ANALYTICAL ART: Reading, Writing, Making & Doing

READING, WRITING, MAKING & DOING David Rushton Analytical Art Analytical Art : Reading, Writing, Making and Doing David Rushton Front Cover : Exhibited Painting (1970) reproduced at Coventry University in 2010 For David Bainbridge, teacher and colleague Introduction : Mark Dennis & Chris Gomersall Catalogue and Archive : David Rushton Photographs : David Rushton, Wilson Smith and Alan Van Wijgerden First published in a limited edition by School Press to coincide with the exhibition held in August 2013 at MERZ, Sanquhar Second Edition Design : Morane Le Coz, lecozmorane.com Fonts : Gill Sans by Eric Gill and Faune by Alice Savoie / Cnap British Edition : British Cataloguing in Publication Data Analytical Art : Reading, Writing, Making and Doing ISBN : 1 899 405 11 9 Canadian Edition : Analytical Art : Reading, Writing, Making and Doing Published by Maison Kasini Canada, Montreal, Quebec Show & Tell Editions / Unoriginal Sins 19 Temple Gorebridge EH23 4SQ, www.unoriginalsins.com Printed and bound at Helloprint ISBN : 978-1-927587-50-8 Legal deposit—Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, 2020 Legal deposit—Library and Archives Canada, 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission from the publisher. Infringement is liable to remedies rendered by the copyright act. TO BE TRIMMED Foreword Foreword to the First Edition Analytical Art : Reading,Writing, Making and Doing 1969-1973 reproduces (mostly) unpublished Analytical Art-work undertaken at Coventry College of Art by students involved with Art & Language. On graduation in 1972 two of the editors of the student journal Analytical Art, Philip Pilkington and David Rushton, merged their activities with Art & Language. By 1973 Analytical Art had been wound-up. However, the distinctive protagonist approach of those contributing to Analytical Art continued to be felt in art schools in the 1970s through the loose association of ‘SCHOOL’ and its graphics, printing, writing and publishing. I’d like to thank the curators at the Herbert and Lanchester, Rosie Addenbrooke and Sadie Kerr, for being patient and sticking their necks out in support. I’m also very grateful to Mark Dennis and Chris Gomersall for contributing their Introduction on the Analytical Art Group. Ours was an approach to working, studying and exhibiting art in a hostile educational setting that coalesced and survived for a very brief period at Coventry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. David Rushton This catalogue compliments the earlier Art & Language : Indexes and Related Work published in 2012. As something of a prequel the focus here is on student work in art at Coventry. A publication on more recent work -Art Modelsis in preparation, to reflect what has passed for this author’s ongoing art-practice since the mid-1970s. In the later work ; methods and attitudes identified here have been worked-up and amplified. What is missing in these narratives is an overarching account of those critical art school publications from the 1970s. This text has still to be written and these three books are definitely not a substitute. The three past, present and future catalogue-publications cover the exhibition Models and Metaphors, Concepts and Conceits that took place in 2010 at the Herbert Museum and Art Gallery and at Coventry University’s Lanchester Gallery. 1 TO BE TRIMMED Exhibited Painting 1969 (David Rushton, here as reproduced at Herbert Art Gallery, 2010) Exhibited Painting was initially undertaken in the studio at Coventry School of Art when students were asked to ‘complete a painting in their cubicle’. How might someone know a painting was complete ? Perhaps if painting itself was selected and exhibited ? A camera was set up to photograph an area of painted wall, and the photograph fixed to the top left hand corner of the area that was being photographed. A further photograph was taken and fixed alongside… and so on. Here part of a wall’s existing surface was identified as the focus for exhibition. While the painting ‘exhibited’ is progressively obscured it is simultaneously ‘revealed’ through this iteration of reproduction and representation. 2 TO BE TRIMMED Analytical Art : Reading, Writing, Making and Doing Mark Dennis & Chris Gomersall In the wake of the Coldstream Report of 19601, English art schools changed significantly. These changes brought to the fore problems that remain unresolved to this day. Concurrently, Minimal and Conceptual art practices offered a challenge to Romantic conceptions of the individual, genius artist; the possessor of an un-acquired talent, who creates works from “the immediate knowledge of the inner nature of the world unknown to his faculty of reason.”2 Such notions exercised a strong grip on the self-image of the artist at the time, particularly the one that had been cultivated in art education. What Minimalism and Conceptual art offered students in the late 1960s was a way of working in which a spirit of modernist critical self-consciousness might continue to be put to work in the face of the exhaustion of abstract painting and sculpture. It was from out of such practices that there emerged a challenge to notions of teaching and learning in the art school. Analytical Art : Reading,Writing, Making and Doing presents the work of a group of students who were studying for their Diploma in Art and Design (Dip AD) at Coventry College of Art and Design between 1969 and 1972 on the so-called ‘Art Theory Course’ with an emphasis on the work and collected papers of one student in particular, David Rushton. These students embarked on their Dip AD under the tutorship of the founding members of Art & Language (hereafter A&L) Terry Atkinson (full-time), Michael Baldwin and David Bainbridge (part-time), with the fourth member of the group, Harold Hurrell, teaching at Hull. A primary outlet for their work was two student journals Statements and Analytical Art, examples of which are presented in this exhibition, with excerpts reproduced in this catalogue. In displaying and republishing from these journals, alongside the presentation of a large sample of unpublished essays and drafts, the writings’ origins in conversational group activity is made available for critical scrutiny for the first time. This exhibition and publication, therefore, goes some way to demystifying an intervention into British art education that is frequently referenced but rarely interrogated. In the following we will offer an introduction to, and context for the production and distribution of some of the works presented within this catalogue and exhibition. In May 1969, the Dip AD course at Coventry underwent its five-yearly review and, in response to this, A&L tabled for the following academic year a ‘vital proposal for change’3 in studio teaching. The proposal put forward by the group can be seen in light of a significant addition made to art education in the 1960s, namely the recommendation by the Coldstream committee that students complete written work in art history and in complimentary studies, as a distinct and separate element (albeit comprising only one fifth) of the curriculum. A&L’s design of what came to be known as the ‘Art Theory Course’ was intent on taking this ‘written element’ far more seriously than was envisaged by Coldstream, and in many ways their course proposal sought to permanently undermine the liberal assumptions of such a loosely conceived intellectual structure. Atkinson, Baldwin and Bainbridge sought to develop intellectual resources for a course focused primarily on group-learning through conversation, reading and writing. The work produced on the course engaged directly with questions arising from the decline of a Greenbergian Modernism as the dominant voice in art production and evaluation. A&L understood that many of the more challenging (or puzzling) questions which late-abstraction and minimalism had generated had been largely abandoned, or at least ignored, in the wake of the triumphant development of Conceptual art as a new art of ‘ideas’. Instead the work produced at Coventry would develop around a matrix of problems, problems which led this group of students and tutors to plough an altogether messier furrow. These activities were to be located in an uneasy relation to both the entrenched traditions of the British art school and the fashionable ‘neophiliacs’ of the Conceptual art world at the time. Following preliminary tutorials on philosophy, conducted as a final term elective for Foundation Year students at the college in early 1969, the following September saw a prioritisation 3 TO BE TRIMMED of the analysis of language-use, of argumentation, and conversation within studio activity on the Diploma course. This was seen partially as a response to the supposed remodelling of art education, which, due to its laissez aller approach at the level of actual teaching, had effected very little significant change in terms of equipping students with an understanding of any precepts that may act upon or determine their activity. Initially, this preoccupation with language-use took the form of a structured programme of study based around the categories of ‘Art Theory, Audio Visual, Epistemology, Romanticism and Technos’; however, this structure was applied less in practice than the initial proposal had suggested. The extensive reading list, the provision of which was unusual enough in art colleges at the time, functioned as an announcement of the new regime. The writings of A J Ayer, W V O Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Elisabeth Anscombe, P F Strawson, Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper were but a few of the philosophers and logicians to be introduced and discussed alongside the usual suspects : Immanuel Kant, Erwin Panofsky, Michael Fried, Richard Wollheim and Clement Greenberg. During the first months of the course, the search continued unabated for new intellectual resources that might allow for the articulation of problems. Although it can be said that the structure of learning proposed in 1969 may have broken down quite early on, the reading snowballed among the dedicated few and the early deference with which the writings approached the perhaps unfamiliar works in Anglo-American philosophy soon became more confident as the references diversify. As the writings of the student group and the course itself gained some momentum (and garnered its own dedicated opposition), some effort was made to establish a critical audience for the work, one which might extend from the immediate set of peers, to envisage a community in which learning, sharing and conversation might flourish. Conscious as the students were of coming from a regional art school, the group sought to challenge preconceptions about their activities and its location, to address possible dismissal of work being done on the course as ‘parochial’ or ‘provincial’. One assumption of the architects of the new Dip AD qualification was that a levelling out of prestige might occur among those colleges that were able to offer the qualification, countering the hitherto privilege of London art schools. Partly because levelling was not evident, the students at Coventry made a point of aligning their work with the ‘international’ (ie. trans-Atlantic) art world. A further contention faced by those on the Coventry course was the call for a more liberal, fluid and writing-free form of art education voiced by those who had been most involved in the 1968 sit-ins. There was considerable opposition to the newly introduced ‘Art Theory Course’ by the majority of the Fine Art students at Coventry. This can be aligned to the dominant call for greater freedom 4 from intellectual rigor. Regardless of this, a course centred on collective reasoning through the identification and working through of a set of problems was certainly noteworthy if not unique, and the need to ‘establish an outlet’ beyond the College was acted upon at a very early stage, leading to a proliferation of journals over subsequent years by students in regional Art Colleges, initially in Newport then throughout the Midlands and North; Nottingham and Hull of particular note, among others4. The production of journals at Coventry was not the only means by which the students and staff attempted to reach audiences outside of their immediate peer-group. To give some examples; senior members of A&L, their early work having gained some recognition abroad, had travelled to New York, the perceived centre of the art world at the time, and had made contact with artists such as Lawrence Weiner, Sol Le Witt and Joseph Kosuth. A number of their essays had been published in Studio International, and members of the group had also been able to deliver talks at other art colleges within the UK. In turn, two of the students – Philip Pilkington and David Rushton – exhibited work and lectured at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design5 in March 1971. This College in particular was running a busy programme of residencies and collaborations mainly involving Conceptual artists. Pilkington and Rushton gave further lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago and the New York School of Visual Arts. Further, the editorial article for Analytical Art No.1; ‘Don Judd’s Dictum and its Emptiness’ was included in the Biennial de Jeunes in 1971, which had dedicated a specific section to ‘Concept Art’ and included works by Joseph Kosuth as well as A&L. Teaching has traditionally been seen by artists as merely a means to subsidise their income, but for Atkinson, Baldwin and Bainbridge A&L was conceived as a research-like, group activity determined largely by the interactions of their teaching. The small group of authors of Statements and Analytical Art were those students that took on board this way of thinking and doing most enthusiastically. In the early days the art college environment allowed A&L a place to work, however, the particular form of group-learning offered on the ‘Art Theory Course’ developed as an unofficial and, in many respects, unwanted teaching practice at Coventry. The increasing opposition to this way of working came to a head in 1971 with the decision not to renew the contracts of David Bainbridge and Michael Baldwin. In spite of this, the conversational practice and the ensuing writing continued for those students who remained committed to the ongoing concerns of the work initiated, either in self-directed discussion or through informal meetings with former tutors outside of the college. With institutional and educational support now restricted, the production of journals, a form of distribution that was relatively cheap to publish and open to relatively widespread access, became ever more important as an outlet. Crucial to this in terms of the circulation and distribution of the work as writings was the role played by art college libraries6, who were willing to stock the respective publications and also politically sensitised to their role in providing free and democratic access. Thus, out of necessity, the work began to find a life as well as some encouragement beyond educational jurisdiction and art-gallery circulation. Two students at the centre of the Analytical Art Group were David Rushton and Philip Pilkington. Rushton and Pilkington were founder-editors for the two journals represented here, and both were to become members of the ‘second generation’ of A&L, when Analytical Art eventually merged with Art-Language in 1972. Other students who made significant contributions to Analytical Art were Graham Howard - who was also a contributor to Art-Language on a number of occasions - Kevin Lole, Christopher Willsmore, Peter Smith, Ian Johnson and Paul Tate. Student contributors to Statements include Susan Beeby, Graham Mileson, Stephen Dove and Geoffrey Richings. In addition, the essays ‘Obligations’ by Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin and ‘The Grammarian’ by Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden of A&L New York both appeared in Analytical Art No. 1. This exhibition and catalogue-archive however, is mainly drawn from the individually and co-authored writings of David Rushton from this period. Other works referenced in this introduction have been included among the journals on display in exhibitions. To consider the two Coventry journals in turn; the ethos of Statements (January and November 1970) was primarily to publish various responses to set-questions from components of the initial course, thus the journal itself gives a clear indication of the problems that were presented to the student group and their initial responses. The essays contained in the first issue are largely concerned with the application of a quasi-logical method for analysing commonplace assumptions, conflations and errors in the evaluation of artworks and which take their cue from P F Strawson, A J Ayer, and J J C Smart. The first issue of Statements is thus largely exploratory, representing some of the early efforts at writing up the group’s conversations and of trying to formulate a position within the reading. Many of the contributions are rather undercooked combinations of ideas which the students had encountered early on in the course and concern mainly, expositions of theories of individuation, time and the word-object relation. There are two recurring questions running through Statements, both of them linked. The first is the use of a physical definition of a Kenneth Noland piece, considering the ‘propositional’ aspect of art, and of art objects as distinct from everyday objects, the second looks at the ‘time slice’ in terms of the notion of an object’s persistence through time. Possibly in an effort to provoke a ‘more varied reply’ there is more of a diversity of topics included in the second issue. Here, Philip Pilkington considers a point of confluence between the methodologies used in the philosophy of history and Issac Asimov thought experiments in his science fiction writing; Geoffrey Richings includes a flippant text proposal for an art-work ; and Christopher Willsmore includes two dense texts drawing from a broad spectrum of disciplines. As a contrast, however, a very clear and straightforward exposition of a central analytic idea can be found in ‘Tautologies’ by Phillip Pilkington. David Rushton’s work tends toward practical, process and object based solutions to some of the problems set up in the course’s ‘Technos’ assignment, or developed from essay questions originally set within the unreconstructed art history component, with texts that document a quasiscientific process with social implication. Dealing with issues around representation and truth-value in the semantics of art criticism, the first issue of Statements also contains a description and diagram of an ‘Exhibited Painting’ and the second issue includes the work ‘Noisy Channel’, which began life as a topic, and as one among several terms derived from engineering, that David Bainbridge had proposed as a starter for re-thinking notions of work and art-work. Enacted with Philip Pilkington and also included in this exhibition is The Robert Morris Project of April 1970, which consists of a felt sculpture with photographic and film documentation and accompanying exegesis regarding its own making and conditions of reception. The practical elements evidenced by these projects belie the patently absurd notion that the students on the ‘Art Theory Course’ did not produce ‘tangible’ art work, often cited pejoratively, as being the main reason for the eventual reassertion of traditional studio-based teaching and the limiting of A&L’s activities within the college. A seeming problem with this kind of work, and perhaps why it didn’t count as physical work, was the antagonistic and deflationary attitude it represents towards the division between theory and practice and the appropriate level of reflection upon the physical as output which one was expected to adopt as an artist. The students might have argued that this aspect of the work could be considered as irrelevant or was superseded as the conversation moved on. Pilkington, Rushton and Lole formed a central triad of committed students on the course. Pilkington and Rushton wrote a number of essays together and began to work on models and on indexing implications towards the end of the course. Their final joint degree project prefigured many of the techniques and characteristics that were to become the Art & Language Index 01 and 02 of 1972. The texts of Statements and Analytical Art and many others included here also feature in those Indexes. 5 The first point of note is the reccurring figure of Marcel Duchamp. Throughout both the journals Duchamp comes to be a marker, along with Donald Judd, for the production of a strain of artworks reliant on repetitive (and ever more grandiose) acts of nomination and ‘selection’ which were viewed by the group as tautological and increasingly meaningless. In the first essays of Statements, however, the Duchampian readymade is taken up primarily as an example from which to consider how ‘morphological’ criteria for distinguishing between artworks and practices may be discounted. The continued references to Duchamp in the writings might account for the misconception that A&L, or at least their students, situated themselves within a Duchampian tradition in-common with much Conceptual art. However even a cursory reading of the essays on Duchamp in both Analytical Art and Art-Language should disabuse us of this notion. Such texts seek to expose the readymades in particular to a thoroughgoing scrutiny, concluding that they are particularly weak and somewhat boring instances from which to begin an understanding of late twentieth century art practice. In Analytical Art this critique of Duchamp, who was then being recuperated by the academy as the protoconceptualist par excellence, is evinced through works such as ‘Don Judd’s Dictum and its Emptiness’, in which Duchamp’s act of constitution by fiat is being considered as a precursor to Donald Judd’s statement ‘If someone calls it art, it’s art’, as quoted in Joseph Kosuth’s article ‘Art after Philosophy’; in ‘Duchampian Delinquency and the Constitutive Cure’ and, more implicitly, in ‘Progress in Art and Science’. The corollary to Duchamp was Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, noted by the art historian Charles Harrison as a particularly significant book and set of ideas for this period of ‘flailing around’7 and was itself a ‘set text’ on the course. Although Duchamp was being heralded as executing a significant change in the conception of how an artist might work, the result of this change left open a series of questions. Was the act of nomination a key to the understanding of artistic activity in the breakdown of a set of technical skills and in the ensuing state of confusion that permeated both liberal art educational attitudes, typified by the Coldstream reforms, and the free-for-all, anything goes attitude of the expanded field of art ? This understanding of art as, perhaps, a pre-paradigmatic discipline helped situate the students’ collective search for an intelligible description of their field. 6 crucial and on-going concerns of the group. Indeed by 1972 Art & Language would write that : “Public paradigm and the repudiation of the ‘private language’ is basic and central as a methodological thesis of the Art-Language Institute.”8 In light of this we would like to devote some time to looking at how Wittgenstein’s argument was received. Kevin Lole, in his paper; ‘The Private Language Thesis in Art’9 suggests that the Private Language Argument, developed in the Philosophical Investigations10, can be given in three canonical forms, which Lole paraphrases : “(i) it is impossible for a man to use words with a meaning that nobody understands, (ii) it is impossible for a man to use words which refer to private objects, that is, objects which nobody else could in principle know, (iii) it is impossible for a man who has lived in isolation to possess a language, even is [sic] his sounds are understandable by another person.’11 The private language argument has traditionally been presented by postulating a private language which Wittgenstein tells us, not unproblematically, is defined as “a language which describes my inner experience and which only I myself can understand”- then moving to deduce, via a reduction, that it cannot be a language. We can offer one very basic reconstruction of the argument as follows (whilst noting that it remains highly controversial in the literature as to just how the Private Language argument is supposed to be validly formulated) : 1. In a language there must be a correct / incorrect distinction. 2. In a private language there can be no distinction. 3. Therefore there can be no private language. The second journal Analytical Art drew from an incredibly broad range of writing, in what follows we will try to summarise the most important and, with hindsight, the most enduring issues and figures addressed. The above basically says that in assuming that meaning is normative, that language-use depends on our being able to follow rules and that the meaning of a word depends on its correct or incorrect use, it then proceeds to argue that this normative distinction cannot be made on the basis of an individual’s private relation, for example, to his own inner episodes, since in such relation “I have no criterion of correctness… Whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘right’.”12 That is, to be able to say that one is following a rule, there must be a difference between thinking that we are following a rule and our actually following it, and this requires another person. Since an isolated individual will be unable to draw this distinction, there can be no private rule following and therefore there cannot be a private language. Analytical Art No.2, collects together a number of essays which are concerned with working out some of the implications of Wittgenstein’s Private Language argument and of rulefollowing more generally, both of which were to become The strategy in Lole’s paper is to apply the argument to the assumption of “‘private’ experiences and thus ‘private’ meanings’” in the languages of art and art criticism, paradigmatically the experiences one is said to have in an encounter with a work of art. Although he notes that “we cannot appreciate experience devoid of the implication of some language structure” he reserves some scepticism for the argument from normativity, stating that : “What has been taken as a key point around which the conceptual framework of language hangs in relation to the possibility of its being private is the function of rules within a structure. It is posited that the rules of language are essentially public. But, in adopting an argument for the adequacy of criteria for knowing that one follows the rules, it seems the argument flounders on the epistemic grounds.” Lole, whilst recognizing the rule-following paradox which emerges in Wittgenstein’s argument, concludes, somewhat questionably, by suggesting that the “publicity of rules ought to hinge on the publicity of the ‘given’ in experience.” Together, the contents of the journals Statements and Analytical Art and the additional papers from David Rushton’s collection provide documentation of the progression and interaction of students on the ‘Art Theory Course’ at Coventry. These texts, along with contemporary articles which the students submitted for Studio International are conversation-like entities and, as such, serve as testament to the importance of the attempt to develop a more discursive, group model of art education, rather than say, their individual practice being assessed as aspirant works of either ‘proper philosophy’ or ‘real art’. However, this is certainly not to say these writings are without epistemic validity. Since it should be noted that in order to encourage the description and explanation of the norms governing artistic practice, it was necessary to exit that practice so as to reflect upon the concepts which that practice used. This is not, however, to say that art practice is not theory-laden. As Donald Davidson puts it in his little essay on Robert Morris : “Art that has been created with the idea of being read or seen or heard by others… enters the conceptual scene at an advanced stage.”13 In order to practice art we need to understand what art is, which is to say we need to have learned and acquired the concept “art” and we must be able to deploy that concept in order to guide our artistic activity. Indeed, as A&L themselves note, works such as Frank Stella’s black striped paintings of 1958-1959, for example, were themselves reflective commentaries on the norms of modernist painting which seem to blur the distinction between artistic practice and the theory about that practice. That it might be the case then that there are certain works of art which are about art and thus might be considered to be content, indiscernible from statements in a theoretical language, it should be noted however that ‘participation in the art world is not to be conflated with theoretical reflection upon participation in the art world.’14 This is how we should begin to understand the ‘second- orderishness’ of the ‘Art Theory Course’. As Rushton notes in papers here, making the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘about art’ ensures art as a proposition remains intellectually interesting. We conclude then with the following. Firstly, many commentators have considered the work of both A&L and the students on the ‘Art Theory Course’ in terms of a category of ‘philosophy as art’, which has led some to dismiss the approach of the course as involving either a misguided and rather eccentric foray on the part of artists into the technical abstruseness of Anglo-American Philosophy of Logic, or at best a temporary distraction from the business of producing ‘tangible’ studio works, or both. Rather the work produced in the persistence of the Coventry ‘course’ can perhaps be better understood if we consider that art, insofar as it is art at all rather than mere behaviour, is produced by agents engaged in processes of practical reasoning, and that reasoning is itself guided by concepts. If the actions that we undertake depend upon the reasons that we acknowledge and which we take to be binding on our actions, then the meaning and validity of those reasons, and thus of the actions we undertake in light of them, is itself conferred by their status in a discursive social practice in which such reasons may be given, assessed, defeated, corrected and revised. This is what we take to be the basic structure underpinning the course at Coventry and what eventually developed into ‘conversational indexing’ post-Coventry. Thus, if the production and evaluation of art depends on concepts, understood as rules or norms for reasoning, and if concepts are themselves socially acquired, then we might take it to be self-evident as to why an ‘Art Theory Course’ would be structured around an inquiry into the validity of those concepts, their histories and traditions of use. Moreover, that certain reasons can prove to be inadequate, that certain norms can lose their grip on us, is just what occurred in the breakdown of Modernism; the breakdown of an account of what had come to count as art. The Theory Course was thus inaugurated in a period of hiatus in the normative status of art and necessitated an attempt to find intellectual resources for the articulation of problems and in light of their articulation, the development of certain skills and competencies for theoretical and practical reasoning. Thus ‘conceptual reasoning’ should not be simply equated with or shunted off to the academic discipline of ‘philosophy’, and neither was it something like a ‘good idea’ which might be declared ‘art’. Lastly, it is indeed significant to note that many of the students who completed the ‘Art Theory Course’ did not choose to pursue a career primarily in art. In equipping students with a range of tools for reasoning, argumentation 7 and justification, the ‘research-like’ activity, centred around the core concern with the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, representing the development of discursive abilities, upon which the students’ ensuing political (and other) practices and commitments could be built and articulated. The ‘Art Theory Course’ stole the vocabularies of art and aesthetics away from their circumscription by philosophers of art, critics and art-historians and as such was positively emancipatory. The chutzpah and bravado of these students and teachers offered a direct provocation to the perceived intellectual laziness of the art school and the ramifications go beyond what is contained in both these texts and any original course document. Endnotes 1 The Coldstream Committee’s main legacy was to introduce a portion of compulsory written work into the new Dip AD qualification in addition to selecting the colleges able to confer such a qualification. This both introduced the idea of a broader, liberal learning into art education, and also started to re-orientate fine art education away from pure practical, skill-based learning towards an historically informed and justified process, in order for the new qualification to gain credulity as a degree equivalent. The extent to which this was achieved and the subsequent results remain contentious to this day. 2 Schopenhauer, The World of Will and Representation, i :263 3 As described by the review panel for the National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design MSS.322/AD/63 – NCDAD Quinquennial Review, 1969 held at Warwick Modern Records Centre. 