Varieties of Pictorial Experience

Contents

Preface ……………………………………………………………….

1

Introduction …………………………………………………………

3

1. Pictorial Experience …………………………………………….

8

2. Factive Pictorial Experience …………………………………...

34

3. Television and Witnessing …………………………………….

52

4. Immersive Pictorial Experience ……………………………….

71

5. Virtual Ethics ……………………………………………………

94

Conclusion …………………………………………………………..

112

References …………………………………………………………...

113

Summary in Dutch …………………………………………………

118

1

Preface

When I started this project, I considered myself a continental philosopher. Drawing

on the theories of Husserl and Heidegger, I intended to write a dissertation about

media and virtual reality. Now, three and a half years later, the result is a study

about the experience of pictures, written in the analytical style. Despite this change

in philosophical outlook, my basic interest has remained the same over the years:

to elucidate visual experiences of things that are not directly present to our senses,

but can only be seen by virtue of a mediating artefact, like a canvas or a computer

screen. I hope this dissertation provides the reader with a decent overview of some

contemporary (analytical) debates about these peculiar experiences, as well as with

a few original contributions to those debates.

Parts of this dissertation have already appeared in academic journals, in books, or

in conference proceedings. Chapter 2 contains thoughts expressed in “Can Digital

Pictures Qualify as Photographs?” (American Society for Aesthetics Graduate Journal)

and in “The Digital Challenge: Photographic Realism Revisited” (Proceedings of the

European Society for Aesthetics). A rudimentary version of Chapter 3 has appeared in

an edited volume (Politik der Zeugenschaft) as “Das Zeitalter der Zeuge? Fernsehen

und Zeugenschaft”. Chapter 4 is based on my paper “Where am I? The Problem of

Bilocation in Virtual Reality” (Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics). Chapter 5 is a revi-

sion of “The Ethical Status of Virtual Actions” (Ethical Perspectives). None of these

papers appear in this thesis in its original form. They have all been substantially

revised, both to improve their content as well as to make them fit into the larger

whole of the dissertation.

Without the help and support of others, I could not have finished this project. First,

I would like to thank my supervisors Geert Van Eekert and Erik Myin. Not only for

their comments on earlier versions of this text, but also for their valuable advice

about how to manage and, perhaps even more important, finish a project like this.

I also want to thank two philosophers whose work inspires my own and who took

their time to discuss with me. Most notably Lambert Wiesing, whose work – after a

long period of speculation about images, media and virtual reality – put me on the

right track. I have wonderful memories of the time I spent in Jena, presenting my

paper in his seminar. I should also mention Kendall Walton, for his comments on

my talk about violent video games and our subsequent e-mail discussions. There

2

are others, commentators at conferences and anonymous reviewers of journals,

that have also contributed substantially to the positions defended in this thesis.

Finally, I am grateful to the members of the jury, for reading and scrutinizing my

work. Philosophy benefits more, I believe, from the objections of others than from

their admiration.

I would like to express my gratitude to the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO),

for having trusted me to bring this project to a good end and for supporting me

financially.

I owe special thanks to my friends and colleagues – in that order – Jasper and

Liesbet. Not so much for discussing philosophy with me, but for making D-412 a

pleasant place to be. I am especially indebted to my parents, my brother and sister,

my friends, and, of course, to Hanne; they know why.

3

Introduction

Pictures give rise to peculiar experiences. Imagine looking at Caravaggio’s Basket of

Fruit. What do you see? The answer is intriguing. You will probably be inclined to

say you see a fruit basket. Nevertheless, you know perfectly well that you are not

actually facing a fruit basket. Instead, you are looking at a canvas that was marked

with paint by an artist. Your experience of the painting is hence a complex affair.

Whilst looking at it, you see two things: a canvas and a fruit basket. Whereas the

former is physically present in your surroundings, the latter is not. When you look

at Basket of Fruit, your perception of the canvas gives way to your perception of the

absent thing it represents. For the sake of brevity, I call this complex perceptual act

‘pictorial experience’.

Over the years, the crème de la crème of philosophical aestheticians attempted a

satisfactory description of pictorial experience. According to some, the Caravaggio

gives you the illusion of seeing a fruit basket.1 Others claim it makes you imagine

seeing one. Yet others believe pictorial experience cannot be analysed in terms of

other mental states. Rather than being a kind of illusion, or a kind of imagination,

pictorial experience would be an autonomous visual experience. Until this day, the

debate about the nature of pictorial experience remains unsettled, with new views

surfacing regularly in the philosophical arena. With this dissertation, I hope to

contribute to these on-going discussions by answering the following two research

questions:

First, what is pictorial experience? In answer to this question, I provide an account

of pictorial experience in general. This account describes every pictorial experience,

regardless whether it is solicited by a painting, a photograph, a television image, or

a video game.

The second question concerns the relationship between pictorial experience and

pictorial medium. Does the medium that was used to produce a picture affect our

experience of it? In answer to this question, I examine the hypothesis that different

pictorial media entail different varieties of pictorial experience. More concretely, I

discuss two instances where this seems to be the case. First, I look at experiences

1 References to particular authors and their works are omitted in this introduction, but can be found in

the remainder of the dissertation.

4

solicited by photographs. These would be special because the spectator necessarily

sees facts in such pictures. Seeing something in a photograph would hence make

for a factive pictorial experience. Next, I examine the experiences solicited by virtual

reality. These are special because the spectator does not merely see a represented

space, that is filled with represented objects, but can somehow position herself in

this represented space and interact with the objects in it. Seeing things by means of

a virtual reality system hence makes for an immersive pictorial experience. The viewer

does not merely look into the pictorial space but experiences herself as occupying a

position in it.

These two research questions are connected. Since factive and immersive pictorial

experience are subcategories of pictorial experience in general, all properties that

apply to pictorial experience must apply to them as well. The analysis of pictorial

experience thus provides the general framework for the analysis of its varieties.

But the analysis of the varieties can also inform the general framework. In fact, it

can even challenge it. For if a subcategory of pictorial experience lacks a property I

ascribed to pictorial experience in general, or possesses a property that I explicitly

denied to it, then my characterization of pictorial experience is unsatisfactory. The

analysis of the varieties of pictorial experience therefore serves as a ‘reality check’

for my general account. Every property ascribed to pictorial experience must apply

to its concrete variants, otherwise it is not a necessary property of pictorial expe-

rience at all.

Before providing a description of the five chapters following this introduction, two

remarks concerning the scope of the investigation:

First, this thesis is not about aesthetic experience. Many pictures, like the Basket of

Fruit, are works of art and facilitate aesthetic experience. When looking at pictorial

works of art, we might experience beauty. But that does not yet imply pictorial and

aesthetic experience are identical. Whereas Basket of Fruit may solicit an aesthetic

experience, the photograph of a fruit basket in an advertisement leaflet of the local

grocer is unlikely to do so. Aesthetic experience is subsequently not an integral

component of pictorial experience, and does not even accompany the experience of

pictures in all cases. Hence, I will completely disregard aesthetic experience in the

remainder of the dissertation. This thesis is not a contribution to the philosophy of

art, but rather an exercise in the philosophy of perception, broadly construed as an

inquiry into all sensory experiences.

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Second, this thesis does not contain a theory of depiction. Theories of depiction

define the conditions under which one thing represents another pictorially. Many

theories of pictorial experience are theories of depiction too. From their analysis of

pictorial experience, they extract a definition of what it is to depict. According to

such theories, y counts as a picture of x if, and only if, it gives rise to such-and-such

an experience. Various experiential theories of depiction compete amongst each

other, as well as with non-experiential accounts. In what follows, I remain agnostic

with regard to what defines a picture and focus on pictorial experience instead. If

depiction-related problems do enter into my analysis of pictorial experience – as

will inevitably happen– I will side with common-sense. The reader will hence not

encounter any controversial claims about depiction, let alone a theory of it, in this

dissertation.

Now the scope of the thesis is sufficiently clear, I will briefly describe its contents.

The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter concerns pictorial experience

in general. In chapters two and three I address factive pictorial experience, whilst I

deal with immersive pictorial experience in chapters four and five.

In chapter one, I present my general account of pictorial experience. This account is

a modified version of the position defended by Richard Wollheim. I evaluate two

major claims Wollheim makes about pictorial experience. The first is that pictorial

experience involves a simultaneous visual awareness of both the pictorial surface

and the depicted object. The second claim is that our awareness of the depicted

object is analogous to a face-to-face perception. Whereas I defend Wollheim’s first

claim against two objections, I approach his second claim with a more critical eye. I

argue our visual awareness of the depicted thing should not be described in terms

of another mental state. Although it shares properties with face-to-face seeing – but

also with illusion and imagination – I argue it cannot be reduced to any of these

states. In fact, I think it is even nonsensical to say our seeing of the depicted thing

resembles one of those states in a privileged manner. My alternative is to embrace

a radically anti-reductionist account of pictorial experience. This account is broadly

wollheimian in nature, but resists the tendency to describe the experience of seeing

something in a picture in terms of any other experience.

In the second chapter, I discuss factive pictorial experience. Robert Hopkins argues

that only photographs solicit this special variety of pictorial experience. What we

see in photographic pictures is necessarily a fact; what we see in non-photographic

is not necessarily a fact. This would explain why we attribute an epistemic value to

camera-made pictures that we do not ascribe other pictures. Seeing something in a

6

photograph would be a good reason to believe it is true, whilst seeing something in

a painting or drawing would not be a good reason for such a belief. I partly agree,

partly disagree with Hopkins. I agree that photographs support factive pictorial

experience. I also agree photographs have special epistemic value over handmade

pictures. But I do not think that photography’s epistemic value can be explained in

terms of factive pictorial experience. I make two points against Hopkins: First, I

argue handmade pictures can also support factive pictorial experience. Second, I

offer an explanation of photography’s epistemic value that is not grounded on the

concept of factive pictorial experience. The notion of trust – unjustly neglected in

many discussions about photography – is of importance in my arguments for both

points.

In the third chapter, I ask whether viewers of live television qualify as witnesses to

the events they see on screen. John Durham Peters has argued that they do, and

several prominent philosophers, like Roger Scruton and Kendall Walton, defend

positions similar to his. Viewers would qualify as witnesses because the television

screen is a transparent surface through which the filmed events are, quite literally,

seen. I disagree and develop two counterarguments against this view. First, I argue

the screen is not transparent and television viewers do not literally see the filmed

events. What they see are rather representations of these events. Second, I argue

conventional witnesses – actually present at the scene of the event – can perform a

relic-like function with regard to the event. A witness to the Fall of the Berlin Wall

is interesting in the same way as a piece of brick that was once part of the Berlin

Wall. Not so much because of the information she can provide about the event, but

simply because she was there and is physically linked to the event. Television

viewers, on the other hand, lack this physical connection to the event and cannot

function as relics of it. Hence, they do not qualify as witnesses.

In the fourth chapter, I discuss immersive pictorial experience. When you explore a

virtual world, and are asked to describe where you are, you have two options. You

can refer to your position in physical reality, but you can also refer to your location

in the represented environment. Unlike paintings and photographs, virtual reality

solicits an immersive sensation, where the viewer experiences herself as present in

the represented space. This immersive experience has been further qualified by

various philosophers. Some think immersion is a kind of illusion, whereas others

believe it is a matter of imagination. Although the second view is more satisfactory

than the first, I reject both these positions. Instead, I argue that immersion is best

understood as a special variety of pictorial experience. Virtual reality offers a more

encompassing pictorial experience than paintings and photographs, because it

7

visually represents not just objects and spaces, but also the spectator’s presence in

these spaces

In the fifth chapter, I address some ethical issues connected to immersion. Suppose

a friend is immersed in a virtual world and performs a virtual rape in it. You see

your friend’s virtual actions on a computer screen. Can you tell her that what she is

doing in the virtual world is morally wrong? Or are virtual actions, due to their

unreal nature, by definition unsuitable for moral evaluation? In response to these

questions, I argue virtual actions are morally underdetermined. When considered

in isolation virtual actions cannot be right or wrong. But they may become so due

to contextual factors. More concretely, I will focus on the subjective states of the

immersed viewer (mainly, but not exclusively, on her emotions) as determining

whether her virtual actions can be morally judged or not. This way, I aim to steer a

middle course between morally over-sensitive and morally indifferent responses to

virtual violence. Virtual violence is not always wrong, nor is it never wrong; it is

sometimes wrong. More specifically, it is wrong in cases where virtual actions are

accompanied by certain thoughts or emotions, like arousal or anger.

8

Chapter 1

Pictorial Experience

In this introductory chapter, I provide an account of pictorial experience in general.

My aim is to define a set of properties that characterizes every pictorial experience,

regardless whether it is of a painting, a photograph, a television image, or a virtual

world. The account I defend is a modified version of the position held by Richard

Wollheim.2 In Painting as an Art, Wollheim makes two major claims about pictorial

experience:

1. The spectator is simultaneously aware of both the pictorial surface

and the depicted thing

2. The spectator’s visual awareness of the depicted thing is analogous

to a face-to-face perception of that thing.

In what follows, I defend the first claim against two objections. Next, I criticise the

second claim.3 There are two problems with it. First, Wollheim holds that seeing a

thing in a picture is analogous to seeing it face-to-face, but he does not say in what

respect. Second, although I agree that seeing a thing in a picture resembles seeing it

face-to-face – in fact, I will be more specific about the respects in which it does than

Wollheim – I believe his analogy is tendentious. I argue the experience of seeing

something in a picture is not only analogous to face-to-face seeing, but to imagined

and illusory seeing as well. This leads me to formulate a radical anti-reductionist

version of Wollheim’s original view. The experience of seeing a thing in a picture

2 I base myself on Wollheim’s, Painting as an Art (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987). In this

book, Wollheim presents his final views on pictorial experience, which importantly differ from those he

defended earlier in “Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation,” (in Art and its Objects, Richard

Wollheim, 205-226, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Here, Wollheim describes pictorial

experience as a composite of two separate visual experiences. However, in Painting as an Art he

describes it as an integrated whole, not as a composite. This last view is also defended by Wollheim in

his later papers, like “On Pictorial Representation,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998),

217-226. 3 Other critiques on the second claim can be found in Robert Hopkins, Picture, Image, and Experience. A

Philosophical Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 19; Jerrold Levinson, “Wollheim

on Pictorial Representation,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 229; Katerina Bantinaki,

“Picture Perception as Twofold Experience.” in Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, eds. Catharine

Abell and Katerina Bantinaki, 128-150, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010: 149.

9

cannot be reduced to any other visual experience, nor does it make sense to say it

resembles any visual state more than others. Instead, I propose to think of pictorial

experience as a fully autonomous member of the family of visual states. It shares

salient features with many of its ‘family members’, but cannot be reduced to any of

them.

1. Wollheim’s first claim defended

Suppose that Carey looks at a Van Gogh painting of a sunflower. Whilst observing

it, Carey sees a flat surface, marked with paint by Van Gogh. But she also sees the

thing this picture depicts: the sunflower. She sees, in other words, both something

that is physically present (the marked surface) and something that is not physically

present (the depicted object). Looking at pictures allows Carey to see things in their

absence. Even though no sunflowers are present, the picture provides her with a

visual experience of one. Moreover, Carey’s seeing of the marked surface and her

seeing of the depicted object constitute an integrated whole.4 She sees the depicted

object by virtue of perceiving the marked surface that is present in her visual field.

The presence of a pictorial surface in her environment makes her see the things it

represents in their absence

Wollheim uses some special terminology to describe the experience spectators of

pictures typically have. First, he describes this experience as seeing-in.5 Carey sees

a flower in the blots of paint on the pictorial surface. Second, he claims the essential

feature of seeing-in is twofoldness. The notion of twofoldness describes the double

visual awareness involved in seeing pictures. The first fold of pictorial experience

is the spectator’s awareness of the marked surface. The second fold is her seeing of

the depicted thing.6

These two folds are parts of a single experience. Carey does not have two separate

experiences whilst seeing a sunflower in a painting, nor does she alternate between

two separate experiences.7 The two components of pictorial experience – the visual

awareness of the surface and of the thing depicted – can be distinguished only in

thought; they are inseparable in reality. For if Carey would experience the depicted

4 Hopkins, Picture, Image, and Experience: 16.

5 Wollheim, Painting as an Art: 46.

6 Wollheim, “On Pictorial Representation,” 221.

7 This is Ernst Gombrich’s view in, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation

(New York: Pantheon, 1982).

10

thing without an awareness of the surface in which it is seen, she would be tricked

into thinking she sees the sunflower face-to-face. What, if not her awareness of the

blots of paint in which she sees it, withholds her from thinking she is really looking

at a sunflower? Pictorial experience would dissolve into illusion if it only involved

awareness of what the picture represents.8 An exclusive awareness of the picture’s

surface, au contraire, would also annul pictorial experience. Suppose the Van Gogh

is observed by Carey’s friend Aidan, who is very interested in paint from the 19th

century. When he, for example, inspects the pictorial surface through a microscope,

he does not see the depicted flower but only the paint marks in which it could be

seen. In this case, Aidan does not undergo a pictorial experience either. Nothing is

seen in the surface he inspects. He is looking at a picture, but since he is too close to

its surface to see what it depicts, his experience is not a distinctly pictorial one.

Although pictorial experience necessarily involves a double visual awareness of

the surface and the depicted thing, a spectator’s attention can be unequally divided

between them. An amateur botanist might focus almost exclusively on the thing

depicted, trying to identify what variety of sunflower the Van Gogh represents. A

connoisseur of 19th century brushing techniques, by contrast, might mostly be

interested in the skills deployed by the artist to depict a sunflower. Still, both the

botanist and the connoisseur of the brushing techniques can go through a distinctly

pictorial experience; one that involves an awareness of both surface and depicted

thing. The botanist is, for example, not likely to reach out for the flower in order to

smell it. Even though she attends to the thing depicted, she probably still registers

the picture’s surface. This makes her realize she does not see a sunflower face-to-

face; she will not reach out for it. And the connoisseur of brushing techniques is

probably interested in the skills Van Gogh deployed to depict certain things, such

as sunflowers. She consequently treats the marks on the pictorial surface as marks.

She sees the sunflower itself, but is mostly interested in how Van Gogh realized his

representation this object.

The double visual awareness required for pictorial experience can thus be defined

quite minimally: It is necessary that one registers both surface and thing depicted,

but one does not have to actively attend to both. In face-to-face seeing too, we see

many things without attending to them. When Carey walks the street she evades

many obstacles, which implies she has perceived them. But it sounds strained to

say Carey paid attention to every bench or protruding part of the pavement. She

8 Bence Nanay, “Is Twofoldness Necessary for Representational Seeing?” British Journal of Aesthetics 45

(2005), 255: “If someone is not aware of the surface visually, she does not see anything in the painting;

she is fooled into believing she sees something face-to-face.”

11

has taken note of them, i.e. registered them, without attending to them. Something

similar is true for the spectator of a picture. When Carey sees a movie she does not

attend to the screen, she rather focusses exclusively on the story. But she probably

does take notice of the screen and subsequently will not take herself to be seeing

the filmed events face-to-face. There are many other cases in which the pictorial

surface is not an object of interest: The customs officer who checks the passports at

the airport; the guard who looks at a screen attached to some security camera; the

football fan watching a match of his favourite team. However, if these experiences

are to qualify as pictorial ones – and under normal conditions, they will – the

officer, guard and football fan must have registered the surface in which they see

the things they are interested in.9

The claim that pictorial experience essentially involves a twofold visual awareness

of both surface and depicted thing has given rise to two worries: (1) Twofoldness

would not be sufficient for pictorial experience, and (2) twofoldness would not be

necessary for pictorial experience. In the remainder of this section, I briefly address

both worries.

(1) Twofoldness is not sufficient for pictorial experience, because certain twofold

experiences are not pictorial. That is, not every instance of seeing a thing in another

thing is triggered by a picture. It is possible that Carey sees a flower in the coffee

stains on her white table cloth. This experience can be described as twofold: Carey

sees the coffee marks on the cloth and, in these marks, she sees a sunflower. Yet her

experience is obviously not of a picture, but of coffee she accidentally spilled on the

cloth. As not all twofold experiences are of pictures, twofoldness is insufficient for

pictorial experience.

Wollheim recognizes this problem and proposes a second criterion which, together

with twofoldness, is sufficient for pictorial experience. This criterion is the so-called

‘standard of correctness’. This standard governs experiences of pictures, but not of

other patterned surfaces (like table cloths with coffee on them).10 The standard of

correctness determines what a spectator should see in a patterned surface. If Carey

looks at a sunflower-painting, she is right to see a sunflower in the blots of paint.

Conversely, Carey would be wrong to see something else in the picture (a rose or a

9 Levinson (1998, 229) argues that many experiences of pictures are not twofold, because we only attend

to the depicted thing, and have no attention for the surface. I have argued attention is unnecessary for a

twofold visual experience. It suffices that the spectator visually registers the medium. Only when she

does so, will she not be fooled into thinking she sees the depicted object face-to-face. However, this does

not require her to focus on the medium.

10 Wollheim, Painting as an Art: 49.

12

dahlia), or to see nothing in it at all. In both cases, an ideal spectator could correct

Carey, pointing out that she is, in a way, obliged to see one definite thing, in this

case a sunflower, in the patterned surface.

The experience of seeing a sunflower in coffee stains, by contrast, is not governed

by a standard of correctness. Carey can see all kinds of things in the stains on her

table cloth. Instead of a sunflower she might see another flower, or a human-like

figure, or a strangely shaped building. Although Carey cannot see anything she

wants in the stains – one cannot see a football in a stain with a rectangular outline

shape – Carey is not obliged to see one definite thing in them. In fact, she is not

obliged to see anything at all in coffee stains. If she simply takes the stains to be

stains, no one can blame her for that. However, if she visits the gallery of her friend

Charlotte, and sees nothing in the surface of a sunflower-picture, Charlotte can

correct Carey, pointing out that she should see a sunflower. The kind of seeing-in

solicited by pictures is necessarily subject to a standard of correctness; the kind of

seeing-in caused by non-pictorial surfaces is not.

What sets the standard of correctness? What determines that spectators should see

x, and only x, in an x-picture? According to Wollheim the standard of correctness is

a function of the maker’s intentions. When a competent picture maker intends the

spectator to see x in the picture, the spectator is right to see x.

At first sight, this reference to the artist’s intentions makes sense. Suppose Carey

has an identical twin sister, Mary. Mary has her portrait painted and puts it up. A

few days later, she is visited by a friend. The friend looks at the portrait and says it

is a nice picture of Carey. At this point, Mary can reply it is not a portrait of Carey,

but of her. The spectator should not see Carey in this surface, because the portrait

was intended by the artist to be of Mary. Although portraits of Carey and Mary

look perfectly alike – they are, after all, identical twins – the artist’s intention to

depict Mary sets the standard of correctness and determines the spectator should

see no one else but her in the marked surface.

No such obligation is present when spectators see things in non-pictorial surfaces.

If Mary’s friend sees Carey’s face in stains on a table cloth, she cannot be corrected

by someone claiming that, in fact, she sees Mary in the stains. On Wollheim’s view,

this is due to the fact that no intentional agent wants spectators to see Carey, Mary,

or anything else for that matter, in the stains. Due to the absence of a picture-

maker’s intentions, the spectator cannot possibly be mistaken about what she sees

in such surfaces.

13

Although it is generally agreed that pictorial experience is governed by a standard

of correctness, it has been a matter of debate whether this standard is always set by

the picture-maker’s intentions.11 Some pictorial experiences are not governed by a

standard set by the picture-maker. Suppose a photographer intends to take Mary’s

picture. She has, however, mistaken Carey for Mary. Who should the spectator see

in the picture our unfortunate photographer comes up with? If the intentions of the

picture-maker are decisive, we would have to say: Mary. But this wollheimian

reply seems counterintuitive here. A spectator can see Carey in the picture because

she, and not Mary, was in front of the lens. In this case, the standard of correctness

does not necessarily conform to the intentions of the picture-maker.

Michael Newall advocates a categorical distinction between handmade pictures

and photographs on this point:12 When we are looking at handmade pictures, the

standard of correctness is set by the intentions of the artist. But when we are

looking at photographs, the standard is set by whatever is in front of the lens. In

other words: Whilst looking at a handmade picture, we are required to see in it

whatever the maker wants us to see (provided she has sufficient artistic skills to

realize her intentions). When looking at a photograph, by contrast, we are required

to see in it whatever was in front of the lens when the picture was made. In case of

photographs, the standard of correctness would not be intentional but causal; set by

the relevant cause of the picture: the photographed scene.

For two reasons, I find Newall’s distinction between the experience of handmade

pictures (presumably always governed by an intentional standard of correctness)

and the experience of photographic ones (presumably always governed by a causal

standard of correctness) problematic. It seems to me that some handmade pictures

are governed by a causal standard too, whereas some photographs are also subject

to an intentional standard.

Suppose Mary has promised a draftsman to pose for him. When the moment is

there, she does not feel like going and sends her sister Carey instead. Mary asks

Carey not to reveal her identity to the draftsman. As the draftsman is unable to

distinguish Mary from Carey by their appearance, he thinks that he is carrying out

his initial intention to depict Mary. Who should we see in the picture he comes up

with? For the wollheimian, the answer is unequivocally ‘Mary’. But I think that we

could just as well say ‘Carey’, since Carey sat in front of the draftsman to have her

11 Robert Hopkins, Picture, Image, and Experience: 74.

12 Michael Newall argues for this distinction in his paper , “Pictures and the Standard of Correctness,”

Esthetica (2011), 2.

14

features portrayed. Mary’s features guided the hand of the draftsman and brought

the picture about. I do not, of course, want to rule out the drawing could pass for a

picture of Mary. I only want to say that it would not be incorrect to see Carey in it.

This leaves us with a handmade picture in which something can be seen that is not

intended by the picture maker. The standard of correctness is here determined by

the real object that served as a model for the picture (i.e. Carey). Therefore, it seems

that handmade pictures can, in some cases, be governed by a causal standard as

well.

Some photographic pictures, on the other hand, are governed by an intentional

standard. Consider, for example, a James Bond movie. It is, of course, possible to

apply a causal standard to this experience: we can say the spectator sees Daniel

Craig playing James bond and that she sees Craig pretending to shoot a man with

a fake gun. This, however, it is not a very natural way to look at a movie. The

spectator is more likely to see James Bond kill a man with a real gun. If she does so,

she follows an intentional standard of correctness. It is the intention of the film-

maker that we see Bond (not Craig), a shooting (not a pretended shooting), and a

gun (not a fake-gun). We are not expected to see what really happened in front of

the camera’s lens, but we are supposed to see what the picture-makers intend us to

see. (Of course, it is not their intention to solicit the illusion we are looking at a

documentary, or to otherwise convince us that we are not looking at a fiction.)

Although every photographic picture can be viewed as governed by a causal

standard of correctness, they are sometimes governed by an additional intentional

standard.

In sum, I agree with Wollheim that pictorial experience is governed by a standard

of correctness, and that it, together with twofoldness, is sufficient for pictorial

experience. But I do not agree this standard is always set by the intentions of the

picture-maker. Nor do I agree that handmade pictures are always governed by an

intentional standard and that photographs are always governed by a causal one.

The experience of both kinds of pictorial representations can be governed by both

kinds of standards.

One might say that twofoldness plus a standard of correctness is still not sufficient

for pictorial experience. Suppose that Carey and her friend Charlotte are looking at

the clouds. Carey points towards a cloud and says ‘Germany’. The cloud she points

towards, however, has roughly the same outline shape as Great Britain, seen from

a satellite perspective. In this case, Charlotte can correct Carey, saying ‘No, that’s

Great Britain’. Carey is wrong to see Germany in the clouds, she should see Great

15

Britain instead. Here, we seem to have an experience of a non-pictorial surface,

which triggers a twofold visual experience (Carey sees a country in the clouds) that

is apparently governed by a standard of correctness. Is this example a threat to

Wollheim’s thesis that twofoldness plus a standard of correctness is sufficient for

pictorial experience?

Not at all. The cloud-experience is not governed by a standard of correctness, as

the spectator is not obliged to see anything at all in it. Charlotte’s corrective remark

followed Carey’s remark about seeing Germany in it. If one had asked Charlotte

what she saw in this cloud, without her knowing that Carey compared it to a

country, she might just as well have said ‘a sock’ or ‘a strangely shaped alien’, and

these responses would all be legitimate. The cloud-example thus does not show

that seeing-in solicited by a non-pictorial surface is governed by a standard of

correctness. If anything, it shows that we cannot see just anything in non-pictorial

surfaces.

(2) A second objection against Wollheim’s first claim, is that twofoldness is not

necessary for pictorial experience. There would be pictorial experiences where the

spectator has no visual awareness whatsoever of the pictorial surface. Cases in

which she does not even register its presence in her visual field, let alone attend to

it. The paradigm case here is that of the trompe l’oeil painting, the surface of which

would be invisible, at least initially, to the spectator, so that she takes herself to see

the depicted object face-to-face. Imagine Carey sees a trompe l’oeil of a blackboard.

At first, she might take a piece of chalk to write on it. When she carries out this

intention, however, she realizes there is no real blackboard in front of her but an

extremely realistic representation of one. That Carey reaches out for the pictorial

surface to write on the ‘blackboard’ would be the typical trompe l’oeil effect: she is,

if only for a moment, unaware of the pictorial surface. She sees the depicted thing,

without noticing the medium.

The case of trompe l’oeil has generated different interpretations. Wollheim himself

thinks that a trompe l’oeil is not a picture.13 Their existence subsequently does not

threaten a theory that claims pictorial experience is always twofold: the ‘onefold’

experiences generated by trompe-l’oeils are not experiences of pictures. Others,

however, consider Wollheim’s exclusion of trompe-l’oeils from the realm of pictorial

13 Richard Wollheim, “A Reply to the Contributors.” in Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting. Art as

Representation and Expression, ed. Rob van Gerwen, 241-261, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2001: 243. To the question whether trompe-l’oeils are representations, Wollheim answers: “It is my view

that they aren’t.”

