Imaginación, percepción y memoria. Dando sentido a las ideas de Walton sobre fotografía y representación pictórica

Abstract

Walton has controversially claimed (a) that all pictures (including photographs) are fiction because, in seeing a picture one imagines that one is seeing the depicted content in the flesh; and (b) that in seeing a photograph one literally – although indirectly – sees the photographed object. Philosophers have found these claims implausible for various reasons: (1) it is not the case that all pictures are fiction; (2) explaining depiction does not require an imaginative engagement and (3) seeing objects in photographs is not tantamount to seeing the object. I agree with Walton’s critics in all of these claims. However, I try to give some plausibility to Walton’s view. Firstly, I claim that (1) is a misunderstanding. Second, I try to clarify (but not defend) Walton’s view of depiction by contrasting pictorial experience with perceptual experience more generally. Finally, I focus on the case of photographs and I l claim that although Walton is not right in claiming that seeing objects in photographs is a case of literally perceiving the objects, photographs share an important feature with perceptual experience: the content of photographs, like the content of pictorial experience, is particular in character, and that explains their peculiar phenomenology. I content, however, that the experience of photographs is closer to memory than to perception.

Walton sostiene que todas las representaciones pictóricas (incluidas las fotografías) son ficciones y que, al ver una fotografía uno literalmente –aunque indirectamente– ve el objeto fotografiado. Los filósofos han considerado estas afirmaciones implausibles y yo estoy de acuerdo con ellos. No obstante, intentaré dar una lectura razonable de estas ideas waltonianas. Intentaré clarificar (que no defender) la visión waltoniana de la representación pictórica y para ello contrastaré la experiencia pictórica con la experiencia perceptual en general. Me centraré en el caso concreto de la fotografía y sostendré que, a pesar de que ver objetos en una fotografía no constituye un ejemplo de percepción literal de un objeto, las fotografías comparten un rasgo fundamental con la experiencia perceptual: el contenido de las fotografías, como el de la experiencia pictórica, es un contenido particular. Esto explica su fenomenología. Las fotografías, sin embargo, son más cercanas a las experiencias de la memoria que la experiencia perceptual.