Understanding Pictures (Oxford Philosophical Monographs)

By Dominic McIver Lopes

Book Overview

There is not one but many ways to picture the world--Australian "x-ray" pictures, cubish collages, Amerindian split-style figures, and pictures in two-point perspective each draw attention to different features of what they represent. Understanding Pictures argues that this diversity is the central fact with which a theory of figurative pictures must reckon. Lopes advances the theory that identifying pictures' subjects is akin to recognizing objects whose appearances have changed over time. He develops a schema for categorizing the different ways pictures represent--the different kinds of meaning they have--and argues that that depiction's epistemic value lies in its representational diversity. He also offers a novel account of the phenomenology of pictorial experience, comparing pictures to visual prostheses like mirrors and binoculars.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199272034
• ISBN13: 9780199272037
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.5"