16

representation to be counterintuitive and suspicious. The impression exists that

Wollheim merely excludes them because, if they are indeed pictures, trompe l’oeils

threaten his thesis that pictorial experience is essentially twofold.14 Alternatively,

philosophers like Jerrold Levinson propose that “… there can be seeing-in in

connection with pictures […] that does not involve any awareness of pictorial

properties or the medium in which they are embedded.”15 When Carey is looking

at the blackboard-trompe l’oeil she would have such a ‘onefold’ pictorial experience;

one that does not involve an awareness of the pictorial surface.

I agree with Levinson that excluding trompe-l’oeil from the realm of pictures does

not make sense. Unlike Levinson, however, I want to stick to the idea that pictorial

experience is essentially twofold. What options are there to reconcile the existence

of trompe l’oeil pictures with the twofold nature of pictorial experience?

One possibility is to redefine the concept of twofoldness, so that experiences of

trompe-l’oeils do qualify as twofold. This solution is proposed by Bence Nanay. On

his view, the only thing required for twofoldness is that a spectator sees the surface

and the depicted thing. It is not, however, required that she is aware of the fact that

she sees both. If this is true, Carey’s experience of the trompe-l’oeil does qualify as

twofold. She sees the depicted object by virtue of looking at the pictorial surface,

even though she does not realize she sees a surface.16 This weakened concept of

twofoldness – which does not even require that a viewer notices both surface and

subject, let alone pay attention to both – is a first way to reconcile the existence of

trompe-l’oeil pictures with Wollheim’s claim that every pictorial experience involves

seeing both a pictorial surface and the depicted object.

There is a problem with Nanay’s solution. The concept of twofoldness is meant to

describe pictorial experience. It aims to characterize what it is like to see pictures. The

14 Two important philosophers that resist Wollheim’s exclusion are Dominic Lopes in his Understanding

Pictures (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 49-50 and Levinson (1998), 228-229.

15 Levinson (1998) “Wollheim on Pictorial Representation,” 229. Lopes argues, along similar lines, that

“… the existence of trompe-l’oeil pictures is incompatible with strong twofoldness but also with the hope

that pictures always have a distinctive phenomenology. Trompe-l’oeil demonstrates that what it is like

see an object in a picture need not be discontinuous with what it is like to see that object itself in plain

sight.” (Understanding Pictures: 49).

16 Bence Nanay, “Inflected and Uninflected Experience of Pictures,” in Philosophical Perspectives on

Depiction, eds. Catharine Abell & Katerina Bantinaki, 181-207, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010, 192-193: “… if

seeing-in entails twofoldness in [the] sense [of] the simultaneous representation of surface and scene,

then it is not at all clear that our experience of trompe l’oeil paintings is not a twofold experience. When

we are deceived by a trompe l’oeil painting, we are not aware of the surface: that’s why, for a moment,

we are fooled into thinking that we are perceiving the depicted object face-to-face. But this does not

exclude that we do represent the surface properties, without being aware of them.”

17

problem with Nanay’s take on twofoldness is that he excludes the marked surface

from pictorial experience. His definition degrades the perception of this surface to

a causal precondition for seeing the depicted thing. Although Carey’s seeing of the

representation brings about her experience of the blackboard, the surface does not

enter into the content of her experience; it is not a part of it.17 Therefore, Nanay’s

weakened conception of twofoldness is self-defying: it does not give a description

of pictorial experience, but of the causal conditions for this experience.

A better solution is offered by Katarina Bantinaki. She points out that trompe-l’oeil

pictures are only able to fool the viewer for a short period of time. When their spell

is broken, they can become vehicles for twofold visual experience:

… once the artefactual character of what is seen is acknowledged by

the viewer … the technique of the trompe-l’oeil comes to the fore and

the medium is thereby evident in the viewer’s experience, which now

has the complex character of seeing-in.18

This account offers a way to (a) maintain that trompe-l’oeils are pictures and (b) that

pictures always, at least potentially, are vehicles for twofold experience, without

(c) having to adopt the weak concept of twofoldness proposed by Nanay. Before

Carey realizes she sees a trompe-l’oeil, her experience of the picture only included

awareness of its subject. However, it was not a pictorial experience yet, but rather

an illusion. Once Carey realizes she does not see a blackboard face-to-face, but in

blots of paint, she acknowledges the pictorial surface, and can attend to it. If she

acknowledges the surface, she has a twofold experience of the trompe-l’oeil. Before

twofoldness kicked in, Carey was under the spell of an illusion, and illusion is not

pictorial experience.

Although I am sympathetic to a solution along these lines, there is a problem with

it. According to Bantinaki, the viewer has to acknowledge the artefactual character of

what she sees for illusion to dissolve and pictorial experience to kick in. But I think

there are cases where such acknowledgement does not automatically give way to

pictorial experience proper.

Consider the Müller-Lyre illusion. This illusion consists of two lines that seem to

differ in length but, in fact, have the same length. Even if one is familiar with this

17 Bantinaki formulates a similar critique on Nanay’s minimal conception in “Picture Perception is

Twofold Experience,” (2010): 146.

18 Bantinaki (2010), “Picture Perception as Twofold,” 145.

18

illusion, and is not fooled into thinking the lines have different length, it still seems

they differ in length. If this is so, one undergoes a purely perceptual illusion.

Perceptual illusion involves the deception of the senses, not the deception of the

mind. A subject that has such an illusion acknowledges the lines have the same

length, although she does not experience them as such.19

The Müller-Lyre illusion: A and B have the same length

Something similar can occur to the spectator of the trompe-l’oeil. After Carey has

reached out for the ‘blackboard’, and realizes its artefactual character, she might

still be unable to register the medium visually, although she knows it is there. In

this case, her experience would not be a twofold visual experience of seeing a

blackboard in a painting. It is rather a onefold perceptual illusion of a blackboard:

Carey knows she does not actually see a blackboard, but it appears to her as if she

does. Acknowledging the medium subsequently does not yet give way to pictorial

experience. Something extra is needed for a pictorial experience of the trompe-l’oeil

to occur: one has to visually register the surface. That is, to notice it; not merely

know it is there. This can be achieved, for example, by positioning oneself close

enough to the picture, or by viewing it from a number of different angles, so that

the illusory effect fully dissolves and the pictorial surface becomes visible. Only

19 Susan Feagin compares trompe-l’oeil with the Müller-Lyre illusion in “Presentation or

Representation,” in Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting. Art as Representation and Expression, ed. Rob

van Gerwen, 189-199, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001: 193. “At least some human processing of visual

stimuli is relatively ‘modular’ or ‘encapsulated’, that is, not penetrable by ‘higher order’ cognitive states

such as beliefs or expectations about what one is seeing. For example, one may know that the line in a

Mueller-Lyer illusion are the same length, even though one cannot help but experience one as shorter

than the other. Trompe-l’oeil, trading on and grounded in this psychological fact, produces engaging and

amusing visual effects, visual puzzles and paradoxes, and a concomitant enjoyment in and amazement

at a painter’s skill and virtuosity.”

19

when illusion – cognitive or optical – has completely disappeared is pictorial

experience possible. This experience requires that a spectator sees both the surface

and the depicted object, not merely that she knows they are there.

Trompe-l’oeil pictures aim to achieve illusion with pictorial means. As long as the

spectator is under the spell of this illusion, she does not have a pictorial experience

but an illusion. Hence, the existence of trompe-l’oeil painting poses no threat to the

thesis that pictorial experience is necessarily twofold. When an experience of a

picture does not include an awareness of its surface, it is not a pictorial experience

at all. Once the surface entered the experience, its quality changes, and the trompe-

l’oeil painting becomes a vehicle for pictorial experience proper, i.e. an experience

characterized by twofoldness.

I argued Wollheim is right to claim pictorial experience is twofold. I addressed two

worries concerning this claim. First, that twofoldness is not sufficient for pictorial

experience. This objection can be met when we introduce an additional necessary

condition for pictorial experience: a standard of correctness (causal or intentional)

which determines what a spectator should see in a patterned surface. Second, it has

been argued twofoldness is not necessary for pictorial experience. This objection is

invalid. If there is not any visual registration of the patterned surface, the spectator

does not have a typically pictorial experience, but a cognitive or perceptual illusion

instead.

2. Wollheim’s second claim questioned

In Painting as an Art, Wollheim not merely claims pictorial experience necessarily

includes two aspects – a visual awareness of the pictorial surface and a visual

awareness of the thing depicted – and is subsequently twofold. On top of that, he

also characterises these two aspects. In this section, I evaluate his characterization

of the second aspect: the spectator’s awareness of the depicted thing. This aspect is

in need of clarification, as it is surely the most puzzling part of pictorial experience:

how to characterize the spectator’s perception of something that is not physically

present?

Wollheim is both surprisingly brief and surprisingly ambiguous about this matter.

First, he claims that our visual awareness of the depicted object can be described as

20

analogous to seeing that object face-to-face.20 Describing two things as analogous is

something else than claiming they are identical. On the contrary, when we make an

analogy we highlight one or more common properties, shared by things that are, in

general, very different. If Carey says ‘Men are like rabbits’, she highlights only one

feature men and rabbits share. Similarly, Wollheim’s analogy does not imply that

seeing something in a picture would be an experience with the same quality as a

face-to-face perception of that thing. Any critique that interprets Wollheim to claim

this would be misguided from the beginning. He never claims that seeing things in

pictures is phenomenologically continuous with seeing things face-to-face. On the

contrary, he even insists that these experiences are very different. His analogy-

claim is subsequently not a very strong one: seeing x in a picture and seeing x face-

to-face are similar in an important respect, but not identical.

To make a case for his analogy, Wollheim should not prove that seeing things in

pictures and seeing them face-to-face are similar in all respects. What he should do,

however, is point out at least one significant similarity between these experiences.

Surprisingly, he refuses to do this. The reason for this refusal is that we would get

‘lost’ once we start to compare seeing things in pictures with seeing them face-to-

face.21 As the visual awareness of the depicted object is always accompanied by a

visual awareness of a surface, the spectator’s perception of that object would be

phenomenologically incommensurate with face-to-face perception.22 This claim is

stronger than saying they are not identical; it implies they cannot even be sensibly

compared.

This characterization of our perception of a depicted thing is unsatisfactory. When

Carey sees a sunflower in a Van Gogh, her perception of the sunflower would be

analogous to seeing a sunflower face-to-face. But it is not clear what the salient

similarities and differences between this experience and seeing a sunflower face-to-

face consist in. In fact, Wollheim insists it would not make sense to ask what such

similarities and differences could be. This way, Carey’s seeing of the sunflower is

20 Wollheim, Painting as an Art: 46.

21 Wollheim, Painting as an Art: 46. “we get not so much into error as into confusion if, without equating

either aspect of the complex experience with the simple experience after which it can be described, we

ask how experientially like or unlike each aspect is to the analogous experience. We get lost once we

start comparing the phenomenology of of our perception of [a] boy when we see him in [a marked

surface] with that of our perception of the boy […] seen face-to-face.”

22 Wollheim, Painting as an Art: 47. About the comparison between seeing things and pictures and

seeing them face-to-face, he says: “Such a comparison seems easy enough to take on, but it proves

impossible to carry out. The particular complexity that one kind of experience has and the other lacks

makes their phenomenology incommensurate.”

21

not elucidated. It would somehow resemble seeing a sunflower face-to-face, but it

is not clear on what point.23 Nor is it clear on which points the analogy between the

two experiences breaks down.

In what follows, I address this lacuna. More concretely, I will highlight one salient

similarity and two salient differences between seeing x in a picture and seeing x

face-to-face. I will, in other words, compare face-to-face seeing with seeing things

in pictures; a comparison Wollheim explicitly discourages, because the complexity

of the second kind of seeing – always accompanied by the awareness of a pictorial

surface – would make it incomparable to the former. I disagree with Wollheim on

this matter. The similarities and distinctions I highlight are precisely there because

the viewer’s seeing of the depicted thing is always accompanied by her perception

of a patterned surface. Therefore, my analysis of the spectator’s awareness of the

depicted thing is consistent with Wollheim’s description of pictorial experience as

a twofold visual experience.

There is at least one salient similarity between seeing things face-to-face and seeing

them in pictures. Both when Carey sees a sunflower face-to-face as when she sees it

in a picture, her seeing of the sunflower is passive. Carey discovers the sunflower in

the picture, like she discovers a sunflower in the garden. She perceives something

‘out there’ of which she cannot control what it looks like. Therefore, both things we

see face-to-face and things we see in pictures can surprise us. Carey can, for

example, be startled by the shape of a sunflower in her garden, but also by the

unusual shape of a sunflower she sees in a Van Gogh painting. If she, by contrast,

imagines seeing a sunflower, such surprise is impossible. As the subject actively

shapes the things she imagines – they are, at least to a degree, subject to her will –

she cannot be startled by them.24 This requires an unanticipated object preceding

the experience; an object to be discovered. Such a pre-given object is not present in

the case of the imagination, but it is present when a subject sees things face-to-face

and sees them in pictures. In both cases, the experiencing subject ‘stumbles on’ an

object of vision. Just like we cannot choose what we see the moment we open our

eyes onto reality, we cannot choose what to see when we open our eyes onto a

picture.

23 Hopkins also loathes Wollheim’s vagueness about the precise nature of the spectator’s seeing of the

thing depicted “... some element in seeing-in is somehow analogous to seeing [the depicted object].”

(Picture, Image, and Experience, 19).

24 About the activity of the imagination and the passivity of perception, Wittgenstein writes: “Während

ich einen Gegenstand sehe, kann ich ihn mir nicht vorstellen. Verschiedenheit der Sprachspiele: ‘Schau

die Figur an!’ und ‘Stell dir die Figur vor’. Vorstellung dem Willen unterworfen. Vorstellung nicht

Bild.” (Zettel, par. 621, in Wittgenstein Werkausgabe Band 8, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994: 420)

22

That our visual awareness of a depicted object, like face-to-face seeing, is passive,

does not mean it cannot take an effort to find out what a picture depicts. Carey

might have problems, for example, to recognize her friend Charlotte in a cubistic

portrait. Apparently, seeing Charlotte in this portrait requires some work from the

spectator. Similar situations arise, however, in clear-cut cases of face-to-face seeing.

Suppose Carey is visiting a fancy-dress party. As her friends are all dressed up, it

might take her time to figure out that the mermaid on the dance floor is actually

her friend Charlotte. Both in this case as in that of the cubistic portrait, however,

Carey eventually identified a pre-given object. Her recognitional capacities were

strained, but, in the end, she identifies what is ‘out there’. In both cases, she does

not contribute anything to the identity of what she experiences; what she saw was

never subject to her will or intentions. Although it took her an effort to make the

correct identification, her experience is still passive.

Passivity is a property face-to-face seeing shares with the visual awareness of the

depicted thing, exactly because the latter is always accompanied by the awareness

of a marked surface. When spectators see things face-to-face, this experience is

passive because there is something out there, the perceived thing, that determines

the experiential content. When a spectator sees the depicted object, there is also a

thing out there, i.e. the marked surface, which determines the content of her visual

awareness. Instead of making face-to-face perception and seeing something in a

picture incommensurable, as Wollheim thought, the accompanying awareness of

the pictorial surface actually makes them saliently similar in at least one respect.

That being said, I will now highlight two salient properties which apply to seeing

things in pictures but not to face-to-face seeing. Like passivity, these dissimilarities

are an implication of the twofold character of pictorial experience. What are these

dissimilarities? In what follows, I first argue that the perception of a depicted

object is deniable and that the face-to-face perception of that thing is not. Second, I

argue our face-to-face perception of a thing is informed by the possibility to interact

with what is seen; our perception of depicted things is not.

When a subject sees a thing face-to-face, she cannot deny having seen it afterwards.

If someone has seen x, and remembers that she has, she will be considered a liar if

she denies having seen x. Suppose Carey goes on a trip to France, and sees many

sunflowers. When she gets home, and is asked if she has seen any sunflowers, she

is obliged to say she has. Of course, she can, de facto, deny it, but that would be an

act of lying.

23

When a spectator sees a thing in a picture, by contrast, she can deny having seen

the depicted object, even if she remembers this experience vividly. Suppose Carey

spends a day at the museum, marvelling at Van Gogh paintings of sunflowers.

When she gets home, her boyfriend asks her if she has seen sunflowers that day. If

Carey replies in the negative fashion, she is not a liar. Or consider watching a

speech by Barack Obama on television. Whilst watching the television footage, the

viewer can say ‘I see Barack Obama’ when asked to describe what she sees. But if

someone, a few hours later, asks her if she has ever seen Obama, she can deny this.

Again, this denial does not constitute a case of lying. In fact, people will be more

inclined to call the viewer a liar when she claims to have seen Obama. Seeing

sunflowers in paintings and presidents on screens does not oblige spectators to say

they have seen those things.

What makes the perception of the depicted object deniable? The answer is simple:

twofoldness. When Carey sees a sunflower face-to-face, her visual awareness of the

sunflower is triggered by the thing itself. A sunflower was physically present and

stimulated her visual system (her eyes, her nerve system, her brain). After

deploying her capacity to recognize sunflowers, she has a conscious visual

experience of it. Afterwards, Carey cannot deny she has seen a sunflower, as the

physical presence of a real sunflower set the process leading up to the sunflower-

awareness in motion. A perceiver cannot deny having seen the objects of

perception as these objects must have been really present to her senses for the

perceptual state to arise.

The viewer of a picture is in another situation. Her awareness of the depicted thing

is not caused by the physical presence of that object. No sunflower was present to

stimulate Carey’s eyes, nerve system and brain. Her awareness of the sunflower is

rather brought about by a flat surface, marked with paint by an artist. This makes

her seeing of the depicted thing deniable. No sunflower was present to her senses

whilst watching sunflower-pictures at the museum. She is therefore not obliged to

say she has seen them.

The fact that Carey’s visual awareness of the sunflower was not caused by a real

sunflower, but by a surface instead, does not suffice to explain why she can deny

having seen it. There are cases where a subject’s visual awareness of a thing is not

brought about by that thing, but where she is unable to deny having seen it.

Suppose someone puts a hallucination-inducing drug in Carey’s coffee, which

maker her see sunflowers everywhere. She thinks these experiences are triggered

by actual sunflowers, even though they are not. If her boyfriend asks her whether

24

she has seen sunflowers, she is a liar when she denies this. No sunflowers were

present to stimulate Carey’s visual system, but she thought they were; this suffices

to make her denial an act of lying.

In order to legitimately deny having seen a thing, not one, but two conditions need

to be fulfilled: (1) the subject’s visual awareness of x has to be caused by something

else than x, and (2) she has to be aware of this fact. Whereas only the first condition

is met in the drug-example, both conditions are met in case of pictorial experience.

When having a pictorial experience, the spectator’s seeing of the depicted object is

accompanied by a visual awareness of the pictorial surface. Hence, she knows her

visual system is not stimulated by the depicted object as such which renders her

seeing of the depicted object deniable.

Deniability is a salient property that our visual awareness of a depicted object does

not share with face-to-face seeing. Interestingly, it shares this feature with a mental

state that radically differs from perception: the imagination. Carey can see a pink

elephant with her mind’s eye, but this does not oblige her to say she has seen a

pink elephant. Her imagined perception of a pink elephant is as deniable as the

visual awareness triggered by a pink elephant-picture. However, imagining seeing

things and seeing them in pictures also differ, because the former is passive and

the latter is active. I will address the more general question whether our awareness

of a depicted object can be understood as a subcategory of some other visual state

(like perception, imagination, or illusion) in the conclusion of this chapter. There, I

defend a non-reductionist perspective: philosophers should resist the tendency to

describe the spectator’s seeing of the depicted object in terms of any other visual

state.

Before doing so, I discuss a second distinction between seeing things in pictures

and face-to-face seeing. Whereas face-to-face seeing is informed by the possibility

to interact with what is seen, seeing things in pictures necessarily is not informed

by this possibility.

Face-to-face seeing is an instrument to learn about the world. When Carey visits

the zoo, she can use her eyes to find out what tigers look like. However, there is

more to face-to-face seeing than finding out about the visual properties of things.

When Carey sees a tiger, she does not merely see a catlike animal with a certain

colour and shape. She also sees something she could stroke; that could chase, and

even bite her. Similarly, when a driver sees a stone on the road, she does not only

see a grey object, but also an obstacle to be evaded. When a perceiver sees a thing

25

face-to-face, the possibility to interact with the object of vision is never far away.

The act of seeing things face-to-face is subsequently not like watching a theatre

play. Perceivers are always potentially involved in what they see; they are no mere

spectators.25

The possibility to interact with what we see face-to-face is not a mere contingency.

It is rather an a priori implication of face-to-face seeing. As I already noted whilst

discussing the first difference between seeing face-to-face and seeing in pictures, a

mental state only qualifies as a perception if the object of visual awareness caused

this state. The visual awareness of a tiger hence counts as a face-to-face perception

when a tiger is present to cause the perceiver’s experience of it. Of course, we can

have an experience of a tiger without it being present, for example when dreaming

about it. But in that case, the experience does not count as a case of face-to-face

seeing. Seeing x face-to-face requires that a perceiver’s visual awareness of x is

caused by x itself, through a physical connection between the perceived object and

the perceiver’s sensory organs.

If a physical relation between perceiver and perceived object is necessary for face-

to-face seeing, then other causal relationships – besides the stimulation of the

subject’s visual infrastructure – must be possible as well. If a fire stimulates Carey’s

eyes, she not just sees the fire. She might be afraid that what she sees might burn

her, and might look for a fire extinguisher to put it out. Since seeing face-to-face

asks for a causal connection between the perceiver and the perceived thing, all

kinds of other interactions between perceiver and perceived become possible. The

possibility to interact with what we see face-to-face is thus an implication of face-

to-face seeing.

The possibility of interaction has phenomenological implications. Carey can

imagine seeing a fire, and imagine being afraid of it. But this ‘fear’ is of a different

quality then when she really sees a forest-fire, and consequently knows that what

she sees can really hurt her.26 In fact, we often use our eyes – and other senses – not

25 In what follows, I will develop some idea put forward by Lambert Wiesing. Wiesing argues that face-

to-face seeing involves perceivers in what they see. Seeing something in a picture, by contrast, would

turn me into an uninvolved spectator. I will provide additional support for this thesis. Whereas Wiesing

describes the difference between face-to-face seeing and seeing things in pictures, I try to explain this

phenomenological difference. For Wiesing’s arguments see Das Mich der Wahrnehmung. Eine Autopsie

(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2009) and his Artifizielle Präsenz. Studien zur Philosophie des Bildes (Frankfurt

a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2005).

26 Kendall Walton has written extensively about the qualitative differences between real fear and

imagined fear in his paper “Fearing Fictions” The Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978), 5-27. He argues we are

not really afraid of what we imagine (7 & 18).

26

to passively register the world, but to actively explore it so that we may find

beneficial interactive possibilities (food to eat, cars to drive, furry cats to pet) and

avoid harmful possibilities (holes in road surfaces, collision with other pedestrians,

dangerous dogs). The things subjects see face-to-face are experienced as objects of

possible interaction. We realize we are in the same causal nexus as the things we

see face-to-face and this affects our experiences of these things.

One could object there are instances of face-to-face seeing where interaction is not

possible. Suppose Carey visits the zoo to see tigers. The tigers are locked in special

cages, behind thick glass, through which Carey can see them, but they cannot see

her. The cages are sound- and smell-proof. It is therefore not possible for Carey to

make the tigers even aware of her presence. Still, Carey’s visual awareness of the

tigers qualifies as a case of face-to-face seeing. The tigers behind the glass bring

Carey’s visual awareness of tigers about. There is a casual connection between the

tigers and her visual system. However, if someone were to ask Carey to interact

with the tigers, she could answer that is impossible. Moreover, Carey will probably

not be afraid of the tigers in the cages. This indicates her experience of the tigers is

not informed by the possibility of interaction. Carey is here a mere spectator of the

objects of face-to-face seeing and she realizes this.

The impossibility to interact with the tigers is, however, a de facto impossibility. We

can think of events in physical reality that would make interaction possible. In case

of an earthquake, the glass might break, and Carey would have reason to fear what

she sees. Although the barrier between her and the tigers is robust, it is a physical

barrier: It is unlikely that it will break, but it does not lead us into contradictions

when we imagine that it does. For each case of face-to-face seeing, we can think of

conditions under which the perceiver would be able to interact with the object of

her visual awareness. Therefore, interaction always lies in wait when we perceive

face-to-face, even though it might not be possible to interact with these things at a

particular moment.

When one’s visual awareness of x is not triggered by x itself, but by an x-picture

instead, interactivity does not inform her perception. Suppose Carey sees Henri

Rousseau’s Tiger in a Tropical Storm. Whilst looking at this painting, Carey sees a

tiger, but she cannot interact with it. If she reaches out to pet it, she touches the

paint of the pictorial surface, not a tiger’s fur. Moreover, the twofold nature of her

pictorial experience will prevent her from undertaking such fruitless actions. Her

perception of the depicted object is accompanied by a visual awareness of the

surface in which she sees it. She knows there is a boundary between herself and

27

what she sees in the surface; a boundary that cannot be crossed. In contrast to the

caged tigers, we can imagine no event in reality, however spectacular or unlikely,

that would allow the spectator and the depicted thing to interact.27 Such interaction

is only possible when the object of seeing stimulates the spectator’s visual system.

There is no such physical relation between the spectator and the depicted thing;

only between the spectator and the pictorial surface.28 Carey can take the picture

from the wall and smash in someone’s head with it. But there is no way in which

she can unleash the tiger on that person. If Carey’s experience is a pictorial one, her

awareness of the depicted thing is informed by the impossibility of interaction with

what she sees.

One could object there are instances where pictorial experience does not exclude

interaction. Suppose Carey watches a live video feed of a comet heading for the

earth. If she remains where she is, the thing seen in the marked surface will crush

her. Therefore, it would make good sense for her to be afraid of the thing on the

screen. Hence, one could argue, the perception of a depicted thing apparently can

be informed by interactive possibilities.

There are two responses to this objection. First, one could respond that the thing

Carey has her eyes on whilst watching the screen cannot be interacted with. Only

comets seen face-to-face can crush us, comets seen in pictures cannot. Second, the

fear Carey feels whilst watching the screen is not an implication of her pictorial

experience as such. Suppose Carey looks at the screen and sees a comet, but does

not know it is heading for the earth. In this case, Carey might not be afraid. In fact,

she may enjoy seeing the comet flying through space, admiring its size and colour.

She only starts to feel fear once someone tells her the comets she sees on screen is

heading for her position on this very moment. When she realizes that, she infers

that the thing seen in the picture is coming her way and subsequently becomes

fearful. She needs an extra piece of knowledge – the thing you see on screen is

coming this way – to realize she is in danger and can be fearful. But Carey needs

no such additional knowledge to realize she is in danger when she sees a comet

face-to-face. When she sees with her own eyes that it is coming towards her, and

27 This constitutes, according to Wiesing, the difference between seeing things in a picture – for example

on television – and seeing things face-to-face through a bullet proof window . The things seen through

the window belong to the sphere of interaction, the things seen in the picture do not: “Bei einem

Schaufenster schaut man nicht aus einem Raum in die Fern, sondern in einen nahen Raum. Dies gilt

generell: Die nahen Dinge, die durch ein Fenster sichtbar sind, gehören in den Radius der Dinge, mit

denen sich handeln lässt– und dies bietet kein Fernseher ” (Artifizielle Präsenz, 104). 28 Wiesing, Das Mich der Wahrnehmung, 213: “Beim Bild ist sogar die Regel: Ich kann etwas sehen ohne

deshalb durch meinen Wahrnehmungszustand mit dem Wahrgenommenen kausal verstrickt zu

werden.”

28

takes up a larger and larger portion of her visual field, she knows directly, and not

inferentially, that she is in danger. This case shows face-to-face perception is an

experience informed by interactive possibilities, whereas the pictorial experience is

not. The spectator’s visual awareness of the depicted object as such is not informed

by interactive possibilities.

One could still object that certain visual representations do make us interact with

the things they depict. Whilst playing a video game, Carey might ‘shoot’ the aliens

she sees on her computer screen. Interaction with depicted objects subsequently

seems to be possible in the case of virtual worlds. I will deal extensively with this

objection in chapter four. Put briefly, I will argue that no real interaction is possible

between Carey and the alien, because no causal relation exists between herself and

this alien. There is only such a relation between Carey and the marked surface in

which she sees the alien being shot. This explains why Carey will probably answer

in the negative fashion when she is asked if she has ever shot an alien. She did not

really shoot it, nor has she actually interacted with aliens in other ways. The only

thing she really interacted with are her joystick and her computer screen.29

In this section, I discussed Wollheim’s claim that seeing x in a picture is analogous

to seeing x face-to-face. This claim suggests these two visual states share at least

one salient property, but must differ in other respects. However, Wollheim himself

did not specify these similarities and differences. To make his analogy more

robust, I highlighted one property both types of visual awareness share (passivity)

and two properties that they do not share (deniability and interactivity). I argued

these similarities and differences are an implication of the twofoldness of pictorial

experience: the spectator’s awareness of the depicted object is passive, deniable,

and non-interactive because it is accompanied by an awareness of the surface in

which it is seen.

3. Defining pictorial experience

In this chapter, I developed an account of pictorial experience in general. It should

hold for the experience of all pictorial representations, regardless whether they are

paintings, television images, or virtual worlds. The definition I propose is inspired

by Richard Wollheim’s, but does not coincide with his. My definition of pictorial

experience runs as follows:

29

See Chapter 4, 90-91.

29

Pictorial experience involves a double visual awareness of a pictorial

surface and of the depicted thing seen in that surface. It is governed

by a standard of correctness, which is sometimes determined by the

intentions of a picture-maker and sometimes is casual. The spectator’s

visual awareness of the depicted thing is analogous to a face-to-face

perception of that thing, as these two states have (at least) one salient

property in common but also differ in (at least) two other ways. Like

face-to-face perception, our visual awareness of the depicted thing is

passive. But unlike face-to-face seeing, our visual awareness of the

depicted objected is deniable and not informed by the possibility to

interact with what is seen.

