Photography and Ontology

Watch this video
http://vimeo.com/12302777

"Photography and Ontology" By Blake Stimson, Professor of Art History at University of California, Davis

"Photography has two distinctly appealing properties. On the one had, it has mechanically-enhanced artistic powers: it can capture a moment, or orchestrate an intricate arrangement, or populate an empty frame with the blink of an eye. We might call this its vertical or qualitative axis, and plot any given photograph according to its degree of artistic success according to whatever criteria we might choose--exhibitions, say, or reviews, or individual judgment of its mastery. On the other hand, photography has mechanically and electronically-accelerated powers of distribution like computers and promises something like a factory in every pocket or handbag. We might refer to this as its horizontal, or quantitative axis, plotting the spread of photographicization by the picture, say, or camera, or megapixel, or ISO sensitivity. Both of these properties makes its own claim to universality, to ontology, to the meaning of being, one idealist, the other materialist, one metaphorical, the other metonymical. Because of its uniquely ingrained connection with art and its broad appeal as non-art, photography's ontology is defined to an exceptional extent by a dynamic tension between the one and the all. This presentation will explore some of the sociopolitical effects and opportunities arising from that distinctive tension."

Philosophy goes to the movies

Philosophy goes to the movies
Christopher falzon , 2007 , routledge
(Many interesting chapters using examples of films to illustrate philosophical inquiry)

Introduction
   Philosophy + film
- the book is founded on the idea that films represent a collective visual memory, vast repository of images which many ideas and arguments can be discussed.
- within philosophy there is a degree of prejudice against the visual image p3
- it is thought that images are concrete and particular, whereas philosophy is concerned with the abstract and the universal.
- thank you plato for this… The myth of the cave… Even worse the modern cinema is very much like his cave, dark + transfixed by images removed from the real world.
- seems cinema is the opposite of philosophy… However, plato himself instills a striking image into his philosophical discourse. Thus, it is a pathway to understanding… (Reminds me of wynn bullock)  p6
- philosophy is full of arresting images and imaginative visions to illustrate and clarify positions

-  calling into question the perception that philosophy is remote from everyday existence, concerned only with abstraction and universalisation. P5
- second possible concern, from the pov of film, do we run the risk of distorting films and treating them as examples for philosophy (i think they can be used for many things)

- the idea of film as philosophy… Two points.
1. Whatever philosophical themes and content going on, it is only part of it.
2. The extent which films can be used to illustrate and shed light on philosophical themes and positions.

The philosophical approach
- what is philosophy’s subject area? It is so vast.
- jay Rosenberg “philosophy is a second order discipline” . It is a form of reflection in which we try to think about, clarify, and critically evaluate the most basic terms within which we think and act. P11

Overview of the book
- starting point in each chapter is ancient greek philosophy… Roughly historical order.
- philosophy of mind may be very relevant to what i need to research (functionalism etc if i remember correctly)
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(Just a thought, ontology of the photographer… Well even though the other half of my understanding is the interpreter… Could he even be a photographer? The witness? He is making pictures in his head, we all are!!!! Everyone is a photographer, we all make images, we all reference examples in the world to make our points,..)
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Star trek clips… Such as the transporter accident… Riker being tom and riker two identities!
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Wynn Bullock Quote

"As human beings we have a fundamental choice: we can either search for meaning within the realm of what appears to be real, or we can challenge the limits of that reality by asking if there might not be something more."

Things to discuss with Andrew...

An understanding if a lot of material that I have read… Reminder to self that I am just posing questions and not the answers yet. If there are answers at all.

The format for the assignment to take? Pictures I can use of other photographers, ATM thinking I’m just using my own… Etc…

The thoughts about ‘ontology of the photographer’ seems slightly paradoxical, of course he exists, or does he, what of the times where a photographer/artist was invented?.?

ontology / Heidegger

ontology = 
Theory of being as such. It was originally called “first philosophy” by Aristotle. In the 18th century Christian Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, with special metaphysical theories of souls, bodies, or God, claiming that ontology could be a deductive discipline revealing the essences of things. This view was later strongly criticized by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Ontology was revived in the early 20th century by practitioners of phenomenology and existentialism, notably Edmund Husserl and his student Martin Heidegger. In the English-speaking world, interest in ontology was renewed in the mid-20th century by W.V.O. Quine; by the end of the century it had become a central discipline of analytic philosophy. See also idealism; realism; universal.

