Goodman's Account of Representation

N. G. E. Harris

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 31, No. 3. (Spring, 1973), pp. 323-327.

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N. G . E . H A R R I S

Goodman's Account of Representation

I M A I N T A I N THAT Goodman's account of the concept of "representation," which plays such an important part in his book Languages of Art,l is defective and I shall show how.

Let us start by asking, "With what sort of representation is Goodman concerned?" Is he concerned with whatever might be re- ferred to as representation, or is he con-cerned only with some limited form of rep- resentation? The answer is that in the parts of the book I shall be considering, when- ever Goodman talks of "representation," he is talking of "pictorial representation," or the analogue of this in arts other than painting. Or at least that is what he always takes himself to be talking of. In a footnote on page 4 he says: "What I am considering here is pictorial representation, or depic-tion, and the comparable representation that mav occur in other arts. . . . Some writ- ers use 'representation' as the general term for all varieties of what I call symbolization or reference, and use 'symbolic' for the verbal and other nonpictbrial signs I call nonrepresentational." So although Good-man would say that the word-token "Socra- tes" written on the blackboard refers to Socrates, he would not want to say that the word-token represents Socrates. not her ex-ample of his usage of "represents" contrasts more clearly with ordinary usage: He would not want to say that if I were to use pieces of chalk to stand for battalions in a tactical

N. G. E . HARRISis lecturer i n philosophy i n the Uni- versity of Dundee and was an assistant editor of The Philosophical Quarterly (19'70-2).

briefing, I am using the pieces of chalk to represent battalions. For although in the ordinary language usage of "represents" the pieces of chalk represent battalions, they do not pictorially represent them.

Since Goodman intends to use the term "representation" consistently to refer to pic- torial representation, he has no need to use the word "pictorial" in front of the word "representation," and in general does not do so. But the danger of doing this is that one may occasionally slip back into the ev- eryday usage of "representation" and make a claim which appears on the face of it highly plausible if not platitudinous, until one puts the word "pictorial" back in. I shall suggest that on at least one occasion Goodman falls into this trap.

In chapter 1, in addition to talking about representation, Goodman also talks about realism. He switches from one to the other a number of times and the result is a con- fusing picture. The two concepts are linked in that only if a picture represents some-thing can it be realistic. But the opposite implication does not hold. A picture can clearly be representational without being realistic. In other words the fact that a pic- ture is being representational is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of its being realistic. Since the two concepts are linked in this way, they may be used to throw light on one another, in that if something is a necessary condition for a picture to be rep- resentational, then it will be a necessary condition for it to be realistic, and if some- thing is a sufficient condition for a picture to be realistic, it will be a sufficient condi-

tion for it to be representational. Good-man's discussion of realism in chapter 1 is largely concerned with establishing that im- itation is not a necessary condition of real- ism and, if he is right, then it will follow that imitation is not a necessary condition of representation.

But this is hardly a very exciting conclu- sion. What it fails to show is that resem-blance is not a necessary condition of repre- sentation. For resemblance is a much wider notion than imitation. A may still resemble B, although A does not imitate B. For in- stance, there are many ways in which, say, Constable's landscapes resemble one an-other, but none need be a copy or imitation of any of the others. Imitation is but one amongst many sorts of resemblance. Fur- thermore, those who want to claim that re- semblance in some sense is a necessary con- dition of pictorial representation do not want to restrict resemblance to imitative re- semblance. Yet Goodman on occasion ap- pears to do just that. After arguing that imitation is not a necessary condition for realism, he claims on page 34: "This leaves unanswered the minor question what con-stitutes realism of representation. Surely not, in view of the foregoing, any sort of resemblance to reality" (my italics). Now if Goodman consistently chose to use the term "resemblance" to refer only to imitative re- semblance, then we might allow that he had proved his point even though that point is much weaker than the one he might prima facie be taken as making. But Goodman is not consistent. In the first sec- tion of chapter 1 he quite clearly uses re- semblance in a way in which imitation is not involved, for amongst other things he says, (i) resemblance is reflexive; (ii) a pic- ture of Marlborough Castle resembles other pictures more than Marlborough Castle.

So despite Goodman's claims to the con- trary, I think that whatever the merits of his discussion of realism as a discussion of realism, it throws no light at all on the nature of representation. And since I am primarily interested in representation, I shall not consider his discussion of realism further, except for one incidental matter.

