Iconic Representation

Iconic representation is the mode of standing-for based on resemblance or similarity between representation and target. A portrait represents its subject by looking like them; a mental image represents an object by sharing visual properties with it; a scale model represents a building by copying its spatial structure at reduced size. Iconic representation is the oldest and most intuitively compelling theory of representation — so intuitive that philosophers have repeatedly mistaken it for the only genuine form.

The problem is that resemblance is neither necessary nor sufficient for representation. A cloud may resemble a ship without representing one; a stick figure may represent a person without resembling one in any detailed way. The asymmetry of representation — a picture can represent a cat, but a cat does not represent the picture — cannot be explained by resemblance alone, since resemblance is symmetric. Something more is needed: a convention, a causal history, or an interpretive practice that directs the representation relation one way rather than the other. Iconic representation, then, is not primitive but derived: it depends on a background system of interpretation that treats resemblance as significant.

This has consequences for cognitive science. If mental imagery were purely iconic, it would face the same problem: how does the brain know which neural pattern represents which external feature? The answer is that iconic properties are embedded in a larger system of structural and symbolic representation — a hybrid architecture in which no mode operates alone.

The persistence of iconic representation as the default theory in popular and philosophical imagination is a cognitive illusion: we find resemblance compelling because our perceptual systems are tuned to detect it, not because resemblance is the essence of representation. Representation is a systemic property, and iconic resemblance is just one of the materials it can work with.