Rob van Gerwen

Depiction and the Intimation of Experience.

Summary

Logically speaking the depiction of a sad person, a representation, does not necessarily coincide with a sad mode of depiction, a sad expression. This non-analyticity of 'expression' and 'representation' indicates the weakness of the concept of 'expression'. In its stead I propose to think of 'intimation', taken technically, as the way to represent (not express) the experience of a depicted person. Intimation involves the specific effect on the beholder of occasioning him to revivify the experience supposedly had by the person depicted. Such revivification is achieved by supplementing the picture with associations from one's own lived experience. In order to develop this notion, I restrict attention to certain, ideal, pictures, and develop an account of reproductive depiction in terms of exemplificatory recurrence of perceptual properties of the person or event depicted. I argue that reproductive depiction cannot convey an experience, although it can provide specific, perceptually accessible information about it. Alternatives to intimation are considered and dismissed as candidates for explaining the possibility of representing an experience. Lastly, consequences concerning standards of correctness and the relation with aesthetic evaluation are indicated.