The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62:2 Spring 2004
JONATHAN COHEN AND AARON MESKIN
On the Epistemic Value of Photographs
The photograph is the only picture that can truly
convey information, even if it is technically faulty
and the object can barely be identified. A painting of
a murder is of no interest whatever; but a photograph
of a murder fascinates everyone.
Gerhard Richter1
Many have held that photographs give us a
firmer epistemic connection to the world than
do other depictive representations.2
To take just
one example, Bazin famously claimed that
“[t]he objective nature of photography confers
on it a quality of credibility absent from all
other picture-making.”3
Unfortunately, while
the intuition in question is widely shared, it has
remained poorly understood. In this paper we
propose to explain the special epistemic status of
photographs. We take as our starting place (in
Section I) Kendall Walton’s startling proposal
that photographs are special because they are
“transparent”4
—that is, that they are special
because, unlike other depictive representations,
they enable us literally to see their depicta.5
Walton’s proposal has not convinced many;
however, it has proven surprisingly difficult to
say just what is wrong about the transparency
thesis. In Sections II through IV we shall rise to
this challenge and show why photographs are
not transparent in Walton’s sense. Finally, in
Sections V through VII we shall propose and
defend a novel diagnosis of what is epistemically
special about photographs.
I. TRANSPARENCY AND PHOTOGRAPHS
In saying that photographs are transparent,
Walton means that visually attending to a photograph
enables us to see something numerically
distinct from that photograph—namely, its
depictum.6
For Walton, photographs are of a
kind with mirrors, telescopes, and microscopes:
they are prosthetic devices that enable us to see
things that we could not see without them.7
Whereas these other prostheses help us to see
things around corners, very distant things, and
very small things, photographs enable us to see
things that are spatiotemporally remote.8
Walton
emphasizes that he means this proposal quite
literally:
I must warn against watering down this suggestion,
against taking it to be a colorful, or exaggerated, or
not quite literal way of making a relatively mundane
point. I am not saying that the person looking at the
dusty photographs has the impression of seeing his
ancestors—in fact, he doesn’t have the impression of
seeing them “in the flesh,” with the unaided eye. I am
not saying that photography supplements vision by
helping us to discover things we can’t discover by
seeing. . . . Nor is my point that what we see—photographs—are
duplicates or doubles or reproductions
of objects, or substitutes or surrogates for them. My
claim is that we see, quite literally, our dead relatives
themselves when we look at photographs of them.9
Why does Walton insist that photographs are
transparent? He believes that there are significant
similarities between the way that photographs
provide visual experiences and the way that
ordinary vision provides visual experiences. For
one, photographic images are counterfactually
dependent on the scenes they represent; for
example, had your ancestor been smiling rather
than frowning, the photograph of her would
have looked different. For another, and unlike
realistic paintings and drawings (where such
counterfactual dependency may hold), this
198 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
counterfactual dependence is not mediated by
the intentional states of any intermediary agents.
As Gregory Currie puts it, there is a “natural
dependence” of photographs on the scenes that
they depict.10
Finally, photographs also preserve
real similarity relations between objects: like
ordinary perception, confusions about photographic
representations (i.e., with respect to what
they depict) tend to be linked to real similarities
between objects.
For Walton, then, photographs are transparent
but paintings are not. Moreover, he argues, this
difference makes an epistemic difference—for
example, it explains why the appearance of
photographs, but not that of paintings, supports
counterfactuals about the appearance of the
depictum. In addition, it explains why we often
treat photographs as evidence (both formal and
informal), whereas we are resistant to treating
paintings and drawings as such.
We believe that Walton’s proposal does highlight
certain important features of photographs
that are worth capturing. However, it has the
significant defect that its core thesis—that of
the transparency of photographs—is (to put it
gently) highly counterintuitive.11
But just what
is wrong with this thesis? In particular, if we are
to deny the thesis, we owe an explanation of
what it is about photographs that makes them
nontransparent, given that there are other visual
prostheses, such as mirrors, microscopes, and
telescopes, that are transparent. This, then, is
Walton’s challenge to those who reject the
transparency thesis: explain the relevant difference
between photographs, on the one hand,
and mirrors (etc.), on the other.
II. EGOCENTRIC SPATIAL BELIEFS
To motivate our own answer to Walton’s challenge,
it will be useful to begin with a proposal
that has been suggested by a number of authors,12
and that turns on an appeal to visually represented
spatial information. The idea here is that
a necessary requirement for x’s seeing y is that
x represents information about the spatial relations
between x and y.13
This requirement, it
has been suggested, effectively draws a line in
the sand between uncontroversial examples of
transparent visual prostheses on the one hand,
and photographs on the other:
With ordinary seeing, we get information about the
spatial and temporal relations between the object
seen and ourselves. . . . Photographs on the other hand
do not convey egocentric information; seeing a
photograph does not tell me anything much about
where the object photographed is in relation to me.14
I submit that we do not speak literally of seeing
objects unless I can perspicuously relate myself
spatially to them—i.e., unless I know (roughly) where
they are in the space I inhabit.15, 16
The most obvious way of understanding this
proposal is as adding a doxastic requirement
(a requirement about what the agent believes or
knows) to the conditions that an agent must
satisfy if she is to count as seeing an object.
Understood in this way, the proposal is that seeing
requires the formation of certain beliefs or
judgments. For example, Currie specifically refers
to the “kinds of judgments we make in cases of
ordinary seeing . . . which have no counterparts
in the case of seeing photographs.”17
Similarly,
Carroll speaks of ordinary seeing as requiring
knowledge about spatial relations.18
Walton has argued that no proposal of this
sort can be successful because the requirement
it places on seeing is too strong.19
To make this
point, Walton imagines two cases in which a
viewer sees a carnation without meeting the
doxastic requirement about spatial information
set out above.
In the first, a viewer receives visual information
about a carnation through a long series of
mirrors; the viewer knows neither how many
mirrors are involved nor how they are oriented,
so he has no idea in what direction the carnation
lies from him.20
Walton claims that this viewer
will lack information about the location of the
carnation in egocentric space; but since all parties
to the discussion concede that mirrors are
transparent, he thinks, the viewer should count
as (prosthetically) seeing the carnation. In the
second case, the carnation is indeed right in
front of me, but there are many mirrors around,
or I suspect that there are. Here, too, Walton
claims that I lack the relevant egocentric spatial
information about the carnation: “I think I may
be seeing the image of a carnation reflected in
one or many mirrors. So I have no idea where
the carnation is in relation to me.”21
Since he
thinks that in both cases the viewer sees the
Cohen and Meskin On the Epistemic Value of Photographs 199
carnation, even though he lacks information
about its egocentric location, Walton concludes
that possession of that information about the
carnation is not necessary for seeing it.22
While these cases pose serious problems for
Currie and Carroll, we do not believe that they
settle the issue against the doxastic proposal by
themselves. For one thing, although Currie is
comfortable denying that seeing takes place in
the sequence of mirrors case23
—and would
seem forced to take the same position about
Walton’s second case—an alternative answer
would be to weaken the doxastic requirement so
as to evade the case. For example, one might
hold that seeing requires not (as before) holding
a belief about the egocentric location of the
object, but merely the belief that the object is in
the same general space as oneself. On a weakened
doxastic theory of this sort, it is plausible
that the agent in both of Walton’s cases manages
to see, since, plausibly, such very minimal
belief is present in these cases. Unfortunately,
we anticipate that the debate would become
stymied if carried on in this fashion: Walton
would respond with further counterexamples to
the weakened doxastic requirement, which
could then be used to motivate still weaker versions
of the doxastic requirement, at which
point Walton would concoct yet stranger counterexamples,
and so on. We believe that a cycle
of counterexamples and responses of this kind is
unlikely to convince anyone of anything. However,
we propose to sidestep these difficulties:
as we shall argue below, there are independent
(and, we believe, more compelling) reasons for
doubting that any doxastic solution can succeed.
