Direct and indirect photorealism

bongo fury

Under any ordinary reading, the flower is not "directly presented in" or "a constituent of" the photo. The photo is just a photosensitive surface that has chemically reacted to light. — Michael

Surely this is the rub? Most direct and indirect realists alike would assume that a photo is epistemically better grounded than an artist's impression? Even if the artist is an eye-witness at the scene?

Because maybe not the whole flower but many of its properties, and its downstream physical effects, are indeed directly presented in and constitutive of the photo? We recognise some kind of forensic or evidential value of the photo (in preference to the art) by calling it a 'physical trace' of the flower. The photo being 'just' a photosensitive surface that has chemically reacted to light would seem to enable rather than disable this claim to privileged access.

And by the same token, the flower is not "directly presented in" or "a constituent of" phenomenal experience. Phenomenal experience is just a mental phenomenon elicited in response to signals sent by the body's sense receptors. — Michael

Ok. Token re-taken. Analogy accepted. Let's not dwell on obvious differences between photos and mental experiences. Also let's ignore the immediate context in both scenarios. Let's not bicker over whether a homunculus or any other observer is present, and able to become acquainted with the photo or experience. (Or pixel-array or qualia-array or brain-state etc.) The photo (or experience etc.) is the observer.

That is, let's just consider the directness or otherwise of the relevant relation between the photo (etc.) and the flower.

We might think that if there is any such relation, independent of the psychological considerations just marginalised, then it must be the relation of delivering a trace. A bundle of properties and patterns and effects. From flower to photo. Direct and indirect then both apply, in different senses: direct because connecting in an unbroken chain; indirect because involving links and transformations.

We perhaps needn't think that. For Goodman, anyway (in Languages of Art), the relation of depiction is assumed imposed by a system of interpretation. Skill in speaking the language of pictures (pointing pictures at things) is made akin to skill in speaking the language of words (pointing words at things). Resemblance between picture and object is a red-herring. Pictures, like words, apply (denote) only relative to a whole symbolic system. So their epistemic connection to their depicted objects is akin to the verifiability of observation sentences in being (arguably) holistic rather than one by one.

Or, the other side of that coin, the forensic, trace, cctv view of the depiction relation, as conveying a bundle of properties, patterns and effects, perhaps makes a commonsense case against holism about verification. It pumps an intuition of semantic information, as knowledge delivered down a channel, from source to receiver. (Flower to photo.)

Still, the fact that it's possible to relocate the discussion externally, and set aside all the contested assumptions about phenomenology, seems to me to justify a separate thread. :grimace:

Some issues may carry over. Disjunctivism (about the difference between illusion and hallucination) might translate into a view on the difference between factive and fictive depiction?

Michael

many of its properties, and its downstream physical effects, are indeed directly presented in and constitutive of the photo — bongo fury

What do you mean by the flower’s properties being directly presented? What is the word “directly” doing here?

The photo is hung up on my wall. The flower is 1,000 miles away. There is a very literal spatial separation between the photo and the flower. The flower and its properties do not exist in two locations at once.

It seems to me that you are just needlessly, and meaninglessly, throwing in the word “directly”. Whatever you mean by “direct” here isn’t what is meant when debating the epistemological problem of perception.

You might say that the photo resembles the flower (as seen in real life), but then any indirect realist can agree.

bongo fury

What is the word “directly” doing here? — Michael

I guess, the same work as "actually"?

I'm not defending direct realism on that basis.

Direct and indirect then both apply, in different senses: direct because connecting in an unbroken chain; indirect because involving links and transformations. — bongo fury

bongo fury

I guess, the same work as "actually"? — bongo fury

But also, the hidden subtext of "forensic" and "physical trace". Which I think Goodman would argue is skewing the debate.

AmadeusD

Direct and indirect then both apply, in different senses: direct because connecting in an unbroken chain; indirect because involving links and transformations. — bongo fury

Isn't this kind of side-stepping the debate and saying "You have your truth, I have mine" the way Uni students who can't handle be wrong do? (applies equally to DR or IR here, if accepted).

Jack Cummins

↪bongo fury

With photos, there is possibly the most 'clinically objective' image representation of visual reality possible. However, there are some variables, such as lighting, photographic techniques and, more so recently, modifications not simply by airbrushing but by apps for adjustment.

