Philosophy Compass 1/3 (2006): 245255, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00021.

Debates about the Ontology of Art: What are We Doing Here?

Amie L. Thomasson
University of Miami

Abstract

Philosophers have placed some or all works of art in nearly every available ontological category, with some considering them to be physical objects, others abstract structures, imaginary entities, action types or tokens, and so on. How can we decide which among these views to accept? I argue that the rules of use for sortal terms like painting and symphony establish what ontological sorts of thing we are referring to with those terms, so that we must use a form of conceptual analysis in adjudicating these debates.This has several interesting consequences, including that revisionary answers are suspect, that adequate answers may require broadening our systems of categories, and that certain questions about the ontology of art including the basic question What is the ontological status of the work of art? are ill-formed and unanswerable.

Debates about the ontology of art involve attempts to answer the question: what sort of thing is a work of art? Are works of art physical objects, ideal kinds, imaginary entities, or something else? How are works of art of various kinds related to the mental states of artists and viewers, to physical objects, or to abstract visual, auditory, or linguistic structures? Under what conditions do works come into existence, survive, or cease to exist? Are there important differences in kind between paintings and symphonies, sculptures and novels? There are a number of practical reasons to care about this philosophical issue reasons we end up having to try to settle it. Determining the ontological status of works of art involves determining the conditions under which a work of art comes into existence, remains in existence, and is destroyed (persistence conditions) and also the conditions under which works of art are one and the same (identity conditions).As a result, theories about the ontology of the work of art have implications for practical issues faced by those involved in curating, restoring, collecting, or trading art, such as: How much paint may be replaced in restoration while the original painting is preserved? Under what conditions is a new song the same as an old one?What sorts of revision would involve changing a work of literature versus creating a new one? Such practical consequences may have
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to be resolved in law courts even if they arent settled in philosophy seminar rooms. But beyond the practical consequences, issues about the ontology of art also have widespread implications for metaphysics and for philosophy generally. I have argued elsewhere (1999, 2004a) that works of art dont fit easily into standard philosophical category systems; e.g. works of literature are neither (purely) mental nor (purely) material; nor are they either concrete physical objects or timeless, changeless abstracta. If that is the case, then some standard systems of categories turn out not to be exhaustive.As a result, taking seriously problems in the ontology of art may show that we need a more comprehensive system of ontological categories and may require us to broaden our views of what there is. Moreover, as I have recently argued (2005), determining how to choose among the various theories about the ontology of art also leads us naturally and fruitfully into investigating what methods are to be used in resolving debates in metaphysics generally, so that careful attention to the problems in the ontology of art may lead to important insights in metaontology. I. Some Recent Views Attempts to answer the question What is the ontological status of the work of art? have inspired a rich debate in aesthetics over the past thirty years or so, yielding an astonishing variety of answers. In fact, works of art (of some or all kinds) have been placed in just about every major ontological category.1 At first it might seem like an easy answer is available: works of art are just physical objects like any others, no different in principle from sticks and stones.A painting, say, is just a piece of canvas with some pigment on it; a sculpture is a lump of stone or bronze or whatever, shaped in a particular way.Thus, e.g., Richard Wollheim (1980) and Nicholas Wolterstorff (1975) have both defended the view that at least some works of art, such as paintings and non-cast sculptures, are just physical objects. But (as both Wollheim and Wolterstorff note) on reflection its clear that what Wollheim (1980) calls the physical object hypothesis wont do for all works of art. If a poem, a novel, or a work of music is a physical object, which physical object is it, and where is it located?We cant say that Beowulf and some Elgar symphonies are in the British Library, while several Woody Guthrie tunes are currently in the Library of Congress.Any of these works could survive even if those venerable institutions burn down entirely, so clearly the work itself isnt there, even if the original manuscript or score is. So it seems we at least need a different view of the ontological status of repeatable works of art, such as works of music and literature. Since they are not easily identifiable with individual physical objects, these have often been considered as abstract entities; thus, e.g., Richard Wollheim (1980) treats such works as types, capable of having multiple tokens; Nicholas Wolterstorff (1975, 1980) takes them to be norm-kinds that is, kinds
