Photography and Causation
Responding to Scruton's Scepticism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4159591 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dawn M Phillips (University of Warwick, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 327-340 |
| Publication date | 2009-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/aesthj/ayp036 |
| OpenAlex | W2116594992 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton's scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these cannot force him to give up his notion of the ideal photograph. My approach is to argue that Scruton has misconstrued the role of causation in his discussion of photography. I claim that although Scruton insists that the ideal photograph is defined by its ‘merely causal’ provenance, in fact he fails to take the causal provenance of photographs seriously enough. To replace Scruton's notion of the ideal photograph, I offer a substantive account of the causal provenance of photographs, centred on the distinctive role of ‘the photographic event’. I conclude that, with a proper understanding of the photographic process, we have good reason to re-open the question of photography as a representational art
Aesthetics · Art · Causation · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Intentionality · Photography · Skepticism · Visual arts · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory
Arrangement and Timing
On machine vision and photographic imagination
Spontaneity and Materiality
Between Empathy and Imagination
Barthes for Barthes' Sake? Victorian Literature and Photography beyond Poststructuralism
Roger Scruton’s theory of the imagination and aesthetics as a formulation of Aristotelian virtue ethics
Getting the big picture
Portraits, Facial Perception, and Aspect-Seeing
Afterword
| Citations per year | 0.64 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2024 (13) |
| Highly cited | No |