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Just as it’s possible to understand novel sentences without having heard them before, it’s possible to understand novel pictures without having seen them before. But these possibilities are traditionally supposed to have very different explanations (Schier, 1986, 43-84; Currie, 1995, 79-136): whereas the possibility of understanding novel sentences is supposed to be explained by their compositional structure, the possibility of understanding novel depictions is supposed not to be. The last ch...

It’s often argued that the theory of language ought to be subsumed by a general theory of representation, of which language is merely one kind. Ferdinand de Saussure, for example, writes “A language is a system of signs expressing ideas, and hence comparable to writing, the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, symbolic rites, forms of politeness, military signals, and so on. It is simply the most important of such systems. It is therefore possible to conceive of a science which ... would investigate the n...

“The aim of philosophy …”, according to Wilfrid Sellars, “… is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term” (Sellars, 1962, 369). One way of pursuing this aim is to pursue the reductive analysis of everything in terms of the more or most fundamental things. The aim may, for example, be a reductive analysis of everything in terms of the physical, or the phenomenological, or a combination of the physical and the ph...

Whereas the analysis of meaning in terms of intention is orthodoxy in the philosophy of language, it is highly controversial in the philosophy of art. So even if it is agreed that inserting resemblance into the analysis of speaker meaning in terms of intention escapes counterexamples to the sufficiency of resemblance for depiction, it’s likely to be argued that defining depiction as a kind of intentional representation draws too close an analogy between depiction and description. Counterexamp...

The intentionality of depiction is often cited as a reason for denying the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. This chapter argues that the apparent problem posed by the intentionality of depiction for the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance is really a manifestation of the more general problem of intentionality. The best solution to the problem is to analyse representation in general and depiction in particular as primarily relations towards states of affairs...

It's a platitude - which only a philosopher would dream of denying - that whereas words are connected to what they represent merely by arbitrary conventions, pictures are connected to what they represent by resemblance. The most important difference between my portrait and my name, for example, is that whereas my portrait and I are connected by my portrait's resemblance to me, my name and I are connected merely by an arbitrary convention. The first aim of this book is to defend this platitude from the apparently compelling objections raised against it, by analysing depiction in a way which reveals how it is mediated by resemblance. It's natural to contrast the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance, which emphasises the differences between depictive and descriptive representation, with an extremely close analogy between depiction and description, which emphasises the similarities between depictive and descriptive representation. Whereas the platitude emphasises that the connection between my portrait and me is natural in a way the connection between my name and me is not, the analogy emphasises the contingency of the connection between my portrait and me. Nevertheless, the second aim of this book is to defend an extremely close analogy between depiction and description.

Depictions, like thoughts and sentences, distinguish different ways things might be; the Mona Lisa, for example, represents Lisa by distinguishing between the various possible ways which Lisa might have looked. This suggests analysing the states of affairs depictions represent in terms of possible worlds: the state of affairs represented by the Mona Lisa, for example, may be analysed as the set of possible worlds in which Lisa’s appearance is as it portrays. This chapter argues that analysing...

Language has compositional structure. The meaning of ‘Theaetetus flies’ for example depends on the meaning of ‘Theaetetus’, the meaning of ‘flies’ and the order in which they are concatenated. In general, the meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings and arrangement of its parts. In contrast, depiction is supposed to lack compositional structure. The Mona Lisa for example is supposed not to be divisible into parts in the way that ‘Theaetetus flies’ is divisible into ‘Theaetetus’ and ‘flie...

The following three theses are individually plausible, but jointly inconsonant: (1) The degree of realism of a picture is the degree to which it resembles what it represents (in relevant respects)(2) Properties correspond to (possible) predicates, so the number of properties is the number of (possible) predicates(3) The degree of resemblance between particulars is their number of properties in common divided by their number of properties in total This chapter argues for resolving this problem...