Photographic Absence: a fuss about nothing

'There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.' ― John Cage

Philosopher Mikael Pettersson, explores the causal status of shadows and absences in photography. Despite the apparent absurdity of the issues he raises, the implications are profound.

For a conference presentation at the Institute For Advanced Study at Durham University, Pettersson began by reference to the widely held view that photography is a prototypical causal medium wholly dependent upon the known regularities of the universe for its efficacy. If it so happened that photography were an unreliable medium, if every exposure were a struggle with uncertainty and every image were a tapestry of the indeterminate, there would be little value in these objects that so conveniently find their way into our lives. Indeed, if photography lacked causality, it seems unlikely that vision itself would be possible.

But if photography is a causal medium, Pettersson asks, how can non-entities like shadows and other kinds of absence commonly depicted in photographs have causal influence and, moreover, what is their causal foundation?

It is tempting at this stage to throw our hands in the air and to declare the preposterousness of the enquiry. Absences, and this necessarily includes the complete absence of illumination, lack causal influence because there is literally nothing to do any causing. The box of photographic paper that sits on my desk, awaiting exposure to light, gains it's value by virtue of its complete and unalterable insensitivity to the absence of light. We discern shadows in images due to the causal presence of light and its varying intensities precisely because the absence of light has no influence whatsoever. Photographic traces that depict shadows are the result of electrochemical processes designed to replace unexposed portions of the image with chemicals that absorb light, thus simulating darkness.

But to pursue this line of response to Pettersson's enquiries would be to overlook one of the most important enigmas of human, and to an indeterminate degree also creaturely, concern. Possibly the most profound event in any life is the encounter with the death of another. Absences cause—or at least seem to cause—some of the most intense experiences we are ever likely to face. So the question over the possible causal influence of absence is by no means a trivial one. It is arguably the most significant question of all.

Another conference delegate, Vivian Mizrahi, questioned Pettersson's emphasis on photography. Why, she asked, does the same not apply to other forms of image making? For Pettersson, the widely accepted causal directness of photography, the fact that it is not mediated by the brain—as is the case with drawing or painting, seems to provide stronger grounds for attributing a causal role to absence rather than any mind-dependent intermediary. Nonetheless, minds do play an inescapable role in the reception and interpretation (or 'seeing-in') of images. This was the concluding point to which Pettersson turned his attention, though not without giving due consideration to several of the more plausible but ultimately unsatisfactory acausal theories of influence in absentia.

Is there any evidence of the causal influence of absence? It might be argued that the absence of food in our stomachs causes us to seek sustenance; or that a lack of time causes lateness; or that a hole on a beach causes sand to infill the void; or that the absence of aerodynamic lift causes an airplane to fall from the sky. All of these instances, and many more that we could enumerate, are seemingly plausible examples of the causal influence of absence. However, on inspection, many turn out to be cases of commonplace causality. A decrease in blood glucose, triggers hunger; lateness is caused by an over abundance of things to be done and falling is caused by the release of potential energy. 

However, the last example mentioned above is far from clear-cut. Some theorists would claim that the release of potential energy is due to an absence of physical support. There seems to be growing theoretical uncertainty over whether such instances are the result of an oversimplification in description or whether there genuinely are cases of negative causation. Personally, I'm not sure - though I suspect that the fault is linguistic in origin. If exhaustive detail were necessary to describe the causal history of even the most basic state of affairs, the chain of causes would lead inexorably to the Big Bang. Abstraction in description is therefore both necessary and inevitable. At some point even the most exhaustive account falls silent. The concept of absence then, like the concept of zero, is a tool that has proven to have enormous efficacy for us. Yet unlike the concept of zero, which is only ever acquired through education, there is evidence to suggest that human infants display an awareness of absence from a very early age and many animals also behave in ways that suggest a capacity to register absence.

Do these glimmerings constitute the rudimentary evidence of conceptual capacities, of proto-linguistic thought? Perhaps, but we should be wary. If we wish to provide a coherent causal theory of absence we will first need to explain the causal relations that lead to attributions of absence.

I have written previously of another philosopher, Anya Farennikova, who takes the view that we literally perceive absence. Farennikova contends that we possess mental states in which absences are represented. There is a serious problem with this theory though, and it is a difficulty reflected in the issues Pettersson brings to light. To assume that an inner representation represents absence requires this absence to have causal influence, thus violating the laws of causality.

