Suppose we said “that a picture is a portait 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.