World without mind

To doubt the existence of a world that is independent of the mind misses the point. Of course the mind brings the world into being, just as the world brings the mind into being: the case for a clear distinction between mind and world seems dubious. But it makes no sense to wonder about whether the world exists or does not exist without being perceived by a mind. 'It' neither does nor does not exist: categories such as 'existence' don't apply.

Variation and generation

Each new human is a variation of other humans, each new song is a variation on other songs, and each new painting a variation on other paintings.

Self supporting theory

It's risky to build one theory on the back of another (as aesthetic philosophers tend to do with Kant). For all its restrictions at least science demands we should test our ideas (even if in doing so we sometimes test for the outcome our theories lead us to expect). What philosophers can do is point out how complex phenomena are, which in many cases is far beyond the capacity of science to investigate. What science can do is show that what we might naturally assume to be the case is very often not; it forces us to reassess our intuitions.

How to stay ahead

It's tempting to measure one's progress against whatever is currently receiving attention. Just as our perception of reality is delayed by several hundred milliseconds (because of the time it takes the nervous system to process sensory signals) so what appears to be most contemporary is in fact already out of date. Better to look deep into the past and speculate far into the future, paying little attention to the present. You have to work very hard to remain interesting and unfashionable.

Paintings that look like photographs

• It is still impressive to see a painting that looks like a photographic depiction. But what is impressive? Imagine a machine that converted high-resolution photographs into oil paintings with great accuracy. How would we regard the resulting image — with more or less reverence than if the same image were produced by human hand? Most likely less because, it would be argued, it requires less skill and labour to produce the image by machine than by hand.

• (This argument would overlook the skill and labour embodied in the machine, which is still human skill and labour, albeit extended through mechanical means.)

• Comparing a two images of photographic precision — one generated mechanically and one by human artist — we would revere the one produced by the artist more than the one produced by the mechanical process. Why? because the human-generated one appears to contain more skill and labour. Thus what impresses us is the implicit skill and labour in the hand-crafted image, although both are visually identical.

• The quality that causes us to be impressed — the implicit human skill — is absent in the mechanically-generated, though visually identical, picture. This demonstrates the continuity between mind and world: we experience the world as ideas.

Between reality and representation

• All cognate (visual) experience is attended by memory. To sit on a beach and experience clouds, sand, water, rocks, is in each case to recognise these things and in so doing to draw upon memory resources, cognitive resources, that allow us to know where we are and what we are looking at.

• In this sense, looking directly at beach scene is no different from looking at a picture of the beach, insofar as each presents us with a set of visual cues that invoke associated memories, thus allowing recognition to occur.

• The enactivists argue the memory is 'out there', in the external world. The mistake here is to assume there is an external world.

• It would be wrong to suggest that memories are merely fixed units of information storage, which we simply 'call up' on cue. Memories are also being dynamically generated, 'on the fly' — our perceptual models are continually updated, adapting to new sets of cues.

Visual cues

• Presented with visual cues the mind constructs meaningful objects. The visual cues may bear little optical resemblance to the objects they depict, yet still decisively invoke those objects.

• In this sense, the process of identifying objects in the world is the same as identifying objects in a depiction: each presents a set of visual cues that the mind categorises as objects. We can be just as unsure or mistaken about how to interpret visual cues from the world as from pictures.

• The primary difference between seeing object in an image and in reality is that in reality we recognise objects more or less directly, that is without seeing anything else at the same time, whereas in pictures we recognise the object depicted, the medium of depiction (paint, ink wood), the vehicle of depiction (piece of paper, oil-covered canvas) — as well as other things: a Picasso collage, a cubist artwork, an modernist composition, etc.. In other words, recognition in depiction is multifold.

Artistic style influences perception

• Looking at a summer landscape on a cloudy day, seeing cows grazing and trees clumped in fields, after having looked at Constable oil sketches of the same subject, I was immediately struck by the way the landscape looked like the sketches.

• It is perhaps the case that each object or scene we recognise is an accretion or compound of numerous perceptions. When we recognise an image of a cow it is because we reference the accumulated experience of all the cows we've seen, likewise with a picture of a beach .

• It is perhaps the case that the most recent or frequent visual experience comes to predominate in our memory. So for example, if we spend a lot of time looking at Constable's images of summer landscapes of the British countryside then they come to 'stand in' for such a scene; they dominate the memory image. So when we come to look at the scene, say through a train window, we recognise objects (trees, clouds, cows) while referring to the most recent or frequent impressions.

• In a sense, the 'real' scene is just as much a representation as the oil sketch. Each is an image in which recognise particular entities, drawing on memories accrued over countless perceptual moments. The most recent or frequent experience determines the 'shape' of the memory that is brought into play when recognition occurs. I recognise the 'real' landscape at the same time as the Constable landscape - one is overlayed on the other.

Multifoldness in representation

• The visual system is a mandatory object recognition system. The visual field must be categorised into objects, this happens largely involuntarily and normally highly comprehensively.

• Although it is not known exactly how object recognition operates in the visual system, a great deal is known. It often occurs by 'perceptual grouping', that is, putting visual cues together to form clumps or groups that take on the value of object-ness.

• Normally all the visual data received by the system is categorised, assigned meaning based on memory, our vast accumulated experience since birth. It is fast and efficient, using a minimum of information to create a seemingly rich and accurate impression of the world (although easily prone to errors).

• All objects in the visual field must be classified. Once classified we make assumptions about them based on a massive storehouse of knowledge and experience (likely weight, texture, taste, volume, etc.). This is knowledge brought to bear from memory coupled to minimal visual data.

• When coming into the National Gallery, I recognise the gallery space, that I see a painting on a wall in a frame, that it is made of paint, that it is a cathedral and that it is a Monet. All these things I recognise (pretty much) simultaneously, one might take slightly more precedence over the other in terms of conceptual dominance, but none completely effaces the other. They all exist together.

• Thus the experience of looking at the painting might be termed 'multifold' (as opposed to 'twofold') since the object and environment are recognised at the same time the referential content is.

• One could say that the peculiar nature of pictorial representations is that one recognises at least two things at once (simultaneously). The material from which the picture is made and what it represents. If we are presented with sufficient visual cues then we have no choice but to recognise an object being represented. Yet we do not cease to recognise the substrate (except on very special occasions, i.e. Gijsbreachts and Gavin Turk).

• The peculiar nature of pictorial representations is that we recognise several things occuring coterminously, or coincidentally. When we see a fruit on a branch we recognise it as fruit in a straightforward way. When we see a representation of fruit on a branch we recognise the fruit, but also the medium of its representation — at the same time. We may also recognise the style, or the artist, or the significance of the picture, thus multiplying the richness of the aesthetic experience.