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Varieties of Representation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 June 2015
Abstract
The concept of representation has a vast and highly diverse extension. In this paper I distinguish four kinds of representation, viz. proxy, make-believe, and intentional representation, as well as representation simpliciter. The bulk of the paper is devoted to intentional representation. I argue that the relation of intentional representation is non-reflexive, non-symmetrical, and non-transitive. I articulate a fundamental distinction between two aspects of the content of intentional representations, viz. subject and predicative content. Finally, I qualify and defend the distinction between iconic and symbolic intentional representation. Along the way, I also argue that psychological intentions play a constitutive role in representation.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2015
References
1 This paper concentrates on human representation, but I do not thereby mean to suggest that non-human animals are incapable of representing things in their environment. Acculturated primates are capable of symbolic representation and animal social play involves various kinds of play signals. For details, see respectively Savage-Rumbaugh, S. and Lewin, R., Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994)Google Scholar and Beckoff, M., ‘Action in Cognitive Ethology’, in O'Connor, T. and Sandis, C. (eds), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 393–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The kinds of representation I discuss in this paper carry over, with appropriate qualifications, to non-human animal representation.
2 In this paper, I shall sometimes use the term ‘representation’ to refer to the things that represent (e.g. pictures) and sometimes to refer to the relation in which those things stand to what they represent. Nothing hangs on this, and context always makes clear which I intend.
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5 In more perspicuous form: let M be my mental state of believing that I am late for work, and I 1 my intention that M represent that I am late for work. Then for M to be a representation, I must have the prior or concurrent intention I 1. But since I 1 is itself a mental state, having I 1 requires my having the prior or concurrent intention I 2 that I intend I 1, which in turn requires my having the prior or concurrent intention I 3 that I intend I 2, and so on ad infinitum.
6 In calling it an illusion I do not intend to imply that those who partake in it are thereby subject to mistaken beliefs (see below).
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10 Intentionality in this sense should not be confused with intentionality in the psychological sense discussed in section 2, of course.
11 See e.g. Goodman, N., Languages of Art, 2nd edn (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 4Google Scholar; Fodor, J., A Theory of Content and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 33Google Scholar; Goldman, A.H., Aesthetic Value (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 65Google Scholar; Lopes, D.M., Understanding Pictures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 18Google Scholar; Carroll, N., Philosophy of Art (London: Routledge, 1999), 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rollins, M., ‘Pictorial Representation’, in Gaut, B. and Lopes, D. McIver (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2005), 384Google Scholar. Lopes takes depiction to be irreflexive but concedes the possibility of symmetrical depiction in the passage from his Understanding Pictures referred to in this footnote.
12 Lichtenstein's painting does not help me establish the point, for the depicted brushstrokes were not in fact produced by thick, dripping brushstrokes but by lots of thin and tidy brushstrokes. This, of course, is deliberate. The painting is widely regarded as a satirical comment on the action paintings of Jackson Pollock and the like.
13 Which is not to say, of course, that the intention cannot be undermined in particular cases, as abstract photography shows.
14 Cf. Lopes op. cit. note 11, 96ff and Hyman, J., ‘Depiction’, Philosophy 71 (2012), 138–9Google Scholar.
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16 Op. cit., note 11, 3.
17 Op. cit., note 11, 3.
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24 In much photography, of course, the two subjects are one and the same.
25 The need to draw the causal–represented subject distinction does not only arise in connection with photography. For a different case, consider the fact that Rembrandt used his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels as a model for his paintings of Bathsheba (Lopes, op. cit. note 11, 101). Hendrickje Stoffels is the causal subject of the paintings, I think, but Bathsheba is the represented subject, for that is whom Rembrandt intended to represent, as is made abundantly clear by the titles of the paintings – e.g. The Toilet of Bathsheba (1643), Bathsheba at her Bath (1654), Bathsheba Holding King David's Letter (1654).
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27 Op. cit., note 26, 1442.
28 Cf. Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, rev. 4th edn, trans. by Anscombe, G.E.M., Hacker, P.M.S., and Schulte, J. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)Google Scholar, §495; Peacocke, C., ‘Depiction’, The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 407–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., The Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980), 16Google Scholar.
30 Suppose a person is both a lawyer and an actor. As a lawyer he engages in proxy representation and as an actor he engages in make-believe representation. But there is no context – no activity, if you like – in which he engages in both. He may, of course, play the role of a lawyer in a courtroom drama, but in that context he is not engaged in proxy representation – he only pretends to do so.
31 This paper was written with the generous support of a research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. For helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of Zurich, in particular Kai Büttner, Hanjo Glock, and Nicole Rathgeb. I am especially indebted to Sebastian Kalhat for insight and support.