4 In Hull, Ratcatcher from 1975-6, in Nottingham Issue 1976-9 and in Newport A and B in 1971 were notable examples of such journals. 5 The Nova Scotia poster included in this exhibition contains the names of the lecturers and artists that had visited the college during this period, as an advert for their ongoing programme. 6 Especially the support by the Art Librarians’ Society ARLIS. 7 C Harrison and F Orton, A Provisional History of Art & Language, 1984 8 A&L, The Art-Language Institute : Suggestions for a Map, 1972, pp. 17-18 9 Analytical Art, 1972, No. 2 pp 4-12 10 see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953, §243-315 and §§244–271 in particular. 11 Analytical Art, 1971, No.1, p 4 12 Wittgenstein, op. cit. §258 13 Donald Davidson, ‘The Third Man’ Critical Inquiry,Vol. 19, No. 4 (Summer, 1993), pp. 607-616 14 Robert Kraut Art World Metaphysics, OUP, 2007, p 5 8 9 1969-1970 STATEMENTS, January 1970 Philip Pilkington and David Rushton (Editors) This magazine is to be produced twice yearly to contain work by students at present in their first year of the Fine Art Course at this Faculty [of Art & Design, Lanchester Polytechnic].These articles were written on topics set or developed from work that was begun within the five areas of study covered by the course; Art Theory, Audio Visual, Epistemology, Romanticism and Technos. It was thought necessary by a number of students to establish an outlet for work, primarily taking a written form, to an audience not directly concerned with the course, who might find interest in the work produced within such a framework. The character of subsequent issues will be dependent upon the nature of the work undertaken by students. 10 Event David Rushton, October-December 1969 This essay concerns an investigation of the properties of the term event with particular reference to the spatio-temporal aspects of two words associated with that term, After the Battle of Waterloo the allies were considered the victors; that they could claim a victory over the French. Words such as victory and win have been associated with the term event, both lack spatio-temporal properties, they are not descriptive of a situation but concern a conceptual analysis of that situation. Neither victory nor win can be said to describe. A confusion arises with the use of these two words. That the Battle of Waterloo took place, involved a physical structural situation, is not being argued, these pieces of information relating to the victory can be effectively dealt with as a set of occurrences, between certain dates involving a description of the spatio-temporal sequence of physical actions. However the term victory has a certain limitation in respect to its application. The term is only applicable after the occurrences have taken place. To use the term victory during the course of the battle would be meaningless, just as the statement “he is winning”, during a 100 metres sprint, is not a factual proposition. A race cannot be said to have been won until after the race. (That is winning assumes if the race had finished now he would have won.) sprinter A breaking the tape before sprinters B, C, D and E, constitutes a win for A. However the properties which the term win carries are not those of a factual description of the situation. It can be said that the situation constituting the win refers to the instant at which A crossed the tape, that instant occupying no time. The term win cannot be referred to in a time sequence, it is in this case a designatory term applied to one sprinter as opposed to others that ran, according to the fulfillment of a set of rules; the assessment of the completion being taken empirically from the situation set up to terminate this transient sequence : a race. In another example, a person becoming an art student is taken from signing a document committing them to a course of study, and the term event can be used in the context of this. What would mark the change from non-student to student would be signing of a paper agreement. To use the term event here would be to make a connection, not with the description but with the differentiation, between ‘not being a student’, and ‘being a student’, taking the designation ‘student’ to refer to a set of commitments undertaken that differ from those of ‘not being a student’. The basis of this argument is that an event is understood as a linking concept applied to a set of conceptual structures that designate an approach to an empirical situation. Victory and win are conceptual propositions rather than factual statements. The Battle of Waterloo was not a victory for the French but for them a loss, revealing the double viewpoint from which a particular course of action can be viewed. The use of win in the context of ‘a race’ refers to a situation in which a runner breaks the tape before his competitors. The tape terminates a transient running-of-a-race. In reference to J J C Smart’s Time Slice, this would be the earliest ‘slice’ in which the term win is relevant in a meaningful discussion of that race. In a descriptive context it could be said that 11 Exhibited Painting David Rushton, November-December, 1969 Section One A mounted photograph 7½x9½ inches of an area of wallboard 30x38 inches, positioned in the top left hand corner of that area. A series of photographs of the area positioned to form four rows. By positioning the photograph within the area photographed the relationship between photograph and subject is indicated, thus photograph 1 contains information about the area covered by photograph 1. In photographing the area a second time photograph 2 has as its parts photograph 1 and the area not covered by photograph 1. The third photograph contains information about the area not covered by photographs 1, 2 and two sets of information about the area covered by photograph 1. This second set of information being a photograph, of a photograph, of a photograph, of an area. The size of this area in the photographs is reduced as its relationship with the original becomes less direct. All photographs reveal information concerning the wallboard until they are positioned on the wallboard. The photographs do not contain information about themselves but only the total of information up to the previous photograph. Anastasi’s painting of the North Wall of the Dwan Gallery, hung on that wall, stresses the relationship between subject and art object. The connection between this and the gallery photographs is that the painting does not contain information about itself which when looking at the gallery wall is contained by the wall, while information concerning the area covered by the painting is contained within the painting. Unlike Anastasi’s painting, these photographs deal with a regressive system terminated by the extent of the area. Though the reproductive process reduces the area in the series of photographs, the system is renewed, as each photograph is concerned with the whole area, each photograph commences a system while the previous photograph’s systems are extended in that photograph. Section Two A mounted photograph of an area of exhibition wall. The subject and extent of the photograph being determined by the position of the camera back plate placed at a distance, parallel to the exhibition wall, and at a fixed height horizontal to the floor. The location of both back plate and mounted photograph to be the same. A sheet mounted next to the photograph stating the dimensions of the area photographed, the face to be away from the wall. 12 This work concerns how we establish a frame of reference through which a painting can be read while not imposing that framework on the physical structure of the painting. If a painting were stood on the floor and leant against a wall it might be confronted physically. It might be related structurally to its surroundings and be accessible to a sculptural reading system2. It is because the painting is presented hung on a wall that it is removed from a gravitational or sculptural reference, while the artist sets up the reference necessary for that painting to be read within the bounds of the object’s frame3. In the situation described above, the position of a painting’s isolated internal reference is no longer valid for the area relies on its surroundings to be read. By establishing a reference point outside the painting’s boundary a sculptural reading system might become applicable. Though the area is two-dimensional the situation is three-dimensional. On viewing a painting the idea of a painting’s frame is presupposed to be its limits before confrontation with that painting, but the viewer is involved in a three-dimensional arrangement with that painting in order to observe it. The difference with the exercise here is that the information about the painting’s limits is not known to the viewer until he is in a position where both area and information can be read. After apprehension of the information one woµld necessarily have to retain an impression of the photographic information to be able to read the area. A second system would be approached with knowledge of the first, which would assist in reading the second system prior to the reading of the second sheet of information4. Notes 1 Robert Morris ‘Notes on Sculpture’, Art Forum, February, 1966. 2 Michelangelo Pistoletto’s steel sheets and John McCracken’s There’s no reason not to, 1967 confront gravity. The steel sheets being similar to painting in other respects and McCracken’s planks to sculpture. 3 Frank Stella brings his paintings away from the wall to reduce any relationship to the surrounding area. (Interview between David Sylvester and Frank Stella, BBC, 1966.) 4 ‘Situational Aesthetics’,Victor Burgin, Studio International, October, 1969. “An object hung on a wall does not confront gravity, it timidly 1 resists it.” 13 Noisy Channel : Chair 1970, David Rushton A topic set by David Bainbridge for the Technos option of the Art & Language course provided students with a list of engineering terms, inviting the students to make a selection around which to work. In broadcast engineering a ‘noisy channel’ is the difference between the original sound/picture transmitted and the sound/picture received by the audience. To address how a ‘noisy channel’ might be represented visually a photograph taken of a chair was projected back onto the chair after the chair had been coated in photographic emulsion. The emulsion was developed, fixed and washed. The photograph covers but also reproduces the detail on the surface of the chair. Here ‘noise’ is apparent in places where the chair and its photograph fail to coincide. 14 Statements November 1970 Philip Pilkington and David Rushton (Editors) The achievements of Statements January 1970 remain fairly limited, apart from internal college feedback and some replies from Canada, there has been only small response. It is hoped that this issue will provoke a more varied reply and strengthen that already established. If there is a purpose behind Statements, it is to provide an outlet for work to an audience not otherwise available. Participation from outside the Faculty in the form of comment, criticism, articles, artwork will be considered for inclusion in the early 1971 issue. As before, the nature of such work will determine the format of the publication. A Noisy Channel : Photography David Rushton, October 1970 There may be no consensus as to what constitutes a noise so long as only one end of the channel remains open to the listener. Comparison of message before transmission with message at reception opens both ends of the channel, a straight comparison between the two might reveal intrusions on the signal prior to reception which may or may not be controlled or removed. The following reports on a project that operates with a visual ‘noisy channel’, an analogy being drawn with an audio system. 15 Method A copy of a half tone plate of a felt sculpture was taken using 4x5 inch Ilford FP4 film, a positive made on Ilbofrom 182 photographic paper, and compared with the half tone plate. All marks tallied in this comparison and the copy considered ‘noise free’. The photo was divided into a grid of two inch squares and a six inch canvas manufactured to correspond with each square (see overleaf). The canvases were treated with photographic emulsion to retain an image and exposed to a section of the 4x5 negative. Each was compared with its paper counterpart, the variables in the photographic process were cross related to the extent that the number of canvases would permit. The results that produced an image most closely resembling the paper master were selected to produce a canvas containing the whole image. Notes 1. The subject matter in these photographs is of no importance when considering them. The analogy has loosely been established with a radio system where there is a signal before transmission and a signal at reception and in between a state where modifications to the signal can prevail. Rather than just one channel there is a tendency for two channels to operate; one between the photo and the canvas replica and the second between either of these and the supposed object depicted; though here the craft of photography and the nature of the subject subvert identification. We are involved with a secondary quality of photography in which the arrangements and marks of the image are more important than a recognition of the photo as one of felt. As such this second channel, recognising the image, is extraneous and can only be an interference. 2. By taking a copy, and not using the original half-tone plate, we are setting up an hypothetical noise free positive. This facilitates establishing the situation as one of visual comparison, with both ends of the channel being accessible to the viewer. If this were an audio set up this might be more difficult since sound comparisons involve temporal considerations requiring a different sort of perusal. The analogy does differ from a strict transmitter-receiver system since we are using two received signals side by side for comparison. Since noise is used here as an interference term with humans as the sensors this compares with distinguishing between a good receiver and a poor one, and ‘removing’ the noise on the poor set to achieve the standard of the good. 3. Below we show a test taken on a 30x24 inch canvas prior to the test series to ascertain if there was any noise in the proposed system (anyway). 16 One way of removing the unwanted channel (mentioned above) is to use the object as the signal before transmission, and remove the second photo (on canvas). The object used here acts as a carrier for a positive taken of it; the object retains its own fullsize photo. Method Using 10x8 inch IIford FP4 film in a plate camera with a 210 mm lens (aperture f45, exposure 20 seconds) a photograph was taken of a chair. The lens and processed negative were transferred to a horizontal projector and this adjusted so that the projected image corresponded with the chair. The chair was coated with photographic emulsion in the form of a spray until sufficient had been retained and exposed for 5 minutes at f45. Developer, fix and washes were applied with the spray gun and the result photographed adopting the above variables (aperture, time etc) as constants for this and subsequent photograph(s). Maintaining the negative and projector in the same positions the process was repeated, the chair having been coated twice with photographic emulsion and an extended interval (12 hours) allowed for the emulsion to harden. Aperture was increased to f16 and exposure reduced to 35 seconds. This was processed as above and a photograph taken, maintaining the constants but from a position nearer the chair on the same axis. The lighting throughout remained a single 500 Watt photo-flood. Notes 1. If a perfect result were attained it would not be possible to read any of the markings on the part of the chair visible to the camera since these would be hidden by their corresponding photographic marks. Noise could be said to occur anywhere where there was not such a coincidence. It may be necessary to resort to photographs as an intermediary so that the object’s two states can be compared simultaneously. 2. The result could be seen to have been achieved if an intermediary were introduced into the film (such as half tone) by which the distinction between mark and photo mark could be made. Foreshortened shelves for Harry Weinberger 1969, David Rushton Rushton was caught by lecturer Harry Weinberger stealing college shelves to build a hi-fi cabinet. Having already trimmed the shelf-ends Harry suggested that Rushton re-cut the ends and return the shelves to the college stockroom. A photo of the result was titled Foreshortened Shelves for Harry Weinberger, 1969 and submitted by ‘Bill Blake’ in the catalogue of ‘fake artists’ work for an exhibition in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1970. A scale model of the shelves appears in the Conceptual Art Museum from Memory, 1966-1979, 2004. A full-sized replica was built from MDF for the Reconstruction and Fabrication exhibition held with Terry Atkinson and David Bainbridge at the Model Art Gallery, Edinburgh in 2004. The version shown here was for Models and Metaphors, Concepts and Conceits at the Herbert Art Gallery and Lanchester Gallery Projects in Coventry in 2010. It was subsequently reassembled for MERZ in 2013. 17 18 19 20 The Robert Morris Project Philip Pilkington and David Rushton Installation at the gallery at Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry, April 1970 In 1970 the art critic David Sylvester suggested the aesthetic arrangement of Robert Morris soft-form (felt) sculptures was more pleasing when arranged by Morris, than by the gallery cleaners at Tate Britain or by Morris’s window cleaner at his studio in New York. Both had to move the felt to do their work. Because Morris commissioned many of his sculptures from fabricators there seemed little to constrain others from making similar felt pieces. Evidently Morris had no wish to prevent alternative ways of arranging the cut felt either. So on the evidence of construction and arrangement any similarly cut felt might be ‘read or confused as’ being Morris’s work. In their short-lived exhibition held for an art history project at Coventry Pilkington and Rushton did not set out to forge Morris sculptures but rather to suggest that Morris’s ‘innovative’ delegation of responsibilities for making and arranging art - the so-called aesthetic responsibility - might be better understood through a reassessment of an artist’s role. Taken together Morris’ felt works can be more fruitfully understood if Morris were acknowledged as the author of a class of felt sculpture rather than as the initiator, builder or arranger of each and every individual member of that class. Morris disagreed with this proposal and fifty years later it remains that pre-19th Century unique and individuated identifications characterise art in terms of its economic and social identity to secure an artist as a work’s ‘author’. 21 ‘The focus on matter and gravity as means results in forms which were not projected in advance.’ The Robert Morris Project Philip Pilkington and David Rushton, April 1970 Let us consider the ‘set of rules’ in which criticism can be operative. If William S Wilson had noticed some felt on a visit to Robert Morris’s studio in 1966, his perception would have been of carpet under-felt. Since things look the way they can be used, even if he noted the felt, there would be little reason to suppose it to be connected with art. With published notes by Morris on the use of soft form materials in an art context, the framework in which he is working is opened to criticism and interpretation. ‘The duality is established by the fact that an order, any order is operating beyond the physical things. Probably no art can completely resolve this.’ It is statements such as these from Morris’s ‘Anti-Form’ article, [Artforum, April 1968] that come up for critical interpretation rather than the Felt Pieces. The critic, in this case William S Wilson, is at liberty to precis Morris’s writings to derive : “The attempt to suppress relation and order for the sake of particularity and physicality, is evident in the 1968 essay ‘Anti-Form’, also in the works shown in 1968-9, which allow changing relations”. Interpretation of a Morris Felt Piece is assisted by knowledge of Morris’s and other writings, if not determined by such writings. Meaningful interpretation could not be considered without knowledge of ‘Anti-Form’ or derivative criticism; interpretation of the art object requires a framework in which that interpretation can operate. The framework for ‘Anti-Form’ is different from that applied to ‘Minimal’ work. It is necessary for the artist to clarify these ‘rules’ in public statements, and as work becomes less easily defined in an art tradition, it is the artist who determines the method of interpretation applicable to his work. 22 A library is being audited, several books have been purchased throughout the year, yet in the accounts no mention is made of the contents and qualities of the books, ‘not that silence of scholarly merits of the books was a denial of the existence of such merit, it was a declaration of indifference to such qualities’. Gilbert Ryle, whose example is quoted above, splits these relevant qualities into primary and secondary groups, the first contains ‘physical theory qualities’ the second ‘things that cannot be operated with by such a theory’. The rules of auditing exclude all unnecessary information, with indifference not denial. In the same way the ‘rules’ established by the artist in which his work is to be considered, ignore these secondary qualities with indifference; they are not considered part of the work. Further, just as price is not a property of the books, but an attribute, so ‘art object-hood’, in terms of the felt, or any piece of art, is not a property but an attribute. In a different context the felt would be ‘carpet underlay’. On 27th November, 1969, we sent a letter to Morris outlining our proposal to construct a piece to his specifications. Since Morris did not reply to this letter, our decision to manufacture two pieces posed different problems from those first envisaged. Proposal 1 The design of the felt-piece would have been undertaken by Morris, the original motivation and rules in which the piece would operate were to be largely determined by ourselves. The set of activities usually considered in having a sculpture manufactured would be these : 1. Artist’s intention. 2. Artist’s design. 3. Manufacturer’s construction. 4. Artist’s sculpture/art-work. In the case of this piece [of work] they become : 1. Manufacturer’s intention (letter from us to Morris with proposal). 2. Artist’s design (reply to the letter). 3. Manufacturer’s construction. 4. Artist’s/Manufacturer’s sculpture (for duration of exhibition). 5. Artist’s sculpture (on receipt of work). Here the sculpture has two sets of artists, the manufacturers, Philip Pilkington and David Rushton, and the artist Robert Morris. The authorship has to be determined on a temporal scale, since the sculpture is to be made for a specific exhibition [at the Faculty of Art in Coventry], it would for that period be considered the sculpture of Morris, Pilkington and Rushton. (Morris’s role as artist here, would be dependent upon his acceptance of a tripartite authorship, for the duration of the exhibition, of a sculpture he would not have seen.) The felt would not be considered Morris’s sculpture until he had seen it and accepted it, which would be after the exhibition. From that time on we should relinquish our responsibility toward the sculpture. 1. Up until and during the exhibition the sculpture would have not been ‘seen’, ‘passed’ or ‘accepted’ as ‘Morris’s art’, by Morris and those responsible would be Pilkington and Rushton. 2. When Morris receives the work his acceptance (or rejection) of it would determine whether or not he also accepted the role as artist (acceptance, possibly denoted by exhibiting it elsewhere). Proposal 2 The second plan, which has been carried out in a modified form, was to hold an exhibition and lectures, of which these essays are a part. As was indicated above, the rules that apply to these Felt Pieces are not those that apply to Morris’s Felt Pieces. Our concern was not with the object, but with its manufacture. That is, we prescribed the cutting procedure before cutting, and worked toward that on two separate pieces. Decisions we made, for financial or structural reasons, were not to our knowledge of the same order as decisions made by Morris. The first piece was cut into six nine-inch strips, each cut being between eight and ten yards long. This was worked at slowly for two hours. The second piece (ten yards, six strips) was cut over twenty minutes while a video and photographic (slides) record was made of the cutting process. Photographs were then taken of the photographer on the video recording, photographing the felt piece. One of the ‘secondary qualities’ of these pieces may be aesthetic. In the case of the photographs and slides, when the arrangement of image on surface is visually more important than object photographed; the craft of photography subverts identification of the object photographed. This would seem unavoidable in applying photography to anything other than diagrams or charts. In the photographs here the criteria was to include as much of the object as possible : felt, in the slides; felt and people cutting felt, in the video; felt and people cutting felt and video monitor, in the photographs. The slides were taken at intervals, when enough work had been done on the felt to warrant another slide, or when the felt had been moved. The video recording was split into two twenty-minute sections and amounted to a record of all cutting and hanging in that forty minutes. Photographs were then taken of the video screen when a figure was seen to be photographing the felt. All records are presented in the exhibition. Now, any ontological commitment to the felt pieces as works of art would of necessity evaluate those pieces within a possible tradition; Robert Morris, Eva Hesse, Richard Serra. This would be an incorrect interpretation (as interpretation is necessarily connected to intention) since the question of what counts as work would not be distinguishable in this context without having read these notes. It is proposed that the exhibition have a duration of forty minutes : that it be presented four times throughout 8th April 1970. These written reports will be published during the exhibition and made available subsequently. 23 “These sculptures are materially attractive, elegant, graceful yet sparse”. Reference 1. Morris-Sylvester Interview (BBC) on rejecting a piece on its return from the manufacturers; Morris says that he cannot visualise the object’s scale until he sees the sculpture. 