1. Theory Of Art And Magic
2. Art Theory Terms
3. Theory Of Artificial Gravity
4. Theory Of Art Youtube

The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy.Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. Thephilosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also beendebated.

The institutional theory of art is a theory about the nature of art that holds that an object can only be (come) art in the context of the institution known as 'the artworld '.

Theories of art. In R.G, Collingwood's account, the artist struggles to clarify and articulate his initially unfocused feeling. Coming to grasp it and to express it by way of the fashioning of an artwork constitutes a single task. It is not only sensations, feelings, moods and emotions that may be expressed, but also attitudes. TAS Learning Center (Theory of Arts & Sciences) is the #1 Learning Center on Long Island. We provide the best online teaching and online learning resources for any stage in your child’s education. Our program has proven to be an important step towards kids succeeding in schools all across Long Island. There are many different theories for the interpretation of art. Two main theories are the expression theory and the cognitive theory. The expression theory holds that art expresses emotions and feelings. Art is opposed to non-art, art in general to art 'in the full meaning of the word,' and good art to bad art. Each of these categories serves a specific function within Tolstoy’s theory of art, but the reader is often hard put to maintain the segregation of each category from the others which Tolstoy intended.

Contemporary definitions can be classified with respect to thedimensions of art they emphasize. One distinctively modern,conventionalist, sort of definition focuses on art’sinstitutional features, emphasizing the way art changes over time,modern works that appear to break radically with all traditional art,the relational properties of artworks that depend on works’relations to art history, art genres, etc. – more broadly, onthe undeniable heterogeneity of the class of artworks. The moretraditional, less conventionalist sort of definition defended incontemporary philosophy makes use of a broader, more traditionalconcept of aesthetic properties that includes more than art-relationalones, and puts more emphasis on art’s pan-cultural andtrans-historical characteristics – in sum, on commonalitiesacross the class of artworks. Hybrid definitions aim to do justice toboth the traditional aesthetic dimension as well as to theinstitutional and art-historical dimensions of art, while privilegingneither.

• 2. Definitions from the History of Philosophy
• 3. Skepticism about Definitions
• 4. Contemporary Definitions

1. Constraints on Definitions of Art

Any definition of art has to square with the followinguncontroversial facts: (i) entities (artifacts or performances)intentionally endowed by their makers with a significant degree ofaesthetic interest, often greatly surpassing that of most everydayobjects, first appeared hundreds of thousands of years ago and existin virtually every known human culture (Davies 2012); (ii) suchentities are partially comprehensible to cultural outsiders –they are neither opaque nor completely transparent; (iii) suchentities sometimes have non-aesthetic – ceremonial or religious orpropagandistic – functions, and sometimes do not; (iv) suchentities might conceivably be produced by non-human species,terrestrial or otherwise; and it seems at least in principle possiblethat they be extraspecifically recognizable as such; (v)traditionally, artworks are intentionally endowed by their makers withproperties, often sensory, having a significant degree of aestheticinterest, usually surpassing that of most everyday objects; (vi) art’snormative dimension – the high value placed on making andconsuming art – appears to be essential to it, and artworks canhave considerable moral and political as well as aesthetic power;(vii) the arts are always changing, just as the rest of culture is: asartists experiment creatively, new genres, art-forms, and stylesdevelop; standards of taste and sensibilities evolve; understandingsof aesthetic properties, aesthetic experience, and the nature of artevolve; (viii) there are institutions in some but not all cultureswhich involve a focus on artifacts and performances that have a highdegree of aesthetic interest but lack any practical, ceremonial, orreligious use; (ix) entities seemingly lacking aesthetic interest, andentities having a high degree of aesthetic interest, are notinfrequently grouped together as artworks by such institutions; (x)lots of things besides artworks – for example, natural entities(sunsets, landscapes, flowers, shadows), human beings, and abstractentities (theories, proofs, mathematical entities) – haveinteresting aesthetic properties.

Of these facts, those having to do with art’s contingentcultural and historical features are emphasized by some definitions ofart. Other definitions of art give priority to explaining those factsthat reflect art’s universality and continuity with otheraesthetic phenomena. Still other definitions attempt to explain bothart’s contingent characteristics and its more abiding ones whilegiving priority to neither.

Two general constraints on definitions are particularly relevant todefinitions of art. First, given that accepting that something isinexplicable is generally a philosophical last resort, and grantingthe importance of extensional adequacy, list-like or enumerativedefinitions are if possible to be avoided. Enumerative definitions,lacking principles that explain why what is on the list is on thelist, don’t, notoriously, apply to definienda thatevolve, and provide no clue to the next or general case(Tarski’s definition of truth, for example, is standardlycriticized as unenlightening because it rests on a list-likedefinition of primitive denotation; see Field 1972; Devitt 2001;Davidson 2005). Corollary: when everything else is equal (and it iscontroversial whether and when that condition is satisfied in the caseof definitions of art), non-disjunctive definitions are preferable todisjunctive ones. Second, given that most classes outside ofmathematics are vague, and that the existence of borderline cases ischaracteristic of vague classes, definitions that take the class ofartworks to have borderline cases are preferable to definitions thatdon’t (Davies 1991 and 2006; Stecker 2005).

Whether any definition of art does account for these facts and satisfythese constraints, or could account for these facts andsatisfy these constraints, are key questions for aesthetics and thephilosophy of art.

2. Definitions From the History of Philosophy

Classical definitions, at least as they are portrayed incontemporary discussions of the definition of art, take artworks to becharacterized by a single type of property. The standard candidates arerepresentational properties, expressive properties, and formalproperties. So there are representational or mimetic definitions,expressive definitions, and formalist definitions, which hold thatartworks are characterized by their possession of, respectively,representational, expressive, and formal properties. It is notdifficult to find fault with these simple definitions. For example,possessing representational, expressive, and formal properties cannotbe sufficient conditions, since, obviously, instructional manuals arerepresentations, but not typically artworks, human faces and gestureshave expressive properties without being works of art, and both naturalobjects and artifacts produced solely for homely utilitarian purposeshave formal properties but are not artworks.

The ease of these dismissals, though, serves as a reminder of thefact that classical definitions of art are significantly lessphilosophically self-contained or freestanding than are mostcontemporary definitions of art. Each classical definition stands inclose and complicated relationships to its system’s othercomplexly interwoven parts – epistemology, ontology, value theory,philosophy of mind, etc. Relatedly, great philosopherscharacteristically analyze the key theoretical components of theirdefinitions of art in distinctive and subtle ways. For these reasons,understanding such definitions in isolation from the systems orcorpuses of which they are parts is difficult, and brief summaries areinvariably somewhat misleading. Nevertheless, some representativeexamples of historically influential definitions of art offered bymajor figures in the history of philosophy should be mentioned.

