Pictures, Perceptions and the Like

In "The Power of Pictures," Schwartz argues that "pictures may not only shape our perception of the world; they can and do play an important role in making it" (711). In other words, Schwartz sets out to argue that we "partake in world-making" and that it is false to assume a world which is "ready-made, waiting out there to be captured in word or image" (712). In the next paragraph, Schwartz points out that while some individuals extoll the virtue of seeing a pure world, there is no way to determine what is "pure and simple" to the human eye (712). I take this to mean that the author either does not believe in a conception of reality independent of the perceiver OR believes in a reality independent of conception but does not think that it is accessible.

However, later in the article Schwartz discusses the importance of classification and the extent to which one person's ability to notice certain aspects of a face, for example, help to create categories into which we can place other faces. The creation of categories implies that there is something from which to create categories in the first place - a reality independent of our perceptions. Schwartz thus appears to be saying that an infinite number of features exist on a face, and it is up to the perceiver to pick out the ones he or she takes to be the most important. This process eventually produces categories.

With regard to the creation of categories, I was confused by the following passages:

"This class, like any other class of objects, tenselessly always existed. It also always contained all and only the members it has, regardless of the doings of Picasso or anyone else. Indeed, the class we now take to be composed of resemblers of Stein would (if we exclude the reflexive case) have been extensionally the same class and just as real had Stein herself never existed. This, however, says no more than that classes are individuated by the members they keep" (714).

On the next page, Schwartz writes:
"The point then is not the trivial reminder that words bear arbitrary connections to their denotations and, hence, require human habits or conventions to give them their referential force...The idea of the fact of the matter, 'Stephen looking like Stein,' sitting out there or just being that way, while awaiting the good fortune to be noticed or recorded, evaporates" (715).

So categories and labels exist and have always exist but at the same time have not. Could we clarify these two passages in class?

I found the last part of Schwartz's article rather interesting. In applying his theory that by observing the world we partake in "world-making," the author contends that scientists as observers partake in world-making as well (719). This parallel between scientists and artists is interesting and novel. In my opinion, this idea merits more discussion.