The alternative is to view absence not as a causal entity of any kind but as the name we give to the common mismatch we find between what we expect and what we actually perceive. So, when we say that an infant or animal exhibits awareness of absence, what we really mean is that they are capable of forming expectations and of being surprised when these  do not apply.

Absence is an enormously powerful and convenient concept, but the fact that we can treat such abstractions as concrete entities is no cause to invoke causality where none is possible. As far as images go, even the most explicit absence can only be recognised as such if we are capable of a contrasting expectation: of describing, delineating or selecting a substitute of that which is absent, of the actual presence envisaged.

Or, as Carl Sagan said (admittedly in a completely different context): "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Triggers, Signals and Intentionality

I was recently recommended to read Ruth Millikan's work on biological intentionality. Intentionality is widely thought to be the result of anticipatory capacities of one sort or another, but quite how these capacities manifest themselves on a neurological level is a fiercely debated subject upon which Millikan takes a radical but I think entirely mistaken line. Millikan takes the view, not only that brain states are representational, but that they are essentially semantic: ‘Biosemantic.’

In the next few paragraphs I aim to show why biosemantics fails to achieve its goal of naturalising representational content, and I aim to do this by way of a discussion of the evolutionary emergence of the most basic form of signalling commonly observed in nature (i.e. rabbits thumping the ground, the tail splashing of beavers and numerous other rudimentary alarm signals).

Organisms need to be sensitive to changes in their environment and to be differentially responsive to available stimuli, i.e. capable of adjusting their  responsiveness according to prevailing circumstances. If a certain advantageous or disadvantageous circumstance is commonly preceded by other regularly occurring stimuli, then it is of significant advantage for organisms to be capable of responding effectively to these antecedent environmental triggers.

Environmental triggers, of whatever kind, should never be confused with signals. The scent that leads an organism to a source of food is not a literal signal propagated by the food, nonetheless it is a potentially detectible property in the environment propagated by the food. Strictly speaking, a passing shadow or rustling in the undergrowth etc. are not signals, signs or indicators of impending danger, because they are not deliberately produced, i.e. they are not intentional. They are simply detectable characteristics of the environment that occasionally precede threatening events. As we will see, this fact about the necessary intentionality of signalling is one of the principal weaknesses in mainstream theories of intentionality like Millikan’s. If intentionality is dependent upon representations and representations are dependent upon intention then there is no way to break into the circle.

So, what do we know about the emergence of signalling in a biological context? Or, more to the point, how can a publicly perceptible behavioural trigger (a startle response, say) evolve into an intentional signalling behaviour of the rabbit ground-thumping variety?

In order to answer this question we first need to recognise that vulnerable organisms benefit  from social coexistence because this provides a safer environment in which the probability of attack is greatly reduced. Additionally, when any one individual is attacked, the ensuing commotion has the potential to trigger evasive responses on the part of neighbouring individuals. Any individuals failing to detect and respond to such disturbances will be vulnerable to further attacks and will consequently be less likely to survive.

In order for a behavioural trigger to become a signal then, the following conditions need to be met:

1. A group of organisms must be under selective pressure.
2. These organisms must behave in regular and conspicuous ways when attacked, thereby producing a stimulus with the potential to be used as a signal.
3. Consumers must be capable of detecting the stimulus. 
4. Behaviours triggered by the signal must be advantageous to both producer and consumers in the majority of instances*. 
5. Producers must become capable of producing the signal independent of its standard causes if the signal is to have efficacy over and above that provided by ordinary behaviour.

As can be seen, the steps necessary for even the most basic form of signaling are complex and demand very different circumstances than those that pertain amongst the cell structures of the brain. Quite how an analogous form of signaling, of the kind that Millikan and others impute, could evolve through the interaction of brain cells awaits even the most basic demonstration.

What needs no demonstration though, is the fact that many creatures produce publicly perceptible signals. All that needs to be recognised is that it is the capacity to produce such representations that is instrumental in cases of intentionality, not some alleged but so far entirely undetectable representations flitting around inside our heads.

*Individuals may benefit by “crying wolf” in certain circumstances but the efficacy of this strategy will be limited in the long term. Similarly, withholding a signal may have short term advantages and would explain why many animals respond to alarm calls by increased attention instead of shelter-seeking behaviour.