2.1 Some examples

Plato holds in the Republic and elsewhere that the arts arerepresentational, or mimetic (sometimes translated“imitative”). Artworks are ontologically dependent on,imitations of, and therefore inferior to, ordinary physicalobjects. Physical objects in turn are ontologically dependent on, andimitations of, and hence inferior to, what is most real, thenon-physical unchanging Forms. Grasped perceptually, artworks presentonly an appearance of an appearance of the Forms, which are grasped byreason alone. Consequently, artistic experience cannot yieldknowledge. Nor do the makers of artworks work from knowledge. Becauseartworks engage an unstable, lower part of the soul, art should besubservient to moral realities, which, along with truth, are moremetaphysically fundamental and, properly understood, more humanlyimportant than, beauty. The arts are not, for Plato, the primarysphere in which beauty operates. The Platonic conception of beauty isextremely wide and metaphysical: there is a Form of Beauty, which canonly be known non-perceptually, but it is more closely related to theerotic than to the arts. (See Janaway 1998, the entry on Plato’s aesthetics, and the entry on Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry.)

Kant has a definition of art, and of fine art; the latter, whichKant calls the art of genius, is “a kind of representation thatis purposive in itself and, though without an end, neverthelesspromotes the cultivation of the mental powers for sociablecommunication” (Kant, Critique of the Power ofJudgment, Guyer translation, section 44, 46).) When fullyunpacked, the definition has representational, formalist andexpressivist elements, and focuses as much on the creative activity ofthe artistic genius (who, according to Kant, possesses an “innatemental aptitude through which nature gives the rule to art”) as on theartworks produced by that activity. Kant’s aesthetic theory is, forarchitectonic reasons, not focused on art. Art for Kant falls underthe broader topic of aesthetic judgment, which covers judgments of thebeautiful, judgments of the sublime, and teleological judgments ofnatural organisms and of nature itself. So Kant’s definition of art isa relatively small part of his theory of aesthetic judgment. AndKant’s theory of aesthetic judgment is itself situated in a hugelyambitious theoretical structure that, famously, aims, to account for,and work out the interconnections between, scientific knowledge,morality, and religious faith. (See the entry on Kant’s Aesthetics and Teleology and the general entry on Immanuel Kant.)

Hegel’s account of art incorporates his view of beauty; he definesbeauty as the sensuous/perceptual appearance or expression of absolutetruth. The best artworks convey, by sensory/perceptual means, thedeepest metaphysical truth. The deepest metaphysical truth, accordingto Hegel, is that the universe is the concrete realization of what isconceptual or rational. That is, what is conceptual or rational isreal, and is the imminent force that animates and propels theself-consciously developing universe. The universe is the concreterealization of what is conceptual or rational, and the rational orconceptual is superior to the sensory. So, as the mind and itsproducts alone are capable of truth, artistic beauty is metaphysicallysuperior to natural beauty. (Hegel, Introduction III (p. 4)). Acentral and defining feature of beautiful works of art is that,through the medium of sensation, each one presents the mostfundamental values of its civilization.^[] Art, therefore, as a cultural expression, operates in the same sphereas religion and philosophy, and expresses the same content asthey. But art “reveals to consciousness the deepest interests ofhumanity” in a different manner than do religion and philosophy,because art alone, of the three, works by sensuous means. So, giventhe superiority of the conceptual to the non-conceptual, and the factthat art’s medium for expressing/presenting culture’s deepest valuesis the sensual or perceptual, art’s medium is limited and inferior incomparison with the medium that religion uses to express the samecontent, viz., mental imagery. Art and religion in turn are, in thisrespect, inferior to philosophy, which employs a conceptual medium topresent its content. Art initially predominates, in each civilization,as the supreme mode of cultural expression, followed, successively, byreligion and philosophy. Similarly, because the broadly “logical”relations between art, religion and philosophy determine the actualstructure of art, religion, and philosophy, and because cultural ideasabout what is intrinsically valuable develop from sensuous tonon-sensuous conceptions, history is divided into periods that reflectthe teleological development from the sensuous to the conceptual. Artin general, too, develops in accord with the historical growth ofnon-sensuous or conceptual conceptions from sensuous conceptions, andeach individual art-form develops historically in the same way(Hegel, Lectures on Fine Art; Wicks 1993, see also theentries on Hegel and on Hegel’s Aesthetics).

For treatments of other influential definitionsof art, inseparable from the complex philosophical systems or corpuses in whichthey occur, see, for example, the entries on 18th Century German Aesthetics, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Dewey’s Aesthetics.

3. Skepticism about Definitions of Art

Skeptical doubts about the possibility and value of a definition ofart have figured importantly in the discussion in aesthetics since the1950s, and though their influence has subsided somewhat, uneasinessabout the definitional project persists. (See section 4, below, andalso Kivy 1997, Brand 2000, and Walton 2007).

3.1 Skepticisms inspired by views of concepts, history, Marxism, feminism

A common family of arguments, inspired by Wittgenstein’sfamous remarks about games (Wittgenstein 1953), has it that thephenomena of art are, by their nature, too diverse to admit of theunification that a satisfactory definition strives for, or that adefinition of art, were there to be such a thing, would exert astifling influence on artistic creativity. One expression of thisimpulse is Weitz’s Open Concept Argument: any concept isopen if a case can be imagined which would call for some sort ofdecision on our part to extend the use of the concept to cover it, orto close the concept and invent a new one to deal with the new case;all open concepts are indefinable; and there are cases calling for adecision about whether to extend or close the concept of art. Hence artis indefinable (Weitz 1956). Against this it is claimed thatchange does not, in general, rule out the preservation of identity overtime, that decisions about concept-expansion may be principled ratherthan capricious, and that nothing bars a definition of art fromincorporating a novelty requirement.

A second sort of argument, less common today than in theheyday of a certain form of extreme Wittgensteinianism, urges that theconcepts that make up the stuff of most definitions of art(expressiveness, form) are embedded in general philosophical theorieswhich incorporate traditional metaphysics and epistemology. But sincetraditional metaphysics and epistemology are prime instances oflanguage gone on conceptually confused holiday, definitions of artshare in the conceptual confusions of traditionalphilosophy (Tilghman 1984).

A third sort of argument, more historically inflected than the first,takes off from an influential study by the historian of philosophyPaul Kristeller, in which he argued that the modern system of the fivemajor arts [painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and music]which underlies all modern aesthetics … is of comparativelyrecent origin and did not assume definite shape before the eighteenthcentury, although it had many ingredients which go back to classical,mediaeval, and Renaissance thought. (Kristeller, 1951) Since that list of five arts issomewhat arbitrary, and since even those five do not share a singlecommon nature, but rather are united, at best, only by severaloverlapping features, and since the number of art forms has increasedsince the eighteenth century, Kristeller’s work may be taken tosuggest that our concept of art differs from that of the eighteenthcentury. As a matter of historical fact, there simply is no stabledefiniendum for a definition of art to capture.

