Mirrors of Nature: Philosophical Accounts of Realism in Pictorial Representation and Audio Recording
Term:
Spring 2010
Subject Code:
GPHI
Course Number:
6102
Pictures have long been an influential model for understanding what it
is for thoughts and linguistic expressions to realistically represent the
world. This seminar lays the groundwork for assessing the fecundity of
such an approach by first focusing on the case of pictures themselves and what
it is for them to be realistic. We will then test this model by assessing
its usefulness in understanding a philosophically neglected form of mechanical
representation: namely, audio recording. Along the way, we will discuss a
series of related topics, including the question of what it is for something to
be a representation; the generic differences between linguistic, pictorial, and
phonographic representational systems; whether pictorial realism is a relation
between ourselves and pictures or between pictures and the world; whether the
mechanical nature of photography makes it an inherently more realistic
representational system than drawing or painting; and, finally, the overall
usefulness of drawing upon pictorial realism as a model for understanding
realism in other sorts of representational systems. Authors to be
discussed will include Ernest Gombrich, Nelson Goodman, John Hyman, John
Haugeland, John Kulvicki, Stanley Cavell, Joel Snyder, and Casey O'Callaghan.
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