This definition of pictorial experience is anti-reductionist in nature. Reductionist

approaches to pictorial experience take seeing things in pictures as a subcategory

of another visual state (face-to-face perception, imagination, illusion). When Carey

sees sunflowers in a painting, then that would constitute a special case of seeing

sunflowers face-to-face, a special case of imagining sunflowers, or a special case of

the illusion of seeing sunflowers. Pictorial experience is described by reductionists

as a variety of some other mental state. My aim, by contrast, is to highlight the

peculiarity of pictorial experience. When Carey sees a sunflower in a picture, this

experience cannot be described in terms of another state. Of course, seeing x in a

picture shares important characteristics with seeing x face-to-face, with imagining

seeing x, and with the illusion of seeing x. However, it cannot be identified with

either one of those experiences. For every property that the visual awareness of a

depicted object shares with another visual state, there is another property in which

it differs from it.

To conclude this first chapter, I briefly discuss three full-fledged reductionist views

of pictorial experience. None of these views is tenable, because they are each the

product of an invalid inference. More precisely, of a non-sequitur: that seeing x in a

picture shares certain features with other visual experiences does not mean it can

be identified with them.

First, consider the reduction to face-to-face perception. Dominic Lopes argues that

seeing x in a picture constitutes a prosthetic perception of x.30 Visual prostheses,

like microscopes and binoculars, enhance our natural perceptual capacities. Thus,

prosthetic seeing is itself a subcategory: it is a special case of face-to-face seeing.

30 In Understanding Pictures, Lopes claims that “Pictures are visual prostheses.” (190) and that “… we see

things through pictures.” (192).

30

The prostheses simply enlarge the realm of what can be seen face-to-face. Seeing x

in a picture would qualify as a prosthetic perception of x. Both when x is seen in a

picture and when it is seen through binoculars, an artefact is used to see a thing not

perceivable without it. Carey cannot see tigers in her living room. But if she had a

powerful pair of binoculars, allowing her to see the zoo, she could see them. She

could also tune in on a wildlife documentary on the National Geographic Channel to

see tigers. The television screen would then serve as a transparent surface, a visual

prostheses, through which she literally sees the distant tigers.31

Despite these similarities, seeing x through binoculars and seeing x in an x-picture

have a different phenomenology. Sure, both visual states are passive. Carey can be

surprised by what she sees through binoculars and by what she sees in a picture in

a way that she cannot be surprised by what she imagines. However, what she sees

in pictures is deniable and not informed by interactive possibilities. What she sees

through a pair of binoculars, by contrast, is undeniable and informed by interactive

possibilities. If Carey saw tigers through a pair of binoculars and denies having

seen them, she will be considered a liar. But if she has seen tigers on television and

denies having seen them, she will not. And if the tiger she sees through the pair of

binoculars takes up a larger and larger portion of her visual field, Carey has good

reason to start worrying. The tiger is closing in on her and this may have some bad

consequences. When the tiger she sees on television takes up a larger and larger

portion of her visual field, on the other hand, being fearful would not be a rational

response. These two differences show that pictorial experience is not a subcategory

of prosthetic seeing and therefore not a subcategory of face-to-face seeing. Seeing a

thing in a picture shares an important property with pictorial seeing (passivity), but

pictorial seeing has other essential properties that, by definition, do not pertain to

prosthetic seeing (deniability and non-interaction). Thus, seeing a thing in a picture is

not a kind of prosthetic seeing.

Second, consider the reduction to imagined seeing. Kendall Walton disagrees with

Wollheim that seeing things in pictures is like seeing things face-to-face and gives

an alternative: “Rather than being somewhat like engaging in face-to-face seeing,

seeing-in is a visual experience that involves imagining – merely imagining – doing

so.”32 I believe this proposal is just as flawed as Lopes’s. Again, there are certain

properties imagining seeing x shares with seeing x in an x-picture. When Carey

31 Lopes, Understanding Pictures: “By representing the visual world visually, pictures also extend what

we see. We use them, to see through to objects which cannot be seen by ordinary means.” (193).

32 Kendall Walton, “Depiction, Perception, and Imagination: Responses to Richard Wollheim,” The

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (2002), 30.

31

imagines seeing a flower she can deny having seen sunflowers and she knows she

cannot interact with what she sees. But the presence of these shared characteristics

does not make seeing x in a picture identical with imaging seeing it. For the

imaginative experience is an active one – the imagining subject has some control

over the content of her imagination – whereas the visual awareness of a depicted

object is passive. Subjects can never determine what they see in pictures, but they

can change the contents of their imagination. Even if Carey is ordered to imagine a

red car, she could imagine a blue one. But when she is shown a picture of a red car,

she cannot see a blue one. Of course, she could visualize it as being blue, but in that

case she would slip out of pictorial experience and into imagination.33 Since the

imagining subject has control over what she visually experiences, and the spectator

of a picture has not, seeing x in an x-picture is not a special variant of imagining

seeing x.

Third, consider the reduction to illusion. Ernst Gombrich held that x-pictures give

rise to illusory experiences of x.34 Although viewers of x-pictures do not see x face-

to-face, they would have the impression that they do. The identification of seeing x

in pictures and having illusions of seeing x still appeals to philosophers.35 Before

evaluating the illusion-thesis, I should distinguish between two types of illusion:

cognitive and perceptual ones. In the first case, the spectator has false beliefs about

what she sees; in the second case she has not. Consider the illusion of water on the

road, that often occurs when it is hot. When not familiar with this phenomenon,

Carey might have a cognitive illusion and believe there is water on the road. She

may think, for example, that her car will get wet when she keeps driving in the

direction of the ‘water’. But when familiar with this phenomenon, Carey resists

this false belief. Although water appears to be on the road, Carey’s background

knowledge of this phenomenon withholds her from being tricked into believing it

is there. When this is the case, she experiences a perceptual illusion: she is not

fooled into thinking that there is really water on the road.

33 For a more extensive discussion and critique of the waltonian take on representation see Chapter 4.

34 Gombrich, Art and Illusion: 21-23.

35 See Michael Newall’s paper ‘Pictorial Experience and Seeing,’ British Journal of Aesthetics 49 (2009),

129-141 in which he describes pictorial experience as follows: “… there is some item, not X, present

before the subject’s eyes, on which the non-veridical experience of X counterfactually depends. The

experience of X is thus dependent on the presence of some other item, let us call it Y, before the subject’s

eyes, such that if Y were not so present, then seeing X would not occur. This is what happens when we

visually mistake Y for X, or when we are subject to an illusion. I will argue that understanding pictures

also involves this second kind of non-veridical experience of seeing.” (129). Although seeing things in

pictures is not directly described as a kind of illusion, the illusion of x and seeing x in a picture are

described as experiences of the same kind.

32

Imagine first that Carey undergoes a cognitive illusion of seeing water on the road

surface. Her visual awareness is passive, as she lacks control over the experiential

content of her illusion. In this respect, it does resemble the visual awareness of a

depicted object. However, it differs from it too. The object of a cognitive illusion is

not deniable. If Carey really thinks she has seen water – even though she has not –

she would be a liar if she denied this. Her visual awareness of the illusory water is

also informed by interactive possibilities. Whilst Carey is under the spell of a

cognitive illusion, she might think she will get wet if she would move forward. The

experience of a water-picture, on the other hand, is not informed by interaction.

Carey knows she cannot possibly get wet when she moves towards the picture.

Seeing things in pictures is subsequently not a kind of cognitive illusion.

Imagine now that Carey has a perceptual illusion of water on the road. There are

numerous resemblances between this experience and seeing water in a picture.

First, Carey’s seeing of the water is passive in both cases. Second, it is deniable, as

Carey knows the water is not really there. Third, her awareness is not informed by

the possibility of interaction. She knows the ‘water’ on the road surface will not get

her wet. In spite of these similarities, there is also an important difference between

seeing x in a picture and having an optic illusion of it. In the case of the perceptual

illusion, Carey knows she cannot interact with what she sees because of her

memories about, or knowledge of, this phenomenon. In the case of a picture, by

contrast, the spectator does not have to remember or know anything to realize she

cannot interact with what she sees. She simply has to register the pictorial surface

in which the depicted thing is seen. Remembering or knowing anything is not a

requirement: what is seen in a picture is experienced directly as deniable and as

unavailable for interaction.

All three reductionist approaches to pictorial experience are problematic. Pictorial

experience, nor its components, can be described as a kind of face-to-face seeing, a

kind of imagination, or a kind of perceptual or cognitive illusion. I propose that we

embrace a non-reductionist view instead: neither pictorial experience as a whole,

nor its components, are analysable in terms of other visual states. We should rather

think of pictorial experience as an autonomous member of the family of visual

experience. Although it shares many properties with other members of this family,

it cannot be identified with any of them. There are family resemblances with face-

to-face seeing, imagined seeing and illusion, but it would be a mistake to conclude

from these family resemblances that pictorial experience is a subcategory of any of

one family member.

33

Wollheim’s original view, though not a full-fledged reductionist position, exhibits

reductionist tendencies. Whilst Wollheim stresses that pictorial experience as a

whole, due to twofoldness, is a unique and incomparable experience, he also holds

that a component of this experience – our seeing of the depicted thing – is in some

privileged manner analogous to face-to-face seeing. I, on the contrary, argued that

although our visual awareness of the depicted object is indeed analogous to face-

to-face seeing, it is analogous to imagined seeing or illusory seeing as well. My

modified version of Wollheim’s view is subsequently radically anti-reductionist in

nature. It does not merely resists the tendency to reduce pictorial experience, or its

components, to some other visual state; it also resist the tendency to claim pictorial

experience and its components resemble one of those states in a privileged fashion.

I have rather argued pictorial experience resembles and differs from other visual

experiences in numerous respects.

In the remainder of this dissertation, I will not speak of pictorial experience as a

subcategory of another mental state. Instead, I will speak about the subcategories –

or varieties – of pictorial experience: factive pictorial experience and immersive

pictorial experience.

34

Chapter 2

Factive Pictorial Experience

Photographs are generally considered more reliable informants about the world

than drawings and paintings. A snapshot of your partner kissing another person is

more worrying than a drawing of it. Satellite imagery of a hidden nuclear facility is

more disturbing than a painting of such a facility. And whilst video footage of a

man robbing the bank is admissible in court, a cartoon of a man robbing the bank

will not interest the judge. When it comes to finding out about the facts, we prefer

pictures made with cameras over handmade ones. We attribute an epistemic value

to the former that we deny to the latter.

Robert Hopkins has argued that photography derives its epistemic value from its

ability to support a special variety of pictorial experience, which he calls ‘factive

pictorial experience’.36 What is seen in a photograph would necessarily be a fact.

Handmade pictures would not support this special pictorial experience. What is

seen in drawings and paintings could be a fact, but we cannot be sure it really is.

Seeing something in a handmade picture would subsequently not be a good reason

to believe it is true. Only in the case of photographs are we justified to believe what

we see.

I partly agree, partly disagree with Hopkins’ view. I agree that photographs have a

special epistemic value over paintings and drawings. I also agree that photography

supports factive pictorial experience. I do not think, however, that photography’s

ability to support this experience explains its privileged epistemic status. I make

two points against Hopkins in this chapter. First, I argue that handmade pictures

can also support factive pictorial experiences. Second, I will offer an explanation of

photography’s epistemic value that is not grounded on the concept of factive

pictorial experience. The notion of trust – which I believe to be unjustly neglected

in many discussions about photography – is of importance in my arguments for

both points. I will present these points in sections four and five of this chapter, the

preceding three sections serve as preparation for the two arguments made in these

later sections.

36 Robert Hopkins, “Factive Pictorial Experience: What’s Special About Photographs?,” Nous (2010), 1-

23.

35

1. Photographic seeing is believing

In this section, I present Hopkins’ take on the epistemic value of photography. He

holds photographs have special epistemic value because they are the only pictures

that would support factive pictorial experience. Let me start with a brief analysis of

this concept.

What pictorial experience is should be sufficiently clear by now. When you have a

pictorial experience, you are simultaneously aware of both a picture’s surface and

of the thing seen in that surface. Although you should not attend to both, you must

at least register the surface and the depicted thing. This twofold visual experience

is governed by a standard of correctness which determines what you should see in

the pictorial surface. Your awareness of the depicted thing is passive, deniable, and

uninformed by interactive possibilities.

Factivity is a property of mental states. Mental states are factive if they necessarily

reflect the facts.37 A pivotal factive state is perception. If Samantha sees Charlotte in

New York, then Charlotte is in New York. Of course, Samantha could be mistaken.

It might appear to her that Charlotte is in New York, whereas Charlotte is actually

in France and the woman on the street is a doppelganger. But although Samantha

does not get the facts right in this case – Charlotte is in France, not in New York –

her experience of Charlotte in New York does not count as a perception either.

When she finds out that Charlotte is in France, Samantha will realize she has not

seen Charlotte in New York after all. She thought she did, but she was wrong to do

so. What is not the case cannot possibly be perceived. Everything that is perceived

is therefore the case.

The imagination, by contrast, is not a factive mental state, even though we often

imagine things that turn out to be the case. Samantha may imagine that Charlotte

wears a red dress to her birthday party and this could turn out true. But it would

be strange for Samantha to say “I knew you would wear a red dress: I imagined

you wearing this colour”. Imagining that someone wears red is not considered a

good reason for believing she will. The overlap between the imagination and the

facts is a matter of pure coincidence. Charlotte’s dress could just as well have been

yellow.38 Unlike perception, the imagination does not reflect the facts as matter of

necessity.

37 Hopkins, “Factive Pictorial Experience,” 3. 38 One should distinguish between imagination and expectation on this point. If Samantha visits many

parties with Charlotte, and Charlotte always wears red, she can reasonably expect Charlotte will wear

36

Photographs solicit pictorial experiences that are also factive. When observing a

photograph of Charlotte in a red dress, Samantha implicitly knows she wore red.

But she cannot be sure of this when she sees a painting of Charlotte in a red dress.

The painting could correspond with the facts, but she cannot be sure that it does.

Whereas we can see only facts in photographs, we can see both facts and fictions in

handmade pictures.

What explains this distinction between photographs and handmade pictures? Most

philosophers seek the answer to this question in the different production processes

of these pictures.39 Photographs can only depict facts because of their casual origin,

whereas handmade pictures can depict both facts and fictions because of their

intentional background. Suppose that Miranda wants to make a veracious picture

of Charlotte, but is drugged and subsequently takes Charlotte’s white dress to be

red. If she chooses to make a painting of Charlotte, her picture will misrepresent

the colour of the dress. But if Miranda takes a camera and makes a photograph of

Charlotte, her picture will not misrepresent the colour. Whilst the representational

content of a handmade picture depends on the picture-maker’s beliefs about the

depicted scene, the pictorial content of a photograph depends solely on how the

world is. The camera mechanically registers the scene in front of the lens, no matter

what the picture-maker believes about it.40 Photographs reflect a scene in a ‘mirror-

like’ fashion, as we cannot see anything but facts in mirrors and photographs. This

makes photographs superior sources of information. Seeing a photograph equals

seeing the facts.

Three initial objections can be raised against this analysis:

First, one could object that photographs are not the only pictures whose depictive

content is independent from what a picture-maker thinks about the depicted scene.

Suppose a draughtsman depicts an effeminate man and believes he is drawing a

woman. As long as the draughtsman sticks to drawing exactly what he sees, his

incorrect beliefs are irrelevant to what can be seen in the picture. A man is visible

in the marks on the pictorial surface, even though the picture-maker believes this

this colour to her party too. She thus has good reason to believe Charlotte will wear red. My example,

however, involves an instance of ‘pure’ imagination, uninformed by expectation. When Charlotte wears

all kinds of colours to parties Samantha’s imagination does not justify her belief that Charlotte will wear

red. 39 See Kendall Walton’s, “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism,” in Photography

and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature, ed. Scott Walden, 14-49, Malden: Blackwell, 2010, 34 and

Catharine Abell, “The Epistemic Value of Photographs,” in Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, eds.

Catharine Abell & Katerina Bantinaki, 81-103, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010, 83. 40 Hopkins, “Factive Pictorial Experience,” 7.

37

man is a woman.41 Independence from the beliefs of the picture-maker is thus not a

unique feature of photographs.

Although this objection makes sense, I still believe photographs are independent

from a picture-maker’s take on reality in way that handmade pictures are not. The

concept of ‘belief’ is simply unfit to highlight this independency. We better use the

more general notion of ‘mental state’, which encompasses not just cognitive/belief-

like states but experiential ones as well. Only in the case of photography is the

depictive content independent from the picture-maker’s mental states in general.

Suppose our draughtsman takes LSD and hallucinates an extra person into the

room. When he takes a pen to record what he sees, his picture does not show us

the facts. But if he uses a camera instead, the resulting picture does show the room

as it actually was. The mental states of the picture-maker – his false beliefs or his

hallucinatory experiences – are completely irrelevant to what can be seen in the

photograph.

Second, one could object that there are photographs whose depictive content is not

influenced by its maker’s mental states in any way but still do not show the facts.

Suppose Samantha has not seen Charlotte for a while and is shown a photograph

on which Charlotte appears to be fat. Samantha takes it for a fact that Charlotte has

become stout. In reality, Charlotte is still as slim as a model; the picture was made

with a distorting lens which made her appear much heavier than she is. Although

this picture was created in a purely causal fashion – the beliefs and experiences of

the photographer do not have any effect on what can be seen in the photograph – it

does not depict facts. Causality may be a necessary condition for factive pictorial

experience, it surely is not sufficient.42

In response to this objection, Hopkins introduces an extra necessary condition for

factive pictorial experience. A picture should not only be produced causally, but

properly as well.43 For factive experience to arise every element in the photographic

production process should ‘work as it should’. Examples of such elements are the

camera’s focus-mechanism (which should not distort the shape of objects) and the

chemicals used in the development process (which should be of the right type and

to which the negatives should be exposed for a right amount of time). If all these

elements function properly – if everything works as it is supposed to work – the

result will be a picture in which the spectator sees facts.

41 I defended a similar point in the first section of chapter 1. 42 Hopkins, “Factive Pictorial Experience,” 7. 43 Hopkins, “Factive Pictorial Experience,” 9.

38

Third, one could object that there are situations where a photograph is produced

causally and properly but facts are not seen. If Samantha sees a Bond movie, she

sees causal and proper pictures of a man running through what appears to be a

submarine. When asked to describe what she sees, it would be perfectly natural for

Samantha to reply ‘I see James Bond running through a submarine’. Still, this event

is not a fact but a fiction. For factive pictorial experience to arise, it does not suffice

that a photograph is produced causally and properly. An extra necessary condition

is needed for factive seeing-in to occur.

Hopkins provides this condition. It has nothing to do with the photograph as such,

but rather with the spectator’s attitude towards it. Photographs give rise to factive

experience if it is the spectator’s goal to see in them only what is photographically

recorded.44 Samantha thus undergoes a factive experience if she takes herself to be

seeing ‘Roger Moore pretending to be Bond’ and ‘a movie set appearing to be a

submarine’. Every causal and proper photograph is a vehicle for factive pictorial

experience – even those used to represent fictions – but they should be approached

in the right way for this experience to occur.

In sum, photographs support factive pictorial experience when they are produced

causally and properly. Before this experience actually occurs, the viewer must have

the intention to see facts in the picture.

Photography’s ability to support factive experiences would explain the epistemic

value we attribute to it. If a spectator believes that p on the basis of a picture that

was produced causally and properly, her belief is not accidentally true. According

to Hopkins, it originates in an experience that is guaranteed to get the facts right.45

Beliefs formed on the basis of handmade pictures, by contrast, are not necessarily

correct. When we see facts in handmade pictures this is a matter of coincidence. A

painting or a drawing is therefore not a good reason to believe that p. Only when

seeing things in photographs should we believe what we see.

2. From belief to scepticism

In this section, I present a sceptical argument against the thesis that photographs

have a special epistemic value. Although I reject this sceptical argument in the next

section, I believe it reveals a lacuna in Hopkins’ account.

44 Hopkins, “Factive Pictorial Experience,” 10. 45 Hopkins, “Factive Pictorial Experience,” 13.

39

Pictures support factive pictorial experience, and thus are epistemically valuable,

when they have a certain history of production. More specifically, they should be

produced causally and properly. But the spectator of an individual photograph, so

the sceptic might argue, cannot be sure whether these criteria are actually met. An

inspection of the pictorial surface does not necessarily give any decisive answers

about the existence of a causal and proper link between its representational content

and the photographed scene. To be sure that a photograph is a vehicle for factive

pictorial experience, the spectator needs information about its production history

and, in most cases, this information is absent. The spectator sees the end product of

the picture’s production process, but the production process itself remains invisible

to her.

There is, in this respect, an interesting similarity between photographs and relics.46

Take the Shroud of Turin, a piece of cloth in which Christ was presumably buried.

Under what conditions is the Shroud authentic? The answer is simple: the Shroud

is authentic if Christ’s body was actually buried in it. If this physical bond between

the Shroud and Christ’s body is absent, than the Shroud is a fake. But although the

conditions under which relics count as authentic are crystal clear, the question if a

particular relic is authentic is not so easy to answer. Religious believers cannot be

sure if a given piece of cloth was physically connected to Christ by inspecting its

outward appearance. To know for sure that the Shroud is authentic, they should

have knowledge about its history. As the relic does not necessarily give clues about

this history – it may appear to be two thousand years old whilst actually being a

hundred year old forgery –, believing in relics is often thought to be naïve. People

who believe in relics assume that an object has a certain history without having

compelling evidence that it does.

The everyday praxis of forming beliefs on the basis of photographs might display a

similar naiveté. Is it not irrational to believe photographs depict the facts if we can

never be sure that the conditions under which they do are fulfilled? The naked eye

cannot always tell whether a certain picture was produced causally and properly.

It is possible that a photograph appears to be causal and proper but, in fact, has a

representational content that was shaped by an intentional agent or distorted by an

unusual lens. There are at least two examples where pictures that do not reflect the

facts are mistaken for ones that do.

46 The comparison between photographs and relics has been made by Susan Sontag, who wrote that

“Having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a nail from the true cross’ (On Photography,

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 177) and by Patrick Maynard, “The Secular Icon: Photography and

the Function of Images,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 41 (1983): 155-156

40

First, consider photorealistic paintings like John’s Beader work John’s Diner. These

works, especially when observed from a distance, give spectators the impression of

looking at a photograph. Suppose Samantha sees a photorealistic painting of her

apartment in flames. If she mistakes this picture for a photograph – a picture that

reflects the world like a mirror – she may start to panic. However, when she is told

the picture is not a photograph but a photorealistic painting, chances are that she

will feel relieved. Samantha’s panic fades because she realizes the picture does not

have a causal but an intentional origin. The depicted object could subsequently be

a product of the maker’s imagination and does not necessarily reflect reality. Her

initial panic was the consequence of a misidentification of an intentional picture as

a causal one.

One could object that photorealistic paintings are not good examples, because an

inspection of their surfaces can learn a viewer that they are not vehicles for factive

pictorial experience. If Samantha moves close enough to the photorealistic work,

she sees the brush strokes on its surface and will realize that it is not a photograph

after all. The surface of this picture gives significant clues about its history of

production. When these clues are noticed by the spectator, she can infer the picture

might just as well depict a fiction.

Now consider a second example, which serves the sceptical case better: digital

photography. When a digital photograph is taken, the digital camera divides the

photographed scene into a grid. This grid consists of a finite number of cells. These

cells are called ‘picture-elements’ or ‘pixels’. Each pixel is assigned a code which

specifies its colour and shade. These digital codes can be translated into an image

again, so that the photographed scene re-emerges. When a photographer does not

interfere in this process, and uses good software to decode the digital information,

the result is a picture that shows facts. A scene with certain visual properties gives

rise to certain codes in the camera and these subsequently give rise to a picture that

reflect the scene as it was. Had the scene looked different, than correspondingly

different codes would have been formed in the camera, and the photograph would

have looked different too. Like their analogue predecessors, digital pictures can be

mirror-like reflections of reality.47

But not all digital pictures are. Digital imaging techniques allow picture-makers to

create digital pictures ex nihilo or to manipulate pictures with a causal provenance.

Suppose a photographer takes a digital photograph of Charlotte. This photographs

has a causal and proper relation to the photographed scene. It subsequently reflects

47 See my “Can Digital Pictures Qualify as Photographs?” ASAGE 4 (2012), 1-7.

41

the facts. Now suppose the photographer uses a computer to change the codes that

specify the colour and shade of its pixels. This could lead to a photograph on

which Charlotte seems fat, even though she is slim. The spectator cannot find out

about the manipulation by inspecting the pictorial surface. When the surface of the

manipulated photograph is enlarged she will see the pixels with their colour and

shade. However, this does not tell her anything about the origin of the information

contained by the pixels. The pixels may reflect reality, but they could just as well

have been added by a photographer who wants to deceive. When inspecting the

surface of a digital picture you are not always in the position to judge whether the

picture’s representational content is entirely causal, entirely intentional, or partly

causal and partly intentional.

Digital photograph and close-up of the pictorial surface

This observation, plus the fact that digital photography is widespread, has lead

philosophers of photography to be pessimistic about the epistemic status (digital)

photography will enjoy in the future.

Scott Walden thinks there is a paradox of digital photography. On the one hand,

the non-detectability of digital manipulation should undermine our confidence in

42

photographic pictures in general. Every photography that appears to document the

facts could have been undetectably manipulated with a computer. On the other

hand, our confidence in photographs remains undiminished. We still take

photographs in the newspaper to depict the facts. For Walden, there is a naiveté to

this praxis as we cannot be sure whether these pictures meet the requirements

under which they indeed show facts.48 Any picture that seems a mirror-like

reflection of reality could have a representational content that is distorted or

shaped by an intentional agent.

Barbara Savedoff defends a similar position and predicts that photography, due to

the rise of digital image manipulation, will lose its special epistemic status. Since it

is impossible to see if a particular picture really was produced causally and

properly, spectators will not assume any picture to be more reliable than another

anymore. Digital image manipulation will not just have repercussions on the status

of digital photography, but on that of its analogue predecessor as well:

To the extent that we see photographs as potentially indistinguishable

from their digitally altered counterparts, photographs become suspect

as carriers of even the most basic information.49

Hopkins thinks that Savedoff’s claims about the future of photography are of an

empirical, not of a philosophical nature.50 Although I agree that questions about

the decline of trust in photography cannot be answered a priori, I do believe that a

genuinely philosophical question lies at the heart of Savedoff’s worries. Is it

rational to believe that p on the basis of any p-picture if we cannot be sure whether

this picture fulfils the conditions for factive pictorial experience? Is it sensible to

believe what you see in photographs if there is a persistent possibility of

manipulation?

In this section, I presented a sceptical argument against Hopkins’ assumption that

some pictures (i.e. photographs) have greater epistemic value than others. This

argument runs as follows: According to Hopkins, pictures have special epistemic

value when they were produced causally and properly. It is always possible,

however, that a particular picture was not produced causally or properly, but that

an inspection of its surface does not give us any reason to think it isn’t. Therefore it

48 Scott Walden, “Truth in Photography,” in Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature, ed.

Scott Walden, 91-110, Malden: Blackwell, 2010, 108-109. 49 Barbara Savedoff, “Escaping Reality. Digital Imagery and the Resources of Photography,” in The

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (1997): 212. 50 Hopkins, “Factive Pictorial Experience,” 15

43

would be naïve to think some pictures have more epistemic value than others. As

every photograph could be an intentional and improper picture disguised as a

causal and proper one, you should not believe anything you see in them, let alone

regard photographs as evidence. That photographs could support factive pictorial

experience – when certain requirements are met – is not a guarantee that any

photograph actually does.

3. From scepticism to trust

In this section, I present a twofold response to the sceptical positions of Walden

and Savedoff. On the one hand, I think they are right to point out that every

picture which seems to reflect reality could in fact be a misrepresentation. On the

other hand, I think that the sceptical conclusions they draw from this observation

are outrageous. Only the mentally ill can seriously consider the possibility that

every photograph is a fake.

How to reconcile the persistent possibility of photo fakery with the everyday

praxis of believing what you see in photographs? The solution lies in a notion that

is not explored by Hopkins and his sceptical antipodes: trust. In what follows, I

first present a brief analysis of this concept. Next, I argue trust is required to learn

about reality from photographs. We can only believe what we see in photographs

if we implicitly assume that the conditions under which they depict facts are met.

Against sceptics like Walden and Savedoff, I argue it is not naïve to assume this.

When trusting others, we rely on their competence and good will to take care of

something we value.51 The mother leaving her children at day-care trusts others to

look after them. The patient going under narcosis trusts a doctor to take care of her

body whilst she is unconscious. And the tourist asking a passer-by the time trusts

this person knows how to read the time and is not a liar. I focus on this last case,

where a truster relies on a trustee to find out about the facts. After all, photography

too is valued as a means to this end.

When you trust someone you are necessarily vulnerable. Suppose Samantha has

no watch and needs to know what time it is. She asks a passer-by and is told it is 6

PM. Since Samantha has no watch on her, and there are no clocks in the vicinity,

she cannot confirm whether it really is 6 PM. Samantha can subsequently not

51 Annette Baier, “Trust and Antitrust,” Ethics 96 (1986): 259.

44

determine if the passer-by is worthy of her trust. Of course, she could go look for a

clock in order to check whether the passer-by told her the truth. But this would be

an act of distrust that annihilates her trust-relation with the passer-by. When

trusting someone you are necessarily at her mercy. The phrase ‘blind trust’ is

therefore tautological: trust is always to a certain degree blind.52

One could argue this blindness makes relying on the good will and competence of

others naïve. As Samantha cannot rule out the possibility that the passer-by is a

pathological liar or an incompetent clock-reader, it would be irrational for her to

believe it is 6 PM. Sensible people, it is often said, do not simply believe everything

they are told. But although these considerations about the irrationality of trust

sound plausible enough, they are deeply flawed. In his classical study about

testimony, Tony Coady advances a counter-argument against the sceptical idea

that trusting others is irrational. It runs as follows:

We believe that what we perceive is the case. Still, the truth of convictions formed

on the basis of perception depends on the truth of countless other propositions.

