Dr Catharine Abell

Catharine completed her PhD in 2003. She joined the Discipline Area as lecturer in January 2006. Before her arrival at Manchester, she held lecturing positions at Macquarie University and The University of Adelaide. Since arriving at Manchester, she has been awarded a three-year Macquarie University Research Fellowship.

Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Mind

My main research interest is pictorial representation, specifically its nature and epistemic value. I am interested in the role that human communicative capacities play in both picture production and interpretation, and in the effect this has on the epistemic purposes pictures can serve. This includes an interest both in how the epistemic value of pictures produced by mechanical means (e.g. photographs) differs from that of manually produced pictures, and in how picture makers’ stylistic choices affect the epistemic purposes the pictures they produce can serve. I am also interested in a range of further issues in aesthetics, including the nature of style more generally, and in the artistic value of works of tragedy.

Undergraduate

• PH20951 Aesthetics
• PH30622 Analytic Aesthetics

Graduate

• PHIL60041 MA Aesthetics

I am keen to work with graduate students interested in aesthetics, particularly those whose interests overlap with my own research.

Publications Database

Abell, C. (forthcoming 2009) "Canny Resemblance", The Philosophical Review, Vol. 188, No. 2. (16 000 words) penultimate draft

Abstract

Depiction is the form of representation distinctive of figurative paintings, drawings and photographs. Accounts of depiction attempt to specify the relation something must bear to an object in order to depict it. Resemblance accounts hold that the notion of resemblance is necessary to the specification of this relation. Several difficulties with such analyses have led many philosophers to reject the possibility of an adequate resemblance account of depiction. I outline these difficulties, and argue that current resemblance accounts succumb to them. I then develop an alternative resemblance account of depiction, according to which something depicts an object if it bears intention-based resemblances to the object that jointly capture its overall appearance. In addition to solving the metaphysical problem of what it is for something to depict an object; this account also sheds significant light on the epistemological issue of how we are able to work out that something depicts an object. I argue that our ability to work out that something depicts an object results from both our more general ability to identify intentions from the products of communicative behaviour and our knowledge of stylistic conventions. This account overcomes the difficulties that face attempts to analyse depiction in terms of resemblance. It also clarifies and explains the features that distinguish depictive from non-depictive representation.

Abell, C. (2007) “Pictorial Realism”, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85, no. 1. pp 1-17.

Abstract

I propose a number of criteria for the adequacy of an account of pictorial realism. Such an account must: explain the epistemic significance of realistic pictures; explain why accuracy and detail are salient to realism; be consistent with an accurate account of depiction; and explain the features of pictorial realism. I identify six features of pictorial realism. I then propose an account of realism as a measure of the information pictures provide about how their objects would look, were one to see them. This account meets the criteria I have identified and is superior to alternative accounts of realism.

 

Abell, C. (2006) “Realism and the Riddle of Style”, Contemporary Aesthetics

Abell, C. (2005) “Against Depictive Conventionalism”, The American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp 185-197.

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the influential view that depiction, like language, depends on arbitrary conventions. I argue that this view, however it is elaborated, is false. Any adequate account of depiction must be consistent with the distinctive features of depiction. One such feature is depictive generativity. I argue that, to be consistent with depictive generativity, conventionalism must hold that depiction depends on conventions for the depiction of basic properties of a picture’s object. I then argue that two considerations jointly preclude depiction from being governed by such conventions. Firstly, conventions must be salient to those who employ them. Secondly, those parts of pictures that depict basic properties of objects are not salient to the makers and interpreters of pictures.

 

Abell, C. (2005) “On Outlining the Shape of Depiction”, Ratio, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, pp 27-38.

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the account of depiction proposed by
Robert Hopkins in his book Picture, Image and Experience. I first
briefly summarise Hopkins’s account, according to which we experience depictions as resembling their objects in respect of outline shape. I then ask whether Hopkins’s account can perform the explanatory tasks required of an adequate account of depiction. I argue that there are at least two reasons for which Hopkins’s account of depiction is inadequate. Firstly, the notion of outline shape, as Hopkins presents it, is inconsistent. Moreover, I argue that, while a consistent construal of outline shape is possible, Hopkins’s account becomes indistinguishable from previous accounts of depiction under any such construal. Second, I argue that, however it is construed, the notion of outline shape is unable to explain one of the central features which Hopkins himself insists any successful account of depiction must explain.

Abell, C. (2005) “McIntosh’s Unrealistic Picture of Peacocke and Hopkins on Realistic Pictures”, British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp 64-68.

Abell, C. (2005) “Pictorial Implicature”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 63, No. 1, pp 55-66.

Abstract

It is generally recognised that an adequate resemblance-based account of depiction must specify some standard of correctness which explains how a picture’s content differs from the content we would attribute to it purely on the basis of resemblance. For example, an adequate standard should explain why stick figure drawings do not depict emaciated beings with gargantuan heads. Most attempts to specify a standard of correctness appeal to the intentions of the picture’s maker. However, I argue that the most detailed such attempt to date is incomplete. I argue that an adequate standard can be given only if one construes a picture’s content as being pictorially implicated, in a way analogous to that in which Grice explains an utterance’s meaning as being conversationally implicated. I propose a theory of pictorial implicature and use it as the basis for an intention-based standard of correctness. I show how this standard is able to explain both the ways in which the content of pictures differs from the content we would attribute to them solely on the basis of resemblance, and how we are able to apply an intention-based standard of correctness even though we lack any independent knowledge of the intentions of pictures’ makers.

 

Abell, C. (2005) “The Public Cost of Private Ownership of Artworks”, Philosophy in the Contemporary World, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp76-81.

Abell, C. and Currie, G. (1999) “Internal and External Pictures”, Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp 429-445.

Abstract

What do pictures and mental images have in common? The contemporary tendency toreject "mental picture" theories of imagery suggests that the answer is: not much. We show that pictures and visual imagery have something important in common. They both contribute to mental simulations: pictures as inputs and mental images as outputs. But we reject the idea that mental images involve mental pictures, and we use simulation theory to strengthen the anti-pictorialist’ s case. Along the way we try to account for caricature and for some basic features of pictorial representations.

Book Reviews:

Abell, C. (2006) “Review of Dominic McIver Lopes, Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures”, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

Abell, C. (2005) “Review of Z. Pylyshyn, Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think”, Psyche