Philosophy and the Arts, Lectures 21 & 26:

1. Philosophy and the Arts, Lectures 21 &26: “Art as Language-III” & “The ‘Ontology’ of Art”

2. As professors, we like to pretend that we know everything, and , of course, we don’t. Today, we need to discuss two topics that have been important in recent Aesthetics, but which I don’t fully understand. Sometimes we’re pretty stupid…

3. Nelson Goodman begins with a simple question: what do we mean when we say, “This picture represents this man (or whatever)”?? It seems natural to say this means the picture resembles its subject. Art as Language…again…

4. An artist is asked to paint portraits of all the past Scottish kings for which we have names, so this one represents Malcolm III…but does it resemble him?? We have no idea what Malcolm III looked like! But at the Palace of Holyroodhouse…

5. Sir Joshua Reynolds said he painted nature, but it was ideal nature; he painted his subjects as they wanted to be seen. For a price, he would have painted me as a tall, dark, handsome, man--rather than as the short, grey, slob that I am. Resemblance ?? Or consider this by Reynolds…

6. In his book, Goodman does some fancy logic chopping. He notes that resemblance is symmetric, while representation is not. This means that if I resemble my cousin Bill, then we can also say cousin Bill (poor chap) resembles me. Why not resemblance??

7. More of the same… • But even though Chet Edwards represents me (in Congress), this does not mean I represent him (anywhere, in anything). So resemblance and representation are not the same kind of relation. • Goodman says that to say x represents y is to say it denotes y. Denotation is used by logicians to mean that to which a term refers. • So to say this picture represents Malcolm III is to say it refers to him in some meaningful symbolic system. • Many books and papers have been written to explicate just what this means; I do not plan to add to their number.

8. ‘Ontology’ is an old-fashioned word philosophers use for the study of Being. In this case, the question is :what sort of things are art works? Are they “things” at all?? The Classic study is Art and its Objects by Richard Wollheim. “The Ontology of Art”

9. Isn’t she gorgeous? This is the Donna Velata by Raphael. It is said that she is “exalted and dignified.” But a piece of canvas cannot have those attributes…so what kind of “thing” is a work of art?? What’s the problem here??

10. This is Donatello’s St.George. Some critics have said that it “moves with life.” But a hunk of stone (even marble) cannot do that. And didn’t Sartre, no less, say “rocks are hard and do not move.” Another example…

11. Answers?? • Joseph Margolis has also tackled the problem of the ontology of art in some distinguished articles. His solution is that art works are not simply physical objects. They are also “culturally emergent” entities, to which we “impute” some of those properties (which he calls “Intentional”) that aestheticians have found puzzling. • I must confess I still like Pepper’s solutions (see Lecture 14) to the question (what is a work of art?), but I may be prejudiced.

12. Do I understand all this?? • As indicated above, usually profs try to fake it. This time, I won’t. • Goodman, Wollheim, and Margolis are 3 very technical philosophers, and I don’t pretend to understand everything they’ve written. • I agree with the point made by Bertrand Russell, in an essay I have my Intro students read, that the real value of Philosophy may be found, not in the answers we give to our questions, but in the questions themselves. Dogmatists may be happy in their ignorance, unaware of the complexities of the universe around them. • But J. S. Mill was surely right—it really is “better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”