padma

272 pages | 2006 | PDF | 2,3 Mb

Whether it was the demands of life, leisure, or a combination of both that forced our hands, we have developed a myriad of artefacts---maps, notes, descriptions, diagrams, flow-charts, photographs, paintings, and prints---that stand for other things. Most agree that images and their close relatives are special because, in some sense, they look like what they are about. This simple claim is the starting point for most philosophical investigations into the nature of depiction. On Images argues that this starting point is fundamentally misguided. Whether a representation is an image depends not on how it is perceived but on how it relates to others within a system. This kind of approach, first championed by Nelson Goodman in his Languages of Art, has not found many supporters, in part because of weaknesses with Goodman's account.

More...