2. It seems that Morris has been involved with similar work recently. From Dore Ashton’s article in Studio International, March 1970 ‘The idea of process is more apposite in Robert Morris’s project in which he set up a revolving camera to photograph photographs and their reflections in mirrors, and then, as the finale, sets up a revolving projector which projects the filmings of the photographs and their mirror images on the very walls which once held them. The multiple steps Morris undertook to produce the final performance itself qualify as process, and are, in fact very stimulating. There is nothing so intriguing as mirror images and moving pictures. Morris leaves plenty of space for the imagination of the viewer’. II The above opinion of the two felt sculptures in this exhibition could be categorized as a Clive Bell-type comment. This essay will examine the character and consequences of such comments, and will tentatively construct in its place an alternative method of criticism of art objects. Where criticism of the art object’s physical properties come up for discussion there appears to be a resort to the spectator’s taste. How does the spectator’s taste operate towards these two felt sculptures? The spectator can perceive a quality - Clive Bell calls this Significant Form - in the art object which then causes or evokes an enduring mood. This mood is known as ‘aesthetic emotion’. Thus the art object has, inherent, the attributes of beauty or elegance or balance, etc. Failure to see any formal qualities in the object would be dependent upon two conditions. Firstly, the spectator’s ‘eye’ may not be gifted or educated enough to perceive the Significant Form in the art object; secondly, the art object may not have the formal qualities in it. The consequence of the second condition would be, as Bell has pointed out, that the art object that does not have, or has little, Significant Form would be judged to be a “lesser work of art” than those art objects that do have the formal qualities. The origins of this approach to art objects belong to the ancient laws of ‘organic-unity’ which included the qualities of beauty and balance. ‘Aesthetic taste’ has been and is still widely used in art colleges, art magazines and essays on aesthetics. From George Santayana, a 19th Century philosopher, to E C Goosen. Santayana’s words in The nature of beauty… “Art is for the stimulation of our senses and imagination” seem to be echoed by those of Goosen when he talks of Morris’s, Serra’s and Tony Smith’s sculptures as “awakening dull senses”. Again, Dore Ashton in her article ‘Anti-Style’, “If Robert Morris makes an appealing design of mounds of coal, earth and asbestos, setting them in a nice informal pattern in a museum room…” Now what of the characteristics of operating some ‘formal analysis’ to these - or any - sculptures ? 24 (1) The individual spectator must have a passive receptiveness to the art object. That is, he has no pre-conditioning or expectation of what he will see. For all must be dependent upon the moment of perceiving. (This, I find, hardly possible; it appears to oppose the theories of perception constructed by Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein and Quine, etc.) (2) Criticism of works of art as based on emotional response would only result in a categorizing of works as dull, boring and ugly, etc, or alternatively, as attractive pleasant and graceful, etc. (3) This criticism through response is solipsistic. For the experience and the contingent opinion is private to the individual. There is no consensus of what beauty etc., is - for circularly they are matters of taste. Kant’s thesis was that “the judgement of taste is not based on principles, for if it was we could determine it by proofs.” Then if there is no consensus of opinion whether a Clive Bell type interpretation is correct or incorrect they must be all of the same status. To ask whether a statement concerning aesthetics is true or false is absurd for we run into the old problem of the irrefutability of metaphysics. Like the ethical statement “stealing money is wrong” the aesthetic statement “art object X is beautiful” is not a genuine proposition but is a pseudo proposition. And they are pseudo propositions because the status of a genuine proposition is that what it purports to be ‘the case’ can be testable in some way. (1) ‘Carpentry’ facts : the length, breadth, height and colour of the work of art. This could be categorized as Greenbergian or Friedian type of art criticism. (‘Factual cataloguing’ - Don Judd.) It is a debatable point whether ‘carpentry facts’ are about works of art at all : see Statements January 1970. the essay ‘Is the statement that ‘Noland is thirty feet by six feet’ a statement about an art object ?’ (2) Art History : simply dates of birth, biography; cases of precedence over other artists. These are the facts of our temporal dimension of our world picture. (3) We must consider the artist’s intentions, otherwise what we say of the painting or sculpture will not be about it but what was aroused by it. ‘The Intentionalist Fallacy’ of Monroe and Beardsley has been exploded for as Dr F Cioffi has shown in ‘Intention and Interpretation’ from Collected Papers on Aesthetics, Ed Cyril Barrett, [Basil Blackwell, 1965] we can determine the artist’s intention in two ways : firstly through the ‘syntax’ or simply data of the art object’s physical features (internal means) and secondly through the information of the artist’s biography and writings (external means). These propositions do not contain facts, at least not the facts obtained from observation, yet they can come up for the count as far as probability, and certainty go. The Logical Positivist school has held out that genuine propositions are not those that have been tested for their ‘truth’, but propositions that are possible to test; they also hold that these propositions are the only meaningful sentences that can be made. Testability would be a resort to an empiricism. We could not argue over aesthetic statements but only disapprove, condemn or shout down our opponent’s views. Any argument, it appears to me, must resort to facts the truth or falsity of empirical statements. Having examined the drawbacks of an ‘aesthetic taste’ approach and the ‘formal analysis’ approach, basically that they are private languages which could not be said to be possible to ‘discuss’, it is time that the alternative system of criticism was introduced. The real need in this system is to construct some sort of testability criteria on what we say of works of art. As A J Ayer has pointed out we need to discuss what are the facts of a particular case. We have a desire to get to the truth; facts are the truth. And as metaphysical interpretations (Bell’s or Croce’s) contain no facts they are excluded from our system. The facts of art that can be included are 25 By employing these three categories of knowledge we now have ‘cognitive’ interpretation. ‘Cognitive’ interpretation is a practical approach. It is an attack on the idealist’s contemplation of the universal ‘Art’. As Barbara Rose has pointed out in her article ‘The Politics of Art Criticism’, Artforum, April 1968, the only way to obtain the respective values of say a Johns, Bell or a Judd is to talk in the terms that apply to Johns, Bell or Judd. Miss Rose has directed our attention to the aesthetic theory of the American pragmatist John Dewey who undertook during the 19th century one of the strongest attacks on Kant’s idealism. What Dewey appears to have developed in his essay is ‘having an experience’ is a ‘cognitive’ interpretation approach to art. In looking at an art object we are involved in a two way communication between the art object and the spectator. That is, information about the object ‘travels’ to the spectator and the knowledge possessed by the spectator goes out to help in the act of interpretation. This act of perception is thus centred around the notions of present knowledge and sense-data. This seems to me to be epistemologically sound. The question of the content of a work of art is thrown up. For in Dewey’s approach to the interpretation of art the content is of a finite capacity. Dewey wrote, “If we dawdle too long after having extracted a net value the experience becomes empty and perishes of inanition”. That is, interpretation can be exhausted for we now have not an emotional response that merely ceases when we turn away from the object, but an intellectual comprehension that comes to a conclusion. “What’s past is prologue” Shakespeare, The Tempest It may be said that in writing this essay and displaying the video recording and slides with the two felt pieces that they construct a further framework of information about them. Moreover, the question that should be asked is : are the photographs and video-tape of the manufacture of the felt pieces and this essay to be recognised as parts of the work of art? If it is part of the art work, the spectator must realise, it has described for its audience the appropriate frames of reference they should use in looking at the work. And it is the intention of the artists that the extra information of the making of the sculptures obtained through video and slides should be an integral part of this art work and the television screen, projector and type written be art objects as well as the felt. There have been precedents for the work of art being the recording of its own making : ‘Field Painting’ by Jasper Johns has attached to it the objects and materials which helped to produce the painting - brushes, paint can, solder, etc. Max Kozloff wrote of this painting “The division and mockery of the self”… “Field Painting then is about its own history; it knows of nothing except that which has gone into its making”. Similarly, Robert Morris has built a cube sculpture which contained a tape-recording of its making. Lastly, the slides and video of the felt sculptures have made them [the sculptures] redundant for we have said that the Clive Bell type of approach was no longer appropriate : they can only function now in giving the spectator something pleasing to look at. All the content of the work can be found outside the felt pieces, in these two essays, etc. Pincus Witten has written “this substitution of the record for the actual thing is perhaps one of a retrograde faction of the new sensibility. The acceptance of such views tends to render expendable the product on which they are based”. 26 ROBERT MORRIS PROJECT (Fabrication 2010), at Models and Metaphors, Concepts and Conceits, Lanchester Gallery, Coventry, 2010 27 Portrait of Harriet Smith 1970, David Rushton The Portrait of Harriet Smith is a reproduction of four pages from Jane Austen’s novel Emma presented with an exploratory text (P of H S). The extract describes Harriet Smith painting a portrait of Mr John Knightley. The paragraphs address an essay set by the Art History department at Coventry, asking What do you need to know about an art object in order to understand it properly ? With these paragraphs from Emma the art history question is turned around. It now invites the reader/viewer to ask whether there are any realistic limitations to what might be known about an art object, unless perhaps that the object itself is largely unknowable as a work of fiction or as a theoretical model. 28 Portrait of Harriet Smith (P of H S) David Rushton, 1970-71 A. If our ‘random’ or ‘arbitrarily selected’ individual has a certain property, then every individual must have this property. By modus tollens : if some individual lacks a certain property, then the ‘arbitrarily selected’ individual cannot have this property. The point is a ‘random individual’ is not itself an individual. A statement involving an ‘arbitrarily selected element/ individual’ is a synoptic account of a multiplicity of statements - viz. the corresponding assertions regarding each particular element of the set. Thus ‘random individual’ is not a thing or element; such a notational device as P of H S is a universal surrogate for individuals and not itself an individual.To introduce random individuals meaningfully requires subjection to the self-denying ordinance conventionalised as; Nothing is to be said about a random individual that is not intended about all of the individuals of the domain at issue. To regard a ‘random individual’ as an individual is to commit Whitehead’s ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’… to incur a category mistake. Randomness or arbitrariness does not reside in individuals but in the deliberate ambiguity of the notation by which reference is made to them. So talk of random or arbitrarily selected individuals is to reify a notational device - which is demonstrably absurd. Al. The distinction between domain and set is tentative. Domain (here) covers those sentences that are logically not self-referring but conventionally so. Conventionally is like constitutionally habituated or paradigmatic. No doubt the null class presents a logical puzzle; all that is done there is to pragmatically (semantically ?) elevate contextually (reify in the demonstrably absurd sense mentioned) and plot that ambiguity. B. The notion of what a thing might be about seems broader than the notion of what information can be gained from a thing. Standard logical models being of little use here. Saying that P of H S has the physical attributes of a portrait (some of them) is possibly a minimal sufficiency - possibly a clue. What can be said to be additional ? or What can a responsibility with respect to this thing be like ? Rather, it is better how to register that query. Simply, how we index an interest insofar as the interest at best is bound to be peripheral (or trivial). It might seem to be a straightforward issue for indexical expressions to sort out - but not only do we not have access to bare particulars (there are no bare particulars) but we have (in some sense) ‘access’ ie., there is a history of striving. It is an issue for some axiomatic decision about which relations are important. That is, it’s more about the context from which that heuristic is derived than about any accomplishment. It’s about modes of tackling things. C. Perhaps it is the only fragment of ‘analytical art’ that parallels agency problems with Analytical Cubism - substitute ‘description’ for ‘ostension’. D. Constitutions may be modified by high-order norm delegation - which means they are not self-referring (perpetuating) or then again by mob-rule (when seen to have been superseded). E. It is like an information channel with only the terminal semantically open – which means we can only scan for efficiency not sense (if it were the case that… How efficient would this be as a description / prescription) in so far as there is no thing which the ‘terminal’ depicts / illustrates / describes there are problems about information transformation. In a standard sense there is no information. Like random or arbitrarily selected individuals ‘novel’ is a universal surrogate for a class or set of individuals. What we deal with are various sub-species of surrogateness. Transformations between a surrogate and its (A) universe of discourse. El. So what sort of information-theoretic ‘about’ transformations are possible ? None, unless we treat the novel as ‘metaphor for action’. Which means we need to treat context seriously. E2. What can be said to be added to the thing in itself ? It is Engel’s conversion of ‘things-in-themselves’ to ‘things-for-us’ ? To what extent is metaphor transformational ? F. The irony and (possible) metaphorization of / from P of H S makes it somewhat more than literally a paradigmatic part of a history. It is more than a list of linguistic tools or a display. It is best to polarise the semantic (or sociological) paradox of which it is an instance. Metaphor is an interaction within dialectics. Particularly in this instance, to attempt some literal reduction would be absurd. 29 The secondary system of the discourse is that pool from which terms derive. The literal transformation of metaphor that is adequate here can arise only if there is sufficient pragmatic (conversational) interaction about the nature of the primary and secondary systems. In a coarse material fashion the ontological vagaries of metaphor don’t only imply ontological problems on the application but hermenuetical and heuristical (ie. searching) possibilities with respect to range of application. The literal-ness function of a metaphor (the degree to which literalness is applicable) - its embedding - is increased proportionately with the degree of homomorphism of the natural background of the term (its literal context) - the heuristic value of viewing that to which it is applied in terms of parts of that natural background. But it is more than that. Metaphorization is an intensional prerequisite for extensionality. The three chronological stages are : 1) a non-attached metaphorical ‘semantics’, 2) searches for appropriate extensionality, 3) an attached (literal) semantics. (That is, 1), 2), 3), from the point of view of falsification principles). The range of application is more fundamental than intentionality, ie. whoever introduces the metaphor (it might be meant literally) is of no consequence - its a problem about the scope of the grammar rather than authorship. G. Certain changes in the embedding conditions for art were necessary for P of H S - which is obvious - except that whatever those conditions are determine the transformation rules, ie., determine the chronology of the metaphor / literal functionality. H. In some ways it closes off certain pseudo-problems. (We never really had to deal with intention for semantic paradoxes we had to deal with ‘how things are taken up’ (functions) which is like saying a lot of what we tackle are logical errors - odd social norms.) I. It is pointless to view it as capable of more than metaphorical transformation, ie. take account of social factors - which is to consider Lukacs. But this novel is a-historical which makes that task difficult. 30 1970-1971 Concerning ‘The Paradigm of Art’ Kevin Lole, Philip Pilkington, David Rushton and Peter Smith, October 1970-January 1971 Section One ‘If they are of the dogmatic kind, let people do as they like, no one will be able to play master for long over another before someone is found to make things equal again’1. Towards the end of 1970 students identified collectively as the ‘Analytical Art Group’, Kevin Lole, Philip Pilkington, David Rushton and Peter Smith, began research on paradigms.They followed Thomas Kuhn’s study of paradigms in science, exploring the feasibility of a ‘paradigm of art’.The group subsequently refused to distinguish their ‘own’ work from that of the group for assessment for the Diploma. The apparent contradiction in Ethics may have brought about the Ayer-like view2 toward judgements of the sort ‘X is morally right’. It has been held that one theory or an assertion, in Ethics can be both right and wrong at the same or different times. Both Positivists and ‘Naturalists’ say that we do not allow argument over the right or wrong of our actions, but rather that we merely make assertions about our own and others’ feelings or dispositions. ‘When I say that X is right all that I say is I have some particular feeling toward X’. We can expand this argument to include ‘some men have the feeling X is right’, and societies that have this disposition, and still allow contradictions. What should be said here is that to say of an action that it is right is not to talk of any man, or any set of men, having feelings or dispositions toward that action3.The pleasure derived from action X or our approval of it, is not a proof or epistemological guarantee that action X is morally right. That there is no empirical verification or proof of logic in ‘naturalism’ may give us a sceptical view towards morals, ethics, and any questions of metaphysics. According to Meinong the scope of metaphysics is not sufficient to cover a general science of objects. ‘The totality of what exists, including what has existed and what will exist is infinitely small in comparison with the objects of knowledge4. The Platonic notion of knowledge requires that only the objects of a demonstrative system are necessary truths, all else is at best a matter of belief. Subsequent adaptation has permitted the acceptance, to a lesser degree, of contingent truths as epistemonical. Nevertheless, the objects of belief and those that are contingently true are distinct from the necessary truths by virtue of their empirical status. It would seem, in the strict Platonic sense, that the truth of the objects 31 of belief is arrived at inductively and the greater the number of instances substantiate (but do not conclusively ascertain) the validity of the assumption that the belief is a true one. ‘Strict’ truth is only applicable in the systems of logic or mathematics, but contingent truths can never be the truths of knowledge in the Platonic sense. Such are the differences between the deductive and inductive methods that the observer’s stance for the former is that of ‘Knowing something to be true’ while for the latter ‘Knowing something to be contingently true’ is sufficient grounds to assume that it always will be true, and therefore make it an object of knowledge. As Russell’s Theory of Descriptions was ‘that paradigm of philosophy’5, so might the methodology considered here be ‘that paradigm of art’. There are several important points in Linsky’s preface and introduction to Referring6. Firstly, he accepts Ramsey’s view that Russell’s Theory of Descriptions is ‘(and ought to be)’ a paradigm of philosophy, he notes : ‘(A paradigm, not the paradigm - nothing can be that)’. He writes that Strawson’s ‘On Referring’ rejects this paradigm and ‘that in the view of many it has become itself a new paradigm to replace the old one.’ The decision as to choice rests ‘on alternative ways of doing philosophy’, in Linsky’s terms. Just as Port Sunlight embodied all the previously ideal accoutrements of housing in the pre-electric era, so the Theory of Descriptions possessed what seemed an adequate philosophical argument prior to what Linsky calls the ‘revolution in philosophy’. This somewhat morphological7 view of a paradigm would permit one to assume (if one wished) that this is ‘a paradigm of art’, nonetheless under Linsky’s notion it would be one among many. What is chosen as the definiens of the Paradigm of Art in a hypothetico-deductive system is determined by where and what our methodology approaches. Different approaches to the domain of Art will give us different answers to the question : What is the Paradigm of Art ? Thus there are as many normative paradigms of Art as there are modes of observing the aesthetic domain. Remembering Whitehead, Russell and Stevenson - that because the answers to ultimate questions cannot be capable of strict proof we do not tolerate or grant several norms ‘The Paradigm of Art’ for that would be to commit a fallacy. ‘It is argued : Since this theory implies that one and the same action can be both right and wrong, and since it is evident that this cannot be so, therefore the theory in question must be false’8. But perhaps if we were to say that Norms are not deontic imperatives but merely offer us a choice - a scale of preference - we would not then make the credal error of irrationality. This would be making a mistake of what a norm is. Norms provide us with obligatory rules that we therefore must follow and will not allow us any measure of choice9. We follow what is our duty, which could be : ‘Do X’, or ‘Do X and Y’, or ‘Do X or Y’. Or we do not follow 32 what is our duty. Certainly in the strong constitutive field of Logic and deduction and in the ordinary weaker regulative world Norms are not axiological. An ‘across the board’ approach to the constructing of a norm ‘The Paradigm of Art’ by obtaining, say, what the majority of mankind consider as the paradigm of Art, would result in a norm ‘The normal Paradigm of Art’. What is considered as normal - by the majority of mankind - does not infer that it is also the good or right. Similarly, a majority of mankind stating what is the paradigm of Art is no affirmation of it being the Paradigm of Art. This would be to fall into the error of deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’. Inside the technical areas what ‘is’, that is what is normal, can be said to be also good. Looking from a Utilitarianist point of view we can see that what is normal also functions well and is thus good. But outside the instrumental field what is normal does not infer that it is also good. Again the solely factual character of judgements by itself is fallacious10. We could not gain a prescriptive norm ‘The Paradigm of Art’ from ordinary descriptions. Section Two The validity of a deductive system with respect to knowledge of the world is generally preferred to that of an inductive system. The attraction of a deductive method is its supposed ‘certainty’ or ‘infallibility’, generally associated with the ‘complete intellectual peace of mathematics’. In the empirical sciences, which seek both the acquisition of knowledge and reliable method, deduction is valuable as a mode of organising empirical data but induction permits inference to hitherto unobserved phenomena. This is because a characteristic of the inductive system is that reasoning goes beyond the premises; in that the premises may be true but the conclusion false, whereas with the deductive system this cannot be so. The truth of the conclusion is dependent upon the truth of the premises. The truth of the premises is a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion. Therefore an attack upon the truth of the conclusion ultimately refers to an attack upon the truth of the premises. Thus the deductive system can only be attacked through its premises. The reasoning employed in this system is possible because there are propositions that are not independent of other propositions which would be a fact evident in the setting up of a linguistic framework. The conclusions of such a system would merely follow from the propositions (which shall be the premises) and the relationships between them, which in turn means that all that would be said within the system would be entailed in the premises. The system would merely serve as an explanation of the relationships between the premises. Reference 1 I Kant, Prologemena, p. 149 2 See A J Ayer, Language Truth & Logic, Chapter 1, p. 39-41 3 G E Moore’s Ethics, Chapter 3 4 Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, ed. R Chisholm, ‘Theory of Objects’, p. 78, FP. 5 F P Ramsey, ‘Frontispiece’, Referring (see below) 6 L Linsky, Referring, p. x & xvii, RKP, 1967. 7 The approaches to philosophy and not philosophy per se. 8 G E Moore, Ethics, p. 42 OPUS 9 See ‘How to derive Ought from Is’, J R Searle, Theories of Ethics, ed. Phillipa Foot, OUP, 1968. 10 R M Hare, Language of Morals, Chapter 2, ‘Imperative and Logic’, OUP, 1952. ‘No imperative conclusion can be validly drawn for a set of premises which does not contain at least one imperative.’ A demand for justification accompanies the choice of either the deductive or inductive system but the choice of using one as opposed to the other as a method of construction involves prescriptive questions about the Paradigm of Art. The choice of a system to employ in the erecting of the Paradigm, or perhaps more appropriately to be a constituent of our Paradigm world, according to one view would be based on our ontology; our notion of the reality of the Paradigm, and as it is a paradigm of art, on our ontology of art. Thus choice of constituents, the employment of a Categorical Imperative, a specific theory of objects’ assertions about references within the premises - the furniture of the Paradigm - presupposes commitment to some assertions about art. They do, but according to views comparable to the Carnapian view, not necessarily about the reality of art. The conclusion of an inductive system would seem to be problematic. It would seem that inductive arguments having the highest degree of reliability with respect to assertions about the future can only be replaced by statements of probability which fail to satisfy the critics of induction. There is no proof that the conclusions of inductive arguments are true, merely an intuitive belief in the imputed relationship between the premises and conclusion. Such a critic asks for a deductive justification of induction, and would say where an inductive 33 ‘What he justifies is not an inductive conclusion of any interest, but a sorry substitute for it; we wanted to be sure that milk would nourish us - he insists that water will do no harm.’ conclusion was ‘in fact’ always verified that one was nevertheless still dealing with probability and could only say that the inference held the status of a ‘practical certainty’. In general what could be said of the critic is that he would be dissatisfied with any conclusion which was not entailed in the premises; that is, any conclusion whose negation was compatible with the premises. This points out that induction is not a species of deduction and therefore any attempt at a justification of induction is absurd. We can say of inductive inferences that they are deductively probable. Probability is compatible with both truth and falsity so it remains probable because of appropriate evidence conditions, no matter what the outcome. (Here probability is used in the Classical or Laplacean sense in which the meaning of ‘P is probable’ is explained in terms of the logical relation of P to some set of conditions which constitute the evidence for P.) However it is still impossible to make assertions with respect to matters of fact. The reference to unobserved events is divorced of any empirical content. As Max Black says with respect to the Neo-Laplacean view1, ‘What he justifies is not an inductive conclusion of any interest, but a sorry substitute for it; we wanted to be sure that milk would nourish us - he insists that water will do no harm.’ The probability interpretation of induction2 is no solution to the ‘problem of induction’. So far all the objections to induction boil down to the point that it is not deduction. Thus the critic is asking inductive systems to become deductive. As this is an absurd task a preference for a deductive system must be grounded in the advantages and disadvantages of either system in relation to the task it is intended to carry out. Terms such as ‘evidence’, ‘proof’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘validity’ are apparently often used in support of the deductive system. This indicates a relationship between notions inside and outside the system. If the Paradigm is to be used in the capacity of a satellite of the art world then the relationship between the Paradigm world and the art world must be assessed. If it is an explication of 34 the art world, terms such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘object’ must be defined in accepted terms of the world. The alternative to this is an explication of the world (where world refers to that outside our constructed Paradigm). On one view this would mean that in order to state an ontology of the Paradigm an ontology of the real world is necessary and another view would mean that the positing of certain subjects within the Paradigm world presupposes other referential linguistical frameworks. These points bear on what we can state as matter of fact about our Paradigm; that is, the acceptance of a framework of facts and the knowledge of references within the Paradigm. In other words epistemic questions of : In what sense and what can we know about our Paradigm art world ? We are told that ‘strict’ knowledge occurs only when a conclusion is deduced from unquestionable premises. Such knowledge can obviously not occur via an inductive system and only in a deductive system where the premises are tautologous as in Mathematics. By contrast, with this ‘certainty’ there is the subject of correction and disproof of the inductive system. (It would be more appropriate here to use self-evidence instead of certainty. Certainty is a psychological predicate and it would seem absurd to apply it to a non-psychological subject matter. In relation to Mathematics it would mean something like ‘X has a certain feeling towards such and such an equation’, which is possible but not the point intended in this case.) But we cannot say that deduction is superior to induction, on the grounds of this self-evidence as this is the defining characteristic of deduction. Here again what would be said is ‘Deduction is not Induction’. Both must be assessed with respect to some other common aim. Black holds out this common aim to be that of ‘Establishing by reliable methods conclusions which are comprehensive, systematic and true’3. But he points out that the introduction of the word ‘reliable’ may be begging the question. The reliability of deduction to extract a systematic and truthful conclusion is marred by the redundancy of its products. Whereas by contrast to the deductive standard of reliability the unreliable inductive system holds out the progressive nature of its conclusion. (That is, tautologies tell us nothing new.) The best results would seem to be attained through a manipulation of both procedures4. The difference then in states of ‘knowledge’ would be that strict knowledge applies only to tautologies but that this knowledge is trivially true, devoid of content and does not allow us to go any further. Knowledge from an inductive system is unreliable and speculative but enables us to attempt some kind of understanding of the world. In order to state the Paradigm of Art without being tautologous our premises must at least be open to contradiction. Otherwise we posit it as a calculus. Thus all the implications of references within the system are evident in the premises. If references are made within the premises to an individual case X then the inductive nature of any of the following generalisations in the conclusion is implied, for inductive reasoning moves from one case to a generalisation about all cases. The proof of the conclusion of a deductive system lies in the truth of the premises for that system, and there would seem to be a need for such justification of premises within the Paradigm. In order that the premises should stand, and that the Paradigm should stand, either a proof or description of what makes us believe a proposition to be true is needed. A proposition being true is quite independent of its being believed to be true, so a description of the way we come to believe a proposition is not the same as a proof. In his preface to the Grungesetze Frege describes his ideal of a scientific method, ‘It cannot be required that we should prove everything because that is impossible; but we can demand that all propositions used without proof should be expressly mentioned as such so that we can see distinctly what the whole construction rests upon. We should, accordingly, strive to diminish the number of the fundamental laws as much as possible, by proving everything that can be proved. Furthermore I demand - and in this I go beyond Euclid - that all the methods of inference used must be specified in advance. Otherwise it is impossible to ensure satisfying the first demand’. It is not being put forward that the method of construction be ‘scientific’, though with respect to ‘throwing the Paradigm into the thick of things’ there are certain advantages in terms of scientific or dialectical progress. That is, the Paradigm may become entrenched or explicated in a similar fashion to Strawson setting up a new paradigm of philosophy in the place of Russell’s Theory of Descriptions as Linsky mentions in his Referring5. How can a system that appears to have no connection with the physical world, that has none of the uncertainty of empiricism in its analyticity, be employed in the synthetic propositions in science ? Boyle and Guy Lussac’s classic laws of Gases rest upon the conception of a ‘perfect gas’ which made it possible to construct a notion of gases into a single meaningful theory. Likewise, Galileo required a frictionless world for his mechanics that contained very little empirical background. These simplified superficial ‘impressions’ enabled scientists to carry out axiomatisations of their disciplines. With this simplification scientists were able to draw analogies between what was observed as the case and a mathematical truth. The aim of drawing an analogy would not be that it would be infallible or penetratingly accurate but that it should show point of view. (Let us say, empiricism entrenches theories but does not help us to construct them6.) It is obvious looking back at the inductive system, that we cannot ultimately prove the truth of every proposition. In fact Frege believed that every proof relies upon unproved assumptions, and some of these must be used as axioms in every possible proof. Because of the assumptions there can never be a proof in which these axioms are deduced as theorems for some more fundamental axioms. He believes that these axioms are presupposed in the notion of a valid proof. The notion that propositions used without proof should be expressly mentioned as such is a demand made merely so that we should be able to see their position within the system and how they relate to the conclusion. It has nothing to do with the acceptance of the propositions as true. The acceptance of the truth of such propositions undoubtedly enables the deductive system that uses them to stand. That is, the conclusion of the system, in this case, would be the actual specifications of the Paradigm. Rationally and logically it would be believed to be true if the premises were believed to be true. Thus perhaps what is needed is a reason for the belief in the premises. One reason for specifying the methods of inference in advance, in the scientific system at least, knowledge of relations between truths is incomplete and as long as it is we accept ‘certain transitions in the proofs of propositions as valid even when they do not appear to conform with the known laws of logic’7. This leads to the belief that not all valid methods of inference conform with logical laws. Unless these methods are specified we cannot consider the acceptance or rejection of the supposed proof of the truth of the proposition as we do not know the basis for the justification for holding it to be true. The specification of inference in advance would include it in the premises of the system together with the proved and unproved propositions. Because we have left the field of empiricism and induction for the safety of deductive systems do not suppose that view no longer needs the strength of belief. C L Stevenson makes the point8 that dichotomies within disciplines such as Biology and Physics amount to agreements and disagreements of attitudes in those critical theories. And these disagreements over issues would always be in differences in belief. As we can see from the Ontological Argument of Aquinas, we are able to perceive the truths of his conclusions only by having ‘faith’ in the major premise of the argument. In ‘If P then Q’, accepting the conclusion Q we must have accepted the premis P. Godel has said of systems such as ‘Principia Mathematica’ that they must 35 include propositions which are not provable within that system. Then to make logical sense of the system we must have some sort of belief in its primary axioms. Whitehead and Russell have said of the definitions employed implies that “… the definiens is worthy of careful consideration. Hence the collection of definitions embodies our choice of subjects and our judgement as to what is most important9”. Despite Aquinas’ efforts to resolve the problem of obtaining reason alone to convince and convert us we are still left with the apparent ‘accuracy’ of his predecessor St. Anselm, ‘I do not try to understand in order that I may believe but I do believe so that I may understand. For I believe this too, that unless I had faith I would not understand10. We are in the position to believe P to be true with the apparent justification that no-one can prove us wrong. We are in the same dilemma as Pascal’s wager ‘Let us examine this point and say “God exists” or “God is not”. But to which side should we incline? Reason can decide nothing here … a game is being played’11. The ordinary man’s belief in the absence of proof or disproof must leave the question wide open; if the evidence is equally placed for both arguments (or none at all) then the rational agent must suspend judgement. But as Susan Stebbings has pointed out, taking up a position such as Pascal’s would be unproductive and non-pragmatic as far as we may want to construct a deductive system which would have as its foundations premises which were only as well-grounded as their contradictories12. We would not be dithering, unable to decide what to employ as our definiens, but rationally indifferent. If we are to accept, at the present stage of the argument, that we shall construct a deductive or inductive system we shall require definitions, the premises. 36 hitherto unobserved cases. It is only by making ‘rules’ that we would be able to achieve our aim of infecting the Paradigm of Art with some directive power or persuasion. It should be made clear that we are not giving ‘real definitions’15 in the sense of clarifying notions which had only been intuitively considered, or sorting out relations between particulars. As Richard Robinson would point out, our premises, that is our choice of definiens would not be objective; they would be persuasive definitions in the same way as Plato’s answer to the question ‘What is justice?’ and Tolstoy’s, to the question ‘What is Art?’, are not ‘real definitions’ but are stipulative16. It would be deceitful for us to answer, ‘What is Art?’ or ‘What is the essence of Art ?’ descriptively when the answer would be ‘What Art ought to be’ and so prescriptive. How could we have a moral law, with moral judgements, which merely described peoples actions ? However, there is a ‘moral-ought’ which is not founded on ‘value’. Kant, who was concerned with the regulative ideas which govern our behaviour rather than the descriptive knowledge of the world, constructed the Categorical Imperative - the Principle of Autonomy17. It was not merely an attempt to ground morals, and metaphysics, on a rational basis… There is no single book that one can point to as one might hold up Euclid, and say, this is metaphysics, here you will find knowledge of a highest order being proved from principles of pure reason but was also ridding them of their personal biased opinion. The formulae of Autonomy is deontological as well as being apodeictic. ‘So act that your will can regard itself at the same time as making universal laws through its maxim’18. What this principle, Formulae III, states is that we must act by making laws we are bound to obey. Therefore the will cannot be directed towards its desired ends or act on its own dispositions but toward the rational end, the law itself. The reverence for acting according to the rational laws is also reverence for the Moral Law. And here the term ‘we’ denotates ‘all rational agents’. Therefore to have a rational will is to have a Good Will. Coming back to a hypothetic-deductive system, that is one that has empirical content and is inductive, we would have a premise that would describe one or many relations about the art world. And we could take from the art world examples of, say, the relation of artists towards their art as ‘worthy of our consideration’ for the premises of the Paradigm. Albeit that we can make the choice of definiens, the inductive system would be virtually a meta-ethics. The Paradigm would then be merely a ‘science’ of the behaviour within the domain of art. The inductive system would be value-free : ‘Die Wertfreihert der Wissenschaften’13. Therefore it could be said that the Paradigm would tell us not how things ‘ought’ to be but tell us how things ‘are’; this is the ‘Great divide between fact and norm’14. The principle of Autonomy is analytic in that a rational agent will surely act rationally. Agents will act in accordance with the laws of other rational agents for the laws of thought are valid for all rational beings. But what are the necessary conditions of an agent being rational ? Simply that ‘a rational being must have direct insight into the principles of rational thought and must conceive himself capable of thinking in accordance with these principles’19. We shall make it clear that the Paradigm would not be descriptive but prescriptive. The inductive system would be descriptive in that its premises would have empirical content but also prescriptive in that it would claim to be true for Hence, the condition of a maxim being a Categorical Imperative is that if a law is asserted by one rational agent then it must necessarily be adopted by all other rational agents. Moreover, Kant’s Imperative is not just necessary for rational agents it is a necessitation. That is, we are obliged to, forced to, follow the Moral Law as long as we remain rational agents. ‘I ought to do X’ becomes under the Kantian schema of morals ‘I will do X’. For with the analyticity of the Moral Law, that is the Formulae of Autonomy, we would have logical entailment in our propositions of ethics. ‘If P then Q’ means that we must do Q when we have P not just from moral obligations but from logical necessity. C D Broad in his ‘Five types of Ethical Theories’ has stated that in necessitation the Categorical Imperative cannot be denied although it may be resisted. Now we can obtain the rational accessability to the Paradigm of Art and also have the infallible certainty of its premises. We are, as observers, compelled to recognise the meaning of our Paradigm otherwise we can make no sense of it. Correctly understanding the Paradigm would be realising the inherent truths of its autonomous premises. Acting as a rational agent would give the observer access to these truths. And only understanding the Paradigm would give us access to it. Rather trivially, ‘If you can perceive the truth “If P then p” then you can perceive the truth; if you do not then you do not perceive that truth’. If one does not perceive the truth of the propositions within the Paradigm then one does not perceive the Paradigm. Coming back to the problem of having the case where the assertion ‘X is morally good’ can be true or false. With the formulae of Autonomy all rational agents can agree on moral, ethical and aesthetic assertions. We can all be Gods in Logic in that we are all omni-percipient and omni-sentient. Because all that is explicitly said in the extrapolation of the Paradigm is mentioned implicitly in its premises. And so there would be as many ‘Ideal Observers’20 as there would be observers of the Paradigm of Art. Reference 1 Max Black, Language and Philosophy, Cornell University Press, 1949, p. 71 2 See paragraph three Section One above. 3 op cit p. 84 4 R B Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation, p. 361 -368, ‘Tendency Statements’, 1953 5 L Linsky, Referring, RKP, 1967 6 J W N Watkins, ‘Confirmable and Influential Statements in Science’, Mind 35, 1958 7 J D Walker, A Study of Frege, p. 161, Blackwell, 1965 8 C L Stevenson, Ethics and Language, p. 10, 1944 9 Whitehead/Russell, Principia Mathmatica,Vol. 1 p. 11 10 St. Anselm, Proslogion, 11 Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 1670. 12 Susan Stebbings, Logic in Practice, Chapter 6 ‘Grounds for our belief’ p. 66 ‘The recognition that the other side is not negligible may well make us more tolerant, but it should not render us merely undecided in action’. 13 G H von Wright, Varieties of Goodness, p. 2 14 op cit, p.155 15 R Robinson, Definition, p.167 16 Stevenson op cit. 17 I Kant, Prologemena, 18 I Kant, Groundwork, Chapter 2 19 H J Paton, The Categorical Imperative, 20 J Hospers, ‘The Ideal Aesthetic Observer’, British Journal of Aesthetics, April 1962, Elmer Duncan, ‘The Ideal Aesthetic Observer : a second look’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Fall 1970. 37 Section Three The importance of Meinong’s approach for us lies principally in the construction of an alternative ontology. That is, not from the general notion expounded elsewhere of providing a meticulous, almost parallel secondary world that remains inaccessible except through some temporary lapse, but from a reassembly of our supposed commitment to the present world, in order to provide an alternative hierarchy of assumptions assuming that is we have similar ontologies in the first place. Either an adoption of the proposed Meinongian Grid would cancel out the Russellian (and later British Tradition) notions which appear as a more natural counterpart to our relation with the world as a whole, or we have to modify our suppositions in the light of these proposals. That there are contradictions easily leveled against Meinong is not in dispute, though many of Russell’s ‘differences’ are held by Linsky and Findlay1 to be faults of Russell and not of his predecessor. We would not propose abandoning the Theory of Descriptions etc. in favour of a system that would imply a range of objects too vast for us to cope in anything but a random way. But a Paradigm of Art is not a model of life in the sense that Russell and Meinong have to take account. We are in a more fortunate position of operating from, if not an ideal, at least perhaps on some views an unreal stance2. Meinong’s doctrine provides us with an attachment to the material world only as a basis from which alternative objects ‘ascend’. Drawn with ‘a rare combination of acute inference with capacity for observation’3 it lacks a balance with the material world that make its competitors in object theory more amenable. If we take our proposed Meinongian Grid and compare it with our present beliefs, we do not assume an either/or situation in which one is seen to prevail over the other. It may be that Russell’s various theories of description or Strawson’s On Referring provide a better picture of the world as it is seen to be, but they may not permit an attachment to the Paradigm that is in alignment with our aims here. The Paradigm, though possibly a member of this world, is by its nature not a table or chair object. With Russell (in his earlier views) we may be excluding the Paradigm (if it were fiction) from its place alongside material items as a fully paid up member of the object domain. With the Meinongian doctrine an epistemonical question raised about the Paradigm would take account of all other objects (and facts about them) in which the Paradigm is only involved in a negative sense. In this, the Paradigm as fiction or theory is in the same world as any other object4. It can be assumed that the way one places a ‘grid’ on the world determines the attitude one takes toward the objects singled out, and in this respect determines the world one singles out. It would seem that the notions of belief and disposition place a particular attachment to objects at the top of some hierarchy which would not be so disposed toward by those who did not ‘believe’ or have the requisite disposition. 38 Under a Meinongian approach to the world one might suppose some strong ontological argument from an epistemic viewpoint since prima facie, belief or revelation would be as strong grounds to commitment as perceptive or logical necessity; if existence is not to be held as the sole possible division of objects. A strong axiological commitment on the part of a believer would render his bible as facts about God since this, for one, would be how his ‘grid’ was placed5. A shift in entirety is not a necessary, even if acceptable, criterion upon which an approach may be made toward the Paradigm of Art. One could assume in a Margaret MacDonald ‘joint conspiracy’6 fashion a temporary position which would utilize the notion of a Meinongian Grid as a tool of one’s ontological requirements. In doing this one opts for a temporary fictional focus, which enables the observer to step in and out of such a position with relatively little relation between two activities. If one admits one is pretending in a pretend situation, the purpose of a Meinongian structure is ignored since one denies the transcendence of the fictional and non-fictional which would seem to be the essence of a Meinongian Grid for the Paradigm. In a model of one’s present attachment to objects7, such fictional or theoretical objects that fall to the right of the ‘existence line’ it seems implausible to distinguish at the level at which we have access to their corresponding concepts (to the left of the line). Quine suggests the difficulty here as being the implausibility of there being unique entities in this sphere8. Russell’s Occam’s Razor cuts at the existence line9 attributing an ‘unimportance’ to those objects to the right. This ‘unimportance’ is ‘real’ inasmuch as practicality demands simplicity in operation, but we gain a heavy bias toward those objects which exist in the process and a confused methodology ensues as to how to handle any non-existent objects (which certainly, from some viewpoints in the object language are not held to be objects). With Meinong we get an across-the-board doctrine that may well be impractical but which is unbiased in favour of existence as a necessary concomitant of objecthood. Whether one applies a Meinongian or Russellian Grid over the Paradigm of Art may well determine (from an early viewpoint of Russell’s) if there is anything to single out or if there is anything of any ‘importance’ to single out. Taking a fictional reference we find that Quine’s ‘implausibility’ of there being a unique entity that could be referred to as Pegasus, whatever its state, would result from a refusal to accept assumptions or analogy as sufficient grounds for proof. In this he might well be analytically correct, but for the Paradigm it would seem that ‘Belief’ may be an adequate criterion to which the furniture of the Paradigm should refer as a qualification of validity. It may be that here we are concerned with a Bernard Mayo10 notion of ‘reality’ in as much as the part played in a well entrenched system would be adequate criteria by which to call that object real. In the least it would seem that reality is not to be considered the valuation as to whether there is, or is not, a Paradigm of Art. The usefulness of applying the term would seem to derive from its making clear the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the system with which it might be concerned. In this respect D F Pears’ ‘two world formulation’ in Is Existence a Predicate11 suggests a stance that would seem to be in alignment with Margaret MacDonald’s notion of allowing one’s grasp on the object world to lapse permitting the temporary acceptance of a fictional stance12. By this we would assume that in the one domain there are no Unicorns, while in a particular fiction a Unicorn would appear as a Unicorn. From the object world it would seem that this supposition (when one had adopted a fictional stance) that Unicorns were Unicorns, was not in any way about objects that were real. In Mayo’s terms this would merely imply that ‘Unicorn’, in that system, as an object reference, had little or no sense. Its sense in the fictional world would seem to derive from a transfer of one’s assembly of ‘a spiralled horn’ and ‘a horse’. In a system where one’s concern about existence, in terms outside that system, made no sense. In fiction one would seem to rely on premises that transfered by analogy from the object domain as grounds for an understanding of objects or relations that did not have such a transfer. There is a tendency for assumption or belief in this method to be the chief grounding for acceptance of access into a fictional system. For instance, it would seem necessary to the nature of fiction that if a novelist mentioned in passing streets and houses in a novel set at the present time one would not assume them to be in any way extraordinary unless this deviation were specified. One would attempt an understanding of a fictional world from a normative position comparable to one’s knowledge of the whole world. Terms that do not have a transfer with objects in the world would seem to require relating back to objects or terminology with which one has some transfer. In an extension of this principle fictions are not unlike quasi-deductive systems since we have the construction of premises by analogy and the expansion of the system from these premises. Also the nature of these unexplained notions is not explicit; one might arrive at their nature by negation of the particulars of which they are not members. The principles of verification would be out of place anyway. It would seem that one could construct objects in the fictional world that did not have their origins in the system where reality had a part to play, one could also imply objects or relations that were in some sense prescriptive (or necessarily central to some other thesis) that one could only arrive at by means of negating those things which they were not. The quasi-deductive system in fiction would seem to remain parallel to its counterpart in a scientific system. The grounds that one would have for removing it into the equivalent status of a straightforward scientific hypothesis, however, might only occur when the possibility of analogous transfer arose. So in a sense if we apply the principle that an understanding of fiction is necessarily secondary to our understanding of the world, then what would appear as primary in fiction could only be approached by a negation of those principles which do transfer by analogy. An explicit knowledge by assumption could not be envisaged until the object had been assessed in the language of the object domain. However an implicit knowledge could be considered, since internal consistencies within a fiction may well indicate the object (if only by negation) throughout its explication. This implicit knowledge13 would not be of any use in the physical domain since such a transfer by assumption would not find a denotation. But if one assumes a consistent range of reading material (the work of one author), the implicit knowledge about this necessarily unspecified property may increase sufficient that one may be able to cater for its functions or lower-order offshoots in future reading. Some parallel may be drawn between the acceptance of this fictional stance and the acceptance of an art language. It would seem to be currently held that the term ‘object’ in the primary language does not have the same reference class as the term ‘object’ in an art language. The term ‘art object’ from the primary language would only have ostensive bearing on what is an ‘art object’ from the art language point of view. It might be of use to consider the notions applicable to theoretical objects since, maybe paradoxically, they seem to have encroached almost to the degree of entrenchment into the primary language14. The theoretical object is not reliant on the transfer by analogy on which a fictional world would seem to be founded. We could assume that the electron holds a place in the primary language which enables us to operate with sufficient assumptions about the electron to provide a coherent language in the object domain. We might assume that lines of force do not hold such a place. It would appear that electrons have this notion of real applied to them at the primary language level that may not be the case for lines of force. Perhaps a distinction between a fictional and theoretical object would be that the fiction is of a type not to come up as ‘real’ in the system of the object domain while a theoretical object would seem to possess that attribute. The type of fiction that has some utility in the primary or scientific languages is constructed on analogy with objects that have ‘reality’ at that level. Theoretical becomes a suitable cover to permit assumptions about an otherwise inexplicable object, assuming the electron to have some objectivity in the Meinongian sense or ‘hoped for’ objectivity in a Russellian sense15. Many philosophers regard the reality of the system as a whole as a prescriptive question, which must be raised and answered before the setting up of its terms. The terms that constitute the framework of the system can only be justified, and must be justified, ‘by an ontological insight supplying an affirmative 39 answer to the question of reality’16. In contrast Carnap thinks that ‘An alleged statement of reality of the system of entities is a pseudo-statement without cognitive content’, ie. it is supposedly theoretical but is non-theoretical, and as it is not the assertion of the reality of a system the introduction of a new linguistic framework does not require theoretical justification. The acceptance of new entities means nothing more than the acceptance of a new framework, for purposive reasons, and does not imply, as the ‘Ontologists’ would have us think an assertion of the reality of the new entities. ten fingers’ before the setting up of the framework of numbers. Therefore the occurrence of constants is not a sign of the acceptance of the new system of entities and is not to be regarded as an essential step towards the setting up of the framework. The two essential steps are the following. For the sake of clarification and for reference to future Sections a summary, albeit somewhat limited, of Carnap’s ‘Linguistical Frameworks’ will be given. 2. The introduction of variables of the new type. The new entities are the values of these variables. If new kinds of entities are introduced into a language a system of new ways of speaking subject to new rules has to be introduced : called the linguistic framework of the new entities. There are two kinds of questions of existence that arise : 1 Internal questions - the existence of the new entities within the framework. These internal questions of existence would be trivial and analytic. Questions such as ‘Does the number five exist (within the framework of numbers) ?’ are answered in asking. Internal questions are framed in the new language and the answers may be found either logically or empirically depending on the nature of the framework being either logical or factual. 