Realism and Reality

Despite the fact that more distant objects are projected at a smaller scale onto the retina than closer objects, it is crucial that we perceive the size of distant sources of food, predators etc. as accurately as possible. If our ancestors had perceived proximate objects as larger than distant objects, their chances of survival would have been severely limited. One of the major evolutionary obstacles for the development of visual processing therefore, must have been to overcome the fact that distant objects are projected onto the eye in this way. What we see when we look at distant fruit is distant fruit, not tiny little tidbits. Nonetheless, when we draw distant fruit we have to render them at a smaller scale than closer fruit. It is nothing less than extraordinary that this technique works at all, let alone that it leads us to say that pictorial images look realistic. And it is no wonder also that it took us so long to discover one of the most important strategies for producing such images: perspective.

According to the influential educational psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980), young children do not draw “what they see”, they draw what they know. In Piaget’s view the child is not capable of “pure observation” but instead “he sees the world as if he had previously constructed it with his own mind.” Piaget’s theory has its origins in the philosophical doctrine of Subjective Idealism, a view that conceives of perception as a mental construct, an inner analogue of the external world - a world to which we have no direct access. Traces of this doctrine inform the work of many theorists and educationalists, both past and present, including John Ruskin and Georges-Henri Luquet whose work greatly influenced Piaget. Both Luquet and Piaget claimed that children’s drawings develop from “intellectual realism” (i.e. what children know) towards “visual realism” (i.e. what they see).

So, according to this theory, when we draw with visual realism, we draw what we see. But does this really stand up to scrutiny? Visual realism and reality (what we actually perceive) are by no means the same and it doesn’t follow therefore that there is a simple correlation between what we see and visual realism. If there were, we probably wouldn’t need to distinguish between the real and the unreal, between the real and the realistic, between reality and realism.

We take it as given that everything we see is real and we reserve words like ‘realism’ and ‘realistic’ for representations. So, to say that photographs are realistic is to say very little about what we actually see.

It should be obvious that we have evolved to see the world – as far as is humanly possible – exactly as it is. And whilst pictures look like the world, the two are not interchangeable. Our terminology has evolved in its own ways to reflect this fact.

No matter how realistic an image might be and no matter how susceptible we are, in certain rare circumstances, to mistake images for reality, there is never some point at which pictorial realism gradually or suddenly becomes full blown reality. There is no special lens, no magical painterly potion, no mystical technique that will ever transform a depiction into reality. Realism is forever barred entry into the kingdom of the real.

For a child learning to draw, it is a significant challenge to acquire the many skills necessary to convert three-dimensional experience into two-dimensional depictions. Fortunately children are surrounded by examples (pictures) that show them that the feat is possible. But one of the most significant things that stands in their way is a formidable evolutionary background in which the perception of a distant predator has always been the perception of a distant predator, not the perception of a cute little predator looking at us with hunger in its eyes.

Difficulties for the Philosophy of Illusion

Illusion:

1.     a deceptive or misleading appearance

2.     a false or misleading impression, idea, belief or understanding

3.     a false perception of an object or experience due to the mind misinterpreting the evidence relayed to it by the senses.

The concept of illusion is an ancient one, yet its venerable pedigree and widespread popularity are no guarantee of its value as a tool for uncovering the nature of perception. It is a handy concept for sure, but perhaps we should be wary of convenience, especially as a route to insight.

Examples of illusion are not difficult to come by - many are the stock-in-trade of conjurers and ‘illusionists’, but where some illusions might be distinguished, especially from the tricks and entertaining feats of stage-artists, is in the degree to which they might be regarded as having something to reveal about the workings of perception. When a conjurer uses slight of hand to “deceive the eye”, we do not suppose that this has anything useful to tell us about our sensory capacities. The idea that, with sufficient skill and dexterity, the hand can move more expertly than is easily perceived is unsurprising. Optical illusions, on the other hand, produce puzzling responses or anomalous visual artefacts that call for more sophisticated explanations.

Philosophers – knowing that their theories often stand or fall on the evidence of scientific enquiry – frequently refer to optical illusions in order to substantiate their claims. However, during the 1960’s, an important body of evidence emerged that cast significant doubt on many of these claims, yet has gone largely unacknowledged in philosophical circles.

