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# Resemblance and Representation

An Essay in the Philosophy of Pictures

*Ben Blumson*

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© 2014 Ben Blumson

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Blumson, Ben, *Resemblance and Representation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Pictures.* Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0046

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Cover image: Kazimir Malevich, *Suprematist painting (with black trapezium and red square)* (1915). Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Wikimedia Commons: http:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kazimir\_Malevich\_-\_Suprametism.jpg

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*For my father, Richard Blumson*

# Contents

# List of illustrations

This book has had a long gestation, and I have needed a lot of help, so there are a lot of people to thank. Much of the philosophy of language and mind I draw on in these pages I learnt as an undergraduate at the University of Queensland. I thank especially Deborah Brown, William Grey, Dominic Hyde and Gary Malinas for everything they taught me. I also met many of my closest friends at the University of Queensland – I would especially like to thank June Mahadevan.

The first version of the book was my PhD thesis at the Australian National University (ANU). I especially thank my supervisors Daniel Stoljar, David Chalmers and Martin Davies. Andy Egan, Frank Jackson and Robert McRoberts read entire drafts, while Catharine Abell, Jake Beck, Elizabeth Coleman, Daniel Friedrich, Brendan Jackson and Uriah Kriegel gave me comments on various chapters. The examiners also gave me helpful comments on the finished thesis.

I learnt as much at ANU from my fellow students as my teachers. In particular, Jens Christian Bjerring, David Bourget, Campbell Brown, Carl Brusse, Jacek Brzozowski, Brett Calcott, Yuri Cath, Philippe Chuard, Aisling Crean, Nic Damnjanovic, Ben Fraser, Akira Inoue, Ben Jeffares, Mitch Joe, Ole Koksvik, John Matthewson, Yujin Nagasawa, Karen Riley, Kelly Roe, Stewart Saunders, Martin Smith, Nic Southwood, Weng Hong Tang and David Wall all helped me more than they know.

In addition, I am very grateful to Magdalena Balcerak, John Bigelow, David Braddon-Mitchell, Tyler Dogget, Christoph Fehige, Alan Hajek, Bernard Nickel, Daniel Nolan, John O'Dea, Brad Richards, Denis Robinson and Declan Smithies for discussions at ANU. When Yuri Cath saw the thesis acknowledgements he accused me of thanking everyone indiscriminately. But this list is just a small fraction of the people I spoke to at ANU – I am very sorry to all those I have omitted.

#### *2 Resemblance and Representation*

I finished the first draft of the book, conceived as such, as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney. I'm grateful to Uriah Kriegel, Raamy Majeed and Luca Moretti for discussions during this time. I also thank Axel Gelfert, John Holbo, Wang-Yen Lee, Mike Pelczar, Neil Sinhababu and especially Tang Weng-Hong for taking part in a reading group on the book at the National University of Singapore, and Gabriel Greenberg, Raamy Majeed and David Wall for comments on the draft.

Finally, I am grateful for conversations at conferences and seminars with Catharine Abell, Rafael De Clerq, Mitchell Green, Robert Hopkins, John Kulvicki, Paisley Livingston, Dominic Lopes, Dan Marshall, Michael Newall, Josh Parsons, Michael Rescorla, John Williams, Alberto Voltolini and John Zeimbekis. And I'm grateful to very many – but unfortunately not to all – referees who read the book manuscript or drafts of the papers mentioned below.

Parts of chapters one, two and three appeared previously as "Defining Depiction" in the *British Journal of Aesthetics* (2009a). This paper was presented at the Australasian Postgraduate Philosophy Conference in Melbourne, the University of Queensland and the Singapore Management University in 2005, at the Australian National University and the British Society of Aesthetics in 2006, and at "Images and Intentionality", a workshop I organised at the University of Sydney in 2008.

Parts of chapters four and five appeared as "Depiction and Convention" in *dialectica* (2008). This paper was also presented at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference in Canberra and at the Australian National University in 2006. The final paragraphs of chapter four are from "Depictive Structure?" in *Philosophical Papers* (2011). This paper was presented at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division in 2009 and at the University of Western Australia in 2010.

Parts of "Maps and Meaning" from the *Journal of Philosophical Research* (2010a) are reused in chapter six. I thank Daniel Friedrich and Uriah Kriegel for reading this paper. Chapter six in its current form, "Depiction and Composition", was presented at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference in Sydney in 2010, the University of Copenhagen and the London Aesthetics Forum in 2011 and the Victoria University of Wellington in 2013.

Chapter seven, "Interpreting Images", was presented to the American Society of Aesthetics Pacific Division in 2009, at a workshop, "Depiction and Description" in Singapore in 2010, and to the International Society of Philosophy and Literature in Singapore and at the University of Western Australia in 2013. I thank Liz Blumson for reading this chapter. Chapter eight previously appeared as "Images, Intentionality and Inexistence" in *Philosophy and Phenomenological Research* (2009b) and was presented at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University in 2007.

Chapter nine was published as "Pictures Perspective and Possibility" in *Philosophical Studies* (2010b). This paper was also presented at the New Zealand division of the Australasian Association of Philosophy in 2007 and the University of Sydney in 2008. Chapter ten was presented at a workshop at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, "Art and Metaphysics", and at the University of Sydney in 2012.

It's difficult to acknowledge family without sounding like one is winning an academy award rather than writing an academic monograph. Nevertheless, Elizabeth, Erica and Emily Blumson are the best mother and sisters one could ask for. While a quick look at my thesis convinced my nephew that it was mind-numbingly repetitive (no doubt some other readers will be sympathetic), my father patiently read it all, and corrected several mistakes. This book is dedicated to him.

I use single quotation marks to mention an expression. So whereas Boston is a North American city, 'Boston' is the name of a North American city. I use double quotation marks to quote what another person said. For example, Quine said that quotation "… has a certain anomalous feature …" (Quine, 1940, 26). I use corner quotation marks when I need to use a variable or subscript within a quoted expression. So '˹the bank1 is open˺' and '˹the bank2 is open˺' refer to disambiguations of 'the bank is open'.

I also use corner quotes for substitutional quantification. In particular '(∏φ) ˹φ˺ in English means that φ' asserts that for every English sentence φ, writing φ (not 'φ'!) in quotation marks, followed by 'in English means that', followed by φ without quotations marks results in a truth. In particular, it asserts that 'snow is white' in English means that snow is white, that 'grass is green' in English means that grass is green, … and so on.

The passage just quoted from Quine continues "A quotation is not a *description*, but a *hieroglyph;* it designates its object not by describing it in terms of other objects, but by picturing it" (Quine, 1940, 26). Though I mostly follow Quine's recommendations for the usage of quotation marks I cannot agree with this: in fact I take quotation as a paradigmatic example of descriptive, rather than depictive, representation. I think this presupposition is defensible, but also dispensable, so I won't defend it here.

*The fact is that on that night I laughed at the axiom Quae sunt aequalia uni tertio sunt aequalia inter se ("Things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other"), for the portrait resembled M. M. and it also resembled the strumpet, and the latter did not resemble M. M. Murray admitted it, and we spent an hour philosophizing.*

Giacomo Casanova, *History of My Life*, volume 4, chapter 10

It's a platitude – which only a philosopher should 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 that it really 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.

The main strategy of the book is to generalise ideas from the philosophy of language to encompass pictures. Depiction is representational in the same sense as description, except whereas the latter is mediated by convention, the former is by resemblance. It turns out, I will argue, that many ideas from the philosophy of language apply directly to depiction, with only superficial amendments or the incorporation of resemblance. And it turns out that the apparently compelling objections raised against the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance are merely manifestations of, and amenable to the same solutions as, familiar problems from the philosophy of language.

This chapter introduces the central themes of the book. The first section clarifies the subject with an ostensive definition of depiction. The second section introduces the analysis of resemblance as sharing properties and explains how it underlies the most compelling objections to the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. The third section provides a brief taxonomy of kinds of representation, and discusses the place of depiction within this taxonomy. The fourth section elaborates and defends the method of analysis, which is the central method of the book. The fifth section outlines the remaining chapters of the book.

#### 1.1 An ostensive definition of depiction

Depiction is a distinctive kind of representation. Figurative painting and drawing are the paradigm example, but figurative sculpture, photographs and maps are also central examples. Language is the paradigm of nondepictive representation, but symbolic notation – whether in mathematics or music – and indication – as when clouds represent rain or smoke represents fire – are also central examples. In contrast, material objects such as rocks, tables and planets are not examples of either kind of representation, but are at most degenerate cases of indication. The rest of this section clarifies and defends this ostensive definition.

Three clarifications. First, although figurative painting and drawing is the paradigm example of depiction, defining depiction as a kind of representation means that not all paintings and drawings are depictions. Although figurative and abstract painting, for example, have much in common, abstract paintings are not counterexamples to the thesis that depiction is mediated by resemblance, because figurative and abstract paintings intuitively don't belong to the same kind of representation (Lopes, 1996, 5-6). Figurative and abstract paintings are similar because they are flat surfaces marked with paint, not because they represent in the same way.

Second, defining depiction as a kind of representation means depictions may belong to any media (Hopkins, 1994, 1; Kulvicki, 2006, 106-114). Although sculptures, for example, are not flat surfaces marked with lines or colour, this does not disqualify sculptures from being depictions, since it is plausible that figurative sculptures and pictures represent in the same way. Similarly although most music, for example, is neither depictive nor representational, program music is an important exception. Most dance is not representational, but mime is depiction in the medium of movement. And movies are plausibly depictions in the medium of film (Currie, 1995, 2).

This point is methodologically important. John Hyman, for example, begins a very different inquiry when he writes "Is an apple red because of the visual sensation it produces in us when we see it, or does it produce this sensation in us because it is red? All pictures – whatever kind of substance they are made of – consist of colour distributed on a plane. So this is the right way for a study of depiction to begin" (Hyman, 2006, 7). If the subject of inquiry is a kind of representation, rather than a representational medium, the right way to begin is not to inquire into the nature of perception and colour, but into the nature of representation in general.

Third, while depictive and descriptive representation are distinct kinds, I allow that they may overlap. Take, for example, a picture of a signboard which reads 'danger'. The picture both represents a signboard and represents danger. But whereas the signboard is represented depictively, danger is represented merely descriptively, since it is represented by the appearance of the word 'danger' within the picture. Similarly the Soviet flag represents a hammer and sickle as well as representing the Soviet Union: the hammer and sickle are represented depictively, but the representation of the Soviet Union is arguably merely conventional (Peacocke, 1986, 383).

Allegorical representation is the reverse of this pattern. The words of the fiction are paradigmatically descriptive, but the events described also represent a real situation. While the representation of the fiction is descriptive, the representation of the real situation is depictive, and plausibly mediated by resemblance. *Animal Farm*, for example, describes in language the takeover of a farm by pigs (Orwell, 1945). The events described in turn depict the Russian Revolution, perhaps in virtue of the resemblance between the events of the story and the events of the revolution. So allegorical stories are plausibly a kind of depictive representation.

If it's insisted that depiction must be a kind of visual representation, then this could be accommodated by substituting resemblance below for resemblance in visible respects. Although *Animal Farm* and the Mona Lisa, for example, have in common that they both represent what they do by resemblance, they differ because whereas the Mona Lisa resembles Lisa in respects which are visible, the story of *Animal Farm* resembles the revolution in respects which are invisible. So although the analysis below does not distinguish between depictions in different media, it can be easily modified if it's desirable to do so (Abell's (2009) analysis, for example, adopts this suggestion).