A fourth sort of argument suggests that a definition of art statingindividually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for a thing tobe an artwork, is likely to be discoverable only if cognitive sciencemakes it plausible to think that humans categorize things in terms ofnecessary and sufficient conditions. But, the argument continues,cognitive science actually supports the view that the structure ofconcepts mirrors the way humans categorize things – which is withrespect to their similarity to prototypes (or exemplars), and not interms of necessary and sufficient conditions. So the quest for adefinition of art that states individually necessary and jointlysufficient conditions is misguided and not likely to succeed (Dean2003). Against this it has been urged that psychological theoriesof concepts like the prototype theory and its relatives can provide atbest an account of how people in fact classify things, but notan account of correct classifications of extra-psychologicalphenomena, and that, even if relevant, prototype theory and otherpsychological theories of concepts are at present too controversial todraw substantive philosophical morals from (Rey 1983; Adajian 2005).

A fifth argument against defining art, with a normative tinge that ispsychologistic rather than sociopolitical, takes the fact that thereis no philosophical consensus about the definition of art as reason tohold that no unitary concept of art exists. Concepts of art, like allconcepts, after all, should be used for the purpose(s) they bestserve. But not all concepts of art serve all purposes equallywell. So not all art concepts should be used for the same purposes.Art should be defined only if there is a unitary concept of art thatserves all of art’s various purposes – historical,conventional, aesthetic, appreciative, communicative, and so on. So,since there is no purpose-independent use of the concept of art, artshould not be defined (Mag Uidhir and Magnus 2011; cf. Meskin 2008).In response, it is noted that some account of what makes variousconcepts of art concepts of art is still required; thisleaves open the possibility of some degree of unity beneath theapparent multiplicity. The fact (if it is one) that different conceptsof art are used for different purposes does not itself imply that theyare not connected in ordered, to-some-degree systematic ways. Therelation between (say) the historical concept of art and theappreciative concept of art is not an accidental, unsystematicrelation, like that between river banks and savings banks, but issomething like the relation between Socrates’ healthiness andthe healthiness of Socrates’ diet. That is, it is not evidentthat there exist a mere arbitrary heap or disjunction of art concepts,constituting an unsystematic patchwork. Perhaps there is a singleconcept of art with different facets that interlock in an ordered way,or else a multiplicity of concepts that constitute a unity because oneis at the core, and the others depend asymmetrically on it. (The lastis an instance of core-dependent homonymy; see the entry on Aristotle, section on Essentialism andHomonymy.) Multiplicity alone doesn’t entail pluralism.

A sixth, broadly Marxian sort of objection rejects the project ofdefining art as an unwitting (and confused) expression of a harmfulideology. On this view, the search for a definition of artpresupposes, wrongly, that the concept of the aesthetic is acreditable one. But since the concept of the aesthetic necessarilyinvolves the equally bankrupt concept of disinterestedness, its useadvances the illusion that what is most real about things can andshould be grasped or contemplated without attending to the social andeconomic conditions of their production. Definitions of art,consequently, spuriously confer ontological dignity and respectabilityon social phenomena that probably in fact call more properly forrigorous social criticism and change. Their real function isideological, not philosophical (Eagleton 1990).

Seventh, the members of a complex of skeptically-flavored arguments,from feminist philosophy of art, begin with premises to the effectthat art and art-related concepts and practices have beensystematically skewed by sex or gender. Such premises are supportedby a variety of considerations. (a) The artworks the Western artisticcanon recognizes as great are dominated by male-centered perspectivesand stereotypes, and almost all the artists the canon recognizes asgreat are men – unsurprisingly, given economic, social, andinstitutional impediments that prevented women from making art at all.Moreover, the concept of genius developed historically in such a wayas to exclude women artists (Battersby, 1989, Korsmeyer 2004). (b) Thefine arts’ focus on purely aesthetic, non-utilitarian value resultedin the marginalization as mere “crafts” of items of considerableaesthetic interest made and used by women for domestic practicalpurposes. Moreover, because all aesthetic judgments are situated andparticular, there can be no such thing as disinterested taste. Ifthere is no such thing as disinterested taste, then it is hard to seehow there could be universal standards of aesthetic excellence. Thenon-existence of universal standards of aesthetic excellenceundermines the idea of an artistic canon (and with it the project ofdefining art). Art as historically constituted, and art-relatedpractices and concepts, then, reflect views and practices thatpresuppose and perpetuate the subordination of women. The data thatdefinitions of art are supposed to explain are biased, corrupt andincomplete. As a consequence, present definitions of art,incorporating or presupposing as they do a framework that incorporatesa history of systematically biased, hierarchical, fragmentary, andmistaken understandings of art and art-related phenomena and concepts,may be so androcentric as to be untenable. Some theorists havesuggested that different genders have systematically unique artisticstyles, methods, or modes of appreciating and valuing art. If so,then a separate canon and gynocentric definitions of art are indicated(Battersby 1989, Frueh 1991). In any case, in the face of thesefacts, the project of defining art in anything like the traditionalway is to be regarded with suspicion (Brand, 2000).

An eighth argument sort of skeptical argument concludes that, insofaras almost all contemporary definitions foreground the nature ofartworks, rather than the individual arts to which(most? all?) artworks belong, they are philosophically unproductive(Lopes, 2014).^[2] The grounds for this conclusion concern disagreements among standarddefinitions as to the artistic status of entities whose status is fortheoretical reasons unclear – e.g., things like ordinary bottleracks(Duchamp’s Bottlerack) and silence (John Cage’s 4′33″).If these hard cases are artworks, what makes them so, given theirapparent lack of any of the traditional properties of artworks? Are,they, at best, marginal cases? On the other hand, if they are notartworks, then why have generations of experts – art historians,critics, and collectors – classified them as such? And to whom elseshould one look to determine the true nature of art? (There are, it isclaimed, few or no empirical studies of art full stop, thoughempirical studies of the individual arts abound.) Such disputesinevitably end in stalemate. Stalemate results because (a) standardartwork-focused definitions of art endorse different criteria oftheory choice, and (b) on the basis of their preferred criteria,appeal to incompatible intuitions about the status of suchtheoretically-vexed cases. In consequence, disagreements betweenstandard definitions of art that foreground artworks areunresolvable. To avoid this stalemate, an alternative definitionalstrategy that foregrounds the arts rather than individual artworks, isindicated. (See section 4.5.)

