Image Act Theory is an ethical theory that evaluates image manipulations in terms of social actions. In doing so, Image Act Theory borrows the approach of Austin's Speech Act Theory. Austin argued that certain utterances are preformative; that "in saying something, we do something." Likewise, Image Act Theory argues that when we change the way something appears, we perform a social action. An image manipulation may accuse, misrepresent, persuade and entertain depending upon the audience, illustrator, and whom is depicted. The benefit of this theory is that social actions are already amenable to analysis using a variety of ethical systems. This paper will survey historical and recent examples of image manipulation, and provide commentary about the social action performed.

INTRODUCTION

When an image is manipulated and this manipulation is recognized, a social action is performed. To support this theory, this paper builds from Reinach’s ontology concerning social acts. In doing so the argument borrows heavily on the analysis of television by Lundsten (1998). Still the theory is both inspired and named after Austin’s Speech Theory (1975).

SOCIAL ACT THEORY

The ontological view proposed by Reinach distinguishes between physical objects and states of affairs that exist between them. The states of affairs are used to characterize the obtainable states but also as the domain of communicable information. Reinach uses this division of the world into objects and states of affairs as the basis for description of social acts.

   Lundsten describes the Renachian model as involving “four main characteristics in addition to the necessary physical expression which is needed because human beings are bound to the physical world: (1) social acts are directed at an intentional correlate, and (2) they are doings of somebody, furthermore, (3) they generate changes in the world but, in order to do this, (4) they need to be recognised by a counterpart.” Reinach’s social acts were a precursor to structuralist models of communication such as Jakobson’s analysis of verbal communication (1960).

   As we shall see, image manipulations can be examined using this ontological stance. However, before proceeding it is also enlightening to consider speech act theory as another viewpoint for the analysis of communication.

SPEECH ACT THEORY

Wittgenstein famously noted that “words are deeds.” In doing so he succinctly describes the main proposition of speech act theory. This is (to use Austin’s description) that “saying something does something.”

   An oft-used example of speech act theory is the utterance “duck” to mean “look out!” In yelling the word duck to another English-speaker, I utter a statement but also (if heard and understood) perform the social action of warning the listener.

   Austin’s analysis provides more depth by dividing speech utterances into different varieties of speech acts (Wilson, 2003):

• locutionary act: The meaning of the statement itself (e.g. saying "step back" is to tell someone to step back).
• illocutionary act: The contextual function of the act (e.g. by telling someone to step back, you are warning them of a falling object).
• perlocutionary act: The results of the act upon the listener (e.g. alerting the listener to the falling object, in the sense that the listener became knowledgeable of the impending danger.

   Austin’s work had influence on Searle (1970) who continued the line of analysis to develop a form of illocutionary logic (1985). However, both Austin’s and Searle’s analyses remained focus on the problems of philosophy of language. In the next section I will discuss Image Act Theory as a crude extension of these ideas.

IMAGE ACT THEORY

Image Act Theory’s main proposition is that recognized image manipulations are social actions. Image manipulations are a subset of Remach’s social acts. They are:

• directed at an intentional correlate (in this case an image or representation)
• the doings of somebody (or some agent)
• they generate changes in the world (but, in order to do this)
• they need to be recognised by a counterpart

   In this analysis, image manipulations (in order to be affective) must be recognized by another counterpart. Thus, if a computer program alters images but does not communicate them to another social actor, then the image manipulations do not have a social action. There are many potential parties to the social action but at minimum there is a manipulating agent and at least one manipulation recognizer.

   Image act theory is a also useful as a starting point for ethical analysis. In transforming a image manipulation (which is hard to analyze) into a social action (which is already amenable to ethical analysis) image manipulations are mapped onto familiar domain for moral inquiry. The theory suggests interpreting an image manipulation as an action that might accuse, misrepresent, persuade, or entertain. These actions and their relationship to the state of affairs in the world help better conceptualize the ethical impact of altering imagery.

HISTORICAL EXAMPLE

Pictured below are a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and a portrait of John C. Calhoun. This manipulation along with many others were collected by Farid (2006) as part of work on digital tampering and computational methods to identify manipulated photos. The portrait of Lincoln on the left was produced after his assassination by altering the portrait of of Calhoun (Mitchell, 1992).

Figure 1: a portrait of Lincoln (left) constructed by altering a portrait of Calhoun (right)

As an aside, this is somewhat ironic in that Calhoun was an architect of the breakaway confederacy which Lincoln battled during the U.S. civil war. Mitchell’s account provides more historical detail:

After Lincoln was assassinated, new pictures of the dead president were created by pasting his head, from a famous Mathew Brady photograph (the one engraved on the five-dollar bill), onto an appropriately statesmanlike full-length portrait of Calhoun...Lincoln’s head had to be mirrored in order to make it fit; the deception was discovered when somebody noticed that the late president’s highly recognizable mole was on the wrong side.”

And so we see this example meets the criteria of Image Act Theory. A representation of Lincoln was altered in a manner that it generated a change on the world and was recognized. But the machinery Image Act Theory now encourages us to examine the manipulation in terms of what action was performed. The grafting of Lincoln’s head served onto his political opponent’s body maps onto the action of misrepresenting. It might be argued that the portrait serves good by providing a heroic image of a revered political figure or it might be argued that the portrait sets up a bad state of affairs by misleading historical viewers.

MODERN EXAMPLE

Image Act Theory is of relevance to computer ethics because modern computing systems have made it possible for large numbers of individuals to easily and quickly manipulate imagery. Indeed, moderns systems are capable of altering both images and video streams in a manner which can be difficult to detect.

Figure 2: an image of Condoleezza Rice in which lighting and contrast were manipulated to create an unnatural appearance,

In the image above, published in USA Today (a daily newspaper) Condoleezza Rice’s appearance was manipulated. By introducing unusual and disquieting contrasts in lighting the image appears striking and unflattering. One might argue that the action is to demonize the appearance of Rice. While it is common to create caricatures of political figures it is less common to provide photorealistic representations of them that make them appear unnatural.

REFERENCES

Austin, J.L. (1975) How to do things with words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Farid, H. (2006) Digital tampering in the Media, Politics and Law. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

Lundsten, L. (1998) Towards a Reinachian Ontology of Television. Conference on Applied Ontology, April 24 - 25, 1998, Buffalo, New York, USA.

Jakobson, R. (1960) Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics. In Sebeok, A. (ed.) Style in Language. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Mitchell, W. J. (1992) The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Reinach, Adolf. (1989) Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Ausgabe mit Kommentar. B. Smith & K. Schuhmann (eds.). Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

Searle, J.R. (1970) Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Searle, J.R. & Vanderveken, D. (1985) Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Wilson, G. (2003) Notes: How to Do Things with Words. http://www.garretwilson.com/books/reviews/howtodothingswithwords.html