Art and Experience, Utrecht, © 1996. All rights reserved

Overdetermination is the characteristic of having more than one determining factors. Because describing a perception involves a reduction of determinations (rather than a reduction of modalities) descriptions are underdetermined by the data of perception (cf. Quine). Pictorial reproduction replaces the overdetermination of polymodal, embodied perception with one that is partly disembodied and reduced to its merely visual aspect. In contrast with description photographic reproduction is not underdetermined because a photograph comes into being entirely causally--mechanical-cum-chemically. Cf. Scruton, extensive knowledge, senses.