It is to these reasons that we now turn.
III. TOWARD A NONDOXASTIC SOLUTION
We are convinced that the contemplated requirement
on seeing proposed by Currie and Carroll
is too strong. However, we believe that a proper
appreciation of the reasons for the failure of
this requirement points the way toward a more
successful answer to Walton’s challenge.
Rather than weakening the doxastic requirement,
we propose to drop it altogether, while
retaining Currie’s and Carroll’s insights that
spatial information is the key to resisting
transparency.
The requirement at issue (on the doxastic
reading considered so far) concerns what subjects
must believe in order to count as seeing an
object. Walton’s cases are designed to bring out
the failure of such a doxastic requirement on
object-seeing by pointing out that beliefs can be
undermined too easily—namely, beliefs can be
undermined in ways that do not undermine seeing.
For example, virtually any of my beliefs can
be undermined by the onset of a sufficiently
far-reaching skepticism. But, while it is plausible
that the onset of skeptical doubt might erode
a subject’s belief that she sees a carnation (or
her belief that she is within four feet of a carnation,
or even her belief that she is somewhere
near a carnation), presumably we do not want to
say that it would (by itself) prevent her from
seeing a carnation that is right in front of her
face. This is why we are inclined to say of Walton’s
second case, wherein the subject merely
doubts that she lacks egocentric information,
that the subject nonetheless sees the carnation.
Similarly, the onset of confusion may undermine
a subject’s belief that she sees (or any of
her other beliefs, for that matter), but it is
implausible that such confusion should (by
itself) vitiate her capacity to see. This is why we
are inclined to say of Walton’s first case,
wherein the intervention of a series of mirrors at
unknown angles makes the subject confused
about the egocentric location of the carnation,
that the subject continues to see the carnation.24
These reflections suggest to us that no doxastic
condition on object-seeing will suffice to distinguish
prosthetic seeing through mirrors from
(putative) prosthetic seeing through photographs.
That is, object-seeing cannot involve the requirement
that the subject believe any particular content,
such as content about the egocentric location
of particulars. Belief is fragile with respect to
perturbations that leave seeing intact, so no
doxastic state can be necessary for seeing.25
(A further reason for thinking that a doxastic
requirement on object-seeing is too strong
involves the possibility of object-seeing by
nonhuman animals and neonate human beings.
For one thing, while many writers have felt
uncomfortable attributing doxastic states to nonhuman
animals and human neonates, they have
generally been less reluctant to claim that such
creatures are incapable of object-seeing; but if
object-seeing requires any doxastic state, then the
200 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
latter claim follows from the denial of doxastic
states in nonhuman animals and human neonates.
For another, the question whether all seeing animals
are cognizing animals strikes us as broadly
empirical; as such, it strikes us as inappropriate as
a matter of methodology to allow this question to
be settled as a consequence of the requirements
on object-seeing imposed from the armchair.)
What then explains the continued appeal of
placing a doxastic condition on seeing? Like
Fred Dretske, who has also argued for a nondoxastic
account of seeing,26
we are inclined to
apportion blame to a number of sources. Among
these, Dretske points to the “utterance implications”
of ordinary statements about seeing. For
example, since we do not ordinarily say that we
see (or have seen) an object unless we have
identified the object that we see, talk about seeing
often creates the conversational implicature
that we hold identificatory beliefs about the
seen object. Dretske also notes that ordinary
instances of object-seeing typically lead us to
form beliefs about seen objects, and, in particular,
we ordinarily form beliefs about their egocentric
locations. Finally, we suggest that the appeal
of doxastic accounts of object-seeing may be
due, in part, to running together the conditions
required for seeing, on the one hand, and the
conditions that are required for knowing that
one sees, on the other. It is plausible that knowing
that one sees an object requires that one
have beliefs about the egocentric location of the
object. But since one can see without knowing
that one sees, this observation does not motivate
a doxastic condition on mere object-seeing.
IV. EGOCENTRIC SPATIAL INFORMATION
The moral we have drawn so far is that a successful
answer to Walton’s challenge cannot
involve a doxastic requirement on object-seeing.
On the other hand, we do not believe that photographs
are transparent, and we are sympathetic
to the general idea of exploiting egocentric spatial
information to distinguish between genuine
and nongenuine cases of prosthetic seeing. Our
task, then, will be to find a way of exploiting
egocentric spatial information that does not
place doxastic requirements on seeing, and
thereby avoids the problems that plague the variants
examined so far.
The doxastic baggage we are hoping to avoid
appeared in other accounts because they understood
the notion of (egocentric spatial) information
doxastically—namely, in terms of the beliefs or
knowledge produced in would-be seers. We
propose to do without doxastic elements by
construing the notion of (egocentric spatial)
information nondoxastically. In particular, we
propose to rely here on an understanding of
information originally due to Shannon and
Weaver, and that was first put to philosophical
use (as far as we know) by Dretske in Knowledge
and the Flow of Information.27
To a first approximation, Dretske understands
information-carrying as a kind of (objective)
probabilistic, counterfactual-supporting connection
between independent variables. Thus, for
example, the state of the room’s thermometer
carries information about the temperature in the
room insofar as there is an objective probabilistic
connection between the two: the probability of
the room temperature’s being 72°F conditional on
the thermometer’s reading 72°F is much higher
than the probability of the room temperature’s
being 72°F conditional on the thermometer’s
not reading 72°F (assuming the thermometer is
in good working order, is calibrated, is free
from outside influence, and so on). And this
probabilistic relationship is made evident by
counterfactuals relating the room temperature
and the thermometer’s state; namely, if the
temperature of the room were different then the
thermometer’s reading would be different (again,
assuming ideal conditions). Note that there is no
such probabilistic link between the state of the
thermometer and the temperature of a second
room, even if the temperature of this second
room is also 72°F; for here the correlation is
accidental—not probabilistically linked, and not
counterfactual supporting. (Of course, the correlation
is not accidental if the temperature in
the second room is probabilistically related to
the temperature in the first room—say, by thermal
connections between the two rooms or
something; but in that case there will also be an
informational link between its temperature and
the state of the thermometer.) Again, evidence
for this claim about information relations comes
from consideration of counterfactuals; namely,
it is not the case that if the temperature in the
second room were to change, the thermometer
reading would change.28
Cohen and Meskin On the Epistemic Value of Photographs 201
Significantly, the claim that x carries information
about y is a claim about an objective
probabilistic link between the two, and as such its
truth is independent of anyone’s doxastic attitudes
about the two.29
In the context of the problems
examined in Section III, such a nondoxastic
understanding of information—according to which
information-carrying is independent of any subject’s
beliefs about whether it is carried—seems
to be just what we need to move forward. We
propose to use this nondoxastic account of information
to formulate a nondoxastic requirement
on object-seeing. We believe that this will enable
us to draw the desired distinction between
ordinary and prosthetic seeing on the one hand,
and photography on the other.
