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All Outputs (11)

Covers, Concreteness, and Craft: A Reply To Giupponi, Pettersson and Campion (2024)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. (2024). Covers, Concreteness, and Craft: A Reply To Giupponi, Pettersson and Campion. Debates in Aesthetics, 18(2), 101-118

I reply to three authors who responded to my target article: 'Music, Visualization and the Multi-stage Account of Photography'. Mikael Pettersson raises concerns about absent light because traditional theories suppose that a photograph is a causal tr... Read More about Covers, Concreteness, and Craft: A Reply To Giupponi, Pettersson and Campion.

Music, Visualization and the Multi-Stage Account of Photography (2024)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. (2024). Music, Visualization and the Multi-Stage Account of Photography. Debates in Aesthetics, 18(2), 13-46

Like his contemporary, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams claimed that visualization is essential for creating fine art photography. But, unlike Weston, he believed that a print from a negative is like a performance from a score. In his analogy, a photograph... Read More about Music, Visualization and the Multi-Stage Account of Photography.

Against Imprinting: The Photographic Image as a Source of Evidence (2022)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. M. (in press). Against Imprinting: The Photographic Image as a Source of Evidence. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 89(4),

A photographic image is said to provide evidence of a photographed scene because it is a causal imprint of reflected light: an indexical trace of real objects and events. Though widely established in the history, theory and philosophy of photography,... Read More about Against Imprinting: The Photographic Image as a Source of Evidence.

Reflecting, Registering, Recording and Representing: From Light Image to Photographic Picture (2022)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. (2022). Reflecting, Registering, Recording and Representing: From Light Image to Photographic Picture. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 122(2), 141-164. https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoac008

Photography is valued as a medium for recording and visually reproducing features of the world. I seek to challenge the view that photography is fundamentally a recording process and that every photograph is a record — a view that I claim is based on... Read More about Reflecting, Registering, Recording and Representing: From Light Image to Photographic Picture.

Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography (2021)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. M. (2021). Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 79(2), 161-174. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpab005

Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by... Read More about Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography.

Facing the camera: Self-portraits of photographers as artists (2012)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. M. (2012). Facing the camera: Self-portraits of photographers as artists. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 70(1), 56-66. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2011.01498.x

Self-portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism and artistic agency in photography-a relationship that is seen as a problem in the philosophy of art. I discuss self-portraits by p... Read More about Facing the camera: Self-portraits of photographers as artists.

Wittgenstein's 'Picture-Theory' and the Aesthetic Experience of Clear Thoughts (2011)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Wilson, D. Wittgenstein's 'Picture-Theory' and the Aesthetic Experience of Clear Thoughts. Presented at 33rd International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium, 2010, Kirchberg

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein appeals to clarity when he characterises the aim, task and results of philosophy. In this essay I suggest that his ‘picture theory’ of language implies that clarity has aesthetic significance in phil... Read More about Wittgenstein's 'Picture-Theory' and the Aesthetic Experience of Clear Thoughts.

Fixing the image : re-thinking the 'mind-independence' of photographs (2009)
Journal Article
Phillips, D. M. (2009). Fixing the image : re-thinking the 'mind-independence' of photographs. Postgraduate journal of aesthetics, 6(2), 1-22

It has been argued that photographs are unsuitable or inferior candidates for art because they are not intimately bound to the mind of an artist. I believe that we can address scepticism in the philosophy of art only if we recognise that it is linked... Read More about Fixing the image : re-thinking the 'mind-independence' of photographs.

Photography and causation: Responding to Scruton's scepticism (2009)
Journal Article
Phillips, D. M. (2009). Photography and causation: Responding to Scruton's scepticism. British Journal of Aesthetics, 49(4), 327-340. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayp036

According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton's scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these... Read More about Photography and causation: Responding to Scruton's scepticism.

What can be shown, cannot be said: Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy in the Tractatus and the Investigations (2002)
Thesis
Phillips, D. M. What can be shown, cannot be said: Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy in the Tractatus and the Investigations. (Thesis). University of Durham. https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4055594

My thesis is that the say-show distinction is the basis of Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy in both the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953). Wittgenstein said that the Investigations should... Read More about What can be shown, cannot be said: Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy in the Tractatus and the Investigations.