2 External questions - the reality of the system as a whole. In the world of things the concept of reality in the internal questions is an empirical, scientific, non-metaphysical concept. In contrast with internal questions such as ‘Is there a piece of paper on my desk’ there is the external question asked by the philosopher of the reality of the thing-world itself. This question legitimately should not be asked as it is framed in the wrong way. It implies a theoretical question but is a matter of practical decision concerning the structure of our language. To say that someone decides to accept the thing language is to say that he accepts the world of things but it is not to say he believes in the reality of the thing world. It is not a theoretical question, therefore it does not entail such belief, assumption or assertion. To accept the thing world is to accept certain rules for forming, testing, accepting or rejecting statements. The decision to accept the thing language is effected by theoretical knowledge, which will suppose certain factors relevant for consideration in making the decision. In this case the efficiency of the thing world makes it advisable to accept it. Before the setting up of the new linguistic framework, the new system of entities, some terms occur within the framework which already occur within the framework eg. ‘I have 40 1. The introduction of a general term, a predicate of higher level, for the new kinds of entities, permitting us to say of any particular entity that it belongs to this kind (eg. Red is a property). The transfer of this concept to the Paradigm would mean that we are not asserting an ontology of art or implying one, merely recommending the acceptance of rules for ‘forming, testing, accepting, rejecting statements’. Their acceptance or rejection will finally be decided upon efficiency. Reference 1 J N Findlay, Meinong’s Theory of Objects, OUP and L Linsky, Referring, FKP, 2 It would seem that we are operating from a position in alignment with an art language in as much as this might bear on objects that do not have a ‘reality’ corresponding to the notion of that term in the primary language. It may be appropriate to ignore practical applications of Meinong since our position, viewed from the primary language would suppose us to be concerned with theory that has no practical or descriptive content in a things-in-the-world-sense. Since this would be a Paradigm of Art it is not a Paradigm of Physics, though this does not exclude it being constructed with a similar grounding or notion of object, since it might be that these two Paradigms have a similar formal connection with some sort of normative reference such as the primary language. 3 B Russell, Meinong’s ‘Theory of Complexes and Assumptions’, (1, 2 & 3) Mind, 1904. 4 A general relation toward the world derived from, say, Frege, Russell, Strawson & Quine. 5 If one were able to make epistemic lists God would get a high count for this agent. 6 M MacDonald, ‘The Language of Fiction’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. xxvii, 1954. 7 See 4 above. 8 W V O Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University, 1953. Also, the distinction between Myth and Fiction has been ignored here. 9 See D F Pears, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition, this ‘unimportance’ is not held throughout Russell’s writings. 10 B Mayo, ‘The Existence of Theoretical Entities’, PSN No. 32 May 1954 p. 7-18 11 D F Pears article in Philosophical Logic, ed. P F Strawson, OUP. Though Pears is using this stance to avoid a referential tautology or referential contradiction : languages do appear to be ontologically revealing. 12 M MacDonald op. cit. 13 The notion of implicit and explicit knowledge expressed here requires this assumption of belief in the fictional world as not being essentially different in its furnishings from the world in which assertions are said to have a denotation. Explicit and implicit indicate the difference in procedure in our fact finding activities and do not necessarily indicate the gleaning of facts in the primary language sense of knowledge, since what we assume to be the case in fiction has no bearing on what is the case in the world. We should have to turn to Meinong’s ‘so-being’ in order to make sense of these facts in the fiction in the light of the primary language. 14 P F Strawson (in Individuals) holds a similar view of entrenchment of non-particulars. 15 Though according to R B Braithwaite (in Scientific Explanation) its function would seem to be limited to the part it played within a calculus. 16 R Carnap, Meaning & Necessity and the included essay ‘Linguistic Frameworks’ 41 Section Four : Appendix The relationship of the concept of freedom to art could best be summed up as an ontological view of art. Some recent art has made explicit attempts to realise a kind of freedom; that is, to realise an ostensibly, socio-politically motivated, non-figurative art. Now if we refer to man as a Kantian rational being, belonging to the intelligible world, he can never conceive the causality of his own will except under the idea of freedom; for to be independent of determination by causes in the sensible world (and this is always what reason must attribute to itself) is to be free. To the idea of freedom is inseparably attached the concept of ‘autonomy’, and to this in turn the universal principle of morality - a principle which in idea forms the ground for all the actions of rational beings, just as the law of nature does for all appearances1. Barbara Rose has maintained when discussing the work of these anti-formalist artists2 and in reference to John Dewey’s intention of ‘taking Kant apart’ - that Kantian Idealism was tied to a specific set of social, political and economic factors. Further she expounds that the critical criteria for such an art obviously are not adherence to Categorical Imperatives, but the variety of experiences and range of imaginative play offered. She writes eulogistically for and on behalf of the aesthetics (or anti-aesthetics) of such artists as Keith Sonnier, Eva Hesse, Bill Bollinger, Richard Tuttle, Barry Le Va, Richard Serra etc. “Their art”, she states, “criticises not only art, but an entire social, political and economic structure. A dissatisfaction with the current social and political system results in an unwillingness to produce commodities which gratify and perpetuate that system. Here the sphere of aesthetics and ethics merge.” The assertion that these artists are objecting to the use to which their work is being put, and also the situation where art has become an ‘instrument of lesser goals’, seems to presuppose a quest for ‘freedom’. If ‘freedom’ is brought into the realm of Philosophy - in order to be contiguous with ‘The Politics of Art’ then as Paton states in his analysis of Kant’s Outline of a Critique of Practical Reason we should say that the only things we can explain are objects of experience, and to explain them is to bring them under the laws of nature. Freedom, however, is merely an idea. It does not supply us with examples which can be known by experience and can be brought under the law of cause and effect. We obviously cannot explain a free action by pointing out its cause, and this means we cannot explain it at all. All we can do is to defend freedom against the attacks of those who claim to know that freedom is impossible : “Reason would overstep all its limits if it pretended to explain how freedom is possible or, in other words, to explain how pure reason can be practical”3. 42 The rejection of Categorical Imperatives with regard to the artists in discussion is based on an alternative to Kantian Idealism (which by mere association with Clement Greenberg could possibly have caused this reaction). Greenberg identifies radicality not in terms of the role and function of art but as a progressive internal development, which is ostensibly regardless of public or critical acceptance or rejection. For him, radical form is held in highest esteem and it is revolutionary function that is denigrated. On these terms Greenberg is able to reconcile decorative embellishment and investment commodity with a concept of immanent radicality. However, John Cage, who is regarded not only as a prophet of the technological future, but as an advocate of a genuinely democratic art which extends the aesthetic beyond the unique object into the life and environment of everyman, of course takes exactly the opposite viewpoint and espouses a radicality of art not concerned with form but defined in terms of its disruptive function within a given social, political, economic or psychological framework. Whether or not one takes sides with Cage’s identification depends on one’s political or aesthetic standpoint; therefore, whether it is taken to be good or bad are unverifiable propositions. However, it does seem to be arrived at on quasi-moral principles. That Cage could show interest in the well-being of ‘every-man’ shows a certain concordance with Kant’s Categorical Imperative. This Universal Law moves from ordinary moral judgements to the very highest pitch of philosophical abstraction : “A man is morally good, not as seeking to satisfy his own desires or to attain his own happiness (though he may do both these things), but as seeking to obey a law valid for all men and to follow an objective standard not determined by his own desires”4. Further Kant maintains that man is morally good, not so far as he acts from passion or self-interest (as in the manner of gestural painting or possibly even some of the post-painterly abstractionists who are especially associated with Greenbergian aesthetics), but so far as he acts on an impersonal principle valid for others as well as for himself. This is the essence of morality; but if we wish to test the maxim of a proposed action we must ask if universally adopted, it would further a systematic harmony of purposes of the individual and in the human race. Only if it would do this can we say that it is fit to be willed as a universal law5. Contemporary aesthetics in American art to a large extent are consistently aligned to pragmatism. Such artists as Don Judd have attempted to create a concrete expression that primarily seeks to eschew the European tradition. The pragmatist demands an absolute correspondence between facts and reality. Judd sees the European tradition of painting as being predicated on illusionism that is a disjunction between appearance and reality and therefore is an affront to truth. His work is an attempt to create something positive out of American culture - or out of the lack of American tradition - “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end”6. without falsifying it with a European veneer. So Judd’s rejection of illusionism is deeply rooted in the pragmatic tenet that truth to facts is an ethical value. The work of Robert Morris is another example of a holistic gestalt-orientated art set is in the light of the anti-dualism of pragmatism. Work of this kind shows certain affinities with Kant’s formula of the end in itself : “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end”6. It seems to me that Greenberg’s espousal of Modernism is again not in accordance with Kantian Imperatives, for it is a rationalist idea that art can replace religion as the repository of the spiritual, and the bearer of moral conviction. ‘The Moral Law’ tells us that heteronomous principles (as opposed to autonomous) are either empirical or rational. When they are empirical their principle is always the pursuit of happiness, although some may be based on a supposed moral feeling or moral sense. When they are rational their principle is always the pursuit of perfection, either a perfection to be attained by our will or one already supposed to be existent in the will of God which imposes certain tasks upon our will7. This implies that the moral law is not derived from the will itself but some object of the will. In thus being heteronomous it gives no morally good action to be good in itself. Therefore immediate interest in moral action is destroyed - which places man under a law of nature rather than a law of freedom8. The diametrical opposition of dematerialised art to the mystical speculation that has surrounded much of 20th century abstraction is highly significant. It is a revolt against Modernism as the religion of art. It is “a de-mythification of art and de-sanctification of the artist, as art is brought down to earth and forced to approximate more and more the mundane world of non-art”9. If we maintain that the inclinations inherent in an ephemeral or dematerialised art form are pre-disposed to the rational will - which is supposed to be in some sense actually present in ourselves - and also to some sense of egalitarianism, then we have the possibility of a Categorical Imperative. This of course depends on the degree to which it is motivated on empirical grounds. Whether these artists could conceivably find it possible to base their ideals on the concept of pure practical reason is doubtful, but, I think, not nearly so doubtful as such possibilities with respect to the ‘high art’ so vehemently defended by Greenberg. References 1 H J Paton, The Moral Law, pp.120 2 Barbara Rose, ‘The Problems of Criticism IV : The Politics of Art’, Art Forum, May 1969. 3 The Moral Law, pp 48 4 The Moral Law, pp 22 5 The Moral Law, pp 31 6 The Moral Law, pp 33 7 The Moral Law, pp 38 8 The Moral Law, pp 39 9 ‘The Politics of Art’, op. cit. 43 Some Introductory Remarks on ‘Concerning the Paradigm of Art’ David Rushton, October 1970 John Locke’s unpretentious outlook for philosophy is perhaps more fertile in its application to the art domain than might seem obvious. We might not be able to uphold the ‘under-labourer’ view as anything other than initiating a reshuffle of how the art-game is played. In order that the paradigm might be methodological we should remain within the confines of this view of philosophy and not venture into any quasi-scientific areas. If we have other war-mongering aims to wage against the art world; to stage ‘revolution’ in Marx’s terms or ‘shift’ in Kuhn’s terms we should move entirely into the scope of the sciences. At the outset the Paradigm of Art seems a scientific term if it advocates some (metaphysical) position outside of the present scope of our philosophy. ‘Genuine new knowledge (is) acquired by scientists by experimental and observational methods’ as Peter Winch suggests. (We might be forced to find new sorts of objects - experimental or observational which may constitute a different set of objects from those we commonly call art objects.) However Donald Judd seems to have covered this eventuality since his dictum [what the artist calls art, is art] potentially covers anything in the experimental/observational bracket. If we remain strictly philosophical within Locke’s or Ryle’s limits there is no place for revolution. We may assume the same set of objects, hence the same set of observations, the same words to the language, the same sets rules : until presumably science tells us otherwise on the Winchian view. Do we intend to play within the present rules ? Play the same game ? The paradigm case in art is no longer a sculptural or painterly morphology but remains subject to the nominalism of its being asserted as art. How subtle is the distinction ? If one football team began to play an attacking game this would not be sufficient to change the spirit of football. If all teams were to play an attacking game there would be a change of spirit generally but not a change in the rules… Consider the internal moves but also look at the game’s aims at the broader social level. The rules of a game and the aims of a particular game may not coincide. There is no need to score vast numbers of goals over and above one more than that scored by an opposing team in a particular game. However the number of goals scored helps determine each team’s position in the league table. The league is another game whose rules are arguably implicit in the playing of each game of league football. Players are not, not playing football if they individually seek to score more goals than any other footballer since this is not 44 proscribed by the rules of the game, although it might be proscribed by the views of managers if this hypothetical player were the goalkeeper. We do not need to amend or overthrow the rules of football in order to induce a change of paradigm or shift in the spirit of play. The norm of play that discourages goalkeepers from being goal scorers is their value handling the ball within the goal area as defenders. In breaking rules I am interested in the possibility of our action being construed as (merely) irresponsible. (The oft used example of Duchamp’s delinquency). In not breaking the rules we would remain within the ‘under-labouring’ scope of philosophy that holds a view of philosophy as parasitic in accepting a negative role that is not the role occupied by change in a scientific setting. What I find difficult to assimilate in relation to a scientific notion of art’s paradigm is the difficulty of shifting from the open expanded conception of art to a more rigorous notion so as to avoid the scope of the performative rather than constitutive assertion we find within Judd’s dictum. Finding a basis for art on moral grounds appears sound enough in isolation but it seems that ‘X’ would still not enter a public arena as art until it had been subjected to passage through the Juddian assertoric hoop. What I am suggesting with the philosophical and especially linguistic notion of paradigm is we might not be forced into a type of radical difference that entails the ‘works’ being inaccessible from within the present set of rules. Even in science the issue is not as diverse as the use of a scientific paradigm might be in reflection upon the art world. A ‘Newtonian quantum theorist’ might appear a paradox if the history of the theorist’s education were not taken into account. Quantum Theory only overthrows a small section of Newtonian Physics and in that area of opposition there is a grey borderland. For a dialectical scientific method the discipline’s opposite is an inherent (if perverse) part of the view. It is indifference that is the principal asset of the anti-revolutionary. models in that group. We might suggest that this potential paradigm of ours is not paradigmatic until it is either prescriptive or other models display a particular characteristic or it is found that what appear as random actions at present are paradigmatically related to it, and in this we would suggest that they are no longer/were never random actions. The paradigm may be an arbitrary selection yet its choice is grounded by an adequate display of whatever is the paradigmatic quality possessed by all in the group. The shift in paradigm is something like a shift in the procedure for searching for the Holy Grail, an importance for which lies in a significant part in its not being found. One only moves to what appear more likely means of finding the Grail but never to something entirely conclusive, never to something that would secure it. It would seem that induction in science has to be taken – and is taken – as a sturdy inductive argument and not a weak one. This justifies the assertion that Probability to all intents and purposes is Certainty. On the basis that Judd’s Dictum and the Emperor’s New Clothes characterize the same thing it is possible to move towards a more rigorous position from which to uphold a paradigm that critics would perhaps label ‘private’ and on that view not towards a paradigm at all(?). A philosophical paradigm shift suggests reshuffling the way the game is played while retaining the constitutive rules. The different stress is what is important. We would retain the art assertion but assign it a less significant role in the overall methodology. The art assertion exemplifies at present that looseness of present art activities. The novelty art object that arises is the alternative teleology for any qualitative assessment. I think this is again an issue requiring sorting out the rules of a history and not of putting objects in a history as a means of influencing some shift. That ‘shift’ occurs in the description and not in the making in itself (Kant). The scope for the philosophical Paradigm of Art may be an emphasis of stress rather than one of dogma. In accepting a linguistic analysis of the term we find the importance of the term paradigm to be its relation to other unrealized models or words which in themselves are paradigms that stand in paradigmatic relation to this model. In accepting a paradigm we imply a group of objects/actions/words in which the relationship is paradigmatic. This paradigm may demand the arbitrary selection of one model from a series of models displaying the paradigmatic character that would enable any of them to be a paradigm among that group and any of its potential 45 1971-1972 Analytical Art took an interest in the conventional and under-rehearsed sub-texts in understanding and interpreting art : it seemed that the act of presenting objects as art (particularly where there was some difference in appearance or morphological disjunction from past art) resembled those performative aspects of ‘asserting’ that had been studied by language philosophers. The artist’s conclusions suggested that although there were formal similarities between the syntax of ‘ordinary language’ assertions and the art assertion there was little or no semantic similarity : there was no propositional content in the art assertion that could be subjected to the verification (or falsification) principle(s). A-A proposed treating the on-going conventions of art as capable of maintaining some rhetorical or performative power while ignoring and suppressing a concern that what appeared absent was a mechanism or principle for negation at the semantic level. 46 ‘Model Theory’ in History David Rushton, January 1971 If an historian were to construct historiological laws or historiological categories his subsequent tasks would be those of observation within the limits that he had set; interpretation in a sense in which variables become involved is the frame into which empirical evidence can then be fitted. Using a Kantian schema the principal study would be of phenomena. In another view Positivism has a ‘natural plan’ in order to take account of either temporal order or necessity. On this view the historian constructs a model to account for - or to order - the pattern of occurrence of certain events for which he has some explicit evidence. For Kant teleology in nature is an internal explication and not as the Positivist holds out, an external one. Nonetheless it seems that there might be advantages to the Positivist’s standpoint to avoid the difficulty of intersubjectivity encountered by Collingwood and Croce. Both approaches require and rely upon a model, but the extremists suggest that their histories are interchangeable with the cause, intention or event as it stood. If a history is to provide a coherent interpretation of states of affairs the epistemological questions find a place only as a basis for interpretation ‘in terms of…’ (usually the historian’s outlook), and this has to be distinct from speculation.Yet attempts to construct a definitive history may fail on grounds like indeterminancy and the supremacy of relativism in historical research. The historian could rely upon Empiricism and recorded evidence to construct his model. This model would be taken by an Idealist to be parallel to the circumstances unearthed by research - the evidence reflecting the true state of affairs. This seems too certain. A Positivist would construct a causal or teleological explanation but at best this could only be ‘held to be’ inter-changeable with ‘the explanation’ of which there is only the event. An Idealist might suggest empathetic re-enactment but this does not account for any phenomenological intervention prior to the realisation of the agent’s intentions. For the Idealist the assessment of past thought as rational is determined by having access only to the alleged resulting action. This is not necessarily immovably linked with the intention. One can only assume that the Idealist’s model ‘is true’ in the light and nature of the evidence available. A Positivistic outlook which supposed a teleological explanation using the agent’s intention as the motivation of action would always suppose the agent to be (in some respect) ‘ideal’. He could construct an explanation in strict behavioural terms, in which case the model would serve to show how the ordinary man (as the species norm) would have acted in such a situation. The conclusion would require a Positivist to assume the same internal causality for any future agent who may be in a similar position as regards the available evidence. It is not necessary that a Positivist assume an internal causation. Whether Rome had any idea of its position in relation to the decline of the Greek Empire is beside the point in Toynbee’s model. It is sufficient (and perhaps necessary) to assume that the Romans were acting in that light in order to make any sense or meaning out of a collective activity. And this is where the semantic requirement enters. It may be emphasised that history is an interpretational discipline and firmly embedded within the temporal sphere of the interpreter. Toynbee’s construction that Rome was the fading era of the Greek Empire may be more forthcoming about epistemologically vacuous items in the Rome world. For instance that Rome was in decline may explain the collapse of naval exploration. By an entrenchment of Toynbee’s model we can assume a causal nexus for the decline in certain activities within Rome, for which there is no other available explanation. Nevertheless as Collingwood suggests in a refutation of aspects of progress (an historically useful term) the notion of commercial ‘decline’ does not suggest or provide instances of (eg.) spiritual deprivation. We may suppose that interpretation is temporally preceded by that action and intention up for interpretation and it is not an integral part of these, as an essentialist might have it. We may suppose that to find the meaning of signs is a descriptive task. However historians find their task to be prescriptive, since the model is to account for events (and this may entail a notion of collective ‘intention’ as that applied to Rome by Toynbee). That is the events follow the rules applied by the historian, in a logical rather than temporal sense. The meaning of certain actions is secondary to those actions. In this instance, Rome was acting as if they had knowledge of being the last era of the Greek Empire. Meaning must in some degree indicate the present day ontological disposition of the historian. The notion ‘Rome declined’ is interesting in the light of its assertion as an historical fact. One could suggest that the meaning of historical fact is something like, ‘that this is the only explanation (only possible model) to account for the evidence’, therefore Rome declined. This does not satisfy all the rules of the historiological game since presumably the historian engages ‘use of language as meaning,’ and in this case might require that the reader assume that ‘declined’ means ‘became commercially less stable’ and not, ‘became spiritually unaware’ (as decline might mean to John Ruskin). Not only does the historian seem to imply that his model is replaceable with either the causality or intention but that the model serves to establish rules by which others may deliver their interpretation by suggesting that his model holds, in some sense, the meaning of the evidence. (In this presumption the historian legislates the meaning of evidence). Seemingly it would upset the notion of rational action to in fact re-enact past thought in the Idealist manner; and past thought is not in itself meaning. Meaning is being bound by the historian’s rules. 47 ‘Appeals’ in Language “To search in our daily cognition for the concepts, which do not rest upon particular experience, and yet occur in all cognition of experience, where they as it were constitute the mere form of connection, presupposes neither greater reflexion nor deeper insight, than to detect in a language the rules of the actual use of words, and thus to collect elements for a grammar. In fact both researches are nearly related”. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. The Empiricist argument for language suggests that correct usage is determined by actual usage. E Gower and A Herbert have urged that what is correct usage of any language group is ultimately determined by actual usage. J L Austin’s concern with correct usage as the determinate of use supports Wittgenstein’s use as meaning by which the use is language-neutral eg. in the respective use of ‘father’ and ‘pere’.Yet Gower and Herbert could be suggesting an idiolect or small language group in which actual usage and correct usage appear as one and the same thing. Suggested misuse would therefore, in terms of the idiolect, appear impossible or perhaps irrational. With Austin one does not suppose the language to be restricted or consolidated and any change in actual usage would ultimately alter the meaning of the word in question for the language group. It is excesses of this possibility that F Waismann refers to as ‘encouraging an anarchic Humpty Dumptyism’. Under Anthony Flew’s view the linguist resolves an evident a priori procedure or moral grounds : that is, everyone ought to conform with the usage accepted as correct by the language group or sub group of which his linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour makes it reasonable to assume he is tacitly or explicitly claiming membership. Flew notes that this is not an embargo on improvisation in language but nevertheless the suggestion seems clearly to define a position in which correct and actual usage should not differ. The arbiter for G E Moore, ‘the plain man and his common sense’ has been replaced for the empiricists by an appeal to the ordinary use of words. Under the ‘meaning is use’ formulation J O Urmson’s ‘The Argument for the Paradigm Case’ examines the use of a standard example to which any contention is ultimately referred for a decision on meaning. When the meaning is given in terms of the paradigm case it is indicated that the word’s ordinary usage in a given situation is to be authoritative. Correct usage and hence meaning is determinate. If we developed an idiolect then there would be no need for the paradigm case since all uses would be paradigmatic, the exception or misuse would be like ‘irrationality’. The paradigm case offers an alternative to ‘a priori-ness’ in terms of intentionality, although Flew’s notion of obligation implies the ‘necessary connections’ of Kant that are not a concern for the Empiricist. On assuming that ‘correct usage is determined by actual usage’ and ‘meaning is use’ there are no grounds here to 48 question the moral foundations of a social normative since it is the very basis upon which the Empiricist intuitively constructs his frame. The ‘what’ of the consensus and not the ‘why’. The paradigm case would seem necessary in order to acknowledge the difference between actual and correct and still retain the bias toward actual usage, so to preserve a semblance of order or grammar. Ryle’s appeal to ordinary language appeals to ordinary meaning in Wittgenstein’s terms. Flew’s position indicated above presents an ideal picture of general language, because a language group would only seem to be an operable notion if applied within some discipline or context in which obligation was applicable, and not within the conglomerate of all ‘users of the English language’. In natural philosophy it was frequently the case that two sorts of scientific explanation were offered : “x is an eclipse of the sun” or “x is the Gods venting their anger” explaining the same event. As a loose distinction “x is an eclipse of the sun” became the scientific explanation in a post-Galilean view while “x is the Gods venting their anger” became a subjunct of that allegedly first order explanation. “x is an eclipse of the sun” was a description to which “x is the Gods venting their anger” was interpretation. With disparate beliefs commitments attaching to the scientific or religious “x is an eclipse of the sun” and “x is the Gods venting their anger” could not be synonymous. This may be a special case of the distinction which Frege upholds between sense and denotation. A less clear example is “father” and “male parent” having the same denotation (as for our purpose we may say “x is the Gods venting their anger” has the same denotation as “x is an eclipse of the sun”). With Frege in mind sorting out these so called different senses has proved a problem for Pap and Church. On an Austinian / Wittgensteinian view of the matter we could say that “father” and “male parent” are language neutral : that for every language in which “father” appears “male parent” is a viable alternative. But “x is an eclipse of the sun” and “x is the Gods venting their anger” do not carry the same language neutrality hence we might establish the case for these not being synonyms. But there is an important question somewhat missed by Pap if ‘father’ and ‘male parent’ are synonyms within language L common to all users. One cannot say the same for “father” and “pere”. We might say that “father” holds a similar relation to its language users as does “pere” for its language users. The important point with translation is that “pere” in translation from language L is “father” in language L2 and not “pere” in L2. It might seem somewhat extraordinary but in a nominalistic sense at least “x is the Gods venting their anger” must transfer from the (religious) language L2 into the (scientific) language L as “x is an eclipse of the sun”, and not as “x is the Gods venting their anger” since that finds insufficient usage sufficient to warrant synonymity in that language. Some plans for Analyticity If one assumes, a priori, rules in the art world (forming an art discipline), such as an idiolect of Roland Barthes, and that an historian/critic is as conversant within the art language as the artist then we might ground interpretation on analytic rather than empiricist grounds. In his Groundwork Kant suggests that a rational action derives from an intention to act rationally. An agent who accepts his role within a discipline (the art discipline) would by choice and decision act from a rational intention or duty within the context of the discipline (an external interference may well upset him realizing such an intention at the extentional level). But acting from duty determines the moral value of the action. Moral Art is art with a rational intention. But proving this is a more difficult matter. Consider the art world as a specific language group. Both for Flew and Chomsky there is the suggestion that we ought to abide by the rules of the group of which we claim membership. Chomsky suggests we intuitively accept the fundamental aspects of grammar and presupposes a ‘competence’ which may not be matched by our ‘performance’. In this Chomsky accepts that an agent may act irrationally and realise (again intuitively) that he is deviating from ‘competence’. The question is whether we accept actual usage of terminology as correct or instead assume that the grammar or rules in some way generates the present range of terms. This latter assumption would seem in line with Kant’s views of the historical process necessary for his rational agent. Accepting the present range of terms (and under Kant or Chomsky) the assumption leads to conformity with the intention of the practising agent and hence the art discipline as a whole. (This is not to suggest that the art world as it is at the extentional level can be described this way : we would not assume the present range of objects as correct because the diverse nature of criticism and historicism (in its prescriptive role) does not provide a coherent foundation for the assumption of the art discipline as the sole discipline of art). So considering the art world to be a specific language group would seem to break down. Russell’s nominalism could be used to construct some frame for a first order level of terms. A comparison of art object as ‘name’ and its meaning as ‘intention’ would give the art object a status equivalent to a name only if it had meaning, otherwise it would be considered ‘noise’ and therefore meaningless within such an object language orientated domain. An irrational intention is not up for interpretation since it falls outside the discipline, and so has no meaning. But the ‘performance’ of a native speaker would be outside the grammar and would offer scope for interpretation or consideration as if inside the grammar. Competence here would correspond to a meaning but not the ‘performance’. With an Empiricist linguistics we would be limited to a utilitarian view of the determinate of correct usage which we would assemble under one heading : (i) those words that ‘happen’ to be correct, (ii) those that are correct because the agent whose utterance they are adhered to the grammar or rules. For Kant the agent’s intention is given priority over his action and therefore (ii) would suggest a rational intention on the part of the agent within the language group, while (i) supposes (perhaps) acting from habit which is outside the context of a moral consideration, since this would offer no intentional level within the art discipline. (Either Grice’s or Naess’s method of sifting for such intentions seems appropriate.) We could suggest Moral Art form a limitation over a discipline of art but not its anti-thesis since there would be no coherence to immoral art. This parallels Kant’s universal making of lying promising us an impossibility. To presuppose consistent irrational action is contradictory. One could construct a ‘class of irrational intentions’ but each of these would rely separately on the ‘class of rational intentions’ which, in this case, establishes The Art Discipline. Methodologically there can be an irrational intention, but for hermeneutics all intentions have to be rational (or considered to be rational). Rational intentions have an object-like status; they have a necessary correspondence (possibly Semantic) which is not possible for an irrational intention. (One can only talk about truth in relation to the rational intention. By being outside the grammar at the intentional level the irrational intention is outside the grammar at the hermeneutic level.) Russell talks of naming something. The significance of this is that one does not have to account for all (if any) first order objects of the art domain since an as yet indeterminate number may fall outside the Discipline of Art. In Russell’s terms the irrational intention is without meaning because it lacks an object status within hermeneutics : in Chomsky’s terms, this is because it falls outside the grammar. The language of hermeneutics is logically secondary to the language of intention and may relate to it as a meta-language. This language contains the possibility of a semantic conception of truth excluded in a single level language. (The intentional language corresponds to the object language here). The hermeneutic language, by virtue of Tarski, is ‘larger’ than the intentional language since the latter is contained within the hermeneutic language. This avoids those epistemic problems of tautology because the language of hermeneutics would ostensibly be nominative in its meta-language method. The propositional level of the generative grammar (incorporated within the hermeneutic language) would suggest there is a relation between objects (or intentional objects) but would not itself judge on the correctness of any proposition. As the container of the intentional language the hermeneutic language provides the language of The Art Discipline. 49 Artist as Idea 1970, David Rushton Catalogue of ‘work’ by fake-artists Bill Blake, Ottore Oscura and R W Johnson The January 1970 issue of Statements was of interest in Canada. Staff at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design expected several students to be working on Art Theory, Audio Visual, Epistemology, Technos and Romanticism at Coventry. They sought further examples of work underway. But most students at Coventry had already rejected the course. So to ‘supplement’ the work already forwarded by the editors of Statements a catalogue of fake-artist work was prepared (Artist as Idea, 1970). David Rushton and Philip Pilkington visited Nova Scotia to lecture on the Coventry work and the fake-artists work was shown in the College’s Mezzanine Gallery. For the purposes of this exercise Foreshortened Shelves for Harry Weinberger was then attributed to ‘Bill Blake’. Advertisement 1972 and 2002 (as reproduction) Garry Neill Kennedy In 1972 Nova Scotia College of Art & Design took out a full-page advertisement in North American and UK art magazines to promote their course. Devised by Garry Neill Kennedy, Advertisement, 1972 & 2002 lists the College’s students, staff, visitors and artist-exhibitors and includes Pilkington and Rushton together with the ‘fake-artists’ from Coventry. 50 The Discipline of Art David Rushton, April-May 1971 “To search in our daily cognition for the concepts which do not rest upon particular experience, and yet occur in all cognition of experience, where they as it were constitute the mere form of connection, presupposes neither greater reflexion nor deeper insight, than to detect in a language the rule of the actual use of words, and thus to collect elements for a grammar. In fact both researches are nearly related”. Immanual Kant, Prologemena to any Future Metaphysics. On the assumption that the artists’ present, purely assertive role is not capable of regulative discourse; the art tautology of Don Judd [what the artist calls art, is art] implying a non-critical subjectivism like Robert Barry’s, Douglas Heubler’s or Laurence Weiner’s. Judd has resolved no meaningful limits on the artists’ role outside the assertive context. There seem to be no rules that are in any sense generative of the artist qua artist. Descriptions of artists require the causality of authorship as the determinant of artisthood, within some epistemic framework that is the extent of an observer’s art definition. The critical and historical agencies of art maintain privatistic axiologies. Success is held in Jack Burnham’s terms to be concomitant with the artists perceiving the “highly sophisticated but hidden, logical structure (of art)” which is naturalistic in equating public opinion (success) with some sort of value judgement. Burnham’s theorising leaves aside any prescriptive notion of quality by intent; yet such a view at the sociological level is prescriptive to the extent that Burnham’s The Structure of Art1 is axiomatic within the critical field. Although regulative, it is fallacious; the purely descriptive as Heisenberg suggests is not an absolute term. The conceptual artist in the Barry, Heubler, Weiner tradition is of interest, because their object requires no re-assessment of the critic’s ontology and does not offer its own critical frame (see Kevin Lole’s ‘Control, Intention and Responsibility’.) In this analysis we accept a priority to the What is art ? question but do not accept the descriptive method of answer implicit in the ontology of the question. Also the notions of What art is and What art ought to be are not synonymous. The critic would perhaps assume (at least that impression is given) that the art object is necessarily ontologically revealed through its social parameters (modes of presentation), yet interpretation can never meaningfully be universal, as Jack Burnham intends, so long as there is no obligation to follow rules. The epistemic limits on what we can and cannot know about an art object would arise only within some structure of meaningfulness; a suitable but not infinitely wide notion of reality for instance. (see Concerning The Paradigm of Art, Kevin Lole, Philip Pilkington and David Rushton). The What do we need to know about an art object…? question which is entitled to have Everything as an answer (cf. Brentano and Meinong) remains open ended until the same pattern of rules is binding for the artist, critic and historian. The question What can we know ? might be of more interest as a limitation for all agents; then we can enforce the moral around what we have likelihood of fulfilling. That the predicate has a denotation is fundamental to our notion of reality. Any systematic consideration of epistemic limits would require some assessment of the existence line relative to the object domain. Do we accept a Quinean2 or Meinongian ontology or perspective ? With Meinong3 (and Brentano too) we are not restricted to such rigorous limits in as much as empiricism (or quasi-empirical method) is not the sufficient condition of existence. In this analysis we favour Quine’s thesis but attempt to account for analogues without object domain status, which under Quine are held to be ‘ideas in the mind’ or meanings; hence retaining the priority of the primary language and its objects. A fiction within the primary language, however, may be purposive in that role as some ultimate imperative : meaningfulness and intelligibility are reciprocal at the universal (in terms of ‘construction’) and then at the axiomatic levels (in terms of hermeneutics). For instance, the universal implicit in Newtonian Mechanics is seen to be a less than absolute universal in the light of Quantum Mechanics (which may in turn apply to an ideal universe but is in some sense the present description of the universe to which we hold up our ontology.Yet to some degree Newtonian Mechanics was regulative if its limited application was seen to be the context of the contemporary agents’ ontology.) One may consider an electron a place in reality from its axiomatic (regulative) and not its empirical characteristics, since our ontological tools offer no choice; even though it is not open to individual verification it is nevertheless a maxim of so-and-so’s ontology : it makes sense of his world. From a single [rather than multiple] language point of view one either accepts Pegasus as an objective winged horse or says there is no such thing (but at which, one’s account might resort to meaning as an ideational term to which, to a limited extent of definitiveness (Quine), there is a reference). The acceptance of a tiered vocabulary4 offers an alternative by which self-contradiction is avoided. On the one level (object domain) one admits no Pegasus. On a second level one allows in Pegasus (ie. Quine’s concept or idea); within the single language one’s answer is simultaneously in the affirmative and in the negative to the existence of Pegasus, which when unraveled designates two references and not a self-contradiction (cf. D F Pears, Is Existence a Predicate)5. The existence of Pegasus is ultimately dependent on the status of the operative language; its relation to the object. If one admits to more than 51 one language (say a fictional language) then Pegasus can be held to be real in that language (though an access to it might be limited); within the confine one’s ontology may differ from that in which a primary language has a central part (see Carnap6). The basis of one’s commitment (for the electron rather than for an electron theory) is axiomatic as well as empirical. It makes sense to talk of Pegasus as a winged horse; sense of a particular fiction rather than sense of the world, though reciprocally it does that also (by categorising what is not in that world at the objective level). Confusion between these two languages, leads to confusion over the correctness of an epistemic outlook on Pegasus. It is the nature of myth that it relies on this confusion such that these intentional objects are held to compare with extentional objects at the extentional level since assertions presuppose a bias toward the object domain. One asserts some thing to be some other thing or in the class of some other things. For the anthropologist ‘myth’ appears as a description of the belief status of the agents under survey. Those whose notion of reality is constructed on myth have no conception of its being a myth since it is a necessary part of their metaphysic that they believe it to be true. These agents would have (from the anthropologist’s viewpoint) myth status objects as part of their primary language; a myth (or fictional) level need never arise as the reality is concomitant with the ontology and hence language. With this in mind Jack Burnham’s art as myth stands on strange ground since Burnham is a native of the art world under survey. Any notion of objectivity which may apply to the culturally, disciplinarily variant Levi-Strauss for whom myth is a quasi-description of his subject, is not open to the art world entrenched Burnham. (cf. Freud’s contribution to the Oedipus myth as part of our present conception of the Oedipus myth as one drawback; to be consistent, those who believe in a myth don’t know it’s a myth they are believing in. From within the art world it’s real enough.) It seems appropriate to examine under this analysis an example by which to explicate the notion of a limitation on epistemology as a limitation on different modes of interpretation. A painting of a portrait by Harriet Smith is described in the narrative of Jane Austen’s novel Emma9. For fiction, intelligibility is the criteria for meaningfulness rather than epistemology10, yet there may be construed to be epistemological limits on any form the portrait might take; the limitations that were on Jane Austen. Assuming some concept (or Quinean) level for the portrait’s epistemological base the intermediary between the assumed world of Emma and our own is of interest. The notion of analogy is held to play a primary role. It is intended to suggest a measure of reciprocity by which the fictional world is transcendental to Quine’s view of the real world as in some sense a model of an a priori element in experience (as in Kant). It would appear that in order 52 to understand a novel the reader-observer requires some normative scale that is common with his view of the characters’ world. That is to say, one approaches an understanding of the novel by making comparisons with what in one’s own scale of values is the normal example (or perhaps Platonic example). The hermeneutic framework of the observer (reader) is in some sense normal until specifications within the novel or its parameters (e.g. that it was written in 1815) suggest some deviation from that frame. It is suggested that the tendency is to move toward that normative in order to entrench our hermeneutic further; to make things more intelligible the reader moves toward the paradigm of the 1815 (middle class, home counties, etc.) portrait but only from a position reliant on some equally similar normative (or extensional) class of referents. That is to say the reader draws upon their view of a normal portrait that fits the ‘description’ in the novel in order to construct or assume that portrait’s attributes which are not explicitly indicated in the novel but filled in from accessible (real) portraits. Within the fictional reference we never attain the explication of that reference; the lack of any denotation ensures absence of normativeness. Such a portrait will remain in some parallel sense a scientific ideal. The tendency to make intelligible ontology (as with the electron) at the prescriptive concept level is not revealed or inherent in these objects themselves. These ‘quasi-propositions’ as R B Braithwaite describes them have marked similarities to the view taken of this fictional axiom. The negative method inferred in the tendency statement to consider the quasiproposition as the procedural norm for a hermeneutic of fiction; is the tendency toward adopting a specific or paradigm example of its sort that may be exchanged with any member of its class. One may never be able to make a portrait out of Jane Austen’s description of the Portrait of Harriet Smith merely an indication of which paradigm portrait the reader should hold up as accountable under their own hermeneutic, to which they can then add from their somewhat normative parallels. To make sense of an art object it is common practice to assume some correspondence between the artist’s intention and some realisation of this intention in the object. In Robert Goldwater’s ‘Problems of Criticism’ the object is held to be intentionally revealing. With Barbara Rose12 the notion of meaning appears to loosely disguise an intentionality attributed to the artist. It is perhaps necessary in order to make any sense of the artist’s actions to suggest that meaning is the part the object plays within the historian’s or critic’s model of the art domain. The notion of intention as assumed by the historian or critic may have nothing to do with the artist’s intention, but in order to maintain the critical model and hence ontology it is a requirement of historicism and criticism to attribute to the artist a causal responsibility for their objects holding a place in the historian’s or critic’s hierarchical version of the art domain. Beyond the first order testable level there is little coherence amongst critics or historians over (so called) attributes of the art object. Since there is no entrenched or paradigm aesthetic there is no critical or historical aesthetic discipline in art. We might expect something more if we did have a set of rules. Reference 1 Jack Burnham, The Structure of Art, (Braziller) 2 W V O Quine From a Logical Point of View. “We may for the sake of argument concede that there is an entity, even a unique entity (though this is rather implausible), which is the mental Pegasus idea; but this mental entity is not what people talk about when they deny Pegasus.” 3 J N Findlay, On Meinong’s Theory of Objects or from The Discipline of the Cave, p. 3 “In the beginning of the century the great realist philosopher, Alexius Meinong, taught a doctrine of Aussersein, of an infinite realm of objects quite indifferent to the distinctions between being and non-being, between reality and unreality, between what is and what is not the case. In the democracy of that world the golden mountain stood on a level with Pennines, the round square on a level with the Red Square at Moscow, the equality of 2 and 2 to 10 to the equality of 2 and 2 to 4. Bertrand Russell, at first charmed by this doctrine, devoted vast energy to its demolition, constructing the famous Theory of Descriptions on which most of modern British philosophy is founded. I am far from denying that Russell was right in refusing to admit the boundless wealth of Aussersein into the world beyond the cave or even into that purified portion of the cave where right reason fully prevails. But people have thereby been led to forget that the unreal, the abstract, the illogical, the imaginary, the hypothetical and the ideal are an essential foil in human experience to the real, the concrete, the logical and the scientifically acceptable”. 4 P F Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory, University Paperbacks, p.19 and (especially writing on the second-order vocabulary). 5 D F Pears, Is Existence a Predicate, Aquin Press, 1963 6 Rudolph Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, University of Chicago Press, 1956. 7 Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, Basic Books, 1958. 8 Dr Hugh Mellor appears to hold to a similar notion of myth as a term applied by agents who are not themselves believers (in a myth), Sunday 9th May 1971, BBC Television. 9 Jane Austen, Emma, Macmillan, 1961, (first published 1816), pages 34-41. 10 Margaret MacDonald suggests ‘coherency criteria’ rather than intelligibility, in the ‘Language of Fiction’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,Vol. XXVII (1954) 11 R B Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation, CUP, 1958. 12 Barbara Rose, ‘The Problems of Criticism No. 4’, Art Forum, Feb. 1968. 13 Robert Goldwater, ‘The Problems of Criticism No.1’, Art Forum, Sept. 1967. 53 Schema for ‘Art Models’ David Rushton, 1971 One 1.1 If two sentences T and U are synonymous (equipollent) for some agents in some situations, T will be said to be a possible interpretation of U and U a possible interpretation of T. If all interpretations of T are also interpretations of U, whereas some interpretations of U are not interpretations of T for some agents in some situations, we say that T is more precise than U for those agents in those situations. 1.2 We might say that mathematical sentences are more precise than psychological ones. If T were a formulation in mathematics and U a formulation in psychology, they may be interpretations of each other, or may have some interpretations in common, but the norm would be that they have none. We might say they are incompatible. In other theories we might say that T is more precise than U on grounds of internal consistency. In this definition T and U must have at least one interpretation in common before questions of ‘more precise than’ are applicable. The rough conclusion from tests of this sort conducted by Arne Naess suggests (1) if the addressee made a definite interpretation of the sentence at all he must either have intended ‘a or non-a’, (2) he may neither have intended ‘a or non-a’ being unaware of the possibility of making the distinction, ie., of recognizing the law of excluded middle or of many-valued logics. 1.3 The definition requires this construction to permit inferences from formulations of the type, ‘T is more precise than U’ to ‘T may with profit be substituted for U’ and ‘T is apt to provoke less misunderstanding than U’. The use of the term ‘precise’ is too general for our purpose to cover parallels in relative consistency between incompatible domains. (In addition, we might compare the congruency of intensional entities as being the problem of quantification (or formalisation) in opaque contexts that are anti-psychologistic : and here we should refer to the authors Hintikka and Kaplan.) 1.4 If ‘a is more precise than b’ is symbolized by P(ab), ‘x and y are synonymous for z in t’ by S (xyzt), and ‘e’ stands for ‘definitional identity’, the definition of ‘more precise than’ may be formulated as follows in terms of synonymity relations : P(ab) e(Ey).(Ez) (Et) S(byzt)& - (Ez)(Et) S(ayzt) : & : - (Ey).(Ez) (Et) S(ayzt)& - (Ez)(Et) S(byzt) From the definition of ‘more precise than’ it follows that if ‘a’ is more precise than ‘b’ within a context, ‘a’ will be more precise than ‘b’ within the same limited application. On testing the theorems as empirical hypotheses, questionnaires have seemed applicable. 1.5 From those tests it is clear there is frequently a lack of consideration given on the part of those agents being tested to the possibility of distinctions.This issue is broadly the problem of definitiveness (or vagueness) of intention (or delimitation). For example : In a specific text the author/tester might employ a particular sentence, eg., “… for this we require an adequate theory of interpretation …”. The context of the reading of the paper is then formally interrupted either with detailed spoken ques- 54 tions or a written questionnaire requiring completion before further reading of the text. The format of ‘questions’ is directed toward the addressee’s interpretation of the sentence as it occurred in the text. Some stress is given to basing answers on inferences from past verbal and non-verbal behaviour – not mere speculations. Lists of interpretations of the sentence are given. There are obvious practical difficulties in formulating sets of discriminating possibilities as a marking scheme.These difficulties would hinder a rigorous quantification of results. Two : What might constitute a partial understanding ? 2.1 The grammar of (eg.) ‘knows’, ‘can’, ‘is able to’, ‘understands’ and ‘I mean’ is alike and closely related to the notion of mastering a technique. The grammar is dissimilar to that applied to mental states, eg. ‘depression’, ‘excitement’, ‘pain’, etc. 2.2 Questions that might be raised to support this are ‘How do you interpret someone’s claim to have understood a specific word continuously ?’ or ‘When do you know how to play chess ?’ (Here we’re asking Wittgenstein’s questions in Philosophical Investigations.) 2.3 Wittgenstein attaches importance to the fact that exclamations of the sort ‘Now I know !’ or ‘Now I understand !’ are uttered in the first person. He contrasts the point of view of the author with the point of view of the addressee(s). Formulations of occasions for an author’s use of ‘Now I know !’ would be : i) When a particular algebraic formula occurs to him. ii) When he expresses a feeling of relief at that occurrence. iii) When he experiences the inclination to utter ‘Now I know !’. The addressee may underwrite the author’s utterance given certain circumstances, viz. that he too knows algebra or that “Much critique of present discussions in politics, in art, in the various fields of contemporary problems in society, should be directed against indefiniteness of intention rather than against ambiguity of formulations”. P F Strawson and H P Grice, ‘In Defence of a Dogma’, Philosophical Review, 65, pp.141-58, 1967. 55 the author has proved reliable in the past. But though these might constitute justifications to underwrite an utterance they do not normally constitute the reason for the utterance. Whether or not the author has understood so-and-so depends upon his future behaviour. This so-called understanding cannot be referred to as the root of correct use, since a failure to evince the correct behaviour in the future should count as strong prima facie evidence against the author’s earlier claim that he in fact understood. 2.4 Wittgenstein categorizes these initial utterances as ‘signals’, ‘exclamations’, ‘responses’, and ‘manifestations’ in order to indicate that their function is not solely to make reports but to draw attention to the utterer. 