Matt Dill

In this paper, I defend Bazin’s re-presentationalist realism—the view according to which (1) photography and cinema literally re-present their model(s) to the audience and thus (on account of this and various facts about human psychology) that (2) realism is the most appropriate program to pursue in photography/cinema—against objections recently raised by Noël Carroll. I begin by dealing with the problem of »objectivity« in Bazin’s representationalist realism. After considering and responding to Carroll’s arguments against Bazin’s claims regarding objectivity in photography/cinema, I deal more specifically with Carroll’s objections to Bazin’s advancement of a realist approach to the aesthetic evaluation of photographic/cinematic images.

Matt Dill is a PhD student in the philosophy program at Boston University. He specializes in Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Philosophy of Art and will to be spending the 2016-17 academic year in Germany, where he is writing a dissertation on the role of affective dispositions in Nietzsche’s approach to valuation.