Here, then, is our proposed answer to Walton’s
challenge. We propose that neither belief nor
knowledge about the egocentric spatial location
of an object is a necessary condition for seeing
it, but instead that what is essential is that the
relevant visual experience is produced by a
process that carries egocentric spatial information
about the object. That is, x sees y through a
visual process z only if z carries information
about the egocentric location of y with respect
to x. According to us, mirrors are transparent in
Walton’s sense because mirrors carry egocentric
spatial information about objects. In contrast,
our view secures the desired conclusion that
photography is not transparent, insofar as the
visual process of looking at photographs fails to
carry egocentric spatial information about their
depicta. For there is no probabilistic relationship
between the photographic image and the egocentric
location of the depictum: as I move around the
world with the photograph, the egocentric location
of the depictum changes, but the photographic
image does not.
Some comments are in order.
1. We are not claiming that carrying information
about egocentric location of perceived objects
is sufficient for seeing. Clearly it is not, and
our account reflects this.
2. Information-carrying is, in the first instance,
defined for token events: token x carries
information about token y just in case there
is an appropriate objective probabilistic link
between x and y. Our requirement on object
perception, in contrast, talks about the information
carried by a visual process type—
appropriately, since the challenge we take
ourselves to be answering is a challenge to
mark distinctions among various process
types (not tokens). We intend the appeal to
the information carried by process types as a
generalization of the more basic informational
relation defined for token events. Namely,
we can say that a process type carries the
information of a certain kind just in case the
process’s tokens are typically tokens that
carry information of that kind. Indeed, we
can construe this feature of processes as a
disposition: processes that carry information
of a certain kind are disposed to have tokens
that carry information of that kind.
3. Since, as just noted, the notion of informationcarrying
for process types is construed
dispositionally, we can allow that, even for a
process type that carries information about
the egocentric location of objects, there may
be individual tokens of the type that fail to
carry information about the egocentric location
of objects represented. That is to say,
information-carrying processes can fail to
carry information in individual cases without
thereby ceasing to be information-carrying
processes.
4. Why do we formulate our condition on
object-seeing in terms of egocentric location
(i.e., location with respect to the viewer) rather
than absolute location or allocentric location
(i.e., location with respect to a frame of
reference independent of the viewer)? Mainly
because it enables us to draw the distinctions
we need to draw while avoiding a host of
thorny issues.
For example, suppose someone wants to
individuate photographs by the absolute or
allocentric locations of their depicta. Then if the
counterfactuals are read de dicto, photographs
will, trivially, carry information about the allocentric
location of their depicta (because the
relevant counterfactuals will turn out to be
vacuously true). But that would mean that a
requirement stated in terms of absolute or allocentric
locational information will not distinguish
between the visual process of looking at
photographs, on the one hand, and uncontroversial
cases of prosthetic or nonprosthetic
vision on the other. We suppose we could
defend an allocentric/absolute formulation of
our requirement if we were willing to rule out
202 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
the individuative standard at issue or plump
for a de re reading of the counterfactuals, but
we would prefer not to take sides about such
tendentious issues if we can avoid it. In contrast
(however you read the counterfactuals),
individuating photographs by the allocentric
location of their depicta does not make it the
case that photographs carry information about
the egocentric location of their depicta.30
Furthermore, the idea of individuating photographs
by the egocentric location of their
depicta is implausible on its face—it is hard
to accept that walking across the room with
the photograph of your grandmother amounts
to replacing the old photograph with a new
one. Consequently, formulating our requirement
in terms of egocentric locational information
allows us to distinguish between
photographs and visual prosthetics without
having to make controversial claims about
the individuation of photographs and the
interpretation of counterfactuals.
5. Our account does not place a doxastic requirement
on seeing. We hold that what is essential
to seeing is that the relevant visual experience
is produced by a process that carries information
about the egocentric spatial information
of the perceived object. On our account,
knowledge—or even mere belief—about the
location of the object is not necessary for
seeing. For the activity of information-carrying
processes need not result in beliefs (for
example, such processes may be at work in
the case of the thoroughgoing skeptic,
although in her case they would fail to result
in beliefs; this is in accord with our insistence
in Section III that the onset of skeptical
doubt should not erode the capacity for
object-seeing). For this reason, our account
evades the problem pressed against other
answers to Walton in Section III.
6. Walton complains that the doxastic proposal
put forth by Currie and Carroll amounts to
“ad hoc linguistic legislation,”31
and that such
disputes over terminology have no philosophical
interest. Are we, in putting forward
our own anti-transparency proposal, guilty
of the same sin?
We hope not. Linguistic usage of ‘sees’ is
eclectic, and obviously occurs (appropriately)
in cases where object-seeing is not at
issue (e.g., when someone says “I see a horse
in the clouds”; cf. Dretske, Seeing and
Knowing). As such, we agree with Walton
that there is no point in arguing over who
gets to keep the word. On the other hand, we
take it that there is philosophical point to
“bring[ing] out the important similarities and
differences. . . especially the kinship which
seeing a photograph of something bears to
other ways of seeing it, and seeing a painting
of it does not.”32
We contend that our own
proposal attains this goal more successfully
than does the transparency thesis. For while
both accounts bring out similarities between
object-seeing and the ways in which we perceptually
interact with photographs and
other depictive representations, our account
is more successful than Walton’s in bringing
out differences between the cases—differences
whose salience and importance is
revealed by the extent to which most readers
(including Walton himself; see note 11)
regard Walton’s proposal as counterintuitive.
To see that our proposal is extensionally correct,
let us examine a few cases. We begin by
looking at some cases where it is clear that a
visual process does underwrite object-seeing.