One objection. Beginning with an ostensive definition of depiction which – whether by accident or design – classifies all and only representations which are mediated by resemblance as depictions might be thought to beg the question in favour of the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. If the main objections against the resemblance theory were about which representations it classifies as depictions, then this objection would be right: choosing figurative painting and drawing as paradigm examples of depiction would stack the deck in favour of the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance.

But the most compelling objections against the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance aren't merely about its classification of different kinds of representation, but purport to show that it's impossible for any kind of representation to be mediated by resemblance. If successful, these objections would show that depiction is not mediated by resemblance, no matter which representations are classified as depictions and no matter how depiction is ostensively defined. So in the context of rebutting these objections, beginning with an ostensive definition of depiction doesn't beg the question in favour of the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance.

Beginning with an ostensive definition of depiction which – whether by accident or design – classifies all and only representations which are mediated by resemblance as depictions may also be thought to beg the question against other theories of depiction, according to which what is distinctive of depiction is a distinctive kind of perceptual experience (Wollheim, 1980; 1987), a special kind of syntactic and semantic structure (Goodman, 1968; Kulvicki, 2006), or a peculiar kind of perceptual processing (Schier, 1986; Currie, 1995; Lopes, 1996; Newall, 2011). Since these theories disagree in their classifications, my choice of examples may also stack the deck against them.

But if a different choice of ostensive definition leads to a different final classification, and thence to a different theory, this only shows that the different definition ostended a different class of things, for which a different theory is appropriate. If, for example, one begins with an ostensive definition of depiction which includes abstract painting and excludes figurative sculpture, then one will end with a different classification and a different theory of depiction. But that theory of depiction would not disagree with the theory I argue for here, because it has a different subject matter. Beginning with an ostensive definition doesn't beg the question, but merely describes the subject.

Because different theories of depiction – whether or not they agree about which things they classify as depictions – are not obviously inconsistent with each other, I will not adopt a last man standing approach, which seeks to establish the resemblance theory by first refuting every other plausible theory, and mention alternative approaches only when they're relevant to the exposition of my own. If there's an analysis of depiction in terms of resemblance which captures the classification outlined here, discovering that analysis suffices for success. If there are other analyses or theories in other terms which capture other classifications, discovering them is an even greater success.

#### 1.2 The analysis of resemblance as sharing properties

The naïvest analysis of depiction in terms of resemblance simply assimilates depiction to resemblance (Goodman, 1968, 3). According to it:

(1) Something depicts another if and only if the former resembles the latter.

The Mona Lisa, for example, is supposed to depict Lisa simply because the Mona Lisa resembles Lisa. Counterexamples to the necessity and sufficiency of this analysis illustrate some of the most compelling objections to the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance.

In turn, the naïvest analysis of resemblance simply assimilates resemblance to having properties in common. According to it:

(2) Something resembles another if and only if the former has a property in common with the latter.

Peas in a pod resemble each other, for example, because they have the properties of greenness, roundness and yuckiness in common. So according to the naïvest analyses of depiction and resemblance, the nature of depiction ultimately depends on the nature of properties.

But there are rifts in our conceptions of properties. A first is the rift between sparse and abundant conceptions of properties (Lewis, 1983a; 1986, 59-69). According to an abundant conception of properties there's a property corresponding to each (possible) predicate, and so the number of properties is the number of (possible) predicates. Just as there's a property of being white which corresponds to the predicate 'is white', for example, there is also, according to abundant conceptions of properties, a property of being a raven or a writing desk, corresponding to the predicate 'is a raven or a writing desk'. So properties, according to the abundant conception, are ubiquitous.

(A predicate is just a sentence with a name removed. The predicate 'is white', for example, results from removing 'snow' from 'snow is white'. Likewise, the predicate 'is a raven or a writing desk' results from removing 'Edgar' from the sentence 'Edgar is a raven or a writing desk'. The semantic value of a predicate is often thought of as a property: the semantic value of 'is white', for example, is the property of being white, whereas the semantic value of 'is a raven or a writing desk' is the property of being a raven or a writing desk. So abundant conceptions of properties are motivated in part by the need to find a semantic value for every (possible) predicate.)

Sparse theories of properties deny there is a property corresponding to every possible predicate, and so deny the number of properties is the number of possible predicates. Which predicates correspond to properties, according to sparse theories, is revealed *a posteriori* by total science (Armstrong, 1978b, 7-9). Whether the predicate 'is white' corresponds to a property of being white, for example, is an *a posteriori* question; the existence of the property of being white cannot be deduced from the existence of the predicate 'is white', and no property of being a raven or a writing desk corresponds to the predicate 'is a raven or a writing desk'.

Whereas an abundant conception of properties is considered most appropriate for the analysis of predication, it's the sparse conception which is considered appropriate for the analysis of resemblance. As David Lewis, for example, writes "Because properties are so abundant, they are undiscriminating. … Thus properties do nothing to capture facts about resemblance. That is work more suited to the sparse universals" (Lewis, 1983a, 13). But it's almost as difficult to square the analysis of resemblance as having properties in common with a sparse as with an abundant conception of properties. So, until chapter ten, I'll attempt to stay neutral on this issue.

A second is the rift between the subjective and objective conception of properties. According to subjective conceptions of properties, whether a particular instantiates a property is dependent on us, whereas according to objective conceptions of properties, whether a particular instantiates a property is a fact independent of us. According to a subjective conception of colours, for example, whether a particular is red depends on whether it is disposed to appear red to us under certain conditions, whereas according to an objective conception of colours, whether a particular is red depends on whether it is disposed to reflect light of a certain wavelength.

The platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance is often associated with an objective conception of properties. In his criticism of the resemblance theory, Michael Newall, for example, says "I will call all theories that hold that a viewer-independent resemblance between a picture and its referent is necessary for depiction resemblance theories. … Viewer-independent resemblances involve identity in some respects – a sharing of viewer-independent properties … Viewer-independent resemblance is close to the everyday meaning of the term 'resemblance', and it is this that resemblance theorists employ" (Newall, 2011, 67).

Likewise, in his defence of the resemblance theory, Hyman writes "I shall argue that there is a strict and invariable relationship between the shapes and colours on a picture's surface and the object which it depicts, which can be defined without referring to the psychological effect the picture produces in a spectator's mind …" (Hyman, 2006, 73). But although it's natural to combine the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance with an objective conception of properties and resemblance, the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance is equally compatible with the subjective conception, and so I will also attempt to stay neutral on this issue.

In light of the analysis of resemblance as having properties in common, the necessity of the first analysis is not obvious, because it's not obvious which properties pictures have in common with what they represent. As Robert Hopkins, for example, writes: "Resemblance must be resemblance in certain respects. If two things resemble, they must do so in respect of some property or other, perhaps in respect of many. Unfortunately, when we ask in what respect picture and object resemble, it is easier to find difference than likeness" (Hopkins, 1998, 11). Whereas most pictures are flat and rectangular, most of the things they represent are neither flat nor rectangular.

But although explicitly specifying the respects of resemblance between many pictures and what they represent is difficult (see Hyman (2006, 73-112) and Newall (2011, 66-94) for detailed discussion of particular examples), whether there is an in principle problem for the necessity of resemblance for depiction depends on one's conception of properties. If it's combined with a sparse theory of properties – according to which whether there is a property corresponding to each (possible) predicate is revealed by *a posteriori* scientific investigation – the problem is severe. I will return to the problem posed by sparse conceptions of properties in chapter ten.

But if it's combined with an abundant theory of properties – according to which there is a property corresponding to each (possible) predicate – the analysis of resemblance as sharing properties entails that everything resembles everything in some respect, so the necessity of resemblance for depiction is guaranteed. If properties are abundant, then a raven resembles a writing desk, for example, because the raven and the writing desk both fall under the predicate 'is a raven or a writing desk'. Likewise, the Mona Lisa resembles Lisa because the Mona Lisa and Lisa both fall under the predicate 'is the Mona Lisa or Lisa'. In this case, the problem of necessity evaporates.

The insufficiency of the first analysis *is* obvious, because resemblance is ubiquitous. Members of the same family resemble each other, but do not depict each other; twins resemble each other almost exactly, but still do not depict each other. Automobiles from the same assembly line resemble each other very closely, but rarely represent each other. Most paintings bear a closer resemblance to other paintings than they do to what they represent (Goodman, 1968, 4-5). And all white things resemble each other in virtue of sharing the property of being white, but not all white things depict each other. Sharing a property is sufficient for resemblance, but not depiction.

If it's combined with an abundant theory of properties – according to which there is a property corresponding to each (possible) predicate – then the analysis of resemblance as sharing properties entails everything resembles everything in some respect, which exacerbates the insufficiency of resemblance for depiction. Although if properties are abundant the Mona Lisa is guaranteed to resemble Lisa, for example, since the Mona Lisa and Lisa both fall under the predicate 'is the Mona Lisa or Lisa', a raven is also guaranteed to resemble a writing desk because both fall under the predicate 'is a raven or a writing desk'. But ravens do not depict writing desks.

Since resemblance is not obviously necessary and obviously insufficient for depiction, it might be thought that an analysis of depiction should specify some relevant respects in which all depictions resemble what they represent. Hopkins, for example, writes "One reaction would be to abandon hope that there is any one respect in which all pictures are experienced as resembling their objects. Sometimes colour is the key, sometimes tone, sometimes shape. However, it is clearly desirable to resist this retreat if possible. Supposing that we still hope for a single respect relevant to all depiction, where should we look for it?" (Hopkins, 1998, 51-52).

But the quixotic search for a specification of a relevant respect in which all depictions resemble what they represent is superfluous to defending the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. If depiction is mediated by resemblance, every depiction resembles what it represents in some relevant respect. But it doesn't follow that there is some relevant respect in which all depictions resemble what they represent, because the respects relevant to each different depiction may be different. And even if there is a relevant respect in which all depictions resemble what they represent, a specification of the respect cannot establish the sufficiency of resemblance for depiction.

Two counterexamples, which rely on the reflexivity and symmetry of resemblance, illustrate this point. First, Aristotle resembles himself, but Aristotle does not depict himself. Moreover, since all things share all of their properties with themselves, it follows from the definition of resemblance as sharing properties that resemblance is a reflexive relation: everything resembles itself. In contrast, depiction is not a reflexive relation: not everything depicts itself. So the insufficiency of resemblance for depiction follows simply from the fact that resemblance is reflexive whereas depiction is not (Goodman, 1968, 4).

Just as resemblance is reflexive, so is resemblance in specific respects. Resemblance in respect of colour, for example, is reflexive, because everything is the same colour as itself. In general, everything shares its own properties with itself, so everything resembles itself in respect of every kind of property. So just as resemblance simpliciter is not sufficient for depictive representation, no specific respects of resemblance are sufficient for depictive representation either: even if there were a relevant respect in which all depictions resembled what they represent, resemblance in that respect would not provide a sufficient condition for depiction.

Second, just as the Duke of Wellington's portrait resembles the Duke, the Duke resembles his portrait. But while the portrait depicts the Duke, the Duke does not depict his portrait. Since whenever one thing shares a property with a second, the second shares that same property with the first, resemblance is symmetric: whenever one thing resembles a second, the second resembles the first. In contrast, depiction is not a symmetric relation: not all things depict the things which depict them. So the insufficiency of resemblance for depiction follows merely from the fact that resemblance is symmetric whereas depiction is not (Goodman, 1968, 4).