Theory Of Art And Magic

3.2 Some descendants of skepticism

Philosophers influenced by the moderate Wittgensteinian stricturesdiscussed above have offered family resemblance accounts of art, which,as they purport to be non-definitions, may be usefully considered atthis point. Two species of family resemblance views will be considered:the resemblance-to-a-paradigm version, and the clusterversion.

On the resemblance-to-a-paradigm version, something is, or isidentifiable as, an artwork if it resembles, in the right way, certainparadigm artworks, which possess most although not necessarily all ofart’s typical features. (The “is identifiable”qualification is intended to make the family resemblance view somethingmore epistemological than a definition, although it is unclear thatthis really avoids a commitment to constitutive claims aboutart’s nature.) Against this view: since things do notresemble each other simpliciter, but only in at least onerespect or other, the account is either far too inclusive, sinceeverything resembles everything else in some respect or other, or, ifthe variety of resemblance is specified, tantamount to a definition,since resemblance in that respect will be either a necessary orsufficient condition for being an artwork. The family resemblanceview raises questions, moreover, about the membership and unity of theclass of paradigm artworks. If the account lacks an explanation of whysome items and not others go on the list of paradigm works, it seemsexplanatorily deficient. But if it includes a principle that governsmembership on the list, or if expertise is required to constitute thelist, then the principle, or whatever properties the experts’judgments track, seem to be doing the philosophical work.

The cluster version of the family resemblance view has been defendedby a number of philosophers (Bond 1975, Dissanayake 1990, Dutton2006, Gaut 2000). The view typically provides a list of properties, no one ofwhich is a necessary condition for being a work of art, but which arejointly sufficient for being a work of art, and which is such that atleast one proper subset thereof is sufficient for being a work ofart. Lists offered vary, but overlap considerably. Here is one, due to Gaut: (1)possessing positive aesthetic properties; (2) being expressive ofemotion; (3) being intellectually challenging; (4) being formallycomplex and coherent; (5) having the capacity to convey complexmeanings; (6) exhibiting an individual point of view; (7) beingoriginal; (8) being an artifact or performance which is the product ofa high degree of skill; (9) belonging to an established artistic form;(10) being the product of an intention to make a work of art (Gaut2000). The cluster account has been criticized on several grounds.First, given its logical structure, it is in fact equivalent to along, complicated, but finite, disjunction, which makes it difficultto see why it isn’t a definition (Davies 2006). Second, if the listof properties is incomplete, as some cluster theorists hold, then somejustification or principle would be needed for extending it. Third,the inclusion of the ninth property on the list, belonging to anestablished art form, seems to regenerate (or duck), rather than answer, thedefinitional question. Finally, it is worth noting that, althoughcluster theorists stress what they take to be the motley heterogeneity of theclass of artworks, they tend with surprising regularity to tacitlygive the aesthetic a special, perhaps unifying, status among theproperties they put forward as merely disjunctive. One clustertheorist, for example, gives a list very similar to the one discussedabove (it includes representational properties, expressiveness,creativity, exhibiting a high degree of skill, belonging to anestablished artform), but omits aesthetic properties on the groundsthat it is the combination of the other items on the list which,combined in the experience of the work of art, are precisely theaesthetic qualities of the work (Dutton 2006). Gaut, whose list iscited above, includes aesthetic properties as a separate item on thelist, but construes them very narrowly; the difference between theseways of formulating the cluster view appears to be mainly nominal. Andan earlier cluster theorist defines artworks as all and only thosethings that belong to any instantiation of an artform, offers a listof seven properties all of which together are intended to capture thecore of what it is to be an artform, though none is either necessaryor sufficient, and then claims that having aesthetic value (of thesame sort as mountains, sunsets, mathematical theorems) is “whatart is for” (Bond 1975).

4. Contemporary Definitions

Definitions of art attempt to make sense of two different sorts offacts: art has important historically contingent cultural features, aswell as trans-historical, pan-cultural characteristics that point inthe direction of a relatively stable aesthetic core. (Theorists whoregard art as an invention of eighteenth-century Europe will, ofcourse, regard this way of putting the matter as tendentious, on thegrounds that entities produced outside that culturally distinctiveinstitution do not fall under the extension of “art” andhence are irrelevant to the art-defining project (Shiner2001). Whether the concept of art is precise enough to justify thismuch confidence about what falls under its extension claim isunclear.) Conventionalist definitions take art’s contingentcultural features to be explanatorily fundamental, and aim to capturethe phenomena – revolutionary modern art, the traditional closeconnection of art with the aesthetic, the possibility of autonomousart traditions, etc. – in social/historicalterms. Classically-flavored or traditional definitions (also sometimescalled “functionalist”) definitions reverse thisexplanatory order. Such classically-flavored definitions taketraditional concepts like the aesthetic (or allied concepts like theformal, or the expressive) as basic, and aim to account for thephenomena by making those concepts harder – for example, byendorsing a concept of the aesthetic rich enough to includenon-perceptual properties, or by attempting an integration of thoseconcepts (e.g., Eldridge, section 4.4 below) .

4.1 Conventionalist Definitions: Institutional and Historical

Conventionalist definitions deny that art has essential connection toaesthetic properties, or to formal properties, or to expressiveproperties, or to any type of property taken by traditionaldefinitions to be essential to art. Conventionalist definitions havebeen strongly influenced by the emergence, in the twentieth century,of artworks that seem to differ radically from all previousartworks. Avant-garde works like Marcel Duchamp’s“ready-mades” – ordinary unaltered objects likesnow-shovels (In Advance of the Broken Arm) and bottle-racks – conceptual works like Robert Barry’s All the things I knowbut of which I am not at the moment thinking – 1:36 PM; June 15,1969, and John Cage’s 4′33″, have seemed tomany philosophers to lack or even, somehow, repudiate, the traditionalproperties of art: intended aesthetic interest, artifactuality, evenperceivability. Conventionalist definitions have also been stronglyinfluenced by the work of a number of historically-mindedphilosophers, who have documented the rise and development of modernideas of the fine arts, the individual arts, the work of art, and theaesthetic (Kristeller, Shiner, Carroll, Goehr, Kivy).

Conventionalist definitions come in two varieties, institutional andhistorical. Institutionalist conventionalism, or institutionalism, asynchronic view, typically hold that to be a work of art is to be anartifact of a kind created, by an artist, to be presented to anartworld public (Dickie 1984). Historical conventionalism, adiachronic view, holds that artworks necessarily stand in anart-historical relation to some set of earlier artworks.