Müller-Lyer Illusion

In a 1966 study undertaken by Segal et al into cross cultural variations in susceptibility to optical illusions the researchers found significant variance between differing communities and age groups across the globe. Some groups, for instance, reported little or no difference between the apparent lengths of the lines of the famous Müller-Lyer diagram. An earlier study by Hudson (1960), of culturally isolated South African children, encountered very similar findings. Both studies attributed their results to a lack of habitual exposure to pictures amongst the communities studied. Hudson dubbed this lack of familiarity: ‘pictorial illiteracy’. In fact, even children well schooled in language and arithmetic skills (but lacking pictorial literacy) were not susceptible to what is commonly described as the ‘pictorial illusion of depth’ and were therefore unsusceptible to the depth cues that many optical illusions exploit.

In 2006 Robert N. McCauley and Joseph Henrich write:

For those who experience it, the illusion may persist, but susceptibility to the Müller-Lyer illusion is neither uniform nor universal. Moreover, a plausible argument can be made that through most of our species’ history most human beings were probably not susceptible to the illusion.

If this is correct, and corroborating evidence can be provided from the art historical record to support it - then there is good cause to doubt the relevance of illusion in the explanation of perception. Moreover, if the following evidence is anything to go by, these doubts are in greater need to explanation than ever.

In numerous well documented studies, it has been shown that when people reach to grab three-dimensional versions of optical illusions, their grip aperture (the distance between finger and thumb) is unaffected by the illusion. So, whilst we may be inclined to say that one part of an optical illusion appears to be larger than the other, our ability to physically interact with these illusions is unaffected.

From an evolutionary point of view, it is of the utmost importance that we do not confuse a distant object for a small object, especially if the distant object has significance for our potential to survive. It is extraordinarily fortunate in fact, that the capacity to recognise and use perspectival images (in which distant objects are depicted at disproportionate scales than nearby objects) has not been entirely overridden by the evolution of our perceptual skills. If the research of Hudson, Segal et al is correct, then it would seem that this capacity to derive depth cues from perspectival images is a learnt skill and is not an immediately available part of our genetically acquired perceptual repertoire. And McCauley and Henrich are surely right when they speculate that our susceptibility to illusions must be a relatively recent consequence of the increasingly widespread use of pictorial imagery. What better explanation do we have for the widespread indifference amongst animals to our attempts to interest them with images?

"The Innocent Eye Test", Mark Tansey, 1981

I hope the evidence presented here makes it clear that the standard view of illusion - as deceptive, misleading or false - is thoroughly inadequate as a tool for the investigation of the nature of perception.  If our theories don’t fit the evidence then it is time to change our theories. I suggest that we start with the theory of illusion.

The Difficulty of Making Things Out

“I can think of no good reason to deny that a tilted coin could be seen as elliptical and flat with respect to the viewer. This would be tantamount to denying the possibility of illusion.” -John O’Dea “Art and Ambiguity: A Gestalt Shift Approach to Elusive Appearances” (2013)

In the concluding paragraph O’Dea writes:

“Constancy often fails; deep shadows can make surface colour perceptually unclear; at severe angles, shapes constancy disappears; size becomes harder to judge from more distant objects; and so on. Is perceptual experience illusory in these conditions?”

A denial of illusion might be too much to ask, but perhaps we could urge that the term be used with great caution. When things recede into the distance they do not gradually become illusory, they are simply harder to make out. We see less of the far side of the table than the near side. This isn't an illusion or an inaccuracy. It's a commonplace and unremarkable consequence of the spatial fall-off of sensory input. The further away something is, the less we see of it. The process is linear and gradual and leads eventually to the complete loss of input as an object recedes into the distance.

Illusion and Veridical Perception

"Perception comprises, by stipulation, veridical perception and illusion." - Alex Byrne (2009).

Philosophers often make a distinction between what they call "veridical perception", in which things are thought to be seen in ideal circumstances, and "non-veridical perception" in which they are not. Some philosophers go so far as to say that all non-veridical circumstances are illusory. Others are more circumspect and limit the attribution of illusion to what they claim are "undeniable" cases. Mike Martin of UCL believes that the famous Ames room, where one views a specially prepared space through a monocular peephole, is one of these undeniable examples. He writes: "Viewing with one eye through an aperture into an Ames room can lead to distorted judgements of size." This may seem an uncontentious claim, yet it is not difficult to show that it is mistaken. To invoke judgement, as Martin does, is to attribute the cause to a sophisticated capacity of inference that could not possibly have evolved to such an advanced state if it were so prone to "distortion." Seeing isn't a set of ongoing judgements. The gibbon swinging through the trees does not infer the position of the branches it grabs with such consummate skill. 