Just as resemblance is symmetric, so is resemblance in specific respects. Resemblance in respect of being green, for example, is symmetric, since if one pea shares the property of being green with another pea, then the second pea must also share the property of being green with the first. In general, if something shares a property with another, then the latter shares that property with the former, so if something resembles another in some respect, then the latter resembles the former in that same respect. So specifying particular respects in which depictions resemble what they represent can't exclude examples of insufficiency arising from the symmetry of resemblance.

So analysing depiction in terms of respects of resemblance is inadequate not because there's no relevant respect in which all depictions resemble what they represent, but because no respect of any kind could be sufficient for representation. A similar point is made by Nelson Goodman in *Languages of Art*, where he writes that: "The plain fact is that a picture, to represent an object, must be a symbol for it, stand for it, refer to it; and that no degree of resemblance is sufficient to establish the requisite relationship of reference" (Goodman, 1968, 5). An adequate analysis of depiction in terms of resemblance must combine resemblance with representation.

But effecting a combination of resemblance with representation is not straightforward. The simplest way to effect the combination is simply to conjoin resemblance with representation, leading to the following analysis (Schier, 1986, 3):

(3) Something depicts another if and only if the former resembles and represents the latter.

This analysis accommodates the point that depiction is a kind of representation straightforwardly since, according to it, the Mona Lisa, for example, depicts Lisa not merely because the Mona Lisa resembles Lisa, but also because the Mona Lisa is a representation of Lisa.

This analysis also escapes the obvious counterexamples to the sufficiency of the first. Members of the same family and cars off an assembly line do not depict each other, since although they resemble each other, they don't represent each other. Paintings resemble each other more than what they represent, but they still do not depict each other unless they represent each other. Aristotle does not depict himself, since he does not represent himself. And although the Duke of Wellington resembles his portrait as much as it resembles him, the Duke does not depict his portrait, since only the portrait represents the Duke, and not vice versa.

But there are less obvious counterexamples to the sufficiency of the second analysis, which show that it doesn't escape the problems of the first. The sign-language sign for a rabbit, for example, resembles a rabbit, but it does not depict a rabbit because the resemblance of the sign to the rabbit is noticeable only if one already knows what it represents (Lopes, 1996, 16). Similarly, all onomatopoeic words resemble what they represent, but not all depict what they represent, because the resemblances responsible for their origin have ceased to be relevant: the resemblance of 'woof' to a dog's bark, for example, is no longer relevant to its representation of a dog's bark.

Likewise, if properties are abundant, the analysis of resemblance as sharing properties entails every representation resembles what it represents in some respect. But even if properties are abundant, not every representation is a depiction. If properties are abundant, then the name 'rosemary' resembles rosemary, for example, since both the name 'rosemary' and rosemary fall under the predicate 'is 'rosemary' or rosemary', and so have the corresponding property of being 'rosemary' or rosemary. But even if properties are abundant, the name 'rosemary' does not depict rosemary. Resemblance and representation, like resemblance simpliciter, is insufficient for depiction.

Moreover, there are counterexamples to the combination of representation with any specific respect of resemblance. The phrase 'this phrase', for example, both represents and resembles itself, so the analysis predicts that it depicts itself. Furthermore, since resemblance is reflexive, the phrase 'this phrase' resembles itself in every respect. Nevertheless, 'this phrase' is obviously not a depiction of itself, since the fact that it resembles itself is merely incidental to the fact that it represents itself. So simply conjoining resemblance and representation cannot escape the basic problem posed by the insufficiency of resemblance (Goodman, 1970, 437).

A simple way to attain sufficiency would be to stipulate that the resemblance of a symbol to what it represents is not incidental to how it represents. Take, for example, the following analysis (Sachs-Hombach, 2003, 171):

(4) Something depicts another if and only if the former represents the latter in virtue of the former resembling the latter.

Since 'this phrase' does not represent itself in virtue of resembling itself, this version of the analysis escapes the insufficiency of the second analysis by guaranteeing a non-incidental connection between resemblance and representation.

Likewise, although onomatopoeic words resemble what they represent, but do not all depict what they represent, this is because they have ceased representing what they do in virtue of resembling it, and now represent what they do merely conventionally: the resemblance of 'woof' to a dog's bark, for example, is not any longer relevant to its representation of a dog's bark, and so 'woof' does not represent a dog's bark in virtue of resembling it. And even if the name 'rosemary' resembles rosemary in respect of the property of being 'rosemary' or rosemary, it's obviously not in virtue of this resemblance that 'rosemary' represents rosemary.

But although this analysis escapes insufficiency, it's not an informative response to the objection. The objection, supported by examples such as 'this phrase', claims that resemblance is in general incidental to the way that symbols represent what they do. By defining depiction as that kind of representation in which resemblance plays a non-incidental role, this version of the analysis states there is a non-incidental role for resemblance in depictive representation, but it doesn't elaborate on what that role is. An informative analysis, in contrast, would specify what the non-incidental role of resemblance in depictive representation is as well as stating that it has one.

#### 1.3 An intuitive taxonomy of representation

Representation is not a fundamental feature of the world, which suggests it should be analysable in terms of more fundamental features. In order to effect this reduction, it's helpful to divide representation into various kinds. The broadest division into kinds of representation is between natural and non-natural representation. Intuitively, natural representation divides into depiction and indication, and non-natural representation divides into conventional and intentional representation. Conventional representation is analysed in terms of intentional representation, whereas intentional representation is analysed in terms of natural representation.

It's common to combine the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance with the thesis that depiction is a kind of natural representation. The following passage, for example, neatly exemplifies the intuitive connection that many feel between the two theses: "As opposed to conventional symbols there are the so-called *natural* symbols, in which there is some non-conventional or natural relation (usually either of resemblance or causal connection) between the symbol and the thing symbolized" (Hospers, 1946, 30). Depiction, this suggests, is a kind of natural representation, and the role of resemblance is analogous to the role of causation in indication.

The paradigmatic example of natural representation is indication. Whereas depiction is mediated by resemblance and language by convention, indication is mediated by causation. Smoke is a natural representation of fire, for example, because smoke is caused by fire. Similarly, clouds naturally represent rain because rain is caused by clouds. And the number of rings in a tree's trunk is an indication of the age of the tree because of the causal connection between the number of rings and the age of the tree. If indication is simply causation, then indication is ubiquitous, since nearly everything physical is causally connected to something.

So the obvious way to analyse depiction as a kind of natural representation is to argue that just as indication is simply causation, depiction is simply resemblance. But this naïve suggestion – as the last section argued – cannot offer sufficient conditions for depiction, and so cannot support the platitude that whereas description is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. This suggests that unless one's willing to accept the consequence that just as resemblance is ubiquitous, depiction is ubiquitous, depiction should not be analysed as a kind of natural representation, like indication, but as a kind of non-natural representation, like description.

Even if it's denied that depiction is a kind of natural representation, photography – an important kind of depiction – plausibly is. Since there's a causal connection between photographs and what they represent, photographs are indications. This suggests that depiction must be analysed at least partially in terms of indication or causation: just as painting and drawing might be analysed by combining resemblance with non-natural representation, photography can be analysed by combining resemblance with natural representation. I'll argue in section 3.3 that this suggestion cannot be carried through: photographs are depictive only insofar as they are non-natural.

Just as natural representation is traditionally – but incorrectly – divided into depiction and indication, non-natural representation is traditionally – and correctly – divided into conventional and intentional representation. Language is the paradigm example of conventional representation, but there are numerous other examples, such as Morse code and semaphore, musical and mathematical notation, and various traffic signals or gestures. The hallmark of conventional representation is arbitrariness: my name, for example, is conventional, because my name was chosen arbitrarily; if my parents had chosen another name, it may have suited me just as well.

It's natural to combine a close analogy between depiction and description with the thesis that depiction is a kind of conventional representation, so I have to emphasise this is not my position: whereas my name and I, for example, are connected merely by an arbitrary convention, the connection between my portrait and me is non-arbitrary – my portrait represents me because it resembles me. Although some depictive symbol systems are partly mediated by convention – it's a convention, for example, that the top of a map represents the north – I will argue in section 5.2 that not every depictive symbol system is mediated (even in part) by convention.

Although depiction is not a kind of conventional representation, chapters four and five argue that there's a close analogy between depictive symbol systems and conventional language: if the component of the analysis of conventional language which ensures its arbitrariness is substituted for resemblance, then it applies instead to depictive symbol systems. And if the component of the analysis of conventional language ensuring its arbitrariness is removed altogether, it applies not just to depictive symbol systems but to symbol systems in general, including those – such as innately known languages or symbol systems – which are mediated by neither convention nor resemblance.

The fact that linguistic expressions may be used non-literally, with meanings which differ from those attached to them by convention, attests conventional representation is not the only kind of non-natural representation (Grice, 1957, 215). If, for example, I said, pointing into the sky, 'that aeroplane is a kilometre long', then I would typically only mean that it was much longer than the usual aeroplane, though the conventional meaning of the sentence is that the aeroplane is a whole kilometre in length. This type of representation is not mediated by convention, but by the intentions and purposes of the representation's perpetrator.

Although the paradigm example of intentional representation is non-literal language, there are numerous other examples. Whereas it's a convention for an audience to clap (or to knock on the table) to express appreciation, it's not a convention for speakers to clear their throats in order to signal they're about to begin, since because a clear throat is a prerequisite of speaking, an audience can recognise a speaker's intention to speak by hearing them clear their throat. I will argue in chapters two and three that depiction is a kind of intentional representation, and the role of the resemblance of depictions to what they represent is to facilitate the expression of intention.

#### 1.4 The methodology of analysis

The central method of this book is philosophical analysis, which calls for clarification in order to avoid some common misunderstandings and misgivings. An analysis is a statement of equivalence between an analysandum and analysans. The following, for example, is an analysis of bachelors: bachelors are unmarried men. The analysis says what bachelors are by stating that bachelors, the analysandum, are equivalent to unmarried men, the analysans. Similarly, an analysis of depiction should state an equivalence between depiction, the analysandum, and a combination of resemblance and intentions, the analysans.

An analysis of depiction should not only state an equivalence between depiction and something else, but should state the conditions under which something depicts another. The Mona Lisa, for example, should not merely be classified as a depiction, but as a depiction of Lisa. That suggests that the analysis should be in the form of a biconditional stating that something depicts another if and only if …, where the ellipsis on the right hand side is replaced by the analysans. The first analysis above, for example, replaced the ellipsis on the right with 'resembles' to form the statement that something depicts another if and only if the former resembles the latter.

Biconditional analyses should be interpreted as strict biconditionals, which state necessary equivalences between the analysandum and the analysans, rather than material biconditionals, which merely state a contingent coincidence between the analysandum and analysans. The biconditional 'snow is white if and only if grass is green', for example, is not an adequate analysis of snow's being white in terms of grass' being green, since although 'snow is white' and 'grass is green' are the same in truth-value, it isn't necessary that this is so. Illuminating analysis requires a necessary and not merely contingent coincidence between the analysandum and the analysans.

Even a strict biconditional does not always suffice for an illuminating philosophical analysis: it is a simple matter to find strict biconditionals which fail to provide an analysans which illuminates the nature of the analysandum. Take, for example, the analysis: something depicts another if and only if the former depicts the latter. This analysis obviously states a necessary equivalence between the analysandum and the analysans, since its left and right side cannot differ in truth-value. But because the analysandum and the analysans are stated in exactly the same terms, the analysis is uninformative: it contributes nothing to a philosophical understanding of depiction.

The fourth analysis above – which states that something depicts another if and only if the former represents the latter in virtue of resembling the latter – displays a similar defect, despite being a strict biconditional. In this case the terms of the analysans are distinct from terms of the analysandum. But the analysis is insufficiently illuminating since what is sought from a philosophical analysis of depiction – an explanation of how something may represent another in virtue of resembling it – is not provided in the analysans, but simply assumed to be available. An adequate analysis of depiction, in contrast, can be expected to provide an explanation of how depictions represent.

Some analyses are illuminating but uninteresting. No doubt it's possible, for example, to analyse bottles in terms of the purely physical. But the analysis would not be worth the difficulty of obtaining it: although an analysis of bottles in terms of the physical would show bottles are physical, the physical nature of bottles is not something we're inclined to doubt. An illuminating analysis of depiction in terms of resemblance, in contrast, would be interesting, because – as the objections raised against it show – the platitude that whereas description is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance is something we're inclined to doubt.

The illumination of analysandum by analysans may be of two kinds: an analysis may be either reductive or reciprocal, depending on its goals. Reductive analyses require the terms of the analysans to be metaphysically, epistemologically or conceptually prior to the terms of the analysandum, whereas reciprocal analyses are just required to illuminate how the analysandum and analysans are interrelated (Avramides, 1989, 19-24). Defending the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance and a strong analogy between depiction and description requires merely a reciprocal analysis of depiction in terms of resemblance and intention.

Nevertheless, the analysis of non-natural meaning in terms of intentions and beliefs is generally considered as the first stage of a larger reduction of all representation – mental, descriptive and depictive – in terms of the physical (Schiffer, 1972, xi-xxix). If the second stage of this reduction – the analysis of intentions and beliefs in terms of the physical – is successful, then the analysis of depiction in terms of intentions and beliefs could likewise be considered as a step towards reductive physicalism, which would establish the epistemic, metaphysical or conceptual priority of mental over depictive representation. This is desirable, but not a requirement of success.

In particular, it's often objected that analyses of depiction in terms of resemblance and intention cannot be epistemologically reductive, since the terms of the analysans are not epistemologically prior to the terms of the analysandum: the resemblance of a depiction to what it represents and the intentions of its perpetrator, according to the objection, are only discoverable because the depiction represents what it does, rather than the reverse (Lopes, 1996, 16-20). The analysis below isn't committed to the epistemic priority of intention over representation, but merely, I will argue in section 2.2, to the epistemic priority of resemblance over depiction.

Four objections. First, analysis is often misleadingly called "conceptual analysis", as if the analysandum were a concept and the analysans were the conditions for the application of that concept. This leads to the idea that the subject of investigation is not depiction itself, or whatever is being analysed, but merely the concept of depiction, or the concept of the analysandum. Given that one might easily have had a different concept of depiction and that it's possible that not everyone expresses the same concept using the word 'depiction', this suggests analysis is merely an exercise in autobiography, rather than a method of philosophical inquiry.

But analyses, on the face of it, state equivalences between analysanda and analysans, rather than conditions for the application of concepts. So there's no reason to suppose that concepts, rather than analysanda themselves, are the subject of investigation. It might be true, and explain the use of the title "conceptual analysis", that knowledge that an analysis is true is based on grasping the concepts expressed in the analysis. But even if this epistemology of analysis is correct, it needn't follow that concepts are the subject of analyses. So it needn't follow that analysis is merely an exercise in autobiography, rather than a method of philosophical inquiry.

Second, analysis is often criticised on the grounds that it leads to dialectical deadlock, where it becomes impossible to assess rival positions. Robert Hopkins, for example, writes that "Provided that rival views avoid obscurity and obvious failure to cover more than a fraction of picturing [depiction], there is little to help us choose between them. At most they may differ about quite where the boundaries of depiction lie. The debate between them will then reduce to trading intuitions about which peripheral cases do or don't count as depiction. Experiences of such discussions elsewhere in philosophy suggest that they are rarely productive" (Hopkins, 1998, 23-24).

It is true that rival analyses disagree on the classification of which examples count as depictions. But this is no different from the disagreement of rival scientific theories over how to interpret the results of particular experiments: one theory may discard as noise what another regards as extremely significant. Just as it's still possible to assess rival scientific theories which disagree over the results of particular experiments by conducting further experiments and appealing to theoretical virtues such as simplicity, rival analyses may still be assessed by appeal both to further examples and, when only peripheral examples remain, to general theoretical virtues.

Third, continued disagreement between proponents of rival analyses even after all examples and theoretical considerations are taken into account sometimes indicates verbal disagreement about what the terms of the analysandum refer to, rather than substantive disagreement about its nature. If this is the case, it's better to resolve the dispute by accepting both analyses as successful accounts of distinct analysanda (as I suggested in section 1.1). But philosophical progress may continue by assessing the consequences of each analysis for the further questions they were intended to resolve, so that the method of analysis is able to resolve substantive questions even in the presence of verbal disagreement (Chalmers, 2011a).

So even if the dispute about whether depiction is mediated by resemblance turns out to be a merely verbal dispute about which kind of representation 'depiction' refers to, it does not follow that there are no substantive questions which an analysis of depiction – or of one disambiguation of what 'depiction' refers to – in terms of resemblance can resolve. In particular, there is substantive disagreement about the question of whether any kind of representation at all is mediated by resemblance, so disagreement over whether depiction is mediated by resemblance could continue even if it were discovered the original disagreement is partly verbal.

Fourth, it might be objected that most philosophical analyses are unsuccessful. There are nearly always counterexamples which show that the truth of the sentences on each side of the biconditional used to give an analysis may differ, so that the two sides are not equivalent. Furthermore, this usually proves to be the case independently of the complexity of the analysis or the number of revisions it has undergone. Given this history, it is very unlikely that an analysis of depiction which is both informative and truly necessary and sufficient will ever be given. If this is the case, then it seems that analysis is a poor choice of method for examining the nature of depiction.

But failure comes in degrees. Some counterexamples damage the succinctness of an analysis, but don't interfere with its ability to clarify the issues it's proposed in order to resolve. It's sometimes pointed out, for example, that colours cannot be analysed in terms of reflectance properties, because stained glass windows have their colour due to filtering rather than reflecting light (Hyman, 2006, 15). But this counterexample does not affect the spirit of the analysis, since it's not an obstacle in principle to the project of analysing colours in terms of their effect on light or, more generally, in terms of whatever physical properties are normally correlated with colours.

But some counterexamples show, not just that the analysis of a given thing is likely to be cumbersome, but that it is in principle impossible to give an analysis of that thing in the relevant terms. The existence of a possible world, for example, which is a physical duplicate of our own but lacks conscious experience, is a counterexample to any analysis of consciousness in physical terms, regardless of the complexity of such an analysis (Chalmers, 1996). The example, if successful, shows that the analysis of consciousness in terms of the physical is not merely cumbersome, but impossible in principle.

An adequate analysis of depiction should not be vulnerable to this second kind of counterexample. There may be counterexamples which show the correct analysis must be cumbersome and unwieldy, but there should be no counterexamples which show it's impossible in principle to analyse depiction in terms of resemblance and intentions in parallel with the analysis of non-natural meaning. So although the analysis of depiction below is unlikely to be more than approximately true, it may still be sufficiently close to the truth to support a strong analogy between depiction and description and to defend the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance.

#### 1.5 Conclusion

The following chapters pursue an analysis of depiction which combines the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance with a close analogy between depiction and description. The second chapter argues for defining depiction as a kind of intentional representation, by adapting a Gricean analysis of meaning and communication (this part of the book shadows Abell 2005a; 2009, as well as Blumson 2009). Chapter three defends this analysis from familiar objections to intentionalism in philosophy of art. I argue that these objections are really objections to intentionalism in general, and have already been answered by proponents of the Gricean program.

The Gricean program in the philosophy of language employs a strategy of divide and conquer by distinguishing speaker meaning, which is analysed in terms of intention, from sentence meaning, which is analysed in terms of convention. Whereas chapters two and three extend the Gricean analysis of speaker meaning in terms of intention to encompass depiction, chapters four and five modify the Gricean analysis of sentence meaning in terms of convention by jettisoning arbitrariness in favour of resemblance to form an analysis of depictive symbol systems. By jettisoning resemblance as well, chapter five extends this analysis to symbol systems in general.

Languages are striking for their compositionality: the meaning of sentences depends upon the meanings and arrangement of their parts. Chapters six and seven pursue the analogy between depiction and description to its extreme by arguing that depictive symbol systems, like languages, are compositional. Chapter six argues that both depiction and description have compositional structure and chapter seven argues that compositional structure has the same role in the interpretation of both depiction and description. The platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance is neglected in these chapters, but the pursuit of a strong analogy between depiction and description continues.

The platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance is often doubted because it's not obviously consonant with the possibility of depicting inexistents, the possibility of depicting something without depicting something in particular, and the possibility of depictive misrepresentation. In chapter eight, I argue that these problems are merely manifestations of the problem of intentionality in general and, in chapter nine, I argue that the analysis of content in terms of possible worlds resolves this problem in a way which is consonant with the platitude. Chapter nine also addresses problems raised by pictures in perspective, and the possibility of depicting impossibilities.

Just as it's a platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance, it's a platitude that a picture is realistic to the degree to which it resembles what it represents (in relevant respects). But if properties are abundant and degrees of resemblance are proportions of properties in common, then the degree of resemblance between different particulars is constant (or undefined), which is inconsonant with the platitude. Chapter ten argues this problem should be resolved by revising the analysis of degrees of resemblance in terms of proportion of properties in common, and not by accepting a sparse theory of properties or denying the platitude.

"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 phenomenological. As I conceive of it, the purpose of the philosophy of pictures is to complete one small step in this ambitious reductive program.

The reductive program may take various paths. In philosophy of mind and language, it's common to distinguish the Sellarsian program, which pursues a reductive analysis of mind in terms of language, from the Gricean program, which pursues an analysis of language in terms of mind (see McKinsey (1983, 1-2) and Bennett (1976, 24-27)). Whereas the Sellarsian program analyses the belief that it's raining, for example, in terms of the assertion that it's raining, the Gricean program analyses the assertion that it's raining in terms of the belief that it's raining. The next four chapters pursue an analysis of depiction as part of this Gricean program.

The Gricean program in the philosophy of language employs a strategy of divide and conquer by distinguishing speaker meaning, to be analysed in terms of intention, from sentence meaning, to be analysed in terms of convention. Whereas this chapter and the following extend the Gricean analysis of speaker meaning in terms of intention to encompass depiction, chapters four and five modify the Gricean analysis of sentence meaning in terms of convention by jettisoning arbitrariness in favour of resemblance to form an analysis of depictive symbol systems. The analysis of pictures, I will argue in these chapters, slides seamlessly into the Gricean program as a whole.

#### *32 Resemblance and Representation*

So this chapter argues for defining depiction as a kind of intentional representation. In particular, it argues for defining depiction by combining resemblance with an analysis of speaker meaning in terms of intentions (following Abell, 2005a; 2009; as well as Blumson, 2009). The Mona Lisa depicts Lisa, for example, because Leo intended his audience to infer from the Mona Lisa's resemblance to Lisa his intention to induce an effect in them, by means of recognition of his intentions. This analysis, I will argue, supports both a close analogy between depiction and description and the platitude that whereas description is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance.

The first section introduces the analysis of speaker meaning in terms of intention and argues for its application to depiction. The second section takes up and argues against the natural suggestion of defining depiction by substituting experienced resemblance for the intended effect in the analysis of speaker meaning. The third section argues for defining depiction by substituting resemblance for the intended feature of utterances in the analysis of speaker meaning from which the speaker's intentions are intended to be inferred. The fourth section compares the analysis with Catharine Abell's (2009), which also defines depiction by combining resemblance with speaker meaning.

#### 2.1 Grice's analysis of speaker meaning

There's an important distinction between the meaning of sentences, called "sentence meaning", and what speakers use those sentences to mean, called "speaker meaning" (Grice, 1957, 217). Suppose, for example, I say, after Smith's just insulted me, 'Smith is a fine friend'. The sentence means that Smith is a fine friend, but this is not what I mean by the sentence: rather, my utterance of the sentence on this occasion means that Smith is a foul friend, for having insulted me. It's plausible that speaker meaning should be analysed directly in terms of intentions, whereas sentence meaning should be analysed jointly in terms of convention and speaker meaning.

This order of analysis is justified by the dependence of meaning on use: the purpose of linguistic utterances is to achieve various effects in audiences. Indicative sentences, for example, are usually uttered to produce beliefs. Imperative sentences, in contrast, are usually uttered to produce actions rather than beliefs. If, for example, I mean you to stop by uttering 'stop!', then my purpose is to induce you to stop. This suggests that a person means something by an utterance if and only if the person intends to induce an effect in an audience (Grice, 1957, 217). I might mean that it's raining by uttering 'it's raining', for example, because I intend you to believe it's raining.

But the following is a counterexample. Suppose that I want to frame you for a murder I've committed. In order to do so I leave your handkerchief at the scene of the crime, stained in the blood of the victim. I intend to induce the police to believe, on finding the bloodstained handkerchief, that you are the murderer, so the conditions of the analysis are met. Nevertheless, it is not the case that by leaving your handkerchief at the scene I mean that you are the murderer. I intend my action to produce an effect in my audience, but I nevertheless do not mean anything by my action, so intending to induce an effect in an audience is insufficient for speaker meaning (Grice, 1957, 217).

The problem the example raises is that it is not sufficient for an utterance to have meaning that it be used for a certain purpose, even if that purpose is characteristically linguistic, because it's always possible to achieve that purpose in some other way, without communicating one's intentions. The example shows an adequate analysis of speaker meaning has to characterise not only the effects, such as inducing beliefs and actions, that meaningful utterances are intended to accomplish, but also the distinctive way in which meaningful utterances bring about those effects. Merely causing beliefs and actions is not the same as communicating them.

In meaning something by an utterance, one's intentions are explicit in a way one's intentions in other actions aren't: telling someone something, for example, is explicit in a way that tricking someone is not (Grice, 1957, 218). This suggests:

(5) A person means something by an utterance if and only if the person intends the utterance to produce an effect in an audience by means of recognition of this intention (Grice, 1957, 220).

So I mean that it's raining by uttering 'it's raining', for example, because I intend to induce you to believe that it's raining by means of recognition of my intention.

Requiring the intended effect of an utterance to produce an effect in an audience by means of recognition of intention captures the distinctive way in which meaningful utterances produce their effects, because it captures the fact that one's intentions in meaning something by an utterance are explicit in a way one's intentions in other actions aren't. In leaving your bloodstained handkerchief at the scene of the crime, for example, I don't mean that you're the murderer, because although I intend the police to believe that you are the murderer, I don't intend this effect to be produced by means of recognition of my intention.

Depictions, like sentences, are aimed at the production of various effects. Maps, for example, are depictions aimed at producing beliefs in audiences about terrain. Lego instructions are depictions which are intended to induce audiences to arrange Lego in a certain way, rather than to induce them to believe that Lego is arranged in that way. Caricatures, like jokes, are aimed at producing amusement. This suggests analysing depiction, like speaker meaning, in terms of the effects pictures are intended to induce in their audiences, by means of recognition of these intentions: depiction, in other words, should be analysed as a special case of speaker meaning.

It would be a problematic disanalogy with meaning if there were any depiction which did not have the purpose of producing an effect in its audience. The fact that the purposes of some depictions are exclusively aesthetic, rather than directed towards a practical end such as belief or action, might be thought to show this. But, firstly, this is not a disanalogy since there are examples of descriptions, such as in poetry or song, which are also exclusively aesthetic and, secondly, even a depiction with an exclusively aesthetic purpose is at least intended to produce some aesthetic effect, such as pleasure or amusement, concerning what it represents in its audience.

An example analogous to the example of the handkerchief shows that depictive, like descriptive, representation requires the effect in the audience to be induced explicitly and openly. Suppose that I have a secret tunnel in my office. One panel of the wall is actually the door to the secret tunnel, which I have disguised to look exactly like an ordinary part of my bookshelf. Hence, the tunnel door is intended to look and be like an ordinary part of my bookshelf and to induce visitors to believe it is an ordinary part of my bookshelf. But the tunnel door doesn't depict an ordinary part of my bookshelf, since I don't intend it to induce this effect by means of recognition of my intention.

A deeper reason that the analysis of speaker meaning ought to be applied to depiction is its general nature. There is no distinctively linguistic or verbal element in the analysis of speaker meaning except for the word 'utterance', which is used in an extended sense to cover any kind of action, including dropping handkerchiefs and drawing pictures as well as writing and talking (Grice, 1969, 92). This means that the analysis should be expected to apply not just to language but to all communication, including pictorial representation. Different kinds of representation – like depiction and description – can then be defined as different kinds of speaker meaning.

So the analysis of speaker meaning should be applied to specifying how depiction is representational. As Catharine Abell writes: "… in the case of depiction 'the maker *A*, means picture *Y* to depict an object, *Z*' is roughly equivalent to 'A produced *Y* with the intention of inducing a belief about [or other effect concerning] *Z* in the observers of *Y* in virtue of those observers recognizing this intention'" (Abell, 2005a, 59; see also Novitz, 1977, for a similar account). So the Mona Lisa, for example, depicts Lisa because Leo intended to induce an effect – such as the belief that Lisa smiled – in his audience, by means of recognition of his intention.

But exactly how to apply the analysis of speaker meaning to the analysis of depiction is not obvious: simply conjoining resemblance with speaker meaning is no better than merely conjoining it with representation. The sentence 'this sentence is thirty-five letters long', for example, resembles itself and may be written with the intention of inducing in audiences the effect of believing that it is thirty-five letters long, by means of recognition of this intention. But, like the phrase 'this phrase', the sentence does not depict itself, because its resemblance to itself is incidental to its representation of itself. The problem of insufficiency is still unresolved.

#### 2.2 The intended effect in Grice's analysis

A common way to analyse a particular kind of meaning or representation is by specifying the intended effect in the analysis of speaker meaning. Assertions, for example, are those utterances which are intended to induce beliefs by means of recognition of intention, whereas commands are those utterances which are intended to induce actions by means of recognition of intention. Similarly, jokes are utterances intended, by means of recognition of intention, to induce amusement. This suggests depiction might also be analysed by an appropriate specification of the intended effect in the analysis of speaker meaning.

To take a more exotic example, fiction can be analysed by substituting imagination as the intended effect in the analysis of speaker meaning (Currie, 1990, 18-51). So, for example, it is fictional in *The Adventures of*  *Sherlock Holmes* that Sherlock Holmes is a detective because the reader is intended, on the basis of recognition of that intention, to imagine that Sherlock Holmes is a detective. If there is some effect on the audience that is distinctive of depiction, as imagination is an effect distinctive of fiction, then that could be combined with the analysis of speaker meaning to provide an analysis of depiction.

Robert Hopkins (1998, 50-51) suggests that audiences of depictions experience them as resembling what they represent. This suggests substituting experienced resemblance for the intended effect in the analysis of speaker meaning as follows:

(6) Something depicts another if and only if the former is intended to induce the former to be experienced as resembling the latter by means of recognition of this intention.

So the Mona Lisa, for example, is supposed to depict Lisa because Leo intended it to be experienced as resembling Lisa, by means of recognition of his intention.

One clarification. An experience of resemblance does not require both the thing that resembles and the thing that is resembled to be present. If somebody is familiar with a company logo, for example, then whenever they see that logo their experience is likely to represent it as having the property of resembling the instances of the logo that they have seen in the past (Peacocke, 1987, 385). So experiencing a resemblance is not just experiencing similar things simultaneously. Rather, it's having an experience which represents something as having the property of resembling another, which may or may not be present.

By specifying experienced resemblance as the intended effect in the analysis of speaker meaning, this analysis seems to provide for a nonincidental connection between resemblance and representation. Although the sentence 'this sentence is thirty-five letters long', for example, resembles itself and is intended to induce an effect in its audience by means of recognition of intention, the intended effect is not for it to be experienced as resembling itself. This suggests that substituting experienced resemblance for the effect in the analysis of speaker meaning escapes the counterexamples to straightforwardly conjoining resemblance with representation.

But the following counterexample shows that it doesn't. Suppose I sincerely write: 'I intend this sentence to induce itself to be experienced as resembling itself by means of recognition of my intention'. Since I do intend the sentence to induce itself to be experienced as resembling itself by means of recognition of my intention, the analysis predicts that I have not only written that sentence, but also depicted it. But although the sentence is sincerely intended to be experienced as resembling itself by means of recognition of my intention, it is not a depiction of itself. On the contrary, it's a paradigm example of a non-depictive, descriptive, representation.

In this case, the fact that the sentence is intended to be experienced as resembling itself is incidental to the way that the sentence represents itself in the same way that the fact that 'this sentence is thirty-five letters long' resembles itself is incidental to the way that it represents itself. The problem with the analysis is that it specifies the distinctive feature of depiction by specifying what depiction is used to do. But depiction is distinctive, not because it is used to do something special, but because it achieves what it is used to do in a special way. So depiction cannot be analysed by specifying the intended effect in the analysis of speaker meaning.

Four objections. First, perhaps the counterexample can be avoided by denying that things can be experienced as resembling themselves, and thus denying that I can sincerely intend my sentence to be experienced as resembling itself by means of recognition of my intention. But since there are pictures that represent themselves (Walton, 1990, 117-121), denying that things can be experienced as resembling themselves is not an available response. One might just deny that this particular sentence can be experienced as resembling itself. But there is no principled reason to do so, nor to think that this would solve the underlying problem.

Second, perhaps the argument tacitly relies on the false premise that nothing can be both a depictive and a descriptive representation. Pattern poems, for example, often represent their subjects both through the conventional meaning of their words and the arrangement of those words into patterns that resemble what they represent: John Hollander's (1981, 31) pattern-poem *Pattern Poem*, for example, makes its point by both describing itself as making a point and depicting itself as making a point, in virtue of resembling itself in respect of being point shaped. I don't want to deny that such pattern poems are both descriptions and depictions of their subjects.

But the argument doesn't rely on the premise that nothing can be both a depiction and a description. I don't deny that the sentence 'I intend this sentence to be experienced as resembling itself by means of recognition of my intention' is a depiction merely because it is a linguistic description, but because both the resemblance of the sentence to itself and the fact that the sentence is intended to be experienced as resembling itself are incidental to its representation of itself: the sentence refers to itself only because of its use of the demonstrative expression 'this sentence' to refer to itself.

So the fact that the sentence is a paradigmatically linguistic representation doesn't exclude the sentence from being a depiction, and the claim that linguistic representations cannot also be depictive representations is not a premise of the argument. The fact that the example is an explicit and paradigmatically linguistic representation plays only a heuristic role: it makes it more obvious than another example would that the sentence's being intended to be experienced as resembling itself and its resemblance to itself are incidental to the way it represents itself.

Third, it might be objected that the argument proves too much, because it undermines the analysis of fiction as well. Suppose I say 'I intend you to imagine that it was a dark and stormy night, by means of recognition of this intention'. It might be argued that, despite meeting the conditions of the analysis of fiction, what the sentence says is not fictional, because a person sincerely uttering it would be telling the truth: the sentence would be a factually correct account of that person's intention. So explicitly stating that the conditions of the analysis of fiction are met appears to produce an analogous counterexample to its sufficiency.

But the sufficiency of the analysis of fiction may be defended by arguing that my utterance of 'I intend you to imagine that it is a dark and stormy night by means of recognition of my intention', as well as accurately reporting my intentions, really does make it fictional that it is a dark and stormy night. The example is not one in which an utterance of non-fiction meets the conditions of the analysis of fiction, but is an example in which someone meets the conditions of the analysis of fiction by simultaneously speaking the truth and explicitly creating a fiction.

The following example illustrates the plausibility of this response. The first sentence of *If on a Winter's Night a Traveller*, by Italo Calvino, is 'You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, *If on a Winter's Night a Traveller*' (Calvino, 1982, 1). Like a sentence that explicitly states the conditions of the analysis of fiction are met, this opening is at once a statement of fact, since normally the reader is about to begin reading the book, and an explicit announcement that the author is engaging in fiction, since it states that you are reading a novel.

Fourth, it might be objected that the argument proves too much because it undermines the analysis of speaker meaning in general. Suppose I sincerely say 'I intend you to believe that it's raining by means of recognition of my intention'. It follows from the analysis of speaker meaning that the person has said that it's raining. But intuitively, runs the objection, by uttering that sentence I would not mean that that it's raining. Rather, I would mean that I intend you to believe that it's raining by means of recognition of my intention.

But the sufficiency of the analysis of speaker meaning may be defended by arguing that by uttering 'I intend you to believe that it's raining by means of recognition of my intention' as well as explicitly stating my intentions, I also mean that it's raining. As for the analysis of fiction, the response becomes plausible if one considers explicit performatives. 'I hereby declare that there is a cat on the mat', for example, is at once a declaration that there is a cat on the mat and a report that the speaker declares that there is a cat on the mat (Schiffer, 1972, 64-68).

Note that the argument applies not only to experienced resemblance, but to any attempt to analyse depiction by specifying the intended effect in the analysis of speaker meaning. Whatever effect is specified, it will be possible to write a sentence sincerely announcing the intention of the writer to induce that effect by means of recognition of that intention. That sentence would meet the conditions of the analysis, but it would fail to be a depiction. So to provide an analysis of depiction, the analysis of speaker meaning has to be combined with a feature distinctive of depiction not by specifying the intended effect in the analysis, but in some other way.

#### 2.3 The salient feature in Grice's analysis

To see how resemblance and the analysis of speaker meaning can be combined to analyse depiction, consider the following two examples. First, suppose a shopkeeper antecedently knows that I want cigarettes. I pass the shopkeeper fifty dollars in order to induce him to give me cigarettes, by means of his antecedent recognition of my intention that he give me cigarettes. Second, suppose I pass the shopkeeper eleven dollars and fiftyfive cents, the exact price of the brand I prefer, intending him to infer from the fact that I pass him that amount that I intend the money to induce him to give me those cigarettes by means of recognition of my intention.

Because in the first case the shopkeeper already knew that I wanted the cigarettes, it does not seem that by passing him the fifty dollars I meant that he should give me the cigarettes. But in the second case, because the shopkeeper inferred what I wanted, it does seem that I meant by the eleven dollars and fifty-five cents that I want the cigarettes (Grice, 1969, 94). To reflect this difference, the analysis should be altered to the following (Avramides, 1989, 47):

	- a. the utterance has a certain feature
	- b. an audience recognise that the utterance has that feature
	- c. the audience infer at least in part from the fact that the utterance has that feature that the person intends:
	- d. that the utterance produce an effect in the audience
	- e. and that that effect be produced at least in part by means of the audience's recognition of intentions (a)-(e).

So, for example, my passing the shopkeeper eleven dollars and fifty-five cents means he should give me the cigarettes because it has the feature of being exactly the price of my brand of cigarettes, and because the shopkeeper infers from that feature that I intend him to give me the cigarettes by means of recognition of my intention (see Harman (1974) for defence of the selfreflexivity in (e)).

In the case of linguistic representation, the feature from which the audience is intended to infer the speaker's intentions is the conventional meaning of the utterance or the fact that speakers have uttered it before with the same meaning. My utterance of 'it's raining', for example, means that it's raining because I intend you to infer from the conventional meaning of 'it's raining' in English that I intend to induce you to believe that it's raining by means of recognition of my intentions (Schiffer, 1972, 12). Convention connects words with what they represent by allowing audiences to infer the communicative intentions of speakers who conform to the convention.

But whereas words are connected to what they represent by convention, depictions are connected to what they represent by resemblance. So it's natural to mark this difference by inserting resemblance into the analysis of meaning in the same place that allows for the role of the conventional meanings of words, as follows:

	- a. the former resembles the latter in a certain respect
	- b. an audience recognise the former resembles the latter in that respect
	- c. the audience infer at least in part from the fact the former resembles the latter in that respect that it is intended:
	- d. that the former produce an effect in the audience
	- e. and that that effect be produced at least in part by means of the audience's recognition of intentions (a)-(e).

This analysis is the result of specifying that resemblance is the feature of the picture from which audiences infer depicters' intentions, just as conventional meaning is the feature of linguistic utterances from which audiences infer speakers' intentions.

By specifying the role of resemblance in depictive representation, this analysis avoids the counterexamples to analysing depiction simply by conjoining representation with resemblance. The sentence 'this sentence is thirty-five letters long', for example, is not counted as a depiction of itself because, although it resembles and represents itself, the intentions of people who utter it to induce effects in their audiences by means of recognition of their intentions will normally be inferred not from the sentence's resemblance to itself, but from its conventional meaning in English. So the analysis captures the non-incidental role of resemblance in depictive representation.

Moreover, a counterexample to this analysis cannot be produced by a linguistic restatement of the relevant conditions. Even if I say 'I intend that this sentence resemble itself in shape, that you recognise this resemblance, and that you infer from this resemblance that I intend to induce you to believe that it's raining by means of recognition of my intention' I cannot be sincere because those inferences cannot be made from the sentence's resemblance to itself in shape and so I cannot rationally or successfully have the intentions I declare I have using that sentence. So the analysis avoids the counterexamples to the insufficiency of resemblance for representation.

It might be objected that analysing depiction in terms of intention reverses the correct order of discovery, since the intentions of a depiction's perpetrator are discovered from knowledge of what the depiction represents, rather than what it represents being discovered from knowledge of its perpetrator's intentions. Rather than discovering that the Mona Lisa represents Lisa, for example, by discovering that Leo intended to induce a certain effect in us by means of recognition of his intention, we discovered that Leo intended to induce this effect in us by means of recognition of his intention because we know that the Mona Lisa depicts Lisa.

This objection is only relevant if the analysis is intended as an epistemic reduction of depiction to intention. But the analysis isn't intended as an epistemic reduction of depiction to intention, so whether we discover what pictures represent by knowing their perpetrators' intentions or vice versa is irrelevant. The analysis is intended as a metaphysical reduction of depiction in terms of intention. But the analysis plausibly succeeds as a metaphysical reduction, since intention is plausibly metaphysically prior to depiction: intentions might have existed without depictions, but depictions could not have existed without intentions.

But the analysis is committed to an epistemic priority of resemblance over depiction, because it requires the communicative intentions of a depiction's perpetrator to be inferred from the resemblance of the depiction to what it represents, and this is open to question. It might be argued that the resemblance of hidden figures to what they represent, for example, is inferred from antecedent knowledge of what the figures represent, rather than what the figures represent being inferred from what they resemble (Lopes, 2005b, 167). If this is the case then – contrary to the analysis – there is no epistemic priority of resemblance over intention.

But although what hidden figures represent cannot be recognised immediately, this need not be because what they resemble is inferred from what they represent, since what hidden figures represent cannot be recognised immediately either. Moreover, it must be possible to recognise what hidden figures resemble independently of what they represent, since it would still be possible to recognise the resemblance of a figure to what it represents even if it ceased to represent that thing. It might be difficult, for example, to notice a figure hidden in the midst of a painting of clouds. But it must be possible, for the resemblance could still be pointed out even if the clouds were real.

Three clarifications. First, the analysis requires not merely that the picture is intended to resemble what it represents, but that it is intended to resemble what it represents in a certain respect. And the analysis requires not merely that the audience recognise that the picture resembles what it represents, but that they recognise that it resembles what it represents in this specific respect. For the Mona Lisa to depict Lisa, for example, the analysis requires that Leo had in mind a specific respect in which he intended the Mona Lisa to resemble Lisa. Moreover, it requires us to be able to recognise that the Mona Lisa resembles Lisa in this specific respect.

But it sometimes seems possible to recognise a resemblance without recognising the respect in which the resemblance obtains. It may be possible to recognise a similarity between two faces, for example, without being able to recognise the respect in which that similarity consists (Armstrong, 1978b, 98). And it may be possible to recognise a similarity between a portrait and the face it represents, without being able to recognise the respect in which the portrait and the face it represents are similar. If this is correct, then the portrait may depict the face without the artist or audience recognising in what respect it resembles the face, and so the analysis should be weakened.

However, the specific respect must be mentioned in the analysis since if the abundant conception of properties is a necessary truth, it's also a necessary truth that everything resembles everything, and so it's also a necessary truth that a picture resembles what it represents (if the picture and what it represents exist). In this case, the intention that a picture resembles what it represents would be problematic – it would be like having an intention that one plus one is two, or that bachelors are unmarried men. Moreover, the audience could easily recognise that the picture resembles what it represents, but it would be difficult for them to infer anything from this about the artist's intentions.

So if the sparse conception of properties is correct, then the analysis can be simplified and the counterexample above avoided by omitting to require that the resemblance be in a certain respect. But if on the other hand it's the abundant conception of properties which is correct, then the analysis cannot be simplified in this way, and the purported counterexample must be addressed head on. But this is not so much a problem for the analysis as a problem for the abundant conception of properties, for a proponent of the abundant conception of properties must argue that recognition of resemblance, unless it is vacuous, is always recognition of resemblance in a certain respect.

Second, though it contains the word "recognition", the analysis is not a version of the recognition theory of depiction. According to recognition theories, something depicts another only if the former causes (usually nonveridical) recognition of the latter. But according to analysis (8), something depicts another not only if it is intended that an audience recognise the latter itself, but only if it is intended that an audience recognise the *resemblance* of the former to the latter. And analysis (8) requires the recognition of the resemblance of the former to the latter be veridical. (See Newall (2011, 42-94) for an extremely helpful comparison of the recognition and resemblance theories.)