4.2 Institutional Definitions

The groundwork for institutional definitions was laid by Arthur Danto,better known to non-philosophers as the long-time influential artcritic for the Nation. Danto coined the term“artworld”, by which he meant “an atmosphere of arttheory.” Danto’s definition has been glossed as follows:something is a work of art if and only if (i) it has a subject (ii)about which it projects some attitude or point of view (has a style)(iii) by means of rhetorical ellipsis (usually metaphorical) whichellipsis engages audience participation in filling in what is missing,and (iv) where the work in question and the interpretations thereofrequire an art historical context (Danto, Carroll). Clause (iv) iswhat makes the definition institutionalist. The view has beencriticized for entailing that art criticism written in a highlyrhetorical style is art, lacking but requiring an independent accountof what makes a context art historical, and for not applyingto music.

The most prominent and influential institutionalism is that of GeorgeDickie. Dickie’s institutionalism has evolved overtime. According to an early version, a work of art is an artifact uponwhich some person(s) acting on behalf of the artworld has conferredthe status of candidate for appreciation (Dickie 1974). Dickie’s morerecent version consists of an interlocking set of five definitions:(1) An artist is a person who participates with understanding in themaking of a work of art. (2) A work of art is an artifact of a kindcreated to be presented to an artworld public. (3) A public is a setof persons the members of which are prepared in some degree tounderstand an object which is presented to them. (4) The artworld isthe totality of all artworld systems. (5) An artworld system is aframework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to anartworld public (Dickie 1984). Both versions have been widelycriticized. Philosophers have objected that art created outside anyinstitution seems possible, although the definition rules it out, andthat the artworld, like any institution, seems capable of error. Ithas also been urged that the definition’s obvious circularity isvicious, and that, given the inter-definition of the key concepts(artwork, artworld system, artist, artworld public) it lacks anyinformative way of distinguishing art institutions systemsfrom other, structurally similar, social institutions (D. Davies 2004,pp. 248–249, notes that both the artworld and the“commerceworld” seem to fall under that definition). Earlyon, Dickie claimed that anyone who sees herself as a member of theartworld is a member of the artworld: if this is true, thenunless there are constraints on the kinds of things the artworld canput forward as artworks or candidate artworks, any entity can be anartwork (though not all are), which appears overly expansive. Finally,Matravers has helpfully distinguished strong andweak institutionalism. Strong institutionalism holds thatthere is some reason that is always the reason the art institution hasfor saying that something is a work of art. Weak institutionalismholds that, for every work of art, there is some reason or other thatthe institution has for saying that it is a work of art (Matravers2000). Weak institutionalism, in particular, raises questions aboutart’s unity: if absolutely nothing unifies the reasons that theartworld gives for conferring art-hood on things, then the unity ofthe class of artworks is vanishingly small. Conventionalist views,with their emphasis on art’s heterogeneity, swallow thisimplication. From the perspective of traditional definitions, doingsso underplays art’s substantial if incomplete unity, while leaving ita puzzle why art would be worth caring about.

Some recent versions of institutionalism depart from Dickie’s byaccepting the burden, which Dickie rejected, of providing asubstantive, non-circular account of what it is to be an artinstitution or an artworld. One, due to David Davies, does so bybuilding in Nelson Goodman’s account of aesthetic symbolicfunctions. Another, due to Abell, combines Searle’s account of socialinstitutions with Gaut’s characterization of art-making properties,and builds an account of artistic value on that coupling.

Davies’ neo-institutionalism holds that making an artworkrequires articulating an artistic statement, which requires specifyingartistic properties, which in turn requires the manipulation of anartistic vehicle. Goodman’s “symptoms of theaesthetic” are utilized to clarify the conditions under which apractice of making is a practice of artistic making: onGoodman’s view, a symbol functions aesthetically when it issyntactically dense, semantically dense, relatively replete, andcharacterized by multiple and complex reference (D. Davies 2004;Goodman 1968; see the entry on Goodman’s aesthetics).Manipulating an artistic vehicle is in turn possible only if theartist consciously operates with reference to shared understandingsembodied in the practices of a community of receivers. So art’snature is institutional in the broad sense (or, perhaps better,socio-cultural). By way of criticism, Davies’neo-institutionalism may be questioned on the grounds that, since allpictorial symbols are syntactically dense, semantically dense,relatively replete, and often exemplify the properties they represent,it seems to entail that every colored picture, including those in anycatalog of industrial products, is an artwork (Abell 2012).

Abell’s institutional definition adapts Searle’s view of social kinds:what it is for some social kind, F, to be F is for it to becollectively believed to be F (Abell 2012; Searle 1995, 2010;and see the entry on social institutions).On Abell’s view, more specifically, an institution’s type isdetermined by the valued function(s) that it was collectively believedat its inception to promote. The valued functions collective belief inwhich make an institution an art institution are those spelled out byGaut in his cluster account (see section 3.1, above). That is,something is an art institution if and only if it is an institutionwhose existence is due to its being perceived to perform certainfunctions, which functions form a significant subset of the following:promoting positive aesthetic qualities; promoting the expression ofemotion; facilitating the posing of intellectual challenges, and therest of Gaut’s list. Plugging in Gaut’s list yields the finaldefinition: something is an artwork if and only if it is the productof an art institution (as just defined) and it directly effects the effectiveness with which that institution performs the perceived functions to whichits existence is due. One worry is whether Searle’s account ofinstitutions is up to the task required of it. Some institutionalsocial kinds have this trait: something can fail to be a token of thatkind even if there is collective agreement that it counts as a tokenof that kind. Suppose someone gives a big cocktail party, to whicheveryone in Paris invited, and things get so out of hand that thecasualty rate is greater than the Battle of Austerlitz. Even ifeveryone thinks the event was a cocktail party, it is possible(contrary to Searle) that they are mistaken: it may have been a war orbattle. It’s not clear that art isn’t like this. If so, then the factthat an institution is collectively believed to be an art institutionneedn’t suffice to make it so (Khalidi 2013; see also the entry on social institutions).^[3]A second worry: if its failure to specify which subsets of the tencluster properties suffice to make something an artwork significantlyflaws Gaut’s cluster account, then failure to specify which subsets ofGaut’s ten properties suffice to make something an art institutionsignificantly flaws Abellian institutionalism.

4.3 Historical Definitions

Historical definitions hold that what characterizes artworks isstanding in some specified art-historical relation to some specifiedearlier artworks, and disavow any commitment to a trans-historicalconcept of art, or the “artish.” Historical definitionscome in several varieties. All of them are, or resemble, inductivedefinitions: they claim that certain entities belong unconditionallyto the class of artworks, while others do so because they stand in theappropriate relations thereto. According to the best known version,Levinson’s intentional-historical definition, an artwork is a thingthat has been seriously intended for regard in any way preexisting orprior artworks are or were correctly regarded (Levinson 1990). Asecond version, historical narrativism, comes in several varieties. Onone, a sufficient but not necessary condition for the identificationof a candidate as a work of art is the construction of a truehistorical narrative according to which the candidate was created byan artist in an artistic context with a recognized and live artisticmotivation, and as a result of being so created, it resembles at leastone acknowledged artwork (Carroll 1993). On another, more ambitiousand overtly nominalistic version of historical narrativism, somethingis an artwork if and only if (1) there are internal historicalrelations between it and already established artworks; (2) theserelations are correctly identified in a narrative; and (3) thatnarrative is accepted by the relevant experts. The experts donot detect that certain entities are artworks; rather, thefact that the experts assert that certain properties are significantin particular cases is constitutive of art (Stock 2003).

