Automatism, Causality and Realism: Foundational Problems in the Philosophy of Photography

This article contains a survey of recent debates in the philosophy of photography, focusing on aesthetic and epistemic issues in particular. Starting from widespread notions about automatism, causality and realism in the theory of photography, the authors ask whether the prima facie tension between the epistemic and aesthetic embodied in oppositions such as automaticism and agency, causality and intentionality, realism and fictional competence is more than apparent. In this context, the article discusses recent work by Roger Scruton, Dominic Lopes, Kendall Walton, Gregory Currie, Jonathan Cohen and Aaron Meskin, Noël Carroll, and Patrick Maynard in some detail. Specific topics addressed include: aesthetic scepticism, transparency, imagination, perception, information, representation and depiction. 1. The Philosophy of Photography: Foundational Intuitions The philosophy of photography is a relatively new area of philosophical investigation. It is still possible to count the philosophical monographs on photography on one hand, and the first anthology of philosophical essays on the topic in English appeared only this year. Although there is a far larger canon of texts in art history and photography theory, to date these texts have had relatively little influence on philosophical treatments of photography. As a result, the ‘philosophy of photography’ is a relatively untrammelled field, if at the cost of a rather narrow set of questions holding sway. These revolve for the most part around the correct specification of the respective roles of causality and intentionality in photography, and whether this does or does not distinguish photography in kind from other forms of depiction, or imbue it with a special, epistemically privileged, relation to the world. These core questions touch on other areas in philosophy, notably prior questions in the philosophy of perception, positions on which they often implicitly presuppose; but they also open onto broader ethical questions about the moral limits of depiction, just in case photography necessarily shows ‘real’ events. 2 Automatism, Causality and Realism © 2008 The Authors Philosophy Compass 4/1 (2009): 1–21, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00193.x Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Talk of the philosophy of photography implies a unified subject of enquiry, but two largely independent, if overlapping, sets of debates structure the field, one broadly epistemological, the other aesthetic. The present article addresses both: one question it raises is whether the prima facie tension between the two is more than apparent. At first blush photography’s epistemic and aesthetic value certainly seem to be in competition: the more photography is said to be epistemically privileged, in virtue of being an objective, mind-independent record of the facts, the less capacity it seems to have for aesthetic value, for which mind-dependent fictional competence – at minimum, the capacity for intentionally representing fictional states of affairs or events – is assumed to be required, and vice versa. Our own view is that one chief desideratum for any comprehensive philosophy of photography is that it be able to do justice to both. To achieve this requires addressing the source of our conflicting ideas. Three widespread and contentious intuitions play a role in most discussions of photography: 1) The photographic process is, in some sense, automatic. 2) The resultant images are, in some sense, realistic. 3) The realism of photographs, in some sense, depends on the automatism of the photographic process. In these formulations the term ‘automatic’ stands proxy for a variety of notions used to characterise the photographic process, such as: mechanical, mind-independent, agent-less, natural, causal, physical, unmediated. The term ‘realistic’ could be replaced by an equally large variety of terms, used to characterise the status of photographs, such as: authentic, faithful, objective, truthful, accurate. The task of selecting, clarifying and establishing the most appropriate terminology will form a major part of forthcoming work in the philosophy of photography, given that these intuitions underpin both the aesthetic and epistemic debates and, moreover, are likely to be responsible for the apparent tension between the two. The folk psychology that surrounds photography undoubtedly reinforces these intuitions; but this does not mean that folk psychology should be eliminated as philosophical accounts advance. Rather, as will become apparent, most philosophical theories attribute an ineliminable role to background beliefs about the photographic process in their final accounts of the epistemic or aesthetic significance of photographs. Whether the intuitions listed are jointly coherent and individually justified, and if not, why, are central problems that surface throughout this article, and will be treated explicitly in our concluding remarks. To get off the ground, all theories of photography must suppose some conception of their object. Hence what constitutes photography as a distinct field of investigation remains a foundational question at this stage. Many philosophers continue to favour an essentialist view of photography, and focusing on the photographic medium tends to be the dominant