We take it as fairly obvious that our view
allows for ordinary (nonprosthetic) seeing and
uncontroversial cases of seeing by visual
prostheses. Ordinary seeing carries information
about the egocentric location of objects (although
it is, of course, subject to failures of informationcarrying
in individual cases). In addition, our
proposal allows for uncontroversial cases of
prosthetic vision involving eyeglasses, binoculars,
telescopes, and periscopes. All of these
prostheses carry information about the egocentric
location of objects perceived (although they
may fail in certain circumstances). Evidence of
this informational link can be found in various
counterfactuals that hold true about these processes;
in each case, if one were to change the
egocentric location of the objects seen, one
would be presented with a different visual
image.33
For the same reason, our view allows
for seeing through a single mirror. Moreover,
the condition we propose creates no problem for
saying that I see in the case in which I am
surrounded by many mirrors (or merely suspect
that I am). Although this situation might undercut
my belief that I am seeing, and hence my
Cohen and Meskin On the Epistemic Value of Photographs 203
ability to know that I see, this cannot undercut
the mirror’s capacity to carry information about
the egocentric location of the carnation. Finally,
the same holds true regarding a long sequence
of mirrors. In all of these cases, change in an
object’s egocentric location would bring about
change in the (mirror-produced) image.
What about cases in which a visual process
does not underwrite object-seeing? As mentioned
above, our proposal provides a principled
basis for rejecting photographic transparency.
That is, it implies that photographs and films do
not allow us to see the objects they depict. For,
as we have maintained, visual processes involving
photographs and film fail to carry egocentric
spatial information about their depicta (although
they do carry some sorts of information about
their depicta): there is no probabilistic relationship
between the photographic/film image, on
the one hand, and the egocentric location of the
depictum, on the other. Evidence of the lack of
this probabilistic relation is, as usual, to be
found by consideration of the counterfactuals
linking the two. It is not the case that if our
egocentric location with respect to the objects
were to change, the photographic image would
change. For one can walk around with a photograph—changing
one’s location with respect to
the depictum—without a concomitant change in
the photographic image.
The same seems to be true of broadcast and
live-feed video. Broadcast video (whether broadcast
live or from a prerecorded source) can be
viewed in many different absolute locations;
hence the (fixed) depictum can be in any of
many different egocentric locations with respect
to the viewer without any change in the video
image. This shows that broadcast video fails to
carry information about the egocentric location
of the depictum, hence does not permit prosthetic
object-seeing. On the other hand, suppose
there is a direct video feed (not a broadcast signal)
directly connected to a monitor at only one
location. If the monitor should happen to
remain in one place, there may very well be a de
facto correlation between the video image and
the egocentric location of the depictum. But this
correlation fails to rise to the level of an informational
link, as can be seen by consideration
of the relevant counterfactual: if, contrary to
fact, there were a modification in the egocentric
location of the depictum (say, if, contrary to
fact, someone bought a longer video cable and
moved the monitor by twenty feet), the video
image would remain unchanged. Here, too, then,
the process type fails to carry information about
the egocentric location of the depictum, so there
is no object-seeing.34
What about painting and drawing done in
realist (or even photo-realist) style? Consider
cases in which a painter strives to depict an
actual person or scene accurately. In these
cases, counterfactual dependence and the preservation
of real similarity relations may be
present. In addition, such paintings may carry a
great deal of information about their subjects.
But visual processes involving these paintings
(like photographs) fail to carry egocentric spatial
information about the objects they depict.
Again, one can move about with the painting—
thereby changing one’s egocentric location with
respect to the objects that it depicts—without
changing the image. Hence, seeing the depicted
objects is precluded (as desired).
V. THE EPISTEMIC VALUE OF PHOTOGRAPHS
So far we have been reacting against the transparency
thesis—we have taken it as our goal to
show why photographs are not transparent.
However, our account of what separates genuine
cases of prosthetic perception from photographs
suggests what seems to us a new and
better way of addressing one of the original
questions to which transparency was proposed
as an answer: Why are photographs epistemically
special in a way that other sorts of depictive
representations are not? (Why, for example, do
photographs but not paintings carry evidentiary
weight?) This question will be our focus in what
follows.
To answer it in a way that connects with what
we have said so far about visual process types,
we need to extend our information-related
terminology once again so that it will apply to
depictive representation types. Therefore, we
shall say that a type T of depictive representation
carries information of a certain kind if and
only if the type of visual process involving
looking at T-tokens carries information of that
kind. Likewise, we can define a notion of information-carrying
for token visual representations:
a token t carries information of a certain
204 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
kind just in case the visual process token
involving looking at t carries information of that
kind. Like the notion of information-carrying
defined for visual process types above, the
notion of information-carrying for depictive
representation types is dispositional; hence, a
type T can carry information of some kind
despite occasional failures to carry information
of that kind by isolated T-tokens.
With this terminology in hand, we propose
that part of what makes photographs epistemically
special is this: they are information carriers
whose conditions of employment are easier to
satisfy than other information carriers. To see
what we mean by this, consider these two kinds
of information that a representation (or
representation-type) can carry about its representational
object:
(i) information about the visually accessible
properties of the representational object, and
(ii) information about the egocentric location of
the representational object.35
For many ordinary cases these two sorts of
information-carrying capacities coincide: things
that carry type (i) information also carry type
(ii) information. Even more than this, it seems
that things typically have their capacity to carry
type (i) information only insofar as they have a
concomitant capacity to carry type (ii) information
as well. Thus, for example, ordinary, nonprosthetic
vision carries both type (i) and type
(ii) information, and would not carry type (i)
information if it did not also carry type (ii)
information. Similarly, a mirror carries type (i)
and type (ii) information about the carnation,
but it would not carry type (i) information about
the carnation if it were not spatially related to
the carnation and the viewer in such a way that
it also carries type (ii) information.
Ordinarily, then, transmission of type (i)
information occurs only when transmission of
type (ii) information occurs as well. However,
we believe, there are exceptions to this generalization;
namely, for reasons given in Section
IV, we believe that photographs convey type (i)
information without conveying type (ii) information.
To coin a term, we shall refer to anything
that carries type (i) information without
carrying type (ii) information as a spatially
agnostic informant. We propose to explain the
special epistemic features of photographs
(partly) in terms of their being spatially agnostic
informants.
Why do we believe that this fact about photographs
has interesting epistemic consequences?
First, insofar as information about visually
accessible properties is epistemically useful, it
seems clear that anything that carries information
of type (i) has nontrivial epistemic value.
Photographs have an epistemic value that paintings
and other sorts of depictive representations
lack since the former carry type (i) information
while the latter do not. (Our claim here is that
the criterion in play can distinguish between
photographs and paintings qua types of depictive
representations; we do not mean to deny
that there are token paintings that carry information
of type (i). More on this point below.)
However, our suggestion is that, insofar as
they are spatially agnostic informants, photographs
have an epistemic value not possessed
by other type (i) information carriers. As noted,
most things that carry type (i) information are
unavailable except where they also carry type
(ii) information. But this is to say that such
sources of type (i) information come with
strings attached. In particular, they do not serve
as sources of type (i) information in those cases
where they fail to provide type (ii) information.
And, as it happens, sometimes we are not
situated in a way that allows for the provision of
type (ii) information at all, but where it nonetheless
serves our needs to have type (i) information.
