accompanies a painting-induced pictorial experience, the latter will exhibit the phenomenology that typically attaches to a photographically-induced pictorial experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91m3mg3xv121bb68wjh87s7)) > My belief, however, is that the content of our folk-psychological conception of the photographic medium is entirely unclear. With the now widespread rise of digital photography, my a priori suspicion is that folk-belief about the medium is currently in a state of flux. So I am sceptical that looking to folk- belief will yield a satisfactory account of photographic phenomenology. > [Relatedly, however, one might think that the prevalence of digital manipulation, and greater awareness of such techniques, casts doubt on the cognitive-etiological account. It’s not at all obvious, one might think, that an informed viewer of digital photographs takes things to be as they are presented in pictorial experience, absent reasons to believe otherwise.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark32)[32](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/221411067/#bookmark32) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91mb0x4sr45ggjpx4phvyw4)) > Granted, it may well be that our doxastic attitudes towards photographs are not what they used to be. But that, if true, does not challenge the cognitive-etiological account. The theory says only that where we *do* have psychologically immediate uptake into belief of pictorial experience’s content, we thereby also have photographic phenom- enology: that quasi-perceptual feeling of contact, or closeness, or proximity, or inti- macy, with the depicted objects and events. The theory is thus a conditional one, and so has a degree of flexibility built into it. Where we do not have that uptake, the view pre- dicts that the relevant phenomenology will be absent. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j91mcw6kdjvv93ggskqyy7bm))