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that may have correct and incorrect instances (performances or copies) and Edward Zalta (1983) develops an understanding of stories as abstract objects that are authored. But what does it mean to treat at least some works of art as abstract entities what are abstracta?2 Historically, philosophers have most often treated abstract entities on the platonic model as eternal or timeless, changeless entities independent of all human activities; as a result, abstractist views face the challenge of accounting for the apparent role of artists in creating works of art.3 This has been handled in various ways, e.g. by treating the role of the artist as based in selecting rather than creating objects, or by treating the work of art (as such) as the abstract object qua thing selected by an artist at a certain time, e.g.Jerrold Levinson (1990) treats works of music as structures of sounds and performing means, as indicated by a particular composer at a particular time (cf. Wolterstorff 1975, section 5, for a discussion of both options). Developing a view inspired by Roman Ingarden (1973 and 1989), I have argued (1999) that we should go further than this.To account adequately for works of literature, music, and other cultural entities such as laws, contracts, and so on, I have argued that we should accept that there are abstract artifacts: that is, entities that are abstract in the sense of lacking a spatio-temporal location but that (unlike platonistic abstracta) are created, come into existence at a certain time, may change, and may cease to exist. (Other works of art, such as paintings and non-cast sculptures, I consider to be concrete artifacts). On this model, through their creative activities authors and composers bring things into existence that (unlike platonistic abstracta) depend in various ways on human intentionality, and are capable of change and destruction. If this is correct, traditional ontological bifurcations into, e.g., concrete physical entities and platonistic abstracta, are not exhaustive, and properly handling the ontology of such works of art requires accepting a broader system of ontological categories (see my 1999 and 2004a). Jean-Paul Sartre (1966) takes even more seriously the idea that works of art in some sense depend on human consciousness or imagination, and as a result maintains that no works of art are physical or real objects at all; instead they are unreal or imaginary objects created and maintained in existence by human consciousness. R. G. Collingwood (1958), like Sartre, is impressed with the role of imagination in perceiving a work as a work of art, but argues that the work of art should properly be understood not even as an unreal object, but rather as the artists imaginary experience of total activity which viewers may recreate for themselves (14951).4 Although imaginational theories of art have held little sway in recent debates,5 some recent authors have pursued the idea that the true work of art should not be identified with any object created, but rather with the creative process.Thus Gregory Currie (1989) argues that all works of art are types of action rather than types of object, namely, the action-type of someone discovering a particular (verbal, sound, or visual) structure by means
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of a certain heuristic path (e.g. via certain influences, etc.).Thus on Curries view we are wrong to think of works of painting or sculpture as individual objects that can be touched and restored, bought and sold. More recently, David Davies (2004) has similarly denied that any works of art are artifacts created by artists; instead, he argues that all works of art (including works of music, painting, and sculpture) are particular (token) performances artists engage in as they specify a focus of appreciation. II.Assessing the Debate:What are We Doing Here? Given the wide range of views that has been developed, how can we even begin to assess a debate like this, determining which view about the ontological status of works of art to accept?When we ask questions about the ontology of art like when does a painting survive? and must a novel be created? we are using terms like painting and novel. So we can rephrase the question as asking what (ontological) sort of thing the terms painting and novel pick out. But what determines what ontological sort of thing our terms pick out? As many philosophers of language have acknowledged, in any context in which a term is introduced and used, we could be attempting to refer to a great many (ontologically) different sorts of things, e.g., in a gallery we could introduce a term to name a physical arrangement of atoms, an artifact constituted by these atoms, a type of pigment on its surface, a technique used in its construction, a process it is undergoing, a style-kind to which it belongs, and so on.This results in the so-called qua problem:6 that is, external context alone is inadequate to determine what our terms refer to; disambiguating reference also requires that speakers have some broad intentions about what ontological sort of thing their term is to refer to. On this view, the question what sort of thing is a painting? e.g., is only answerable to the extent that the way the reference of the term is established (or grounded) and continues to be used disambiguates the ontology by determining the general kind or category of entity that the term is to refer to if it refers at all.The needed disambiguation, I have argued (2004a, 2005), is provided by the beliefs and practices of those who ground and reground the reference of the terms in question (painting, novel, and the like), provided these are used as genuine sortal terms.A sortal term is a term that comes with some basic rules of use of two kinds: first, basic criteria of application, laying out conditions in which, e.g., painting may be successfully applied (and its reference grounded), and basic criteria of identity that give rules for determining when the term may be re-applied to one and the same thing, yielding, e.g., conditions under which painting A is identical to painting B, and making it possible to count the things of that sort.7 The application conditions and identity conditions together yield basic persistence conditions for paintings conditions under which we may continue to refer to this very painting.These basic conditions may be sketchy, and may also