It is in these cases that photographs
hold a special epistemic value. Photographs are
epistemically valuable because they constitute a
relatively undemanding source of information
about the visually accessible properties of
objects—one that works even when we lack
information about egocentric location.
Insofar as tools with relatively undemanding
conditions of employment are valuable, the fact
that photographs are spatially agnostic informants
explains why they are valuable in ways that
even other information carriers are not.36
Of
course, this is not to say that photographs are
epistemically superior to other sources of type
(i) information along every dimension of evaluation;
in particular, one dimension along which
the former are epistemically inferior to the latter
is that, precisely because of their spatial agnosticism,
photographs are informationally poorer
Cohen and Meskin On the Epistemic Value of Photographs 205
than other sources of type (i) information. The
special epistemic value of photographs, we claim,
is pragmatic: they do their epistemic job of conveying
type (i) information in situations where
other candidates for the job are unavailable.37
VI. TOKENS, TYPES, AND EVIDENTIARY STATUS
What we have said in Section V is intended to
explain why photographs (qua type) enjoy an
epistemic status that is in some ways superior both
to other types of depictive representations (say,
paintings) and other types of carriers of type (i)
information (say, mirrors). But, of course, some
tokens of other representation types—some
realistic portrait paintings and some courtroom
illustrations, for example—are also spatially
agnostic informants;38
thus, if what we have
said on behalf of photographs is correct, these
nonphotographic tokens should hold the same
special epistemic status. On the other hand, this
seems counterintuitive, insofar as we do not
accord the same epistemic status to realistic
portrait paintings that we accord to photographs.
What has gone wrong?
The first point to make in connection with
this is that, taken as particulars, these tokens
pose no threat to the thesis about what makes
photographs special: our thesis is intended to
mark out what is special about photographs qua
type, and this is compatible with extending the
same status to individual tokens of other types.
However, the possibility of gathering these
particulars into a type suggests an objection to
our view, and a full explanation of the epistemic
status of photographs demands an answer to this
objection. Consider the type consisting of token
depictive representations that are spatially
agnostic informants but are not photographs. On
our own admission, this type is nonempty.
Moreover, there are several interesting and nonempty
subtypes of this type, including, for
example, the type of veridical portrait paintings.
These types are like the type of photographs in
that their members are spatially agnostic
informants. Yet we take it that there is an
important epistemic difference between these
types and the type of photographs: it seems that
instances of the former types do not command
assent in the way that photographs do (for
example, they are not accorded the same evidentiary
weight that is accorded to photographs;
but see below for exceptions to this claim). This
shows that more remains to be said.
We propose to explain the relevant epistemic
difference between photographs, on the one
hand, and tokens of (most) other types of
spatially agnostic informants, on the other, by
holding that the former type is salient for subjects
in a sense that these other types are not. By
this we mean that subjects visually experiencing
a token photograph typically categorize that
token as an instance of the type of photographs
(typically on the strength of their visual experience
of the token and background knowledge
about how photographs visually appear, although
nothing we shall say hangs on this). In contrast,
we claim, subjects visually experiencing a token
veridical portrait painting typically do not categorize
that token as an instance of the type of
veridical portrait paintings; rather, unless they
have some special knowledge about the conditions
under which the work was made, they are
likely to categorize a token of this type as an
instance of the type of paintings, or perhaps an
instance of the type of portrait paintings.39
Moreover, we contend, subjects (tacitly) hold
relevant background beliefs about the types to
which they assign these works.40
Namely, they
believe that the type to which token photographs
are assigned (namely, the type of photographs)
is a type whose members carry type (i) information.
In contrast, they believe that the type to
which token veridical portrait paintings are
assigned (namely, the type of paintings, or the
type of portrait paintings) is a type whose
members may fail to carry type (i) information.
These background beliefs, we think, explain
why subjects accord a different evidentiary
status to token photographs and token portrait
paintings. Namely, as a result of the beliefs in
question, subjects believe that a currently seen
token photograph (like other tokens of the type
of photographs) is likely to carry type (i) information.
In contrast, subjects will believe that a
currently seen token veridical portrait painting
(like other tokens of the type of portrait paintings)
may fail to carry type (i) information.41
But, plausibly, a subject will take a depictive
representation as evidence for a proposition p
only if she believes that it (or its type—see
point 2 in the itemized list in Section IV) carries
the information that p. Consequently, subjects
206 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
will take photographs as evidence for propositions
about the visually accessible properties of
their representational objects, but will not
extend this evidentiary status to veridical portrait
paintings (in the absence of independent
knowledge about their veracity).
It is worth noticing, at this point, that what
we have said about the type of photographs
plausibly extends to some other types of depictive
representations as well. For example, it
may well be that ornithological illustrations
carry information about the visually accessible
properties of our avian friends. Moreover, it is
plausible that this is a salient type for many
typical viewers of such depictions. Their distinctive
style, and the contexts in which they are
typically presented, make it the case that token
ornithological illustrations are typically categorized
as tokens of the type of ornithological
illustrations rather than simply as tokens of the
type of drawings. In addition, it is plausible that
subjects typically, (and tacitly) hold the background
belief that tokens of this type provide
type (i) information. If this is right, then the
type of ornithological illustrations (and, potentially,
other types as well) would seem to be on
all fours with the type of photographs. And this
is not implausible; we are prepared to accept
that ornithological illustrations carry the sort of
evidentiary weight at issue (in the bird-watching
and bird-identifying contexts in which the illustrations
in question are typically used).42, 43
VII. THE CONTINGENCY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC
PECULIARITY
In Sections V through VI we have argued that
there are important epistemic differences between
the class of photographs and other classes of
depictive representations. However, we believe
that these differences between photography and
other forms of depictive representation are contingent,
rooted in the history of the uses of these
various media, and not solely in their material
natures.
