ABSTRACT
Stand in front of the etching and look. You see a planar surface marked with many lines. You also see that it depicts a stand of trees. This is clear to you because, somehow, when looking at this etching you also have an experience as of a group of trees. That's not to say you have been fooled into thinking there are large plants nearby. You’re content to let the impression remain an impression, shorn of the commitments that usually accompany seeing things. Where are the trees? If forced to choose, you would probably say that the trees look like they recede from and are somehow behind the picture surface. Somehow. After all, the etching is an opaque tangle of lines. How could you see anything back there without moving it out of the way, or walking around it? It is uncontroversial that you see the etching—the gallery is well lit, your eyes are in good shape—but in some other sense you also seem to see the trees. Experiential accounts suggest that pictures are a distinctive kind of representation because of the distinctive experiences they evoke. The trees are there, along with the etching, but in another sense, they are not.