The similarity of these views to institutionalism is obvious, andthe criticisms offered parallel those urged against institutionalism.First, historical definitions appear to require, but lack, anyinformative characterization of art traditions (art functions, artisticcontexts, etc.) and hence any way of informatively distinguishing them(and likewise art functions, or artistic predecessors) fromnon-art traditions (non-art functions, non-artisticpredecessors). Correlatively, non-Western art, or alien, autonomousart of any kind appears to pose a problem for historical views: anyautonomous art tradition or artworks – terrestrial,extra-terrestrial, or merely possible – causally isolated fromour art tradition, is either ruled out by the definition, which seemsto be a reductio, or included, which concedes the existenceof a supra-historical concept of art. So, too, there could be entitiesthat for adventitious reasons are not correctly identified inhistorical narratives, although in actual fact they stand in relationsto established artworks that make them correctly describablein narratives of the appropriate sort. Historical definitions entailthat such entities aren’t artworks, but it seems at least as plausible to say that they are artworks that are not identified as such. Second,historical definitions also require, but do not provide asatisfactory, informative account of the basis case – the firstartworks, or ur-artworks, in the case of the intentional-historicaldefinitions, or the first or central art-forms, in the case ofhistorical functionalism. Third, nominalistic historical definitionsseem to face a version of the Euthyphro dilemma. For eithersuch definitions include substantive characterizations of what it isto be an expert, or they don’t. If, on one hand, they include nocharacterization of what it is to be an expert, and hence noexplanation as to why the list of experts contains the people it does,then they imply that what makes things artworks is inexplicable. Onthe other hand, suppose such definitions provide a substantive accountof what it is to be an expert, so that to be an expert is to possesssome ability lacked by non-experts (taste, say) in virtue of thepossession of which they are able to discern historical connectionsbetween established artworks and candidate artworks. Then thedefinition’s claim to be interestingly historical isquestionable, because it makes art status a function of whateverability it is that permits experts to discern the art-makingproperties.

Defenders of historical definitions have replies. First, as regardsautonomous art traditions, it can be held that anything we wouldrecognize as an art tradition or an artisticpractice would display aesthetic concerns, because aesthetic concernshave been central from the start, and persisted centrally forthousands of years, in the Western art tradition. Hence it is anhistorical, not a conceptual truth that anything we recognize as anart practice will centrally involve the aesthetic; it is just thataesthetic concerns that have always dominated our art tradition(Levinson 2002). The idea here is that if the reason that anythingwe’d take to be a Φ-tradition would have Ψ-concerns isthat our Φ-tradition has focused on Ψ-concerns since itsinception, then it is not essential to Φ-traditions that they haveΨ-concerns, and Φ is a purely historical concept. Butthis principle entails, implausibly, that every concept is purelyhistorical. Suppose that we discovered a new civilization whoseinhabitants could predict how the physical world works with greatprecision, on the basis of a substantial body of empirically acquiredknowledge that they had accumulated over centuries. The reason wewould credit them with having a scientific tradition mightwell be that our own scientific tradition has since its inceptionfocused on explaining things. It does not seem to follow that scienceis a purely historical concept with no essential connection toexplanatory aims. (Other theorists hold that it is historicallynecessary that art begins with the aesthetic, but deny thatart’s nature is to be defined in terms of its historicalunfolding (Davies 1997).) Second, as to the first artworks, or thecentral art-forms or functions, some theorists hold that an account ofthem can only take the form of an enumeration. Stecker takes thisapproach: he says that the account of what makes something a centralart form at a given time is, at its core, institutional, and that thecentral artforms can only be listed (Stecker 1997 and 2005). Whetherrelocating the list at a different, albeit deeper, level in thedefinition renders the definition sufficiently informative is an openquestion. Third, as to the Euthyphro-style dilemma, it mightbe held that the categorial distinction between artworks and“mere real things” (Danto 1981) explains the distinctionbetween experts and non-experts. Experts are able, it is said, tocreate new categories of art. When created, new categories bring withthem new universes of discourse. New universes of discourse in turnmake reasons available that otherwise would not be available. Hence,on this view, it is both the case that the experts’ say-so alonesuffices to make mere real things into artworks, and also true thatexperts’ conferrals of art-status have reasons (McFee2011).

4.4 Traditional (mainly aesthetic) definitions

Traditional definitions take some function(s) or intended function(s)to be definitive of artworks. Here only aesthetic definitions, whichconnect art essentially with the aesthetic – aesthetic judgments,experience, or properties – will be considered. Differentaesthetic definitions incorporate different views of aestheticproperties and judgments. See the entry on aesthetic judgment.

As noted above, some philosophers lean heavily on a distinctionbetween aesthetic properties and artistic properties, taking theformer to be perceptually striking qualities that can be directlyperceived in works, without knowledge of their origin and purpose, andthe latter to be relational properties that works possess in virtue oftheir relations to art history, art genres, etc. It is also, ofcourse, possible to hold a less restrictive view of aestheticproperties, on which aesthetic properties need not be perceptual; onthis broader view, it is unnecessary to deny what it seems pointlessto deny, that abstracta like mathematical entities and scientific lawspossess aesthetic properties.)

Monroe Beardsley’s definition holds that an artwork:“either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable ofaffording an experience with marked aesthetic character or(incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type ofarrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity”(Beardsley 1982, 299). (For more on Beardsley, see the entry on Beardsley’s aesthetics.) Beardsley’s conception of aesthetic experience is Deweyan:aesthetic experiences are experiences that are complete, unified,intense experiences of the way things appear to us, and are, moreover,experiences which are controlled by the things experienced (see theentry on Dewey’s aesthetics).Zangwill’s aesthetic definition of art says that something is awork of art if and only if someone had an insight that certainaesthetic properties would be determined by certain nonaestheticproperties, and for this reason the thing was intentionally endowedwith the aesthetic properties in virtue of the nonaesthetic propertiesas envisaged in the insight (Zangwill 1995a,b). Aesthetic propertiesfor Zangwill are those judgments that are the subject of“verdictive aesthetic judgments” (judgements of beauty andugliness) and “substantive aesthetic judgements” (e.g., ofdaintiness, elegance, delicacy, etc.). The latter are ways of beingbeautiful or ugly; aesthetic in virtue of a special close relation toverdictive judgments, which are subjectively universal. Otheraesthetic definitions build in different accounts of theaesthetic. Eldridge’s aesthetic definition holds that the satisfying appropriateness to one another of a thing’s form and content is the aesthetic quality possession of which is necessary and sufficient fora thing’s being art (Eldridge 1985). Or one might define aestheticproperties as those having an evaluative component, whose perceptioninvolves the perception of certain formal base properties, such asshape and color (De Clercq 2002), and construct an aestheticdefinition incorporating that view.