However, in the phenomenology of art, there is a difference by rendering an image, or of copying, of a photograph and human drawing and painting. This may be where qualia and perception come in. If a group of people sit together and draw a person there are likely to be so many differences in the picture produced. It may come down to artistic ability but also due to perception itself, with so much being interpretative as opposed to 'photorealism'.

However, it is a muddy area as some strive to copy in such a way as to resemble photorealism, especially if photographs are used as part of the research and details copied from photos. Currently, graphic art and its incorporation of humans blur the boundaries. Also, there is the movement of supperealist painting, which attempts to make art which looks more 'real' than photography.

In addition, the familiarity with certain art and photography may influence human perception itself. Artists study art to improve their visual imagination. Also, the he exposure to photorealism informs the basis of the visual imagination is one influential aspect of visualisation alongside the neuroscientific aspects of perception, with the brain and eyes being the physical wiring for picturing 'reality'.

Michael

Direct and indirect then both apply, in different senses: direct because connecting in an unbroken chain; indirect because involving links and transformations. — bongo fury

What would a "broken" chain be? Is seeing my face in a mirror an "unbroken" chain and so "direct" perception of my face? Is watching football on TV an "unbroken" chain and so "direct" perception of a football match?

I guess, the same work as "actually"? — bongo fury

So when you say that the flower's properties are "directly presented in and constitutive of the photo" you're saying that the flower's properties are actually presented in and constitutive of the photo? Well that's factually incorrect. The flower (and its properties) is a thousand miles away, and cannot exist in two locations at once.

Also, the flower is organic whereas the photo isn't, so I'm not even sure which properties you're claiming to be "presented in and constitutive of the photo".

bongo fury

Isn't this kind of side-stepping the debate and saying "You have your truth, I have mine" — AmadeusD

Haha, not if @Michael can help it. And good for him.

As he says, and I admitted in the first place, I may not be addressing the usual problem, and certainly not in the usual terms.

↪Jack Cummins

Yes, you raise some relevant points about aesthetic notions and doctrines concerning photorealism, which might help expose the subtext I mentioned.

What would a "broken" chain be? — Michael

If conveyance of a physical trace is the criterion, the chain is broken by any link that fails to convey an actual physical trace from one link to another.

An artist's or AI's visual image might be richly informative, and even be considered a true picture of the reported scene or event, but it would break any chain of supposed forensic connection with that scene. Just as a verbal description would break that chain, even if true.

Is seeing my face in a mirror an "unbroken" chain and so "direct" perception of my face? — Michael

If you mean, is your retinal image, or the array of reflectance in the glass, a physical trace of the light reflecting off your face, obviously yes. And the process is direct in the sense of an unbroken chain of conveyance of physical properties and patterns and effects, but indirect in the sense of the properties being transformed and the patterns distorted.

Is watching football on TV an "unbroken" chain and so "direct" perception of a football match? — Michael

I expect most fans of TV football hope that the displayed picture completes an unbroken chain of conveyance of physical traces from the light and sound reflecting off players and scenery at a particular place and time. They would be displeased to learn that the chain began or (restarted) at a different place and time, perhaps in an AI.

So would I. Sometimes a direct, I mean unbroken, connection with reality is important to the epistemic value of audiovisual footage. Although it doesn't guarantee any such value. And it isn't always needed.

I'm not even sure which properties you're claiming to be "presented in and constitutive of the photo". — Michael

Visual ones.

AmadeusD

As he says, and I admitted in the first place, I may not be addressing the usual problem, and certainly not in the usual terms. — bongo fury

Fair enough then :P

perhaps

there is a recurring discourse about appearance vs reality that historically stems from Plato’s Republic book X, I won’t bother with footnotes, nor the subsequent playful repartee in contemporary arts criticism and practise, that most who are interested in art history culturally as I infer would be acquainted with anyway. Just a mention of the artist Gerhard Richter whose opus includes a substantial body of photorealist paintings. They are worth looking if you are interested in philosophical informed artworks involving the complex interplay of photography and painting, he once said it like this: Photography has almost no reality; it is almost a hundred per cent picture. And painting always has reality: you can touch the paint; it has presence; but it always yields a picture – no matter whether good or bad. That’s all theory. It’s no good. I once took small photographs and then smeared them with paint. That partly resolved the problem, and it’s really good – better than anything I could ever say on the subject.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪bongo fury

Surely this is the rub? Most direct and indirect realists alike would assume that a photo is epistemically better grounded than an artist's impression? Even if the artist is an eye-witness at the scene?