If we point a camera through the Ames peephole, the resultant image will not be a distorted judgement. Ask someone familiar with the Ames room to make a model of what they see and they would have no significant difficulty. There is no distorted judgement and no illusory perception, only one or more ways of exploiting what we see in relation to what we know. 

For some reason philosophers don't seem to have cottoned on to the fact that the Ames room is carefully constructed to force what we might call a "pictorial view" which is a way of representing things that visual artists have always striven to acquire and refine. Seeing the world in terms of pictures is something we have learnt to do over millennia. We have become so good at it that we have incorporated these skills into our language in extraordinarily sophisticated ways, ways that infants pick up with the near ease of a gibbon swinging through the trees. Perhaps one day in the not too distant future philosophers will come to the realisation that a description of an "illusory appearance" is not a distortion but rather an innovative way of representing what we see. Such capacities by no means threaten our grip on reality - they only secure it more steadfastly. We are skilful little monkeys, more skilful than our philosophers are prepared to admit.

"Consider the oar's looking bent in water. Could we say that the oar's appearance is an illusion? That seems natural. But if so, then presumably the look of things through a glass of water, which will be similarly distorted, is also an illusion. And if that, then also the look of things through a magnifying glass held appropriately close? Through a telescope? Through ordinary corrective lenses?" —Eric Schwitzgebel

Perception (information or use?)

When we see the sunrise, do we perceive an illusion? We know that the sun is stationary with respect to the earth yet we say that the sun rises and falls. Are we misinforming ourselves, or, worse still, do we think that the sun presents misleading information? Philosophers talk of “accuracy conditions”, of “illusions” and “elusive appearances” but are these terms really appropriate? Is it even true to say that things present information to our senses? If we take the view that things do indeed present information then we are forced to conclude (though we should probably deny) that the sun presents inaccurate, imprecise or contradictory information about itself.

Many philosophers claim that experience has what they call “content” and this is either rich or sparse depending on your philosophical view. Others disagree. And so they should. The sun doesn’t emanate information and nor do the many surfaces from which its energy in reflected. So, it doesn’t follow that the appearance of the rising sun is inaccurate, elusive, deceptive, illusory etc.

The reason we commonly say that the sun rises and falls is because this has proven again and again to be a useful description of what we see. When some of our specialist needs changed (about 500 years or so ago) we eventually worked out that the sun doesn’t in fact revolve around the earth. Yet we continue to describe it in this way – not because we are misinformed, but because this is the way that continues to be most useful for our earth-bound needs.

So, what do we actually perceive when our portion of the earth turns towards the sun? Well, if you ask philosophers, you’ll get as many answers as you can fit fairies on a pinhead. But perhaps the most revealing way of approaching this issue is by asking what we can usefully do in response to the things that we see. And one of the most useful things we have learnt to do – especially with ungraspable things like the sun - is to represent them.

Perhaps one day it will be obvious that perception isn’t something we gain possession of (content we get) but rather something we are capable of doing. And, of all the things we are capable of purposefully doing, representing is probably the most fundamental.

Representing Neurons

Last year several websites posted articles about the research of David B. Hay and co-researchers (Darren Williams, Daniel Stahl, Richard Wingate) who published a paper investigating the drawing styles of undergraduates, trainee scientists, and leading neuroscience researchers when making drawings of neurons. The following image shows the three sets of drawings. 

The upper line was produced by undergraduate students and shows a close adherence to textbook diagrams whilst the mid line was produced by PhD students and postdoctoral researchers more familiar with neurons under the microscope. The lower line of drawings was produced by expert neuroscientists and shows the greatest variety of approaches to the task.

The research of Hay et al claims that:

“The analysis strongly suggests that a willingness/ability to hybridize extant brain cell knowledge with imaginative conjecture grounded by experience of experimental plausibility gives rise to drawings that are recognized as being ‘expert signatures’ by all classes of participants.”

In other words there was general agreement that the drawings of expert neuroscientists were more “creative,” and on the back of this conclusion various visualization techniques were employed to encourage undergraduate students to be more inventive with their visualisations of neurons. Apparently at the end of this process the drawings of the undergraduates were indistinguishable from the drawings of the experts.

