amie thomasson what are we doing here

Debates about the Ontology of Art: What areWe Doing Here?

Amie L. ThomassonUniversity of Miami

Abstract

Philosophers have placed some or all works of art in nearly every available ontologicalcategory, with some considering them to be physical objects, others abstractstructures, imaginary entities, action types or tokens, and so on. How can we decidewhich among these views to accept? I argue that the rules of use for sortal termslike “painting” and “symphony” establish what ontological sorts of thing we arereferring to with those terms, so that we must use a form of conceptual analysis inadjudicating these debates. This has several interesting consequences, including thatrevisionary answers are suspect, that adequate answers may require broadening oursystems of categories, and that certain questions about the ontology of art – includingthe basic question “What is the ontological status of the work of art?” – areill-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, idealkinds, imaginary entities, or something else? How are works of art of variouskinds related to the mental states of artists and viewers, to physical objects,or to abstract visual, auditory, or linguistic structures? Under what conditionsdo works come into existence, survive, or cease to exist? Are there importantdifferences in kind between paintings and symphonies, sculptures and novels?

There are a number of practical reasons to care about this philosophicalissue – reasons we end up having to try to settle it. Determining theontological status of works of art involves determining the conditions underwhich a work of art comes into existence, remains in existence, and isdestroyed (persistence conditions) and also the conditions under whichworks of art are one and the same (identity conditions). As a result, theoriesabout the ontology of the work of art have implications for practical issuesfaced by those involved in curating, restoring, collecting, or trading art, suchas: How much paint may be replaced in restoration while the originalpainting is preserved? Under what conditions is a “new” song the same asan old one? What sorts of revision would involve changing a work ofliterature versus creating a new one? Such practical consequences may have

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to be resolved in law courts even if they aren’t settled in philosophy seminarrooms.

But beyond the practical consequences, issues about the ontology of artalso have widespread implications for metaphysics and for philosophygenerally. I have argued elsewhere (1999, 2004a) that works of art don’t fiteasily into standard philosophical category systems; e.g. works of literatureare neither (purely) mental nor (purely) material; nor are they either concretephysical objects or timeless, changeless abstracta. If that is the case, thensome standard systems of categories turn out not to be exhaustive. As aresult, taking seriously problems in the ontology of art may show that weneed a more comprehensive system of ontological categories and may requireus to broaden our views of what there is. Moreover, as I have recentlyargued (2005), determining how to choose among the various theories aboutthe ontology of art also leads us naturally and fruitfully into investigatingwhat 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 toimportant insights in metaontology.

I. Some Recent Views

Attempts to answer the question “What is the ontological status of the workof art?” have inspired a rich debate in aesthetics over the past thirty years orso, yielding an astonishing variety of answers. In fact, works of art (of someor 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 justphysical objects like any others, no different in principle from sticks andstones. A painting, say, is just a piece of canvas with some pigment on it; asculpture is a lump of stone or bronze or whatever, shaped in a particularway. Thus, e.g., Richard Wollheim (1980) and Nicholas Wolterstorff (1975)have both defended the view that at least some works of art, such as paintingsand non-cast sculptures, are just physical objects.

But (as both Wollheim and Wolterstorff note) on reflection it’s clear thatwhat Wollheim (1980) calls the “physical object hypothesis” won’t do forall 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 can’t say that Beowulfand some Elgar symphonies are in the British Library, while several WoodyGuthrie tunes are currently in the Library of Congress. Any of these workscould survive even if those venerable institutions burn down entirely, soclearly the work itself isn’t there, even if the original manuscript or scoreis. So it seems we at least need a different view of the ontological status ofrepeatable works of art, such as works of music and literature. Since theyare not easily identifiable with individual physical objects, these have oftenbeen considered as abstract entities; thus, e.g., Richard Wollheim (1980)treats such works as types, capable of having multiple tokens; NicholasWolterstorff (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 abstractobjects 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 treatedabstract entities on the platonic model as eternal or timeless, changelessentities independent of all human activities; as a result, abstractist views facethe challenge of accounting for the apparent role of artists in creating worksof art.3 This has been handled in various ways, e.g. by treating the role ofthe artist as based in selecting rather than creating objects, or by treating thework of art (as such) as the abstract object qua thing selected by an artist ata certain time, e.g. Jerrold Levinson (1990) treats works of music as structuresof sounds and performing means, as indicated by a particular composer at aparticular time (cf. Wolterstorff 1975, section 5, for a discussion of bothoptions).