Heidegger =
In 1927 he published his magnum opus, Being and Time. It strongly influenced Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialists, and, despite Heidegger’s protestations, he was classed as the leading atheistic existentialist.
His declared purpose in the work was to raise anew the question of the meaning of being. His preliminary analysis of human existence (Dasein, or “being-there”) employed the method of phenomenology.
In the early 1930s his thought underwent a Kehre (“turning around”), which some have seen as an abandonment of the problem of Being and Time. Then the whole Nazi thing…
Phenomenology restricts the philosopher’s attention to the pure data of consciousness, uncontaminated by metaphysical theories or scientific assumptions. Husserl’s concept of the life-world—as the individual’s personal world as directly experienced—expressed this same idea of immediacy

incompatible with metaphysics!?
I'm starting to like the notion of the 'being' 

Which Philosopher are you?

Your Result: W.v.O. Quine / Late Wittgenstein

60%
There is no provable absolute truth. The way you see things is dependant on your language. Truths exist only within a language, and change as the language does. —This quiz was made by S. A-Lerer.

58%
Plato (strict rationalists)

50%
Aristotle
48%
Nietzsche
42%
Immanuel Kant
40%
Sartre/Camus (late existentialists)
34%
Early Wittgenstein / Positivists

To look at: Fred Ritchin

Fred Ritchin - bending the frame

Recap: Assignment 1

Remember 
that this assignment and film is an inquiry into the questions and problems I can see with my dissertation and opens up possible avenues to explore…. Questions, I am not seeking answers at this point, I am seeking points to explore.

Batchen

To research... ASAP
(sourced from guest lecturer)

Batchen in camera Lucida: p133 + p139
‘He is dead and he is going to die’
Future anterior tense
Andre bazin - the ontology of the image
Interesting stuff!!!

The next step...

The next steps... 

 

The problems lie in the:
1. Photographer / author
2. Interpreter / seer / audience

Investigate metaphysical implications… My initial premise focused on the sociological formation of indented and excluded the philosophical nature of identity over time (self-portrait) (emergence)

Possible worlds: created when choosing one photograph over another, it represents an event.

Intentional + affective fallacy

Amalgamation of myself: Foucault shopping list, expand more on the notion of what is an author?
The concept of time… A paradox.

Is a self portrait even art? (Institutional theory) more Kant.

Representation

The self - souls, identity… Memory (Kant equivalence)

Reasoning - making depictions (interpretation) judgements

Free will - determinism causation, Kant again, clockwork

- Laura mulvey, death 24x a second, stillness and the moving image
- damian sutton, photography cinema memory - the crystal image of time
- David green + Joanna Lowry stillness and tim: photography and the moving image … Issuu.com
- deleuze continental philosophy, cinema 1 cinema 2 (identity and difference)
- contemporary science and time: object orientated ontology [ooo]
- philosophy goes to the movies
- Wynn bullock

Kant on time in the system
Heidegger towards death
Create a manifesto?

Ontology of the photographer… *****
(A lot of these things seem to do with the nature and existence of the photographer)

PH4024 - Kant on Beauty...

4 categories of aesthetic experience
- The Agreeable
- The Good
- Beauty
- The sublime.
His ideas have been very influential

The Critique of Judgement

When a man judges beauty he judges not just for himself but for all men… unlike subjective tastes “this olive is delicious” well that could be different to many people… the olive being beautiful however? Would be a more objective thing, we would of thought.. or is it…
- Beauty is a subjective experience in someones mind, just like taste.
- However, we do not care if the beautiful thing is real or not [contestable] the physical object exists does it not
- IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS
    The agreeable is what GRATIFIES a man; the beautiful what simply PLEASES him; the good what is ESTEEMED (approved), i.e., that on which he sets an objective worth.
- agreeable, linked to some desire like hunger or lust
- Something is good, linked to our moral judgement
- Beauty is free of these ties… more PURE, we are disinterested in the object itself.
We feel beauty immediately upon witnessing it

No conditions by logic can be placed upon the object… It’s beauty must be inherent to it and self-inherent.
- A sense of beauty must be universal.

