Goodman's rejection of resemblance

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 36, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 398-412

  Files, Craig ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949169363     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/36.4.398     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. Nelson Goodman, Languages Of Art (London: Oxford U. P., 1969), pp. 3-5; hereafter cited as Goodman (1969).
2. I will be concerned with how pictures represent, not their artistic worth. 'Realist' will be used in the pre-theoretical sense. It is an open question as to exactly what constitutes pictorial realism. For a recent discussion see Crispin Sartwell, 'What Pictorial Realism Is', British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1994), pp. 2-12.
3. The symmetry-asymmetry objection is briefly discussed by David Blinder, 'In Defense of Pictorial Mimesis', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 45, No. 1 (1986), pp. 19-27;
4. Daniel Gilman, 'A New Perspective on Pictorial Representation', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 70, No. 2, (1972), pp. 174-186;
5. and David Pole, 'Goodman and the "Naive" View of Representation', British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 14 (1974), pp. 68-80. All three authors cited attempt to find fault with the objection. However, Blinder and Gilman argue that resemblance is not symmetric, a position I regard as itself mistaken, given any reasonable characterization of resemblance (see section IV of the present paper). Pole's response is close to an element of my own, though his treatment is very brief.
6. Jerry Fodor, A Theory of Content and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/M. I. T. Press, 1990), Chap. 2 ('Semantics, Wisconsin Style'), p. 33.
7. Reprinted from Synthese, Vol. 59 (1984), pp. 231-250.
8. References to Peirce's work will be to C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and A. Burks (eds), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 1931-1958). Peirce's views on representation are scattered throughout his work. I will refer to specific passages by volume number and paragraph number.
9. I owe the term 'representation-bearer' to Barbera Von Eckardt, What is Cognitive Science? (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/M. I. T. Press, 1993), p. 146.
10. 'Representational object' is also borrowed from Von Eckardt, What is Cognitive Science?, p. 146.
11. As we will see in the next section, one way of construing the question of content is to ask about the nature of the relation obtaining between a representation-bearer and a representational object. In the realm of mental representation, however, the question is not always seen in this way. One currently influential theory of mental content - Daniel Dennett's neobehaviourist account - denies that there is any objective relation holding between mental representational states and their representational object. See The Intentional Stance (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/M. I. T. Press, 1987).
12. I show how the distinction between the issue of representation and content - suggested by Peirce's theory of representation - has further explanatory value in regard to the problem of mental misrepresentation in my 'Misrepresentation and Content Determination' (paper in preparation).
13. Daniel Dennett has said things about representation which suggest something akin to Peirce's view. See 'Artificial Intelligence as Philosophy and Psychology', in Brainstorms (Cambridge, Mass.: M. I. T. Press, 1978), pp. 121-122.
14. Fred Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981)
15. and Explaining Behaviour. Reasons in a World of Causes (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/M. I. T. Press, 1988);
16. Jerry Fodor, Psychosemantics (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/M. I. T. Press, 1987), and A Theory of Content.
17. Sartwell, 'What Pictorial Realism Is', p. 8. As a number of writers have pointed out, the resemblance between a picture and its representational object is one of visual appearance. This would seem obvious enough, but the specification is necessary in order to avoid Goodman's complaint that any two paintings resemble one another more closely than any paintings and its representational object (1969, p. 5). Often the particular set of properties we are adverting to is clear, because of the context of the resemblance claim. On the standard reply to Goodman's complaint
18. see, for example, Gilman, 'A New perspective'
19. Pole, 'Goodman and the "Naive" View of Representation'
20. As Karen Neander, 'Pictorial Representation: A Matter of Resemblance', British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 27, No. 3, (1987), pp. 213-226, has pointed out, the difficulty with developing such a theory may largely rest in the absence of universal respects upon which the resemblance between different modes of pictorial representation and representational objects holds (pp. 214-216).
21. Actually, as stated so fair, this account of how we recognize the objects represented by pictures need not be the exclusive preserve of resemblance theorists. See Flint Schier, Deeper Into Pictures (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1987), pp. 186-188.
22. Except Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1921/1974), trans. D. F. Pears.
23. It is worth pointing out that were Goodman's line of reasoning correct, the causal theory of content would likewise be in trouble. Causal relations, like resemblance relations, exist without being content-conferring. For a response to this difficulty see Fodor, A Theory of Content, pp. 90-93.
24. Neander, 'Pictorial Representation', pp. 218-219, cites studies suggesting that apes and young children often respond to objects depicted in pictures as if they were the objects themselves. An account of pictorial representation which claims that representation is conventional, and content determined by resemblance, is consistent with these findings, given that visual perceptual capacities develop prior to the development of the sort of higher-level cognitive abilities required to understand the concept of representation. Such an account also suggests an explanation of (admittedly unreliable) reports that certain African tribespeople fail to recognize objects familiar to them in photographs. One possibility is that the tribespeople, perhaps unfamiliar with photographic representation, are not interpreting the photographs as representations.
25. Pole, 'Goodman and the "Naive" View of Representation', p. 70.
26. For the claim that visual processing is isolated from cognitive 'modules' carrying theoretical knowledge, see Jerry Fodor, 'Observation Reconsidered', Philosophy of Science, Vol. 51 (1984), pp. 23-43.
27. For arguments against the conventionalist theory of pictorial perception, see Gilman, 'A New Perspective'
28. and Daniel Gilman, 'Pictures in Cognition', Erkenntnis, Vol. 41 (1994), pp. 87-102.