Philosophy 290-3

The focus of this graduate seminar is the nature of depiction and the experience of pictures. What do you see when you look at a picture? What is a picture? And what makes some pictures works of art? Pictures introduce the problem of intentionality, so an underlying project of the seminar is to understand and explain intentionality. A further guiding concern is the value of art, and art criticism, for philosophy (as philosophy). We will also consider the question of dance (what do you see when you look at a dance?).