Mirrors, Windows, and Paintings

Abstract

What do we see in a mirror? There is an ongoing debate over whether mirrors present us with images of objects or whether we see, through the mirror, the objects themselves. Roberto Casati has recently argued that there is a categorical difference between images and mirror reflections. His argument depends on the observation that mirrors, but not paintings, are sensitive to changes in the observer’s perspective. In our paper we scrutinize Casati’s argument and present a modal argument that shows that it cannot establish this conclusion. We suggest that Casati’s line of reasoning suffers from the fact that he does not take dynamic images – that is, images that change over time – into account.

Keywords

• mirror images
• pictorial representation
• perspective
• dynamic images
• brunelleschi’s experiment