The ability to visualize ideas on paper (and increasingly on screen) is a valuable means of stimulating theories, testing hypotheses and communicating ideas. It is also an important tool in science education - and education in general in fact - because it allows concepts to be digested quickly and efficiently thus optimizing learning and often making it more enjoyable in the process. I’m sure I wasn’t the only child to have wished that physics, biology and chemistry could have involved a lot more drawing and visualization. But what is often missed in the drive towards optimal learning is the value of lateral approaches to concept generation. Students are often treated as inert vessels that need to be crammed full of facts and it is assumed that once these facts have been assimilated that other more lateral skills will emerge of their own accord – or more worryingly - that such skills are superfluous to the advancement of science.

Clearly the work of Hay et al intends to counter such narrow-mindedness and for this reason it should be applauded. Nonetheless, I have several reservations about the way that the study interprets the theory and practice and drawing and the conclusions it makes about creativity in both educational and expert settings.

Different kinds of drawing serve different kinds of purposes and it is vital to understand that these differences have nothing to do with ‘expert signatures.’ When undergraduate students draw neurons the reference material they are given tends to be diagrammatic - usually diagrams in which certain details have been exaggerated in order to make them more informative for a wide variety of applications. When these students draw a neuron they are expected to copy the diagram. Strictly speaking, when a student copies a diagram they produce a predominantly matching representation of the predominantly symbolizing  illustration. So, what they end up with - and few people ever acknowledge this subtle but obvious fact - is a drawing that represents two things simultaneously: a neuron and a diagram of a neuron.  And in either case the strategy of representation is significantly different.

When a PhD student or postdoctoral researcher draws a neuron seen under a microscope they are most likely seeking to produce an image that closely resembles what they see. Even if they are asked to draw a neuron from memory, they are likely to attempt this form of simulating representation. Equally, if their branch of research isn’t concerned with observing neurons under a lens, then it is likely that their drawings will be more like those of an expert neuroscientist, as several of the drawings confirm.

When an expert neuroscientist draws a neuron they are clearly not interested in simulating what neurons look-like. They are probably more interested in how neurons function and their drawings tend to be more schematic because they intend to symbolise what they believe to be salient neuronal processes.

So, when Hay et al ask undergraduate students to experiment with alternative methods of representing neurons they are encouraging different ways of thinking about the features and functions of neurons. This is good. But when they assume that expert drawings are more “creative” they make an important error that is easily exemplified. When a doctor scrawls a prescription, even if it is perfectly legible to the pharmacist, this is no evidence of creative flair and we are right not to seek to encourage aspiring doctors to develop similarly idiosyncratic writing styles. Where information is concerned the style of communication is completely irrelevant. What matters is the purpose.

If experimentation with different forms of representation leads to insights then it is obviously important to exploit this practice. But if the representations produced are uninformative, or worse still if they lead to bad medicine, then there is little point in promoting them, no matter how creative they are claimed to be.

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Thanks to James Atherton for posting the link.

Evolution's Greatest Gift

Gifts can arrive carefully concealed or straight out of the box. Either way their consequences can only be envisaged but never seen from the outset.

I recently had a discussion with a philosopher in which he brought up the Wollheimian concept of "seeing-in." He claimed that an expert talent-scout working for a modelling agency would be able to see - literally perceive - potential in the face of a prospective model. Sadly the discussion was interrupted and I didn't get a chance to explore his view further.

It may be the case that he was using the term "perception" figuratively as an equivalent of "appreciation", "evaluation" or "inference". Potential in this sense is a projective notion, specifically a notion about a possible or even likely future. It's an anticipatory account, image or expectation. If I say that someone has potential, I don't mean that I literally see anything. If the person in question leaves the room, the potential I see doesn't walk out of the door with them. So to see something in this sense is not to perceive it in anything like the sense in which we might readily see the shape or size of objects around us.

Expertise may sometimes involve a degree heightened perceptual awareness developed through practice and experience. But to see indications, signs, suggestions, evidence etc. involves skills beyond those of mere perception. Even when we see dark clouds looming and say "It looks like it's going to rain" we can only say this because we know from past experience that dark clouds often precede rain and we can use this knowledge to inform our judgements about the future.

Expertise is thus at least partly a condition of being acquainted with certain causal regularities. Experience and education about these regularities furnishes experts with exemplars that allow them to make more accurate predictions. But these predictions are not properties of the world. This is why even experts are often wrong, especially about long-term events.

So, to say that we see potential in a student is to hedge a bet based upon their previous achievements. It is certainly not a kind of mysterious emanation that only experts can sense. It is not a perceptible thing or energy of any kind. It is a supposition, based upon evidence and supported by experience without which the determination of potential would be impossible.