Goodman seems to allow for the possibil-

N . G . E . H A R R I S

ity of representation being a matter of de- gree in the way that realism would seem to be a matter of degree. I am not going to concern myself with the question whether realism is a matter of degree, beyond saying that i t seems to me at least a plausible the- sis. But the question whether representa- tion is a matter of degree is one to which I should give a negative answer. T o me a picture either represents something or it represents nothing, and a picture that rep- resents a certain thing represents that thing no more and no less than does any other picture that represents that thing. A picture that represents the Taj Mahal may repre- sent the Taj Mahal very badly, very unreal- istically, but it will be no less a representa- tion of it than any other painting that rep- resents the Tai Mahal.

I have said %at Goodman seems to allow for the possibility of representation being a matter of degree. Where is my evidence for saddling him with this dubious doctrine? On page 6 he considers the question, "Is it perhaps the case that if A denotes B, then A represents B just to the extent that A resem-bles B?" That is, is it the case that the more A resembles B, the more A represents B? Admittedly, he then goes on to say: "I think even this watered-down and innocu- ous-looking version of our initial formula betrays a grave misconception of the nature of representation." But the suggested mis- conception he goes on to spell out is not that there are no degrees of representation, but that resemblance is not a relevant con- sideration. And it takes him fourteen pages to do this. Yet had he thought, as I do, that there is no question of there being degrees of representation, the "watered-down" the- sis could have been demolished in as many lines.

A second and more important passage oc- curs on page 230 where Goodman says of symbol schemes, "the difference between the representational and the diagrammatic is a matter of degree." And since he goes on to talk of some symbol schemes being more diagrammatic than others, he seems to allow that some symbol schemes are more representational than others. And firom this it would seem to follow that two pictures of

Goodman's Account of Representation

the same subject constructed in different symbol schemes may represent that subject to different extents. But it should be re-membered that what Goodman means is that the two pictures may pictorially repre-sent the subject to different extents. Now I am willing to allow that two pictures may differ in degrees of pictorial representation, but if they do they will differ only in the extent to which their representation is pic- torial. This is perhaps what Goodman him- self means, but he would express it by say- ing that whilst the two pictures denote the same subject, they represent it to different extents.

Goodman's terminology is clearly very different from that normally used, but his use of other terminology might be justified if ordinary usage was either confusing or otherwise defective, or if Goodman's own terminology was particularly illuminating. But to my mind neither is the case. Indeed, I want to claim that his usage of the word "represents" is misleading. For the use of a single word, and the importance he attaches to obtaining an analysis of the concept, give an appearance that the concept is a rela- tively primitive one. But, as I think is clear from his own analysis, this is not so. Good- man's concept of "representation" is the conjunction, or perhaps what one might better call the intersection, of two concepts, that of "picturing" and that of "denoting," i.e., "representing" in the ordinary usage. I shall show later that unfortunately Good- man fails even to give a satisfactory charac- terization of the composite concept of "pic- torial representation."

First, I want to say something more about his attempted refutation of the thesis that a condition of A pictorially represent- ing B is that A resembles B. He quickly disposes of the possibility of the condition being a sufficient one, for there are many cases of resemblance which certainly do not involve pictorial representation. Thereafter he discusses whether resemblance can be a necessary condition of representation. What is striking about his discussion as a whole is his unquestioning use of the concept of re- semblance. I have already pointed out how he uses "resemblance" on some occasions as

synonymous with "imitation," and on other occasions uses it more widely. The trouble with the word is that we often use it in contexts where much can be tacitly as-sumed. We may say that a child resembles his father, "Isn't he like his dad?" But what we may mean is something like "He resem- bles his father in facial characteristics," or we may mean something quite different, such as "He resembles his father in being an enthusiastic football club supporter." Which is meant will normally be clear from the context. Although we may often use "resembles" as though it were a two-place predicate, really it is a three-place one. The places are to be filled by (1) a thing of some kind, (2) the thing which is said to be like it, (3) the feature or features with respect to which (2) is like (1). How the last of the three places is to be filled is often left un- stated because it is obvious. But Goodman consistently treats "resembles" as though it were a two-place predicate and this leads him into error. He attacks the thesis that " 'A represents B' implies 'A resembles B' " by finding cases where we should want to say that A represents B but where A does not resemble B with respect to certain fea- tures, such as being a geometrical projec- tion of B. But whilst this will be a refuta- tion of the thesis that " 'A represents B' implies 'A resembles B with respect to being a geometrical projection of B,' " it does not refute all theses of the form " 'A represents B' implies 'A resembles B with respect to features C.' "

Now in Western art it appears to be con- ventional to take the artist's word for what it is he is representing. And this might ap- pear to give Goodman a chance to show that in representation no resemblance in any significant features need be involved. Consider the following example. Suppose a painter of religious scenes always paints a new-born lamb in his pictures and that we know from his written or spoken remarks that he takes this lamb to represent the devil. And suppose that it is not the case that we can identify the lamb with the devil by some other means, such as that the lamb is performing an action known to have been performed by the devil. Consider

a particular picture by this artist, say one of Christ feeding the five thousand.

