Representation and models have been the focus of considerable interest in philosophy of science for several decades. But the publication in 2008 of Bas van Fraassen’s important book Scientific representation: Paradoxes of perspective gave a novel and strong impetus to the study of their role in the dynamic of scientific knowledge, as attested by the growing quantity of papers and conferences related to representation. In science, knowing necessarily involves representing—phenomena at least and perhaps more for the (...) scientific realist—by means of mathematical structures. Even if these structures are not, as van Fraassen aptly insists, mental ideas, scientific activity is still evolving within the modern Cartesian “épistèmè de la representation” as Michel Foucault famously put it.This book is a welcome collection of exciting papers which grew out of a Workshop on representation and models organized on 11–12 March in Ferrol, at the University of A Coruña . Most papers are devoted to .. (shrink)

This book provides a methodological perspective on understanding the essential roles of econometric models in the theory and practice. Offering a comprehensive and comparative exposition of the accounts of models in both econometrics and philosophy of science, this work shows how econometrics and philosophy of science are interconnected while exploring the methodological insight of econometric modelling that can be added to modern philosophical thought. The notion of structure is thoroughly discussed throughout the book. The studies of the consumption (...) function of Trygve Haavelmo, Richard Stone, Milton Friedman, David Hendry and Robert Lucas are taken as the case studies to investigate their methodological implications of model and structure. In addition to the semantic view of the scientific theories, various philosophical accounts concerning scientific models are used to shed light on the methodological nature of these consumption studies in economics. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of methodology of economics and econometrics as well as anyone interested in the philosophy of science in an economic context. (shrink)

One of the central issues in cognitive science is the nature of human representations. We argue that symbolic representations are essential for capturing human cognitive capabilities. We start by examining some common misconceptions found in discussions of representations and models. Next we examine evidence that symbolic representations are essential for capturing human cognitive capabilities, drawing on the analogy literature. Then we examine fundamental limitations of feature vectors and other distributed representations that, despite their recent successes on various practical problems, (...) suggest that they are insufficient to capture many aspects of human cognition. After that, we describe the implications for cognitive architecture of our view that analogy is central, and we speculate on roles for hybrid approaches. We close with an analogy that might help bridge the gap. (shrink)

This chapter introduces a structural account of representation through partial structures and examines its ontological commitments. It is pointed out that structural approaches to scientific representation emphasize the crucial role played by structures in representing salient features of the world. It is common to present and, in some cases, even to reify such structures as abstract entities, in particular as set-theoretic constructs. Against this view, it is argued that no such reification is called for and that several strategies (...) can be articulated to avoid commitment to set-theoretic structures in the defense of structural representation. In the end, one can favor the latter without being platonist about the former. (shrink)

Roman Frigg and Adam Toon, both, defend a fictionalist view of scientific modeling. One fundamental thesis of their view is that scientists are participating in games of make-believe when they study models in order to learn about the models themselves and about target systems represented by the models. In this paper, the epistemology of these two fictionalist views is critically discussed. I will argue that both views can give an explanation of how scientists learn about models (...) they are studying. However, how the use of models can foster an understanding of target systems is not sufficiently accounted for by Frigg and Toon. (shrink)

Representation has been one of the main themes in the recent discussion of models. Several authors have argued for a pragmatic approach to representation that takes users and their interpretations into account. It appears to me, however, that this emphasis on representation places excessive limitations on our view of models and their epistemic value. Models should rather be thought of as epistemic artifacts through which we gain knowledge in diverse ways. Approaching models this (...) way stresses their materiality and media-specificity. Focusing on models as multi-functional artifacts loosens them from any pre-established and fixed representational relationships and leads me to argue for a two-fold approach to representation. (shrink)

This is the preface of the special Issue: Formal Representations in Model-based Reasoning and Abduction, published at the Logic Jnl IGPL (2012) 20 (2): 367-369. doi: 10.1093/jigpal/jzq055 First published online: December 20, 2010.

