- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:49:13 -0500
- To: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)
- Cc: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>, www-tag@w3.org
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Hash: SHA1 > >Pat Hayes writes: > >>>Hmm? What _does_ a thumbnail of an JPEG (of a) photograph of the >>>Eiffel tower depict, if not the Eiffel tower? >> >> It *depicts* the Eiffel tower. That does not make it a > > *representation* of the Eiffel tower, necessarily. It might be being >> used to represent almost anything. > >OK, so further to this and your previous response, care to define >'represent', 'depict' and 'describe' as you would like to see them >used in this kind of discourse? 'Describe' relates a textual or symbolic document to what it, well, describes. Its the basic relation between a symbolic text and some part of the (or a possible) world, aka a situation, aka an interpretation structure. It presumes that the describer has a symbolic, parsable, structure to which meaning can be attached. So in a game, for example, the Eiffel tower jpeg might be a symbol for a goal state the players are racing to attain. 'Depict' relates an image to what it is an image of. "Image" here can be construed broadly, to include audio "images" (sound tracks) for example. Cameras and recorders create depictions, but they can also be made by artists of course. Typically, depictions are not constructed from symbols, they have no syntax, and they represent by being in some sense similar to (a projection of) the thing they depict. In the literature often called a "direct" representation. (Maps (in the cartographic sense) are an interesting border case. I think they are basically descriptive, symbolic, but they represent spatial location by a form of depiction. There are other border cases: labanotation, ASL - which uses arm gestures as partly depictive, partly symbolic. And real spoken language can often be used depictively, as in mimicry.) 'Represent' is an overarching term meaning any relationship between some information-bearing object and the thing or things it bears information about. It encompasses both the above and probably other things as well. I think tag-represent is a very narrow, special case of depiction, in this scheme of things. Pat -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Monday, 11 June 2007 22:49:26 UTC