ABSTRACT
The appreciation of pictures is often described as an appreciation of how a picture surface supports a visual impression of volume and depth. In this paper, I argue that for subjects to have visual experiences of the picture’s surface as well as visual experiences of volume and depth, they have to engage in perceptual activities (to be in perceptual states with specific agentive profiles). The perceptual activity required by classical aesthetic accounts (like seeing-in) is necessary for cognitively driven picture perceptions, but not for visually driven picture perceptions, which take place without any agentive contribution. Subjects are able to engage in the relevant perceptual activities with any kind of picture but don’t usually do so, and don’t need to do so in order to grasp the contents of most pictures. On one hand, the fact that most picture perceptions require no perceptual activity shows that seeing-in accounts of picture perception are false, because they entail that perceptual activity is part of picture perception generally. On the other hand, aesthetic accounts of appreciation of pictures can be defended against the objection that most pictures are used without paying any attention to how their surfaces support their contents. Finally, the structure of the perceptual activities involved shows that picture surfaces and picture contents cannot be visually experienced simultaneously.
