# Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures  ## Metadata - Author: [[Dominic McIver Lopes]] - Full Title: Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/144375171 - Source File: Sight and Sensibility – Evaluating Pictures by Dominic McIver Lopes (2007).pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > the role ofexperiences ofpictures and depicted scenes in the evaluation ofpictures is, with few exceptions, scarcely given serious thought (the exceptions are Schier 1993; Graham 1994; Goldman 1995b; Hopkins 1997). > Bridging both concerns is an assumption about what it is to evaluate a picture as a picture: pictorial evaluation thesis: in part, to evaluate a picture as a picture is to evaluate it as eliciting experiences of the picture itself and as of the scene it depicts. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htyax6xq13sp159tchsh33cr)) > According to the mimesis thesis, pictures typically elicit experiences as of the scenes they depict, which experiences resemble, in important respects, face-to-face experiences ofthe same scenes. For example, a picture ofan old pair ofshoes typically elicits an experience like one ofseeing an old pair ofshoes face to face, and to evaluate the picture as a picture is in part to evaluate it as a vehicle for seeing some old shoes ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv3gkfzf2v87pqpd6xapv42d)) - Note: Mimesis thesis does not entail resemblance theory of depiction (e.g. Peirce's view). Resemblance is between: scene-presenting experiences pictures elicit face-to-face experiences of subjects NOT between: picture's design its subject #claude > . Use ‘design’ to refer to those visible surface properties in virtue ofwhich a picture depicts what it does. Design comprises the surface configurations that you see when you see the picture surface without seeing anything in it and that are responsible for your seeing something in it. Not every intrinsic visible property ofa picture surface is part of its design, however. We may be able to see that a picture is made of canvas or is very old, but ifthese are not features in virtue ofwhich the picture depicts what it does, then they are not elements of its design. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqar61v4cfqpyj4erz12d591)) > When we look at a picture, we normally see in it the scene it depicts, but we may also see its design as a design. Ofcourse, there is a sense in which we always see a picture’s design when we see things in it, for we always see a scene in a picture by seeing the picture face to face. It is only in virtue ofseeing the configuration ofmarks on its surface, and being sensitive to visible changes in them, that we see anything at all in the picture. However, seeing a pictorial design face to face does not entail seeing the design as a design—it does not entail design seeing: a visual experience ofa picture as a configuration, on a two-dimensional surface, ofmarks, colours, and textures in virtue ofwhich the surface depicts a scene. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hy3gd6wrj40wywq0870tr9yj)) > less one simultaneously sees the depicted scene and the depicting d ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hy64xsyj9zjv6a0j7hn0en0h)) > An obvious argument is that unless one simultaneously sees the depicted scene and the depicting design, one cannot see how the latter undergirds the former and how the former is an elaboration of the latter, and seeing a picture as a picture amounts to seeing its undergirding—to seeing, as it were, the process of depiction and not merely its product. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hy64s7sa8pc02pbfe33hwv52)) > An obvious argument is that unless one simultaneously sees the depicted scene and the depicting design, one cannot see how the latter undergirds the former and how the former is an elaboration of the latter, and seeing a picture as a picture amounts to seeing its undergirding—to seeing, as it were, the process of depiction and not merely its product. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hy64ys9kzp5m5bzyveqa7r0n)) > . Features of the design may inflect illustrative content, so that the scene is experienced as ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hy64f0dzdkjt1fmnjx644v3z)) > . Features of the design may inflect illustrative content, so that the scene is experienced as ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hybce1tctqwas1nen79nwz5h)) > Sometimes seeing-in is illusionistic and divides from design seeing. In these cases, seeing scenes as having three-dimensional properties that the scenes could be seen to have face to face rules out simultaneously seeing the pictures’ two-dimensional designs. However, seeing-in is not often illusionistic. Features of the design may inflect illustrative content, so that the scene is experienced as ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hybcfnvj3xpy61704q76rq70)) > having properties it could only be seen to have in pictures. The lesson is that it is wrong to think that illustrative content is not distinctively pictorial. The negative argument from medium specificity embodies too narrow a conception of seeing-in. A distinctive feature of the medium is its affording seeing-in. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hy64evm45sg8vwrfkrc81hyv)) > Seeing-in divides from design seeing, but there is no trompe-l’œil. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hy65g0j148qptzsms6mdz0ww))