Kendall Walton

Kendall Lewis Walton (born 1939) is an American philosopher, the Charles Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan.[1] His work mainly deals with theoretical questions about the arts and issues of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. His book Mimesis as Make Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts develops a theory of make-believe and uses it to understand the nature and varieties of representation in the arts.[2] He has also developed an account of photography as transparent, defending the idea that we see through photographs, much as we see through telescopes or mirrors,[3] and written extensively on pictorial representation, fiction and the emotions, the ontological status of fictional entities, the aesthetics of music, metaphor, and aesthetic value. (Source: Wikipedia)