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> An object resembles itself to the maximum degree but rarely represents itself,<< writes Nelson Good-man, at the outset of his well-known argument against the identification of representation with re-semblance'. One might object, of course, on two counts. First, even if things rarely represent them-selves, people often do. Certainly, whenever one presents oneself, as for an interview, some self rep-resentation is involved. We may easily misrepresent ourselves, or at least our intentions. To repre-sent oneself candidly may turn out to be as difficult as to do justice to a sitter in a portrait. And second, as anyone can testify, there are times when one barely resembles oneself, indeed, when one is not oneself at all.

Yet no one would argue that the difficulty of self-representation constitutes an argument for the re-semblance theory of representation. That representation goes on while resemblance falters is rather an argument …