2-11: Goodman – Depiction and Description, Pictures and Paragraphs

"The plain fact is that a picture, to represent an object, must be a symbol for it, stand for it, refer to it; and that no degree of resemblance is sufficient to establish the requisite relationship of reference. Nor is resenblance necessary for reference; almost anything may stand for almost anything else. A picture that represents – like a passage that describes – an object refers to and, more particularely, denotes it. Denotation is the core of representation and is independent of resemblance." (Goodman, 1976, p. 5)

"What we have done so far is to subsume representation with description under denotation. Representation is thus disengaged from perverted ideas of it as an idiosyncratic physical process like mirroring, and is recognized as a symbolic relationship that is relative and variable." (Goodman, 1976, p. 42-43)

"We saw that representation is relative – that any picture may represent any object." (Goodman, 1976, p. 48)

"This all adds up to open heresy. Descriptions are distinguished from depictions not through being more arbitrary but through belonging to articulate rather than to dense schemes; and words are more conventional than pictures only if conventionality is construed in terms of differenciation rather than of artificiality. Nothing here depends upon the internal structure of a symbol: for what describes in some systems may depict in others. Resemblance disappears as a criterion of representation, and structural similarity as a requirement upon notational or any other languages. The often stressed distinction between iconic and other signs becomes transient and trivial; thus does heresy breed iconoclasm." (Goodman, 1976, p. 230-31)