Abstract

The dissertation offers a general account of artifactual representation , a category that includes depictions, linguistic utterances, symbols of various sorts, and uses of pre-existing objects for representational ends. This category is unified by the role agents' intentional actions play in giving such things their representational status. I argue that, unlike cases of natural representation, artifactual representation cannot be explained by reference to correlations between non-intentional phenomena alone. This distinction differs from the Gricean one between natural and non-natural meaning, which involves notions of assertion and communication that mine does not. ;I argue that the intentional actions which result in artifactual representation are performed with the characteristic end or purpose of bringing it about that what is represented is potentially retrievable by observers or audiences with appropriate capacities. The possession of this end, along with beliefs about how to fulfill it, motivates or rationalizes instances of representational action. Not all artifactual representations issue from agents' deliberative or consciously willed actions; but all issue from the cognitive capacities underlying fully intentional representational action. Agents need not intend to communicate anything to their audiences; where they do, this is a further end toward which representation is a means. Agents also need not intend that the results of their actions be understood by any actual audience, but only that they could, in appropriate circumstances, be taken as 'of' what they represent. ;The account is first given schematically; later chapters supply details appropriate to narrower species of artifactual representation. I develop a view of the intentions required for the meaningful deployment of a name that is compatible with elements of a causal-historical account of reference. The final chapter applies the account to the ontology of music. Musical Platonists claim that the relation between musical works and their performances is one of instantiation or exemplification; against this, I argue that the work/performance relation is a species of artifactual representation, continuous with others. The view I advocate captures the role of intentional action in musical performance, and the intuition that jazz and popular compositions are musical works