# Recording and Representing, Analog and Digital by [[John Kulvicki]] >In the final analysis, however, a definition should be [[more than]] merely adequate to the intuitive data. It should show that the cases cited are instances of a theoretically interesting general kind, and it should emphasize the fundamental basis of that theoretical interest. >-[[John Haugeland]], "Analog and Analog" (HT, 75) >Recording also fails to coincide with two closely related technical notions: information and Gricean natural meaning. It is possible to carry information about particular individuals, like Whitman and lincoln (Dretske 1981). In fact, it's likely that the recordings carry information about what Whitman said, what Lincoln wore. A family photo carries infor- mation about one's ancestors on their wedding day. The right kinds of counterfactual support allow information to flow, but they are helpless when faced with demands for playback. Similar remarks apply to Gricean natural meaning. Grice suggests that a photo naturally means something about a tryst (1957, 382-383), but there is no witless way to reproduce such a thing, at least not from a photo. ChatGPT says that the above says that recording something is [[not just]] about the information it gives or what it might suggest; it's also about being able to play it back, which is a special thing recordings can do. >Recording is not offered as a replacement for information or natural meaning. It's just another nonintentional process that relates in interest- ing ways to representation. Information and natural meaning are used to illuminate (Grice) or serve as a reduction base (Dretske) for intentionality of all sorts. Recording will help us distinguish kinds of representation from one another in a manner neither of the other notions is suited to doing. It does this, surprisingly, because of the two-way street required by playback. >The skeletal contents of for example, are nothing but "variations of inddent light with respect to direction" (HT, 189). Rarely do we interpret a photo as representing nothing but variations of incident light-it's Lincoln!-but such patterns are the core contents of any picture. The formula for showing this is simple. First, peel off the layers of implication, in its broadest sense, by imagining alternative, acceptable fleshed-out contents. Then, with these alternatives in mind, ask what they all have in common. The portrait depicts Lincoln, but it's possible that an exactly simi- lar daguerreotype could have been [[the result]] of focusing on a wax model of Lincoln, an alien impostor, or even another daguerreotype of Lincoln. These disparate objects have in common only the way that they project onto a surface to form the picture. That common ground is the content's skeleton, that on which all the fleshings-out must build.