When i pronounce something to be beautiful, I am not saying so for myself, but as something that is beautiful to everybody.

PROBLEMS: emotions and feelings can get in the way and bring impurity to ‘beauty’ …. But we can’t remove yourself from our feelings…
When we experience a beautiful object, it can only be beautiful as a complete thing its totality of form. Must be beautiful in itself, without thought to an end…. eg a car. without thought of how it drives
Beauty can be sensed by all of us, without need for communication. Its universal… But emotion and experience can deepen the beauty we feel…

The Intentional Fallacy

Influential critical theory - 20th century

    Interpretation of a work should focus purely on its objective qualities, we should diregard ALL external/extrinsic factors (biographical, historical) concerning the author.
The MISTAKE of judging the value/meaning of a work by factors such as these is called the intentional fallacy.
"one doesn’t need to know the artist’s private intentions. The work tells all." - Susan Sontag
…originally, Literary criticism.

The Affective Fallacy
- in appreciating a work of art, we can expect that different audiences will respond in different ways + form different opinions.
- We expect each interpret to form their own interpretation (a different meaning on the world)
- All these can’t be supported by the artists intention, so the intentional fallacy seems plausible.
- “The mistake of confusing the impact that a work might have on its audience with its meaning - the affective fallacy”

YouTube is lacking...

Ideal, informative + VISUAL discussions of various philosophers and their theories…. thank goodness for three minute philosophy videos, they ARE interesting but only bitesize chunks as an verview…

What is Art?

 ---> sourced from 50 philosophy questions book.

The battle between the artist + the critic.
"The conflict is timeless and beyond resolution because it is motivated by a fundamental disagreement on the most basic of questions: What is Art?"
Representation - - - - - - - - - Abstraction
John Ruskin + James McNeill Whistler
- they disagree on the nature of aesthetic value.
- Greeks (Plato) Art is a representation/mirror of nature. Plato regarded works of art as a poor reflection/imitation of truth.
- Aristotle shared these view, but, more sympathetic view of its objects, they’re a completion of what was only partially realised in nature, insight into the universal essence of things.
The eye of the beholder
- Is beauty inherently in the objects it is ascribed to?
- realist vs anti-realist views.
- support: Kant’s universal validity: aesthetic judgements are based purely on our subjective responses and feelings; but so ingrained in human nature that they are universally valid… “any properly constituted human can share them”
The Institutional Theory
- widely discussed since 1970s…
- Works of art have that status by virtue, bestowed upon them by authorised members of the art world.
- Difficulties… influential, but uninformative, we want to know WHY.
Formalist approach to art in 20th century.
- line, colour _ other formal qualities were considered paramount.
- Form was elevated over content
- Paved the way for Abstractionism
- Another influential departure from representation: expressionism… Expressions of the artist’s subjective emotion and experience were regarded as the hallmark of true works of art.
Family Resemblance
- As with many of Socratic Dialogues, a question is posed to be defined… The problem is a lot of things we seem to know what they are but are unable to define it.
- ONE WAY OUT… Wittgenstein: family resemblance. “games” we can easily give examples of games, but trouble arises when we try and find a definition that encompasses every instance. NO COMMON DENOMINATOR.

- so for art, pieces might have much in common with other pieces, but if we look for features they all possess, we will search in vain.
"any attempt to define art is misconceived and doomed to failure"

Free Will.

Think - Simon Blackburn
Chapter 3 - Free Will

The Bonds of fate
- We regard ourselves as free agents
- We appear to be conscious about our freedom
- Freedom brings responsibility, and those who abuse it, blame and punishment
- moral reaction imposed because ‘we could have done otherwise’
- Could this consciousness be an illusion?
- Lucretius - past controls the present + future, can’t control the past + its control over the present + future. Therefore, can’t control the future.
- DETERMINISM
- If we accept this argument, we are HARD DETERMINISTS, they think freedom + determinism are incompatible.
- Deny this? Quantum physics give some hope, as they appear random… we don’t like randomness…
- If determinism holds, we lose freedom + responsibility.
If determinism does not hold, but some events ‘just happen’, and then, equally, we lose freedom and responsibility.

