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Philosophy

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  • Not representing anything else, the way images represent external objects, purely self-expressive. Commented May 21, 2021 at 9:17
  • @Johnny-come-lately As an analogy, think of the difference between the portrait of a man and the word "man". We can use both of them to refer to some man but only the portrait is representational. The word "man" does not represent anything in itself. This is only an analogy since in effect even a portrait does not represent anything in itself but it is certainly created to do just that, whereas most words not only do not represent anything but also are not created to represent anything. Commented May 21, 2021 at 16:21
  • "One day Soshi was walking on the bank of a river with a friend. 'How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water!' exclaimed Soshi. His friend spake to him thus: 'You are not a fish; how do you know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?' 'You are not myself', returned Soshi; 'how do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?' " - from The Book Of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura. Commented May 21, 2021 at 18:14
  • Thanks all, all comments were very useful, comment of @Conifold was particularly helpful for me to understand the paragraph (and the article). Commented May 22, 2021 at 21:28