Scientists often make use of epistemic representations in order to perform investigations about the real world. So far, philosophers of science interested in epistemic representation of this sort have mostly focused on scientific models. In this thesis, I argue that there are other interesting instances of representation besides models: thought experiments, experimental organisms, and mechanically-produced pictures. These represent portions of the world in the same way as models do, if the concept of epistemic representation (...) is properly understood. In Chapter 1, I introduce and develop the idea that a system functions as an epistemic representation of a designated target system insofar as it is interpreted as a symbol that both possesses and highlights some properties that are then to be imputed to that target system via a proper de-idealising function. In the main body of the thesis, I analyse the above-mentioned types of representations and argue that they function as representations in the same way as scientific models. Chapter 2 discusses the use of thought experiments in physics, with particular focus on Galileo’s thought experiment that illustrates the principle of inertia. Chapter 3 focuses on experimental organism research in biology, with specific attention to the Drosophila melanogaster. Finally, Chapter 4 is about the epistemic use of mechanically produced pictures with the picture of a black hole as the primary case study. In each chapter, I further show that by studying these types of representation through the lens of the account developed in Chapter 1, one can (dis)solve specific issues about thought experiments, model organisms, and pictures respectively. In Chapter 5, I further defend my proposal from scepticism about the concept of representation and its application to these different cases. Chapter 6 concludes the thesis by illustrating the most general implications of my analysis and proposing routes for future enquiry. (shrink)

Current cognitive architectures are either working at the abstract, symbolic level, or the low, emergent level related to neural modeling. The best way to understand phenomena is to see, or imagine them, hence the need for a geometric model of mental processes. Geometric models should be based on an intermediate level of modeling that describe mental states in terms of features relevant from the first-person perspective but also linked to neural events. Concepts should be represented as geometrical objects that (...) have sufficiently rich structures to show their properties and their relations to other concepts. The best way to create such geometrical representations of concepts is through the approximate description of the physical states of neural networks. The evolution of brain states is then represented as a trajectory linking successful concepts, and topological constraints on the shape of such trajectory define grammar and logic. (shrink)

Could relativist theses about scientific theories be coherent with realist theses about the relationship between such theories and the physical world? This is the central issue of this paper that we approach, mainly, on Giere’s perspectival realism. We consider that his epistemological relativist theses are plausible and sustainable, but his realist thesis about the representational role that plays the theoretical models with respect to real systems as well as his thesis about true hypotheses are not. After trying to show (...) that, we delineate an epistemological version of conceptual relativism which becomes cognate with Giere’s perspectival claims but that it does not comprise realist claims. (shrink)

Although learning from multiple representations has been shown to be effective in a variety of domains, little is known about the mechanisms by which it occurs. We analyzed log data on error-rate, hint-use, and time-spent obtained from two experiments with a Cognitive Tutor for fractions. The goal of the experiments was to compare learning from multiple graphical representations of fractions to learning from a single graphical representation. Finding that a simple statistical model did not fit data from either experiment, (...) we searched over all possible mediation models consistent with background knowledge, finding several that fit the data well. We also searched over alternative measures of student error-rate, hint-use, and time-spent to see if our data were better modeled with simple monotonic or u-shaped non-monotonic relationships. We found no evidence for non-monotonicity. No matter what measures we used, time-spent was irrelevant, and hint-use was only occasionally relevant. Although the total effect of multiple representations on learning was positive, they also had a negative effect on learning, mediated by a higher error-rate. Our evidence suggests that multiple representations increase error-rate, which in turn inhibits learning. The mechanisms by which multiple representations improve learning are as yet unmodeled. (shrink)

We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment, related to misrepresentation, context-sensitivity, and complementary use, are highlighted. The PR view provides insight into the common (...) but little-discussed practices of iteratively reusing and repurposing data, which result in many datasets’ having a phylogeny—an origin and complex evolutionary history—that is relevant to their evaluation and future use. We relate these insights to the open-data and data-rescue movements, and highlight several future avenues of research that build on the PR view of data. (shrink)

