0199277346.Oxford.University.Press.USA.Sight.and.Sensibility.Evaluating.Pictures.Jun.2005.pdf

SIGHT AND SENSIBILITY
Evaluating Pictures
Sight and Sensibility presents the first detailed prehensive
theory of evaluating pictures. Dominic Lopes confronts the puzzle
of how the value of seeing anything in a picture can exceed that of
seeing it face to face - his solution pinpoints how seeing-in is like
and unlike ordinary seeing. Moreover, since part of what we see in
pictures is emotional expressions, his book also develops a theory of
expression especially tailored to pictures.
Some evaluations of pictures as opportunities for seeing-in are
aesthetic, others are cognitive or moral. Lopes argues that these
evaluations interact, for some imply others. He proposes novel
conceptions of aesthetic and cognitive evaluation: aesthetic
evaluation is distinguished from art evaluation as essentially tied
to experience, and some cognitive evaluations assess cognitive
capacities, including perceptual ones.
Ultimately, Lopes defends images against the widespread criticism
that they thwart serious thought, especially moral thought, because
they merely replicate ordinary experience. He concludes by pre-
senting detailed case studies of the contribution pictures can make
to moral reflection.
Dominic Mclver Lopes is Professor of Philosophy at the University
of British Columbia.
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Sight and Sensibility
Evaluating Pictures
DOMINIC MCIVER LOPES
CLARENDON PRESS и OXFORD
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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