Fig trees and waterfalls
 - Schopenhauer waterfalls, causal steps for water to boil, waves… - similar Wittgenstein… Autumn leaf - criticise an argument, cannot be conscious of something’s absence, e.g when I speak, I am not conscious of the causal structures that make it possible to speak. - mind-body dualism - introduces the controlling soul. - how do we understand the freedom of the soul??? - entire problem of mind-brain interaction Pulling yourself together - compatabalism -according to Kant, he dismissed it as it only gives us the freedom of clockwork. Puppets and Martians -

Inspiration

Reasoning.

Think - Simon Blackburn
Chapter 6 - reasoning

Formal logic, inductive reasoning, elements of scientific reasoning

A little logic
- working parts of an argument are it’s ‘premises’ (what is accepted or assumed)
- from these ‘premises’ we can derive a conclusion
- if we don’t accept the conclusion we have two options:
1. Reject some premises (untrue)
2. Reject the way the conclusion is drawn from the premises. (Invalid reasoning)
- logic is interested in whether arguments are valid
- Aristotle, form of an argument:
Modus ponens
P;
If p then q;
So, q.
- there is no way our conclusion could be false if the premises are true.

Plausible Reasonings
- we expand beliefs on a daily basis… Our pragmatic approach goes under ‘plausible’ or ‘reasonable’
- Open to the world of POSSIBILITES
- Hume points out the problem: all our experience is from the past and the present so if we are to make assumptions about the future then these are inferences. All based on past experience and could be wrong, but then, this is all we have isn’t it? The Sun has risen every day for all humanity but doesn’t follow that it will rise tomorrow, it is a belief
Hume: THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION

The Lottery For The Golden Harp
- arguments from experience rely upon resemblence, that the future will be like the past.. UNIFORMITY OF NATURE

Chancy Stuff
- 1/1000 people will have the disease
- test is 99% accurate
- however if have the disease the chance of having it will be 1/11

Problem: Identity Crisis

Disorders / Memory
Consciousness and memory issues

Science side and the philosophical/artistic side

- not recognising own features (one of the signs of self awareness) Alan Turing machine relevant here?

The Self.

Think - Simon Blackburn
Chapter 4 - the self

- Descartes salvaged the self out of universal doubt
- lichtenberg queried this…

An immortal soul?
- there are actual things we think about ourselves (once small, will age) and possible things we think about (might have been born with different mind and body, might live again)
- the first list is compatible with a straightforward view of who I am… The second list implies I am something mysterious, that my soul could endure through a lot of changes.
- Hume observes the self is elusive and unobservable, inside your own mind all you will discover is perceptions, experiences and emotions.
[ o ] room (contents of mind), can never see the house (mind) and can never really see other peoples houses if all the windows are closed…
- Thomas Reid states the ‘I’ is simple, the self is not composite. Things that cannot change and decay are not composite, therefore neither can the soul.

oak trees and ships
- Locke’s observation on Vegetables + plants:
- plants can change all of their cells/atoms, but this doesn’t matter, just as long as this ‘unity of function' is maintained.
- This explains how a human being is said to be the same throughout all stages of ones life.
- ship of Theseus, planks changed, still the same ship? What if someone had been picking up the planks all the while… Would there be two ships? Identical? How is that possible, a clone?