Public reason theories are characterized by three conditions: constructivism, representation, and stability. Constructivism holds that justification does not rely on any antecedent moral or political values outside of the procedure of agreement. Representation holds that the reasons for the choice in the model must be rationally explicable to real agents outside the model. Stability holds that the principles chosen in the procedure should be stable upon reflection, especially in the face of diversity in a pluralistic society. Choice procedures (...) that involve at least two-stages with different information, as Rawls’s theory does, will be path-dependent and not meet the condition of representation since it will not be globally coherent. Attempts to solve this problem without eliminating the segmentation of choice in the procedure will run afoul of constructivism or stability. This problem is instructive because it highlights how public reason theories must evolve in the face of increased concerns about diversity. (shrink)

I analyse the double function of models (representing the phenomena, and being a tool for calculating and predicting them) from a cognitive point of view. Taking the same approach as Ronald Giere, I nevertheless argue that he is to much committed to an abstract conception of theories and that one should give more attention to the particular formats in which models are expressed and grasped. By taking the example of Classical Mechanics, I show that a model, as an (...) abstract entity, doesn't represent anything if not presented in some particular format, be it linguistic, diagrammatic, or pictorial. This format is crucial to the relation between the two main functions of models. (shrink)

In this article I connect two debates in the philosophy of science: the questions of scientific representation and both model and theoretical equivalence. I argue that by paying attention to how a model is used to draw inferences about its target system, we can define a notion of theoretical equivalence that turns on whether models license the same claims about the same target systems. I briefly consider the implications of this for two questions that have recently been discussed (...) in the context of the formal philosophy of science. (shrink)

We give an extension of the Jónsson‐Tarski representation theorem for both normal and non‐normal modal algebras so that it preserves countably many infinite meets and joins. In order to extend the Jónsson‐Tarski representation to non‐normal modal algebras we consider neighborhood frames instead of Kripke frames just as Došen's duality theorem for modal algebras, and to deal with infinite meets and joins, we make use of Q‐filters, which were introduced by Rasiowa and Sikorski, instead of prime filters. By means (...) of the extended representation theorem, we show that every predicate modal logic, whether it is normal or non‐normal, has a model defined on a neighborhood frame with constant domains, and we give a completeness theorem for some predicate modal logics with respect to classes of neighborhood frames with constant domains. Similarly, we show a model existence theorem and a completeness theorem for infinitary modal logics which allow conjunctions of countably many formulas. (shrink)

Even though the philosophy of simulation is intended as a comprehensive reflection about the practice of computer simulation in contemporary science, its output has been disproportionately shaped by research on equation-based simulation in the physical and climate sciences. Hence, the particularities of alternative practices of computer simulation in other scientific domains are not sufficiently accounted for in the current philosophy of simulation literature. This article centres on agent-based social simulation, a relatively established type of simulation in the social sciences, to (...) exemplify this claim. The analysis advanced has a twofold goal. First, it shows that the philosophy of agent-based social simulation, mostly developed by practitioners themselves, is, on one hand, heavily influenced by the methodological features of agent-based modelling and by the loose and fragmented character of social theory and, on the other hand, distinctively shaped by contrasting views of what it implies to do social research with virtual or artificial societies. Second, it suggests ways in which cross-fertilisation could enrich the philosophical understanding of computer simulation both in agent-based social simulation and in the philosophy of simulation. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the historical text as a whole. It does so by conceiving of the historical text as representation - in the way the we may say of a photo or a painting that it represents the person depicted on it. It is argued that representation cannot be properly understood by modelling it on true description. So all the central questions asked since the days of Frege with regard to how the true statement relates to the (...) world must be asked anew, if we wish to understand how a historical representation relates to what it is about. Three claims are made. In the first place, representation is not a two-place but a three-place operator: apart from a representation (say, a book on Napoleon) and what the representation represents (Napoleon himself), a representation also indicates an aspect of represented reality (an aspect of Napoleon). The second claim is that this notion of the aspect is crucial for a proper understanding of (historical) representation. Thirdly, it is argued that traditional theories of reference cannot account for the relationship between a representation and the aspect indicated by it. (shrink)