Before we give our reason for believing this
claim, we want to consider another reason that
might be advanced in favor of the same conclusion,
but that we take not to be convincing. The
thought here starts from the observation that, on
our account, the epistemic peculiarity of photographs
is rooted in their being spatially agnostic
informants. But some have alleged that some
photograph tokens do, under certain circumstances,
provide type (ii) information. For
example, Currie writes that “photographs can
serve, along with information from other sources,
in an inference to egocentric information. If I
know where and when the shot was taken, and
where I am now (and what the time is now), I
may infer that the scene depicted stands in a
certain spatiotemporal relation to my current
time slice.”44
If Currie is right about this, then it
follows that spatial agnosticism (and hence
whatever epistemic peculiarity of photographs
that results from their spatial agnosticism) is a
merely contingent feature of photographs. However,
this view seems to us to be mistaken. For,
at least given our way of thinking about information,
photographs do not carry type (ii) information
in Currie’s cases (despite any inferences
that may be drawn from them).45
For this reason,
we are unpersuaded by the line of thought under
consideration.46
For all that, we do believe that the epistemic
peculiarity of photographs is contingent. To see
why, recall that our account of the epistemic
differences between photographs and other
spatially agnostic depictive representations rests
(in part) on claims about the relative salience of
various representational types and the standard
background beliefs associated with these. We
have claimed that the type of photographs is
salient in a way that the type of veridical
portrait paintings is not (i.e., photograph tokens
are typically categorized as photographs, while
veridical portrait paintings are categorized
merely as paintings or portrait paintings). Moreover,
it is plausible that the folk theory of photography
assumes that photographs are sources
of visual information, while our background
beliefs about paintings differ—we do not expect
them to be sources of information. But both
the saliency ordering among representational
types and the generally-held background beliefs
about these types are, presumably, contingent;
namely, they are contingent on facts about both
the history of representational practices and our
perceptual/cognitive psychology. That is, if
these facts had been different, the evidential
status of photographs vis-à-vis that of paintings
(for example) might have been different as
well.47
Cohen and Meskin On the Epistemic Value of Photographs 207
VIII. CONCLUSION
In this paper we have made a number of claims
about the epistemic status of photographs. First,
we have claimed, pace Walton, that photographs
are not transparent because, unlike mirrors,
telescopes, and the like, they are spatially agnostic
informants. However, we suggest, the type of
photographs is epistemically superior to the
type of drawings in that instances of the former
but not the latter type provide type (i) information
about their depicta. Moreover, the type of
photographs has (and, consequently, tokens of
that type have) an evidentiary status superior to
the type of portrait paintings (and its instances)
and even the type of veridical portrait paintings
(and its instances) because of differences in the
salience of these types for subjects and their
background beliefs about these types. On the
other hand, the same sort of factors explain why
the special evidentiary status of photographs
also extends to some subcategories of veridical
nonphotographic depictions in some settings.
Finally, we claim, the epistemic differences
between photography and other depictive representations
are based on contingent rather than
necessary features of these representational types.48
JONATHAN COHEN
Department of Philosophy
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, California 92093
INTERNET: joncohen@aardvark.ucsd.edu
AARON MESKIN
Department of Philosophy
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas 79409
INTERNET: aaron.meskin@ttu.edu
1. Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting:
Writings and Interviews 1962–1993, ed. H. U. Obrist (MIT
Press, 1995).
2. Some of the material in this paper appeared (in an earlier
version) in a shorter paper titled “Photographs Are Not
Transparent” that we presented at the 2003 Pacific Division
meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics. This work
is fully collaborative; the authors are listed alphabetically.
3. A. Bazin, What Is Cinema? trans. Hugh Gray (University
of California Press, 1967), p. 14.
4. Kendall Walton, “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature
of Photographs,” Critical Inquiry 11 (1984): 246–276.
5. To be fair, Walton uses the transparency thesis to
explain more than just the epistemic value of photographs.
That said, this is clearly one of the important explanatory
targets that he uses to motivate the proposal.
6. Cinematographic and video depictions also count as
transparent on Walton’s account; the intended contrast is
with painting and drawing, which he takes to be nontransparent.
Note that Walton does not claim that the depictum is
the only thing we see when we look at a photograph; in
particular, he does not deny that we see the photograph in
addition to its depictum. Indeed, he insists that it is in virtue
of seeing the photograph that we see its depictum. Hence,
on this view, transparency does not entail invisibility.
7. Compare David Lewis, “Veridical Hallucination and
Prosthetic Vision,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 58
(1980): 273–286.
8. Note that photographs are not unique among these
visual prostheses in allowing for a specifically temporal
separation between viewer and the object seen: we speak
unhesitatingly of seeing a stellar explosion through a telescope,
even if the explosion transpired millions of years
before the viewer existed.
9. Walton, “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of
Photographic Realism,” pp. 251–252; emphasis in original.
10. Gregory Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy,
and Cognitive Science (Cambridge University Press, 1995),
p. 55.
11. We suspect even Walton would concede this much—
this would explain why he felt the need to warn against
taking the thesis nonliterally. Of course, these sorts of intuitions
are not infallible, so it is open to one to respond by
rejecting them. On the other hand, general canons of
rational conservatism counsel against rejecting such intuitions
(especially deeply held ones) when less revisionary
alternatives are available. Therefore, we propose to take the
intuitions seriously and attempt to explain them as reasonably
as we can. This policy applies to both the intuition that
photographs provide a special epistemic connection to the
world (one that Walton accepts) and the anti-transparency
intuition (one that Walton rejects even while appearing to
recognize its force), inter alia.
12. Noël Carroll, “Towards an Ontology of the Moving
Image,” in Philosophy and Film, ed. C. A. Freeland and
T. E. Wartenberg (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 68–85
and Theorizing the Moving Image (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), pp. 62–63; Gregory Currie,
“Photography, Painting, and Perception,” The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (1991): 23–29, and Image
and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science; and
Nigel Warburton, “Seeing through ‘Seeing Through Photographs,’”
Ratio 1 (1988): 64–74.
13. Some articulations of this point (e.g., that in Currie,
Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science,
p. 66) put the point in terms of spatiotemporal relations. We
prefer to express the point in terms of spatial relations in the
context of an attempt to exclude photographs because,
arguably, when x looks at time t at a photograph of y, x (or
x’s visual system) represents the information that y existed
before time t. We do not see any nonstipulative reason for
refusing to count this as information about the spatiotemporal
relation between the viewer and the depictum, but it does
208 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
not seem reasonable to count it as information about the
spatial relation between the viewer and the depictum.
14. Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and
Cognitive Science, p. 66.
15. Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image, p. 62.
16. Currie and Carroll claim that the spatial requirement
in question is a necessary condition for prosthetic seeing,
not that it is a sufficient condition. This is all to the good,
since it is not a sufficient condition: if I am looking straight
down at my desk, wearing blinders, and you hand me written
descriptions of the spatial relations that obtain between me
and objects in my vicinity, then I may know where these
objects are in relation to me, but presumably I am not (or
not literally) seeing these objects prosthetically (using you
as my prosthetic).
17. Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and
Cognitive Science, p. 66.
18. We find the doxastic construal the most straightforward
reading of Currie and Carroll. We shall be arguing
below that no such doxastic proposal can succeed as an
answer to Walton, and offering a nondoxastic proposal in its
stead. However, if Currie and Carroll want to insist that they
originally intended a nondoxastic view, and that our proposal
is a mere extension of what they had in mind all along,
that’s all right with us too.
19. Kendall Walton, “On Pictures and Photographs: Objections
Answered,” in Film Theory and Philosophy, ed. R. Allen
and M. Smith (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 60–75.
20. Walton, “On Pictures and Photographs: Objections
Answered,” p. 70.
21. Ibid.
22. We can imagine a defender of the egocentric information
requirement who would allow that, after the number
of intervening mirrors between the subject and the carnation
gets sufficiently large—say, greater than n, the subject
ceases to see the carnation. Therefore, she might suggest,
the case involving n+1 mirrors is not a case where the subject
sees without egocentric spatial information, hence not a
counterexample to the requirement she is defending. But we
find this response unconvincing. For as Walton’s second
case shows, the point does not turn on assuming large numbers
of mirrors are involved. Therefore, the point goes
through even if we concede the objection.
23. Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and
Cognitive Science, p. 70.
24. The intuitions about Walton’s specific cases adduced
here are certainly not beyond dispute, especially if the doxastic
requirement under discussion is weakened in the way
imagined at the end of Section II. But the general moral we
are drawing stands, independently of verdicts about these
specific cases: mere confusion can undermine belief but
cannot undermine seeing.
25. Arguably there is a nondoxastic reading of at least
Carroll’s version of the spatiotemporal information proposal.
For, at times, Carroll seems to be suggesting that the relevant
difference between ordinary seeing and photographic
looking has to do with their relation to our physical abilities:
I can “orient my body” spatially to what I see, either with
the naked eye or through a telescope or microscope.
But when I see a photograph I cannot orient my body to
the photographed objects. The space of the objects is
“disconnected phenomenologically from the space I live
in.” (Carroll, “Towards an Ontology of the Moving
Image,” p. 71)
If the “orientability requirement” Carroll suggests here is
understood as not placing doxastic requirements on wouldbe
seers, then it would evade the problem we have been discussing.
However, this requirement, too, seems too strong,
since it would inappropriately follow from the requirement
(on its most straightforward reading) that organisms incapable
of moving their bodies (e.g., normal human victims of
paralysis) cannot see any objects.
26. Fred I. Dretske, Seeing and Knowing (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1969). See also Fred I. Dretske,
“Simple Seeing,” in Body, Mind, and Method: Essays in
Honor of Virgil C. Aldrich, ed. D. F. Gustafson and B. L.
Tapscott (Boston: Reidel, 1979), pp. 1–15. Indeed, in these
works Dretske makes points similar to those we are urging
against doxastic accounts. However, the view of nonepistemic
seeing defended in Seeing and Knowing (according to
which “S seesn D=D is visually differentiated from its
immediate environment by S” [p. 20]) plausibly entails that
we see objects by means of photographs of them. If so, then
Dretske’s view also underwrites the transparency thesis.
Needless to say, we do not accept this (nondoxastic)
account of object-seeing either.
27. Fred I. Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information
(MIT Press, 1981).
28. It is worth mentioning, only so that we can set aside,
two concerns about the metaphysics of information. First, as
Barry Loewer (Loewer, “From Information to Intentionality,”
Synthese 70 [1987]: 287–317) points out, it is not obvious
how to understand the objective conditional probabilities
(including objective conditional probabilities for unrepeatable
token events) undergirding Dretske’s notion of information:
standard proposals are inapplicable, and Dretske
does not offer anything in their place. We have nothing to
say about this problem. Second, in appealing to certain
counterfactuals as evidence for informational relations, we
are not committed to the view that informational relations
are constituted by the holding of such counterfactuals per se.
We are only committed to the weaker claim that the counterfactuals
provide evidence for the informational relations.
29. Famously, Dretske appeals to this understanding of
information, in part, as part of an account of knowledge and
justification. Since information-carrying is nondoxastic in
the sense explained, it turns out that, on Dretske’s account, a
subject can know that p (be justified in believing that p) so
long as she satisfies the conditions (including informational
conditions) even if she fails to believe that she satisfies
them. In the standard jargon, this means that Dretske’s
account of knowledge and justification is externalist rather
than internalist (cf. L. Bonjour, “Externalism/Internalism,”
in A Companion to Epistemology, ed. J. Dancy and E. Sosa
[Blackwell, 1992], p. 132). In helping ourselves to the Dretskean
understanding of information in the service of a proposal
about object-seeing, we are not thereby signing on to
Dretske’s epistemology, and therefore do not take on the
burdens of defending Dretske’s conception of knowledge or
justification.
30. Reading the counterfactual de dicto, it is not the case
that if the depictum were to change its egocentric location
then the image would change, because such a change is only
possible if the viewer moves. On a de re reading, the
Cohen and Meskin On the Epistemic Value of Photographs 209
counterfactual fails as well: it is not the case that if
Grandma were to change her egocentric location then the
image would change.
31. Walton, “On Pictures and Photographs: Objections
Answered,” p. 71.
32. Ibid.
33. Indeed, it is critical to the standard use of these tools
that they carry information about egocentric location. Consider,
for example, binoculars and periscopes: we do not
simply want to find out what the enemy soldier and enemy
battleship look like, we also want to know where they are in
relation to us.
34. Objection: What was just said about live-feed video
plausibly extends to telescopes (etc.), contrary to our claim
that these are visual prostheses. For while there is a de facto
correlation between the telescopic image and the egocentric
location of the depictum, one could modify the telescope—
by inserting a tube, adding mirrors so the eyepiece is three
feet to the left, or whatever—without thereby changing the
telescopic image.
Response: First, many changes in telescopic mirrors,
tubes, and the like do change the telescopic image. Adding
tubes, for example, changes the magnification, while adding
a mirror inverts the image. Of course, such changes can be
offset by various means (adding mirrors only in pairs so that
inversions are reinverted, changing the lenses to offset magnification
differences). If you make such extensive modifications
to your telescope, it will be true that the egocentric
location of the depictum with respect to the viewer before
the modifications is distinct from the egocentric location of
the depictum with respect to the viewer after the modifications,
although the telescopic image will be unchanged.
However, we are inclined to say that the telescope before
the changes is distinct from the telescope after the changes
(and that the type of visual processes involving the first is
distinct from the type of visual processes involving the second).
Moreover, it seems that there is a probabilistic link
between the telescopic image produced by each telescope
and the egocentric location of the depictum with respect to
it. We claim, then, there is no single telescope such that
visual processes involving it fail to carry egocentric spatial
information; instead, there are two telescopes such that
visual processes involving each of them do carry egocentric
spatial information. That is just what one would expect if, as
we claim, the type of visual processes involving telescopes
carry egocentric spatial information.
35. Objection: If egocentric location is a visually accessible
property, then type (ii) information is a species of type
(i) information.
Response: In this case, restrict type (i) information so that it
includes only information about visually accessible properties
of the representational object other than its egocentric location.
In what follows, we shall ignore this point for ease of
expression.
36. The importance that photographs have depends
partly on the (presumably contingent) fact that we sometimes
want type (i) information in situations where type
(ii) information is unavailable, given the de facto limitations
on our perceptual capacities. By way of contrast, notice that
black and white photographs are less demanding sources of
visual information than color photographs in that the former
are chromatically agnostic informants. But since we are
rarely confronted with situations in which seeing is possible
but seeing in color is not, we tend not to accord to black and
white photographs an epistemic value over and above that
of color photographs.
