Taking twofoldness seriously: Walton on imagination and depiction

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 285-289

  Nanay, Bence ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249363203     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0021-8529.2004.0160.x     Document Type: Review

References (28)

1. Richard Wollheim, "Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation," in Art and Its Objects, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 205-226
2. See also his Painting as an Art (Princeton University Press, 1987), esp. pp. 46-75
3. and "On Pictorial Representation," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 217-226, esp. pp. 221-224
4. Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Harvard University Press, 1990), esp. chap. 1, pp. 11-68
5. Kendall L. Walton, "Depiction, Perception, and Imagination," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (2002): 27-35, esp. p. 33
6. Kendall L. Walton, "Reply to Reviewers," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1991): 423-427, esp. p. 423
7. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe, pp. 300-301
8. Richard Wollheim, "A Note on Mimesis as Make Believe," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1991): 400-406, esp. p. 404
9. Wollheim, "On Pictorial Representation," esp. pp. 224-225
10. Walton, "Depiction, Perception, and Imagination," pp. 27-35
11. Wollheim, "Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation," p. 213. Wollheim gives a slightly different definition in "On Pictorial Representation," p. 221, and in Painting as an Art, p. 46
12. Wollheim, "A Note on Mimesis as Make Believe," pp. 404-405
13. Walton, "Reply to Reviewers," pp. 424-425, esp. p. 425
14. Christopher Peacocke, "Does Perception Have a Nonconceptual Content?" Journal of Philosophy 98 (2001): 241. Original emphasis
15. See, for example, Colin McGinn, 'The Structure of Content," in Knowledge and Reality, ed. Colin McGinn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) pp. 111-151
16. John Searle, Intentionality (Cambridge University Press, 1983)
17. John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind (MIT Press, 1992)
18. Fred Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind (MIT Press, 1995), pp. 30-32
19. Jerry A. Fodor, The Elm and the Expert (MIT Press, 1994)
20. and Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982)
21. Walton, "Depiction, Perception, and Imagination," p. 34, n. 15
22. The point of view a chair is represented from is part of the way it is represented, that is, part of the configurational aspect of representation. I can change the point of view without changing anything about the recognitional aspect of representation (that is, about what is represented). Richard Wollheim, personal communication (in-person conversations in Berkeley, California), November 2001, September 2002
23. Walton could argue at this point that I can certainly imagine flapping my arms to be my flying without actually imagining the way I flap my arms to be the way I am flying. Thus, the same is true for seeing: I can imagine my seeing y to be my seeing x without actually imagining the way I see y to be the way I see x. I argue elsewhere that the assumed similarity between "imagining my flapping my arms to be my flying" and "imagining my seeing y to be my seeing x" is only a superficial one and that the semantic structure of "imagining seeing something" and "imagining doing something" is in fact very different (Bence Nanay, "Imagining Seeing," manuscript). I am grateful to Jerrold Levinson for pushing me on this point
24. They are the two possible interpretations I could find support for in Walton's text. Of course this does not mean that these are the only logically possible interpretations of the term 'the way one perceives something.' However, it is hard to see what else could be suggested as a possible candidate
25. Walton, "Depiction, Perception, and Imagination," p. 35, n. 42
26. It may be true that I hear the concert as indirectly transmitted, while imagining hearing the concert as directly transmitted, but if that is the case, then there is nothing experiential about my imagining. Hence, it is not clear why we should think of this example as an example of perceptual make-belief
27. Kendall L. Walton, "Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism," Critical Inquiry 11 (1984): 246-277
28. I am most grateful to Richard Wollheim for repeated discussions of the question of representational seeing and twofoldness as well as comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful for the comments of Jerrold Levinson, Susan L. Feagin, Felicitas Becker, and an anonymous referee of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism