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Words and Pictures

John Hyman

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement / Volume 42 / March 1997, pp 51 - 76

DOI: 10.1017/S1358246100010183, Published online: 12 April 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1358246100010183

How to cite this article:John Hyman (1997). Words and Pictures. Royal Institute of PhilosophySupplement, 42, pp 51-76 doi:10.1017/S1358246100010183

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Words and Pictures

J OHN HYMAN

Pictures have always played a prom inen t role in philosophical spec -ulation about the mind , but the concept of a picture has itself be enthe object of philosophical scrutiny only intermittently. As a matterof fact, it was studied most intensively in the course of a theologicalcontroversy in the Eastern Rom an E mp ire, dur ing the eighth c entu-ry - which is a sufficient ind icati on of its marginal place in the his-

tory of philosophy. Perhaps this is because pictures have never p ro -duced in us the theoretical paralysis wh ich Au gu stin e famously a sso-ciated with time, but have on the contrary generally seem ed too

unproblematic to deserve much tim e from philoso phers. Even today,after several decades of accumulating theory, philosophers with no

stake in the matter are often imp ervious to its charm. I feel somesympathy for this att i tude , because the task of explaining the natureof depiction is, I believe, one w hich calls for the refinement ratherthan refutation of our first thou gh ts ab out it. But a precise und er-

standing of depiction is both a necessary prolegomen on to a signifi-cant part of aesthetics, and a useful prop hylac tic against confusion inthe theory of the ima ginatio n. B esides, ther e is also the pleasure of

the chase, which J. L. Austin nonchalantly appealed to many yearsbefore the Research Assessmen t Exercise was ina ugu rated.

Introduction

Although abstract paint ings are som etimes called pictures, I shall

follow the restrictive convention w hich stipulates th at every pictu redepicts, is a picture of, someth ing or other.A picture is a kind of artefact. In general, kinds of artefact -

clocks, lamps , knives, cha irs — are distinguished by their function. Aclock is a device for keeping t ime, a lamp for sheddin g l ight , and so

on. Of course clocks and lamps can serve m any different pu rpo ses .For example, a clock can be used to decide whether a record has

been beaten and a lamp can be used to attract insects; and either canbe used as a door-stop. But a clock or a lamp can be used for a cer-

ta in purpo se because it is a clock or a lamp if, and only if, it serves thispurpose by keeping time or sheddin g l ight . Henc e, these are theirdefinitive func tions. In m any cases an artefac t's function will dictatethe kinds of material it can or cannot be made of, and its form or

shape. For example, a knife cannot be spherical or made of sponge,

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John Hyman

and a sail cannot be made of chicken-wire. There are also manykinds of artefact which are distinguished by form or size, distinc-tions which may correspond to differences in function, but need not

do so - for example, kinds of spear or sword: halberds, pikes andbills, cutlasses, sabres and scimitars. Finally, simple machines aredistinguished not only in terms of their function, but also in termsof their manner of operation - not only what they do, but also howthey do it. Pulleys and capstans, for example, are both machines forlifting w eights , bu t they w ork differently. A pictu re is not a machin e;but the definition of a picture, like the definition of a pulley, willneed to explain what a picture does and how it does i t .

The philosophical l i terature contains answers to both questions.Answers to the first - What do pictures do? - include the following:They show us things. They give us the i l lusion of seeing things.They make us think of things. They stand for or denote things.Historically, the most common answer to the second question -H ow do they do it? - has been: by m eans of resem blance. However,in Languages of Art, N elson Go od m an rejects this answer, andargues instead that pictures depict by means of semantic and syn-tactic rules. Languages of Art dese rvedly rem ains a focus of deba tethree decades after its publication, partly because of its rhetoricalpanache, but principally because its arguments are ingenious and itsconclusions original, not to say perverse. It may be helpful to layout some representative answers to the two questions in a table, inorder to display the route which led to Languages of Art:

What do pictures do?

Beardsley A picture shows the latestmodel Chevrolet, a plaid

shirt...something thatexists or might existoutside the pictureframe'. (1981, p. 267)

Hospers A picture is a symbol andtherefore refers to or

stands for the objects itrepresen ts. (1946, p. 29)

Goodm an A picture stands for ordenotes its subject. (1981, p. 5)

How do they do it?

By means of a closeresemblance in shape and

colour; for in order todepict a Y, a picture mustmust contain an area'that is more similar tothe visual appearance ofYs than to objects of anyother class', (ibid., p. 270)

By means of a 'closenatural relationship,

namely likeness orresemblance, betweensymbol and thingsymbolized', (ibid., p. 40)

By means of a system ofsemantic and syntactic rules.

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Words and Pictures

The table is not arranged chronologically. Beardsley's Aesthetics wasfirst published about a decade after Hospers' Meaning and Truth in theArts. But it conveys a schematic picture of the relationship between

the three theories more effectively than a chronological arrangementwould. For as we can see, Beardsley and Hospers disagree about the'what' of pictures, but agree about the 'how'; whereas Hospers andGoodman agree about the 'what', but disagree about the 'how'.

In order to see which way philosophy has moved since Languagesof Art, it is best to take a long step back, and to consider howDescartes fits into the picture:

Descartes A picture 'enables the soul By the operation of

to have sensory perceptions mechanisms which physiologyof the various qualities of can investigate,the objects to which itcorresponds'. (1985, p. 166)

Descartes' idea is that the function of a picture is to produce psy-chological episodes of a certain sort, namely, 'sensory perceptionsof the various qualities' of the things it depicts. So instead of sup-posing that the distinctive nature of the experience of looking at apicture - what makes this experience different from the experienceof looking at visible things of other kinds - is simply a function ofthe distinctive nature of pictures themselves, he makes the oppositesupposition: that the distinctive nature of pictures should beunderstood in terms of the distinctive character of the experienceof looking at them. And what is distinctive about this experience isthat it is not, or not exclusively, a sensory perception of the variousqualities of the picture itself, but of the forest or battle or stormthat the picture represents. A picture is therefore something whose

essential nature is disguise: a flat pattern of ink or pigment, con-trived with the express purpose of frustrating the desire to see itsimply for what it is. This is, in effect, an illusion theory of pic-tures: the function of a pictu re, in Descartes ' view, is to produ ce anillusion.

Today almost everyone with an opinion agrees that the illusiontheory is not viable; but the general approach that Descartes pio-neered is more popular today than any other, partly because of theinfluence of Ernst Gombrich's Art and Illusion, which has done

even more than Languages of Art to make pictorial representation alively topic in philosophy, and partly because Goodman won fewconverts, but persuaded many that the resemblance theory wasirreparable. There isn't a consensus about how exactly the experi-ence of looking at a picture should be defined, but there is wide-spread agreement that defining this experience is the key to the

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John Hyman

theory of pictorial representation. Paradoxically, the m ost faithfulCartesian in the twen tieth ce ntury w as Gilbe r t Ryle, who was there-fore - in a sense - ahead of his time.1

In what follows, I shall begin by discussing the doctrine thatdepict ion is explained by resemblance, and two main argum entsagainst it, the first pro po un ded by Descar tes, in his treatise on

optics, and the second by G o o d m a n , in Languages of Art. Secondly,I shall examine and crit ic ise G ood m an's own theory of depiction.Finally, I shall defend a positive proposal ab out the n ature of depic-tion - although it is m uch less than a complete answer to the theo-retical problems raised by pictoria l a rt — and examine its connectionwi th Descar tes ' and Goo dm an ' s a rgumen ts and conclusions, and

with the doctr ine they opposed.

The Resemblance Theory

T h e t ru th m ay be s imple to express b ut difficult to exp ou nd; an d wesometimes discover, in the course of expounding it, that the simpleformula we began with is as a pt to misle ad as to inform. T he propo -

sit ion that resemblance explains how pictures depict will turn out tobe of this sort; and whether we stick to it, as the best epitom e of a

subtle matter, or prefer to be less economical with the tru th, willmatter relatively little, once we are able to provide a more substan-tial explanation.

One reason for treating the s imple formula with caution is that weoften believe the right thing for the wro ng reasons; and what mayseem to be a good reason for believing that resemblance explainsdepict ion is actually no reason at all . Wh at I have in mind is the fact

that some pictures are good likenesses. Th is is how the train ofthought might run : a por t ra i t is one paradigm of a picture, and

al though a por t ra i t can be used in various ways — to comm emora tethe dead, to negotiate or celebrate a marriage, to express allegianceor to reinforce auth ority - it cannot be deemed a successful po rtra itunless it is a good likeness, that is, unless it resembles its subject.And wha t is true of portrai ts is true of other pictures too. A suc-cessful picture of a girl looks like a girl, and a successful pic ture of

an apple looks like an apple. Th es e resemblances, no less than the

1 Ryle's comments about depiction occur in a chapter devoted to the

imagination, and although the two philosophers make strange bedfellows,these com ments mark a point of congruence between Descartes' theory ofperception and Ryle's theory of imagination. See Ryle (1949), ch. 8, esp.pp. 253-4.

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Words and Pictures

resemblance between Smith and his portrait, will be obvious to any

spectator who knows what girls or apples or Smith look like.

If these thoughts seem plausible, it is because we find it easy to

misidentify the things which resemble each other when pictures

are good likenesses.2 If, for example, I am struck by a close like-

ness or resemblance between Renoir s Girl with a Falcon and the

postman s daughter, the resemblance which strikes me is not

between the postman s daughter and a canvas smeared with pig-

ment, but between the postman s daughter and the girl in Renoir s

picture. Similarly, Frans Hals s portrait of Johannes Hoornbeek

resembles his portrait of Herman Langelius more closely than it

resembles its subject; but the man we can see in the picture resem-

bles Hoornbeek, or so we believe. It may be tempting to object

that the man in the picture cannot be said to resemble Hoornbeek,

since he is Hoornbeek; but this objection betrays an important

confusion, for the phrase the man in the picture can be used in

two different ways: to describe a picture , what it shows us and

what we see or fail to see in it; or to refer to a man whom a picture

portrays.3 Thus, The man in Hals s picture is dead is false if the

phrase is being used in the first way, to describe Hals s picture, but

it is true if it is being used in the second way, to refer to Johannes

Hoornbeek. It is normally clear in which of these two ways a

phrase like the man in the picture is being used. For example,

The man in the picture has a book in his hand normally means

The picture depicts a man with a book in his hand , in which case

the phrase the man in the picture is being used in the first way;

but The man in the picture was a professor of Theology at the

University of Utrecht means The picture portrays a professor of

Theology at the University of U trecht , so here the phrase the

man in the picture is being used in the second way. Needless to

say, we can imagine circumstances in which it might be difficult to

be sure how such a phrase was being used, but it would be a sim-

ple matter to find out.

We can call the first way of using the phrase the man in the pic-

ture , the one which corresponds to the paraphrase using the verb

depicts , internal , and the use of the same phrase which corre-

sponds to the paraphrase using the verb portrays , external . And

now it should be obvious that Hals s portrait is a good likeness, not

if the canvas resembles Hoornbeek, but if the man in the picture, inthe internal use of the phrase, resembles him. This resemblance is

2 This and the following paragraph draw substantially on and modify

Hyman(1992).3 Cf. Anscombe (1965), p. 159.

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John Hytnan

not what makes the picture a por t ra i t of Hoornbeek; bu t it is whatmakes the por t ra i t a good likeness. For conve nience, w e can say tha ta por trai t is a good likeness if its internal subject resembles its exter-

nal subject.*

In sum, we need to take care not to confuse the marks on the sur-

face of a picture and its internal subject. T he resemblance whichentit les us to describe a por t ra i t as a good likeness is not a resem-blance between the man or wom an por t rayed and the marks on the

surface of the picture, but between the man or wom an portrayedand the pictu re's intern al subject; and if an apple in a picture isunmistakably a Cox's O range Pipp in, it is the picture 's internal s ub -ject , the apple we can see in it, and no t the patch of canvas whichdepicts the apple, tha t m ust resemble other C ox's Orange Pipp insmore closely than it resembles Bram leys. M agr itte 's celebratedpaint ing he Trahison des Images illustrates the confusion. The artistseems to be claiming tha t every pictu re, by its very nature, is a

deceiver, a false friend. Bu t the tr ut h is less dram atic: 'Ceci n 'est pasune p ipe ' is true if the pro no un refers to the paint ing, and false if itrefers to its internal subject . Wh ethe r M agri t te knew it or not, the

pain t ing tu rns on an equivocat ion, not a paradox .This a rgument does not disprove the resemblance theory; but it

removes one unsatisfactory reason for endors ing it, and it also sug-

gests that a more explicit statement of the theory than the simpleformula we began with may be useful: not resemblance tout court,bu t a resemblance in shape or colour betwe en th e disposition of pig-m e n t s on a picture's surface and the pictu re's intern al subjectexplains depiction, if the resemblance theory is right.

There have been two major attacks on the resemb lance theory:one by Descar tes ; the other by Go odm an. B oth make use of an

analogy between pictures and words in a language.Descar tes was not especially interested in the nature of depictionin its own right. He denied th at resem blance explains dep iction

4 The distinction between pictures that have an external subject and pic-

tures that don't is drawn by many philosophers who write about the sub -ject. However, it is commonly thought that the external subject of a pic-ture must be someone or something which actually exists, and thereforecannot be a fictional character or thing. For example, Malcolm Budd, whocalls pictures which have an external subject 'relational p ictures ' (1995, pp.66ff.), claims that a [relational] picture must stand in a certain relation toan actual thing', describes relational pictures as pictures of real individu-als' (ibid., pp. 66, 73, italics added), and argues that pictures of fictionalcharacters - to put it more crudely than Budd does - merely pretend to berelational pictures (ibid., p. 72). The idea that the external subject of a pic-ture cannot be a fictional character is, I believe, mistaken; but it is a diffi-cult issue, and I shall not examine it here.

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Words and Pictures

because he believed that this doctrine was implicated in a theory ofvisual perception which he was bent on undermining. Nevertheless,his argum ent is worth examining carefully. Thi s is what he says:

in no case does an image resemble the object it represents in allrespects, for otherwise there would be no distinction between theobject and its image. It is enough that the image resembles itsobject in a few respects. Indeed the perfection of an image oftendepends on its not resembling its object as much as it might. Youcan see this in the case of engravings: consisting simply of a littleink placed here and there on a piece of paper, they represent to usforests, towns, people, and even battles and storms; and although

they make us think of countless different qualities in theseobjects, it is only in respect of shape that there is any real resem-blance. And even this resemblance is very imperfect, sinceengravings represent to us bodies of varying relief and depth ona surface which is entirely flat. Moreover, in accordance with therules of perspective they often represent circles by ovals betterthan by other circles, squares by rhombuses better than by othersquares, and similarly for other shapes. Thus it often happensthat in order to be more perfect as an image and to represent an

object better, an engraving ought not to resemble it. (Descartes1985, pp. 165-6).

Descartes makes three poin ts here. The first is that an image can-not be a perfect facsimile of the things it represents; the second isthat an image need only resemble what it represents in a fewrespects; and the third is that even this resemblance is often imper-fect. Then he illustrates the second and third points with the exam-ple of an engraving.

The first point has often been made. Socrates argues for it with anice example in Plato's Cratylus (432b-c): 'An image', he says toCratylus, 'which reproduced all the qualities of the thing imitatedwould no longer be an image.' And he continues as follows:

Suppose tha t some god makes not only a representation such as apainter would make of your outward form and colour, but alsocreates an inward organisation like yours, having the samewarmth and softness, and into this infuses motion, and soul, andmind, such as you have, and in a word copies all your qualities,

and places them by you in another form. Would you say that thiswas Cratylus and the image of Cratylus, or that there were twoCratyluses?

Although it is obvious which answer Socrates expects, it is less obvi-ous that either is satisfactory. However, what matters more is that

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John Hym an

the general proposition about images has not been demonstrated,and seems to be false; for many pictures depict other pictures, andin such a case, part of the depicting picture will resemble the

depicted picture in i ts ' inward organization' as well as in i ts 'out-ward form and colour', as long as the same sorts of materials areused in both cases. Perhaps we can accommodate this exception bymodifying the general proposition, for i t seems plausible that anentire image cannot resemble an object i t represents in all respects.But since many parts of images depict objects or parts of objects,the modified proposition will not shed much light on the nature ofdepiction, at least until some further work is done to tease out itssignificance.

Descartes' second point is that an image need only resemble whatit represents in a few respects. Socrates' argument has a bearing onthis point also, because it implies what was proposed earlier — thatthe few respects in which an image must resemble what i t repre-sents, if the resemblance theory is right, are 'outward form andcolour'. However, it is noticeable — although not surprising, givenhis theory of colour - that Descartes chose to illustrate the pointwith the example of an engraving, ignoring colour altogether.5

Descartes' f inal point is that even in respect of shape the resem-blance between an image and the object it represents is oftenimperfect . He supports th is with two observat ions, one concerningthe shapes of bodies and the other, two-dimensional shapes. First ,he points out that 'engravings represent to us bodies of varyingrelief and depth on a surface which is entirely flat ' . So, for exam-ple, the parts of an engraving which depict a cylindrical tower andits conical roof cannot possibly resemble these things in shape,because a figure on a plane cannot be cylindrical or conical. And

then he adds that ' in accordance with the rules of perspective[engravings] often represent circles by ovals better than by othercircles. . .and similarly for other shapes' . Thus, even part of anengraving which depicts some thing with a two-dim ensional shape- say, the facade of a building or the surface of a table - will nothave exactly the same shape as the thing it depicts, if the artist hasused foreshortening.

I think this criticism is interesting, and rather effective. Just howeffective it is will become clear in the sequel.

I turn now to Goodman. Goodman tr ies to disprove the resem-blance theory by attacking a theory of vision which he believes itpresupposes. Following Gombrich, he calls this theory the 'myth ofthe innocent eye' . I t is propounded by Berkeley in his New Theoryof Vision and defended by Russell in Our Knowledge of the External

5 On Descartes' theory of colour, see Hacker (1987), ch. 1.

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Words and Pictures

World: w hat we see imm ediately and directly, the visual appearancesthat things present to us, are always sim ply a patchwork of colours.We identify the things themselves and their various qualit ies, by

interpreting this bril l iant panorama in the light of experience. (AsBerkeley (1975, sec. 130) pu t it: in a strict sense, I see noth ing but

lights and colours, and the ir several shade s and v ariations.. . ')Goodman argues that if, as the resem blance the ory implies, a pic-

ture were a copy of the visual app earance of the things it depicts, an

artist would need, somehow or other, to strip away the varnish of

thought and interpre tation which clothes his — as everyone's — per-

ception of things, in order to record the pristin e patchw ork of colourswhich lies beneath it. But since this operation, which G ood m an(1981, p. 8) caustically desc ribes as 'purification rites' and 'methodi -cal disinterpretation', is impossible, the resemblance theory is false.

I f ind this argument unsatisfactory because it imputes gui l t by

association. The theory of percept ion Goodman at tacks is definite-ly confused. It implies that perceptual judgements - such as the

judgement that there is a book before yo ur eyes, or a window to one

side of you - are the results of inferences, and a faithful re po rt of

the evidence on wh ich the se inferences are based wou ld ne ed to be

couched in a vocabulary restricted to terms which refer to shapesand colours. Hence it implies that every reasonable perc eptu aljudgemen t we m ake arises out of a visual experience wh ich we are

able to describe faithfully in these austere terms, since the evidencefor the judgement would otherwise be beyond our grasp. B ut we are

not generally able to prov ide this sort of descr ipt ion of our visualexperience; hence our experience and the judg em ents which ar iseout of it cannot be related in the way the theory implies. It is easyto miss this point, if we imagine that a visual experience itself,

rather than a description of what we see, co uld be the data or evi-

dence on which an inference was based. But in fact the phrase'sense-data ' is misleading. A visual experience is not the premise of

an argument, which can be taken as true and argued from: hence itcannot be evidence in the requ ired sense.

6

O ne can of course imagine the resemb lance theo ry being com-

bined with this patchwork theory of vision, the myth of the inno-cent eye. Indeed there is no need to imagine it , because it was untilrecently quite common, not only am ong theorists but among

painters too. Monet , for example, offered the following advice:'When you go out to paint , try to forget what objects you havebefore you, a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely thin k, hereis a little squ are of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yel-

6Cf. Ryle (1971), p. 346.

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John Hyman

low, and pain t it jus t as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape,unt i l it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you '.

7

Nevertheless, Goodman fails to show tha t one cannot end orse the

resemblance theory without implicit ly accepting the myth of theinnocent eye, and it is doubtful w heth er this can be shown. An

advocate of the resemblanc e theo ry nee ds to say something aboutappearances. But why are we entitled to sup po se that this confuseddoctr ine about appearances is all tha t he w ill find to say? Since ther eis no obvious reason, since none is given, and since — as will be

shown in the sequel — there is much else that can be said aboutappearances , Goodman 's a rgument is unconvincing. The resem-blance theory and the m y t h of the inno cen t eye dovetail neatly, and

have often been combined, but one cannot condem n a theorybecause it has been seen in bad company.

Goodman s Theory

N o w I shal l examine Goodman 's own theory of depict ion. The

philosophers Goodman reacted against were Susanne Langer ,Char les Morr is , John Hospers . As we have seen, they prop ose d a

novel answer to the quest ion of what pictures do, although theyaccepted the orthodo x answer to the quest ion of how they do it.

Ins tead of producing i l lusions, or making us think of things, or

presen t ing us w ith the appea rances of things, they argued th at p ic-tu res are symbols or signs which stand for or refer to the objectsthey represent . (Hospers (1946, p. 29) does not explain wha t' s tand ing for is, beyond me nt ion ing , as an examp le, that the wordchair 'refers to or stands for. . . the kind of object that I am now sit-

t ing on . M orris (1946) explains what s tandin g for is in behav-

iourist terms.)If both pictures and words are signs or symbols, we shall have to

distinguish between them by distinguishing between different kindsof signification. Drawing partly on Peirce's taxonomy of signs,

7 Quoted by Gage (1993), p. 209. Unfortunately, there is no record of

this remark in the original French; but it seems very likely that the phrasethe translator rendered as 'naive impression' was meant to refer to thecolourful mosaic which was widely imagined to be the raw material ofvisual experience. In England, Ruskin and Fry expressed similar views.

Indeed, Ruskin expressed it in the passage in The Elements of Drawingwhich gave Gombrich the phrase 'the innocent eye': 'The whole technicalpower of painting', Ruskin wrote, 'depends on our recovery of what maybe called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, of a sort of childish per-ception of these flat stains of colour, merely as such, without conscious-ness of what they signify...' Quoted by G ombrich (1977), p. 250.

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Words and Pictures

Morris (1946, p. 190) describ ed a picture as a visual and iconic sign,that is, a 'visual stimulus .. .which is similar in some respects to whatit denotes'.

8 Hospers argued that a picture is a natural symbol ,

whose significance does not depend , as the significance of a worddoes, on stipulation or convention.

O ne of the problem s with the semiotic theory is that too m a n ydifferent kinds of thing were said to be iconic signs: onomatopoeicwords; sentences which are similar in struc ture to the circum stancesthey describe, like T he fork is to the left of the knife' (w rittendown) or T he Sanctus comes before the Agnus Dei (spoken);graphs; maps; paint ings; photographs; shadows; footpr ints; coloursamples of the sort one finds in catalogues of artists ' materials; and

so on. M oreover, it becam e clear that th e term s symbol and stands forwere being used too generously to retain m uch m eaning. For exam-ple, nimbus clouds were held to stand for rain and a car comingstraight towards another car was descr ibed as a symbol meaning' s top ' , although these were not of course supposed to be iconicsigns. But even if it was thou ght possible to tighten this up, and

thereby toss out some of the motley things in the rag-bag of iconicsigns, degrees of iconicity still seemed too crude a device to drawsignificant distinctions between the things that remained .

Languages of Art is an avowedly heterodo x p rodu ct of the semi-otic tradition in aesthetics. G oo dm an accep ts that picture s are visu-al signs - they are signs because they stand for or refer to the objectsthey represent; they are visual signs because w hat they repre sentdepends on how they look. But he denies categorically that pictu resare natural or iconic sign s; and that , he says complacently, 'adds up

to open heresy' (1981, p. 230).Instead of explaining depiction in terms of a 'close natural rela-

t ionship ' between a picture and w hat it represents , Languages of Artdefends an elaborate analogy between the manufacture and enjoy-men t of pictures and the use of language. This analogy has existedin one form or another since Plato. It received its m ost influentialexpression in the letter G rego ry the Great wrote to the Bishop of

Marseilles in about 600: For the u nle t te red , and in part icular for

the heathen, a picture takes the place of a book. ' As I ment ionedearlier, Descartes drew attention to it in his Optics. And of course itwas implicit in the doctr ine of the iconic sign. But nob ody before

8 Morris also claimed that an iconic sign 'denote[s] any object which hasthe properties (in practice, a selection from the properties) which it itselfhas' (1939-40), p. 136; but this implies that if a portrait of Smith is aniconic sign which denotes Sm ith, then it denotes his twin brother, and thatif a picture of an apple is an iconic sign, it denotes every other picture ofan apple that it resembles sufficiently closely.

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John Hyman

Goodman supposed that the analogy is sufficiently close to discon-nect depiction and resemblance entirely.

G ood m an begins with a por trai t of the Du ke of W ell ington. T he

portrait , he argues, l ike the proper name 'Arthur Wellesley' and thedefinite description ' the victor at Waterloo' , denotes the man it por-trays. Like Hospers, Goodman does not explain what he means bydenotation. It is the relation between a label and the thing or thingsit is attached to, a name and its bearer, or a predicate and the sever-al members of the corresponding class - and that is all there is to besaid about i t . Holbein 's portrait of Erasmus denotes Erasmus, and aview of the Matterhorn denotes the mountain .

However, a painting of a satyr, although it may be said, with per-

fect propriety, to depict or represent a satyr, denotes nothing at all,for no satyrs exist to be denoted. In this sort of case, Goodmanargues, the verb 'dep ict' does not signify a relation betwee n two inde-pe nd en tly ex isting thin gs; it is pa rt of a com plex one-place p redicate.A painting of a satyr is not something, a painting, which stands in acertain relation, depiction, to another thing, a satyr. It is merely acertain kind of painting, a satyr-representing-painting, so to speak. 9

I f Holbein 's por trai t of Erasmus, l ike the name 'Erasmus' ,denotes him, whereas a painting of a satyr, l ike the word 'satyr ' ,denotes nothing, what is i t that makes the two paintings, each ofthe m an intr icate disposi t ion of p igm ents u pon a canvas, examplesof p ic tor ia l represen ta t ion , whereas the two s t r ings of le t te rs ,'E-R-A-s-M-u-s' and 's-A-T-Y-R', are linguistic symbols? Not, asHospers and the other semioticians supposed, a 'close natural rela-tionship, namely likeness or resemblance' , or for that matter anyother sort of relationship, between the pictures and what theydepict: 'Descriptions are distinguished from depictions not throughbeing more arbitrary but through belonging to articulate ratherthan to dense schemes; and words are [no] more conventional than

9 In Languages of Art, Goodman (1981), p. 21 injudiciously claimed that

'F-representing-picture' is an unbreakable predicate, i.e. that its meaningis not a function of the meanings of its parts and the way in which they arecombined. ('Red' and 'round' are trivially unbreakable, because they donot have significant parts; 'red and round' and 'red or round' are notunbreakable. Figurative predicates are often unbreakable, despite havingsignificant parts: for example, one cannot deduce the meaning of 'blue-chip' or 'copper-bottomed' from the meaning of their parts.) This claim

was criticised by Wollheim (1973) and Scruton (1974), pp. 193-97, and itis certainly false. For if 'sloop-representing-picture' were an unbreakablepredicate, it would not be possible to deduce that a sloop-representing-p ic-ture is a boat-representing-picture from the fact that a sloop is a boat.Goodman (1972, p. 122) has since conceded that F-representing-picture isa complex one-place predicate, and not an unbreakable one.

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pictures...if conventionality is construed in terms of...artificiality'(Goodman 1981), pp. 230-1). The manufacture of pictures,Goodman argues, like the use of language, is a symbolic activity

governed by a complex system of semantic and syntactic rules; andit is the distinctive character of the system of rules which guide themanufacture and the use of pictures, rather than a special kind ofrelationship, such as resemblance, between pictures and what theydepict, which makes the difference between a picture and a desc rip-tion in words.

A symbolic system is representational, Goodman explains, if anychange to a character in any one of various respects, however smallthe change is, will effect a change in what it represents. This, in anutshell, is the difference between pictures and written descrip-tions. One example will suffice. Compare a drawing of a man witha long nose with the corresponding written phrase (figs. 1 and 2). Ifwe change the drawing slightly, say by elongating the part whichrepresents the nose, it will represent a man with a longer nose thanit did before; whereas the corresponding change to the phrase willnot have the same effect (figs. 3 and 4). Of course, a small change tothe written phrase might change its meaning (fig. 5); but only if it

Fig 1

man w ith a long noseFig. 2

Fig 3

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John Hyman

A man with a long n o s eFig 4

A man with a long hoseFig 5

affects the classification of one or more characters, so that an 'n'becomes an 'h ' , for example. There is no respect — the thickness orcolour of the line, the size or shape of any part of the inscription —in which any change, however small, will change the significance ofa wri t ten phrase. Turning from wri t ten to spoken language, we cansee tha t if En glish we re modified in such a way that every differencein intonation, volume and pitch corresponded to a difference inmeaning, i t would become a representational language, or rather, i twou ld have ceased to be a language an d would have become insteada means of making audible representations, distinguishable frompictures only by the fact that they would be constructed out of

sounds rather than colours. Hence the distinctive character of a pic-torial symbolic system depends essentially upon the 'syntactic andsemantic relationships among [its] symbols' (1981, pp. 227-8), andhas nothing whatever to do with any putative resemblance betweenpictures and their subjects.

Turning now from exposition to crit icism, I shall concentrate onthe propinquity Goodman's analysis confers on words and pictures;in fact, I shall focus on one fundamental defect, although I shallappro ach it by a circuitous route. Th e struc ture of the a rgum ent

will be complicated; so I shall explain it in advance. It has threesteps.First , I shall consider one of the two most common objections to

Goodman's theory: that i t severs the connection between being vis-ible and being depictable. I shall argue that Goodman can meet thisobjection, but only by conceding that if pictures 'function in some-wh at the same way as des criptio ns' (G oo dm an 1981, p. 30), thedescriptions that pictures are somewhat l ike are descriptions whichare couched purely in terms of form and colour. Second, I shall con-

sider the other of the two most common objections to Goodman'stheory: that if I can recognize a certain sort of object then I can beexp ected to recognize a pic ture of tha t sort of object, w hereasGoodman's theory implies, on the contrary, that I cannot be expect-ed to recognize a picture of something unless I also know the rele-vant syntactic and semantic rules. Again, I shall argue that

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Goodman can meet this objection, but only by making the sameconcession: that if pictures 'function in somewhat the same way asdescriptions', these descriptions must be ones which are couched

purely in terms of form and colour. Finally, I shall argue that theconcession is fatal, because it implies that we can only identify thesubject of a picture by means of an inference. This approach is basi-cally a matter of asking what kind of rule Goodman's theory postu-lates, or rather, what its nearest linguistic equivalent would be; andwhether seeing what a picture represents could be the result ofapplying rules of this kind.

According to Alberti, 'No one would deny that the painter hasnothing to do with things that are not visible' (1966, p. 43). If this

seems plausible, then it will be tempting to argue as follows: byinsisting tha t the relation between a picture and its subject is whol-ly conventional, Goodman loses the resources he would need inorder to explain why it is impossible to depict sounds; for it is cer-tainly possible to devise a representational scheme which usescolours arranged on a plane surface to represent sequences ofsounds, and where a small modification in the symbol (it would bea kind of graph) affects what it represents. For example, the x axismight represent time; the y axis, pitch; hue might represent timbre;

and saturation, volume.If the objection is stated in exactly these terms, it seems to be

open to a decisive rejoinder, namely, that it is possible to depictsounds. For example, the drawings by Saul Steinberg which theadvertising campaign for Classic FM radio made famous unmistak-ably depict the sounds of various musical instruments.Furthermore, whatever makes it true that the delicate filigreedepicts the sound of a harp, it cannot be a close resemblancebetween them in shape or colour, or the fact that the drawing pro-

duces the illusion of hearing a harp, because there is no such resem-blance and no such fact. Hence, far from indicating a weakness inGoodman's theory, the question of whether it is possible to depictsounds reveals a weakness in its principal rivals.

Perhaps there is a better way of stating this objection toGoodman's theory. For whereas it is perfectly possible to describe asound without employing a synaesthetic metaphor, any depiction ofa sound will need to be metaphorical; and that is a fact whichGoodman's theory cannot accommodate. Once again, an advocateof the resemblance theory can take heart, for if X and Y resembleeach other in appearance, the resemblance between them may be aliteral one; but if the appearance of X resembles the sound of Y, theresemblance can only be metaphorical.

There is, I believe, one way in which, Goodman can meet this

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John Hyman

objection, and that is by conceding that the language in which pic-tures speak to us is only capable of literal descriptions of things withshapes and colours. This would not imply that pictures cannot rep-resent landscapes, men and angels; bu t tha t they could only do so ina vocabulary confined to shape- and colour-terms. In Goodman'sown terminology, the compliance-classes (or classes of denotata) ofcharacters in a pictorial system of representation would be definedby shape and colour alone. If this concession were granted, the factthat a picture of a sound cannot fail to be a metaphor would ceaseto be an embarrassment. For although colour-terms can be used todescribe sounds — Messiaen was famously fond of giving colourfuldescriptions of his chords - these descriptions are bound to bemetaphorical.

Now for the other popular objection to Goodman's theory. Theability to recognize something by its appearance seems intuitivelyto be connected more closely with the ability to recognize a pictureof it than with the ability to recognize a description of it; whereasGoodman's theo ry implies, on the contrary, that neither connectionis closer than the other. This objection surely has some degree ofplausibility, bu t it is difficult to tur n it into a compelling argum ent.

It would be nice if we could claim, straightforwardly and unequiv-ocally, that if I can recognize something by its appearance then Imust be able to recognize a picture of it; for if depiction isexplained by semantic and syntactic conventions, I may be able torecognize something by its appearance without knowing the rele-vant conventions, and hence without being able to recognize a pic-ture of it. But the straigh tforward claim is, as it so often is, too boldto be convincing. For example, a dog may be able to recognize itsmaster without being able to recognize his portrait. And if the

straightforward claim is false, it isn't easy to modify it sufficientlyto make it plausible without weakening it to the point where it isconsistent with Goodman's theory. A few critics have tried to dothis, and failed. Richard Wollheim, for example, put the objectionas follows:

it is a grave objection to [Goodman's theory] that it cannotaccount for the evident fact of transfer. By the term 'transfer' Imean, for instance, that, if I can recognize a picture of a cat, andI know what a dog looks like, then I can be expected to recognize

a picture of a dog. But on [Goodm an's] view this ought to be baf-fling. It should be as baffling as if, knowing that the French word chat means a cat, and knowing what dogs look like, I should, onhearing it, be able to understand what the word Men means.(Wollheim 1987, p. 77)

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Wollheim's argument is admirably concise, bu t it is not a cogentobjection to Goodman 's theory because the the ory does not implythat pictures are like n am es. On the contrary, Go odm an argues thatthe rules which determine what pictures represent are significantlydifferent from the rules which fix the m eanings of 'chat ' and 'chien ' ,and as we have seen, he is quite clear abou t w hat the difference is.

So it would be a fairer test of Goodman 's theory to ask whethe rtransfer would be a surprising feature of a symbolic system or, in

particular, of a representational symbolic system — in other w ords, asymbolic system in which m inute changes of various kinds to a

character will change what it represents .In fact, there are ma ny sym bolic systems in wh ich transfer

occurs. For example, the diagram ma tic no tat ion devised for musi -cally illiterate guitarists represents the fingering for each chord by

marking a grid w ith dots, and it seems obvious that if I can recog-nize the sign for a G major chord and I know the fingering for a

diminished seventh on D, then I can be expected to recognise the

sign for a diminished seventh on D. So, would it be surpr is ing iftransfer occurred in a representational system? I can see no reasonto think that it would; and since he fails to provide a reason,

Wollheim's argument is unconvincing. He seems to have m istaken adisanalogy between pictures and words for a disanalogy b etw eenpictures and symbols in general.

But if transfer is an 'evident fact' a bou t pictures, as it seems to be,and if pictures 'function in somew hat the sam e way as descr ip t ions ' ,as Goodman says they do (1981, p. 30), thes e will hav e to be

descriptions of a special sort, since transfer will have to be a factabout them too. If I can recognize this sort of descr ipt ion of a cat,

and I know what a dog looks like, th en I can be expected to recog-

nize this sort of descr ipt ion of a dog. But the only sort of descr ip-tion I can be expected to recognize becau se I know w hat a d og lookslike is a description of a dog's appearance; and the only sort of

description of a dog's appearance I can be expected to recognizebecause I can recognize a certain sort of descr ipt ion of a cat is a

description which makes use of the same vocabulary as this sort of

description of a cat. In short , if pictures 'function in somewhat the

same way as descr ipt ions ' , these descr ipt ions m ust be couched in a

vocabulary which has a sufficiently broa d com peten ce in the

description of appearances to m atc h the full ex tent of transfer in therecognition of pictures; and which is fully eng age d in every de scrip -tion, so that if I under s t and one descr ipt ion, I can be expected tounderstand another . When we consider how far transfer extends -

from pictures of clouds to pictures of cuckoos — it is obvious thatthis could only be a vocabulary of colour- and shape- terms. So, if a

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picture is like a description, it must be like a description couchedpurely in terms of form and colour.

As we have seen, Goodman says that pictures are like descrip-

tions. If my argument is correct, his theory implies that they are likedescriptions of a particular sort, namely, ones which only make useof colour- and shape-predicates. It follows that the theory isdemonstrably false; for if pictures were like descriptions of thissort, any attempt to say what a picture depicts which goes beyond adescription of their colours and shapes would have to be the resultof an inference; but this is false.

Goodman (1981, p. 36) explicitly denies that we need be 'aware...of making any interpretations at all' when we perceive what a pic-

ture depicts. But in fact his theory implies that we should be awareof making interpretations when we perceive that a picture repre-sents the sun, as opposed (roughly) to something round and yellow,or a girl with a falcon, as opposed to som ething with such-and-suchcolours at such-and-such places, just as we would be if we realisedthat a verbal description in terms of shape and colour was in fact adescription of the sun or a girl with a falcon. Once we know a lan-guage well, we come to hear or see words, phrases and sentences ashaving the meaning they do. So there is no obstacle to Goodman'smaintaining that we need not be aware of interpreting pictureswhen we perceive what they represent, despite the fact that they arecharacters in a symbolic system, so long as we do not outstrip theirmanifest signification. But as soon as we perceive that a picturedepicts something of such-and-such a kind, where 'such-and-such'involves more than shapes and colours, he is bound to admit that wehave left behind what visual experience can present us with, bymeans of an explicit inference.

Goodman criticises the resemblance theory for implying that visu-al experience can only ever present us directly with shapes andcolours. Following Gombrich, he calls this doctrine the myth of theinnocent eye. But the proposition that perceiving what a picturedepicts depends on making inferences is tantamount to applying themyth to pictures; for it is no more plausible to deny that we can seewhat a picture depicts immediately and directly than to deny that wecan see the visible objects in our environment immediately anddirectly, rather than mere patterns of light and colour. In the final

analysis, this is the cardinal principle which Goodman's theory con-tradicts. If his theory were correct, we would need to be capable ofdescribing what a picture depicts purely in terms of shape and colourin order to be capable of describing it at all. But we don't, any morethan we need to able to describe the visible things that su rround us inthe same austere vocabulary, in order to say what they are.

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Art and Occlusion

If the relationship betw een p ictures and wh at they depict is not ,

after all, a purely conventional on e; and if Descartes was right to saythat even in respect of shape, the resemblance between an imageand the object it represents is often imp erfect, is it possible to

explain precisely what sort of relationship must exist between a pic-ture and its subject? Or is there perhaps - as Descar tes seems tohave believed - no answer to be found, until experim ental p sych ol-ogy has discovered whatever correlations exist between the forms of

images and the 'sensory percept ions of all the various qualit ies of

the objects to which they correspon d '?

I think it is possible to provide an answer, if we make use of the

concept of occlusion shape. T he occlusion shape of an object is

what some philosophers have called its 'apparen t shape ' - in otherwords, an object 's outline or silhouette. I prefer the ter m 'occlusionshape' because it is less tenden tious, since it does not carry the sug-gestio falsi that a contrast is being m ade im plicit ly between an

object's occlusion shape and its real shape, and hence that an object 'socclusion shape is not a perfectly objective visible feature of our

physical environment. A circular plate viewed obliquely has an

elliptical occlusion shape: it will occlu de or be occluded by an ellip-tical patc h on a plane perp endicular to the line of sight. An object 'socclusion shape is a function of its actual shape (I shall use the

phrase, despite misgivings) and its orien tation relative to the line of

sight. We can be mistaken about the occlusion shape of an object,and a mistake of this kind can be corrected by m easurem ent and cal-culation. An object's o cclusion sh ape can also be affected by refrac-tion. A straight stick that is half- immersed in water will have acrooked occlusion shape. Again, this is a perfectly objective m atter.

The concept of occlusion shape plays the following role in the

theory of depiction. Consider an engraving of a m an 's head .W h e t h e r the picture shows its internal subject (as Beardsleythought) , stands for it (as Ho spers thought) , or produces a specialsort of psychological episode which is related in some distinctiveway to the psychological episode wh ich occu rs when som eone seesa man's head, it does so because the shape (the actual shape , that is)

of the smallest pa rt of the pictu re w hich dep icts the m an's nose or

chin is identical to the occlusion shape of the nose or the c hin in thepicture, relative to the spec tator 's l ine of sight. T he general pr inc i-ple, which I shall call the Occlusion Sha pe Princip le, is easilyproved by means of a though t -exper imen t . In fact, the though t -exper iment is an unu sual one, because it can actually be performed.The exper iment is to try to trace the shape of the par t of a picture

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John Hytnan

which depicts something - whether it's a house or a tree or a man ora part of his body - by running a finger across its surface, withoutsimultaneously tracing the occlusion shape of the correspondingpart of the pictu re's internal subject - the house or the tree or what-ever. Alternatively, one might try to trace the occlusion shape ofpart of a picture's internal subject without tracing the actual shapeof the part of the picture that depicts it. It only takes a moment'sreflection to see that neither thing is possible. Hence the occlusionshape of a part of a picture s internal subject (/), relative to the spec-tator's line of sight, and the actual shape of the smallest part o f thepicture that depicts that part of its internal subject (D ) must be iden-tical.

It is important to notice how modest the Occlusion ShapePrinciple is. First, it tells us nothing about what kind of thing theinternal subject of a pic ture is, as opposed to its occlusion shape rel-ative to the spectator's line of sight. For example, if part of a pic-ture represents a duck 's bill or a rabbit's ears, the principle does nottell us which; although it does tell us that if the picture can be seeneither as a picture of a duck or as a picture of a rabbit, the duck andthe rabbit must have the same occlusion shape, relative to the spec-tator's line of sight. Second, it says nothing about the relationshipbetween the surface of a picture and its external subject, if it hasone. Finally, it does not imply that each part of the internal subjectof a picture must have a fully determ inate occlusion shape; althoughit does imply that any such indeterm inacy will be precisely matchedby a corresponding indeterminacy in the shape of the correspond-ing part of the picture's surface. But although the Occlusion ShapePrinciple is modest, it marks a fundamental difference between pic-tures and inscriptions, for the shape of an inscription alone does not

tell us anything whatever about its meaning.Mention of meaning brings me to an objection which might wellhave been raised when the concept of a picture's internal subjectwas introduced. T he objection may as well set out from a remark inLanguages of Art:

From the fact that P is a picture of or represents a unicorn wecannot infer that there is something that P is a picture of or rep-resents... Saying that a picture represents a so-and-so is thus high-ly ambiguous as between saying what the picture denotes and

saying what kind of picture it is. (Goodm an 1981, p. 22)

The objection is that unless talk about a picture P's internal subjectis interpreted as talk about what kind of picture P is, it is bound toinvolve, at least implicitly, the 'fallacious existential inference'(ibid., n. 19) that there is something that P is a pictu re of, something

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Words and Pictures

that actually exists; and that the Occlusion S hape Pr inciple implic-itly commits this fallacy. If the internal subject of a picture is anal-ogous to the sense or meaning of a de scr ipt ion in words, the claim

that it has a certain occlusion shape or that it resembles S m ithinvolves a blatant h ypostatisation of meanings .

The reply to this objection is that a t t r ibut ing an occlusion shapeto a part of the internal subject of a picture need not be taken toamoun t to som ething m ore than saying what kind of picture it is.

The Occlusion Shape Principle allows us to infer from

(i) D depicts something which has the occlusion shape 5

that

(ii) D has the actual s hape S

although of course this must not be taken to imply that any infer-ence is necessary in order to perceive that either (i) or (ii) is the case.But if P represents a unicorn ' can be unders tood as saying whatkind of picture P is, rather than as expressing a relation between Pand something else which exists independently of P, as it surelycan, then so can P (or D) represents something which has the

occlusion shape S . Hence , ne i the r ' / has the occlusion shape S nor

' / resembles Smith ' implies that / is som ething w hich exists inde-pendently of P, and which m igh t therefore su rvive its destruct ion;any more than 'Jones is imagining som ething w hich has the occlu-sion shape S or 'Jones is imagining a man who resembles Sm ith 'carries the corresponding and equally fallacious im plica tion.

A second objection to the Occlusion Shap e Principle is that por-

trait caricature disproves it, for surely the physiognomy of a carica-turist 's subject may be wildly d istorted on the picture's surface, and

moreover the distortio n need not conform to any fixed rule . T he

objection is a weak one , becau se it turns on a confusion betw een theinternal subject of a picture and its external subject. T he internalsubject of a portrait caricature is a recognisable distortion of its

external subject ; but the cor responde nce p resc r ibed by the

Occlusion Shape Principle, between the pic ture 's surface and its

internal subject, is not breached.A more telling objection has to do with distor t ions of a different

kind, namely anamorphoses: 'perspectives which, r ightly gazedupon , / Show nothing but confusion, - ey d awry, / Dist inguish

form'.10 The best know n anam orphoses include the famous depic-tion of a skull at the bot to m of H olbein 's French Ambassadors (in the

National Gallery, London) and a portrai t of Edward VI (in the

National Portrait Gallery), but the technique was commonly and

10 Shakespeare, Richard II, II.ii.18f.

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John Hym an

less playfully exploited by the artists responsible for Byzantinechurch decoration, to compensate for distortions which would oth-erwise appear in pictures as a result of the spectator's eccentric line

of sight, or the curvature of the picture's surface. For example, inthe Pentecost depicted in the main cupola of the Haghia Sophia inThessalonica, the legs of the Apostles are deliberately elongatedbecause, whereas the upper parts of the figures l ie almost perpen-dicular to the spectator's line of sight, their lower parts are morenearly vertical, and so the anamorphosis ensures that the apostles 'bodies will appear to be well-proportioned when the cupola is seenfrom below.

Examples of this sort seem to disprove the Occlusion Shape

Principle, because the occlusion shape of an Apostle 's leg, relativeto the spectator s line of sight, is not identical to the actual shape ofthe smallest part of the mosaic that depicts it, precisely because thespectator 's l ine of sight is eccentric. Anamorphosis therefore seemsto recom m end a different principle , namely that the occlusion shapeof / and the occlusion shape of D, both relative to the normal orintended line of sight, must be identical. The phrase 'normal orintended' is of course vital, since the occlusion shape of / will notchange merely because the spectator 's l ine of sight, and hence theocclusion shape of D, chang es. For exam ple, if a circular part of apicture's surface represents a sphere, it will not cease to do so if thespectator moves to one side of the picture. But whereas the occlu-sion shape of a sphere can only be a circle, the occlusion shape of acircular part of a picture's surface will become elliptical if the spec-tator moves to one side.11

But the same phrase - 'normal or intended' - also indicates whatis wrong with the new principle. I t simply isn 't plausible that a nor-mal or intended line of sight which is sufficiently precise to under-write the principle is associated with every picture: there would, forexample, need to be a normal reading posture precise enough toshame the sternest aficionado of the Alexander Technique, andacknowledged since the invention of the illustrated book. And it ismanifestly absurd to suppose that a distinct line of sight is specifi-cally associated with each part of every large picture which is not ananamorphosis. Is it feasible to add a rider to the new principle, stat-ing that the default line of sight is orthogonal to the picture plane?

Perhaps; but this would simply amount to a return to the OcclusionSha pe Principle , disguised by a cu m bro us circum locution, for theocclusion shape of a two-dimensional form, relative to the line ofsight that is orthogonal to the plane on which the form is drawn, is

11 On some related matters concerning the spectator's line of sight, see

Gom brich (1977), pp. 215-16.

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identical to its actual shape. It is better, therefore, to stick to theOcclusion Shape Principle, and to acknowledge the exceptionalnature of anamorphoses - somewhat as the theory of meaning can

acknowledge irony and hyperbole, without being stymied by them.Anamorphosis is exceptional; for whereas we normally perceive apicture's internal subject by perceiving shapes and colours on itssurface, anamorphosis requires us to mzsperceive D , in order to per-ceive / as we are meant to. Anam orphoses are, in effect, pictures tha tdon't mean what they say.

What goes for occlusion shape goes equally for relative occlusionsize. If I hold out my hands in front of me, and extend one arm fur-ther than the other, my hands will not appear to differ in size, but

the greater occlusion size of the nearer hand will be evident: thenearer hand will occlude or be occluded by a larger patch on a planeperpendicular to the line of sight. The relative occlusion size of twoobjects is a function of their relative size and their relative distancefrom the spectator, and is, no less than occlusion shape, a perfectlyobjective feature of the visible objects in our environment. And justas the occlusion shape of /, relative to the spectator's line of sight,and the actual shape of D must be identical, so the relative occlu-sion size of I, and I 2 relative to the spectator's point of view, and the

relative size of D, and D 2 must be identical. I shall call this theRelative Occlusion Size Principle.

The two Occlusion Principles disprove Goodman's doctrine thatthe difference between a picture and a description in written wordsis wholly attributable to the distinctive pattern of 'syntactic andsemantic relationships among [its] symbols'. They also explain thefact on which - as we have seen - Goodm an confers a crucial signif-icance, namely, that a small change to a picture may effect a changein what it represents although a similar change to an inscriptionwould not have a similar effect. For if the Occlusion ShapePrinciple is true, any change to the actual shape of D will, eo ipso,change the occlusion shape of /, relative to the spectator's line ofsight; and if the Relative Occlusion Size Principle is true, anychange to the relative size of D, and D 2 will change the relativeocclusion size of I, and I2, relative to the spectator's point of view.The resemblance theory — in its cruder forms at least — impliessomething more than this, as Beardsley acknowledged: 'if two rep-resentational designs differ as designs,' he claimed, 'no matter howlittle, they must differ in what they depict, even if only trivially'(1981, p. 295). But this is false, for if two paintings differ only inabsolute size, and not at all in the relative proportions of their parts,then in the absence of any explicit convention to this effect, therewill not be a difference in what they depict. (Although of course it

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John Hym an

does not follow that they will not differ aesthetically).12

T h eOcclusion Principles, by contrast , do not imply that a change inabsolute size, large or small, will have a corresponding effect on the

size of the picture 's internal subject.The Occlusion Principles also reveal how much truth there was in

Descartes' f inal objection to the resemblance theory. The objectionwas this:

Indeed the perfection of an image often depends on its not resem-bling its object as much as it might. You can see this in the case ofengravings...although they make us think of countless differentqualities in these objects, it is only in respect of shape that there is

any real resemblance. And even this resemblance is very imper-fect, since engravings represent to us bodies of varying relief anddepth on a surface which is entirely flat. Moreover, in accordancewith the rules of perspective they often represent circles by ovalsbetter than by other circles, squares by rhombuses better than byother squares, and similarly for other shapes. Thus it often hap-pens that in order to be more perfect as an image and to representan object better, an engraving ought not to resemble it.

Since an engraving represents objects on a flat surface, the actual

shape of / and the actual shape of D cannot be identical if the shapeof / is three-dimensional; and the example of perspective showsthat the actual shape of / and the actual shape of D need not beidentical even if the actual shape of / is two-dimensional. Thismuch is undeniable. And we can add two further points, both in thespirit of Descartes' argument: first, as we have seen, the occlusionshape of / and the occlusion shape of D (both relative to the spec-tator's line of sight) need not be identical; and second, / and D neednot resemble each other in colour, for the internal subject of a gri-

saille or an engraving (whatever the colour of the ink) need not andgenerally will not have a determinate colour.

Descartes was therefore right to reject the resemblance theory, ifthe term 'resemblance' is taken au pied de la lettre. But having saidthat, if the Occlusion Principles are true and truth can be mixedwith falsehood, then the idea that resemblance explains depictionsurely has some truth in it - which is why my first remarks about theformula were equivocal. More importantly, Descartes was wrong toconclude that experimental investigation alone can determine what

regu lar corres po nde nce s in sha pe exist betw een the surface of a pic -ture and its internal subject. Whether the same is true of corre-spondences in colour is another matter, and one which I shall dis-cuss elsewhere.

12 On the aesthetic significance of scale, see Wind (1985), pp. 65 and n. 124.

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I cannot claim that the Occlusion Principles are an original idea,for something very similar appears in m any places. In book xxxv of

his Natural History, for exam ple, Pliny insists patriotically tha t the

claim of the Egyptians to have discovered the art of paint ing is spu-rious, but apart from this he tells us little abo ut th e o rigins of pain t -ing - except that he claims that it is generally agreed tha t p aint ingbegan 'with the outl ining of a ma n 's shadow ' . In fact, the analogybetween an image and a shadow makes its first appe arance in the

Odyssey (xi.204-8) , when Odysseus encounters his mo ther ' s image{eidolon):

As my mother spoke there came to me out of the confusion in m y

heart the one desire, to embrace her spirit , dead th ou gh she was.Thr ice , in my eagerness to clasp he r to m e, I started forward withmy hands outstretched. Thrice, l ike a shadow or a dream, she

sl ipped through my arms and left me harrowed by an evensharper pain.

Sometimes indeed ' learning philosophy is really recollecting'.13

References

Alberti, L . B. 1966. On Painting, revised edition, trans. J. R. Spencer. NewHaven: Yale University Press

Anscombe, G. E. M. 1965. The Intentionality of Sensation: AGrammatical Feature', in R. J. Butler (ed.), Analytical Philosophy:Second Series. Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Beardsley, M. C. 1981. Aesthetics: Problems in the Theory of Criticism, 2ndedition. Indianapolis: Hackett

Berkeley, G. 1975. An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, inPhilosophical Works, ed. M. R. Ayers. London: J. M. Dent

Budd, M. 1995. Values of Art. London: Allen LaneDescartes, R. 1985. Optics, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,

Volume I, trans. J. Cottingham et al. Cambridge U niversity PressGage, J. 1993. Colour and Culture. London: Tham es HudsonGombrich, E. H. 1977. Art and Illusion, 5th edition. Oxford: PhaidonGoodman, N. 1972. Problems and Projects. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill

1981. Languages of Art, 2nd edition. Brighton: HarvesterHacker, P. M. S. 1987. Appearance and Reality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Hospers, J. 1946. M eaning and Truth in the Arts. Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press

Hyman, J. 1992. 'Language and Pictorial Art , in D. Cooper (ed.), ACompanion to Aesthetics. Oxford: Basil BlackwellMorris, C. 1939-40. Aesthetics and the Theory of Signs', Journal of

Unified Science (Erkenntnis) 8, 131-501946. Signs, Language and Behaviour. New York: Prentice-Hall

13 Wittgenstein (1993), p. 179.

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Ryle, G. 1949. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson1971. 'Sensation', in his Collected Papers, Volum e 2. London:

Hutchinson

Scruton, R. 1974. Art and Im agination. London: Routledge Kegan PaulWind, E. 1985. Art and Anarchy. London: DuckworthWittgenstein, L. 1993. Philosophical Occasions, ed. J. Klagge and A.

Nordmann. Indianapolis: HackettWollheim, R. 1973. 'Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art in his Art and

the Mind. London: Allen Lane1987. Painting as an Art. London: Tham es Hudson

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