Developing a view inspired by Roman Ingarden (1973 and 1989), I haveargued (1999) that we should go further than this. To account adequatelyfor works of literature, music, and other cultural entities such as laws,contracts, and so on, I have argued that we should accept that there areabstract artifacts: that is, entities that are abstract in the sense of lacking aspatio-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 tobe concrete artifacts). On this model, through their creative activities authorsand composers bring things into existence that (unlike platonistic abstracta)depend in various ways on human intentionality, and are capable of changeand 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 acceptinga broader system of ontological categories (see my 1999 and 2004a).

Jean-Paul Sartre (1966) takes even more seriously the idea that works ofart in some sense depend on human consciousness or imagination, and as aresult maintains that no works of art are physical or “real” objects at all;instead they are “unreal” or “imaginary” objects created and maintained inexistence by human consciousness. R. G. Collingwood (1958), like Sartre,is impressed with the role of imagination in perceiving a work as a work ofart, but argues that the work of art should properly be understood not evenas an unreal object, but rather as the artist’s “imaginary experience of totalactivity” which viewers may recreate for themselves (149–51).4

Although imaginational theories of art have held little sway in recentdebates,5 some recent authors have pursued the idea that the true work ofart should not be identified with any object created, but rather with thecreative process. Thus Gregory Currie (1989) argues that all works of artare types of action rather than types of object, namely, the action-type ofsomeone 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 Currie’sview we are wrong to think of works of painting or sculpture as individualobjects that can be touched and restored, bought and sold. More recently,David Davies (2004) has similarly denied that any works of art are artifactscreated by artists; instead, he argues that all works of art (including worksof music, painting, and sculpture) are particular (token) performances artistsengage 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 evenbegin to assess a debate like this, determining which view about theontological status of works of art to accept? When we ask questions aboutthe ontology of art like “when does a painting survive?” and “must a novelbe created?” we are using terms like “painting” and “novel.” So we canrephrase 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 inwhich a term is introduced and used, we could be attempting to refer to agreat many (ontologically) different sorts of things, e.g., in a gallery we couldintroduce a term to name a physical arrangement of atoms, an artifactconstituted by these atoms, a type of pigment on its surface, a techniqueused in its construction, a process it is undergoing, a style-kind to which itbelongs, 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 broadintentions 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 onlyanswerable to the extent that the way the reference of the term is established(or “grounded”) and continues to be used disambiguates the ontology bydetermining the general kind or category of entity that the term is to referto 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 regroundthe 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 thatcomes with some basic rules of use of two kinds: first, basic criteria ofapplication, laying out conditions in which, e.g., “painting” may besuccessfully applied (and its reference grounded), and basic criteria of identitythat give rules for determining when the term may be re-applied to one andthe same thing, yielding, e.g., conditions under which painting A is identicalto painting B, and making it possible to count the things of that sort.7 Theapplication conditions and identity conditions together yield basic persistenceconditions for paintings – conditions under which we may continue to referto this very painting. These basic conditions may be sketchy, and may also



appeal to the world to fill in detailed empirical conditions (e.g. it may bepart of the basic persistence conditions for paintings that they cannot survivethe destruction of the canvas, but part of the empirical persistence conditionsthat they cannot survive temperatures of greater than 451 degreesFahrenheit). In any case, on this view, at the most basic conceptual levelwhat it takes for there to be a painting (including, e.g., whether an artist’screative activities are required for a painting to come into existence), andwhat it takes for a painting to persist (e.g., whether or not a painting maysurvive a fire that burns the canvas to ashes) is determined by the basicidentity and application conditions associated with the sortal term “painting.”