A central goal of the scientific endeavor is to explain phenomena. Scientists often attempt to explain a phenomenon by way of representing it in some manner—such as with mathematical equations, models, or theory—which allows for an explanation of the phenomenon under investigation. However, in developing scientific representations, scientists typically deploy simplifications and idealizations. As a result, scientific representations provide only partial, and often distorted, accounts of the phenomenon in question. Philosophers of science have analyzed the nature and function of (...) how scientists construct representations, deploy idealizations, and provide explanations. As such, our aim in this special issue is to bring these three pillars of research into closer contact with the contributions to it focusing on three main themes. -/- The first set of papers, Alan Baker (2021) and Marc Lange (2021), address mathematical explanations in science. Baker (2021), a proponent of mathematical Platonism, examines its capacity to evade the critique that the so-called Enhanced Indispensability Argument is circular. Lange (2021) examines distinctively mathematical explanations, arguing that neither Platonism nor representationalism are successful paths, and instead argues in favor of Aristotelian realism. A second theme emerging from the papers in this special issue is the impact that various conceptualizations of idealization have on our abilities to offer scientific explanations, to pro- duce an analysis of what explanations are or should be, and to understand scientific representation. Peter Tan (2021) suggests amending inferentialist accounts of scientific representation to account for inconsistent idealizations. Michael Strevens (2021) advocates a view wherein the introduction of idealizations into a model is legitimate so long as it pertains to non-difference-making factors, arguing for a logical reading of the notion of difference-making. Natalia Carrillo and Tarja Knuuttila (2022) offer an alternative account to the idealization-as-distortion view, emphasizing instead the holistic nature of idealization. -/- Finally, contributions by Carrillo and Knuuttila (2022), Terzian (2021), Valente (2021), and Rodriguez (2021) illustrate how issues regarding idealization, representation, and explanation are applied to specific contexts and across various sciences. Carrillo and Knuuttila (2022) examine conceptions of idealization in the context of models of the nerve impulse. Giulia Terzian (2021) extends the discussion of idealizations to the context of generative linguistics. Giovanni Valente (2021) examines how idealizations and evaluations of accurate representation impact capacities to explain phenomena in the context of statistical thermodynamics. Quentin Rodriguez (2021) examines the role of idealizations and analogies in various strategies to explain critical phenomena. -/- In what follows, we offer a brief overview of important philosophical issues connected to representation, idealization, and explanation in science. We then provide short summaries of the eight papers in this special issue. (shrink)

It is assumed that scientific models contain no superfluous model elements in scientific representation. A representational model is constructed with all the model elements serving the representational purpose. The received view has it that there are no redundant model elements which are non-representational. Contrary to this received view, I argue that there exist some non-representational model elements which are essential in scientific representation. I call them representation-supporting model elements in virtue of the fact that they play (...) the role to support the representational role of representational model elements. Representation-supporting model elements, which have a characteristic of dependability, are not to be eliminated in the process of modeling although they are playing second fiddle to representational model elements in scientific representation. (shrink)

Epistemic justifications for democracy have been offered in terms of two different aspects of decision-making: voting and deliberation, or ‘votes’ and ‘talk.’ The Condorcet Jury Theorem is appealed to as a justification in terms votes, and the Hong-Page “Diversity Trumps Ability” result is appealed to as a justification in terms of deliberation. Both of these, however, are most plausibly construed as models of direct democracy, with full and direct participation across the population. In this paper, we explore how these (...) results hold up if we vary the model so as to reflect the more familiar democratic structure of a representative hierarchy. We first recount extant analytic work that shows that representation inevitably weakens the voting results of the Condorcet Jury Theorem, but we question the ability of that result to shine light on real representative systems. We then show that, when we move from votes to talk, as modeled in Hong-Page, representation holds its own and even has a slight edge. (shrink)