Views which combine features of institutional and aestheticdefinitions also exist. Iseminger, for example, builds a definition onan account of appreciation, on which to appreciate a thing’sbeing F is to find experiencing its being F to bevaluable in itself, and an account of aesthetic communication (which itis the function of the artworld to promote) (Iseminger 2004).

Aesthetic definitions have been criticized for being both too narrowand too broad. They are held to be too narrow because they are unableto cover influential modern works like Duchamp’s ready-mades andconceptual works like Robert Barry’s All the things I know but ofwhich I am not at the moment thinking – 1:36 PM; June 15, 1969,which appear to lack aesthetic properties. (Duchamp famously assertedthat his urinal, Fountain, was selected for its lack ofaesthetic features.) Aesthetic definitions are held to be too broadbecause beautifully designed automobiles, neatly manicured lawns, andproducts of commercial design are often created with the intention ofbeing objects of aesthetic appreciation, but are not artworks.Moreover, aesthetic views have been held to have trouble making senseof bad art (see Dickie 2001; Davies 2006, p. 37). Finally, moreradical doubts about aesthetic definitions center on theintelligibility and usefulness of the aesthetic. Beardsley’s view, forexample, has been criticized by Dickie, who has also offeredinfluential criticisms of the idea of an aesthetic attitude (Dickie1965, Cohen 1973, Kivy 1975).

To these criticisms several responses have been offered. First, theless restrictive conception of aesthetic properties mentioned above,on which they may be based on non-perceptual formal properties, can bedeployed. On this view, conceptual works would have aestheticfeatures, much the same way that mathematical entities are oftenclaimed to (Shelley 2003, Carroll 2004). Second, a distinction may bedrawn between time-sensitive properties, whose standard observationconditions include an essential reference to the temporal location ofthe observer, and non-time-sensitive properties, which do not.Higher-order aesthetic properties like drama, humor, and irony, whichaccount for a significant part of the appeal of Duchamp’s andCage’s works, on this view, would derive from time-sensitiveproperties (Zemach 1997). Third, it might be held that it is thecreativeact of presenting something that is in therelevant sense unfamiliar, into a new context, the artworld, which hasaesthetic properties. Or, fourth, it might be held that(Zangwill’s “second-order” strategy) works likeready-mades lack aesthetic functions, but are parasitic upon, becausemeant to be considered in the context of, works that do have aestheticfunctions, and therefore constitute marginal borderline cases of artthat do not merit the theoretical primacy they are oftengiven. Finally, it can be flatly denied that the ready-mades wereworks of art (Beardsley 1982).

As to the over-inclusiveness of aesthetic definitions, a distinctionmight be drawn between primary and secondary functions. Or it may bemaintained that some cars, lawns, and products of industrial design areon the art/non-art borderline, and so don’t constitute clearand decisive counter-examples. Or, if the claim that aesthetic theoriesfail to account for bad art depends on holding that some works haveabsolutely no aesthetic value whatsoever, as opposed to somenon-zero amount, however infinitesimal, it may be wondered whatjustifies that assumption.

4.5 Hybrid (Disjunctive) Definitions

Hybrid definitions characteristically disjoin at least oneinstitutional component with at least one aesthetic component, aimingthereby to accommodate both more traditional art and avant-garde artthat appears to lack any significant aesthetic dimension. (Suchdefinitions could also be classified as institutional, on the groundsthat they make provenance sufficient for being a work of art.) Hencethey inherit a feature of conventionalist definitions: in appealing toart institutions, artworlds, arts, art functions, and so on, theyeither include substantive accounts of what it is to be anartinstitution/world/genre/-form/function, or areuninformatively circular.

One such disjunctive definition, Longworth and Scarantino’s, adaptsGaut’s list of ten clustering properties, where that list (see 3.5above) includes institutional properties (e.g., belonging to anestablished art form) and traditional ones (e.g., possessing positiveaesthetic properties); see also Longworth and Scarantino 2010. Thecore idea is that art is defined by a disjunction of minimallysufficient and disjunctively necessary conditions; to say that adisjunct is a minimally sufficient constitutive condition forart-hood, is to say that every proper subset of it is insufficient forart-hood. An account of what it is for a concept to have disjunctivedefining conditions is also supplied. The definition of art itself isas follows: ∃Z∃Y (Art iff (Z ∨Y)), where (a) Z and Y, formed from properties onGaut’s cluster list, are either non-empty conjunctions or non-emptydisjunctions of conjunctions or individual properties; (b) there issome indeterminacy over exactly which disjuncts are sufficient; (c)Z does not entail Y and Y does not entailZ; (d) Z does not entail Art and Y does notentail Art. Instantiation of either Z or Y suffices forart-hood; something can be art only if at least one of Z,Y is instantiated; and the third condition is included toprevent the definition from collapsing into a classical one. Theaccount of what it is for concept C to have disjunctivedefining conditions is as follows: C iff (Z ∨Y), where (i) Z and Y are non-empty conjunctionsor non-empty disjunctions of conjunctions or individual properties;(ii) Z does not entail Y and Y does not entailZ; (iii) Z does not entail C and Y does notentail C. A worry concerns condition (iii): as written, it seems torender the account of disjunctive defining conditionsself-contradictory. For if Z and Y are each minimallysufficient for C, it is impossible that Z does notentail C and that Y does not entail C. If so,then nothing can satisfy the conditions said to be necessary andsufficient for a concept to have disjunctive defining conditions.

A second disjunctive hybrid definition, with an historical cast,Robert Stecker’s historical functionalism, holds that an item is anartwork at time t, where t is not earlier than thetime at which the item is made, if and only if it is in one of thecentral art forms at t and is made with the intention offulfilling a function art has at t or it is an artifact thatachieves excellence in achieving such a function (Stecker 2005). Aquestion for Stecker’s view is whether or not it provides an adequateaccount of what it is for a function to be an art function, andwhether, consequently, it can accommodate anti-aesthetic ornon-aesthetic art. The grounds given for thinking that it can arethat, while art’s original functions were aesthetic, those functions,and the intentions with which art is made, can change in unforeseeableways. Moreover, aesthetic properties are not always preeminent inart’s predecessor concepts (Stecker 2000). A worry is that if theoperative assumption is that if x belongs to a predecessortradition of T then x belongs to T, thepossibility is not ruled out that if, for example, the tradition ofmagic is a predecessor tradition of the scientific tradition, thenentities that belong to the magic tradition but lacking any of thestandard hallmarks of science are scientific entities.