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appeal to the world to fill in detailed empirical conditions (e.g. it may be part of the basic persistence conditions for paintings that they cannot survive the destruction of the canvas, but part of the empirical persistence conditions that they cannot survive temperatures of greater than 451 degrees Fahrenheit). In any case, on this view, at the most basic conceptual level what it takes for there to be a painting (including, e.g., whether an artists creative activities are required for a painting to come into existence), and what it takes for a painting to persist (e.g., whether or not a painting may survive a fire that burns the canvas to ashes) is determined by the basic identity and application conditions associated with the sortal term painting. One consequence of this view is that debates about the ontological status of the work of music, painting, literature, etc., must in some sense be resolved by analyzing the concepts of those who ground and reground the reference of the term but the sense ofconceptual analysis at issue here has to be understood carefully. For mostly it is not little pictures or phrases explicitly entertained in the heads of competent speakers that help determine the reference of our common terms, but rather the practices of those who use the terms and deal with the objects.That is, we help establish what ontological sort of thing we are referring to by, e.g. considering works to be observable under some conditions but not others (as, e.g., a painting may be seen this month at the museum, a performance of a musical work may be heard tonight only, while the work itself may be heard in any of three major cities any night this month); or by treating works as destroyed (or not destroyed) in various circumstances (e.g. a fire may destroy a painting but not a symphony); or by way of what we consider to be saleable and moveable (e.g. whether we treat the work itself, or only rights to it or copies of it to be capable of being bought and sold), and so on.These practices, which naturally co-evolve with the use of category-specifying art terms like painting and symphony, play the core role in disambiguating the ontological status of the kinds of works of art we commonly refer to (both in language and in our other dealings with them).As a result (I have argued (2004a, 2005)) to determine the ontological status of works of art of these kinds, we must analyze the practices involved in talking about and dealing with works of these kinds and see what ontological kind(s) they establish as the proper referents for the terms (assuming the terms refer). This way of understanding the proper methods of addressing questions about the ontology of art also has important ramifications for which sorts of questions are answerable, and what sorts of answer are plausible. I will turn now to sketch some of these consequences. III. Unanswerable Questions If questions about ontological status are to be answered by determining what basic criteria of application and identity competent speakers associate with the relevant sortal terms, then at least some of the questions that have
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exercised philosophers in addressing the ontology of art may be simply unanswerable. If the identity and persistence conditions for paintings or novels, for example, are at bottom established by our practices, then where our practices draw no sharp line marking, e.g., exactly what percentage of paint may be replaced while a painting remains, or how many words may be altered while a novel remains the same, there may simply be no fact of the matter to discover (see my 2003, 2005).We should neither be embarrassed by the lack of definitive answer to these questions, nor bullied into providing arbitrary answers; where our practices are not determinative we shouldnt expect determinate answers.Where practical issues arise (e.g., in resolving court cases and the like), the best we can do is to draw proposals about how we might best (artificially) precisify our existing concepts and practices, but we cannot conceive of these as discoveries about when the work really does or does not survive. If some questions about the ontology of art are unanswerable by being too specific, others suffer the same fate by being too broad.An enduring question in debates about the ontology of art concerns whether any unified answer to the question What is the ontological status of the work of art is available.While many authors (e.g.,Wollheim (1980), Goodman (1976), and myself (2004a)) argue for a form of pluralism, allowing that works of music and literature may have a different ontological status from works of painting and (non-cast) sculpture, others (e.g., Collingwood (1958), Currie (1989), and Davies (2004)) have offered unified theories, treating all works of art as belonging to the same ontological kind.8 The metaontological considerations above give us a principled reason for doubting that any unified answer is available, and indeed for thinking that the basic question I started with,What is the ontological status of the work of art? is an ill-formed and unanswerable question. Not all questions about the ontological status of Gs, where G is a general noun, are answerable, since not all general terms are sortal terms.As has often been noted, such general terms such as object, thing, or entity (in their generic uses) do not come associated with the criteria of identity that are needed to disambiguate the category of entity to be referred to.9 Even somewhat more contentful nouns, such as gift, may fail to be category specifying, as my gift to you might be a T-shirt, a trip to the beach, a new haircut, or a poem Ive written for you.The generic term art or work of art seems to be like gift in this regard: it seems not to be category-specifying.10 If thats the case, then there is no hope of finding a single, uniform answer to the question what is the ontological status of the work of art? any more than we can answer what is the ontological status of the gift? and the use of the common term art should not lead us to suppose that there must be a single ontological kind common to all works of art.11 In that case, any theories of the ontology of art that are explicitly or tacitly motivated by the perceived need to find an ontological kind common to all works of art (as, e.g., Currie (1989) seems to be) are misguided.There is no pressure to find
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a unified answer, since there is no reason to suppose that there is a single answer to the question, though there may be many different answers to more specific questions such as what is the ontological status of the painting? what is the ontological status of the symphony? and so on.These specific questions may remain answerable (provided the terms in question are used in a category-specifying way), and if the above is correct, we have some idea how they are to be answered: by analyzing the concepts employed by competent speakers in referring to and otherwise dealing with works of those sorts. An interesting consequence of the idea that art is not a category-specifying term is that there may in principle be more ontological kinds of art than are recognized by us as our familiar art kinds and named by our familiar art-kind terms, and the ontological kinds of works of art may vary from place to place. For if different cultures have different category-specifying art-kind terms, and different individuative and evaluative practices that go along with these, these may name different kinds of work of art. Similarly, the ontological kinds of art there are may vary over time, and ontologically new forms of art may be introduced, e.g., various forms of internet art may differ in ontological status from works of such familiar kinds as paintings and movies. (Of course, this leaves open the question of how we determine whether or not any of these unfamiliar things are art, but that should be no surprise, as it is often noted that the question of how art is to be defined must be distinguished from the question of what the ontological status of works of various kinds is.) IV Revisionary Answers . The work of section II above not only helps us narrow down which questions in the ontology of art are answerable, it also helps us narrow down which among the great variety of answers are plausible, and determine how to go about choosing among them. For if the above is correct, we have reason to be suspicious of radically revisionary answers to questions about the ontological status of paintings, symphonies, and the like, which would take everyone to be massively mistaken about their identity and persistence conditions. Given, e.g., the customary use of the term painting and associated painting names (The Mona Lisa,Broadway Boogie-Woogie, Guernica), it just could not turn out that these names in fact refer to types of action (which can survive the burning of any canvas); if these terms refer at all they refer rather to things with the identity conditions for concrete artifacts, e.g. requiring continuous maintenance of a physical basis for ongoing existence. Nor could it turn out (as Sagoff (1978) argues it does) that paintings and sculptures cannot actually survive the replacement of even a small part, so that any attempts at restoration in fact (unbeknownst to most) destroy rather than preserve the work in question. In fact, the only plausible views will be those that simply make explicit the conditions for existence
