Maps, Pictures, and Predication

Abstract

Failing to indicate the presence of something in a map is tantamount to indicating its absence. Blue indicates water, and a lack of blue suggests a lack of water. No lines for highways on part of a map, which can otherwise indicate highways, indicates a lack of highways in that area. Michael rescorla (2009) calls this the absence intuition, and claims it shows that maps cannot employ predication as languages do. This paper offers a new account of maps that respects the absence intuition without abandoning predication. Maps, pictures, and diagrams differ from language not in whether they involve predication, but in how they organize predicates. Maps introduce predicates holistically, in groups, as degrees of freedom to which any location on a map must commit. This proposal uncovers norms for mapmaking, leads to the first new semantics for maps since roberto casati and achille Varzi (1999), and offers a new perspective on how maps relate to pictures. Maps and pictures are alike not just in the way they represent space, but also in that they both introduce predicates holistically. This proposal relates in interesting ways to John Haugeland's (1991) attempt to understand representational kinds in terms of features of their contents.