http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:7286 Depiction is the form of representation distinctive of figurative paintings, drawings, and photographs. Accounts of depiction attempt to specify the relation something must bear to an object in order to depict it. Resemblance accounts hold that the notion of resemblance is necessary to the specification of this relation. Several difficulties with such analyses have led many philosophers to reject the possibility of an adequate resemblance account of depiction. This essay outlines these difficulties and argues that current resemblance accounts succumb to them. It then develops an alternative resemblance account, drawing on Grice's account of nonnatural meaning and its role in determining sentence meaning to argue that something depicts an object if it bears intention-based resemblances to the object that jointly capture its overall appearance. In addition to solving the metaphysical problem of what it is for something to depict an object, this account also sheds significant light on the epistemological issue of how we are able to work out that something depicts an object. This essay argues that our ability to work out that something depicts an object results from both our more general ability to identify intentions from the products of communicative behavior and our knowledge of stylistic conventions. This account avoids the difficulties that face rival attempts to analyze depiction in terms of resemblance. It also clarifies and explains the features that distinguish depictive from nondepictive representation. 2010-03-10T11:10:24.279Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:2060 My concern in this paper is what, in 'Art and Illusion', Gombrich calls "the riddle of style". This is the problem of why people at different times and in different cultures have depicted objects in very different ways. An adequate solution to this problem will comprise an explanation of why depiction has a history. 2010-01-27T23:08:37.092Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:2739 In this paper, I discuss the account of depiction proposed by Robert Hopkins in his book "Picture, Image and Experience". I first briefly summarise Hopkins's account, according to which we experience depictions as resembling their objects in respect of outline shape. I then ask whether Hopkins's account can perform the explanatory tasks required of an adequate account of depiction. I argue that there are at least two reasons for which Hopkins's account of depiction is inadequate. Firstly, the notion of outline shape, as Hopkins presents it, is inconsistent. Moreover, I argue that, while a consistent construal of outline shape is possible, Hopkins's account becomes indistinguishable from previous accounts of depiction under any such construal. Second, I argue that, however it is construed, the notion of outline shape is unable to explain one of the central features which Hopkins himself insists any successful account of depiction must explain. 2010-01-27T23:01:07.019Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:2740 I defend Christopher Peacocke's and Robert Hopkins's experienced resemblance accounts of depiction against criticisms put forward by Gavin McIntosh in a recent article in this journal. I argue that, while there may be reasons for rejecting Peacocke's and Hopkins's accounts, McIntosh fails to provide any. 2010-01-27T23:01:07.014Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:2820 The claim that depiction involves language-like conventions is examined, and distinguishes it from two other forms of depictive conventionalism. An argument that because conventionalism must be consistent with the distinguishing features of depiction, it must construe depictive conventions as conventions for the depiction of basic color, shape and textual properties is presented. 2010-01-27T23:00:11.113Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:3189 I propose a number of criteria for the adequacy of an account of pictorial realism. Such an account must: explain the epistemic significance of realistic pictures; explain why accuracy and detail are salient to realism; be consistent with an accurate account of depiction; and explain the features of pictorial realism. I identify six features of pictorial realism. I then propose an account of realism as a measure of the information pictures provide about how their objects would look, were one to see them. This account meets the criteria I have identified and is superior to alternative accounts of realism. 2010-01-27T22:55:51.803Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:4094 In what follows, I assume that visible content is a matter of resemblance, although I will leave it open exactly how resemblance serves to determine visible content. I will concentrate on two issues: first, whether the intentions of a picture’s maker can provide the basis for an adequate standard of correctness, and second, how we are able to apply such a standard. Given that an object has a certain visible content, therefore, I want to know whether the intentions of that object’s maker are adequate to determine both whether that object is a picture and, if so, what its depictive content is. I also want to know how we are able to tell what the intentions of an object’s maker were, without having any independent knowledge of these intentions. 2010-01-27T22:45:31.247Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:4336 I argue that artworks are of public value because aesthetic experience of them contributes to the development of our aesthetic judgement. I use two accounts of aesthetic judgement to explore how it might do so and how the private ownership of artworks could affect the development of our aesthetic judgement. 2010-01-27T22:42:49.291Z ]]>