Art Theory Terms

A third hybrid definition, also disjunctive, is the cladisticdefinition defended by Stephen Davies. who holds that something isart (a) if it shows excellence of skill and achievement in realizingsignificant aesthetic goals, and either doing so is its primary,identifying function or doing so makes a vital contribution to therealization of its primary, identifying function, or (b) if it fallsunder an art genre or art form established and publicly recognizedwithin an art tradition, or (c) if it is intended by itsmaker/presenter to be art and its maker/presenter does what isnecessary and appropriate to realizing that intention (Davies, 2015).(In biology, a clade is a segment in the tree of life: a groupof organisms and the common ancestor they share.) Artworlds are to becharacterized in terms of their origins: they begin with prehistoricart ancestors, and grow into artworlds. Hence all artworks occupy aline of descent from their prehistoric art ancestors; that line ofdescent comprises an art tradition that grows into an artworld. Sothe definition is bottom-up and resolutely anthropocentric. A worry:the view seems to entail that art traditions can undergo any changeswhatsoever and remain art traditions, since, no matter how distant,every occupant of the right line of descent is part of the arttradition. This seems to amount to saying that as long as they remaintraditions at all, art traditions cannot die. Whether art is immortalin this sense seems open to question. A second worry is that therequirement that every art tradition and artworld stand in some lineof descent from prehistoric humanoids makes it in principle impossiblefor any nonhuman species to make art, as long as that species fails tooccupy the right location in the tree of life. While theepistemological challenges that identifying artworks made by nonhumansmight pose could be very considerable, this consequence of thecladistic definition’s emphasis on lineage rather than traits raises aconcern about excessively insularity.

A fourth hybrid definition is the “buck-passing” view of Lopes, whichattempts an escape from the stalemate between artwork-focuseddefinitions over avant-garde anti-aesthetic cases by adopting astrategy that shifts the focus of the definition of art away fromartworks. The strategy is to recenter philosophical efforts ondifferent problems, which require attention anyway: (a) the problem ofgiving an account of each individual art, and (b) the problem ofdefining what it is to be an art, the latter by giving an account ofthe larger class of normative/appreciative kinds to which the arts(and some non-arts) belong. For, given definitions of the individualarts, and a definition of what it is to be an art, if every artworkbelongs to at least one art (if it belongs to no existing art, then itpioneers a new art), then a definition of artwork falls out: xis a work of art if and only if x is a work of K, where K is anart (Lopes 2014). When fully spelled out, the definition isdisjunctive: x is a work of art if and only if x is awork belonging to art₁ or x is a work belonging toart₂ or x is a work belonging to art₃…. Most of the explanatory work is done by the theories of theindividual arts, since, given the assumption that every artworkbelongs to at least one art, possession of theories of the individualarts would be necessary and sufficient for settling the artistic ornon-artistic status of any hard case, once it is determined what art agiven work belongs to. As to what makes a practice an art, Lopes’preferred answer seems to be institutionalism of a Dickiean variety:an art is an institution in which artists (persons who participatewith understanding in the making of artworks) make artworks to bepresented to an artworld public. (Lopes 2014, Dickie 1984) Thus, onthis view, it is arbitrary which activities are artworld systems:there is no deeper answer to the question of what makes music an artthan that it has the right institutional structure.^[4] So it is arbitrary which activities are arts. Two worries. First, thekey claim that every work of art belonging to no extant art pioneers anew art may be defended on the grounds that any reason to say that awork belonging to no extant artform is an artwork is a reason to saythat it pioneers a new artform. In response, it is noted that thequestion of whether or not a thing belongs to an art arises only when,and because, there is a prior reason for thinking that the thing is anartwork. So it seems that what it is to be an artwork is prior, insome sense, to what it is to be an art. Second, on the buck-passingtheory’s institutional theory of the arts, which activities are artsis arbitrary. This raises a version of the question that was raisedabout the cladistic definition’s ability to account for the existenceof art outside our (Hominin) tradition. Suppose the connectionbetween a practice’s traits and its status as an art are whollycontingent. Then the fact that a practice in another culture thatalthough not part of our tradition had most of the traits of one ofour own arts would be no reason to think that practice was an art, andno reason to think that the objects belonging to it were artworks. Itis not clear that we are really so in the dark when it comes todetermining whether practices in alien cultures or traditions arearts.

5. Conclusion

Theory Of Artificial Gravity

Conventionalist definitions account well for modern art, but havedifficulty accounting for art’s universality – especiallythe fact that there can be art disconnected from “our”(Western) institutions and traditions, and our species. They alsostruggle to account for the fact that the same aesthetic terms areroutinely applied to artworks, natural objects, humans, and abstracta.Aesthetic definitions do better accounting for art’straditional, universal features, but less well, at least according totheir critics, with revolutionary modern art; their further defenserequires an account of the aesthetic which can be extended in aprincipled way to conceptual and other radical art. (An aestheticdefinition and a conventionalist one could simply be conjoined. Butthat would merely raise, without answering, the fundamental questionof the unity or disunity of the class of artworks.) Which defect isthe more serious one depends on which explananda are the moreimportant. Arguments at this level are hard to come by, becausepositions are hard to motivate in ways that do not depend on priorconventionalist and functionalist sympathies. If list-like definitionsare flawed because uninformative, then so are conventionalistdefinitions, whether institutional or historical. Of course, if theclass of artworks, or of the arts, is a mere chaotic heap, lacking anygenuine unity, then enumerative definitions cannot be faulted forbeing uninformative: they do all the explaining that it is possible todo, because they capture all the unity that there is to capture. Inthat case the worry articulated by one prominent aesthetician, whowrote earlier of the “bloated, unwieldy” concept of artwhich institutional definitions aim to capture, needs to be takenseriously, even if it turns out to be ungrounded: “It is not atall clear that these words – ‘What isart?’ – express anything like a single question, to whichcompeting answers are given, or whether philosophers proposing answersare even engaged in the same debate…. The sheer variety ofproposed definitions should give us pause. One cannot help wonderingwhether there is any sense in which they are attempts to …clarify the same cultural practices, or address the same issue”(Walton 2007).

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aesthetics: aesthetic judgment | aesthetics: German, in the 18th century | Dewey, John: aesthetics | Kant, Immanuel: aesthetics and teleology | Nietzsche, Friedrich | Plato: rhetoric and poetry | Schopenhauer, Arthur

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