Welcome

Bence Nanay (Antwerp/Cambridge):

The History of Vision and the history of attention

The claim that vision has a history goes back at least as far as Tacitus, but it becomes one of the most important premises of art history and aesthetics from the early 20th Century. This idea, however, has been severely criticized recently, both for empirical and for conceptual reasons. The aim of this paper is to defend a new version of the history of vision claim from these recent attacks. The upshot of my argument is that if visual attention has a history, then vision has a history and we may have strong (but not necessarily conclusive) reasons to believe that visual attention has a history.

Thor Grünbaum  (University of Copenhagen):

Imagining acting intentionally

A central problem for theories of sensory imagination is the question of whether it is possible to imagine perceptually an unperceived physical thing. In what sense can I visualise an unseen palm tree on a desert island? In this paper, I look at the parallel question concerning ownership of imagined action. This question concerns the possibility of imagining an intentional action without imagining the action as being performed by a particular agent. Can we make sense of the claim that one can imagine acting intentionally while leaving it open who is acting intentionally? Despite having a number of important implications for simulationist architectures of the mind, this problem has received only little attention by philosophers and psychologists.

Jan Koenderink (KU Leuven and Utrecht University):

Works of art are two-fold intentional objects

I consider conventional definitions of works of visual art, and investigate their stratified structure.  “Works of art” are two-fold intentional objects. Ontological strata range from the smallest relevant constituents such as pen strokes, to the representation of objects, scenes, or stories. This leads to a variety of different notions of “part” and “whole”. I draw on our knowledge of artistic practice on the one side, and on the experimental phenomenology of visual perception on the other side. Taxonomies of objects perceived in works of the visual arts are based on “family resemblances”. Microgenesis proceeds in ways not unlike proto-scientific attempts at taxonomies of the animal kingdom. Ethology suggests that visual awareness is an optical user-interface, its objects being template-like Gestalts

Lunch

John Kulvicki (Dartmouth College):

Recording, representing and the analog/digital distinction

John Haugeland introduced the distinction between recording processes, which are mechanical and non-intentional, and things that have intentionality, or the status of representing. He used this distinction to defend his account of kinds of intentionality in "Representational genera". I suggest a new way of distinguishing representational kinds, which maps onto an interesting way of distinguishing kinds of intentionality. Some kinds of representation are _modeled by recording processes_ while others are not, so, some have a close relation to non-intentional, mechanical processes, while others do not. Those that are typically exemplify analog representation, while those that are not tend to be digital. Interestingly, though, digital representation is often unpacked in terms of copying, which is a special case of recording. This distinction between representational kinds sheds new light on the usefulness of the analog/digital distinction as a tool for understanding intentionality, by re-configuring the the relation each has to recording

Peer Bundgaard (Aarhus University):

The Intentional relation to aesthetic objects is shifted

I aim to show that aesthetic objects (artworks), often by virtue of certain, visually accessible design properties, set up a specific framework for their experience (which has nothing to do with the feeling of beauty writ large). This framework exerts top-down constraints on the manner in which the object is attended to: it thus defines a determinate kind of intentional relation to the object. In this paper I will account for how visually accessible properties shift the intentional relation into an aesthetic one. I will furthermore show what semiotic effects this has for the artwork as a locus for meaning-making.

Catharine Abell (University of Manchester):

Fiction Making

Fiction making is the activity of producing a work of fiction. It essentially involves the performance of locutionary acts. It is less clear, however, whether or not it involves the performance of illocutionary acts. In fiction making, authors frequently perform locutionary acts of a type that are commonly used to make assertions.  However, it is unlikely that fiction making generally involves asserting. Firstly, authors don’t generally believe the contents of the works of fiction they produce. Secondly, in contrast to those who lie to us, we hold fiction makers culpable for producing works whose contents they don’t believe. Many have denied that authors generally perform illocutionary acts in producing works of fiction, and argued instead that they overtly pretend to do so. However, I argue that the pretend illocution account of fiction making is unable to accommodate the fact that fiction making is a method by which authors communicate, by either literal or nonliteral means, with their readers. I also argue that the main rival to the pretend illocution account, according to which fiction making involves the performance of a distinctive illocutionary act, is unable to explain its communicative role. I argue that fiction making involves the performance of declarative illocutionary acts, and explain what distinguishes fiction making declarations from other types of declarations.

Aaron Meskin (University of Leeds):

Categorial Intentions and the Categories of Art

What role should intentions play in the categorization of art? I argue that views which fail to pay attention to the significance of categorial intentions to art categories (e.g., the short story, comics, poetry) tend to suffer from anachronism. But accounts that place heavy emphasis on categorial intentions suffer from their own flaws, most notably the inability to explain a certain sort of artistic failure and a certain sort of accidental artistic success. I argue that categorial intentions should typically be understood as merely relevant to (but neither necessary for nor determinative of) membership in significant art categories.

Paolo Spinicci (University of Milan):

Expressive properties and imaginative contexts

My talk has two goals. First, I argue in favor of the perceptual nature of expressive properties. On the other hand I maintain that perception of expressive properties does not necessarily imply the attribution of the (same) emotional state to someone or something: in order to take expressive properties as expressing properties, an  adequate contextual background is needed. The lack of a contextual background has another interesting consequence: we cannot deepen our understanding of what we perceive by linking it to a net of reasons and motivations which specify its emotional nature. Hence the somehow raw and unprocessed character of non-contextual expressive properties, like melancholy of the fading sun or joyfulness of a creek or sadness of a minor chord. In the second part of my talk I focus on imagination and on its ability in re-creating a meaningful context for those expressive properties which lack a real context and do not really stay for any emotional state of mind.  My final remarks are devoted to suggesting that deep aesthetic appreciation of the full meaning of expressive properties in music or painting depends on the listener’s or the spectator’s ability to re-create imaginative contexts according to the author’s intentions

Frederik Stjernfelt 

Biosemiotic roots of intentionality