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and identity built into our practices of treating works of art as here or there, surviving and being destroyed, etc. it cant turn out that these practices are all wrong, and we are all terribly mistaken about what sorts of things works of art really are. Those who offer apparently revisionary theories of the ontology of art may respond to this challenge in various ways. One is for the revisionary theorist to redescribe what she is doing not as offering a surprising account of what the paintings, symphonies, etc. we describe really are, but rather as proposing a way of revising our conceptual scheme in order to give clearer, more consistent, or otherwise better answers to the questions that inevitably arise about the ontology of art.12 In that case, the theorist owes us compelling pragmatic reasons to replace our standard conceptual scheme with the newly proposed one. The revisionary theorist may, e.g., claim that given the vagueness and incompleteness of application and identity conditions associated with terms like painting and symphony, any fully precise theory about the persistence conditions for works of art must be at least mildly revisionary in the sense of providing answers to questions that the use of our common sense terms simply leaves open. She then owes us an account of why we need a more precise theory, and why her method of precisification is preferable to others. Most importantly, she must remain clear that what she is offering is a proposal about how to develop concepts relevantly like our standard concepts of painting, symphony, etc. but that are more precise not a record of surprising discoveries about what paintings, symphonies, etc. really are, when they really survive or are destroyed, and so on. Another way of justifying a revisionary ontology of art is to claim that there are inconsistencies in our practices (in talking about and dealing with works of art), so that any workable view in the ontology of art must be revisionary not just in the minor sense of filling in the gaps, but in the major sense of reinterpreting some of our ways of talking about and dealing with works of art.This seems to be behind the revisionary theories developed by both Currie and Davies.13 They argue that our practices of appreciating works of art presuppose that works of art are action types or performances, for appreciation is fundamentally appreciation of the artists achievement (Currie 1989, 68).This might conflict with our practices of buying, selling, and exhibiting works of art, which apparently treat paintings (e.g.) as physical objects. If there is such a conflict, then any adequate account of our practices in dealing with art must resolve this conflict by reinterpreting some aspect of our practice. Davies and Currie hold that the more important strands of practice are the appreciative ones, and so argue that we should reinterpret talk about buying and selling, hanging and moving, works of visual art (e.g.) as talk not about the works of art itself, but about an associated instance of the work or about the work focus (Davies 2004, 17989). While I have doubts that there is any such conflict within our practices, I must leave it for others (or other occasions) to examine specific claims that
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our common sense ontological conceptions of paintings, symphonies, etc. are tacitly inconsistent (and so in need of some major revisions).14 What is crucial to note here is some structural points beyond the details of these particular debates. One is that (if the results of section II above are correct) revising central elements of our practice in identifying and distinguishing paintings, symphonies, etc., should be a move of last resort, suitable only if all attempts at dissolving the apparent conflict fail; the onus is on the revisionary ontologist to make the case that there is such an irresolvable conflict in the individuation and persistence conditions presupposed by our practices in using such terms as painting, symphony, etc.15 The revisionary ontologist also has the burden of showing that her way of resolving the conflict is minimally revisionary in the sense that it does the least violence to our total range of practices and assumptions (or preserves the most important strands of those at the cost of violating only some fringe elements). Finally, even if both of those points are made, the revisionary ontologist should not present her conclusions as surprising discoveries about what, e.g., paintings really are, but instead as proposals about how to replace our inconsistent concept (to which nothing could fully correspond) with one that mimics it as nearly as possible while avoiding its problems. A final option for the revisionary ontologist of art is of course to reject the metaontological approach described above but then the theorist owes us an account not only of what is wrong with the above reasoning, but also of how else ontological debates about the status of works of art are to be evaluated, such that the view on offer wins. V Conclusion . I have argued that attempts to resolve debates about the ontology of the work of art quickly lead into difficult issues in metaontology about how such metaphysical disputes generally are to be resolved. If I am right that such disputes must be resolved, at bottom, by analyzing the application, identity, and persistence conditions associated with the relevant sortal terms, we can readily explain why finding an acceptable answer to the question What is the ontology of the work of art? has proven so difficult. For first, as we have seen, we have reason to think that the completely general question What is the ontology of the work of art? is ill-formed and unanswerable, and so leads astray those who attempt to answer it by finding a unified status common to all works. Second, as I have argued elsewhere (2004a), even if we divide it into a number of more specific, answerable questions (such as What is the ontological status of the symphony? etc.), answering these properly may require reaching outside the bounds of traditional philosophical category bifurcations (such as the real and ideal, the material and the mental), and broadening our category systems altogether. So it shouldnt be a surprise that those working against the background of traditional category systems
