Protein Classification and Natural Kinds

Chapter 3 claims that pictures have syntactic parts in a manner distinct from how linguistic expressions have them. Chapter 7 shows that maps and related representations have parts in much the same way. This chapter closes the book by suggesting that the most fundamental distinction between kinds of representation is found in how they have parts. Pictures and maps have inseparable syntactic parts, while linguistic representations only have separable syntactic parts. This provides a new understanding of how compositionality is relevant to pictures and maps, and it also offers a new perspective on what makes pictures non-propositional representations, even though they can be used to express propositions.