2.5 The status of acting ‘as if’ one understood might suggest behaviourism to be the principle access. Three : The distinctions made by Paul Grice and Peter Geach Whether or not one displays an understanding depends upon one’s disposition to do so. Also, compare the tactics of argument permitted in Rhetoric as distinct from those permitted in Dialectics. Four : Achievement words Can we suppose ‘the desire to achieve an understanding’ a necessary condition of a language-game ? Can we avoid discussing this in terms of mental-states (and the homogeneity of mental states) ? Is it legitimate to say ‘I am winning’ is the same as saying ‘If the race were terminated at time t (and not some future t+l) then I would have won’ ? [See also the ‘Event’ essay among these papers.] Can we deduce in parallel, ‘If the argument had been terminated at time t (and not t+l) then I would have understood ?’ as being the same as the transient ‘I am understanding’ ? Do achievement words necessarily anticipate a prediction of the outcome ? There are differences in ‘I am understanding the joke’ and ‘I am following the syllogism’ since no understanding obtains unless the addressee predicts an outcome. (Here we might read Nelson Goodman’s ‘The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals’ in Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, University of Illinois Press, 1952.) Five : Is there an obligation to attempt to understand ? 5.1 Those to whom arguments are addressed ought to attempt to understand if they have in some way contracted to do so. (How might this contract be formalized ?). We could call those who break this (presumed) contract ‘backsliders’ although we should distinguish between ‘forbearing to do’ and ‘forbearing to try’. (See G H Von Wright, Norm and Action, pp. 52-55, 1963.) 56 5.2 Consider… a) ‘I do not (I am unable to) understand’ (This is problematic terminology, if we think of R M Hare. While Jaakko Hintikka has pointed out the difficulty in ‘obtaining’ such an epistemic state.) We consider : i) The addressee does not grasp the author’s overt intention ii) The addressee does not understand the ‘hardware’ iii) The addressee does not understand the rules. Also the rules might have been changed by the author without notice. For instance, ‘Everything I now refer to as either true or false will only be either true or false (on Jupiter)’ – is subject to an undisclosed ‘rule’, viz. ( ). J L Austin once asked in an Analysis question, ‘If all swans are white is true, does this cover the swans (if any) on the canals of Mars’. Consider here as well Hintikka’s discussion on the limits of assumptions required for quantification in his ‘Language Games for Quantifiers’, American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph, 1968. We might make it a rule that the addressee will endeavour to understand. It would seem that if we had this rule we should have another for the author : that ‘he will endeavour to make himself understood’. But this seems to go too far, since in order to make his utterance understandable it may be prudent not to disclose his reasons for wishing to make the utterance understandable. If it were an aim of the author to have the addressee understand the utterance he might be better advised to encourage the addressee to take an interest in the implications of the utterance. For this very reason the author might undertake some sort of guidance in order to encourage some later reciprocal display from the addressee. Understanding does not require ‘taking an interest’ (see below), while having the addressee ‘take an interest in’ might be a purpose of the author while to reveal as much would serve no useful purpose. b) Consider, ‘I do not (will not) understand’ Is this… i) because the addressee wishes to be perverse. i.i) and is taking-part in a language game but not wanting to understand (therefore is an absurdity) or rule-breaking if we are saying that taking-part in a language game obliges the participants to attempt to understand. i.ii) taking part in a language game and understanding but declaring that one cannot understand – ie. lying. i.iii) taking part in a language game with the ability to understand but not making the effort to do so. This might be thought of as imprudential by going against one’s better interests. i.iv) and if i.iii) then is the addressee irrational in acting against his own (potentially) better interests ? i.v) and if i.iv) in some contexts as this goes on the author might impute a Christian-like injunction : ‘you ought to exploit your talent to the full’. Or… ii) because it would be imprudent in the light of the addressee’s commitment to understand / try to understand (as a component of a possible contract in an educational setting). But can this moral Canute-ism be supported ? Modified, the rationale here might be read as ‘I understand your practice but I do not understand how you make it stick together’. This would then seem like i.iii), a situation where the addressee finds the context in which the utterance sits overwhelmingly at odds with the logic of the authored statement and his own wider understanding. Six 6.1 The author might hide intention(s) from the addressee. (This might even in the long term be in the interests of the addressee.) 6.2 Can the addressee be motivated to ‘p’ and not have access to the author’s overt as well as covert intentions ? (There are different implications for declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives.) 6.3 How does the addressee come to know his intentions ? 6.31 The dichotomy between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ world is or is not correctly based ? Or is not a dichotomy. 6.32 Intentions are certain (even if attribution of responsibility is not). Bibliography Arne Naess, ‘Towards a Theory of Interpretation and Preciseness’, in Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, E Linsky, University of Illinois Press, 1952. P F Strawson and H P Grice, ‘In Defence of Dogma’, Philosophical Review, 1952. Jaakko Hintikka, ‘Semantics for Propositional Attitudes’, Reference and Modality D Kaplan, ‘Quantifying In’, Reference and Modality, Paul Grice, ‘Meaning’, Philosophical Review, LXVII, 1957. Peter Geach, Mental Acts, New Humanities Press, 1957. 57 Art & Language, INDEX 02,The New Art, Hayward Gallery, London, 1972 58 Analytical Art No 1 July 1971, Kevin Lole, Philip Pilkington and David Rushton (Editors) From the Introduction, ‘Don Judd’s Dictum and its Emptiness’ “‘Artist’ is in some degree a professional distinction which we may hold out for as opposed to an ostensive definition. The simple nomination of an object as art appears sufficient qualification of that nominating agent as artist, the promiscuous use of this causality of art.The fact that ‘artist’ is not axiomatically defined is no reason for its not being (ought to be) axiomatically defined”. 59 Don Judd’s Dictum and its Emptiness Philip Pilkington & David Rushton Exhibited at Biennale des Jeunes, Paris 1971 and published as the Introduction to Analytical Art No. 1, July 1971 Duchamp’s ready-mades, Donald Judd’s tautology, and Joseph Kosuth’s propositions may be too unsophisticated to provide a working definition for art.The intentional as meaning problem remains. ‘If someone calls it Art (then) it’s art’ ignores the central issue of the ‘it’s’ ontology. And secondly whether we should allow in all the assertions of art as the moral question of having an axiology over one’s furniture; since X can say all things in the universe are art, and be right. But saying all things in the universe are art rather leaves the universe as it presently stands; which refers us elliptically back to whether X holds an Ockhamish, Platonic or whatever ontology of the universe he has dispositions toward. Epistemically all knowledge of the art object is relevant to one’s comprehension of the art object, if one at no point is able to assume some frame of relevance; a context of intelligible assertions about that object (if you like, does not assume an art grammar; see ‘The Grammarian’ Ian Burn & Mel Ramsden, ‘Lecher System’ Michael Baldwin & Terry Atkinson, ‘Meaningful Art History’ Philip Pilkington & David Rushton). For instance, intelligible sense could be made (in one view of history), of Oppenheim’s ploughed fields in the light of same (literal) formalism, in the light of Clement Greenberg’s Modernism; Judd’s dictum does not suppose an assertive pattern, but allows an extremity of object to prevail. In the critic’s terms novelty is the sufficient condition for consideration (eg.Vito Acconci’s kisses). A naive Greenbergian dialectic is how it actually works; an intuitive blindman’s-bluff, stumbling to construct the new paradigm out of the tiredness of the last. We may be sympathetic to the ‘rationalism’ of Judd in not imposing the naturalism of qualitative discourse on the normal art world. (The hermeneutic that stands up as the correct hermeneutic would not be the ‘who says for 60 what reason’, but the number that say). But we are disposed toward an axiology, so how can we get out of the naturalism of ethical choice and remain in sympathy with Judd’s a prioriness ? By assuming a priority to Judd’s dictum we can assume the art assertion as well enough endowed to be left as said (and as tautology, empty). The rigid axiology would be built on this generous truism ‘of what art is’; the axiological question is not one of dividing objects off under moral umbrellas but of raising the making of art to a regulative praxis. Such that this moral prescription has got to deal with modeling the artists’ dispositions toward art in a non-reistic sense. Not to suggest some perfect utilitarianism or technical ethical prescription about how to make ‘moral art’. Both the ethical deontic imperatives (actions) and the moral deontology (a point of view) would remove the erroneousness of interpretation (which of its nature admits alternatives). The correct interpretation is not on the moral thesis interpretation, but necessity, while on the technical (making) level the descriptive criticism would be interchangeable with any other at its moral, ethical content level. The critic or historian in their present form would be redundant in either discipline; in the former one does not impose the limitations of what (albeit perhaps perfect) is nothing more than a sophisticated semiology of objects. The artist/critic/historian at the praxis level is concerned with his relation to the discipline as a whole; the notion of artist-hood is not concomitant with the parameters (choice, placing or asserting) of an object but of sorting out his relation to a specific context that presupposed a general bearing on the a prioriness of the discipline. The appeal to the Kantian moral system has been held as a model for a rationalism in art; that is because of its analyticity and universality etc. (see Concerning the Paradigm of Art, Kevin Lole, Philip Pilkington and David Rushton.) The teleology has hardly changed in philosophy though semantic morphologies have differed; similarly with art. The prescriptive past paradigms have suggested a naturalism to the art language. Ordinary language is all right so long as it remains just the ordinary language and does not posit prescriptions on our ethical behaviour. It is perhaps that the epistemological status of art that allows in ‘contradictions’ at an assertoric level (ie. there’s no verification) is up for re-appraisal and amendment. (see ‘The Discipline of Art’, David Rushton.) The Naturalistic appeal to consensus of a group in the aesthetic domain, which may be real, in order to escape the responsibility of one’s value heirarchy, is mythical. R M Hare has among many exposed the Naturalistic Fallacy : in ‘The Language of Morals’ he writes, “… for to be genuinely naturalistic a definition must contain no expression for whose applicability there is not a definite criterion which does not involve the making of a value judgement. If the definition satisfies this test, we have next to ask whether its advocates ever wish to commend anything for being C. If he says that he does we have only to point out to him that his definition makes this impossible… clearly he cannot say that he never wishes to commend anything for being C; for to commend things for being C is the whole object of his theory”. Jack Burnham’s naturalism is at the sociological level prescriptive to the extent that The Structure of Art is axiomatic within the critical field; that is, influential. It is fallacious because Burnham (unlike for instance an anthropologist) is not in a position to be descriptive of the art world. An internal criticism of Burnham’s book is that he would become part of the art myth as Freud became part of the Oedipus myth. Externally, how can Burnham suggest the art world is a myth while he is a doyen of that art world. (To be consistent, those who believe in what others might call a myth (anthropologically) have no conception of its being a myth for they are operating with these notions at a behavioural, and not quasi-fictional level). On the other hand in publishing his book he must accept the view that The Structure of Art will either be ignored or appear unintelligible to the art world, as he describes it, or if read and understood it will, in having influence on its readers, explode his own thesis. We need to make more explicit how the move from Robert Morris’s horse rides to Vito Acconci’s kisses is akin to ordinary language, they may follow rules (and hence follow a priority) yet these rules are easily changed and for no apparent reason within the art praxis. (Note : Wittgenstein’s analogy of ordinary language as a ball game which changes without acknowledging (without importance or influence on) what’s gone before in the game, just what’s to come next or an a-historicity. “And is there not also the case where we play and make up the rules as we go along ? And there is even one where we alter them as we go along ?” What sort of rules are these in art and how are they accessible ?) As the rules can be changed they are not essential or are not constituted of art in the way Judd’s maxim is the only deontic norm in art (or Greenberg’s two conventions for painting). It’s just a law of identity. John Rawls would suggest ‘rules of thumb’ as the other alternative (‘Two Concepts of Rules’). The rules of enforcing morals are regulative, but these are the enforcement practicalities of a moral position; not the embodiment of the morals but the practical norms. We may admire Robert Morris for successfully dealing with practical necessity (resolving the enforcement problem) but he has raised no external prescriptive questions about the (Kantian) constitutional rules of art. The problem with Judd’s ‘world view’ is not only with objects at the extensional level but also with intentional objects. Since the latter’s ontology can also allow in non-conformists yet essentially makers or choosers, (Bernar Venet’s action in selecting Peter Caws to deliver a lecture is little different from Duchamp’s action in selecting the bottle-rack). The intentional object is an object for all its lack of dumb material status. Conforming to what axiology, may be the immediate question to answer; “Axiology or Value-Theory began as the tailpiece to Ethics, but it arguably ought to end as the tail which wags the dog, which by illuminating the ends of practice alone makes the prescription of norms for practice itself a practicable undertaking”. (J N Findlay, Axiological Ethics). ‘Artist’ is in some degree a professional distinction which we may hold out for as opposed to an ostensive definition. The simple nomination of an object as art appears sufficient qualification of that nominating agent as artist, the promiscuous use of this causality on an extentional and intentional level could endanger the historicity and meaningfulness of art. The fact that ‘artist’ is not axiomatically defined is no reason for its not being (ought to be) axiomatically defined. The problem around the issue of nominalism and ostensive definition appears either to be resolved by opting for one’s language or of opting for one’s objects and accepting Waismanns’ ‘Humpty-Dumptyism’ of extremist meaning is use. The problem is whether the concept of art is shaped by consensus or dogma or some other thing. At present it might be held to be an open concept as Morris Wietz would say to allow in, what he refers to as creativity in the arts (see ‘The Role of Theory in Aesthetics’). Having the open concept allows us to have ‘holes in the desert’ as art; the ‘hole in the desert’ would, as it were, be a definition of art. This fits in with Wittgenstein’s meaning is use. What is the distinction between the ordinary meaning-is-use and the extremist meaning-is-use notions ? Wittgenstein and the early Austin would have their Paradigm Case as the consensus, while ‘Humpty’s’ language is privatistic to the extent that he only has to exhibit the (or his) artisthood of the ostensive definition once within the history of art to establish it as his paradigm. Before committing himself to activities outside what would (prior to his being ostensibly established as an artist) have been outside any art framework; but are within it if one accepts this define (the open concept). Because of (and after) Duchamp the ordinary ball game of art as meaning is use has became as chaotic to the extent 61 of Waismann’s criticism. Inventiveness (or tiredness, novelty, avant-gardeness or vulgarity) is not an issue of consequence at this level, since talk of revolution or progress in art is, in this analysis, fallacious, for to have a notion of progress one would have to have a coherent axiology in art. It may be wrong for critics to argue that there have been and there are revolutions in the morphology of art, for this would only be a change, not an incommensurable difference from the past. Only a shift in the teleology and epistemology would in any strict sense be a revolution. If one is going to construct an intentional framework such that one may stipulate which intentions are within the scope of obligation or duty, for instance, the rational and irrational the moral and immoral, one could begin the construction on the basis of assuming the polarity of an axiology. No matter what were held to be at the two poles in the choice of an axiology the methodology or calculus of axiologies remains fundamentally the same. In an attempt to construct some universality or order on the praxis of art we are may be attempting to shift the epistemological status of art from intuitionalism towards rationalism. If we were to accept theses in art for a rational inspection we would see inconsistencies between theories and from a rational perspective these inconsistencies would entail a shaky foundation for any one of these theories; that there can be alternatives. Beyond the first order, testable level there is little coherence amongst critics, and historians (see ‘Control, Intention and Responsibility’, Kevin Lole) for there is not one entrenched paradigm of art (or art theory). Following a rule entails an obligation (that is logical priority), and because of the multiplicity of rules in art recognising one set of obligations necessitates disobeying another set of obligations that are upheld by another group. This appears to be something like being moral from one point of view but nevertheless not universally moral in Kant’s sense, because we can also be told that we are immoral and must admit that the validity of another’s metaphysic stands equal to ours. A mono-paradigmatic discipline is in Kuhn’s terms a mature discipline (see The Structure of Scientific Revolution). 62 PREPARATION FOR THE ART & LANGUAGE INDEX 01, 1971-72, as shown at MERZ, 2013 References ‘Lecher System’ Terry Atkinson & Michael Baldwin (Studio International, July-August ‘70) ‘Concerning the Paradigm of Art’ Kevin Lole, Philip Pilkington & David Rushton (Art-Language Vol. 1 No. 5), The Language of Morals, R M Hare, pp. 92-93 (OUP) The Structure of Art, Jack Burnham (particularly the introduction) (Braziller) Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein (the ball-game analogy) (Blackwell) ‘Two Concepts of Rules’, John Rawls in Theories of Ethics, ed. Philippa Foot (OPUS) Axiological Ethics, J N Findlay (Macmillan) ‘The Role of Theory in Aesthetics’, M Wietz in Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism (Vol. 15 1956) The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Thomas Kuhn (CUP) 63 POSSIBLE FURNITURE FOR THE PARADIGM OF ART, 1971, as shown at MERZ, 2013 64 On Asserting David Rushton From Analytical Art No. 1, July 1971 Introduction A Fregean answer to whether or not ‘The King of France is bald’, would permit the sentence to have sense while not having a reference. Not being open to truth or falsehood does not render it meaningless. Russell finds the sentence meaningful after assessing it as a conjunction of statements, while the proposition expressed by it is false. Frege has opted out of the commitment to truth or falsehood as necessary for meaning, as Strawson does later. The distinction is significant for Grice’s analysis;1 in as much as Frege accepts an isolable notion of meaning which Russell and the early Wittgenstein reject (“The name means the object. The object is its meaning”. Tractatus 3.203)2. This is something like the object-ness which Searle holds as causal to the Verification Theory of Meaning of the positivist language philosophers who, he suggests, did not resolve the internal prescriptions regarding the epistemic status of their theory. Austin’s argument for a class of utterances which are neither true nor false (performatives) and Strawson’s On Referring draw more from Frege than Russell in this respect. In Austin’s early account performatives (eg. promises) are contrasted with constatives which require the verification principle or an alternative theory of truth. Not only is the speaking and perhaps the reference an action, but the utterance is itself an action, thus one can fail to refer to ‘The bald King of France’ just as one might fail to knock him over. The problem of referring appears to have shifted to extending Frege’s outlook rather than to any outcome of Russell’s identification of referring with the assertion of an existential proposition. Austin later suggests3 that constatives are also speech acts, he distinguishes illocutionary acts (eg. statements, bets, warnings) from perlocutionary acts (eg. persuading, annoying, frightening) which involve the achievement of certain effects on the hearer to the extent that it is considered a part of this speech act that it requires a response from the hearer of the type indicated by the speech act. Both Strawson and Searle use Grice’s analysis of meaning4. In Strawson’s case the majority of illocutionary acts do not appear conventional though they may be understood under Grice’s ‘complex overt intention’ by which the hearer can grasp the intention but not the intended effect of the intention. With the conventional act the speaker’s failure to achieve his overt intention is attributable to non-compliance with the rules of the convention (however they might be constructed). Searle’s argument suggests that neither Grice nor Strawson appreciate fully Austin’s distinction between illocutionary uptake (or understanding) and perlocutionary effect. He maintains that they both suggest that the overt intention of the speaker, in the non-conventional case, as the eliciting of some response or effect in the hearer, (eg. getting him to believe something; the overt intended effect of statements). Searle’s point is this : “I wish to claim the intended effect of meaning something is that the hearer should know the illocutionary force and propositional content of the utterance, not that he should respond or behave in such and such ways”. Grice and Strawson, he suggests, believe it ‘just so happens’ that we have linguistic conventions for achieving what are natural responses such as beliefs and actions. Searle maintains that for some actions at least (statements) they can only be performed within systems of constitutive rules and that the particular linguistic conventions we have in particular natural languages are simply conventional realizations of these underlying constitutive rules. (This analysis will utilize Grice’s later modifications to his account of meaning as basic to the congruency to be established as part of our present art methodology and as part of the preliminary questions essential to a disciplined or rigorous view of art.) I am not concerned here with intention in its phenomenological distinction, though it is perhaps appropriate to outline a view of the difference between these interests. This difference appears to be centred around ‘meaning’. The language philosophers with whom this is concerned would apply intelligibility or understanding rather than epistemology (in an extended sense), which appear forward to the phenomenological concern. Roderick Chisholm5 finds a link between Brentano’s intentionality and Frege’s concept of ‘indirect reference’, (Chisholm’s first and second criteria of intentional sentences fall within the scope of a Fregean ‘sense and reference formula’). What I would understand to be the difference for Strawson, Searle and Grice, and essential to Austin, is that intention deals with motivation, or specifically is an action rather than the acted upon. It is what sort of action that is the issue. Chisholm transfers the ‘intentional’ to the belief sentence as, to a degree, an attempt at definition of the intentional as proposed by Brentano (in more normative terms). The distinction then appears to be between the method, (Austin etc.) and the objects of a method and their status in the world, (Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, etc.) The latter interest applies more importance to the object toward which one directs one’s attentions (intentions, in the other sense) and its incumbent status determines, as it were, whether that object is, or is not, ‘intentional’. Fulfillment of the sentence or a denial of the sentence affirming ‘whatever it is’ as an implication of possible fulfillment is one criterion by which Chisholm denies that a sentence (in Brentano’s sense) is ‘intentional’. But that is not what is implied when we suggest that the intention in a particular case has not been fulfilled (or at least as it is used here). 