The truth of your belief ‘Charlotte wears a red dress’ depends on the truth of

propositions like ‘I am not under the influence of drugs that makes all red surfaces

seem green’ or ‘I am not being fed images of Charlotte in a red dress by an evil

neurosurgeon’. If these propositions were false, then your perceptual beliefs would

be false as well. Nevertheless you do not need to make certain that all these

additional propositions are true in order to believe Charlotte’s dress was red.53 You

would, on the contrary, act deeply irrational if you embarked on such an

undertaking. Suppose someone took a blood-test every hour to make sure her

perceptions were not influenced by hallucinatory drugs. Instead of considering this

person a critical thinker and a rational being, we probably take her to be paranoid

and ready for a mental institution. To establish that p on the basis of your senses

you do not need to establish the truth of the various propositions q, r, and s which

are presupposed or entailed by the truth of p.54

This principle can be extended to the field of testimony, where we trust others to

report the facts. The truth of beliefs formed on the basis of their reports depends on

52 Lars Hertzberg, “On Being Trusted,” in Trust, Sociality, Selfhood, eds. Arne Gron & Claudia Welz

(Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck: 2010): 198. “No matter how strong the grounds the other may have to predict

that I will behave in ways beneficial to his projects and desires, no matter how smartly he deliberates,

those deliberations will not change our relation into one of trust. On the contrary, the more explicitly

those external considerations enter into the relation, the less it comes to have the character of trust.” 53 Tony Coady, Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 144. 54 Coady, Testimony (2002), 145.

45

the truth of countless other propositions. Witnesses should not be liars, they

should be competent, and we should interpret their words correctly. Nevertheless,

we would consider Samantha paranoid if she insisted that the passer-by telling her

the time should take a lie detector-test. Doubting the honesty of every person is not

an indication of a supremely rational personality. Universal distrust is rather a sign

of poor mental health.

That does not mean distrust always equals paranoia. Distrust is justified when

there are indications that someone is unreliable. Suppose a passer-by tells

Samantha it is 6 PM. There is, however, plenty of daylight even though it is the

midst of winter. In this case, it is doubtful the passer-by tells the truth. Her

assertion is incoherent with other things Samantha knows to be true. Although the

fact that someone tells you that p suffices for you to believe that p, you sometimes

have reasons not to believe p. But it is this disbelief – not your belief – that needs a

justification. Unless you have good reason to believe someone is not telling you the

truth, you should believe what they say.55

Trust is also required to learn from photographs. Beliefs formed on the basis of

photographs depend on countless other propositions. When seeing a photograph

of Charlotte in a red dress, Samantha believes Charlotte wore red. But this belief is

only true when the picture was not manipulated and not developed with chemicals

that distort the colours of the dress. When learning something about the world

from this photograph, Samantha implicitly assumes that the conditions under

which the photograph represents the facts are indeed fulfilled. Since she cannot

establish whether they really are, learning about reality from photographs requires

her to trust in the good will and competence of the picture-maker. Kendall Walton

mentions the importance of trust for photographic seeing but does not pursue it

any further:

We need to make certain assumptions if we are going to trust [a]

photograph: that the camera was of a certain sort, that no monkey

business was involved in the processing and so on. These may require

our accepting the say so of the photographer; we may have to trust

him.56

55 Wittgenstein summarizes this insight in paragraph 600 of Über Gewissheit: ”Was für einen Grund habe

ich, Lehrbüchern der Experimentalphysik zu trauen? Ich habe keinen Grund, ihnen nicht zu trauen.”

Werkausgabe Band 8 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994), 241.

56 Kendall Walton, “Transparent Pictures,” 37.

46

Learning from photographs requires trust in the picture-maker. The picture must

have a certain history of production to represent facts and we are often not in the

position to confirm it has. But this ignorance about a picture’s history does not

justify the sceptical positions defended by Walden and Savedoff, who hold that

forming beliefs on the basis of (digital) photographs is simply naïve. If others

communicate to us that p we can take p for a fact, even though we can think of

circumstances – ‘the speaker is a liar’ or ‘the photographer has manipulated the

picture’ – in which p is not the case. We can regard photographs as vehicles for

factive pictorial experience, unless there are indications they are not. There are at

least two kinds of reasons to distrust photographs:

First, there are internal reasons for distrust. These concern inconsistencies within

the picture itself. Imagine a picture with three people standing in a row. On the

floor in front of them, you see the shadows of two persons. The third person does

not have a shadow. This could be an indication that the picture is a fake and the

third person has been added later. The distrust this picture may evoke is

comparable to the doubts raised by an inconsistent verbal report. Just like a

detective may distrust a witness whose reports contradict themselves, the viewer

of a photograph can distrust a photograph that is not internally cohesive.

Second, there are external reasons for distrust. These concern inconsistencies

between what you see in the picture and other things you hold true. Suppose

Samantha is shown a photograph on which Charlotte is fat. But as Samantha has

seen Charlotte every day over the last ten years, and Charlotte was slim on all of

those days, Samantha has reason to doubt the photograph reflects reality. Instead

of taking the picture as a reliable informant, she might reasonably suspect it was

manipulated by an intentional agent.

In this section, I argued that learning from photographs requires trust in others.

The spectator must assume that the photographs she sees indeed meet all the

conditions under which they reflect the facts. I defended it is not irrational to make

such an assumption. It would, on the contrary, be a sign of paranoia to regard all

photographs as potential misrepresentations. Distrust is only justified in situations

where there is good reason to doubt a photograph reflects the facts.

4. Handmade pictures and facts

Learning about the world from photographs requires trust. The viewer has to

assume a photograph indeed meets all the conditions under which it reflects the

47

facts. I argued viewers are justified to take this leap of faith, unless there is reason

for doubt. This insight also has implications for Hopkins’s distinction between

handmade pictures and photographs. Remember he argued only photographs can

be mirror-like reflections of reality. Seeing things in a photograph would therefore

be a good reason for believing them, whereas seeing things in a handmade picture

would not be a good reason to do so. I think that Hopkins is wrong. There are

many cases where painting and drawings should be treated as vehicles for factive

pictorial experience.

Hopkins claims photographs reflect reality when they meet certain requirements.

They should not have been manipulated and not been taken with a distorting lens.

When you take a photograph to document reality, you implicitly assume that these

requirements are met. There is, however, also a set of conditions which, when

fulfilled, makes handmade pictures reflect the facts. Examples of such conditions

are ‘The picture-maker does not intentionally misrepresent the depicted scene’,

‘The picture-maker is not under the influence of hallucinatory drugs’, and ‘The

picture-maker has enough skills to capture the scene’. When a handmade picture

is presented to you as a recording of the facts, you can assume these conditions are

met. For if someone communicates that p – regardless whether she uses words,

photographs, or paintings – you can take p for a fact, unless there are reasons for

distrust.

Consider a court-drawing of a defendant. When a bald man is seen in it, you may

believe that a bald man was trialled. The truth of this belief depends on the truth of

countless additional propositions. Examples of such propositions are ‘The court-

drawer is not a pathological liar’, ‘The court-drawer is not an LCD-user who

constantly suffers from hallucinations’, and ‘The court-drawer is competent

enough to depict the court room adequately’. There is a persistent possibility that

one or more of these conditions is not met and the drawing does not reflect facts.

But it would be an indication of paranoia to seriously consider the possibility that

every court-drawing is made by a psychopathic drug addict. When you are shown

pictures that presumably represent the facts, you can assume that they fulfil the

conditions under which they reflect the facts. Distrust is only justified when you

have good reasons to believe these conditions were not met. When you are the

court-drawer’s psychiatrist, and know he is a pathological liar, you have a valid

reason to approach his pictures with a more critical eye. If such reasons are absent,

distrust is not warranted and the court-drawing should be treated as a vehicle for

factive pictorial experience.

48

Believing what you see in court-drawings is perfectly natural. It requires reliance

on the good will and the competence of the picture-maker, but so does believing

what you see in photographs. In both cases, the spectator makes a leap of faith and,

in both instances, making this leap is rational. Seeing a bald man in a handmade

court-drawing is as valid a reason to believe that a bald man was in court as a

photograph of the same scene. Although the set of conditions under which the

drawing reflects the world in a mirror-like way differs from the set of conditions

under which a photograph does this – drawings cannot be taken with distorting

lenses or be developed with the wrong chemicals –, that is no reason to assume the

court-drawing does not reflect reality.

5. Epistemic value revisited

The conclusion that photographs and handmade pictures both support factive

pictorial experience invalidates Hopkins’s account of photography’s epistemic

value. Remember he argued photographs are better sources of information about

the world because they would be the only pictures capable of supporting this

special variant of pictorial experience. Now it has become apparent that they are

not, we are left with two options. The first is to conclude that photographs do not

have any special epistemic value over handmade pictures. The second is to provide

an alternative explanation for the special status of photographs as informants

about the world

I will pursue the second option, as it is more in harmony with common-sense than

the first. Suppose you suspect your partner of having an affair. You hire a private

detective to watch her. The detective is a keen drawer as well and asks you

whether he should draw or photograph the activities of your partner. Chances are

you prefer him to make photographs, although you have no reason to doubt his

drawings will reflect the facts. Photographs of your partner kissing another person

would somehow confirm your suspicions in a way that a drawing could not. But

how do we explain this if both pictures can be considered vehicles for factive

pictorial experience?

The answer lies again in the notion of trust. I will argue that photographs are

considered better sources of information about reality than handmade pictures

because believing what is seen in a handmade picture requires me to trust others

more blindly than believing what is seen in a photograph. When learning from

photographs you are less dependent on the good will and competence of others

49

than when learning from handmade pictures. Although both handmade and

photographic pictures can be a valid reason for belief, the chance that your belief

will eventually turn out false is greater in the first case than in the last. This

explains why photographs are generally considered better informants about the

world whilst at the same time not disqualifying handmade pictures as vehicles for

factive pictorial experience.

Some situations ask us to rely more blindly on the people we trust than others.

Consider the famous trust-fall. When the trust-fall is performed, one person

deliberately lets herself fall and relies on the good will and competence of others to

catch her. We can imagine variants of the trust-fall where the falling person is more

at the mercy of the trustees and variants in which she is less dependent on them.

Suppose Samantha lets herself fall and Miranda and Charlotte are to catch her.

Unwilling to put herself completely at their mercy, Samantha makes Miranda and

Charlotte sign a contract. They each have to pay a thousand euros if they let her

fall. Although Samantha still has to rely on the good will and competence of her

friends – they might be so wicked that even a fine does not withhold them from

dropping Samantha – she is less dependent on their goodness than without the

contract. The contract has made Samantha’s trust in her friends less blind.

Although she could reasonably assume Miranda and Charlotte would catch her

even without the contract, she can be even more sure of it now the contract has

been signed. The possibility that Miranda and Charlotte let her fall persists, but the

chances of them actually doing so have decreased.

Believing what you see in photographs asks you to rely less blindly on others than

believing what you see in handmade pictures. Although both pictures can serve as

reason for belief, learning from handmade pictures involves a greater risk of

disappointment. Why is this so? Unlike Hopkins, I do not believe photography’s

special epistemic value over paintings and drawings is an a priori feature of the

medium (in casu, not a consequence of photography’s supposedly unique ability to

solicit a particular variety of pictorial experience). I rather think that photography’s

reliability can be explained by more or less contingent features of the photographic

medium.

Consider two scenarios to get a taste for these contingent features. In the first, a

friend shows you a drawing of your partner kissing another person and tells you

‘This is what I saw’. In the second case, a friend shows you a photograph of your

partner kissing another person and tells you ‘This is what I saw’. Why does the

photograph have more impact than the drawing? I think this can be explained by

50

the fact that manipulating photographs in a convincing way requires considerable

time and skills. It is not something everybody can do. Rudimentary drawings of

fictional events are much easier to make. Since photo-fakery is simple more

difficult than telling someone a lie or making a drawing of an event that never took

place, it is safer to believe what you see in photographs. You are less dependent on

the good will of others – who will have more difficulty to produce a photo-fake

than to produce a verbal or drawn fiction – than in the case of handmade pictures.

I cannot emphasize too often that this does not mean that believing what you see in

handmade pictures is naïve whilst believing in photographs is rational. Compare

these two ways of finding out about reality with travelling by car and travelling by

airplane. Both modes of transportation entail risk. There is a possibility you die in a

car crash and a possibility you die in a plane crash. Statistics learn travelling by car

is riskier than travelling by plane. But is this a good reason to seriously consider

the possibility of dying every time you have to travel somewhere by car instead of

by plane? I do not think it is. That one means of achieving a goal involves more

risk than another is not a sufficient reason to expect the worst. When someone

presents us with a handmade picture and tells us it reflects the fact, we can believe

that it does, even though the chances that it does not are higher than in the case of

a photographic picture.

That photography’s epistemic value depends on contingencies implies it can be

lost. We can think of a possible world in which photo manipulation is much easier

than in ours. In this possible world, the photograph will not occupy a special

epistemic position amongst other pictures. Learning about the world from

photographs would require a form of trust that is as blind as that involved in

learning from handmade pictures. Believing what you see in photographs would

be as risky as believing what you see in drawings. But even in this possible world,

photographs can be treated as vehicles for factive pictorial experience. What is seen

in them can be believed, unless there are good reason to believe the photograph

does not fulfil the requirements under which it reflects the facts.

Note that photographs, besides establishing with relative certainty that something

was the case, have other benefits. Whilst handmade pictures only show things the

picture-maker has seen, cameras register everything in front of the lens. If a

drawing is made of a crime-scene, and the draughtsman misses a bullet shell on

the floor, the drawing will not learn the spectator a bullet shell was there. If a

photograph is made of the scene, the unnoticed shell can be discovered by the

51

viewer.57 Another advantage of photography is the efficiency with which a camera

can produce a detailed picture of a scene. Whereas producing convincing photo-

fakes is difficult, producing unmanipulated photographs is extremely simple. Even

a skilled draughtsman would need considerable time to make a detailed picture of

a crime scene. But a detective, unskilled in the arts, can produce a very complete

picture of the scene in seconds.

Photographs and handmade pictures can both serve as vehicles for factive pictorial

experience. We can believe what we see in both pictures. Convictions based on

photographs are less likely to turn out false afterwards than convictions based on

handmade pictures. Therefore, we usually prefer photographs over handmade

pictures when it comes to finding out about the world. We are less at the mercy of

the photographer than we are at the mercy of the painter or the draughtsman. The

leap of faith from representation to belief is subsequently smaller in the case of

photography than in the case of handmade pictures.

6. Conclusion

In the introduction to this thesis, I presented the hypothesis that different pictorial

media entail different types of pictorial experience. This hypothesis has been put to

the test in this chapter. Whilst Hopkins believes factive pictorial experience is

indeed a medium-specific affair, I have challenged this view. I argued both

handmade pictures and photographs can support it. Nevertheless, there remains a

difference between the experiences handmade pictures and photographs solicit.

The heightened certainty with which we can take photographs to represent facts

has phenomenological implications. Although both paintings and photographs can

be a reason to believe your partner sleeps with the neighbour, the photograph has

a punch to it that the painting lacks. It has this punch because the photograph

confirms your suspicions with a certainty the painting is not capable of. My initial

hypothesis that there is connection between pictorial medium and experience is

therefore not completely invalid. Whereas photographs are not the only pictures

that entail factive pictorial experience, the factive experiences solicited by them are

qualitatively different from the factive experiences that are solicited by handmade

pictures.

57 Abell, “The Epistemic Value of Photographs,” 81.

52

Chapter 3

Television and Witnessing

There is a shoot-out in Carey’s street. If Carey sees the shoot-out from her window,

she is obviously a witness to the event. If she does not see the shoot-out from her

window, but reads about it in a newspaper, she is obviously not a witness. Now

suppose Carey sees the shoot-out on live television. Is she a witness in that case?

John Durham Peters argues that she is, and views similar to his are defended by

prominent philosophers like Kendall Walton and Roger Scruton.58 Seeing an event

on television would not differ significantly from seeing it through a window. I am

sceptical. In what follows, I first introduce Peters’ view. Next, I raise two objections

against it. Finally, I consider whether these two objections suffice to reject Peters’

position altogether.

1. Viewing as witnessing

Peters holds that viewers of live television are witnesses to the filmed events. Put

very briefly, his argument for this view runs as follows: A witness is someone who

sees an event with her own eyes (premise 1). A television viewer sees the filmed

event with her own eyes (premise 2). Therefore, the television viewer is a witness to

the filmed event (conclusion). In this section, I discuss this argument, especially the

second premise, in more detail.

The first premise is in line with our common sense ideas about witnessing and

does not need much explanation. The Oxford Dictionary defines the noun witness

as ‘a person who sees an event, typically a crime or accident, take place’. The verb

to witness applies when we obtain our knowledge from observation or experience.

Peters’ definition of witnessing is in accord with this uncontroversial description:

“To witness is a sensory experience … the [perception] of an event with one’s own

eyes and ears.”59

58 John Durham Peters, “Witnessing,” in Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication,

eds. Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski, 23-48, Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2009; Walton, “Transparent

Pictures” (2010); Roger Scruton, “Photography and Representation,” Critical Inquiry 7 (1981): 577-603. 59 Peters, “Witnessing,” 25.

53

The second premise of Peters’ argument is less self-evident. Do television viewers

see the filmed events with their own eyes? Don’t they rather see representations of

these events? In response to this question, Peters highlights three similarities

between seeing an event through a window – a clear-cut case of literal, face-to-face

perception – and seeing an event on live television. These three similarities would

suffice to regard seeing an event on live television as a straightforward case of face-

to-face seeing.60

First, live television provides sensory information about the filmed events.61 A

newspaper report about a shoot-out might learn Carey that there was a terrible

noise when two gangsters opened fire. But she does not hear the noise of gunshots

when reading the report. The sensory qualities of things are not preserved in

linguistic descriptions of them. Such information is preserved, by contrast, when

they are filmed. If Carey reads a written report she does not experience colours and

sounds, but if she watches television, she does. This is a first resemblance between

seeing events from a window and seeing them on live television. The colours and

sounds of objects, lost in linguistic descriptions, are available to the perceiving

subject in both cases.

Secondly, live television provides supremely reliable information about the filmed

events. If Carey reads the headline ‘Two gangsters killed’ in the paper, she has to

put considerable trust in the writer of this report. The journalist might have the

intention to deceive her audience. She can deliberately report two gangsters were

killed, although only one died. It is also possible the journalist has the intention to

inform the reader correctly, but mistook one of the wounded for a dead man. This

results in a report informing the audience about two causalities instead of one.

When Carey reads the paper she has to trust other human beings, the journalist

and the newspaper editors, to produce reports that reflect facts.

Carey has to put less trust in others when she sees the shoot-out on live television.

The cameras used to produce live television automatically reflect the world as it

is.62 It is a dumb medium, which simply registers the visual features of the scene in

front of the lens. If these features had been different, then the visual information

displayed on screen would have been correspondingly different. This constitutes a

second similarity between seeing an event through a window and seeing it on live

television. In both cases, there is a causal link between what the world actually

60 The argument provided by Peters is similar to that of Kendall Walton in “Transparent Pictures” (2008) 61 Peters, “Witnessing,” 24. 62 Peters, “Witnessing,” 25.

54

looks like and what is seen. Had there been three dead bodies on the pavement

instead of two, then Carey would have seen something else through her window

or on her screen. Whilst watching television, she does not see the event through the

eyes of a journalist; she is rather in a position to ‘see for herself’.

Thirdly, live television provides real time information about filmed events. This is

a final similarity between seeing events from your window and seeing them on

television. If Carey sees a shoot-out from her window, she obtains information

about this event as it happens. She does not if she reads about it in the newspaper a

day later. For similar reasons, Peters rules out that viewers literally see an event

when watching a recording of it. They would rather perceive a replica of the event

when they do.63 If the viewer sees an event on live television, by contrast, she is in

the same position as someone who sees it from her window. Her visual experience

of the event temporally coincides with the event itself.

Just like regular eyewitnesses, present at the scene, viewers of live television have

access to sensory, reliable, and real-time information about events. For Peters, this

is enough to regard live television as a window to distant events.64 The television

screen is a transparent surface through which the spectator sees the filmed events

with her own eyes. A position similar to Peters’ is held by Roger Scruton, who

writes that:

It seems scarcely more contentious to say that I saw someone on the

television – that is, that in watching the television I saw him – than to

say that I saw him in a mirror. Television is like a mirror: it does not

so much destroy as embellish that elaborate causal chain which is the

natural process of visual perception.65

Now the second premise of Peters’ argument is elucidated, we can turn to its

conclusion. Since witnesses see events with their own eyes, and viewers of live

television do too, television viewers can qualify as witnesses. Live broadcast offers

audiences a chance to see distant events as if trough their windows. Consequently,

they would not speak metaphorically when they describe themselves as

eyewitnesses to, for example, the 9/11 attacks.66 According to John Ellis, the

63 Peters, “Witnessing,” 37. 64 Peters, “Witnessing,” 36. 65 Scruton, “Photography and Representation,” 588. 66 Paula B. Mays writes, for exampe, how she wants “to give [her] impression as a witness to 9/11 from a

foreign land”. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-b-mays/witnessing-911_b_949158.html. This

indicates that some television viewers see themselves as witnesses of the events they have seen on the

screen.

55

television age is an age of witness. Due to television, we would see major events –

like terrorist attacks, collapsing nuclear power plants, tsunamis, and shoot-outs –

on a daily basis.67

Peters’ thesis that television is a kind of window, through which viewers literally

see the event, can give rise to an initial worry. In contrast to a window, television

would not allow us to see the events in a simple and uninterpreted way.68 Instead,

it would always provide an interpretation of these events. First, because live images

are accompanied by verbal comments in most cases. When Carey sees a shoot-out

on live television, there will most likely be a voice-over explaining to her what it is

she sees. Secondly, even when comments are absent, the choice of camera angle

still directs the viewer’s attention. Carey sees certain aspects of the event and its

aftermath, whilst others are kept from her. Live television would hence inevitably

offer an account of the filmed events. It is not a window allowing the viewer to

simply see for herself.

I think this objection is misguided. The presence of interpreting comments, and the

implicit direction of the viewer’s gaze by means of camera angles, do not rule out

viewers literally see the filmed events. Suppose Carey comes home from work to

find her street crowded with police officers. It turns out there has been a shoot-out.

A police detective takes her by the arm and explains what happened. He points

towards the blood on the pavement and the ambulances leaving the scene. He also

tells Carey how two people got killed. Her perceptions of the scene are thus

accompanied by interpreting comments, and her gaze is directed by the police

officer pointing out certain things and ignoring others. Does Carey, because of this,

fail to see the scene? No, she obviously sees the scene with her own eyes.69 Seeing

in the most literal sense can occur whilst someone comments on the scene or

directs our gaze. The presence of comments and the choice of certain camera angles

do therefore not suffice to reject the view that television viewers literally see the

filmed events.

Before introducing more serious objections to Peters’ position, I will summarize it

briefly: If the viewer of live television is to qualify as a witness to the filmed event,

67 John Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in an Age of Uncertainty, (London: Tauris, 1999), 32. 68 John Ellis argues that live television invariable presents viewers with a narrative: J. Ellis, “Mundane

Witness” in Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication, eds. Paul Frosh and Amit

Pinchevski, 73-88, Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2009: 76. 69 Kendall Walton provides a similar argument: People often influence the way in which we see things,

for example by showing under certain lighting conditions. However, we would not deny having seen

something simply because someone, for example, put in under a special kind of lamp (“Transparent

Pictures,” 35).

56

she should have seen it with her own eyes. Three commonalities between seeing an

event through a window and seeing an event on television lead Peters to think that

the viewer literally sees the filmed events. The viewer subsequently qualifies as a

witness to the filmed events.

2. First objection

My first objection against Peters is directed at the second premise of his argument.

I think viewers of live television do not literally see the filmed events; what they

literally see are representations of those events.

Both when seeing an event from a window as when seeing it on live television, the

perceiver has access to sensory, reliable, real-time information about the event. For

Peters, these three similarities suffice to claim that live television is basically a kind

of window, through which we literally see distant events. I disagree. The three

similarities listed by Peters are not sufficient for literal perception. There are cases

in which all three criteria apply, but straightforward perception obviously does not

take place.

Consider the following case, devised by Gregory Currie to invalidate a position

similar to Peters (that of Kendall Walton).70 A and B are two identically looking

clocks. The position of the hands on clock A determines the position of the hands

on clock B by means of radio signals. Every change in the position of A’s hands

leads automatically to a change in the position of B’s hands. The moment that A

indicates it is eleven o’clock, B do so as well. The moment A indicates it is one past

eleven, so does B, and so on.71

All Peters’ conditions for straightforward perception apply to the clock-example:

First, the perceiver receives sensorial information about A when she is perceiving

B. She sees exactly the same clock, with the hands in the exact same position. The

time on clock A is not, for example, displayed in digits on an LCD. There is perfect

overlap in the appearance of the clocks. Secondly, B conveys reliable information

about A. Radio signals warrant that changes in A’s appearance are automatically

70 Kendall Walton defends a position which is very similar to Peters’. According to Walton, we literally

see the depictum when observing pictures made with cameras. Photographs and television would not be

representations, but rather ‘aides to vision’ like telescopes and binoculars. See “Transparent Pictures,”

(1984), 251-252. 71 Gregory Currie, “Photography, Painting, and Perception,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49

(1991): 26.

57

mirrored by changes in B’s appearance. Thirdly, the transmission of information

happens in real time. Changes in A’s appearance are mirrored directly by changes

in the appearance of B.

If the three similarities listed by Peters are indeed sufficient for literal perception, it

should follow that the perceiver literally sees A whilst looking at B. This is not the

case. When looking at B, she sees clock B and nothing more. Peters’ conditions do

subsequently not suffice for straightforward seeing.

In itself, this argument does not yet invalidate Peters’ view. It merely implies that a

mode of access to information has to live up to additional requirements to qualify

as a case of straightforward perception. It cannot be ruled out that seeing an event

on your television stills counts as an instance of straightforward seeing under those

additional conditions.

A proper argument against Peters’ position therefore requires an additional step:

the formulation of an additional necessary condition for literal seeing which rules

out that seeing an event on live television qualifies as a literal perception of that

event. In what follows, I discuss four conditions – or rather four variants of the

same condition – developed by philosophers with exactly that result in mind. The

first condition, proposed by Gregory Currie, runs as follows:

S literally sees x if, and only if, S can determine the egocentric location

of x.72

The egocentric location of a thing is its location relative to me. When I start to move

around, the egocentric location of the things I see will start to change. Right now,

the clouds are above me. But if I had not been in my office but on a plane instead,

the clouds would have been beneath me. All things are somewhere in relation to

the perceiving subjects: to their left, right, close, or far away, above or underneath

the, and so on.

According to Currie, perception is necessarily accompanied by tacit knowledge

about the egocentric location of the perceived objects. Perceivers have access to this

knowledge because of the embodied nature of visual experience. I know the clouds

are above me because I have to adjust the position of my head in a certain way, i.e.

look up, to see them. When I am on a plane, I know the clouds are underneath me,

since I have to look down the window to see them. This knowledge of the perceived

object’s egocentric location remains implicit in most cases. We do not constantly

72 Currie, “Photography, Painting, and Perception,”: 26.

58

entertain beliefs about the egocentric location of things. But when I see something

literally, I would always be in the position to determine the egocentric location of

what I see.

Under this condition, seeing an event on television does not count as an instance of

literal perception. Suppose Carey sees a shoot-out on live television. The fact that

she sees the shoot-out on the screen in front of her, and does not have to move her

head or body to see it, does not imply the accident is itself situated in front of her.

It could be anywhere in relation to her. Of course, Carey can determine her current

location and infer where the filmed event is relative to her. But she cannot discover

the egocentric location of the filmed event merely by looking at the screen. This

constitutes a difference between a television viewer and someone seeing an event

through a window. Seeing an event on television hence does not qualify as a literal

perception of that event.

The requirement Currie puts on literal perception is open to debate. According to

Kendall Walton, there are cases of straightforward perception in which Currie’s

condition is not satisfied. If this is indeed the case, then tacit knowledge about the

egocentric location of the perceived objects is not necessary for straightforward

seeing.

Walton asks us to consider a case like this: Carey is in a mirror labyrinth.73

Somewhere in this labyrinth is an apple. The mirrors in the labyrinth are arranged

in such a way that they all reflect the apple. Carey is allowed to look around, but

cannot touch what she sees. Consequently, she cannot tell whether she looks at the

apple or at its mirror image. She is subsequently unable to determine its egocentric

location. It might be above her, to her left, or to her right. Now suppose that,

without knowing it herself, Carey is looking at the actual apple; there is no mirror

between her and the apple. In this case, it cannot be denied that she literally sees

the apple. But as she does not know whether she sees the apple or its reflection, she

cannot determine the apple’s egocentric location. Seeing in the literal sense can

thus occur without the perceiver knowing the egocentric location of the perceived

object.

This argument saves Peters’ second premise from Currie’s objection. Although

looking at a screen does not allow the viewer to determine the egocentric location

of the filmed events, this is not necessary for perceiving something. Thus, it is still

73 Kendall Walton, “On Pictures and Photographs: Objection Answered,” in Film Theory and Philosophy,

eds. Richard Allen and Murray Smith (Oxford University Press, 1997), 70.

