PICTORIAL EXPERIENCE: THE PROBLEM

It is strange, perhaps even disconcerting, to find that we have got this far in the unfolding of our story without so much as alluding to the nature of our experience of pictures. Now I want to broach this important topic, but more as a matter of philosophical psychology than aesthetics. To be sure, there are fascinating questions about the value of pictorial experience, but I am here concerned with a different matter. Just what do we have to add to my experience of S as a medley of colours in order to make it true that I see S as a picture of some object? In other words, what makes it true that I see S as a picture of O?

Someone may well wonder why I feel obliged to bring up a new issue at this late hour. Surely my argument is complete: I have said what pictures are by saying how we go about interpreting them. For my purposes we don't require an account of pictorial experience, however nice it would be to possess one. Indeed, surely the question ‘What is it for me to see S as a picture?’ is just a substitution instance of a quite general question in the philosophy of perception: ‘What is it to see O as F?’ In general, there is a difference between seeing (say) a rabbit and seeing something as a rabbit. But is there a need for a special account of pictorial seeing-as?