Department of Philiosophy Speakers' Series - Dr. Peter Alward

Event Date:
Friday, February 10, 2012 - 15:15 - 17:00

Location:
B650, 3:15 to 5 p.m.

The Department of Philosophy Speakers' Series presents Dr. Peter Alward (University of Lethbridge Department of Philosophy) as he presents Varieties of Photographic Fiction.

Scruton, in "Photography and Representation", argues that the only sense in which a photograph could be fictional is in virtue of being a photograph of a fiction, and hence that photography - and photo-based cinema - is fictional only in a derivative sense. While acknowledging that photographs can be fictional in Scruton's sense, I argue that there can also be non-derivative photographic fiction as well. In some cases, the photograph itself is part of the fiction; and I argue that, in such cases, appreciators imagine de re of the photograph that it is a picture of a fictional photographic subject. And in some cases in which the photograph is not part of the fiction, I argue that appreciators imagine de re of what is seen in the picture (in Wollheim's sense) that it is a fictional photographic subject.