Souls and Elastic Balls- invoke an ‘immaterial substance’
- Locke points out that if we’re worried about personal survival through time, ‘immaterial soul substances’ won’t help, we don’t make reference to it.
- Kant, ‘representations’ are things like experiences or thoughts contents of the mind. Simply, we don’t know anything about immaterial substances. It could be continually replaced. (elastic ball example)
- Nothing of our notion of ‘self’ gives us a permanent inner substance which can survive (to be immortal)

The Brave Officer
- Locke, person A + person B are the same if A remembers what B thought, felt and acted…- rules out that I am Cleopatra, reincarnated
- similarly I can be sure I will not live another life as a dog, a dog couldn’t have that kind of mental capacity.
- “Memory wipeout destroys personal identity”
HOWEVER, consequences…
- I cannot survive complete Amnesia
- Also, problems with partial amnesia… following on from Locke’s theory, what if I committed a crime, then retained no memory of the event? I am the same human being, but a different person.
- “it seems that the one human being is inhabited by multiple successive personalities, as memories come and go.”
- Thomas Reids version of the problem: brave officer objection, in the end the officer, now general, is and is not at the same time the boy who was flogged as a boy…
- Locke’s simple reply: same person goes along with same human being… or it does not. He needs notions of the same person in order to justify claims of responsibility.
- Courts don’t work that way… Amnesia is far too easy to claim. But in God’s eyes, real amnesia does.
- Reids argument that A = B, B= C then A = C only if each A B C are simple, and not composite… Locke didn’t think this.

The Self as a Bundle
- bundle theory of the self, Hume, mind containing an aggregate of perceptions/experiences together with whatever connects them.
- hume: we are never aware of a self
- Perhaps the way forward is to deny that the ‘self’ is something we can be aware of…. this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, however.
- Wittgenstein, talks of cases where we are subjects of experience “i hear the rain” “i have a toothache”. Cannot mistake the subject for someone else, I can’t call out in pain for someone else.
-   I only refers to the body…’mind’ HAS meaning…
- “Try thinking of self-consciousness some other way…”
The Self as an organising principle
- problem of Artificial Intelligence…
- self-interpretation is necessary for any kind of interpretation of experience
- “The ‘I’ is the point of view from which interpretation starts”
- A point of view is always needed: to represent a scene to yourself is to represent yourself as experiencing it one way or another.

Delusions of Imagination
- This line of thinking is due to Kant.
- I can abstract out of myself, i have transported the mysterious soul
- Suppose I am not transporting anything, but I am representing to myself what it would be like to see the world from a different point of view, at a different time.
- Kants line of thought: there is an equivalence between ‘I can imagine seeing X’ and ‘I can imagine myself seeing X’ … illustrated by me thinking of something such as Genghis Khan, my soul does not transport to him.
- Does this prove that such imaginings such as life after death are illusions?

Scrambling the Soul
- ‘curious’ difference between the past and the future when we think of ourselves.
- suppose we lived in a world where we can assemble bodies and brains like computers… suppose tomorrow you would go to get an upgrade and you had a choice between person A, artic and person B, tropics… you COULD be either person… reminiscent to David Lewis, there is a fork in the road. It is never half and half, I am either on one place, or the other… or neither.- religion affects the people on this subject…

Dissertation overview

Title: to what degree can a self portrait be taken to be an accurate representation of whom it represents, given the inherent bias? 

Intro -
Chapter 1 - self-portrait, identity + representation
Chapter 2 - Vincent Van Gogh
Chapter 3 - the conscious
Chapter 4 - the unconscious
Chapter 5 - the death of the author
Chapter 6 - the wisdom of crowds
Conclusion -

Refer to written notes for details.

Tutorial with Andrew #1

Laura Mulvey’s last book on cinema which is interesting (called death at 24 frames a second)

David Green and Joanna Lowry called ‘Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image’.

The classic/key text of continental philosophy on cinema is Deleuze’s book ‘Cinema 1’ and ‘Cinema 2’

Contemporary science and time - people working on object orientated ontology - some of those people have been using some very advanced models from maths to come up with some curious accounts of metaphysics.

3 year preliminary MA plan

Long term goal: graduate with a published book
Possible title: What is ‘I’?
Launch pad:
1. Dissertation
2. Self-portrait project
3. Past projects such as ‘amalgamation of myself’
4. Future MA modules
Themes explored:
metaphysics. (Philosophy aspects) further exploration of loose ends in dissertation. Identity. Identity over time, representation, possible worlds, the concept of time. Emergence theory… The self  (Refine)
Next steps:
Re-read dissertation + pick out threads to explore/develop
Use ph4024 assignment 1 to pose an introduction to what has been explored and an inquiry into problems still existing and what remains…