59

possible that Carey literally sees filmed events on television. To invalidate Peters’

second premise, there has to be a necessary condition for straightforward seeing

that is immune to counterarguments like Walton’s. Such a condition is proposed

by Aaron Meskin and Jonathan Cohen:

S literally sees x if, and only if, every change in the egocentric location

of x leads to a corresponding change in her visual experience.74

Under this condition, perception does not require that the perceiver can determine

the egocentric location of the perceived object. It merely requires two independent

variables – egocentric location and visual experience – to co-vary: changes in the

egocentric location of the perceived object should automatically lead to changes in

the experience of it. If Carey sees the Eiffel Tower face-to-face such co-variation can

occur. The Tower will take up a larger and larger portion of Carey’s visual field if

she moves closer to it. If she moves away from it, by contrast, the Tower will take

up a smaller and smaller portion of her visual field. When the Tower is perceived

literally, changes in its egocentric location are accompanied by changes in Carey’s

visual experience. If this co-variation is indeed necessary for face-to-face seeing, it

has two important implications:

First, it allows us to regard Walton’s labyrinth example as an instance of literal

seeing, which is the intuitive thing to do. Although Carey is not able to determine

the egocentric location of the apple she sees, its egocentric location and her visual

experience co-vary. Suppose someone changes the position of the apple, by putting

it, for example, closer to Carey. This change in the apple’s egocentric location will

cause her visual experience of the apple to change as well. If the apple is closer to

Carey, for example, it will take up a larger portion of her visual field. She might

still be unable to determine where the apple is, but its changing egocentric position

causes her to see something else.

Secondly, this condition rules out we really see the filmed events whilst watching

live television. Consider again the shoot-out in Carey’s street. This event can be

seen on live television at many different geographical locations. Carey can watch it

at home, at her parent’s house in a neighbouring town, or while she is on an

expedition to the North Pole. The shoot-out itself can thus be in all kinds of places

in relation to her. These differences in egocentric location do not, however, lead her

to see the event differently. The live broadcast shows her the same thing, no matter

74 Jonathan Cohen & Aaron Meskin, “On the Epistemic Value of Photographs,” The Journal of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism 62 (2004), 201.

60

whether she is at home or on the North Pole. There is no co-variation between

what is seen and the egocentric location of the perceived event.75 Carey hence has

not literally seen the filmed event with her own eyes.

Although the condition Cohen and Meskin impose on perception is much weaker

than Currie’s, some think it is still too strong. Bence Nanay mentions experiments

where changes in egocentric location do not lead to changes in visual experience.

When a point of light is projected on the wall of a dark room, changes in a subject’s

egocentric location do not automatically lead to changes in what she sees.76 If she

moves only a little closer to the wall, the point of light still takes up roughly the

same size of her visual field as before. It does not become larger. There is no direct

co-variation between the light point’s egocentric location and the visual experience.

However, it would be counterintuitive to deny the subject literally sees the point of

light. Nanay therefore concludes that covariance between egocentric location and

visual experience is not a necessary condition for perception. Since he also wants to

avoid the conclusion that we literally see filmed events, he proposes an alternative

necessary condition for seeing:

S literally sees x if, and only if, there is at least one way for S to move

so that her visual experience of x would change continuously.77

Under this condition, the visual experience of the point of light in the dark room

qualifies as a case of literal seeing. Although the experience of the light point does

not change with every change in egocentric location, there is at least one way for

the perceiving subject to move so that it does. If the subject moves closer and closer

to the wall, the point of light will, eventually, take up a larger portion of her visual

field. Nanay’s claim about perception is of course a counterfactual: the subject does

not really have to move towards the wall to literally perceive the point of light. It is

merely required that such a move is possible.78

Under this condition, we do not literally see the filmed events when watching live

television. Suppose that Carey sees a shoot-out on television. If she starts moving,

75 Cohen & Meskin (2004), 203. 76 Nanay draws on experiments about perceiving distances. Subjects were asked to estimate how far

away the point of light was. Although standing at various distances, they thought they were (averagely)

60 centimetres removed from the point of light. Not every move closer to the light point lead to a

change in visual experience which would lead the subject’s to think they were now closer than 60

centimetres. See Bence Nanay, “Transparency and Sensorimotor Contingencies: Do We See Through

Photographs?,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (2010), 467. 77 Nanay (2010) “Transparency and Sensorimotor Contingencies,” 469. 78 Nanay (2010) “Transparency and Sensorimotor Contingencies,” 470.

61

another angle of her television screen appears. But the appearance of the event that

is seen on that screen remains the same.79 Of course, Carey can see the event from a

different angle when the cameraman chooses to film it from a different angle. This

change in angle is, however, in no way causally linked to her movements. The

changes are rather caused by the movements of the cameraman. There is no

movement Carey can make that brings about a continuous change in the

appearance of the perceived scene. She subsequently does not literally perceive the

filmed event.

Nanay realizes his condition is open to an objection. Suppose Carey looks at a wax

figure of Obama. Now there are ways for her to move so that her view of Obama

would change continuously as she moves. If she were to walk around the statue,

her view of Obama would change gradually while she keeps her eyes fixed on the

statue. If Nanay’s original condition for perception is correct, Carey literally sees

Obama when looking at his statue. This outcome is counterintuitive. We cannot

claim to have literally seen Obama when we only saw his statue. To rule out that

Carey literally perceives in cases like this, Nanay provides a more exclusive variant

of his initial condition. This condition already comes closer to being a sufficient

condition for literal seeing:

S literally sees x if, and only if, there is a way for S to move such that if

she were to move that way her view of x would change continuously,

and this change is not due to the fact that her view of another object y

(where y is not identical with x) also changes.80

Under this final condition there can never be a television, however advanced, that

allows us to literally see the filmed events. One day, there might be a television

projecting live holograms of the filmed events in Carey’s living room. Carey can

now move in such a way that her view of these events changes continuously as she

moves. She can, for example, move around the hologram to see the shoot-out from

a different perspective. But this change in the scene’s appearance is the effect of a

change in something which is not identical with the event we visually experience,

namely the hologram. As a hologram of a shoot-out is not identical to a shoot-out,

we do not literally see the shoot-out whilst looking at a hologram projection of it.

Even a future 3-D television device does not allow Carey to literally see the filmed

events.

79 Nanay (2010) “Transparency and Sensorimotor Contingencies,” 473. 80 Nanay (2010) “Transparency and Sensorimotor Contingencies,” 480.

62

If live television does not make Carey literally see the filmed events, what kind of

experience does it trigger? I propose that Carey has a factive pictorial experience of a

shoot-out whilst watching live television.

Carey’s experience exhibits all the characteristics I ascribed to pictorial experience

in chapter one. She sees the filmed events in the marks projected on her television

screen. There is a standard of correctness that determines what should be seen in

these marks. Carey can subsequently be right or wrong about what she sees on the

television. Her visual awareness of the filmed events is passive, deniable, and not

informed by interactive possibilities. She cannot actively shape the appearance of

the events she sees on screen, is not a liar when she denies having seen an event

after having seen it on TV, and she does not take herself to be practically involved

in the filmed events. What Carey literally sees during this experience is not the

filmed event but merely the marked surface in which she sees it. Like spectators of

drawings and paintings, television viewers do see the depicted objects and events,

but they do not really see them.81 Whilst watching television footage of a shoot-out

Carey literally sees ‘a pictorial representation of a shoot-out’ and she pictorially

sees ‘a shoot-out’.

The pictorial experience triggered by the television image is special because of its

factivity.82 When watching a shoot-out on live television, Carey implicitly believes

that what she sees is the case. This constitutes a similarity between seeing events

on TV and seeing them through a window. In both cases we take our experiences

to be of reality. But this similarity between face-to-face seeing and factive pictorial

experience should not tempt us to confuse factive pictorial experience with literal

seeing. When Carey sees an event through her window she lays eyes on an actual

shoot-out; when she sees it on live television she lays eyes on a pictorial surface in

which a shoot-out can be seen. Live television generates mental states that, due to

their factivity, are like perceptions. But this does not mean it solicits perceptions of

the filmed events. In the case of face-to-face seeing we really see a real event whilst,

in the case of live television, we do not-really (but pictorially) perceive a real event.

There is thus a subtle distinction between really seeing real events face-to-face and

not really seeing real events on television.

81 A more moderate version of Walton’s transparency theory amounts roughly to the same. When I am

looking at a picture, I see something real. But it is fictional, and not real, that I am perceiving this real

thing. He writes: “Even when one looks at photographs which are not straightforward works of fictions,

it can be fictional that one sees. On seeing a photograph of a long forgotten family reunion, I might

remark that Aunt Mabel is grimacing … it is fictional that I see her grimacing.” Walton (2010),

“Transparent Pictures,” 26. 82 I provided a substantial analysis of factive pictorial experience in the previous chapter.

63

Peters is blind to this distinction and subsequently confuses literal perception and

factive pictorial experience in the second premise of this argument. The television

screen is not a transparent surface through which distant events are literally seen.

Since being a witness requires one has literally seen the events one is a witness to,

television viewers cannot qualify as witnesses.

3. Second objection

My second objection builds on the first, but is more tentative. In what follows, I

defend that conventional witnesses are always part of the events they see literally.

Next, I argue that television viewers are not necessarily part of the events they see

on live television. Finally, I explain why being part of an event matters to being a

witness and conclude that television viewers cannot be witnesses.

Carey is in Manhattan on September 11th, 2001. Around 8.46 AM she sees a plane

crash into the World Trade Centre. A few moments later, at 9.03 AM, she sees how

a second plane hits the building. An hour later she sees the collapse of the South

Tower, and yet another half hour later she watches the North Tower fall. Does this

make Carey ‘part’ of the 9/11 attacks?

In chapter one, I argued that seeing something face-to-face implies there is a direct

causal link between the perceiver and what she sees. A visual experience qualifies

only as a face-to-face perception when the experienced thing caused it. This causal

origin distinguishes perception from other visual experiences. When dreaming

about the 9/11 attacks, Carey’s visual experience of them is not triggered by the

attacks themselves but rather by her overactive brain and nerve system. We will

therefore not be inclined to say she has literally seen the attacks. Perception only

occurs when the WTC-towers and the planes crashing into them brought Carey’s

experience about.

It is the causal relation between Carey and the 9/11 attacks that makes her part of

this event. Consider two visual experiences with identical content. One is a dream

Carey has about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, the other a

perception of the same event. In the dream, Carey’s body is obviously not caught

up in the event. Whilst dreaming about fires and collapsing buildings, she is safe in

bed. After waking up, Carey soon realizes that the fear she felt when dreaming was

not justified. There was no moment that her life was actually on the line. The fires

she saw in her dream could not have burned her, nor could the pieces of wreckage

64

have wounded her. Her dream was nothing more than a bad movie in which she

was not physically involved.

The situation is different when Carey literally sees the 9/11 attacks. Carey’s body is

caught up in the events. Even when she is not burned by fire or hit by pieces of

wreckage, and merely sees the event, she is physically involved in it: Her visual

experience is an effect of the attack imprinting itself on her retina and stimulating

her visual system. Simply because she sees the attacks with her own eyes, Carey is

physically connected to the event. In contrast to her dream about the attack, she is

in the same causal nexus as the event.

One could object this claim is counterintuitive: Carey was not in the World Trade

Centre during the attack, nor was she one of the hijackers who crashed the planes

into the towers. Even Osama Bin Laden, who was not even in Manhattan, seems to

have a bigger part in the 9/11 attacks than Carey, who is in Manhattan as a matter

of mere coincidence. If the CIA mistakenly arrests Carey on suspicion of planning

the attacks, she will try to convince the agents she had no part whatsoever in the

event. Seeing an event face-to-face would subsequently not suffice to make one a

part of it.

In response to this worry, allow me to distinguish between two senses in which

perceivers take part in events. In the narrow sense, Carey is part of the 9/11 attacks

only when she is a victim or a perpetrator. When she is a bystander, she is not

involved since she has nothing to do with the attacks. There is, however, a broader,

but not entirely counterintuitive sense of involvement in which Carey is part of the

event she sees: She is part of the event as an uninvolved bystander. Consider the

following example in support of this seemingly strange claim. Carey returns home

after witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Centre. When discussing this

event with her friends, who did not see it with their own eyes, she will probably

have special authority as a speaker. Carey has this authority because she is the only

one who experienced the events first-hand. In this sense, Carey is like the victims

and terrorists who also experienced the attacks first-hand. Sure, her involvement in

the event is minimal compared to theirs. But compared to her friends, who were

not present at the scene at all, Carey is a kind of passive participant in the event

simply because she has lain eyes on it. Whereas Carey has physical ties with the

event – her seeing of the event was caused by the event itself – her friends lack this

privileged connection to the event. They are not involved, however minimally, as

they have no-first knowledge whatsoever of the event.

65

Just like Carey’s friends, the television viewer is not involved in the filmed events

either. Carey’s friend Charlotte is not in Manhattan on September 11th, 2001. She is

in London and watches the attacks on live television. Charlotte’s visual experience

of the attacks is not caused directly by the attacks themselves. Of course, there is a

causal link between the events and what she sees: if the attacks had not occurred,

Charlotte would not have seen them on her screen. But this causal connection is

indirect. What causes her seeing of the attacks are not the attacks themselves, but

the marked surface in which they are seen. Charlotte literally perceives a pictorial

representation of the 9/11 attacks, that triggers a distinctly pictorial awareness of

the 9/11 attacks.

In chapter one, I argued there is a barrier between the spectator and what she sees

in a picture. No causal relations exist between her body and the depicted thing;

only between her body and the pictorial surface in which this thing can be seen.

Suppose Carey is in Manhattan on September 11th, but watches the attacks from a

safe distance through binoculars. Whilst looking through the binoculars, a plane

she perceives takes up a larger and larger portion of her visual field. Carey’s reflex

is to put down the binoculars and to run away. This reaction is rational: a plane is

approaching her position and she does not want to die. Now consider Charlotte,

who sees the same plane on screen. If a plane starts taking up a larger and larger

portion of her visual field, it would not be rational for her to run away. She does

not have to worry about the possibility of physical interaction between herself and

the plane she sees because her seeing of the plane is not caused by an actual plane

but by the marks on the television screen. Due to this lack of direct causal ties

between Charlotte and the event she has no part, however minimal, in what she

sees on the screen. The viewer of live television is by definition uninvolved in the

filmed events. Whilst Carey is bound up in the same causal nexus as the event,

Charlotte is not.

There are two objections against my thesis that television viewers, unlike regular

perceivers, are not essentially part of the events they see:

First, one could object television viewers sometimes watch television footage of an

event whilst being present at the scene of this event. Suppose Carey is in the World

Trade Centre during the attack, and sees it happen from the top floor of the North

Tower. Since there is a television present in the room, she can watch the attacks on

live television. Carey is consequently part of the filmed events.

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For two reasons, this objection is misguided. First, I never claimed viewers cannot

be part of the filmed events. I merely defended that face-to-face seeing necessarily

makes us part of the events we see, and that seeing things on television does not.

Doing so, I left open the possibility that television viewers are part of the events in

some cases; they could be involved. Second, Carey is not part of 9/11 by virtue of

seeing it on live television. Charlotte, who watches the same broadcast in London,

clearly is not part of the event. Carey, on the other hand, is part of the 9/11 attacks

because the television screen on which she sees the attacks is situated at the very

scene of these attacks. This implies there is a causal connection between Carey and

the event which does not exist between Charlotte and the event.

The second objection against my position runs as follows: although the television

viewer is not physically involved in the filmed events, she is emotionally involved.

When Charlotte sees the 9/11 attacks on television she is probably shocked. What

she sees causes her to worry over her friend Carey, who is in Manhattan. I doubt,

however, these emotions make Charlotte part of the event. She cannot lay claim to

the same special position as Carey when it comes to reporting about the 9/11

attacks. She may lay claim to a special position when it comes to reporting about

the event of seeing attacks in Manhattan whilst knowing your friend is there, but

this is a whole different event to report about. Being part of an event is, I believe, a

largely physical affair. Claims about involvement based on emotional responses to

a live feed are metaphorical.

In sum, Carey was in Manhattan and literally sees the 9/11 attacks. Charlotte was

in London and saw them on television. Carey was part of the event, Charlotte was

not. Why is being part of the event so important to Carey’s role as a witness to the

attacks?

A first possible explanation is that people who were part of an event have better

knowledge of the event. When Carey is in Manhattan, she can choose from a quasi-

infinite number of angles from which she can see the attacks and their aftermath.

On top of that, Carey perceives the event with all her senses. She does not just see

and hear the planes flying into the towers, she might also smell gasoline and touch

a piece wreckage from one of the planes. Her friend Charlotte does not have such a

luxurious access to information about the attacks. What she sees on television

depends on how news crews position their cameras and microphones. Moreover,

she cannot touch, smell, or taste the objects involved in the event. Charlotte would

consequently know less about 9/11 than Carey does. Due to her physical presence

at the scene, Carey would be a better source of information about the event. This

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explains we grant her a witness-status, and deny this special qualification to her

friend Charlotte.

I disagree with this explanation of why we grant Carey a witness status and deny

it to Charlotte. Carey is not necessarily a better source of information about the

event than Charlotte.

First, we can imagine cases where someone who is part of the event has access to

the exact same information as a television viewer. Suppose Carey sees the 9/11

attacks from a bunker made of glass. The bunker allows only visual and auditory

information about the environment to enter. Carey is strapped to a chair and her

head is tied to its back. She is thus present at the scene of the event to literally

perceive it. Still, she does not have access to more information about the event than

her friend Charlotte does. She only hears and sees the event, and cannot choose

from what angle she sees it. Still, Carey intuitively qualifies as a witness, simply

because she is there and sees the event for herself.

Second, the reverse is also imaginable. There are cases where the television viewer

has access to the same information as someone who was really there. Suppose

Charlotte owns a prototype of a revolutionary television device, which consists of a

helmet and suit. The television device stimulates all of the viewer’s senses. She can

also choose the angle form which she wants to perceive the filmed events. When

Charlotte ‘approaches’ flames, for example, her suit warms up accordingly so that

she can feel the warmth of the flames. Her futuristic television device assures that

no aspect of the situation that is present to Carey is lost to Charlotte. In this case,

Charlotte is as good a source of information as Carey. There are consequently cases

in which television viewers know as much about the filmed event as people who

were actually there.

Thirdly, even if these cases are rejected as far-fetched, one could argue television

viewers are often better placed to assess an event than perceivers that are part of it.

When Carey is actually in Manhattan, and has to run to escape pieces of wreckage

flying through the air, her report about the event might very well be incomplete

and inaccurate. Charlotte, who does not have to worry about self-preservation, can

accurately observe the event on screen. Panicking is unnecessary for her, because

her experiences of flames and pieces of wreckage are triggered by a marked

surface, not by actual flames and wreckage.

That Carey was present at the scene, and Charlotte was not, does not imply Carey

can give us better information than Charlotte. But if the quantity and quality of

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information does not make the difference between someone who is actually there

and the viewer, what does? Why does ‘being-there’ – seeing the event with one’s

own eyes – matter to being a witness if this does not necessarily make one a better

source of information?

Suppose that Samantha, a friend of Carey and Charlotte, has a slightly unhealthy

fascination for the 9/11 attacks. As a part of this obsession, she tries to get a hold of

pieces of wreckage that were part of the WTC-towers.83 She pays a large sum for

these pieces, even though good replicas are available at a much lower cost. Why

buy the original if a perfect replica is cheaper? The value of the replica lies not in

its information value – a good replica can inform Samantha equally well about the

shape and size of the pieces of wreckage to which the towers were diminished –,

but rather in the causal connection between the pieces of wreckage and the event.

An authentic piece of brick was part of the World Trade Centre and was catapulted

through the air on September 11th, 2001. It was there, in Manhattan, at the scene of

the event and suffered the impact from a plane. Its replica lacks this physical tie

with this event and therefore is worth much less to Samantha. It lacks the invisible

surplus, a causal link with the actual event, that makes the original pieces of brick

so fascinating.

Witnesses to extraordinary events fascinate us for similar reasons. Suppose Carey’s

and Charlotte’s factual knowledge about 9/11 is identical. The only difference is

that Carey was there and Charlotte watched the event on her television. Who will

Samantha prefer to talk to? There is a good change she chooses Carey. Although

Carey cannot tell Samantha anything about the 9/11 attacks that Charlotte cannot

tell her, Carey has a value that Charlotte lacks. Carey is like the original piece of

wreckage that was actually part of the World Trade Centre, whereas Charlotte is

like its replica. Both Carey and Charlotte can inform Samantha about the occuren-

ces, but the former can do so because her body was present at the scene. Regardless

whether this makes Carey a better source of information about the event, she is

fascinating simply because of her physical connection with the attacks. She is not

only an informant about, but also a relic of 9/11. Hence, she is fascinating simply

because she was present at the scene of the event, not because of what she has to

say about it.

One could object there are many cases where witnesses only interest us as sources

of information about events. The judge is only interested in the witness’ presence

83 Bricks and pieces of the World Trade Centre are actually very popular and hard to get hold of these

days. http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/15157/

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at the scene insofar as it makes her a good source of information about the event.

Testimonies about shoot-outs should mirror the facts, the rest is irrelevant. Be that

as it may, witnesses always potentially function as relics of events. If Carey has seen

a shoot-out, someone can point her out and say ‘She has literally seen a shoot-out

once!’. The interest an audience subsequently takes in Carey’s report about the

shoot-out cannot be completely reduced to the pursuit of knowledge. Her factual

statements about an extraordinary event like 9/11 gain a special kind of authority

simply because the speaker actually lived through these events. Our interest in

witnesses is therefore similar to an interest we might take in Mozart’s fortepiano or

in a book that once belonged to Wittgenstein. The fortepiano and the book are not

merely fascinating because they allow us to extend our knowledge about Mozart

and Wittgenstein. They also appeal to us because Mozart and Wittgenstein actually

laid hands on them. This explains why we would value the original fortepiano and

the original book over their replicas. Unlike the replicas, the originals are causally

linked to Mozart and Wittgenstein, who actually touched them. Similarly, we are

fascinated by the witness because she shares a causal history with the object of

interest, in this case a spectacular event.

There is a significant difference between the regular eyewitness – who literally sees

the event – and the television viewers. Whereas the former is part of the event, the

latter is not. Being part of an event is important to being a witness, because our

interest in witnesses cannot be satisfactorily explained by the pursuit of knowledge

about distant events. Another, more irrational aspect is equally important to the

hearers: witnesses can function as relics; object with a privileged proximity to the

event. As television viewers cannot possibly fulfil the requirements for being relics

– seeing something in a picture excludes a physical relation with the depicted

event – it is doubtful that they qualify as witnesses.

4. Conclusion

Peters argues that television viewers are witnesses to the filmed events they see on

live television. The screen would be a window through which they literally see

distant events. I have raised two objections against this position. First, I argued

television viewers do not literally see the filmed events. They rather lay eyes on a

pictorial surface in which the filmed events are seen. What they really perceive is

this pictorial surface, and not the filmed event itself. Secondly, television viewers

are not part of the filmed events. Unlike regular eyewitnesses, present at the scene,

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they cannot be regarded as relics of the events they perceived. Hence, it is safe to

conclude that television viewers do not qualify as witnesses to the events they saw

on screen.

Note that my reflections about television and witnessing have revealed further

distinctions between seeing things in pictures and seeing them face-to-face (besides

deniability and non-interactivity). First, seeing x face-to-face implies we can move

in such a way that the experience of x changes continuously. This is impossible

when x is seen in an x-picture. Second, a person seeing an event face-to-face can

function as a relic to that event. She is interesting, not exclusively because of her

knowledge of the event, but also because she is causally connected to it. A person

who has seen the same event in a picture, by contrast, can never fulfil such a relic-

like function. No matter how lively the depiction of the event, it never involves her

physically in the represented events.

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Chapter 4

Immersive Pictorial Experience

Miranda is playing a video game. On her screen is a representation of a space-

ship’s interior. A friend enters the room where Miranda is playing the game, looks

at the screen, and asks her ‘Where are you?’. There are two possible responses to

this question: Miranda can either refer to her location in physical reality (‘I am in

my room’), but she could also refer to her location in the virtual reality (‘I am in a

space-ship’).

For two reasons, the second answer is puzzling. First, because Miranda claims to

be somewhere else than where she actually is. In a place that is not even real, but a

mere representation. Secondly, because most visual representations do not prompt

their viewers to claim they are in the represented space. Whilst watching Lord of the

Rings, the spectator might be overwhelmed by the landscapes she sees. But she will

not be inclined to say she is in The Shire when asked to specify where she is. In the

case of virtual reality, by contrast, a sense of being located in the represented space

seems to be a structural feature of the viewer’s experience. Miranda feels immersed

– as I will henceforth call this sense of being located in a represented space – in the

virtual space-ship. She can subsequently refer to the space-ship when she is asked

to specify her location.

How are we to understand immersion in virtual worlds? There have been several

attempts to further qualify the immersive experience. Some believe that Miranda’s

sense of being located in the space-ship is a kind of illusion. Others think she is not

under the spell of an illusion, but merely imagines she is in a space-ship. Although

this second view is closer to the truth than the first, I will reject both positions and

propose an alternative: immersion in virtual reality is a special variety of pictorial

experience. More concretely, I argue that virtual worlds solicit an immersive pictorial

experience.

Before criticizing rival positions, and developing my own view, I will provide a

brief introduction to immersion in general. I will give a taste of what immersion is,

without making any claims about the exact nature of this experience.

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1. Immersion in represented spaces

Many pictures represent objects in such a way that spectators experience them as

situated in a three-dimensional space. Take Raphael’s Transfiguration. In its marked

surface, the spectator sees a crowd, the radiant body of Christ, and some trees.

Spatial relations exist amongst these objects: Christ is above and behind the crowd;

the trees are, in their turn, behind Christ. These spatial relations can be the subject

of meaningful conversation. If someone were to point at the Transfiguration and

asked ‘Where is Christ?’, one could reply ‘Christ is above the crowd, in front of the

trees’. The experience of looking at pictures with three-dimensional pictorial spaces

is, in this respect, similar to a face-to-face perception. When a perceiver sees a scene

face-to-face, she sees some things in the foreground, others in the background, and

yet others somewhere in between. In both cases, the objects you see are spatially

related to each other.

The Transfiguration (1520), by Raphael Sanzia di Urbino

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But there is also a salient difference between seeing face-to-face and seeing things

in pictures with three-dimensional pictorial spaces. When a perceiver sees a scene

face-to-face, she cannot just discuss the spatial relations existing between the things

she sees. She can also discuss the spatial relations existing between these things

and herself. Someone who was present when Christ took on His godly appearance –

presumed such an event ever took place – can say ‘Christ was in front of me’ or ‘I

moved closer to Christ’. The spectator of Raphael’s painting, by contrast, will not be

inclined to say such things. Naturally, she can get closer to the painting’s marked

surface. But approximating this surface does not bring her closer to Christ. It

merely involves getting closer to the marks representing Him. In contrast to the

perceiver that sees a scene face-to-face, the viewer of the painting is not part of the

space in which the perceived objects are situated. She does not inhabit the same

environment as these objects.84

Although many representations, like the Transfiguration, do not give the viewer a

sensation of being in the spaces they represent, there is a form of representation

specifically designed to this end: immersive virtual reality. Immersive virtual

realities exist in many forms. Sometimes the user wears a helmet and a suit. Visual

information about the represented space is projected directly onto the helmet’s

visor, so that it takes up one’s entire field of vision. The user wears headphones, in

order to block out any sounds that do not come from the virtual world, and her

sense of touch is stimulated by the suit. This kind of virtual reality, however, is

rare. The most common variant is so-called desktop virtual reality. Here, the virtual

space is projected on a computer or television screen which does not fill the user’s

entire field of vision. Physical reality is thus not blocked out completely. In the

following, I concern myself solely with this second type of virtual reality. Not only

because desktop virtual reality is more common, but also because it is the most

challenging context for studying immersion. How can it be that users feel present

in the represented space of a video game if this space is projected onto the small

surface of a computer or television screen? That is the question I will answer in this

chapter. However, in spite of this focus on desktop virtual reality, I intend my

analysis of immersion to be valid for all experiences of being located in a virtual

space.

84 A similar point is made by Bernard Williams about the theatre. Whilst watching a Shakespeare play,

we might see Othello at a specifiable distance from a palace. But we cannot be at a specifiable distance

from this place. We are not in the same space as Othello and the palace. See Williams’ paper

‘Imagination and the Self’ in his Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956-1972 (Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1999): 35-36.

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The experience prompted by desktop virtual reality is, in many respects, similar to

the experience of looking at a painting with a three-dimensional pictorial space. In

both cases, an environment is seen in a marked surface. In fact, it is possible that

the user of the virtual world and the viewer of the painting receive identical visual

information. If they, for example, both see a three-dimensional representation of a

space-ship’s interior from a similar perspective, it is possible their visual systems

(eyes, nerve system, brains) receive nearly identical stimuli. But whereas it would

not make sense to ask the viewer of the painting where she is in the represented

space – she is in no way present in this space – it does make sense to pose this

question to the user of a virtual world. Whilst playing the video game, Miranda

somehow inhabits the environment she sees on her screen. She occupies a position

in this world and is spatially related to the things and events in it. Miranda can say,

for example, that she is closer to the ship’s engine room than she was a minute ago,

or that the aliens are closing in on her. Paintings and movies are often realistic and

overwhelming, but they do not give their viewers a sense of being spatially related

to the things and events they represent.

2. Immersion as illusion

The term ‘immersion’ as such does not elucidate the experience of being located in

a represented space. It merely functions as an economical, yet vague, term for this

phenomenon. However, attempts have been made to further analyse the immersive

experience. A popular line of thought is the following: the user of the virtual reality

feels present in the virtual world, but since it is crystal clear that she is not actually

there, the sensation of being present in the represented environment must be some

kind of illusion.85

How would virtual realities succeed in inducing the illusion of being located in the

represented space? Two conditions are mentioned particularly often:

85 Implausible as it seems, the immersive experience has often been characterized as kind of illusion.

Especially in the field of empirically oriented research immersive experiences are often labelled illusory.

