The Invisible Content of Visual Art

In his characteristically perceptive way, Arthur Danto has focused on a central issue about pictures and shown that, in order to resolve it, some distinctions have to be made. As it happens, the issue stands at the intersection of art and science, an appropriate target for a philosopher such as Danto, who has long employed his analytical skills in both domains. His argument bears on the histories of art and science; it leads us to ask why each has taken the course that it has. With regard to art, the answer Danto rejects is: Because of fundamental changes in the ways we see. There is, of course, an undeniable diversity of pictorial techniques for representing the things we see-schemata, as E. H. Gombrich would call them. Those are discovered or invented, then taught and learned. But it does not follow that there have been significant changes in our perceptual abilities.' It is more likely, on Danto's account, that pictorial techniques vary because of the development of artistic skills and because of cultural differences in how the ends of art are conceived-pictorial attitudes, as they have been termed.2 It is therefore crucial for his argument that picture perception is unaffected at some basic level by those very attitudes, and the beliefs, desires, or theories they reflect. Thus Danto claims, partly on the grounds of cognitive science, that (1) picture perception can be explained in terms of the same mechanisms that operate in ordinary perception, and (2) some of those mechanisms are cognitively impenetrable: Vision is modular, in the sense of Jerry Fodor and David Marr.3 The first point implies that we do not have to learn to recognize objects in pictures through experience with pictures per se, i.e., training in the deciphering of pictorial techniques. The second point implies that we do not have to learn to recognize objects in the undepicted world at all. Because basic recognitional abilities are not affected by learning and experience, they cannot be the product of learning and experience. They must be innate. It follows that people everywhere see-and have for thousands of years seen-the world and pictures of it in pretty much the same way. I agree with Danto's first point about the reliance of picture perception on ordinary perceptual abilities. And I think his argument that pictorial diversity does not reflect a deep perceptual plasticity is an important insight, the sort of distinction that we very much need to make. Danto is right to hold that pictorial diversity is often due more to artistic skills and know-how than to fundamental changes in visual processes. Even where representational skills are developed in conjunction with theory and employed in its service, it does not follow that picture perception is theory laden. As Danto notes, much of the evidence that has been cited in aesthetics for the theory ladenness of picture perception does not show that at all, and the same is true of similar arguments in cognitive science.4 At the same time, however, that failure does not show that the modularity thesis is true. Indeed, I think that empirical evidence beyond mere pictorial diversity strongly suggests that the modularity thesis is false, at least in the strict sense set forth by Fodor. If so, then Danto's important claim-that we should distinguish between pictorial diversity and perceptual plasticity, and explain the former in terms of something other than the latter-must be grounded in another way. At the end of my discussion, I will suggest such a way. But contesting the modularity thesis, which is largely an empirical matter, is not really my aim. For one thing, I think that nothing in Danto's philosophy of art actually depends on the modularity thesis, congenial though it may be to his views. Yet he has said