'Representation' is a concept which occurs both in cognitive science and philosophy. It has common features in both settings in that it concerns the explanation of behaviour in terms of the way the subject categorizes and systematizes responses to its environment. The prevailing model sees representations as causally structured entities correlated on the one hand with elements in a natural language and on the other with clearly identifiable items in the world. This leads to an analysis of representation (...) and cognition in terms of formal symbols and their relations. But human perception and cognition use multiple informational constraints and deal with unsystematic and messy input in a way best explained by Parallel Distributed Processing models. This undermines the claim that a formal representational theory of mind is 'the only game in town.' In particular it suggests a radically different model of brain function and its relation to epistemology from that found in current representational theories. (shrink)

There is disagreement over the notion of representation in cognitive science. Many investigators equate representations with symbols, that is, with syntactically defined elements in an internal symbol system. In recent years there have been two challenges to this orthodoxy. First, a number of philosophers, including many outside the symbolist orthodoxy, have argued that "representation" should be understood in its classical sense, as denoting a "stands for" relation between representation and represented. Second, there has been a growing challenge (...) to orthodoxy under the banner of connectionism. Although this connectionist challenge has evoked emotionally-charged rebukes from the symbolist camp, connectionists as a group have not articulated a conception of representation to replace the symbolist view. Nonetheless, most agree on the need for a nonsymbolic notion of representation. This paper advances a "stands for" sense of representation as primary by incorporating it into a general approach to cognitive science consonant with the connectionism. The idea is to marry connectionism to a particular version of functionalism, viz., one that builds its notion of "function" on the similarity between functional analysis in biology and in psychology. It builds on my earlier work adapting and revising Marr's tri-level approach to cognition. My proposal frees Marr's analysis from its moorings in the orthodox symbolic view of representation and allies it with a notion of functional analysis akin to that proposed by Cummins, developed further by Haugeland, and invoked by Millikan and Dretske. Unlike these authors, however, I do not wed representation to a general belief-desire analysis of behavior. Rather, I follow what I take to be the lesson of psychological practice, according to which the investigator does not seek to explain behavior in general but seeks to analyze the cognitive capacities that underlie behavior, such as vision, memory, learning, and linguistic capacities. Accordingly, ascriptions of representational content are made not by working back from belief-desire ascriptions, but in the context of forming psychological models to account for specific cognitive capacities. Because conceptions of representation in cognitive science typically are embedded in a general approach to the study of cognition, arguments for the comparative plausibility of a particular conception of representation must scout these larger frameworks. I therefore begin by characterizing the interlocking set of assumptions that gave life to the orthodox symbolist approach, paying special attention to the complementarity between representation and process that naturally arises from those assumptions. I then consider two versions of an alternative approach to representation: Dretske's and my own. Finally, I urge the merits of the "cognitive capacities" over the "belief-desire" approach to the subject-matter of cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper examines two recent approaches to the nature and functioning of economic models: models as isolating representations and models as credible constructions. The isolationist view conceives of economic models as surrogate systems that isolate some of the causal mechanisms or tendencies of their respective target systems, while the constructionist approach treats them rather like pure constructions or fictional entities that nevertheless license different kinds of inferences. I will argue that whereas the isolationist view is still (...) tied to the representationalist understanding of models that takes the model-target dyad as the basic unit of analysis, the constructionist perspective can better accommodate the way we actually acquire knowledge through them. Using the example of Tobin’s ultra-Keynesian model I will show how many of the epistemic characteristics of modelling tend to go unrecognised if too much focus is placed on the model-target dyad. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam, who may have been the first philosopher to advance the notion that the computer is an apt model for the mind, takes a radically new view of his...