However, even the more theoretically oriented researchers in this field characterize it as such. In their

paper “Being There: The Experience of Presence in Mediated Environments” (Being There: Concepts,

Effects, and Measurement of User Presence in Synthetic Environments. Amsterdam: IOS, 2003), Wijnand

IJsselsteijn and Giuseppe Riva appeal to Daniel Dennet’s concept of a ‘shift to an illusory point of view’

(p. 4) to characterize immersion. In Virtual Art. From Illusion to Immersion (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003),

art historian Oliver Grau writes that users of virtual reality receive an ‘illusionary impression of space’

(p. 16). For a more empirically oriented approach see: T. Marsh, P. Wright and S. Smith, “Evaluation for

the design of experience: Modelling breakdown of interaction and illusion.” CyberPsychology and

Behavior 4 (2001): 225-238.

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First, the represented space has to appear as realistic, or natural, as possible. This is

achieved by mimicking two properties of physical reality: the availability of rich

sensory information and the possibility to interact with the objects in represented

space.86 Art historian Oliver Grau situates virtual reality systems in the tradition of

illusionistic pictorial representations such as the trompe l’oeil painting. Both forms

of representations would require “the exact adaptation of illusionary information

to the physiological disposition of the human senses” and a “maximization of

realism”, so the spectators believe they really see the painting’s subject or really are

located in the virtual space.87 The difference between trompe l’oeil and virtual reality

is the possibility to interact with what is seen. If Miranda looks at a trompe l’oeil

picture of grapes, her illusion of seeing grapes will be disturbed once she reaches

out for them or tries to see them from another angle. She will then realize she is not

actually looking at grapes, as grapes can be picked up and viewed from multiple

angles. The user of the virtual reality, by contrast, is able to ‘pick up’ virtual objects

– using an interface like a mouse or joystick – and to inspect them from different

angles. These basic interactions would sustain the illusion that the depicted things

are present and one is spatially related to them.88 Together with the availability of

rich sensory information, the possibility to interact establishes the illusion that one

occupies the same space as the represented objects. The awareness of these objects

should not be disturbed by an awareness of their representational character for the

immersive illusion to occur.

Secondly, immersion benefits from the exclusion of environmental stimuli that do

not support the viewer’s illusion. Her attention should be directed solely at the

virtual world.89 External signals like a phone ringing or a bird’s cry might remind

Miranda that she is not in a space-ship and shatter the illusion of presence. If these

two determinants – realism of the virtual world and absence of external stimuli –

are present, a peculiar experience, which has been labelled ‘the illusion of non-

mediation’, would come about. Wijnand IJsselsteijn and Giuseppe Riva define this

experience as follows:

86 The availability of rich sensory information, or pictorial realism, would determine our sense of

presence in the virtual world. According to some “… a person is immersed in a very high bandwidth

stream of sensory input organized by our perceiving systems, and out of this ‘bath of sensation’

emerges our sense of being in and of the virtual world.” D. Beck, P. Fishwick, R. Kamhawi, A. Coffey, J.

Henderson, “Synthesizing Presence: A Multidisciplinary Review of the Literature,” Journal of Virtual

Worlds Research, 3 (2011), 3-35.

87 Grau, Virtual Art: 14.

88 The need for, at least, a very basic kind of interaction is stressed by IJsselsteijn and Riva (2003, 5) and

Grau (2003, 16). This interaction involves being able to change your point of view on the virtual world.

89 Beck et al, “Synthesizing Presence,” 12.

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“[an] experience where the virtual reality-system and the external

physical environment disappear from a user’s phenomenal awareness

… [the] subject experiences non-mediation when he or she fails to

perceive or acknowledge the existence of the medium in his or her

environment and responds as if the medium were not there.”90

Although many theories of immersion employ the concept of illusion, it is not

always clear how they define this concept. In chapter one, I distinguished two

types of illusions: cognitive and perceptual illusions.91 Cognitive illusions involve

false beliefs. If Miranda looks at a stick in a bucket of water, the stick may appear

broken, even though it is not. Suppose that Miranda is not familiar with this

phenomenon. In this case, she could believe the stick is broken.92 If she would, her

illusion is cognitive. Perceptual illusions, by contrast, do not involve false beliefs. If

Miranda is familiar with the phenomenon of the ‘broken’ stick, she will not think it

is broken. It appears broken to her, but due to her background knowledge, Miranda

is not fooled by appearances. The illusion remains restricted to the senses and does

not lead to false beliefs.

There are two possible interpretations of the illusionistic take on immersion. One

takes immersion to be a cognitive illusion, and another takes it to be a perceptual

one. Although the latter interpretation is more plausible than the former, I argue

neither version of illusionism is tenable.

If immersion is a kind of cognitive illusion, the user must somehow believe she is

really present in the represented space. This would explain the verbal reports in

which users of virtual reality systems refer to locations in virtual space to specify

their location. Assertions like ‘I am in a space-ship’, ‘Aliens are closing in on me’,

and ‘I am running to the engine room of the space-ship’ would indicate that the

user believes she is actually located in a space-ship.93 For at least three reasons this

suggestion is absurd:

90 IJsselsteijn & Riva (2003), “Being There,” 10.

91 The distinction between these two types of illusion is made by Gregory Currie in his Image and Mind:

Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 22-29. 92 I say ‘she may think’ because my claim is a counterfactual. We do not form beliefs or have thought

about everything we see. Still, if someone were to ask us ‘Was the stick broken?’ we may form a belief

on the basis of our perceptual memory. When our illusion of the broken had a cognitive character, we

will say that it was broken.

93 This cognitive variant of illusionism is held by IJsselsteijn and Riva, who write that: “… the illusion

involves continuous responses of the human sensory, cognitive, and affective processing systems to

object and entities … And, what’s more, the subject experiences non-mediation when he or she fails to

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First, users of virtual worlds don’t usually behave as if they believe they are in the

virtual space.94 Players of video games, for example, often show signs of enjoyment

whilst exploring space-ships and shooting aliens. This enjoyment is hard to explain

when we take immersion to be a cognitive illusion. For if Miranda really believes

that she is in a space-ship, and is attacked by aliens, she is more likely to shake and

scream than to show signs of joy.

Second, users can claim to be present in virtual environments which are so unlike

physical reality that it is practically impossible to mistake them for it. In fact, the

immersive experience can be triggered by virtual spaces that are not even three-

dimensional. Take the classical video game Super Mario. In this game, the user

moves a two-dimensional representation of a man through a two-dimensional

space. Still, if the user were to be asked where she is, she can respond ‘I am in the

dungeon, closing in on the dragon’. But the chance that the sensorially poor and

unrealistic representation leads her to think she is really in a dungeon is very small

indeed. Illusionists are thus wrong to think that realism, achieved through high

quality graphics and rich possibilities of interaction, are necessary for immersion.

This experience can occur apart from the availability of rich sensory cues. Without

these cues, however, it is unlikely that the immersive experience will be mistaken

for reality and that a cognitive illusion will arise. Immersive experiences triggered

by unrealistic virtual realities are an indication that immersion is not a cognitive

illusion.

Third, even if a virtual environment is perfectly realistic, and no external stimuli

reach the user, it remains unlikely she will fall victim to a cognitive illusion. For

even if the representation offered by the virtual reality system is perfect, the user

still knows, from memory, that she plugged into the virtual reality system. She

subsequently knows that she is not really present in space-ship. There might not be

phenomenal awareness of the real world, but there is a belief that, actually, she is

in the physical world and not in the virtual one. The user will therefore not form

the false believe that she is in the represented space.

Immersion in virtual worlds is not a cognitive illusion. This does not mean virtual

reality could not induce the false belief one is really there. This is always possible.

If Samantha plays a video game whilst being under the influence of hallucinatory

perceive or acknowledge the existence of a medium in his or her communication environment and

responds as he or she would have if the medium were not there.” (2003, 10).

94 I take this argument against illusionism from Currie (Image and Mind, 24) who uses it in the context of

film.

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drugs, she may believe that she is actually in the virtual world. But in many cases,

immersion is not accompanied by such an illusion. Users experience themselves as

present in represented spaces, and refer to locations in these spaces when asked to

specify their location, without taking themselves to be there. The conditions that

are necessary for a cognitive illusion, such as perfect realism and interactivity, are

not necessary for immersion. Immersion should consequently not be qualified as a

kind of cognitive illusion.

There is a weaker interpretation of illusionism: virtual reality solicits perceptual

illusions. When Miranda plays a video game, she has the impression of being in a

space-ship. But this never leads her to believe she is really there. Her experience is

thus analogous to the perceptual illusion of the ‘broken’ stick in the water. She is

not fooled by appearances whilst exploring the virtual world and does not believe

she is really present in it even though this appears to be the case.

This interpretation is flawed too. Suppose Miranda has the perceptual illusion of

seeing a ‘broken’ stick in the water. In this case, she can be tempted to believe it is

broken. Her background knowledge about this phenomenon makes her resist this

temptation. In in the case of immersion, by contrast, such resistance is unnecessary.

Since the virtual worlds in which the user feels present are often sensorially and

interactively poor, they are not even tempted to believe they are there. They hence

do not have to draw on background knowledge to resists this temptation. They

simply perceive the representational character of the environment in which they

feel immersed and this blocks of any inclination to believe they are really there.

Immersion is subsequently not a kind of perceptual illusion.

Immersion is neither a cognitive nor a perceptual illusion. The concept of illusion

does not elucidate the immersive experience and the verbal reports accompanying

it. Miranda’s sense of being in a space-ship, and her reference to this space-ship in

answer to questions about her whereabouts, are not a consequence of her having

an illusion.

3. Immersion as imagination

In this section, I discuss a second take on immersion. The user of a virtual reality

would not have the illusion that she is in the represented space, but imagines being

there. This view is held by Grant Tavinor. In The Art of Videogames, he draws on

Kendall Walton’s account of representation and imagination to make sense of the

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immersive experience.95 I briefly present Walton’s general theory of imagination

and then show how it can be used to explain immersion.

Imagining things is often thought to be a free-floating activity. Whereas a subject

cannot decide on what she sees with her eyes, the imagining subject can decide

what’s in front of her mind’s eye.96 Whilst being bored at work, Miranda might

imagine being a hero, taking on a space-ship full of aliens. This act of imagination

is in no way linked to the physical reality in which Miranda is actually present. The

faculty of imagination rather allows her to leave this boring world behind; trade it

in for a more exciting one. It are daydreams like these that typically come to mind

when we think about imagination. The experiences of the imagining subject would

lack an anchor in the real world and float free from it.

In Mimesis as Make-Believe, Kendall Walton states that ‘a conception of imaginative

experiences as, in general, free-floating fantasies disconnected from the real world

would be narrow and distorted.’97 Many imaginings are anchored in the physical

world. More concretely, Walton distinguishes three ways in which physical things

can be involved in the imagination: First, they can prompt imaginings.98 They make

us imagine things we would not have imagined without them. Real things can,

secondly, be object of imaginings.99 Often, they do not just prompt imaginings, but

they prompt imaginings about themselves. Finally, things can function as props.

They generate so-called fictional truths; make certain things the case in a fictional

world.100 These functions of physical things in the imagination can be illustrated

with an example:

Two boys are playing in the woods. At a certain moment, they find two branches

with a sword-like shape. They decide to play knights, the branches being their

swords. In this case, the branches prompt the boys’ imagination. They have caused

them to imagine certain things, for example, that they have swords in their hands.

The branches are also object of imagination, because the boys imagine of these

branches that they are swords. Finally, the branches also function as props. They

generate fictional truths; truths which are valid only in the context of the game

95 Grant Tavinor, The Art of Video Games (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009): 41, 51.

96 “Perhaps the most obvious difference between images and percepts is that images can be willed and

percepts cannot.” Colin McGinn, Mindsight. Image, Dream, Meaning. (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 2006): 12.

97 Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990): 21

98 Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: 22-23

99 Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: 25-27

100 Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: 34-37

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played by the boys. When one of the boys drops his branch, it is true – but only in

the context of their game or their imaginary world – that ‘A sword has fallen to the

ground’. If the boy picks it up, it is true that ‘He has picked up his sword’, and so

on. Instead of being disconnected from physical reality, the boys’ imaginings are

for a large part tied to it.

When children play a game of make-believe they subject themselves to certain

rules.101 These rules are conventions, prescribing what the players of a certain game

are to imagine. An example of a rule is ‘All sword-shaped branches are imagined

to be swords’. If the player does not follow this rules and, for example, imagines

branches to be laser-guns instead, she side-lines herself. She is not playing a game

of knights but a game of aliens. She therefore occupies an alternative imaginary

world; an alternative game of make-believe. Games of make-believe are invariably

connected with rules prescribing the participants to imagine certain things and not

to imagine others.

Walton thinks that make-believe offers the key to understanding all representation.

Representations would be artefacts that prescribe us to imagine things. Raphael’s

Transfiguration, for example, would prescribe the viewer to imagine seeing Christ, a

crowd, and trees. For this imagination, the work is prompter, object, and prop. It

causes the viewer to imagine blots of paint are the body of Christ and brings about

fictional truths – only valid in the ‘world of the game’ – like ‘I see Christ’. If a

viewer does not imagine seeing Christ whilst looking at the painting, she is like a

child which does not treat branches as swords in a game of knights: she breaks the

rules prescribed to her by the representation by imagining something else.

This theory is not only valid for pictorial representations. Literary fictions, films,

and theatre plays would all prescribe imaginings:102 The reader of Madame Bovary is

to imagine there was a woman named Emma Bovary, unhappily married to a

village doctor. Viewers of Goldfinger should imagine seeing a British secret agent,

by the name of James Bond, fighting an evil villain in Fort Knox. Oedipus prescribes

its audience to imagine seeing a man killing his father and to imagine seeing him

sharing the bed with his mother. Representations would lead the imagination of

their appreciators; guide it in a certain direction.

There are, of course, some differences between playing knights and observing a

representation: First, the branch functioning as a sword in the game of knights was

101 Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: 38

102 Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: 51-52 & 69.

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not designed to trigger imaginings of a sword. No one intended the branch to do

this. The Transfiguration, by contrast, was specifically made to trigger imaginings of

seeing Christ. It is an artificial prompter; an artefact intended to appeal to the

imagination of whoever sees it. The branch is a natural prompter, as it was not

produced to this end. Second, in children’s games the rules about what to imagine

are often spelled out. ‘From now one, we imagine we see swords whenever we see

branches’. The viewer of the Transfiguration, however, does not need knowledge of

conventional rules to imagine seeing Christ in the flat surface. The rules are left

implicit. According to Walton, however, these rules are present and can be broken.

When the viewer chooses not to imagine seeing ‘Christ’ whilst looking at the

picture, but rather ‘Uncle John with a beard and shiny white cloths’, she does not

follow the implicit rules the representations prescribes. She does not imagine what

she should imagine.

The waltonian view is applied to the phenomenon of immersion in virtual worlds

by Grant Tavinor.103 Virtual worlds would, first and foremost, function as artificial

prompters, made to prompt imaginings about personal location in their users. The

user is to imagine she is somewhere else than where she actually is. Virtual worlds

are objects of imaginings too, as the user should imagine being in the space she sees

on screen. Finally, virtual worlds are props, as they generate fictional truths like ‘I

am in a space-ship’ or ‘The aliens are closing in on me’. In short, virtual realities are

representations that prescribe the user to imagine being present in the spaces they

represent. They do so, Tavinor thinks, by providing a point of view-perspective on

the virtual world and allowing for basic interaction with the virtual objects, the

most basic interaction being the ability to perceptually explore the virtual world.

These factors specifically invite the user to imagine she is perceiving the virtual

space from within. When a user accepts this invitation, and imagines being in the

space she sees on screen, immersion takes place.

An important advantage of this waltonian account is that it, unlike illusionism,

does not require perfect realism for immersion. Consider children playing knights

in the woods, using branches as ‘swords’. Even when the shape of the branches is

sword-like, there are still many properties these branches do not share with actual

swords. It is therefore quite unlikely that the children will mistake the branches for

103 Grant Tavinor, The Art of Video Games: Especially the chapters ‘Video Games and Fiction’ and

‘Stepping into fictional worlds.” According to Tavinor, video games are fictions. Like all fictions, they

“invite their appreciators to psychologically engage with a world existing only in the imagination.”

Immersion “depends on the cognitive attitude of make-believe…”, that is, it depends on the

imagination (p. 59).

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real swords. The poor resemblance between branches and swords does not prevent

them, however, to imagine branches are swords. When the branch becomes an

object of the imagination, the children use the creative power of their mind to

imagine the things in their hands are ‘razor-sharp’ and ‘made of shining steel’.

Similarly, a represented space does not have to resemble physical reality in every

respect for immersion to occur. Just like a child playing with a branch, the user

puts her imagination to work in order to feel present. This is the desired outcome

as users often claim presence in virtual worlds that seem so unlike physical reality

that they cannot be mistaken for it.

The imagination-account of immersion characterizes virtual reality as an artificial

prompter which prescribes the user to imagine being somewhere else than where

she really is. More precisely, she should imagine being in the spaces represented

by the virtual world. Imagining being at a represented location is compatible with

believing you are actually present somewhere else. Qualifying immersion as a kind

of imagination is therefore an important improvement over the illusion-account I

discussed in the previous section.

4. Imagination versus representation

That the imagination-account of immersion is better than the illusion-account does

not yet mean it is valid. In fact, I will argue it is not. Put very briefly, I will advance

the following objection against this account: First, I defend that aspects of objects,

events, or situations that are represented by a medium do not have to be imagined

by the user. Next, I argue virtual worlds do not only represent a three-dimensional

space, along with certain objects and events, but also represent the user’s presence

in these spaces. Immersion subsequently does not require a user to imagine being

in the space she sees on her screen.

First consider the relation between perception and imagination. Suppose Miranda

sees her friend Samantha in a new dress and thinks ‘That dress leaves little to the

imagination’. This thought probably only occurs to Miranda if the dress leaves a

substantial part of Samantha’s body exposed. Miranda consequently does not have

to imagine what these parts look like. She can simply take note of these parts by

opening her eyes and does not have to visualize them with her mind’s eye. Similar

examples apply to other senses: Whilst reading the score of Beethoven’s Waldstein

sonata, Miranda can imagine how the repeated chords at the beginning of the first

movement sound. But once she has played the sonata on the piano, her imaginings

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become, in a sense, superfluous. Miranda has now heard, with her own ears, how

the piece sounds; no need to imagine about it. Likewise, Miranda can imagine how

it would feel to caress a fury cat sitting on her porch. But the moment she actually

touches the cat, and feels the softness of the fur, her imaginings are replaced by

perceptions. In general, I think the following claim is fairly uncontroversial:

S does not have to use her imagination to form an idea about any

aspect of O she literally perceives.

This claim does not entail that perceivers cannot imagine about what they see. On

the contrary: they can always do this. If Miranda wants to, she can imagine that

Samantha’s legs, which she literally sees, are green. I merely claim that we should

not imagine about the perceivable aspects of things in order to experience them.

We can have an experience of them without appealing to the creative powers of

our minds. In fact, when it is the intention of the perceiver to find out about actual

states-of-affairs, imaginings aren’t worth all that much compared to perceptions.

The imagination might be used to anticipate what a particular aspect looks like, but

will be relieved from its duty once perceptual access to the aspect of interest is

achieved.

The same applies to objects used in children’s games. Consider the following three

cases: First, a branch that is imagined to be a sword. Even when this branch is

sword-shaped, there are still many features it does not share with a real sword. It

is, for example, not iron-coloured, nor is it razor-sharp. The child has to imagine

the ‘blade’ of his ‘sword’ has these features. Compare this to a second case, where

the child does not use a branch, but a toy-sword as his ‘weapon’. Although toy-

swords are usually not razor-sharp, they share many perceivable properties with

real swords. The ‘blade’ might, for example, be iron-coloured. Intuitively, there is

less to imagine here than in the case of the branch. The toy-sword already has the

same appearance as a sword. The child hence does not have to imagine it is iron-

coloured. It only needs to imagine it is real and has a razor-sharp blade. Finally,

suppose the child’s parents lack every sense of responsibility and give their son a

real sword to play with. Now the child does not have to imagine anything for the

object in his hand to function as a sword; it is a sword. The imagination does not

contribute anything to the child’s experience of this thing as a sword. Of course, he

can imagine to be a knight that holds a sword. But that would be an imagination

about himself, rather than an imagination about what is in his hand. As that thing

in his hand is a sword, there is no need to imagine it being a sword with sword-

properties.

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In the these three cases, there is an intuitive digression of the contribution made by

the imagination. Seeing a toy-sword as a real sword requires less imagination than

seeing a branch as one; and seeing a sword as a sword requires less imagination

than seeing a toy-sword as one. In fact, it requires no imagination at all. This

digression can easily be explained. The child does not need to imagine the ‘blade’

of the toy-sword is iron-coloured, since it has this colour. No appeal to the creative

powers of the mind is necessary to form an idea about this colour. The toy has the

property ‘sword-colour’, and the child can take note of it when he observes the toy.

Hence, I think it is uncontroversial to claim that:

S does not have to use her imagination to form an idea about the

aspects of O that its representation R shares with O.

A similar principle applies to the experience of pictures. Consider, for a start, that

Miranda sees a woman in a burka walking down a street. In contrast to Samantha’s

daring dress, this piece of garment leaves practically everything to the imagination.

As the burka completely conceals the woman’s body, Miranda has to appeal to her

imagination to form an idea about it. She might, for example, fantasize about the

woman’s face. Two events can render Miranda’s imaginings superfluous: First, the

woman could take the burka off, so that Miranda can see her face. Or someone can

give Miranda a photograph of the woman without her burka on. In both cases,

imagining about her face becomes unnecessary. Whilst looking at the woman’s

picture, Miranda does not have to fantasize about the visual appearance of her face

because it is visible in the photograph. Naturally, this photograph could trigger

imaginings about aspects of the woman that are not depicted, like the back of her

head. But it sounds strained to say this representation prompts imaginings about

the aspects of the woman that can be seen in the photograph. What pictures depict

is passively consumed by the experiencing subject. She does not need to activate

the productive powers of her mind to form an idea about them. The following is

consequently true of pictorial representations:

S does not have use her imagination to form an idea about the aspects

of O visually represented by its representation R.

What is represented does not need to be imagined by the spectator of a represen-

tation. That is the first premise of my argument against the imagination-account of

immersion. I now turn to its second premise: virtual realities do not just represent

three-dimensional spaces; they also represent their users’ presence in these spaces.

If this is true, then immersion in virtual worlds is not a matter of imagination. The

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user does have to imagine anything in order to feel present in the virtual world,

because this presence is already represented. But how do virtual realities represent

the user’s presence in a virtual space? I think two conditions have to be fulfilled for

immersion to occur.

First, the virtual reality systems must represent a body. There are two ways to do

so: externally and internally. In case of an external representation, the user sees a

body ‘from the outside’. A good example of this is the video game Grand Theft Auto

4, where the user sees the body of the character she controls standing in the

represented space, spatially related to objects such as cars, other people, and

buildings. In case of an internal representation, the viewer is offered a ‘point-of-

view’ perspective on the virtual world. She does not see a body ‘from the outside’,

but rather sees the represented scene from an embodied perspective. A good example

of this is the video game Modern Warfare 2, where the user sees the depicted objects

and events, like buildings, soldiers, and exploding cars, from a first-person point of

view.

The external or internal representation of a body is not sufficient for immersion.

Many paintings depict human bodies externally, but we usually do not claim we

are located in the three-dimensional spaces they represent. Someone who sees the

body of Christ in Raphael’s Transfiguration will not say she is on Mount Tabor.

Certain movies even represent bodies internally subsequently offering a point-of-

view perspective on the fictional events to the viewer. In Being John Malkovich, for

example, the spectator sees the world of the movie from the perspective of famous

actor John Malkovich. She sees on the movie screen what Malkovich sees through

his eyes. But I don’t think the viewer is inclined to refer to Malkovich’ location

when asked to specify her personal location. When, for example, a house takes up

a larger and larger portion of the screen, she will not say ‘I am getting closer to a

house’. She will rather say ‘Malkovich – through whose eyes I see the world of the

movie – is getting closer to a house’. External and internal representations of

bodies are therefore not enough for immersion in virtual reality to occur. Although

such representations of bodies are present in every immersive virtual world, they

are also present in non-immersive representations, like paintings and movies. An

additional requirement has to be added to explain why virtual worlds give rise to

the user’s experience of being located in them, whereas paintings and movies fail

to do so.

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GTA 4’s external representation of a body

Modern Warfare’s internal representation of a body.

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This additional requirement is that the user has control over the represented body.

For immersion to occur, there should be a causal link between the movements of

the user behind her computer and the visual information on her screen. Consider

first a virtual world with an externally represented body. When, for example, the

joystick is pushed forward, the represented body moves forward as well. There is a

link between the user’s motor-input (i.e. the movement of her hand on the joy-stick)

and the sensory-output (i.e. the visual information on screen). This causal link is also

present in virtual worlds with an internally represented body. When, for example,

the joystick is pushed forward, the depicted objects take up a larger and larger

portion of the screen, until they disappear from it, to make place for new objects. In

both cases, the movements of the user lead to changes in the scene represented by

the virtual reality system.

How do these combined factors – the representation of a body plus a user’s control

over it – give rise to immersion? The possibility to move a represented body

around leads to the generation of egocentric spatial information. If Miranda pushes

her joystick forward and the alien at the centre of the screen takes up a larger and

larger portion of the screen, the virtual reality system does not just represent an

alien but also the approximation of an alien. It therefore makes sense if Miranda

says ‘The alien I see is in front of me’ and ‘I am closing in on the alien’. Of course,

the alien is not really seen, nor does the user really closes in on it. But that does not

mean she imagines seeing an alien or imagines closing in on it. As both the alien

and Miranda’s approximation of the alien are represented by the virtual reality,

she does not have to activate her imagination to virtual experience an alien or to

experience herself approximating it. By giving the users control over represented

bodies, allowing them to move them around using a computer’s mouse or a

joystick, virtual reality simply represents more than other visual representations:

Not just the depicted things, situated in a three-dimensional space, but also the

user’s spatial relations to the depicted things. This sense of being spatially related

to the represented object is, in its turn, responsible for immersion proper. The user

can take certain spatial positions with regard to the depicted object and this creates

the experience of occupying the same space as the depicted objects. Users will

subsequently feel present in that space and can refer to locations in it when asked

to specify their whereabouts. In general, the following is true of immersive virtual

realities:

S does not have to imagine being present in the space represented by

the VR, as her presence in this space is represented by the VR through

the internal or external representation of an embodied point of view

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and a causal link between the actual movements of S and changes in

the sensory information she receives.

The illusion-account and the imagination-account of immersion are both invalid,

but for different reasons. The illusion-account is flawed because it asks too much of

the virtual reality system. This system should represent reality so naturally, that

the user thinks she is really present in the virtual world. However, such naturalism

is unnecessary for immersion to occur. We can feel present in spaces that are so

unnatural that they will never be mistaken for reality. The imagination-account, by

contrast, asks too much of the user. I argued that users of virtual reality need not

activate their imagination. All that is needed for immersion to occur is that they

perceive co-variation between their motor-input (the manipulation of a mouse or

joystick) and the sensory-output on their screen (changes in the visual appearance

of the represented objects). Just like a viewer of a sunflower-painting does not have

to do anything – apart from opening her eyes – to experience a sunflower, the user

of a virtual reality does not have do anything – apart from opening her eyes,

moving the joystick, and perceiving the connection between what she does and

what she sees – for the experience of presence to occur. The virtual reality does not

just represent spaces, things and events (that is, not only objects of perception), but

the perceptual situation itself (that is, the spatial relations of the perceiver to the

things she sees).

5. Immersion as pictorial experience

If immersion is not a matter of illusion or imagination, how should we characterize

it? I propose to treat it as a special variety of pictorial experience.

Pictorial experience has been characterized in the first chapter as a twofold visual

experience. Spectators typically see two things whilst looking at a picture: they see

a marked surface and, in this surface, they see the depicted thing. Whilst looking at

the Transfiguration, Miranda sees a canvas marked with paint as well as the radiant

body of Christ. This experience is governed by a standard of correctness, which

means Miranda can be correct or incorrect about what she sees in this painting. If

she claims to see John the Baptist, we should correct her because he is not in the

picture. Her visual awareness of the things that are visible in Raphael’s painting is

passive, deniable, and uninformed by interactive possibilities. Passive because the

visual appearance of Christ cannot be the subject of her will. Deniable because we

will not consider Miranda a liar if she denies having seen Christ after having seen

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the painting. Uninformed by interactive possibilities since no causal relations can

exist between Miranda and the depicted object.

These features apply to immersive experience as well, though not all in an obvious

manner:

The immersive experience is twofold. Whilst playing a video game, Miranda may

see the interior of a space-ship in the marks on her screen. She remains aware of

both the depicted object and the pictorial surface. This explains why she can claim

to be fighting aliens in a space-ship without being in a state of panic. Her seeing of

the pictorial surface prevents her from believing she is really in a space-ship.

Twofoldness is a feature immersion shares with pictorial experience in general.

Whilst looking at the Transfiguration, Miranda does not believe Christ is really

present because she is visually aware of the depicted thing and the marked surface.

However, the immersive experience has an additional feature, that turns it into a

special variety of ‘common’ twofold experience. Immersion is special because of

the co-variation between the user’s movements and the visual information on her

computer screen. If Miranda pushes her joystick forwards, the marks depicting the

space-ship’s control panel can become bigger and bigger. This change in the marks

projected on her screen leads to a corresponding change in her experience of the

control panel she sees in these marks: it is experienced as ‘closer’. The sensation of

being spatially related to virtual objects solicits a more general sense of occupying

the same environment as these objects, and this we call immersion. Immersion is a

special variant of pictorial experience because viewers can manipulate the pictorial

marks in such a way that it not only triggers the sensation of seeing the depicted

space, but also the sense of being present in it. This is a sensation spectators of

paintings do not have, since there is no co-variation between their movements and

what they see in the picture.

The immersive experience is governed by a standard of correctness. Miranda can, first

of all, be correct or incorrect about every depicted object she sees on her computer

screen. It would be wrong to say the sun is seen through the space-ship’s window

if the moon is depicted. In this sense, the immersive experience is like any other

pictorial experience; we cannot see anything we want in the representing marks.

