occluding the rear rim from an oblique angle, so that objective occlusion
shape is being captured to a degree.)
Information-theoretic views understand our ability to recognize S in M as
analogous to and an extension of our ability to recognize ordinary empirical
objects perceptually. As Dominic Lopes puts it,“pictures represent...by
presenting information on the basis of which their subjects can be recog-
nized.”^49 Like ordinary visual recognition of objects, recognition of depicted
subject matter in a marked surface is dynamic, in that it is a matter of
identifying the recognized object (empirical object or subject matter) over
time, across changes in lighting, environment, angle of vision, and so forth,
and in that it takes place by way of visual experience. Unlike ordinary object
recognition, recognition of S in M is also informed by awareness of the
marked surface and of the employment on it of styles of representation.
Hence recognition of what is depicted is both pictorial system-dependent
and aspectual, in that the marked surface will present some features of
objects but not others as a function of both the possibilities of the system
and the representer’s choices. For example, a vase of flowers may be repre-
sented either in black and white or in color, either photographically or in a
painting, either cubistically or in Albertian perspective, and so on. But in
each case visually recognizing S in M is a matter of gettinginformation about S
by way of the visual experience of M.“Pictures are visual prostheses; they
extend the [ordinary visual] informational system by gathering, storing, and
transmitting visual information about their subjects in ways that depend
upon and also augment our ability to identify things by their appearance.”^50
Crucially, our ability to identify things by their appearance, and so also our
ability to identify subject matters in pictures, is not always dependent on
concepts or beliefs. We can sometimes simply reidentify that color, that bolt
of fabric, that odd-looking insect, or that depicted object simply byitslook,
without being able to describe that look verbally. Our visual experience takes
us, by way of the information it provides,tothat thing (actual or depicted),
without necessarily involving belief. While Lopes’s emphases on analogies
between ordinary object recognition and recognition of depicted subject
matters and on the disanalogous system-dependence and aspectuality of
depictive representation are salutary, one may also wonder whether the roles
(^49) Dominic Lopes,Understanding Pictures(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 157.
(^50) Ibid., p. 144.
Representation, imitation, and resemblance 41