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Seeing-in is a Transparency Effect (draft paper)

Newall, Michael (2012) Seeing-in is a Transparency Effect (draft paper). . (Unpublished) (KAR id:31873)

Abstract

Philosophers of art use the term “seeing-in” to describe an important part of our experience of pictures: we often “see” a picture’s subject matter “in” its surface. This paper proposes that seeing-in is an example of a perceptual phenomenon that has received extensive attention in perceptual psychology: the perception of transparency. It is generally accepted that transparency perception is governed by laws of “scission”. I argue that seeing-in is also subject to these laws, and that seeing-in can be understood as a kind of transparency effect. In the process I examine how such a proposal could account for apparent differences between seeing-in and transparency perception – in particular, the fact that we report that picture surfaces seem opaque rather than transparent – and develop a detailed alternative account of the phenomenology of pictures, including not only seeing-in but other forms of pictorial experience.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BH Aesthetics
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Arts
Depositing User: Michael Newall
Date Deposited: 23 Oct 2012 22:49 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:09 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/31873 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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