Sort of. An artist's rendering or a skillful photographer can utilize their skill (a sort of pictorial syntax) to bring out more of a thing's properties, "what it is." For example, skillfully wartime correspondence don't just shoot photos randomly, they seek to bring out the essence of events. Likewise, an artist might be able to bring out certain properties of a thing better than some carelessly shot photograph. Anatomical diagrams are a good example here, particularly the way in which they abstract away variations in individuals and attempt to show the essential nature of some organ, system, etc. The artist can do things like abstract the circulatory system away from the rest of the body.

Under any ordinary reading, the flower is not "directly presented in" or "a constituent of" the photo. The photo is just a photosensitive surface that has chemically reacted to light.
— Michael

Things are phenomenologicaly present in pictures. This is how we speak of things. A person can be "in" a picture. A picture is a representation of a person but a person is not a "representation of pictures of them," even though both share a likeness. To simply discuss the properties of the photo is to abstract away the very mind in which likeness and representation exist. I think it's simply an unhelpful move to try to understand representation without reference to the subject to whom the representation appears. But for the subject, phrases like "hey, that's my brother in that photograph," are not mistakes or untruths. People are made more or less phenomenologicaly present in representations.

Anyhow, perception seems like it would be better described by analogy to a lens rather than a picture. A lens is something that can affect how things appear. But it is also something you look through actively. The agent is involved in what the lens is pointed at. It is something through which we see, rather than what we see. When we look at something through a lens, we do not tend to say we are "seeing the lens," even though all the light we see passes through the lens and is affected by it.

Pictures are more static. The agent viewing a picture isn't actively involved in what is presented, which is not how perception works.

bongo fury

Photography has almost no reality; it is almost a hundred per cent picture. And painting always has reality: you can touch the paint; it has presence; — perhaps

This corresponds to Scruton's sliding scale of degree of pornographic-ness, if I recall: the greater our interest in what is pictured and the less our interest in the picture for its own sake, the more pornographic. (I think he claimed.)

I once took small photographs and then smeared them with paint. That partly resolved the problem, — perhaps

Interesting. Goodman would probably deny the alleged problem, or see it not as inherent in the medium of photography but rather as a failure to see and interpret the photographs with enough discernment and discrimination. But then he would acknowledge the potential efficacy (just not the necessity) of the proposed solution.

Funny how thus doctoring the photos doesn't necessarily reduce their evidential/trace value. While the apps mentioned by @Jack Cummins probably do?

Anatomical diagrams are a good example here, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, excellent. Especially in pressing Goodman's point that

a thing's properties, "what it is." — Count Timothy von Icarus

is relative to the scientific or other purpose.

Things are phenomenologicaly present in pictures. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But here you're back in the other thread.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Michael

The photo is hung up on my wall. The flower is 1,000 miles away. There is a very literal spatial separation between the photo and the flower. The flower and its properties do not exist in two locations at once.

There is spatial separation when any property is instantiated. Properties are only instantiated in interactions. A thing having a photograph taken of it is just one type of physical relation in which a thing's properties manifest. The viewing of that photograph is another.

Our intuition is that direct interactions should be something like one billiard ball moving another, but modern physics shows that this sort of directness is extremely hard to pin down and is quite murkey.

I'm inclined to say than that a thing's effects are signs of it. Directness then should probably be looked at from a phenomenological perspective. A painter doesn't seem to be present in their paintings. The person painted is directly present in a way. This leaves room for some ambiguity, it probably can't be strictly formalized, but then again you can't really do that with the physics of physical interactions either.

bongo fury

I'm inclined to say than that a thing's effects are signs of it. Directness then should probably be looked at from a phenomenological perspective. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Only if semiotics implies phenomenology.

Direct and indirect photorealism

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