Picture, Image and Experience: A Philosophical Inquiry

How do pictures represent? In this book Robert Hopkins casts new light on an ancient question by connecting it to issues in the philosophies of mind and perception. He starts by describing several striking features of picturing that demand explanation. These features strongly suggest that our experience of pictures is central to the way they represent, and Hopkins characterizes that experience as one of resemblance in a particular respect. He deals convincingly with the objections traditionally assumed to be fatal to resemblance views, and shows how his own account is uniquely well-placed to explain picturing’s key features. His discussion engages in detail with issues concerning perception in general, including how to describe phenomena that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists, and the book concludes with an attempt to see what a proper understanding of picturing can tell us about that deeply mysterious phenomenon, the visual imagination.

• Offers a new focus on an ancient philosophical question • Of interest to art historians and psychologists as well as philosophers • Connects discussion of the central issue with background issues in the philosophy of perception and of mind

1. The question; 2. Some features to explain; 3. Outline shape; 4. A theory of depiction; 5. Misrepresentation; 6. Indeterminacy and interpretation; 7. Visualizing.