But immersion is special as well because the user can make correct and incorrect

claims about her location in virtual space. The viewer of a painting cannot do this,

because she cannot claim to be in the depicted space at all. But if Miranda plays a

video game, and has just navigated from the control room of a virtual space-ship to

its engine room, it would be correct for her to say she is in the engine room. If she

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would claim to be in its control room instead, she would be wrong. Just like every

pictorial experience, immersion is governed by a standard of correctness – albeit by

a special one.

The immersive experience is passive. This claim may seem odd since I stated earlier

that users of virtual reality can change the appearance of virtual objects by moving

around a joystick or a mouse. Whereas the spectator of a painting has no control

over how the depicted thing appears to her, the user of a virtual world can alter the

perspective from which it is seen, thereby changing the way in which it appears to

her. However, I doubt this makes the immersive experience active. Although the

user can change the perspective from which she sees a virtual object, she does not

control what this object will look like from a different viewpoint. What she sees

might therefore come as a surprise to her. When she imagines about an object, by

contrast, the appearance of its occluded sides is subjected to her will and cannot

surprise her. This makes the imagination an active affair and immersion a passive

one.

The immersive experience is deniable. When playing a video game, Miranda can

refer to a virtual location when asked to specify where she is. She can claim to be in

the space-ship she sees on her computer screen. But when she denies having

visited a space-ship after she stopped playing, we will not consider her a liar. She

has, after all, not set foot on a real space-ship. Only if she had would her denial

constitute an act of lying.104

Immersive pictorial experience is uninformed by interactive possibilities. This claim

probably seems very odd, because the most important property, and charm, of

virtual worlds is apparently their interactive character. Whereas it does not make

sense to tell the viewer of a movie about aliens to shoot the aliens she sees on

screen, it does make sense to encourage the player of a video game to do so.

However, I still think immersion is uninformed by interactive possibilities. For

although the user apparently interacts with the things on her screen – shooting

laser-guns and controlling space-ships – there is no causal connection between the

things she sees on screen and herself. Her body is not involved in the virtual

events. When she sees aliens coming towards her, this experience is not solicited by

104 The term ‘deniability’ may give rise to confusion in this context. Of course, Miranda cannot deny she

experienced herself as present in a castle or space-ship at a certain point in time. Her immersive

experience took place in reality, and denying that it has, would be lying. What she can deny, however,

is that she was in a castle or a space-ship. When I claim the immersive experience is deniable, I intend to

say it is deniable in this sense.

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real aliens coming towards her, but by the screen in front of her. Subsequently, the

laser-beams from their weapons cannot possibly burn Miranda’s skin, nor can she

die in a space-ship crash. There is a causal link between Miranda and the marks on

the computer screen, but not between Miranda and the thing she sees in these

marks, and this makes actual interaction between Miranda and the depicted object

impossible. My guess is that many people enjoy video games because they offer

enthralling experiences minus the dangers one is exposed to when really inter-

acting with racing cars, terrorists, and aliens. The only real form of interaction that

players of video games engage in involves the manipulation of joystick or mouse,

which affects the visual information on their screen.

I have discussed three attempts to qualify the immersive experience. Immersion

occurs when the viewer feels located in the represented space and can refer to a

location in this space when asked to specify where she is. I argued this experience

is not a kind of illusion, nor an imagination. I proposed to think of it as a kind of

pictorial experience instead. A virtual world is a picture that represents more than

paintings and photographs. It does not just represent things, events, and spaces; it

also represents the viewer’s position in this space. Therefore, it sustains a richer

pictorial experience than other pictorial representations. The virtual reality system

does not just represent percepts, it represents the perceptual situation. A perceiver,

who literally sees a scene face-to-face, not only sees the visual properties of things,

events, and places; she experiences them as being somewhere in relation to her. I

have argued that virtual realities, other than paintings and photographs, represent

this perceptual situation by depicting a body, externally or internally, over which

the user has control. She simply has to move this body with a joystick or mouse,

look at the computer screen, recognize the co-variance between her movements

and what she sees, and the immersive pictorial experience will be triggered.

6. Objections

In this final section, I discuss three objections against my position.

First, one could object that not every experience of being in a represented space is a

pictorial experience. Suppose an evil neurologist directly links Miranda’s brain to a

computer. As a consequence, Miranda thinks she is in a shape-ship although, in

reality, she is in a hospital bed. Here the immersive experience lacks the typical

pictorial characteristic of twofoldness and Miranda will probably believe she is in

the represented space.

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My response is that Miranda’s experience does not qualify as an immersion into a

virtual world. Rather than being a case of immersion it is a special case of a dream

or an illusion, namely a dream or illusion directed with the help of a computer.

Immersed users consciously explore the artificial environment instead of being fed

sensations by a third party.

Second, one could object that control over a represented boy is not necessary for

immersion. Many video games with virtual worlds contain cut-scenes. In these cut-

scenes, the user sees the body that is normally under her control from a movie-like

perspective. The virtual body is, for example, talking to other in-game characters in

the engine room of a space-ship. During these scenes, the user cannot control the

represented body to change her perspective on the virtual world or to change her

location in it. But when someone asks the user where she is, she might still answer

‘In the engine-room of a space-ship’. Control over a represented body would hence

not be necessary for immersion.105

My response is that assertions like ‘I am in the engine-room’ – when the user sees

the body she normally controls in a cut-scene – are only possible because the user

had control over that character at a previous moment. Whilst watching a movie, I

am not inclined to say ‘I am in an engine-room’ when the lead character is there. I

do not, because I never have control over the position of her body. I can make such

claims whilst watching a cut-scene in a video game, because, in the past, I did

exercise control over the character I see.

Third, one could object that identification with the represented body is needed for

immersion, and that this identification is a matter of imagination. The user should

take the body she sees on screen to be hers, one could argue, before she can claim

to be where that body is. This might require the user to imagine the body she sees

on the screen is hers. Some kind of imaginary identification would subsequently be

necessary for immersion after all.

I think identification with a represented body is not a condition for immersion but

rather an effect of it. By giving the user control over a body, a virtual reality system

precisely simulates that the represented body is her body. The user subsequently

experiences herself as present at the same location as that body. The virtual reality-

case hence differs from that of imaginary identification proper. A viewer of Being

John Malkovich can imagine she is Malkovich and, therefore, imagine she is in New

York when he is too. She has to make this identification herself; the movie does not

105 I owe this objection to a reviewer of the Postgraduate Journal of the British Society for Aesthetics.

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represent Malkovich’s body as her body. The viewer of the movie, in other words,

has to put her imagination to work in order to experience herself as being where

John Malkovich is. The user of virtual reality, by contrast, only has to control the

represented body and to recognize that her movements in the real world co-vary

with the visual information she perceives on her screen for this identification to

occur. No extra imaginary activities from her side are necessary for immersion to

come about.

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Chapter 5

Virtual Ethics

Trey is playing a video game whilst his friend Harry is watching him. In the virtual

world of the game, Trey rapes a girl. Can Harry tell Trey it is wrong to do this? Or

can Trey neutralize Harry’s moral judgement about his virtual action by pointing

out that he is not actually raping anyone? To put it in general terms: are actions

performed in virtual realities suitable for moral evaluation, or are they, due to their

unreal character, beyond the grasp of ethical verdict? In my answer to this question

I aim to do justice to the opposing intuitions about virtual actions that have come

to the fore in the example about Trey and Harry:

1. Virtual actions are not real action and therefore unsuitable for moral

evaluation.

2. Some virtual actions, like virtual rape, seem morally reprehensible.

How to reconcile these things? I propose the following solution: virtual actions are

morally underdetermined. When considered in isolation, they cannot be judged right

or wrong, but they may become morally significant due to contextual factors. More

concretely, I will focus on the user’s mental states – the thoughts and feelings she

has whilst performing virtual actions – as determining whether these actions can

be morally judged or not. Doing so, I intend to steer a middle course between

morally over-sensitive and morally indifferent responses to virtual violence. The

morally oversensitive person may find virtual violence is always wrong, whilst the

morally indifferent person may think it is never wrong.106 Against both extremes, I

argue that virtual violence is sometimes wrong, depending on the circumstances.

Before I develop this position, two provisional remarks.

First, regarding the scope of my argument. I will concern myself exclusively with

virtual worlds in which the user is the only human person involved and where all

human-like characters are controlled by the computer. I will not, in other words,

106 The attorney and activist Jack Thompson defends the position that virtual violence is always wrong.

(see: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2007/04/va_tech_dr_phil_jack_thompson.html).

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consider virtual worlds in which one encounters human-like entities controlled by

real people. Suppose Trey virtually rapes a girl, and this girl is controlled by his

friend Charlotte. Trey’s virtual action can upset Charlotte and is morally wrong

because of this undesirable repercussion. Still, I believe that only when we consider

virtual worlds populated exclusively by computer controlled characters, the truly

fascinating problems arise: Why do we have the intuition certain virtual actions are

wrong if those actions have no harmful repercussions on real others? What makes

virtual rape wrong if it only involves the manipulation of bits and bytes?

Secondly, a methodological matter. Many discussions about virtual reality and

ethics evolve around the question whether there is a causal link between engaging

in virtual violence and engaging in real violence. If virtual violence leads to real

violence, it would be reprehensible; if it does not lead to actual violence, it would

be permissible. For two reasons, I will side-line questions concerning the causal

connection between real violence and virtual violence. First, because the existence

of such a connection is an empirical matter that cannot be solved with typical

philosophical tools, such as conceptual or phenomenological analysis. Moreover,

the existing empirical literature is inconclusive.107 Hence, the philosopher cannot

rely on a body of well-established empirical knowledge to build arguments about

the ethical status of virtual actions. Rather than concerning myself with questions

of facts – relevant and interesting as they might be – I intend to develop a distinctly

philosophical outlook on the ethics of virtual actions. One based on arguments and

the exploration of exemplary cases. This leads to a position about the ethical status

of virtual actions that does not depend on the truth or falsity of empirical claims

regarding the causal link between playing violent video games and becoming a

violent person.

1. Virtually harmless

In this first section, I explicate the intuition that virtual actions cannot be morally

judged. First, I elucidate what a virtual action is. Next, I argue these actions have at

least one significant property that makes them apt for moral judgement: they are

performed freely. Finally, I argue that virtual freedom is not sufficient for morally

judging virtual actions.

107 For a critical evaluation of the empirical evidence concerning the connection between virtual and

real violence see Marcus Schulzke’s “Defending the Morality of Violent Video Games,” in Ethics and

Information Technology 12 (2010).

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Virtual realities are interactive representations. There are, however, various ways

in which we can interact with representations. I can take a painting that depicts a

church from the wall and transport it to a different location. Here, I interact with

the representations as a material thing, whilst its representational content remains

unchanged. After I transported the painting, the exact same church can be seen in

its surface. The idea that virtual realities are interactive does obviously not concern

this kind of interaction. It rather involves interaction with the representational

content. There are two ways to interact with representational content. First of all,

externally. I can change the church-painting by taking a brush and adding a tower

to the church. When I am done, something else is visible in the picture. But the

representational content can also be changed internally. Imagine there is a video

game called ‘Builder’ which allows its users to experience being a builder. On a

computer screen, the user sees a three-dimensional model of a church. She controls

a represented body that allows her to add virtual bricks and cement to the church

in order to change its appearance. Internal interaction with the representational

content is usually the way in which users of a virtual world interact with depicted

objects. The video game does not merely allow them to change the appearance of

the church, it does so by simulating the activity of building itself. This explains

why a virtual builder might be inclined to say ‘I am building a church’ – of course,

without the intention to claim she is actually building a church – whereas a painter

depicting a church will not say he is building a church (in reality or otherwise).

Our virtual builder is ‘building’ a church, like the viewer of a church-picture is

‘seeing’ church: She is definitely building a church (like the viewer of a church-

painting definitely sees a church) but she is not really building it (like the viewer of

the picture is not really seeing it). When speaking of virtual actions, I henceforth

refer to this internal interaction with the content of a representation. Note that this

kind of internal interaction does not constitute real (causal) interaction with what is

seen on the screen. If someone plays ‘Builder’ all day, but never build anything in

real-life, she is to justified to claim she has never produced a building.

Virtual actions possess at least one property which makes them suitable for moral

evaluation: they are performed freely by the user. This constitutes an important

difference between virtual reality and other kinds of representation. Suppose Trey

is watching a movie containing a rape scene. Trey does not contribute anything to

this rape. He has not caused the fictional rape, but passively watches it unfold. If

Trey is playing a video game, things are a little different. He does not passively

watch events unfold; he acts. Without him pushing certain buttons, the virtual rape

would not have occurred.

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Various concrete virtual worlds come with various amounts of virtual freedom.

Many virtual worlds do not allow their users to make any ethically significant

choices. When Trey plays a virtual tennis game, his freedom is restricted to moving

around a tennis court and handling a racket. He cannot, for example, approach his

opponent to beat him to death. Trey cannot do anything in the virtual world that

would be considered right or wrong in reality. However, there are numerous

virtual worlds that do allow the user to make ethically significant choices. In Call of

Duty 5, the user experiences the major battles of the Second World War through

the eyes of a Russian soldier, Dimitri. The game contains a virtual representation of

Berlin, which is perceived from a first-person perspective by the user. Towards the

end of the game, she is confronted with a group of surrendering German soldiers.

The commander of her unit, a computer controlled character, orders her to shoot

the Germans. If the user refuses, the surrendering soldiers are burned alive with

Molotov cocktails. The designers of the game clearly intend this scene to provoke

some kind of moral deliberation in the user. Is it preferable to push the trigger-

button on your mouse and give the soldiers a quick death? Or is it preferable not to

pull the trigger and let the others kill them? Unlike the spectator of a movie about

the War, the user of the video game has some kind of grip on the virtual events.

Her actions in physical reality have an effect on the fictional events on screen.

The virtual world of Grand Theft Auto 4 gives the user even greater freedom. In this

game, the user is a citizen of Liberty City, a vivid virtual world based on New York

City. The user can be a good citizen of Liberty City. She can drive a car through the

streets and stop in front of every red light, go bowling, or take someone on a date.

But she could also live a life of vice: stealing cars, running over innocent pedes-

trians, committing robbery, and shooting police officers. It is up to her to decide

whether she wants to engage in these acts of virtual violence. Compared to the

virtual tennis game, the player of Grand Theft Auto has great freedom and

encounters many morally laden situations.

However, the full-fledged freedom of Grand Theft Auto 4 is not necessary for the

moral evaluation of virtual actions. It suffices that the user’s real actions, pushing

certain buttons for example, bring about a virtual action that would be ethically

significant if it were performed in the real world. Consider a comparison between

two scenarios in support of this claim. In a first scenario, Trey engages in virtual

rape and virtual rape is the only thing Trey can do in the virtual world. There are

no other interactive possibilities. In a second scenario, Trey engages in virtual rape

and virtual rape is one of million things Trey can do in the virtual world. In both

cases, Trey’s virtual actions might worry us, even though there is practically no

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freedom of choice in the first world. Full-fledged freedom is hence not necessary

for the moral evaluation of virtual actions. What is necessary, by contrast, is a more

minimal kind of virtual freedom: by virtue of pushing certain buttons or moving a

joystick, the user brings about certain things in the virtual world. This minimal

freedom constitutes the difference between raping someone in a video game and

watching a movie with a rape-scene. The viewer is not at all responsible for the

fictional event in the last case, but the user of the virtual world can choose whether

or not the fictional rape will take place.

If users of virtual worlds act freely, why not apply our normal ethical paradigms to

virtual actions? When one has the choice between running over an innocent citizen

of Liberty City and leaving her alone, why not say that it is better to choose the

former? Why should we not simply claim that choosing against virtual rape is

better than choosing for it? That would be in agreement with the intuition that

some types of virtual behaviour, like virtual rape, are morally reprehensible. There

are, however, difficulties with the moral evaluation of virtual actions.

Consider first the consequentialists’ approach to the morality of virtual actions.

Consequentialism is an ethical paradigm that judges actions by what they bring

about. People would call certain actions right or wrong because of their desirable

or undesirable effects. I doubt, however, if this paradigm suffices to judge virtual

actions. Of course, there are, in a way, consequences in virtual reality. The user of a

video game can elicit the rape or death of entities in the virtual world. But these

consequences are not real. When Trey rapes a virtual girl, he does something

which, unlike an actual rape, has no direct undesirable effects. The rape is not an

event in the physical world. Of course, Trey pushing buttons on his mouse to make

bits and bytes represent a rape on his screen is a real event, but the rape is not. No

real pain is brought about in actual women, nor does any real woman have to live

with the memory of being raped. From a consequentialist’s viewpoint it is difficult

to judge virtual actions, because these actions remain without direct repercussions

on reality.

Perhaps we should resort to an ethical framework that does not judge actions by

their outcome, but by the intentions behind them. Although a plan to assassinate

the president might fail, and he does not get hurt, the mere intention to murder

someone is considered morally reprehensible. This deontological outlook might be

better suited to judge virtual actions, which do not result in actual harm. However,

we also run into trouble if we apply deontology to virtual actions. If Trey engages

in virtual rape, his intention is not to actually rape someone someone but rather to

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simulate rape. The intention to simulate a rape is not something we normally

consider problematic. Think, for example, of an actor depicting a rapist in a play.

We usually do not have the feeling there is anything wrong with this. We might

even admire an actor for being able to simulate a rapist convincingly. At least, we

will not morally judge him for entertaining the intention to simulate rape in a play.

Whereas the intention to rape is reprehensible, the intention to simulate it is not.

Virtual worlds also render the question concerning the identity of the ethical agent,

and thus the question regarding responsibility, problematic. This is a problem for

all existing ethical paradigms one can apply to virtual actions. At first sight, it

seems clear who is responsible for the virtual actions: the user. But in many virtual

worlds, the user takes on a fictional identity. In his analysis of the theatre, Edmund

Husserl makes a helpful distinction between ‘real self’ and ‘picture-world-self’ (in

German: Bildweltich).108 Suppose Trey is an actor, playing Oedipus in Oedipus Rex.

Obviously, it is not Trey who sleeps with his mother and kills his father; it is his

picture-world-I, Oedipus, that does. Similarly, when playing a video game like Call

of Duty 5, Trey explores the virtual world as the Russian soldier Dimitri. He

responds to teammates shouting ‘Dimitri, get over here!’ by coming their way.

Whereas Trey is behind his screen, his picture-world-I is in Berlin, around 1945,

firing at German soldiers. Hence, the person who is firing at the soldiers cannot be

unambiguously identified with Trey. Just like the actor is not responsible for what

the character he plays does in the fictional world of a theatre play, the user cannot

be held accountable for what happens in the virtual world. There is a distinction

between the user as a real person and the virtual character she portrays.

The problem with morally judging virtual actions is that they lack real outcomes,

are not grounded in morally dubious intentions, and cannot be unambiguously

ascribed to real (i.e. non-fictional) agents. As a result, it is questionable if virtual

actions can ever be judged wrong. Rather than being moral or immoral, they seem

amoral. Predicates like right and wrong do not apply to these actions when they

are considered in isolation.

2. Relief and discomfort

In this section, I reconcile the intuition that virtual actions escape moral evaluation

– an intuition explicated in the previous section – with the intuition that certain

108 Edmund Husserl, Phantasy, Image-Consciousness, and Memory. Translated by John Brough (Dordrecht:

Springer, 2005), 556-557.

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virtual actions, like virtual rape, seem wrong to us. I defend the following solution:

virtual actions are morally underdetermined. This means that virtual actions are not

morally significant in themselves, but may become so due to contextual conditions.

More concretely, I focus on the feelings and thoughts of the immersed user that

performs these actions. These thoughts and feelings determine if a virtual action

appears morally neutral or morally reprehensible to us. To make this point, I leave

the high-tech sphere of virtual reality behind for a moment in order to consider a

more primitive example of simulated action: the theatre play. Afterwards I return

to the problem of morally evaluating virtual actions.

Theatre plays and virtual worlds have many things in common. They both present

us with unreal worlds, crowded with unreal people, entertaining unreal intentions,

that lack real consequences. Just like users of virtual worlds, actors in plays do not

really act. Actors and users do not shoot and rape people, they ‘shoot’ and ‘rape’

them. They represent the fictional actions of fictional characters. The distinction

between a theatre actor and the fictional character she portrays is usually crystal

clear. Imagine that Trey is an actor, interpreting the part of Brutus in Shakespeare’s

play Caesar. Whereas Trey is on stage in New York, the character he interprets,

Brutus, is in Rome. This distinction between actor and character also exists at the

level of feelings and intentions. Trey does not hate Caesar and does not intend to

murder anyone. The morally dubious intention to murder a man is entertained

only by his picture-world-I, Marcus Brutus. Moreover, this intention remains

without consequences. When the audience sees how Brutus stabs Caesar they do

not witness a murder but a ‘murder’; a mere fiction. The actor playing Caesar does

not require medical attention, nor is there any reason to arrest Trey for enacting a

murder.

When one does not realize one is watching a play, the revelation of the fictional

nature of the actions on stage can come as a relief. In the British comedy series

Blackadder the Third, situated in the late eighteenth century, the Prince Regent –

who is said to have ‘a peanut for a brain’ – attends a performance of Shakespeare’s

Caesar. The moment Brutus stands behind Caesar with a knife, he shouts ‘Look

behind you, mister Caesar!’. When ‘Brutus’ has ‘murdered’ ‘Caesar’, he calls in the

guards to arrest the actor playing Caesar. When his butler tells him it was only a

play, and that the actor who interpreted the part of Caesar is standing upright on

the stage, awaiting an applause, the Prince is utterly relieved. The relief he feels

differs from the relief one would feel when an actual attempt to murder a man has

failed and the victim survived the attack. In this second case, it does, first of all, not

make sense to say ‘A man was murdered’. This requires the victim to be dead. In

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the case of the failed attempt, one can only assert someone tried to murder the

victim. In the case of the theatre, by contrast, it does make sense to say ‘The victim

was murdered’, as long as the speaker realizes this sentence does not describe the

real world but the fiction only. Second, when we find out a real attempt to murder

someone has failed, we may be relieved, but we will not suspend moral judgment

altogether. We will rather judge the attempt itself to be wrong. When we discover

the murder is a fiction, by contrast, we abandon all attempts to morally judge what

we have seen. So does the Prince. Whilst he first thought something reprehensible

happened in front of his eyes, he now suspends moral judgements to enjoy the

play from an aesthetic point of view. He applauds the actors for playing their parts

so well as to make him believe a murder actually took place. At first, the Prince

was not at all comfortable with what he saw on stage, but now he is able to enjoy

the show. The discovery that the perceived events are to be interpreted as fictions

brings about an intermission in his natural tendency to morally evaluate the events

he sees.

The theatre-example seems to support the idea that fictional actions – performed in

theatres or in virtual worlds – can never be morally judged. Although something

condemnable seems to happen on the stage, our discomfort with the actor’s actions

fades away to make place for relief once we are aware that it was only a play.

Similarly, our discomfort with rape would fade away the moment we realize no

rape actually took place. We should, however, dwell a little longer on the theatre

example, for I have left a possibility unexplored. A movement not from discomfort

to relief, but the other way around: from relief to discomfort. The exploration of

this possibility can help us understand why we sometimes have the impression a

virtual actions is morally reprehensible.

Suppose you have a friend who plays a rapist in a play. You are impressed with his

interpretation of this immoral character and congratulate him with the result. Your

friend, however, confesses that he was able to portray a rapist so well, because

enacting a rape got him aroused. Although your friend has not harmed anyone,

and did not entertain the intention to actually rape someone, it is unlikely you can

watch him do anymore rape scenes whilst simply admiring his qualities as an

actor. The reason is that your friend and the immoral picture-world-I (the rapist)

he depicts, have become too close. Your friend not only vividly depicts the actions

of a rapist, but entertains feelings similar to a sex offender’s: arousal (perhaps even

accompanied by the bodily states that are an indication of this). As a consequence,

the clear distinction between your friend’s actual personality and the immoral

character he represents – a distinction we implicitly assumed to be present – is

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blurred. It is the collapse of this distinction that is responsible for the discomfort

you feel whilst watching your friend portray a rapist. Before finding out that

enacting a rape got him aroused, you could enjoy his fictional immoral actions

from an aesthetic perspective, not judging them from a moral perspective. But now

you know that enacting rape arouses your friend, this aesthetic experience will

probably be spoiled by the impression there is something not at all right about

your friend’s fictional actions.

The theatre-example learns us two things. First, that no theatrical action is morally

significant as such. We generally have no problem with actors portraying burglars,

dictators, murderers, rapists, or even paedophiles. Whilst watching a theatre play,

we suspend moral judgement to enjoy the play from an aesthetic perspective. In

fact, we can correct people who do not suspend moral judgement and, for example,

convict an actor playing a rapist. And in many cases, it is indeed faulty to blame an

actor for her fictional actions. However, we can think of certain conditions under

which acts of fictional immorality become morally significant. This is the second

thing the theatre-example learns. If the emotional states of the actor resemble those

of a real rapist, the clear distinction between actor and character breaks down and

this is troubling. Theatrical actions are hence morally underdetermined: In principle,

they are ‘amoral’, and the actor performing them should not be blamed for them.

But under specific contextual conditions, when fictional actions are accompanied

by certain mental states (emotions, thoughts, etcetera), we will have the tendency to

disapprove of these actions. In these cases, we have the impression it is somehow

wrong to engage in fictional immorality, even though we know perfectly well that

it remains without real consequences and is not the product of actual condemnable

intentions.

Virtual actions are morally underdetermined as well. Their apparent wrongness is

a product of the contextual conditions under which they are realized. Consider the

following examples in favour of this view.

First, virtual rape. We can think of a context in which playing a rape game will not

give rise to moral discomfort. Suppose Trey is writing a dissertation about virtual

reality and ethics. He plays the rape game in order to acquire first-hand knowledge

of violent video games. Whilst playing the game, he is not aroused. In fact, he is

disgusted by what he sees on screen and considers it to be an undesirable, but

necessary, part of his scientific endeavour. If we are aware of this, we will not be

troubled by Trey’s virtual actions. His situation is similar to that of a police officer

who is ordered to investigate child pornography. A police officer watching child

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pornography does not trouble us, as we assume he is not aroused by what he sees

in the pictures. Moral discomfort only arises when Trey or the police officer get

aroused whilst playing the rape game or watching the pornographic photographs.

Their mental states – in this particular case their feelings – make the virtual actions

they perform either morally neutral or morally significant.

Second, consider the case of virtual murder. Again, a context in which this action is

considered unproblematic can easily be imagined. Suppose Trey is shooting virtual

soldiers in order to win the video game he is playing. In this case, Trey is not in an

aggressive but rather in a competitive mood. Usually, we will not have any moral

problems with this kind of virtual violence. However, if Trey would tell us that he

felt bloodthirsty whilst playing the game, we probably will have the impression

something is not completely right about his virtual actions. Just like virtual rape,

virtual murder is morally neutral in some contexts – although we may think of

more valuable ways to spend your time than trying to beat a violent video game –

and morally significant in others. In this case too, it depends on the mental states of

the viewer, i.e. on her competitive or aggressive mood, whether her virtual actions

trouble us or not.

I cannot stress too often that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with enacting a

rape or a murder in a theatre play or virtual world. Such actions only strike us as

worrying when we suspect there is no clear distinction between the real person

and the immoral picture-world-I. This is the case when the person that is enacting

a rape or a murder has a mental state similar to that of a real rapist or murderer

(arousal, aggression, …).

One could raise at least two objections against this proposal.

First, one could object that I have not clarified which specific mental state should

accompany which specific virtual actions in order for moral discomfort to arise. In

response, let me clarify my intention: It is not my aim to give a list of combinations

of virtual actions and mental states which, together, could solicit a feeling of moral

discomfort in the observer of the action. My endeavour is more formal in character.

I merely claim that if a virtual action appears wrong to us, this is due to user’s

thoughts and feelings (or due to the thoughts and feelings we suspect her to have).

Which specific combinations of virtual actions and feelings or thoughts count as

worrying, cannot be articulated a priori. It can only be felt a posteriori by someone

confronted with concrete instances of virtual violence.

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Second, there is a more substantial lacuna in my theory. I argued certain virtual

actions, accompanied by certain feelings or thoughts, give rise to moral discomfort

in the observer of these actions. She feels there is something wrong with simulating

rape whilst being aroused. I have not, however, made clear if this discomfort is

indeed warranted. My views on the moral evaluation of virtual actions thus far are

best understood as a kind of moral psychology, which articulates the conditions

under which a virtual action appears to be wrong. However, the initial question

was not if virtual actions can appear wrong; I asked if they can be wrong. To answer

this question, a more substantial account of virtual ethics is required. One that does

not merely include an explanation of the conditions under which virtual actions

seem to be morally reprehensible, but also indicates if there are sufficient grounds

for this impression. It is possible that Trey’s virtual actions appear wrong to Harry,

but only due to certain contingent features, such as Harry being a prude or the fact

that Harry lives in a society with extremely conservative values. In this case, there

would be nothing intrinsically wrong about being aroused by virtual rape. Harry’s

feeling of discomfort with Trey’s action would be unjustified, very much like the

feeling of discomfort a strongly religious person has when seeing two men walk

hand in hand is unjustified. Harry would have the feeling there was something

wrong with Trey’s behaviour, but it may not be entirely rational for him to feel that

way.

3. Discomfort justified

We occasionally have the feeling a person’s virtual action is morally reprehensible.

Can this feeling be justified? Or is it never rational for Harry to claim that there is

something wrong with Trey’s virtual behaviour? Whilst answering such questions,

one should keep in mind two observations from the previous sections: First, that

virtual actions are hard to judge when considered isolately. They are amoral rather

than immoral. Secondly, that one and the same virtual action can appear both

harmless and reprehensible, depending on the context in which it is realized. We

should subsequently resist absolutist claims of all sorts (‘virtual violence is never

wrong’ and ‘virtual violence is always wrong’). These two observations function as

constraints for a justificationary approach to the discomfort that virtual actions

sometimes causes in those that observe it. Are there any decent approaches on the

market?

