Pictures and Propositions

The London Aesthetics Forum (Institute of Philosophy), with generous funding from the British Society of Aesthetics, announces a conference on

Pictures and Propositions
13-14 June 2016, Senate House, London  
- http://www.londonaestheticsforum.org - 

This conference brings philosophers from art and aesthetics working on pictorial representation together with philosophers of mind and language working on the nature of content. We believe that each party is well positioned to offer new insights to the other. For example, by attending to representational pictures, might we shed light on the nature and structure of content, an issue that has seen a recent revival in the philosophy of language but which has focused almost exclusively on sentential representation? Closely related, what can be said about 'pictorial content'? Should we conceive of the contents of pictures as of a different, non-propositional category or might they be assimilated to the more familiar domain? And how are the contents of pictures determined? If visual aspects of a picture underdetermine its content, might linguistic resources such as presupposition or implicature help fill out what's represented? These questions and more will be taken up by our panel of speakers.    

The conference will take place on Monday the 13th and Tuesday the 14th of June 2016, at Senate House in London. A registration page and a detailed schedule will become available closer to the time of the event. All are welcome to attend.  

The conference will follow the BPA/SWIP Good Practice Scheme.

Please direct questions to Alex Grzankowski at [email protected]