Abstract
What is it for a picture to be more realistic, or more depictive, than another? Without committing to any thesis as to what depiction consists in, I show that degrees of depictiveness are grounded in a certain relation between two basic kinds of differences between pictures: configurational differences and content differences. A picture is thus more depictive just in case it is seen as having fewer nondepictive features, whereas a nondepictive feature is individuated through the susceptibility of the picture's configuration to change without entailing any change in the picture's content.
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Chasid, A. Content-Free Pictorial Realism. Philos Stud 135, 375–405 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-005-3256-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-005-3256-7