A promising strategy for defending the role that representation plays in explanations of cognition frames the concept in terms of internal models or map‐like mechanisms. “Structural representation” offers an account of representation that is grounded in well‐specified, empirical criteria. However, anti‐representationalists continue to press the issue of how to account for the paradigmatic semantic properties of representation at the subpersonal level. In this paper, I offer an account of how the proponent of structural representation (...) should think about content. There are really two problems of content any account of representation must overcome: the “hard problem of content” and the “content determination problem.” I argue that the structural representation account has the resources to provide a naturalistically respectable notion of content that overcomes both problems. (shrink)

This is the first collection of essays focused on the many faceted work of Kendall L. Walton. Walton has shaped debate about the arts for the last 50 years. He provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the arts in terms of the human capacity of make-believe that shows how different arts-visual, photographic, musical, literary or poetic-can be explained in terms of complex structures of pretense, perception, imagining, empathy and emotion. His ground-breaking work has been taken beyond aesthetics to address foundational (...) issues concerning linguistic and scientific representations-for example about the nature of scientific modelling or to explain how what we say is mostly quite different from the literal meanings of our words. Contributions from a diverse group of philosophers probe Walton's detailed proposals and the themes for research they open to provide an overview of important debates that have Walton's work at their core. This book will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working on aesthetics across the humanities, as well as those interested in the topic of representation and its intersection with perception, language, science, and metaphysics. (shrink)

This article presents an approach to understanding human spatial competence that focuses on the representations and processes of spatial cognition and how they are integrated with cognition more generally. The foundational theoretical argument for this research is that spatial information processing is central to cognition more generally, in the sense that it is brought to bear ubiquitously to improve the adaptivity and effectiveness of perception, cognitive processing, and motor action. We describe research spanning multiple levels of complexity to understand both (...) the detailed mechanisms of spatial cognition, and how they are utilized in complex, naturalistic tasks. In the process, we discuss the critical role of cognitive architectures in developing a consistent account that spans this breadth, and we note some areas in which the current version of a popular architecture, ACT-R, may need to be augmented. Finally, we suggest a framework for understanding the representations and processes of spatial competence and their role in human cognition generally. (shrink)

An essential ingredient of language use is our ability to reason about utterances as intentional actions. Linguistic representations are the natural substrate for such reasoning, and models from computational semantics can often be seen as providing an infrastructure to carry out such inferences from rich and accurate grammatical descriptions. Exploring such inferences offers a productive pragmatic perspective on problems of interpretation, and promises to leverage semantic representations in more flexible and more general tools that compute with meaning.

Advocates of dynamical systems theory (DST) sometimes employ revolutionary rhetoric. In an attempt to clarify how DST models differ from others in cognitive science, I focus on two issues raised by DST: the role for representations in mental models and the conception of explanation invoked. Two features of representations are their role in standing-in for features external to the system and their format. DST advocates sometimes claim to have repudiated the need for stand-ins in DST models, but (...) I argue that they are mistaken. Nonetheless, DST does offer new ideas as to the format of representations employed in cognitive systems. With respect to explanation, I argue that some DST models are better seen as conforming to the covering-law conception of explanation than to the mechanistic conception of explanation implicit in most cognitive science research. But even here, I argue, DST models are a valuable complement to more mechanistic cognitive explanations. (shrink)

Azade Seyhan provides a concise, elegantly argued introduction to the critical theory of German Romanticism and demonstrates how its approach to the metaphorical and linguistic nature of knowledge is very much alive in contemporary philosophy and literary theory. Her analysis of key thinkers such as Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis explores their views on rhetoric, systematicity, hermeneutics, and cultural interpretation. Seyhan examines German Romanticism as a critical intervention in the debates on representation, which developed in response to the philosophical revolution (...) of German Idealism. Facing a chaotic political and intellectual landscape, the eighteenth-century theorists sought new models of understanding and new objectives for criticism and philosophy. _Representation and Its Discontents_ identifies the legacy of this formative moment in modern criticism and suggests its relevance to contemporary discussions of post-structuralism, orientalism, theories of textuality, and the nature of philosophical discourse. (shrink)