Now this would presumably be described bv Goodman as a case in which the devil is represented as a lamb. T h e part of the pic- ture that consists of the lamb-picture would be described by him as a lamb-picture that denotes the devil and, taking his sense of "denotes," I should agree with this. Now i t might seem to follow that here we have a case of pictorial representation where the picture resembles in no significant respect what it denotes. But I think the answer to this is that whilst the lamb-picture repre- sents (in the ordinary sense of this word) the devil, it does not pictorially represent the devil, and it is only pictorial representa- tion that I would want to hold involves resemblance in significant features. So I want to say that if X is represented as Y by Z, in general X will not be pictorially rep- resented by Z.

Now this is consistent with most of what Goodman says in his section on "representa- tion-as" (chapter 1, p. 6). But prima facie it appears to conflict with what he says on page 30. For he says there: "To represent the first Duke of Wellington is to represent Arthur Wellesley and also to represent a soldier, but not necessarily to represent him as a soldier; for some pictures of him are civilian-pictures." Now suppose we had a civilian-picture of the Duke of Wellington. This will not be a ~ i c t u r e of the Duke as a soldier, so i t is not a picture that denotes him and is a soldier-picture. But it does denote him, so it is not a soldier-picture. But Goodman wants to say that thepicture represents a soldier. If he is being consistent with his use of the term "represents," he must mean that i t "pictorially represents" a soldier, and this will conflict with what I want to say, for I want to say that it is in this sort of case that pictorial representa-tion is not involved. But Goodman cannot be consistent here in his use of "represents." For he cannot mean that the civilian-pic- ture pictorially represents a soldier for he would then be committed to saying that i t is a soldier-picture, and hence that it is both a soldier-picture and not a soldier-pic- ture. In order to avoid this contradiction,

N . G . E . H A R R I S

Goodman must mean by saying that the ci- vilian-picture represents a soldier, merely that it denotes a soldier, not that i t pictori- ally represents one. But this will mean, as I have suggested, that he is inconsistent in his use of the term "represents." This is an il- lustration of the risk in taking "represents" as a technical term for "pictorially repre-sents."

Finally, I shall show that Goodman's def- inition of "represents" in chapter 6 is defec- tive in that it rules out cases which we should definitely want to describe as cases of pictorial representation, and not as cases of description, which it would seem is what they should be labeled if we use his defini- tions. On page 226 Goodman claims that for a symbol to be representational it must either belong to a symbol scheme that is syntactically dense or to a syntactically dense part of a scheme that is partially dense. And he defines what it is to be syn- tactically dense as follows: "A scheme is syn- tactically dense if it provides for infinitely many characters so ordered that between each two there is a third" (p. 136). So it follows that any symbol from a symbol scheme which is not syntactically dense will not pictorially represent anything. I shall give two examples of symbol schemes which are not syntactically dense at all, but in which one might very well construct a sym- bol, i.e., a picture, which I think we should all want to say was a pictorial representa- tion.

(1) Suppose that an artist forms mosaics entirely from one centimeter squares of plastic which are each uniformly colored in one of ten colors. And suppose that working from these ma- terials he produces on a square floor with fifteen meter sides a picture which could be very easily recog- nized as being of, say, the Statue of Liberty. Would we really want to follow Goodman and deny that such a picture pictorially represents the Statue of Liberty?

(2) People have produced, and even ex- hibited, pictures which have been

Goodman's Account of Representation 327

produced on a typewriter. If in pro- ducing such a picture one rigidly maintains standard spacing between lines, then the symbol scheme will

be s ~ ~ ~ a c ~ G a ~ ~ ~dense. But,

such amon

pictures gst picture

from s that

being depict?

classed

INeIson Goodman, languages ofArt (Indimnapo-again, would we want to rule out all lis, 1968);see esp. chaps. I and 6.