Suppose we
said “that a picture is a port
rait of a
particular object consists in its being derived from that
object in a particular way”. Now it is easy to
describe what we should call “processes of deriving a
picture from an object
” (roughly speaking,
processes of projection). But there is a peculiar
difficulty about admitting that any such process is what we call
“intentional representation”. For
describe whatever process (activity) of projection we may,
there is a way of reinterpreting this projection.
Therefore ‒ ‒ ‒ one is tempted to say ‒ ‒ ‒ such a process
can never be the intention itself. For we could always
have intended the opposite by re-interpreting the process of
projection. Imagine this case: We give
someone an order to walk in a certain direction by pointing, or
drawing an arrow which points in the direction. Suppose
drawing arrows is the language in which generally we
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give such an order.
Couldn't such an order be interpreted to mean that the
man who gets it is to walk in the direction opposite to that of
the arrow? This could obviously be done by adding to
our arrow some symbols which we might call “an
interpretation”. It is easy to imagine a
case in which, say, to deceive someone, we might make an
arrangement that an order should be carried out in the sense
opposite to its normal one. The symbol which adds the
interpretation to our original arrow could, for instance, be
another arrow. Whenever we interpret a symbol in one way
or another, the interpretation is a new symbol added to the old
one.