If beauty were a perceptible property of a prospective model then every perceiver - other life forms included - would have to be capable of perceiving it. I don't think anyone would be confident of that view. Beauty and meaning etc. are socially negotiated attributions. They are ideas we closely associate with certain kinds and configurations of perceptible attributes and objects.

When we give gifts we often try to conceal their identity by wrapping them. It is never the point of gift giving that the recipient should be able to predict the contents. Such a skill would render the ritual of wrapping meaningless. One of the great pleasures of wrapped gifts is the expectation they elicit, an expectation that is often most pronounced in childhood. This has two important consequences. Firstly, it encourages self control; a vital life-skill. Secondly, it encourages powers of imagination that are of inestimable value to us as a species.

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Thanks to Brian for his contributions to a previous discussion on the subject of talent that was an important prompt for this post. Major revisions, July 2021.

Sense and Sensibilities (distinguishing and discriminating)

When discussing such things as taste, discrimination and discernment, there is always a risk of sounding elitist.  It's an occupational hazard in the arts. But, as I hope to show, this is due to two quite different ways in which we are capable of responding to experiences, one of which we all have access to, whilst the other has to be learned.

"But though there be naturally a wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing tends further to increase and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty." —David Hume (1757)

It could be said that an art school education is largely directed towards the cultivation of sensibilities, to the sharpening and refinement of tastes and to the subtleties and nuances of method, media and process. In order for us to become conversant with and to develop our appreciation of the fine details and qualities of experience it is often necessary to attend closely to the minutiae of sensations and to form distinctions between subtly different materials, gestures, expressions etc. But does this skill emerge through sensory experience alone or do language, and the distinctions that language enables, play a vital part in what Hume called "the delicacy of taste"? He writes: "Where the organs are so fine, as to allow nothing to escape them; and at the same time so exact, as to perceive every ingredient in the composition: This we call delicacy of taste."

Hume observes that our first experiences of things are often "obscure and confused; and the mind is, in a great measure, incapable of pronouncing concerning their merits or defects." But as experience increases, "The organ [of taste] acquires greater perfection in its operations; and can pronounce, without danger or mistake, concerning the merits of every performance." But if it is the case that experience and exacting discrimination are sufficient to explain this skill then we are left with an unsettled question: do animals develop a delicacy of taste through experience also? And if experience and fine discriminatory capacities are fundamental to a delicacy of taste then old dogs and innumerable other mature animals must possess sensibilities that far exceed our own.

In the late 1980’s and early 90’s Timothy D. Wilson and colleagues published the results of several frequently cited studies which explored the relationships between feelingful or “affective” judgements and verbal criteria. In the most famous of these studies test-subjects were asked to rank a selection of 5 jams in order of quality. The average rankings determined by these novice jam tasters turned out to be fairly closely correlated with rankings determined by expert jam tasters. Another group of novice jam tasters were also asked to take the test but in this case they were asked to make a note of the reasons for their judgements before ranking each jam. In this case the average rankings were significantly unlike those of the expert tasters.

Wilson et al conclude that what differentiates novices from experts is that novices have not yet integrated their affective states into a conceptual system, with the consequence that their attempts to verbalise their feelings fail to do them justice. Experts, on the other hand, have a much more stable grasp of their conceptual system and the ways this describes and frames their underlying affective states.

What this research reveals is that experience alone is insufficient for the development of our sensibilities. No matter how many jams I try - and I like jam a lot - I'll never become an expert simply by triggering my affective states, by tasting my way. What makes the crucial difference is my capacity to structure and articulate my feelings through language. 

Savouring a sensation then, can be thought of in two quite different ways. We can prolong an experience by deliberately lingering over it - sustaining and consolidating the associated feelings. Or we can contemplate an experience by carefully distinguishing between its component parts. This would be impossible if not for the categories and concepts of language. The ability to discriminate, on the other hand, is enabled by our sensory capacities, capacities that we share, though obviously to differing degrees of resolution and acuity, with other animals. 

Sensibilities, it turns out, are what language enables us to derive from the affective responses of sensory discrimination - from our senses. Without language we might still be able to savour our sensations but we would be unable to contemplate them. Not only is contemplation linguistically derived, it is also inherently social, precisely because of these linguistic roots. Perhaps this is why much of the most memorable and pleasurable savouring is that which is shared.

"No pleasure has any savor for me without communication." —Michel de Montaigne