Third, the analysis leaves open the nature of the intended effect mentioned in clause (d). It is open to the proponent of experienced resemblance, for example, to hold that it is a necessary condition of depiction that experienced resemblance be the intended effect. But I'm doubtful that experienced resemblance or any other kind of experience is necessary for depiction, especially in view of my stipulation in the introduction that depiction may occur in any medium, and includes allegorical fiction. Moreover, if the intended effect in the analysis is allowed to be an action, belief, imagining or similar attitude, then the parallel with the analysis of speaker meaning is more perfect.

#### 2.4 Abell's analysis of depiction

In arguing that depiction should be analysed in terms of resemblance and speaker meaning, I'm agreeing with Catharine Abell, according to whom something depicts an object *O* if "Its maker intended it to resemble *O* in a certain visible respect(s) and thus to bring *O* to viewers' minds, and intended that these resemblances have this effect in part because viewers recognise this intention ..." (Abell, 2009, 208). So the Mona Lisa depicts Lisa, according to Abell, because Leo intended the Mona Lisa to resemble Lisa in a visible respect and thus to bring Lisa to viewers' minds, in part because viewers recognise this intention.

The purpose of this section is to clarify the differences between Abell's analysis and my own. I agree with Abell about the sufficiency of the condition quoted in the last paragraph, which differs only superficially from analysis (8) in the last section. I also agree with Abell that there are counterexamples to the necessity of that condition and analysis (8). But I disagree with Abell about how to accommodate counterexamples to the necessity of her sufficient condition and analysis (8) and so also disagree with her about the final analysis of depiction. This section explains Abell's analysis and how I disagree with it. My own version will not be finalised until chapter nine.

The first issue I disagree with Abell about is how to address counterexamples to the necessity of an audience. It's possible to depict something without intending to induce an effect in an audience: it is possible, for example, to depict by doodling in margins, drawing preparatory sketches and tracing patterns in fogged-up glass, but not intend that the doodles, sketches or traces ever reach an audience other than oneself. In some of these cases, one can argue the intended audience of the doodle, sketch or tracing is simply the doodler, the sketcher or the tracer, but this response, I will argue in section 3.3, is not available in every case of this kind.

The second issue I disagree with Abell about is how to address counterexamples to the necessity of intention. Abell argues that an intention to depict, or to respond to a communication problem, is necessary for depiction (Abell, 2009, 205). Nevertheless, Abell argues that what an artist depicts may not be what the artist intends to depict.  In contrast, I'll argue in section 3.2 that there are no counterexamples to the necessity of intention.

To accommodate these possibilities, Abell argues that "Just as we are able to interpret sentences uttered without communicative intentions because they employ linguistic conventions with which we are familiar, we are able to interpret pictures produced without communicative intentions because they employ stylistic conventions with which we are familiar" (Abell, 2009, 204). So just as, for example, the sentences in my diary have meaning even though I don't intend them to reach an audience because of their conventional meaning in English, the doodles in my margins depict because they fall under certain stylistic conventions, which usually govern communication.

I have two objections to this response. First, it's possible to depict without intending to reach an audience or to conform to a stylistic convention. A painter, for example, may choose not to exhibit his or her paintings, precisely because the paintings are stylistically innovative and so don't conform to any stylistic conventions. Likewise a diarist, in the linguistic case, may write in non-literal language, the intended meaning of which isn't the conventional meaning of the words. To accommodate these cases, I will argue in section 3.3 that it is a necessary condition of depiction not that it induces an effect in an audience, but that it does so *if* it reaches an audience of a certain type.

Second, using convention to accommodate audienceless and unintentional depiction risks failing to distinguish between depiction and onomatopoeia. The word 'woof', for example, resembles but does not depict a dog's bark. But just as sentences now have their sentence meaning because of conventions arising from what they were used to speaker mean in the past, some onomatopoeic words have their meaning because of conventions arising from what they were used to depict in the past. So allowing that merely falling under stylistic conventions is sufficient for depiction risks including not only audienceless and unintended depiction, but also onomatopoeia.

However, Abell's appeal to convention may avoid this problem because falling under a stylistic convention, according to her analysis, is not quite sufficient for depiction. Instead, something depicts an object *O* if its maker produced the resemblance at issue "... and intended thereby to adhere to a stylistic convention extant in his or her community, characterized by resemblance in the respect(s) at issue, and thus bring *O* to viewers' minds" or else had "… the intention of responding to a communication problem to which a conventional solution is extant in his or her community, which is characterized by resemblance in the given respect(s)" (Abell, 2009, 204-205).

The first condition does exclude onomatopoeia, since though onomatopoeic words fall under stylistic conventions extant in their communities, they need not be intended to fall under these stylistic conventions. But the first condition also excludes depiction in the absence of an intended audience, since it requires the maker to intend to bring the object to viewer's minds, and unintentional depiction, since the maker must intend the resemblance at issue and intend thereby to adhere to the stylistic convention which is characterised by that resemblance. Abell's example of an inadvertent picture of a fat man, for example, does not satisfy the first condition.

The second includes depiction in the absence of an audience, since it doesn't require the maker to intend to bring the object to viewer's minds, and unintentional depiction, since makers may produce the resemblances at issue with the intention to respond to communication problems, while inadvertently producing a resemblance in the wrong respect. But in this case, onomatopoeia is included, since onomatopoeic utterances are intended to respond to communication problems to which conventional solutions are extant, and since those conventional solutions are characterised by resemblance in the respects which are responsible for explaining the origin of the onomatopoeia.

The Gricean program in the philosophy of language employs a strategy of divide and conquer by analysing speaker meaning in terms of intention, and sentence meaning in terms of convention and speaker meaning. By invoking conventions in the analysis of depiction, Abell hopes to employ a parallel strategy to respond to counterexamples to the necessity of intentions for depiction. In chapters four and five I will also argue for analysing some kinds of depiction in parallel with the analysis of sentence meaning – but I will deny that a convention which has its origin in resemblance is sufficient for depiction, and so exclude onomatopoeia.

The third issue I disagree with Abell about is how to respond to the problem posed by the intentionality of depiction. Three features of depiction are symptomatic of its intentionality. The first is the apparent possibility of depicting non-existents. The second is the possibility of depicting something without depicting anything in particular. The third symptom is the possibility of depictive misrepresentation. All three symptoms of the intentionality of depiction are problematic for the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance, but the difficulties are raised most strikingly by the problem of the depiction of non-existents.

Abell argues that depicting non-existents is possible because such depictions would resemble what they represent, if what they represent had existed. Although Santa's portrait, for example, does not actually resemble Santa, because Santa does not exist, it seems plausible that Santa's portrait would have resembled Santa if Santa had existed, because if Santa had existed, both he and his portrait would have shared the property of being partly red. In general, depictions of non-existents don't resemble what they represent, but they would have done if what they represent had existed, so the caveat appears to accommodate the depiction of non-existents (Abell, 2009, 212).

However, Santa may be depicted both as mostly red or as mostly green. But had he existed, he would have been either mostly red or mostly green, but not both. So either the depiction of Santa as mostly red or the depiction of Santa as mostly green would fail to resemble Santa in respect of colour, even if Santa had existed. In general, non-existent objects may be depicted as appearing in many different, often inconsistent, ways. If there is a fact of the matter about how the non-existent object would have looked, some depictions of it wouldn't have resembled that object; if there's no fact of the matter, then there's no fact of the matter about whether they'd resemble it or not.

Abell may argue that there are facts of the matter about how inexistent objects look, and that pictures which don't depict them as they would look are misrepresentations, the problem of which has to be solved differently. The problem of misrepresentation is that if a depiction misrepresents what it depicts in some respect, then it will fail to resemble what it represents in that respect. If a tree is depicted as blue, for example, then the depiction fails to resemble the tree in respect of colour. Likewise, if Santa is depicted as partly green instead of partly red, Abell may argue that this is possible for the same reason it is possible to depict a green tree as blue.

A picture misrepresents something as having a property, according to Abell, only if it resembles that thing or would if that thing existed and resembles things that have that property or would if they existed (Abell, 2009, 212). So, for example, it's possible for a picture to depictively misrepresent a green tree as blue, because the picture may resemble the tree in respect of shape and simultaneously resemble something blue in respect of colour. So as long as it's possible for a marked surface to simultaneously resemble a tree and blue things, it's likewise possible for the surface to depict the tree as blue, as long as the surface is marked with the relevant communicative intentions.

But this strategy cannot accommodate all examples of depictive misrepresentation, because some depictive misrepresentations don't resemble what they represent in any intended respect. Suppose, for example, that the police are completely misinformed about the appearance of a dangerous criminal. The police believe that the criminal is brunette, but he is blonde; the police believe he is bearded, but he is shaved; the police believe that he is tall, but in fact he is short; and so on (Kaplan, 1968, 198). If the police drew a wanted poster of this man, then it would resemble someone who is brunette, bearded, tall, and so on, but not resemble the man in any intended respect.

By invoking counterfactuals to address the problem of non-existents, Abell hopes to exploit the idea that although apparent depictions of nonexistents don't resemble any actual thing, they may resemble a merely possible thing. In chapters eight and nine I will also argue for addressing the problems of depicting non-existents, depicting non-particulars and depictive misrepresentation by exploiting resemblances towards mere possibilia, but without invoking counterfactual conditionals. Chapters eight and nine will argue this approach is a general solution to the problem of intentionality, so there is no special problem for the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance.

So Abell and I agree that depiction should be analysed by resemblance in combination with communicative intentions, but disagree about how purported counterexamples to this analysis should be accommodated. In the case of counterexamples due to absence of the relevant intentions, I disagree with Abell's appeal to convention. In the case of counterexamples due to the depiction of inexistents and depictive misrepresentation, I disagree with Abell's appeal to resemblance in counterfactual respects and her claim that even a misrepresentation must resemble what it represents in at least one relevant respect. These disagreements are all about the details, not the spirit, of the analysis.

### 2.5 Conclusion

Resemblance in depictive representation is intended to enable audiences to infer the communicative intentions of a depiction's perpetrator. The Mona Lisa depicts Lisa, for example, because Leo intended audiences to infer from the fact that the Mona Lisa resembles Lisa that he intended an effect in them by means of recognition of his intentions. By specifying the non-incidental role of resemblance in depiction, this analysis avoids counterexamples to the sufficiency of resemblance for representation, and so supports the platitude that whereas descriptive representation is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance.

By defining both depiction and description as kinds of intentional representation, the analysis also supports a strong analogy between depiction and description. Both depictions and descriptions, according to the analysis, depend for their meaning on the intentions of their perpetrators to induce effects in their audience, by means of recognition of these intentions. The difference is merely in the feature from which these intentions are inferred: in the case of description, they are inferred from the conventional meanings of words, whereas in the case of depiction, they are inferred from the resemblance of pictures to what they represent.

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. Counterexamples to the necessity and sufficiency of communicative intentions for depiction, it might be argued, are just as threatening as those to the necessity and sufficiency of resemblance.

This chapter defends the analysis of depiction as a kind of intentional representation from this objection. The strategy is to argue that all counterexamples to applying the analysis of speaker meaning to depiction are also counterexamples to the analysis of speaker meaning simpliciter. And whichever revision or reply is available in defence of the analysis of speaker meaning simpliciter, the same revision or reply is available in defence of its application to depiction. So applying the analysis of speaker meaning to depiction supports not only the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance, but also a strong analogy between depiction and description.

The first section responds to objections to the necessity of intention for depiction. It argues there is no genuine counterexample to the necessity of intention for depiction. The second section addresses objections to the necessity of an audience. It argues that there are counterexamples to the necessity of an audience, but they can be addressed by a simple revision. The third section responds to counterexamples to the sufficiency of intention for depiction, which can also be accommodated by a simple revision. The fourth section addresses a counterexample based on the evidential use of photographs. The fifth section concludes.

Two clarifications. First, the correct analysis of intention is an extremely controversial topic, which it would be out of place to broach here. However, it can't be emphasised enough that the intentions relevant to what is meant or depicted are the *tacit* intentions which govern action, rather than explicitly formulated plans (Grice, 1957, 221-222). In some cases, the intentions involved in drawing or talking may be explicitly thought out in advance, but these cases are unusual. In ordinary cases, the intentions involved in drawing and talking are just as implicit and spontaneous as the intentions involved in driving or walking.

Second, a full defence of intentionalism in the philosophy of art would require a book length treatment (such as Paisley Livingston's (2005)). In this chapter, I will focus on issues which are to do with pictures in particular, rather than issues which are general to the philosophy of art. In particular, I will focus on issues which purport to establish a disanalogy between the analysis of speaker meaning and the analysis of depiction, such as counterexamples which suggest that the analysis of depiction ought to parallel the analysis of sentence meaning, or counterexamples which purport to establish that the analysis of depiction ought to parallel the analysis of natural meaning.

#### 3.1 Objections to the necessity of intention

Suppose an ant is crawling on a patch of sand. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line it traces curves and recrosses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill (Putnam, 1981, 1). In cases like this, it is tempting to say that the ant traces a depiction of Churchill, even though the ant does not intend to depict Churchill. But this temptation should be resisted, because in the absence of any intention on the part of the ant, or a connection to Churchill other than resemblance, the only explanation of how the line depicts him is its resemblance to him, and that is insufficient (Putnam, 1981, 1-2).

As it is for depiction, so it is for description. Suppose the ant is crawling on a patch of sand and, as it crawls, it traces a line which by pure chance has the same shape as the sentence 'Churchill wins' (Putnam, 1981, 2). The temptation to say that the ant means by 'Churchill wins' that Churchill wins should be resisted, because in the absence of any intention on the part of the ant, or another connection to Churchill's winning, the only explanation of how the 'Churchill wins' means Churchill wins is its conventional meaning in English, but that is insufficient to establish what the ant means by it, since the ant is not really writing in English.

Nevertheless, in the case of language the temptation to say that a sentence may mean something in the absence of an intention is explained by the fact that the sentence may have a conventional meaning in a language such as English. Likewise, in the case of depiction the temptation to say that a marking depicts something in the absence of an intention may be explained by the fact that the marking may have a standard meaning in a depictive symbol system. The line the ant traces, for example, may be a standard shape used for Churchill's caricature. I'll pursue this parallel in chapters four and five (but I will deny that the standards in the case of depiction are conventions).

Not every case in which it is tempting to say there is a depiction in the absence of an intention can be explained in this way. If the ant, for example, traces a line which by pure chance resembles the face of another politician, but one whose caricature has no standard shape, then there is nothing in virtue of which the line depicts the politician, and so it does not depict the politician at all. And although *Jabberwocky*, for example, has meaning in virtue of Carroll's (1871, 155-156) intentions, if an ant had traced lines of the same shape, there would have been neither intention nor convention in virtue of which the lines would have meant anything, and so they would have meant nothing.

The right response to these extreme cases is to deny anything is meant or depicted, on the grounds that in these extreme cases there is nothing in virtue of which anything could be meant or depicted. But in many other purported cases of depiction without intention, the right response is not to deny the presence of depiction, but to maintain the presence of intention. And in many purported cases of meaning without intention, the right response is likewise not to deny the presence of meaning, but to maintain the presence of intention. In particular, many common counterexamples can be addressed simply by a spirit of liberality about how the relevant intentions may arise.

Found objects, for example, may become depictions because of the intentions of their finders. An artist may display some found driftwood, for example, in a way so that the driftwood resembles a spade, an audience recognise that it resemble a spade, and infer from its resemblance to a spade that the artist intended a certain effect in them, by means of recognition of this intention (the example is adapted from Weitz (1956, 34)). Likewise, if driftwood on the beach is strewn by pure chance into the shape of a sentence which warns of an impending tsunami, I may nevertheless use the driftwood to warn you of a tsunami simply by leaving it in its place (Eaton, 1969, 166).

In these cases, the relevant intentions are of the finder instead of the maker. In similar cases, the relevant intentions may be neither of the finder or maker but of the curator who exhibits a painting or the chemist who develops a photograph. In the case of cinema, the relevant intentions need not be those of the director, but may equally well be those of the actors, writers and producers or, in some cases, an intention of the group which is not an intention of any of its individual members. And in the case of literature the relevant intentions need not be those of the author, but may equally well be those of the editor or publisher.

So far I have argued that every purported counterexample to the necessity of intention for depiction is either not an example in which intention is absent or else, in extreme cases, is not an example in which depiction is present since, in extreme cases, there is nothing in virtue of which depiction could be present, except resemblance, which isn't sufficient. But it is plausible that photography is a source of counterexamples which escapes this dilemma, because in the case of photography there is something other than resemblance in virtue of which depiction could be present, because in the case of photography there is a causal connection between photos and what they represent.

Suppose, for example, you photograph your shoe by unintentionally dropping your camera. You did not intend an audience to infer from the photograph's resemblance to your foot that you intended to achieve an effect in them by means of recognition of your intention. But intuitively the photograph depicts your foot. This counterexample, if successful, suggests that the analysis of depiction, or the analysis of photographic depiction, should parallel the analysis of natural instead of non-natural representation, in which case applying the analysis of speaker meaning to depiction is mistaken (see Walton (1984, 101-103) for discussion of a similar point).

But the same point seems to apply to meaning in general, including speaker meaning. Suppose, for example, a sleep-talking husband desires to divorce his wife, but doesn't intend to do so – his desire is overruled by countervailing desires. Yet despite this, his desire to divorce his wife may cause him to call out 'I divorce you' thrice in his sleep. In this case, because of the causal connection between the desire and the utterance of 'I divorce you', it is tempting to say that by uttering 'I divorce you' thrice the husband meant to divorce his wife, even though he didn't intend to divorce her. If this were correct, it would follow that intention is not necessary for speaker meaning.

As for many of the examples above, the right response to these cases isn't to deny the presence of depiction or speaker meaning, but to maintain the presence of intention. If I drop my camera and it accidentally photographs my foot, for example, then I may still form the intentions relevant for it to depict my foot afterwards, when I take the film to be developed or when I place it in my photo album. Similarly, if the husband's desire to divorce his wife causes him to utter 'I divorce you' thrice during sleep, one may argue that it did so by causing him to form in his sleep an intention to divorce her (albeit an intention he may regret or forget by the morning).

Another popular response to the photographic case, suggested by both Hopkins (1998, 77) and Abell (2005a), is to argue that the relevant intentions are present by arguing that it is not the intentions of the photographer which are important, but rather the intentions of the camera's manufacturers. This approach predicts that the photograph resulting from your camera being dropped is a photograph of your foot, because the camera's manufacturers intended that the photograph would resemble your foot if it were dropped in this manner. If this is right, then accidentally taken photographs are not unaccompanied by the relevant intentions after all.

But additional intentions aren't available in every case. Even if, for example, I drop my Polaroid camera and it accidentally photographs my foot and then automatically develops the photo, which nobody ever becomes aware of or forms intentions about, there is still a temptation to say that the photograph depicts my foot. Likewise, even though it is possible for the husband's desire to divorce his wife to cause him to form an intention in his sleep, it is not necessary – the desire may cause the utterance in all kinds of indirect and deviant ways. Moreover, the desire is not necessary to cause the utterance – it may be caused, for example, simply by a nightmare.

There are similar examples in which even the camera's manufacturer's intentions are absent. Suppose, for example, a camera is created accidentally by a random collision of materials in space, without the normal procedure of design and manufacturing, and thus without the intentions of designers or manufacturers. And suppose this camera happens to shoot photos at regular intervals, without anyone intending those photos to be shot. Just as photographs taken accidentally are intuitively depictions, photographs taken unintentionally by accidentally created cameras are also intuitively depictions. So appealing to the intentions of manufacturers isn't able to resolve the problem.

One possible, but misguided, response to this problem would be to split the analysis of depiction into two separate analyses: one of non-natural depiction, such as painting and drawing, and one of natural depiction, such as photographic depiction. The analysis of non-natural depiction would combine resemblance with the analysis of speaker meaning, whereas the analysis of photographic depiction would somehow combine resemblance with causation or indication. This proposal is a very intuitive one, but unfortunately it cannot succeed: the problem is that there is no non-incidental role for resemblance to play in natural representation.

Take, for example, footprints. Footprints naturally represent the feet of the animals that make them. Furthermore, footprints normally resemble the feet of the animals that make them, since they are normally a similar shape to the prints. If photographic depiction were to be analysed by combining causation and resemblance, then such an analysis would be bound to include footprints as well as photographs. But this seems to be the wrong result, since the resemblance between feet and prints is incidental to the representation between feet and prints: even had the prints not resembled the feet, they would still represent the feet merely in virtue of being caused by the feet.

So the correct response is to deny that accidentally taken photographs, in the absence of an analogy with sentence meaning and further intentions in their development and presentation, are depictions at all. While this is counterintuitive, it may nevertheless be conceded that the accidentally taken photograph is a natural representation of my foot, but due to the causal connection between the photograph and my foot, rather than because of the incidental resemblance between them. This concession softens the blow to intuition since, while not all accidentally taken photographs are classified as depictions, all are still rightly included as natural representations.

Most photographs are still classified as depictions even though some are not, since most photographs possess non-natural as well as natural meaning. A photograph of a person represents the person in two distinct ways: it depicts the person because its resemblance to the person is intended to allow audiences to infer the photographer's communicative intentions, and it also naturally represents the person because of the causal connection between it and the person. So photographs are a kind of depiction insofar as they are a kind of non-natural representation, but not insofar as they are a kind of natural representation.

The analogous problem for the analysis of meaning in general has the same solution. In the case, for example, of somniloquy which reveals something truly unintended about the speaker, the solution is to deny that somniloquy has non-natural meaning and to argue instead that it is really an instance of natural meaning: somniloquy is revealing, if it is revealing at all, merely due to a causal connection with the speaker's psychology. If, on the other hand, there is no such causal connection nor relevant intention present – whether in the case of depiction or description – then there are no grounds for attributing representational significance at all.

#### 3.2 Objections to the necessity of an audience

The paradigm case of speaker meaning is communication: meaning something by an utterance, according to the analysis above, constitutively involves the presence of an audience. But it may be argued that depiction, although it may sometimes involve communication, is not primarily directed at audiences. People may depict by doodling in their margins, drawing preparatory sketches for paintings, or tracing patterns in fogged-up glass, without intending that their doodles, sketches or traces ever find an audience. So depiction in the absence of an audience seems to be a counterexample to the application of the analysis of speaker meaning to depiction.

But in fact examples of depiction in the absence of an audience reveal no disanalogy between depiction and speaker meaning. People may mean things by writing in diaries, doodling in margins or singing in the shower, without intending any witnesses to their writing, doodling or singing. So while the primary case of meaning involves communication between an utterer and a separate audience, this isn't always the case. Meaning something is possible in the absence of an audience, so the absence of an audience is a counterexample not just to the analysis of depiction, but to the analysis of speaker meaning in general (Grice, 1969, 112-115; Schiffer, 1972, 76-80).