Abstract

The paper presents a new proposal how to explain pictorial representation. Starting point is the phenomenological idea that pictures, in the first place, make something visible (instead of being a sign of something). Making something visible is taken as an achievement of the faculty of imagination, and the faculty of imagination in turn is taken to be a variety of our faculty to simulate (referring here to the concept of simulation as it is used in contemporary cognitive psychology, according to which the ability to simulate e.g. other minds is the ability to reenact somebody else’s cognitive processes). Taken together, these pieces come down to the claim that pictorial representation of some x is simulating the perception of x with pictorial means; pictures prompt and guide such a simulation. Crucial is the addition »with pictorial means«. Picture-based simulation has constraints, which differ from those of perception and imagination. Therefore, in picture-based simulation perceptual processes are not simply copied but re-modeled and open to modification. The primary means of such modification are provided by the properties of pictures as material objects, such as their having a frame which encloses a two-dimensional surface. Therefore, being a material object promotes and shapes pictorial representation, instead of hampering it.