37. A number of authors have held that the special epistemic
status of photographs is to be explained (at least
partly) in terms of the automaticity, or lack of intentional
mediation in the production of photographs. Have we erred
in ignoring this factor in our account? We think not;
photographic production is indeed mediated by intentions
(for example, intentions at work in the selection of lenses,
and in the development process; cf. Joel Snyder and Neil
Walsh Allen, “Photography, Vision, and Representation,”
Critical Inquiry 2 [1975]: 143–169). On the other hand, it
may be that widespread belief in the lack of intentional
mediation in photography partially explains the fact that
subjects tend to believe that photographs carry type (i)
information. If so, this would be relevant to the assignment
of high evidential status to the type; we consider this topic
in Section VI.
38. It follows from this, of course, that Richter is wrong
in saying (see the epigraph at the beginning of this essay)
that the photograph is the only picture that can convey
information.
39. Why does a subject categorize a given token as an
instance of type T rather than type T′ (assuming the token is
in fact an instance of both types)? We suppose this has to
do, in large part, with the degree to which the alternative
types are culturally entrenched, the subject’s personal
history of exposure to the alternative types, and so on.
Compare Walton, “Categories of Art,” Philosophical Review
79 (1970): 357ff. More on these themes in Section VII.
40. Note that, by appealing to belief here we are not
giving up our claim that seeing is independent of belief (see
Section III); instead, we are appealing to belief only in order
to mark out different ways in which subjects tend to treat
different types of depictive representations.
41. Significantly, these differing assessments of the
information-carrying credentials of photographs and portrait
paintings may be erroneous in individual cases; for example,
as noted, there are token portrait paintings that carry
type (i) information perfectly well. That is to say, a token
may in fact be a spatially agnostic informant; but if this fact
is unknown to its viewers, it will not be accorded evidentiary
weight. Likewise, assuming that altered photographs
count as photographs (something that is not obvious, given
what we have said in this paper), a token photograph may
fail to carry type (i) information; if so, then our account predicts
that it will be accorded an evidentiary status that it
does not deserve. Evidence concerning another sort of error
in judgment provides further support for our view. Namely,
it seems that what drives the evidentiary status I accord to a
work is not what type of work it is, but rather what type of
work I take it to be: if I mistake a photograph for a painting,
I will give it less evidentiary weight than other representations
I take to be photographs (even if, in fact, the latter are
paintings I have mistaken for photographs). We take this as
a confirmation of our strategy of explaining the differing
evidentiary status of photographs and paintings in terms of
subjects’ category judgments about works.
42. In other contexts, namely those in which the relevant
background beliefs are not in place, our account predicts
that the very same tokens will lack the relevant sort of evidentiary
weight. Indeed, we can imagine certain cognitive
210 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
purposes for which ornithological illustrations (for example)
may be epistemically preferable to photographs. For
example, suppose that one is interested primarily in making
fine distinctions among visually similar birds (as opposed to
getting accurate information about the visually accessible
features of birds). In this case, it may be preferable to
consult representations that highlight and exaggerate dissimilarities
between species of birds, even if this highlighting
and exaggerating has the result that such representations
carry less type (i) information about their depicta than photographs
would.
43. What we have said here leaves room for further significant
differences between photographs and veridical
drawings. Among these, we note that while photographs
and veridical drawings are both epistemic tools with relatively
undemanding conditions of use, photographs are in
one way even less demanding than the latter. This is
because extant veridical drawings—although they are
spatially agnostic themselves—are necessarily causally
dependent on spatially committed informants (viz., the
object-seeing of the depictum by the agent who produced
the drawing). In contrast, not all photographs depend on
such spatially committed informants (despite being intentionally
mediated—see note 37). Although many photographs
are produced by agents who see the depictum,
cameras may also be positioned to photograph automatically
in circumstances where no agent sees the depictum
(and, hence, where there are no spatially committed informants).
For this reason, photographs can convey visual information
about places too distant or inaccessible for the use of
nonprosthetic or prosthetic vision. This confers upon photography
another pragmatic advantage (analogous to the
advantage it has over mirrors by being spatially agnostic):
photographs can carry visual information in situations
where we want that information, and where other candidates
are unavailable for the job.
We also hold that, if the category of veridical machinemade
drawings were to become salient, their epistemic
value would be equivalent to that of photographs, and that
they would share the pragmatic advantage just ascribed to
photographs.
44. Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive
Science, p. 66.
45. To the extent that Currie would deny this contention,
this gives further support to our interpretation of him as
holding a doxastic understanding of spatial information (see
note 18).
46. In fact, the cases we can imagine in which photographs
carry type (ii) information (in our sense) are pretty
far-fetched—maybe even (nomically or metaphysically)
impossible, for all we know. Still, we have no proof of the
impossibility of photographs providing type (ii) information;
and if there could be such a case, this would show that
our account of the epistemic status of photographs and the
basis of our denial of the transparency thesis rely on merely
contingent features of photographs.
In order to avoid the aforementioned conclusion about
our argument against transparency (which might suggest the
possibility of transparent photographs in distant possible
worlds), one could respond by amending the necessary
condition on object-seeing to rule out processes that are
possibly spatially agnostic. On such a revised view, the
proposed necessary condition on object-seeing—one satisfied
by visual prostheses but not by photographs—would be
this:
x sees y through a visual process z only if z necessarily
carries information about the egocentric location of y
with respect to x.
On this account, even if there are possible worlds in which
photographs provide information of type (ii), they are still
not worlds in which photographs are transparent. Nonetheless,
since photographs would not be spatially agnostic
informants in such worlds, our view predicts that the epistemic
status of photographs in these worlds would be different
than that of photographs in the actual world.
47. In this connection, it may be pertinent to consider
actual developments in the practice and use of photography
rather than (or in addition to) mere possibilities. While it has
long been possible physically to manipulate photographs
(e.g., through manual or chemical means), thereby degrading
the information that they provide, standard photographic
practice has eschewed such manipulations and hence photographs
have remained a source of information about the visually
accessible properties of their depicta. This (contingent)
norm, we claim, explains the persistence of our background
beliefs about (hence the persistence of the evidentiary status
of) photographs. However, the development of digital photography,
and, in particular, the development of cheap and
easy digital means of manipulating photography, may force
viewers to confront seriously the possibility of unreliable,
noninformation-carrying photography; if so, this may change
epistemological attitudes toward photographs.
As Barbara Savedoff puts the point, “To the extent that
we can see photographs as potentially indistinguishable
from their digitally altered counterparts, they become suspect
as carriers of even the most basic information, suspect
as bearers of any evidence” (Transforming Images [Cornell
University Press, 2000], p. 201). In fact, Savedoff suggests
that this shift in status may not even await the development
of digital photographs that are perceptually indistinguishable
from traditional photography: “If we reach the point
where photographs are as commonly digitized and altered
as not, our faith in the credibility of photography will inevitably,
if slowly and painfully weaken, and one of the major
differences in our conceptions of paintings and photographs
could all but disappear” (p. 202).
48. We are grateful to Colin Allen, Craig Callender,
Dom Lopes, Ram Neta, Jenefer Robinson, Rob Rupert,
Scott Walden, and Jonathan Weinberg for helpful comments
on earlier drafts.