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The first candidate is virtue ethics. According to Matt McCormick, only this

approach can justify our gut-feeling that virtual violence is morally problematic.109

He asks us to consider virtual child rape. The consequentialist cannot justify the

gut-feeling this is wrong, because the action remains without real consequences; no

children are harmed by it. The deontologist runs into trouble as well, as the actual

intention of the user is not to rape children but rather to enact child-rape.110 It is

questionable whether this intention qualifies as reprehensible. Consequentialism

and deontology therefore fail to justify our discomfort with virtual child rape. The

reason is, on McCormick’s view, that these approaches consider the virtual actions

isolately. He thinks, like I do, that we should not focus on the virtual action as

such, but that we should add the user performing the action to the equation. This

move is typical of virtue ethics in general. A virtue ethicist is not interested in the

rightness or wrongness of individual actions.111 Instead, she is interested in the

development of a good character or personality. The emphasis is thus not on doing

good, but on being good. Indulging in virtual violence is, from this perspective,

morally problematic, because it does not contribute positively to the development

of character. It accustoms users to vice – murder, rape, paedophilia – rather than to

virtue. Players of violent video games harm no one but themselves, as they harm

their own moral development.112 For McCormick, this justifies our discomfort with

virtual violence.

This virtue-ethical justification of the discomfort virtual actions sometimes trigger

is vague. For what does it means to harm one’s character? McCormick does not

explicate what this amounts to. Luckily, others do. It has, for example, been argued

that a virtuous person empathizes with others.113 A good person can put herself in

the place of the other and develop an awareness of what they are going through.

Empathy can cause Harry to help an old man that took a fall, or to comfort a friend

when he is broken hearted. Moreover, an emphatic person will be more likely to

scrutinize her own behaviour. Her empathic abilities allow her to imagine seeing

her actions from the perspective of another person. We subsequently consider

empathy a good thing. It also fits nicely in the virtue ethical perspective because

empathy is not a property of a good action but a property of a good person. It is a

109 Matt McCormick, “Is it wrong to play violent video games?,” Ethics and Information Technology, 3

(2010): 277.

110 McCormick (2001), 284

111 Marc Coeckelbergh, “Virtue, Empathy, and Vulnerability. Evaluating Violence in Digital Games.” in

Vice City Virtue, eds. Karolien Poels & Steven Malliet, 89-105 (Leuven : Acco Academic, 2011).

112 McCormick (2001), 286: “… the moral problem is with its detrimental effect on a person’s character.”

113 Coeckelbergh (2011), 93-96

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desirable disposition, which is fertile ground for good actions. We therefore praise

people who have this disposition and reproach those lacking it. Empathy is a

disposition worth developing. According to Marc Coeckelbergh, virtual violence is

problematic because it hinders the development of this disposition:

The argument from virtue against violent games, then, could run as

follows: It seems plausible that violent games do not meet the

sympathy/virtue criterion: to the extent that they do not train us to

sympathize with others and not allow us to improve our moral

character, they do not promote – and probably rather hinder – such

long term moral developments.114

Violent video games would hinder the development of our empathic abilities, and

hence our general development as virtuous beings, in two ways. First, virtual

worlds are populated by human-shaped figures, which are not real others. This

would stimulate anti-social behaviour towards human-like entities in general. In a

virtual soccer game, Trey might tackle every player of the opposite team as these

human-like figures experience no pain. The problem, according to Coeckelberg, is

that such virtual actions lead toward a non-empathic stance towards all human-

like figures (real and not representational). Second, as the user knows the human-

like figures in virtual reality are not real others, she will not be inclined to see her

own behaviour through their eyes. When Trey is playing a real game of soccer, he

knows the eyes of others rest on him. After he viciously tackled another player, he

feels ashamed as he can imagine other players disapproving of his action. He feels

shame, in other words, because he sees his actions through the eyes of the others.

The gaze of real others functions as a concrete cause for moral self-evaluation. In

virtual reality, however, this gaze is absent. The user does not feel watched by real

others whilst engaging in violence against human-like figures. Therefore, playing

violent games would not train the user to scrutinize herself morally. Coeckelberg

concludes from this that engaging in virtual violence equals training oneself to be

morally insensitive rather than virtuous.115 If this is true, than our gut-feeling that

some virtual actions are wrong can be justified.

I have two problems with this virtue ethical approach:

First, this approach respects only one of the constraints I put on a decent theory of

virtual violence. More specifically, McCormick and Coeckelberg violate the second

114 Coeckelbergh (2011), 95

115 Coeckelbergh (2011), 96

107

constraint, as their approach implies that virtual violence is wrong in every context.

If each act of virtual violence makes us less and less empathic, so they argue, than

simulating violence is always wrong. I doubt this is true. In theatre plays and

children’s games violent events are regularly enacted. If McCormick is correct,

actors and children would do a morally reprehensible thing when they fictionally

hurt another. This outcome is counterintuitive. Does the actor playing a murderer

harm her character because she enacts murder? Clearly not. Actors often receive

praise for portraying such actions convincingly. And is there a problem with boys

playing knights, pretending to hit each other with swords? I don’t think so. When

it comes to simulated violence, virtue ethics is too moralistic. It expresses an undue

concern for the immoral character of this ‘violence’. Although the virtue ethicist

acknowledges virtual actions are hard to judge when considered isolately, they

hold there is no context in which they are not wrong. This goes against the morally

harmless character of many instances of fictional violence. We usually do not have

the feeling it is wrong to portray a murderer in a play (unless the actors feels

bloodthirsty whilst acting); or to enact a fight between two knights (unless the boys

feel aggression whilst playing); or to play a rape game in the context of a criminal

investigation (unless the officer feels aroused whilst playing). The virtue ethical

approach cannot explain why we find simulated violence morally discomforting in

some cases and not in others. It hence does not respect our common sense stance to

virtual violence (it is sometimes morally neutral and sometimes not) and advances

a revisionary perspective (virtual violence is wrong in all contexts) I am not willing

to accept.

Second, the virtue ethical approach to virtual violence is founded on an empirical

claim, and a dubious one for that matter. The virtue ethicist can only claim virtual

violence is reprehensible if a causal link between playing violent video games and

being a less virtuous (in casu a less empathic) person is discovered. The empirical

evidence for the existence of this connection is dubious.116 However, some people,

including myself, still think that virtual actions accompanied by certain feelings or

116 There is some research indicating that the areas of the brain associated with empathy are inactive

when subjects are playing violent video games. However, this research is dubious. (It is discussed and

dismissed in Marcus Schulzke’s “Defending the Morality of Violent Video Games,”: 132-134). First, the

number of subjects participating in the study is low. Secondly, it could be argued the subject are not

emphatic whilst playing the game because they realize they are not dealing with real people. Thirdly,

the researchers do not prove that the empathy-areas remain inactive after the subject stopped playing

the game. Of course, one might argue that playing a violent video game is still bad, because it is better

for the empathic-areas to be active than to be inactive. But if this true, there might something wrong

with all activities which do not activate our empathic abilities. Hence, it would be reprehensible to slice

potatoes or to tie your shoelaces. This outcome is absurd.

108

thoughts are morally troubling. One can subsequently have the impression there is

something wrong with some virtual actions, without believing that virtual violence

causes bad character. A good theory of virtual violence should be able to justify

why we can find cases of virtual violence morally problematic, even though the

link between real violence and bad personality is not a well-established fact. As the

virtue ethicist cannot do this, and her arguments depend on a dubious empirical

claim, her theory is no good.

Virtual violence could be contrasted with smoking. It is a well-established fact that

smoking has undesirable consequences for the smoker. This knowledge informs

the negative stance we generally take towards smoking, especially towards young

people doing it. By smoking, they are harming themselves and others, and we

consider this wrong. Moreover, our feeling that smoking is a ‘bad habit’ is well-

justified by empirical research, the results of which are now common knowledge.

Acts of virtual violence, by contrast, can be judged wrong by people that do not

believe in, or are agnostic about, its negative repercussions on the user’s empathic

abilities. Moreover, someone engaging in virtual violence can tell someone who

judges her virtual behaviour wrong on the basis of such claims, that her judgement

is not well-founded. There is no solid evidence that virtual violence is bad for the

gamer like smoking is bad for the smoker. This is required to the virtue ethical

argument to work and, since this requirement is not met, the virtual ethical view is

invalid.

I propose an alternative justification for the discomfort we feel when observing

certain virtual actions. If Trey is aroused whilst playing a rape game, Harry may

feel there is something wrong with Trey’s behaviour. But he does not feel this way

because Trey’s virtual actions may have a negative effect on his character. He rather

feels this way, I think, because Trey’s behaviour is an indication of a bad character.

This is a reversal of the virtue ethical view. If we condemn certain virtual actions

we don’t do this because we fear it might cause a person to develop immoral

dispositions. We are more inclined to treat the virtual behaviour as a sign of such

undesirable dispositions.

Virtual violence accompanied by certain feelings or thoughts can be interpreted as

symptomatic for the user’s bad character. An analogy with symptoms in medicine

can enlighten this view. Suppose Trey goes to a doctor with red spots on his skin.

After having investigated the spots thoroughly, the doctors says ‘Trey, this is bad’,

and advises him to go to the hospital. The doctor has, in this case, interpreted the

spots on Trey’s skin as indications of an invisible yet undesirable state (illness).

109

Similarly, Harry interprets Trey performance of a virtual rape, plus his arousal, as a

trace of an invisible yet undesirable state (an undesirable moral disposition). This

discovery may be an unpleasant surprise for Harry. In fact, it can be an unpleasant

surprise for Trey as well. The virtual behaviour plus arousal are bad symptoms that

may make him and others worry about the person he is. In this case, however, the

virtual violence is not seen as worrying because it causes bad personality. Just like

red spots are worrying as symptoms, and not as causes, of an undesirable state

(illness), Trey’s aroused performance of a virtual rape is considered worrying as a

symptom of something undesirable (bad personality).

The analogy with symptoms in medicine should be explored somewhat further.

Suppose Trey goes to a hospital to have a medical specialist look at the spots. The

specialist, who is far more experienced in investigating such spots than Trey’s

doctor, assures him the spots are nothing to worry about. Although they look, at

first sight, like an indication of a serious illness, they are not. Instead of being

caused by a life-threatening condition, they are the effect of a harmless allergy.

This is confirmed by an analysis of a blood sample. The specialist assures Trey,

however, that his family doctor had good reasons to believe the spots were an

indication of something worse, as they indeed look similar to the spots caused by

the dangerous illness.

The interpretation of the relation between symptoms and their cause is prone to

error. Secondly, even in the case of an incorrect diagnosis, the interpreter can have

good reason for his beliefs. As a consequence, Trey can be grateful to his family

doctor for sending him to the hospital, even though this initial diagnosis turned

out to be faulty. His doctor had sound reasons for his worries; it was more than

just a ‘bad feeling’ about the spots. His worries were founded on his observations

and medical knowledge. Something similar goes for Harry’s diagnosis of Trey’s

actions. When Trey is playing a virtual rape game in an aroused state, Harry can

interpret this as a symptom of bad character. However, like the family doctor, he

can be wrong. Suppose that Trey had read an erotic novel before playing the rape

game, which he investigates as a police officer. Whilst playing he is still in an

aroused state. But this is not a sign that he is disposed to commit rape. Harry’s bad

feeling about Trey’s behaviour is unjustified here, as Trey’s arousal is not caused

by the rape game but by the erotic novel. In spite of this, Trey will probably not

blame Harry when he voices his concern. For he can see that Harry, like his doctor,

has sound reasons for his faulty diagnosis. It looked bad but, in reality, it was no

reason for worries after all.

110

Virtual violence cannot always be morally judged. The moral evaluation of virtual

actions is only justified when these actions are accompanied by certain feelings and

thoughts, and when these accompanying states indeed indicate a bad character.

When these conditions are not met, Harry’s moral discomfort with Trey’s virtual

actions is unwarranted. However, when these conditions are met, Harry has good

reasons for his discomfort with Trey’s behaviour. He correctly interprets it as

indicative of an undesirable disposition. What he judges is, in other words, not the

virtual actions itself – which cannot be morally judged – but the person behind it.

His virtual action is wrong to the degree that it is a sign, or trace, of an underlying

thing we consider bad. Like smoke is bad because it indicates fire, and certain red

spots are bad because they indicate illness, virtual actions can be troubling because

they indicate bad character.

4. Conclusion

The question I raised in the introduction – are virtual actions suitable for moral

evaluation? – has been answered. I made three important claims about virtual

actions:

1. They cannot be morally judged when considered in isolation.

2. They appear morally reprehensible when accompanied by certain mental

states (emotions or thoughts).

3. The impression that they are reprehensible is sometimes justified, when

the user’s behaviour is symptomatic for her bad dispositions.

These claims entail a positive, yet nuanced, response to the introductory question.

Virtual violence is not always wrong and, hence, objections to it are not always

well-founded. But there are cases in which we have good reason to be troubled by

it. Namely in those cases where a combination of a virtual action and a feeling or

thought is indicative of an undesirable disposition of the user. The intention of this

chapter was to steer a middle course in a debate often dominated by extremes. I

proposed that virtual violence is not wrong in each and every case, nor is it always

harmless. Against these extreme views, I defended that virtual actions are morally

underdetermined. They appear reprehensible to us in some instances and harmless

in others. This moral indeterminacy thesis became more robust by the addition of a

justificationary reflection: virtual actions cannot merely seem to be troubling and

111

harmless depending on the context, they are troubling and harmless due to these

circumstances.

112

Conclusion

In this dissertation, I dealt with the following two questions:

1. What is pictorial experience?

2. How does the pictorial medium affect the pictorial experience?

In answer to the first question, I argued that pictorial experience is a twofold visual

experience governed by a causal or intentional standard of correctness. Our visual

awareness of the depicted object – one of the folds of pictorial experience – is

characterized by passivity, deniability, and non-interactivity. This definition of

pictorial experience is anti-reductionist, as it does not describe pictorial experience

as a whole, nor our visual awareness of the depicted object, in terms of another

visual experience. Instead of being a kind of face-to-face seeing, a kind of imagined

seeing, or a kind of illusion, pictorial experience is an autonomous member of the

family of visual experience. It shares properties with many members of this family,

but does not coincide with any of them. Pictorial experience is not a subcategory of

any other state, but rather has some subcategories of its own. This brings me to the

second question:

I formulated the hypothesis that different pictorial media entail, at least in two

cases, special varieties of pictorial experience. Photographs would solicit factive

pictorial experiences; virtual worlds would cause immersive pictorial experiences.

This hypothesis has shown to be partly true. Whilst immersive pictorial experience

is indeed medium-specific, factive pictorial experience can also be solicited by non-

photographic pictures. Nevertheless, there is a difference between factive pictorial

experiences solicited by photographs and those solicited by handmade pictures.

Due to contingent features of the medium, you can be more sure of what you see in

photographs than of what you see in handmade pictures. This affects our experien-

ce of these respective pictures.

Future research could focus on a further characterisation of pictorial experience or

on identifying new varieties of this experience (medium-specific or other). Future

investigations should observe, however, that neither pictorial experience, nor its

varieties, can be described as a subcategory of another mental state.

113

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Illustrations

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Samenvatting

Ervaringen van beelden zijn eigenaardig. Stel, je kijkt naar het werk De Fruitmand

van Caravaggio. Wat zie je? Het antwoord is intrigerend. Je bent waarschijnlijk

geneigd te zeggen dat je een fruitmand ziet. Toch weet je heel goed dat je niet naar

een echte fruitmand aan het kijken bent. Je realiseert je dat hetgeen voor je ogen

geen fruitmand is, maar een plat vlak, gemarkeerd met verf door de schilder. Je

ervaring van het schilderij is derhalve een complexe aangelegenheid. Terwijl je het

bekijkt, zie je twee dingen: een plat vlak met verf en een fruitmand. Terwijl het

eerste ding werkelijk aanwezig is in je omgeving is het tweede dat niet. Door naar

het gemarkeerde beeldoppervlak te kijken zie je het afwezige object dat het

afbeeldt. Ik zal de complexe vorm van waarnemen waartoe beelden aanleiding

geven in deze verhandeling aanduiden met de term ‘beeldervaring’.

In de afgelopen decennia heeft een uitgelezen gezelschap van filosofen gepoogd

een adequate beschrijving van de beeldervaring te geven. Volgens sommigen geeft

de Caravaggio je de illusie een fruitmand te zien. Anderen stellen dat het schilderij

je ertoe aanzet je te verbeelden een fruitmand te zien. Weer anderen geloven dat de

beeldervaring niet kan worden beschreven in termen van een andere mentale

toestand. De beeldervaring is niet een soort illusie of een soort verbeelding, maar

een eigensoortige en autonome mentale toestand. Het debat over de natuur van de

beeldervaring blijft tot op vandaag levend en onbeslist. Met dit proefschrift hoop ik

twee dingen bij te dragen aan de lopende discussie. Ik zal dat doen door in te gaan

op twee onderzoeksvragen:

Ten eerste, wat is de beeldervaring? Als antwoord op deze eerste vraag ontwikkel

ik een definitie van de beeldervaring in het algemeen. Deze is van toepassing op

iedere beeldervaring, ongeacht of deze wordt veroorzaakt door een schilderij in het

museum, een foto in een reclamefolder, een beeld op televisie, of een video game

op de computer.

De tweede vraag betreft de relatie tussen beeld-medium en beeldervaring. Heeft

het medium dat wordt gebruikt om een beeld te maken invloed op de beeld-

ervaring? Als antwoord op deze tweede vraag onderzoek ik de hypothese dat

verschillende beeldmedia aanleiding geven tot verschillende typen beeldervaring.

Ik ga uitgebreid in op twee gevallen waar dit inderdaad zo lijkt te zijn. Eerst kijk ik

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naar de beeldervaringen die foto’s teweegbrengen. Deze zouden bijzonder zijn

omdat de kijker altijd feiten ziet in foto’s. Foto’s zouden derhalve een zogenaamde

factieve beeldervaring uitlokken. Vervolgens wend ik me tot de beeldervaringen die

worden veroorzaakt door de virtuele werkelijkheden van bijvoorbeeld computer

spelen. Deze zouden bijzonder zijn omdat de kijker niet louter afgebeelde objecten

waarneemt, maar zich op een of andere manier in de gerepresenteerde ruimte zelf

kan positioneren en met de afgebeelde objecten kan interageren. Virtuele werelden

zouden daarom zogenaamde immersieve beeldervaringen uitlokken. Gebruikers van

virtuele omgevingen werpen niet slechts een blik in een gerepresenteerde ruimte,

maar ervaringen zichzelf als aanwezig in deze ruimte.

Mijn twee onderzoeksvragen zijn verbonden. Aangezien de factieve en immersieve

beeldervaring allebei subcategorieën zijn van beeldervaring in het algemeen, moet-

en alle eigenschappen van de beeldervaring ook aan hen toekomen. De analyse

van de beeldervaring biedt dus het algemene kader voor de analyse van haar

subcategorieën. Daarnaast kan de analyse van de subcategorieën ook het algemene

kader informeren. Sterker nog, ze kan dit kader zelfs onder druk zetten. Wanneer

een subcategorie van de beeldervaring een eigenschap ontbeert die eerder werd

toegeschreven aan de beeldervaring in het algemeen dan is er iets mis met mijn

definitie van de beeldervaring als zodanig. De analyse van de subcategorieën

fungeert dus als ‘reality check’ voor mijn algemene definitie van de beeldervaring.

Iedere eigenschap van de beeldervaring moet toekomen aan haar subcategorieën,

anders is deze eigenschap helemaal niet essentieel voor de beeldervaring.

Alvorens ik een korte beschrijving geef van de hoofdstukken van deze dissertatie

moet ik mijn onderzoek eerst van twee aanverwante, doch verschillende, terreinen

afgrenzen.

Ten eerste gaat deze dissertatie niet over esthetische ervaring. Veel beelden, zoals

Caravaggio’s Fruitmand, zijn kunstwerken en lokken esthetische ervaringen uit.

Terwijl je naar een beeld kijkt dat ook een kunstwerk is ervaar je bijvoorbeeld

schoonheid. Dat wil niet zeggen dat beeldervaringen en esthetische ervaringen

identiek zijn. Hoewel de Fruitmand een esthetische ervaring uitlokt zal de foto van

een fruitmand in de folder van de lokale supermarkt dat waarschijnlijk niet doen.

Esthetische ervaring is dus geen integrale component van beeldervaring. Sterker

nog, de esthetische ervaring begeleidt niet eens iedere beeldervaring. Daarom zal

ik de esthetische ervaring in de rest van dit proefschrift volledig negeren. Deze

dissertatie is geen bijdrage aan de filosofie van de kunst maar aan de filosofie van

de waarneming, breed opgevat als studie van alle sensoriële ervaringen.

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Ten tweede ontwikkel ik geen afbeeldingstheorie. Afbeeldingtheorieën expliciteren

de condities waaronder een object een ander object op specifiek beeldelijke wijze

representeert. Veel theorieën van beeldervaring zijn ook afbeeldingtheorieën. Uit

de analyse van de beeldervaring wordt een definitie van beeldelijke representatie

afgeleid. Volgens dergelijke theorieën telt y als een beeld van x als, en enkel als, y

aanleiding geeft tot die-en-die ervaring. Deze evaringsgeoriënteerde theorieën van

beeldelijke representatie concurreren met elkaar en met niet op de beeldervaring

gebaseerde posities. In dit werk blijf ik agnostisch over wat iets tot een beeld van

iets anders maakt. Mochten problemen gerelateerd aan deze kwestie toch mijn

analyse van de beeldervaring insluipen – wat af en toe onvermijdelijk is – dan zal

ik altijd de zijde van de common sense te kiezen. Men zal dus geen controversiële

uitspraken aantreffen over wat een afbeelding als zodanig definieert, laat staan dat

men zal stuiten op een uitgewerkte positie met betrekking tot deze kwestie. Mijn

aandacht geldt de ervaring van beelden, niet de definitie van wat een beeld is. Ons

common-sense verstaan van beelden volstaat om het onderzoek naar deze ervaring

te kunnen uitvoeren.

Nu mijn onderzoeksterrein voldoende afgebakend is, zal ik de inhoud van mijn

dissertatie kort beschrijven. In totaal zijn er vijf hoofdstukken. Het eerste gaat over

de beeldervaring in het algemeen, het tweede en derde over factieve beeldervaring

en het vierde en vijfde over immersieve beeldervaring.

In hoofdstuk 1 presenteer ik een algemene definitie van de beeldervaring. Deze is

een variant van de definitie die Richard Wollheim verdedigt in Painting as an Art.

Concreet zal ik twee claims evalueren die Wollheim maakt met betrekking tot de

beeldervaring. De eerste is dat de beeldervaring noodzakelijk bestaat uit twee

aspecten: een visueel bewustzijn van het beeldvlak en een visueel bewustzijn van

het afgebeelde ding. De tweede claim is dat onze waarneming van het afgebeelde

ding analoog is aan de directe perceptie van dat ding. Waar ik de eerste claim zal

verdedigen tegen een aantal tegenwerpingen, zal ik de tweede kritisch benaderen.

Ik argumenteer dat onze perceptie van het afgebeelde object niet beschreven moet

worden in termen van een andere visuele ervaring, en dus ook niet in termen van

directe perceptie. Hoewel ons zien van het afgebeelde ding veel eigenschappen

deelt met andere ervaringen – niet enkel met de directe perceptie, maar ook met de

verbeelding en de illusie – kan de beeldervaring niet tot één van hen worden

gereduceerd. Sterker nog, ik denk dat het nonsensicaal is te zeggen dat ons zien

van het afgebeelde object meer op één bepaalde visuele ervaring lijkt dan op een

andere. Tegenover dergelijke posities plaats ik mijn radicaal anti-reductionistische

visie op de beeldervaring. Deze is nog altijd wollheimiaans van insteek, aangezien

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ze vasthoudt aan de gedachte dat beeldervaring gepaard gaat met een dubbel

visueel bewustzijn van beeldvlak en afgebeeld ding, maar tegelijk weerstaat mijn

positie aan de reductionistische tendensen die zelfs nog in Wollheim’s analyse

aanwezig zijn.

In hoofdstuk 2 bespreek ik de factieve beeldervaring door in te gaan op de analyse

die Robert Hopkins hiervan geeft. Hopkins verdedigt dat enkel foto’s factieve

beeldervaring ondersteunen. Dit zou hun speciale epistemische status verklaren.

Wat we in fotografische beelden zien is altijd het geval; wat we in handgemaakte

beelden zien niet. Ik ben het deels eens, deels oneens met Hopkins. Ik ben het

ermee eens dat foto’s een speciale epistemische status hebben. Over het algemeen

kun je zekerder zijn dat p op basis van een p-foto dan op basis van een p-tekening.

Ik argumenteer echter dat dit verschil niet kan worden verklaard in termen van

factieve beeldervaring. In plaats daarvan stel ik voor dat ook een handgemaakt

beeld vehikel voor deze ervaring kan zijn. Derhalve kan de speciale epistemische

status van de fotografie niet verklaard worden door een beroep te doen op een

speciaal soort beeldervaring die foto’s (zogezegd) a priori wel en handgemaakte

beelden (zogezegd) a priori niet ondersteunen. In plaats daarvan argumenteer ik

dat de fotografie haar speciaal epistemische status ontleent aan meer contingente

factoren, zoals de technische vaardigheden die vereist zijn om een foto overtuigend

te manipuleren.

In hoofdstuk 3 vraag ik of televisiekijkers getuigen zijn van wat ze op het scherm

zien. John Durham Peters stel dat ze inderdaad getuigen zijn en filosofen als Roger

Scruton en Kendall Walton verdedigen gelijkaardige posities. Televisiekijkers zou-

den getuigen zijn omdat het televisiescherm een transparant vlak is doorheen welk

de gefilmde gebeurtenissen letterlijk worden gezien. Ik ben het hiermee niet eens

en geef twee tegenargumenten. Eerst stel ik dat het scherm niet transparant is en

de kijker de gefilmde gebeurtenissen niet letterlijk ziet. Wat de kijker letterlijk ziet

is niet de gebeurtenis maar een representatie daarvan. Ten tweede argumenteer ik

dat een reguliere getuige – fysiek aanwezig op de plaats waar de gebeurtenis zich

voltrekt – een reliek-achtige functie kan vervullen met betrekking tot een

gebeurtenis terwijl de televisiekijker dat niet kan. Iemand die bijvoorbeeld getuige

was van de val van de Berlijnse Muur is interessant op dezelfde manier als een

stuk steen dat die dag uit de muur werd verwijderd interessant is: niet uitsluitend

vanwege de informatie die ze over de gebeurtenis kan verstrekken, maar

simpelweg vanwege haar fysieke verbondenheid ermee. De getuige is deel van de

gebeurtenis; een levend spoor ervan. Televisiekijkers daarentegen kunnen niet

fungeren als reliek aangezien ze principieel buiten de gebeurtenis staan en er geen

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fysieke band mee hebben. Op basis van deze twee tegenwerpingen wijs ik Peters’

these dat kijkers getuigen zijn af.

In hoofdstuk 4 bespreek ik de immersieve beeldervaring. Stel je voor een virtueel

ruimteschip te verkennen. Iemand komt binnen, kijkt op het scherm, en vraagt je

waar je bent. Je hebt dan twee opties. Ofwel verwijs je naar je locatie in de fysieke

realiteit (‘Ik zit achter de computer in mijn kamer’), ofwel verwijs je naar je locatie

in de virtuele werkelijkheid (‘Ik ben in een ruimteschip’). Anders dan het schilderij

of de foto ondersteunt de virtuele realiteit immersieve ervaringen; je weet jezelf op

één of andere manier present in de gerepresenteerde ruimte. Deze immersieve

ervaring is verder gekwalificeerd door filosofen. Volgens sommigen is het een

soort illusie, terwijl anderen denken dat immersie een zaak is van de verbeelding.

Ik argumenteer dat geen van beide posities correct is en dat immersie best verstaan

wordt als bijzondere variant van de beeldervaring. Virtuele werkelijkheden bieden

een meer omvattende beeldervaring dan schilderijen en foto’s, omdat ze niet enkel

objecten en ruimtes afbeelden, maar ook de presentie van de toeschouwer in deze

ruimtes visueel representeren.

In hoofdstuk 5 ga ik in op een ethische kwestie die samenhangt met immersieve

beeldervaring. Stel je voor dat een vriend een immersieve beeldervaring ondergaat

en handelingen stelt in een virtuele realiteit. Je ziet zijn handelingen door over zijn

schouder naar het scherm te kijken. Op een gegeven moment voert je vriend een

virtuele verkrachting uit. Heb je voldoende grond om deze virtuele handelingen

moreel te veroordelen? Of zijn virtuele handelingen, vanwege hun virtuele en dus

onwerkelijke karakter, per definitie ongeschikt voor morele evaluatie? Ik verdedig

dat virtuele handelingen moreel ondergedetermineerd zijn. Los bekeken kunnen

we ze nooit goed of slecht noemen, maar ze kunnen moreel significant worden

door contextuele factoren. Ik focus daarbij op de mentale toestanden van het

geïmmerseerde subject, en dan vooral, maar niet uitsluitend, op haar emoties. Ik

stel dat deze bepalen of haar virtuele handelingen moreel neutraal dan wel moreel

verwerpelijk zijn. Op deze wijze wil ik een middenweg vinden tussen een zekere

morele overgevoeligheid en een zekere morele onverschilligheid ten aanzien van

virtueel geweld. Virtueel geweld is niet in alle gevallen fout, maar het is ook niet

altijd moreel neutraal; het is daarentegen fout in bepaalde gevallen, meer bepaald

wanneer een zekere virtuele actie begeleid wordt door een zekere mentale toestand

(zoals opwinding of woede).