I argue against an account of scientific representation suggested by the semantic, or structuralist, conception of scientific theories. Proponents of this conception often employ the term “model” to refer to bare “structures”, which naturally leads them to attempt to characterize the relation between models and reality as a purely structural one. I argue instead that scientific models are typically “representations”, in the pragmatist sense of the term: they are inherently intended for specific phenomena. Therefore in general scientific (...) models are not (merely) structures. I then explore some consequences of this pragmatist account of representation, and argue that it sheds light upon the distinction between theories and models. I finish by briefly addressing some critical comments due to Bas Van Fraassen. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose to understand argumentative decoupling—that is, the structural fact of the argumentative chain self-referring to one of its constituents in subsequent arguments—as part of the way in which cognitive decoupling representation works. In order to support this claim, I make use of part of the discussion developed in cognitive studies and evolutionary theories that describes this phenomenon when explaining intentional communication. By using Toulmin’s model, I exemplify how decoupling representation may be seen as part (...) of a chain of arguments in which a second argumentative move is usually oriented to action. I conclude by reflecting on the relationship between this human cognitive capacity and the problem of recursion to hold that these two concepts are not synonymous but stand in a subordinated and complementary relation to each other. (shrink)

In this paper the topic of the relations between scientific theories and scientific models is tackled by considering the former as hypothetical scientific representations and the latter as fictive scientific representations. A classification of the models is also proposed.

It is a thankless task to have to reply to Professor Murray Krieger’s “Retrospective.” Qui s’excuse, s’accuse, and since I cannot ask my readers to embark on their own retrospective of my writings and test them for consistency, I have little chance of restoring my reputation in their eyes. Hence I would have been happier to leave Professor Krieger to his agonizing, if he did not present himself the “spokesman” for a significant body of theorists who appear to have acclaimed (...) my book on Art and Illusion without ever having read it. The followers of this school of criticism—of which Professor Krieger is a prominent member—had apparently convinced themselves that the book lent support to an aesthetics in which the notions of reality and of nature had no place. They thought that I had subverted the old idea of mimesis and that all that remained were different systems of conventional signs which were made to stand for an unknowable reality. True, professor Krieger admits that I never endorsed such an interpretation of my views, and he even concedes that there are passages in Art and Illusion which contradict such an out-and-out relativism, but he wants to convince his readers that these contradictions lead precisely to the ambiguities he now proposes to analyse.If he were right that the book encourages such a misreading, all I could do would be to express my regrets for having failed to make myself sufficiently clear. Luckily I can draw comfort from the fact that unlike these literary critics, the leading archaeologist of this country, Professor Stuart Piggott, had no difficulty at all in discerning my meaning and profiting from my arguments. In his Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture of 1978, entitled Antiquity Depicted: Aspects of Archaeological Illustration, the author did me the honour of taking a statement from my book as his starting point. It is the passage at the end of part I in which I recapitulate the content of the first two chapters:What matters to us is that the correct portrait, like the useful map, is an end product on a long road through schema and correction. It is not a faithful record of a visual experience but the faithful construction of a relational mode.Neither the subjectivity of vision nor the sway of conventions need lead us to deny that such a model can be constructed to any required degree of accuracy. What is decisive here is clearly the word “required.” The form of a representation cannot be divorced from its purpose and the requirements of the society in which the given visual language gains currency.1 1. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1956 , p. 90. E. H. Gombrich was director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition at the University of London from 1959 to 1976. His many influential works include The Story of Art, Art and Illusion, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, The Sense of Order, Ideals and Idols, The Image and the Eye, and, most recently, Tributes. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “The Museum: Past, Present and Future and “Standards of Truth: The Arrested Image and the Moving Eye”. (shrink)