One consequence of this view is that debates about the ontological statusof the work of music, painting, literature, etc., must in some sense beresolved by analyzing the concepts of those who ground and reground thereference of the term – but the sense of “conceptual analysis” at issue herehas to be understood carefully. For mostly it is not little pictures or phrasesexplicitly entertained in the heads of competent speakers that help determinethe reference of our common terms, but rather the practices of those whouse the terms and deal with the objects. That is, we help establish whatontological sort of thing we are referring to by, e.g. considering works tobe observable under some conditions but not others (as, e.g., a painting maybe seen this month at the museum, a performance of a musical work may beheard tonight only, while the work itself may be heard in any of three majorcities any night this month); or by treating works as destroyed (or notdestroyed) in various circumstances (e.g. a fire may destroy a painting butnot 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 tobe capable of being bought and sold), and so on. These practices, whichnaturally co-evolve with the use of category-specifying art terms like“painting” and “symphony,” play the core role in disambiguating theontological status of the kinds of works of art we commonly refer to (bothin 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 thesekinds, we must analyze the practices involved in talking about and dealingwith works of these kinds and see what ontological kind(s) they establish asthe proper referents for the terms (assuming the terms refer).

This way of understanding the proper methods of addressing questionsabout the ontology of art also has important ramifications for which sortsof questions are answerable, and what sorts of answer are plausible. I willturn now to sketch some of these consequences.

III. Unanswerable Questions

If questions about ontological status are to be answered by determining whatbasic criteria of application and identity competent speakers associate withthe relevant sortal terms, then at least some of the questions that have



exercised philosophers in addressing the ontology of art may be simplyunanswerable. If the identity and persistence conditions for paintings ornovels, for example, are at bottom established by our practices, then whereour practices draw no sharp line marking, e.g., exactly what percentage ofpaint may be replaced while a painting remains, or how many words maybe altered while a novel remains the same, there may simply be no fact ofthe matter to discover (see my 2003, 2005). We should neither beembarrassed by the lack of definitive answer to these questions, nor bulliedinto providing arbitrary answers; where our practices are not determinativewe shouldn’t expect determinate answers. Where practical issues arise (e.g.,in resolving court cases and the like), the best we can do is to draw proposalsabout how we might best (artificially) precisify our existing concepts andpractices, but we cannot conceive of these as discoveries about when thework really does or does not survive.

If some questions about the ontology of art are unanswerable by beingtoo specific, others suffer the same fate by being too broad. An enduringquestion in debates about the ontology of art concerns whether any unifiedanswer 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 ofmusic and literature may have a different ontological status from works ofpainting and (non-cast) sculpture, others (e.g., Collingwood (1958), Currie(1989), and Davies (2004)) have offered unified theories, treating all worksof art as belonging to the same ontological kind.8

The metaontological considerations above give us a principled reason fordoubting that any unified answer is available, and indeed for thinking thatthe basic question I started with,“What is the ontological status of the workof art?” is an ill-formed and unanswerable question. Not all questions aboutthe 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, suchgeneral terms such as “object,” “thing,” or “entity” (in their generic uses)do not come associated with the criteria of identity that are needed todisambiguate the category of entity to be referred to.9 Even somewhat morecontentful nouns, such as “gift,” may fail to be category specifying, as mygift to you might be a T-shirt, a trip to the beach, a new haircut, or a poemI’ve written for you. The generic term “art” or “work of art” seems to belike “gift” in this regard: it seems not to be category-specifying.10

If that’s the case, then there is no hope of finding a single, uniform answerto the question “what is the ontological status of the work of art?” any morethan we can answer “what is the ontological status of the gift?” and the useof the common term “art” should not lead us to suppose that there must bea single ontological kind common to all works of art.11 In that case, anytheories of the ontology of art that are explicitly or tacitly motivated by theperceived 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



a unified answer, since there is no reason to suppose that there is a singleanswer to the question, though there may be many different answers tomore specific questions such as “what is the ontological status of thepainting?” “what is the ontological status of the symphony?” and soon. These specific questions may remain answerable (provided the terms inquestion 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 conceptsemployed by competent speakers in referring to and otherwise dealing withworks of those sorts.