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have not found suitable ways of classifying works of music, literature, and the like. While the methodology I have proposed above (and in 2004a, 2005) wont itself relieve us of all first-order disputes about the ontology of art, if it is correct, it at least gives us some idea of what we are doing when we ask about the ontological status of works of art of various kinds, how to go about evaluating the dauntingly diverse answers that have been proposed, and where to look for more adequate answers when the available options fail us. Notes
Amie Thomasson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Parodi Senior Scholar in Aesthetics at the University of Miami. Her areas of specialization are in metaphysics, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and aesthetics. She is the author of Fiction and Metaphysics (1999), co-editor of Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind (2005), and is currently working on a new book, Ordinary Objects. 1 For fuller discussion of many of these views and their difficulties, see my 2004a. 2 For discussion of problems with various ways of drawing the abstract/concrete distinction, see my (1999, 1267). 3 Wollheim (1980) and Levinson (1990, 81) both aptly point out that despite this philosophical treatment, we naturally speak of created or initiated types in discussing other sorts of thing, such as the British flag, or the Ford Thunderbird, so that those who speak of works of art as types and the like should not automatically be accused of platonism. 4 But see Aaron Ridley (1997) for arguments against the traditional interpretation of Collingwood as taking works of art to be imaginary. 5 The closest contemporary view is perhaps John Dilworths representational theory (2001, 2002). But that view does not treat works of art as imaginary objects in the heads of artist or audience, but rather as objects represented by the associated artifacts such as painted canvases or film negatives. 6 For discussion of the qua problem, see Devitt and Sterelny (1999). 7 Sortal terms may (as I have argued elsewhere (2004b)) be arranged in hierarchies, grouping them into different categories that all share the same identity conditions (and where the application conditions for the category are guaranteed to be fulfilled provided those of any of the sortals of that category are) so, e.g., terms such as rat, kangaroo, and fish may all be of the category animal, and terms like cup, typewriter, and house may all be of the category concrete artifact. Sortals that come with mutually incompatible identity conditions (as, e.g., place, person, and explosion do) cannot refer to things of the same category. 8 While Davies is monistic about the ontology of works of art treating all as performances he is nonetheless pluralistic about the standing of the artwork-focus. See his (2004, 150). 9 Cf. Lowe 1989, 1112, 245;Wiggins 2001. 10 This is related to the point I argued for elsewhere (2005) that intending a term like painting to refer to a kind of art does not provide the needed ontological disambiguation. 11 This doesnt however rule out the idea that there may be some constraints on identity and persistence conditions common to all works of art, even if these arent sufficient to specify a category, and with it a single set of identity and persistence conditions shared by all works of art. 12 Davies also sometimes suggests this approach, writing: It is not our actual practice as it stands that is to serve as the tribunal against which ontologies of art are to be assessed, under the pragmatic constraint, but, rather, a theoretical representation of the norms that should govern the judgments that critics make concerning the ways in which works are to be judged and appreciated (2004, 143). 13 The other factor behind both of their accounts seems to be the desire to offer a unified account of the ontology of art a desire that, if section III above is correct, is misguided.
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14

The case for a conflict relies on claiming that any view that takes works of art to be products rather than processes is unable to account for what it is that we appreciate about works of art. But views that, e.g., take paintings to be (concrete) historical artifacts, and symphonies to be abstract historical artifacts, seem to have a far better chance at this than views that take them to be mere physical objects or abstract structures. Much of our interest in historical artifacts generally is in how they came into existence, why, and what their place is in (military, political, cultural, or art) history. But this does not mean that what we are really referring to when we speak of Edisons first lightbulb or Betsy Ross flag is the processes (of creation, survival, etc.) rather than the artifacts themselves.There is no category mistake in appreciating an artifact for its innovative design or remarkable role in history. Much of the debate thus hangs on whether an ontology of distinctly historical objects (or similar views such as Levinsons indicated structure view) can be made to work (cf. Dodd 2000, Davies 2004, 1828). If it can be, there may be no internal conflict to justify adopting a revisionary theory. 15 Thus, e.g., Currie and Davies must also make the case that our appreciative practices presuppose practices about individuating works of art that are inconsistent with the individuative practices built into our other ways of referring to paintings, symphonies, and the like.

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