An interesting consequence of the idea that “art” is not acategory-specifying term is that there may in principle be more ontologicalkinds of art than are recognized by us as our familiar art kinds and namedby our familiar art-kind terms, and the ontological kinds of works of artmay vary from place to place. For if different cultures have differentcategory-specifying art-kind terms, and different individuative and evaluativepractices that go along with these, these may name different kinds of workof 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 formsof internet art may differ in ontological status from works of such familiarkinds as paintings and movies. (Of course, this leaves open the question ofhow 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 theontological status of works of various kinds is.)

IV. Revisionary Answers

The work of section II above not only helps us narrow down whichquestions in the ontology of art are answerable, it also helps us narrow downwhich among the great variety of answers are plausible, and determine howto go about choosing among them. For if the above is correct, we havereason to be suspicious of radically revisionary answers to questions aboutthe ontological status of paintings, symphonies, and the like, which wouldtake everyone to be massively mistaken about their identity and persistenceconditions. Given, e.g., the customary use of the term “painting” andassociated painting names (“The Mona Lisa,”“Broadway Boogie-Woogie,”“Guernica”), it just could not turn out that these names in fact refer to typesof action (which can survive the burning of any canvas); if these terms referat all they refer rather to things with the identity conditions for concreteartifacts, e.g. requiring continuous maintenance of a physical basis for ongoingexistence. Nor could it “turn out” (as Sagoff (1978) argues it does) thatpaintings and sculptures cannot actually survive the replacement of even asmall part, so that any attempts at restoration in fact (unbeknownst to most)destroy rather than preserve the work in question. In fact, the only plausibleviews will be those that simply make explicit the conditions for existence



and identity built into our practices of treating works of art as here or there,surviving and being destroyed, etc. – it can’t turn out that these practicesare all wrong, and we are all terribly mistaken about what sorts of thingsworks of art really are.

Those who offer apparently revisionary theories of the ontology of artmay respond to this challenge in various ways. One is for the revisionarytheorist to redescribe what she is doing – not as offering a surprising accountof what the paintings, symphonies, etc. we describe really are, but rather asproposing a way of revising our conceptual scheme in order to give clearer,more consistent, or otherwise better answers to the questions that inevitablyarise about the ontology of art.12 In that case, the theorist owes us compellingpragmatic reasons to replace our standard conceptual scheme with the newlyproposed one.

The revisionary theorist may, e.g., claim that given the vagueness andincompleteness of application and identity conditions associated with termslike “painting” and “symphony,” any fully precise theory about the persistenceconditions for works of art must be at least mildly revisionary in the senseof providing answers to questions that the use of our common sense termssimply leaves open. She then owes us an account of why we need a moreprecise theory, and why her method of precisification is preferable to others.Most importantly, she must remain clear that what she is offering is a proposalabout how to develop concepts relevantly like our standard concepts ofpainting, symphony, etc. but that are more precise – not a record of surprising“discoveries” about what paintings, symphonies, etc. really are, when theyreally survive or are destroyed, and so on.

Another way of justifying a revisionary ontology of art is to claim thatthere are inconsistencies in our practices (in talking about and dealing withworks of art), so that any workable view in the ontology of art must berevisionary not just in the minor sense of filling in the gaps, but in the majorsense of reinterpreting some of our ways of talking about and dealing withworks of art. This seems to be behind the revisionary theories developedby both Currie and Davies.13 They argue that our practices of appreciatingworks of art presuppose that works of art are action types or performances,for appreciation is fundamentally appreciation of the artist’s 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 physicalobjects. If there is such a conflict, then any adequate account of our practicesin dealing with art must resolve this conflict by reinterpreting some aspectof our practice. Davies and Currie hold that the more important strands ofpractice are the appreciative ones, and so argue that we should reinterprettalk 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, 179–89).

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



our common sense ontological conceptions of paintings, symphonies, etc.are tacitly inconsistent (and so in need of some major revisions).14 What iscrucial to note here is some structural points beyond the details of theseparticular debates. One is that (if the results of section II above are correct)revising central elements of our practice in identifying and distinguishingpaintings, symphonies, etc., should be a move of last resort, suitable only ifall attempts at dissolving the apparent conflict fail; the onus is on therevisionary ontologist to make the case that there is such an irresolvableconflict in the individuation and persistence conditions presupposed by ourpractices in using such terms as “painting,” “symphony,” etc.15 Therevisionary ontologist also has the burden of showing that her way ofresolving the conflict is minimally revisionary in the sense that it does theleast violence to our total range of practices and assumptions (or preservesthe most important strands of those at the cost of violating only some fringeelements). Finally, even if both of those points are made, the revisionaryontologist should not present her conclusions as surprising discoveries aboutwhat, e.g., paintings really are, but instead as proposals about how to replaceour inconsistent concept (to which nothing could fully correspond) withone that mimics it as nearly as possible while avoiding its problems.

A final option for the revisionary ontologist of art is of course to rejectthe metaontological approach described above – but then the theorist owesus an account not only of what is wrong with the above reasoning, but alsoof how else ontological debates about the status of works of art are to beevaluated, such that the view on offer wins.

V. Conclusion

I have argued that attempts to resolve debates about the ontology of thework of art quickly lead into difficult issues in metaontology about howsuch metaphysical disputes generally are to be resolved. If I am right thatsuch 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 generalquestion “What is the ontology of the work of art?” is ill-formed andunanswerable, and so leads astray those who attempt to answer it by findinga unified status common to all works.

Second, as I have argued elsewhere (2004a), even if we divide it into anumber of more specific, answerable questions (such as “What is theontological status of the symphony?” etc.), answering these properly mayrequire reaching outside the bounds of traditional philosophical categorybifurcations (such as the real and ideal, the material and the mental), andbroadening our category systems altogether. So it shouldn’t be a surprisethat those working against the background of traditional category systems



have not found suitable ways of classifying works of music, literature, andthe like.

While the methodology I have proposed above (and in 2004a, 2005)won’t itself relieve us of all first-order disputes about the ontology of art, ifit is correct, it at least gives us some idea of what we are doing when weask about the ontological status of works of art of various kinds, how to goabout evaluating the dauntingly diverse answers that have been proposed,and where to look for more adequate answers when the available optionsfail us.

Notes

Amie Thomasson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Parodi Senior Scholar in Aesthetics atthe University of Miami. Her areas of specialization are in metaphysics, phenomenology, philosophyof 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, seemy (1999, 126–7).3 Wollheim (1980) and Levinson (1990, 81) both aptly point out that despite this philosophicaltreatment, we naturally speak of created or “initiated” types in discussing other sorts of thing, suchas the British flag, or the Ford Thunderbird, so that those who speak of works of art as types and thelike should not automatically be accused of platonism.4 But see Aaron Ridley (1997) for arguments against the traditional interpretation of Collingwoodas taking works of art to be imaginary.5 The closest contemporary view is perhaps John Dilworth’s “representational theory” (2001,2002). But that view does not treat works of art as imaginary objects “in the heads” of artist oraudience, but rather as objects represented by the associated artifacts such as painted canvases or filmnegatives.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 theminto different categories that all share the same identity conditions (and where the applicationconditions for the category are guaranteed to be fulfilled provided those of any of the sortals ofthat 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 “concreteartifact.” 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 – heis nonetheless pluralistic about the standing of the “artwork-focus.” See his (2004, 150).9 Cf. Lowe 1989, 11–12, 24–5;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 doesn’t however rule out the idea that there may be some constraints on identity andpersistence conditions common to all works of art, even if these aren’t 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 standsthat is to serve as the tribunal against which ontologies of art are to be assessed, under the pragmaticconstraint, but, rather, a theoretical representation of the norms that should govern the judgmentsthat 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 accountof the ontology of art – a desire that, if section III above is correct, is misguided.



14 The case for a conflict relies on claiming that any view that takes works of art to be productsrather than processes is unable to account for what it is that we appreciate about works of art. Butviews that, e.g., take paintings to be (concrete) historical artifacts, and symphonies to be abstracthistorical artifacts, seem to have a far better chance at this than views that take them to be merephysical objects or abstract structures. Much of our interest in historical artifacts generally is inhow 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 Edison’sfirst lightbulb or Betsy Ross’ flag is the processes (of creation, survival, etc.) rather than the artifactsthemselves. There is no category mistake in appreciating an artifact for its innovative design orremarkable role in history. Much of the debate thus hangs on whether an ontology of distinctlyhistorical objects (or similar views such as Levinson’s indicated structure view) can be made to work(cf. Dodd 2000, Davies 2004, 182–8). If it can be, there may be no internal conflict to justifyadopting a revisionary theory.15 Thus, e.g., Currie and Davies must also make the case that our appreciative practices presupposepractices about individuating works of art that are inconsistent with the individuative practices builtinto our other ways of referring to paintings, symphonies, and the like.

Works Cited

Collingwood, R. G. The Principles of Art. New York: Oxford UP, 1958.Currie, Gregory. An Ontology of Art. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.Davies, David. Art as Performance. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.Devitt, Michael and Kim Sterelny.Language and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.Dilworth, John. “The Fictionality of Plays.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60.3 (2002):

263–73.——. “A Representational Theory of Artefacts and Artworks.” British Journal of Aesthetics 41.4

(2001): 353–70.Dodd, Julian. “Musical Works as Eternal Types.” British Journal of Aesthetics 40.6 (2000): 424–40.Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976.Ingarden, Roman. The Literary Work of Art. Trans. George G. Grabowicz. Evanston, IL:

Northwestern UP, 1973.——. The Ontology of the Work of Art. Trans. Raymond Meyer with Jon T. Goldthwait. Athens,

OH: Ohio UP, 1989.Levinson, Jerrold. Music,Art, and Metaphysics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1990.Lowe, E. J. Kinds of Being: A Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms. Oxford:

Blackwell, 1989.Ridley,Aaron. “Not Ideal: Collingwood’s Expression Theory.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

55.3 (1997): 263–72.Sagoff, Mark. “On Restoring and Reproducing Art.” Journal of Philosophy 75.9 (1978): 453–70.Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Psychology of Imagination. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York:Washington

Square Press, 1966.Thomasson, Amie L. “Categories.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2004b <http:/ /plato.

stanford.edu/entries/categories>.——. Fiction and Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.——. “Fictional Characters and Literary Practices.” British Journal of Aesthetics 43.2 (April 2003):

138–57.——. “The Ontology of Art.” The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics. Ed. Peter Kivy. Oxford: Blackwell,

2004a.——. “The Ontology of Art and Knowledge in Aesthetics.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

63.3 (2005): 221–30.Wiggins, David. Sameness and Substance Renewed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.Wollheim, Richard. Art and its Objects. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980.Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Toward an Ontology of Art Works.” Nous 9.2 (1975): 115–42.——. Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.Zalta, Edward. Abstract Objects. The Netherlands: Reidel, 1983.



amie thomasson what are we doing here

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