65 The Illocutionary Act Under J L Austin’s early distinction between utterances that are SAYINGS (eg. statements, descriptions) and utterances that are DOINGS (eg. promises, warnings), the art assertion, in a primitive form, ‘I assert this to be art’, under the Juddian schema is seen to employ the constative rather than performative case. However this distinction does not appear to hold in the art domain. This special case over and above normal usage is Judd’s Dictum (‘If someone calls it art, it’s art’). The open concept appears a singular definition of this contribution. In asserting some-thing to be some-other-thing, (or a member of the class some-other-things) it is usual to presuppose that each object within that class possesses some attribute which determines its classification. ‘I assert this to be art’ is altogether different from an assertion ‘in the world’, since its application in the Juddian art world ensures that we cannot make a mistake; (or not commit an error over truth). There are some issues that require clarification regarding the teleology of this analysis. We might not wish to incur the redundancy suggested by D F Pears6, of explicitly stating existence in what is already an existential proposition in at least its characteristic form. (We should clear up any overlap into Russell’s interests.) ‘I assert that this table exists’ would be a referential tautology if issued in the ostensible proximity of the table. But ‘I assert this to be art’ is not a referring proposition in this same sense of ostensible. There might be problems at the reference level with ‘I assert this art to be’ (or, ‘I assert this art exists’), but not problems of the same sort since ‘art’ is not of the same necessary existence that it seems essential that tables and chairs are. Another issue might be ‘I assert this art to be art’ since this might be divided into ‘how one goes about choosing’ and then ‘how one goes about publishing that choice’. A private language collection of art objects would not involve them being looked upon as art in this wider sense. The state of ‘tableness’ for its empirical or epistemological well being is dependent upon a class of empirical things which make any existence utterance meaningful. The group of objects which are art is not a member of the class of objects which exist, though some of the objects which are art might also exist. Art as an existence category is more expanded than Existence as an existence category. We might appear to assert that something exists (‘to be’) but it is existence in the art world which is perhaps a hollow term for Russell, but it seems to be how things presently are. Intelligibility before epistemology is the order of things in the art domain. What I wish to suggest is that too much reliance is placed on the open concept (or objecthood) and not enough on the characteristics of this ‘assertion’. With Judd the minimum criterion for art (in the public sense) is that one invokes the art assertion, not that there is any necessary thing that one asserts. In support of this view there is the difference between 66 the objects held to be the art objects by critics (or what it is they are critical of, technical or aesthetic levels for instance), and what the artist has chosen which simply might not be accessible to criticism. The implication that art criticism is reliant on the material-ness of (or only what fits the unexpanded existence category) the art object has been dealt with elsewhere. (The artist’s object as being publicly determined by the critic7.) What is interesting for us here is that under the Fregean notion, and under the apparently non-constative ‘assertion’ which is the art assertion, one does not require this exterior definition of what an object is. The verb ‘to be’ is indivisible from one’s saying ‘it’s art’ since there is no thing (no negative existential) which cannot be art it might be redundant to explicitly state it. (For a similar reason it is perhaps otiose to state ‘I assert’ as prefixed to ‘this to be art’, or ‘this art’.) All that one requires of the assertion is to publish how ‘X’ moves from the state of not being art to the state of being art in as much as one’s ‘seeing as’ changes. This in itself is a stale issue. What is of concern is where meaning fits into the art assertion, or the artist’s modus operandi, while sorting out the artist’s modus vivendi regarding the sort of objects the art critic believes to be the art object.This suggests the prescriptive issue (since one has fulfilled art’s being conditional by assertion). Being capable of assertion is the limit of the present art world’s objects, though assertion determines the ‘is’ of ‘is an object’ for the art world rather than the object’s (in any reistic sense) determining the ‘is’ of art. (Or the ontology of Judd’s Dictum). Judd’s Dictum, though tautological in some views, is the day to day basis for the art practice. “If our paradigms of rules are imperative rules such non-imperative constitutive rules are likely to strike us as extremely curious and hardly as rules at all. Notice that they are almost tautological in character, for what the rule seems to offer is a partial definition”8. It is suggested in [the essay] ‘Don Judd’s Dictum and its Emptiness’ that instances covered by the rule also serve to define the practice. Though the Dictum is seen to be complex in its ramifications it is not sufficiently sophisticated to be entirely definitive, it ignores the question of the right of authorship. What is the status of this ‘someone’ Judd refers to ? To utter the word ART is still to invoke the art assertion but it is not explicit in Austin’s terms. It does not state that it is ‘making the art assertion’ though the utterance might well be performed in compliance with the set of conventions of the art domain. With the explicit formula one makes the issuing of the utterance the act of asserting. The context of utterance; the performative verb; intonation or gesture, are the indications of illocutionary force of an utterance. (We may at present ignore the locutionary distinction.) “The function indicating device shows how the proposition is to be taken, or to put it another way, what illocutionary force the utterance is to have, that is, what illocutionary act the speaker is performing in the utterance of the sentence”9. For Searle it seems that the context warrants a sufficient distinction between utterances to the extent that the art assertion can be exercised in what appears a linguistically primitive form if the art world is static in its paradigms to permit the contextual frame to provide a definien for those utterances. With the Dictum there does not appear to be a problem since its coverage is universal. (Tarzan’s guttural cry is as sophisticated as the art assertion and is also indebted to its context. The fact that there have been so many Tarzan movies gives the cry some pedigree if little sense outside of the context.The rapid turnover in art’s morphologies has perhaps made the cry a little louder in the art domain nonetheless this does not endow it with being any more meaningful10.) If there is to be a paradigmatic shift it won’t be a change in morphology or technical-ness but a shift away from this fundamental notion of asserting. We are considering an hypothetical instance of the art assertion with a view to sorting out the intentional level behind such an instance of the assertion. We have to consider if there might be a propositional level of consequence and if the meaning of the utterance does not exhaust the illocutionary force as it would if the case were the same as ‘I apologise’. I am not suggesting that this examination of meaning is to be held as a definitive stance or is based on some rigid description of what meaning might be since the intention issue is not the whole question. Neither is it to sort out some metaphysic and raison d’etre from the past art’s paradigm, in order to hold a disciplined view of art. This does not conflict with the ethical or moral issues raised elsewhere but supplements that view, in the first place by considering the past characteristic of the art world as the essential characteristic; while considering Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm11. There are some points that need to be raised as a preliminary to sorting out what the illocutionary act might be in this wider sense of intention. “The performance of an illocutionary act involves the securing of uptake; ‘it involves’, bringing about the understanding of the meaning and of the force of the locution”12. The art assertion has been portrayed as having a context similar to Tarzan’s right to utter his call; the umpire’s right to utter the cry OUT in cricket. That is, there are accessible conventions that restrict the right to hold authorship to such an utterance. If OUT was given by anyone other than the appropriate umpire this performative would in Austin’s terms be an ‘unhappy’ utterance. (There appears a problem with this in Judd’s art world since by analogy something equivalent to a spectator crying OUT might well make the spectator another umpire.) We have yet to find acceptance to ‘an artist’ being a professional distinction, rather than a distinction depending on assertion in a circular fashion; rather like the chicken and the egg. The argument is that if the art world is a constitutive Models and Metaphors, Concepts and Conceits, Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry, 2010-2011 67 domain in as much as there are those normatives; and there are those rules of thumb; and there are those rules of practice which restrict the art activity (or the art action in Austin’s sense) to the essential one of asserting then, as it were, the question does not swing entirely in Strawson’s favour (or rather in favour of convention free acts). It seems that for the complex intention to be fulfilled we require that comprehension of the utterance that Strawson outlines. For instance, that for A to understand something by utterance x, there is a parallel case that S should mean something by x. (The non-conventional case.) While the fact that S did not mean something by that utterance x is not parallel to A’s (the critic) finding that utterance x meaningful. (The conventional case where meaning is to be made of ‘something’ in terms of the conventions and constitutive rules.) Yet this is not all of the issue. A sound like BOO might have the intended effect (to frighten someone) yet the action we are considering here is not an action of the ‘reflex’ sort. In this we might give the critic more sense than we would give Pavlov’s dog, yet there are some grounds for assuming we ought not to. The logical positivists would find the art assertion meaningless on the grounds that it is not subject to verification; the later issue was that it is not falsifiable (for instance, and in particular, the aesthetic assertion). “They masquerade as factual statements and claim all the benefits thereof but refuse the test of falsification proper to all such statements. They are empty or vacuous, mere pseudo-assertions which in fact assert nothing at all”13. But this is only to assume a word meaning method of justifying the utterance. There is a fundamental difference between utterer’s meaning and word meaning and if we are to make any sense (as we have seen without reference in the normal sense on some occasions) it is the context; these conventions and the utterer’s meaning which suggests that the art assertion is other than the stale epistemological issue it has been thought to have been in the past. than the ‘necessary qualifications’ we are dealing with here.) It seems pertinent to attempt to list these necessary qualifications (that determine that something shall be art) and the sufficient conditions that it might be ‘seen to be art’. These are slightly different issues. The necessary qualification is the minimum we can get by with in order to comply with the Dictum. The sufficient condition that it might be ‘seen as art’, is perhaps the regulative aspect. (A reliance on the past art objects to single out the presently asserted ones and what’s more important rank them rather than any compliance with the liberalness of Judd.) What we have from Grice’s early analysis of meaning through the concept of intention is that audience member A securing uptake is dependent upon his recognising speaker S’s intention to secure that effect. In this instance it is an attempt to convince A ‘that this is art’, by getting A to recognise the intention that S is attempting to convince him ‘that this is art’, as an intention of S. Grice is suggesting that in the indicative utterance the audience should believe something, as the response to the assertion. In a later amendment Grice14 alters this requirement so that A does not have to believe in what is asserted (or stated) but that he should think that S believes that assertion. He then distinguishes between the two levels of A’s requirement; the exhibitive (by which A is imparting that he has that particular propositional attitude) and the protreptic (by which S intends as regards the meaning of the utterance to impart that he (S), has that belief in order to induce a corresponding attitude in A). It would seem that an ‘object’ (in a wide sense) may only qualify as an art object under Judd’s Dictum if the following conditions prevail : (A) A STATE OF NORMALITY OBTAINS. Non-natural Meaning What are the sufficient and necessary conditions of the art assertion being performed in the utterance of the sentence ‘I assert this X to be art’ ? We need not consider the imperative mood, since, although it might be held contrary to this view (that the Dictum is imperative), we will assume that it is clear that the art assertion is in a declarative or indicative mood. On the one view the artist’s belief about the status (and classification) of ‘X’ is being declared. On the other view the artist is indicating that ‘X’ is a member of the class art objects. This also implies the declarative case but it seems belief might warrant it being ‘the fact that’; belief as it were determining the qualification. The openness of the Dictum offers it OUGHT to be art, so it IS art. If one publishes that belief then that belief (that it is art) qualifies it to be art. (We are in danger of tautology.) (This is a different issue from whether the ‘mob’ see it as art, their norms might be quite different (and more restricting) 68 For instance, that both S and A are in a position to listen and speak to each other. There are no defects or impediments in hearing or speech. That the utterance is not in jest or in the context of a play. (Presumably, and we have not sorted this out, that A knows S to be an artist and is not pretending to be an artist which in itself is a problem.) That both are aware of the constitutional aspect of the Dictum. That the linguistic example (the assertion) still characterizes the ostensibly non-linguistic ‘assertion’, eg., pushing something into a gallery, is a similar action under Austin’s analysis. (But as we have suggested the reflex action is a different issue since it appears strictly distinguishable in behavioural terms.) (B) THAT S INVOKES THE ART ASSERTION IN AN UTTERANCE Y. (C) THAT A UNDERSTANDS BY Y THAT S BELIEVES HIS PROPOSITION TO BE TRUE. (D) THAT A UNDERSTANDS THAT HIS RESPONSE TO Y IS DETERMINED BY HIS BELIEF THAT S WISHES HIM TO RESPOND TO Y IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE BELIEF EXPRESSED IN Y. Strawson’s schema is that the (i2) and (i4) intentions of his modified Gricean formula. should be fulfilled as (perhaps) the sufficient condition of understanding. (E) THAT A’s RESPONSE TO Y IS DETERMINED BY A’s BELIEF THAT S IS IN FACT INVOKING THE ART ASSERTION. That is, one aspect of the protreptic case. With Judd’s Dictum once the belief status of the agent S has been made known to the agent A, there appears little option but for A to acquiesce to the utterance and for A to list the asserted object (whether object in the empirical sense or not, if not he might start listing his modes of access to it) amongst those objects he has previously categorized as art objects. Conceivably there is a state where ‘I assert this (X) to be art’ is a private utterance; there is a state where ‘I assert this (X) to be art’ is public; there is then a state a), where the utterance is understood that S is forwarding the conventions and perhaps traditions of that domain, and this may be part of the meaning at the conventional level, not word or sentence meaning, but the illocutionary force. An understanding of that may fulfill all conditions in which understanding is appropriate the meaning exhausts the illocutionary force. A state b), where the utterance is not understood (it is uttered outside the framework covered by Judd’s schema of obligation, to deaf people or foreign language speakers, so it does not fulfill (A)). But there is not it seems, a state c), where one could exercise the assertion in the appropriate context, fulfill conditions (A), (B), and (C) without fulfilling the quasi-protreptic and protreptic clause, either (D) or (E). Since ‘saying makes it so’ there is no option like denial in the art domain of Don Judd. There is a state of A’s understanding, but not fulfilling S’s overt intended effect, the illocutionary act might be performed by A’s understanding the belief status of the art assertion - not compliance with it. That is (D). And a state where A fulfills the perlocutionary effect of the utterance, and further extends the traditions and conventions of that domain by issuing, something of the sort, ‘this ‘X’ is an art object, because S just told me it was.’ That is (E)15. References 1 H P Grice, ‘Meaning’ Philosophical Review, LXVII, 1957 and ‘Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence Meaning and Word Meaning’, Foundations of Language,Vol. 4, No. 3, August 1968. 2 I am indebted to J R Searle and his introduction to The Philosophy of Language, OUP, 1971, for much of what is written in the introduction here. 3 J L Austin, How to do things with words, Oxford, 1962 and ‘Performative - Constative’, The Philosophy of Language, OUP op cit. 4 P F Strawson, ‘Intention and Convention in Speech Acts’ and J R Searle ‘What is a Speech Act’ in The Philosophy of Language, op cit. 5 R Chisholm, ‘Sentences about Believing’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 56, pp.125-148 6 P F Strawson, ‘Is Existence a Predicate?’ in Philosophical Logic, ed. D F Pears OUP 7 See Mel Ramsden & Ian Burn, ‘The Grammarian’, Analytical Art No 1, July 1971. 8 J R Searle, ‘What is a Speech Act’, pp. 41 and also J Rawls ‘Two Concepts of Rules’, Philosophical Review, 1955). 9 ‘What is a Speech Act’, pp. 43, op cit. 10 The art assertion is as essential to a Botticelli as it is to the urinal of Duchamp (at least at some stage in its career). 11 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, CUP, 1962. 12 J L Austin, ‘How to do things with words’, pp.115-116, (quoted and conjoined by P F Strawson, ‘Intention and Convention in Speech Acts’, Philosophical Review,Vol. 73 No. 4, pp. 24). 13 A McKinnon, ‘Unfalsifiability and the uses of Religious Language’, American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 3, July 1965, pp. 229 (a parody of the logical positivists view of religious utterances). 14 H P Grice, ‘Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence Meaning and Word Meaning’, op cit. 15 If this utterance were necessary for the speech act (art assertion) there might be a characteristic shift toward the perlocutionary act (eg. to persuade). The response in the form of another action or as a necessary result is distinguished from the response ‘as believing that S believes something to be the state of affairs’, Searle suggests that Strawson confuses the perlocutionary effect (to respond in alignment with S’s utterance) with the illocutionary uptake (comprehension of S’s utterance). 69 Exhibition, Models and Metaphors, Concepts and Conceits, Lanchester Gallery, Coventry, 2010 70 71 Authorship David Rushton, in Extracts from Work in Progress (December 1971-April 1972) and C2(vii) Art & Language Index 01 and Index 02. Wt(a,p,q), abbreviates ‘a works at time t bringing it about that p in order to bring it about that q’. In this formula the variable dating argument is indispensible. For our purpose the variable agent argument, ‘a’, will count human agents amongst its values to the extent that purposeful behaviour in lower organisms will merely be ignored here, not excluded. (Cf. E Nagel ‘A Formalization of Functionalism’, Logic without Metaphysics, Free Press, 1956, pp 247-83. (1) Wt (a, pt1, qt2) U We may assume the following law (though for reasons of simplicity not apply dating superscripts subsequently to the propositional variables ‘p’ and ‘q’). t ≤ t1,≤ t2. That is, ‘anything worked at is not a state of affairs temporally preceding the working at it, and a thing purposed by working at another thing is not a state of affairs temporally preceding that other thing’. Formula (1) is a kind of formation rule that sanctions some of the following laws. 1.1 Bt (a, p) U In addition to ‘Wt (a, p, q)’, we will also use the formula Bt (a, p) which is, ‘a brings it about at time t that p’. Certain laws are of interest : p. 1.2 Bt [a, Bt1 (b, p)] U That is, ‘whatever anyone brings about, is true’. An alternative Law raising the point made in Formula (1) : t ≤ t1. Since causal efficacy implies a time lapse, the following law may be affirmed. 72 purposed q may still fail to materialize.) a=b. That is, ‘if a brings it about at time t that b brings it about at the very same time, t, that p, then a is identical with b’. From 1.1 and 1.3 it follows that : Bt (a, p). U Bt [a, Bt (b, p)] A stronger but probably independent law is : That is, you cannot work at bringing it about that p without doing something in order to bring it about that p. (That thing which is done might be p itself.) Wt (a, p, q) Wt (a, p, q) Wt (a, p, q). If we were to use dating superscripts on propositional variables we should find that 1.17 can be replaced by the stronger formula : (2) Wt (a, p, q) ( r) [Dt (a, rt, p)]. ‘Working at’ is a transitive relation so long as the dating arguments and the agent-arguments remain constant : (These three Laws pose (resolvable) problems relative to their reconciliation with the ‘Time Law’ (Formula 1). Since they are not utilized in the sequel that resolution has been omitted.) Of greater interest are the following definitions centred on the notion of ‘Doing’. Wt (a, p, r). If the dating argument does not remain constant, the transitivity fails. For example it may be the case that : (3) Wt (a, p, q) • Wt1 (a, q, r) where t1 is later than t, and be false that : (4) Wt (a, p, r). From 1.18 and Definition 1.11 it follows that purposeful behaviour, ‘D’, is also transitive under the same restrictions : p) [Wt (a, p, q)]. 1.20 [Dt (a, p, q) • Dt (a, q, e)] U [Dt (a, p, q) • Wt (a, q, e)] Dt (a, p, r) Dt (a, p, r). Definition 1.12 has an immediate consequence : 1.21 Wt (a, p, q) U U Pt (a, q) = Df ( 1.19 U Dt (a, p, q) = Df [Wt (a, p, q) • Bt (a, p)]. That is, ‘a brings it about at time t that p, in order to bring it about that q’ is definitionally equivalent to ‘a works at time t at bringing it about that p in order to bring it about that q, and a brings it about at time t that p’. 1.12 [Wt (a, p, q) • Wt (a, q, r)] U 1.18 1.11 r) [Dt (a, r, p)]. Bt (a, p). III III III Wt [a, Bt(a, p), q] Wt [a, p, Bt (a, q)] Bt [a,Wt (a, p, q)] ( U III Bt [a, Bt (a, p)] Wt (a, p, q) U 1.17 Laws analogous to 1.7 eliminate redundancies from formulas containing both ‘W’ and ‘B’ : 1.8 1.9 1.10 Dt (a, p, q) Dt (a, p, q) Dt (a, p, q). U Bt [a, Bt1 (b, p)] Bt (a, p). t t t B (a, p) B [a, B (a, p)]. From laws 1.1 and 1.6 the following bi-conditional may be deduced : 1.7 Dt [a, Bt (a, p), q] Dt [a, p, Bt (a, q)] Dt [a, Dt (a, p, q)] The following law most closely connects ‘working at’ and ‘doing’. U 1.5 1.6 1.14 1.15 1.16 E 1.4 Laws 1.7, 1.8, 1.9 and 1.10 suffice to establish the following Laws for the removal of redundancies. III III III U Bt [a, Bt (b, p)] E 1.3 Pt (a, q). Law 1.1 and Definition 1.11 have the following consequence : Laws 1.21 and 1.22 suggest that ‘W’ indicates that a relationship holding between any two propositions or ‘states of affairs’, when they are simultaneous purposes of (ie. simultaneously purposed by) some one individual, a, such that one of these is purposed as a means to the other, which is purposed as an end. While 1.21 and 1.22 permit the deduction of : Dt (a, p, q) p. U U We have a distinction between ‘D’ and ‘W’ for ‘Wt (a,p,q) p’ that is not generally assertible. Also, ‘Dt (a, p, q) q’ is not generally assertible. (One may do something p, in order to bring about another thing, q, but that nevertheless the 1.23 Wt (a, p, q) Wt (a, p, q) U 1.13 1.22 U Furthermore it follows from 1.17 and 1.12 that : U That is, ‘a purposes at time t that q’ is definitionally equivalent to ‘there is some state of affairs, p, such that a works at time t at bringing it about that p in order to bring it about that q’. Pt (a, p). [Pt (a, p) • Pt (a, q)]. 73 [Dt (a, p, q) r]. Several of the Laws suggested state the possibility that a person might have simultaneously many distinct purposes. Law 1.8 further states that a person might be working at bringing about one situation, p, for each of several different purposes. In this case the situations envisaged are related in a ‘means-end chain’ though the several purposes of one endeavour need not be so related. That is there is nothing inconsistent in the following product. (5) Wt (a, p, q) • (a, p, r) • ~ Wt (a, q, r) • ~ Wt (a, r, q). (cf. John Dewey’s discussions on a means-end continuum.) II What is important is the sign reading method of the addressee. Theories of signs based on either ‘is a sign of’ or ‘stands for’ may be elliptical statements of the theory of signs discussed here; the point is that signs are essentially propositional in character. Thus some formula-like ‘pSq’ (‘that p signifies that q’). But ‘is a sign that’ is more appropriate for signification. An appropriate basic formula for sign-reading is as follows. Rt (a, p, q). That is, ‘at time t, a reads – or interprets – that p as a sign that q’. We could claim it to be equivalent to, ‘at time t, a infers that q upon the more or less direct observation that p’. With this proposal sign reading is assimilated to inference. Two precautions are necessary. i) Inference in this sense is akin to what Bertrand Russell means by ‘animal inference’ or what A N Whitehead refers to as ‘physiological inference’ rather than ‘logicians inference’. ii) There is the problem of determining what item operates as the sign. There is the logical problem of determining the concept of sign-reading, for example when there are cues p1, p2, p3, etc…, is each to be read as a sign that q or their conjunction to be read as a sign that q ? Also if Rt (a, p, q), then a is using p as a premise from which to infer q. But p is not necessarily the only premise. We will agree that the restrictions for values of ‘p’ and ‘q’ that satisfy ‘Rt (a, p, q)’ are that they be propositions with an 74 (Some of these sign-readings will be defensible by appeals to deductive and inductive logic : some will not.) It will be useful to introduce one additional formula : Tt (a, p). That is, ‘at time t, a thinks or believes that p’. (This ‘temporary’ device raises epistemological problems that we will have to leave here.) The Formula is used to give expression to the following Laws : 2.1 Rt (a, p, q) 2.2 Rt (a, p, q) Tt (a, p). Tt (a, q). 2.2 suggests that ‘Tt (a, p)’ must not be interpreted as affirming that a has a strong conviction that p. A more adequate Formula might be the functor ‘tht (a, p)’ (with values ranging from 0 - 1) indicating the strength of a’s conviction at time t that p. We might rewrite 2.1 as (6) Rt (a, p, q) tht (a, p) > • 5. U r] U [Wt (a, p, q) U 1.25 U It follows generally from 1.11 that : Let is consider a group of observers/readers, a, b, and c, who simultaneously apprehend more or less directly, that p. (Of course they may all be mistaken and the fact might well be that ~p.) Each of the members of this group, apprehending that p, takes p to be a sign of one or more things – they do not all read p as a sign of the same things. Some of their inferences may even contradict one another, either materially or logically. Thus for example we may have : Rt (a, p, q), Rt (a, p, r), Rt (a, p, s), Rt (b, p, q), Rt (b, p, r), Rt (b, p, s), etc… U [Pt (a, p) • Pt (a, q)]. U [Dt (a, p, q) (For an application of this sort of valuation compare Arne Naess in Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, University of Illinois Press, 1952.) With (6) Law 2.2 would have been shown to be ambiguous. A decision would have to be reached as to whether (7) or (8) would be a more suitable replacement. (7) Rt (a, p, q) (8) Rt (a, p, q) U 1.24 U Definition 1.11 permits the deduction of an analogue from law 1.23 treating of ‘D’. internal dating argument. (Which seems intuitively adequate.) These may or may not be bound by quantification. This allows us to say that the values for ‘p’ and ‘q’ which will satisfy ‘Wt (a, p, q)’ and those which will satisfy ‘Rt (a, p, q)’ are drawn from the same subset of all values of ‘p’ and of ‘q’. tht (a, q) > • 5 U the converse of 1.23 is not assertible; two things may be simultaneously purposed without its either being the case that one of them is purposed as a means to the other. tht (a, q) > tht1 (a, q). These Formulas, in certain instances, may both support and contradict our pre-analytic usages of ‘takes as a sign that’ nonetheless, for the purposes of this paper, the ‘temporary’ formula ‘Tt (a, p)’ and Laws 2.1 and 2.2 are all that are required. t R (a, p, q) t R (a, p, r) t R (a, p, s) t R (b, p, q) t R (b, p, r) t R (b, p, s) etc… 75 III We will consider what is constitutively involved in a productive sign-event with the help of three examples. The tendency will be to see how far the notion of a productive sign-event matches or comes close to our notion of authorship. But suppose that on this occasion I make a mistake. Suppose that Philip’s books are not overdue but that he has noticed me before I have identified him. Assume that he has no desire to stop and talk and so follows those who were hurrying to have their books checked in on time. He does this hoping I will make the inference that I do make in order that I will not bother him. Pilkington’s action would be a value of the following Formula : Example One Assume that I am standing outside the Library at 10.30am, when I see a student with a pile of books hurrying toward the building. I infer that he is a student who has books that will be overdue after 10.30am and he is hurrying in order to avoid paying a fine. (13) Dt {c, p, Rt1 [b, Bt (c, p), Dt (c, p, q)]}. Let us suppose that my inference of purposeful conduct is correct. We could then view this part of the student’s action, and my interpretative observation, as a value of the following Formula. (9) Dt (a, p, q) • Rt1 [b, Bt (a, p) Dt (a, p, q)]. Philip Pilkington’s action has amongst its purposes my reading it as a sign with a particular meaning. This makes his action a productive sign-event. This is an indication of how productive sign-events may be defined : That is, ‘a brings it about at time t that p (namely the student hurrying toward the Library) in order to bring it about that q (namely, a reaches the check-in before he is liable for a fine), and [that] I, b, read at time t1 that a brings it about at time t that a is hurrying toward the Library as a sign that Dt (a, p, q).’ 3.1 According to Law 1.24 Dt (a, p, q) implies Pt (a, q), so my sign-reading could be registered as follows : (10) Rt [b, Bt (a, p) Pt (a, q)]. It is likely that the sign-reading will take the form of (10) and that pondering on the warrant for the sign-reading inference might suggest some ‘backing-up’ to (9). It might be said that, b more directly apprehends that p, that a is hurrying toward the Library and only infers that Bt (a, p). It might further be said : (11) Rt1 [b, p, Bt (a, p)]. (An internal set of detachments and syllogisms which by pass (10) from (11) to (9) and maybe avoid (10) is an area I don’t wish to dwell on here.) Formula (11) may remind us that some sign-reading is an inference of purpose. Also, Formula (9) and Formula (10) remind us that some sign-reading is inference of purposeful conduct. In the present example a was engaged in purposeful behaviour and furthermore his purposeful behaviour was read by b as a sign of his purpose. We cannot call a an author on these grounds or say that a is bringing about that p was a purposeful sign-event. We cannot do this since it was not amongst a’s purposes in performing the significant act that it be read as a sign. Example Two Suppose that I am again outside the Library and Philip Pilkington comes into view, and I make an inference similar to the one 76 I made on the previous occasion : (12) Rt [b, Bt (c, p) Dt (c, p, q)]. P1t, t1 (a, p, b, q) = Df Dt {a, p, Rt1 [b, Bt (a, p), q]}. That is, ‘at time t, a produces p for a sign 1 at a time t1 to b that q’ means by definition that ‘a brings it about at time t that p, in order that b reads at time t1 that a brings it about at time t that p, as a sign that q’. In contrast with Formula (13), the definiens abstracts completely from a limitation on the character of the signification of the proferred sign 1, Bt (a, p). Formula (13) preserves Bt (a, p) as intended to be read as a sign of purposeful behaviour. In Definition 3.1, by using ‘q’ for the intended signification, we allow that the producer may be intending to signify whatever he will. Definition 3.1 does retain the feature of Formula (13) by virtue of which Bt (a, p) is the proffered sign to be read by b. Another type of productive-sign-event retains p, rather than Bt (a, p) : 3.2 P2t, t1 (a, p, b, q) = Df Dt [a, p, Rt1 (b, p, q)]. Example Three Consider that Peter Smith is walking at a normal pace toward the Library with a pile of books. Since he is not hurrying (though it is 10.30am), I do not think he has any books which are due back. He sees me but gesticulates by pointing rapidly at himself and then at the library. These gestures I recognise as a sign with an author, as a sign deliberately directed at me by their author for me to interpret. The case would have been the same had Smith shouted, “I can’t stop because my books will be over-due”. Because Smith is undertaking to communicate with me this is an example of genuine authorship or an instance of a candid Upon recognising these gestures or utterances, b [me] is required to re-read them in order to ascertain what message is being addressed. These two readings have a curious relationship to one another, a relationship expressed in the definition of a candid sign-event. 4.1 P1t,t1 (a, p, b, q) = Df Dt {a, p, Rt1 [b, Bt (a, p), P1t, t1(a, p, b, q)]}. c That is, ‘at time t, a produces p for a candid sign, to be at time t1 that q’, is definitionally equivalent to, ‘at time t1, a brings it about that p, in order that at time t1, b will read that a brings it about at time t that p as a sign that at time t a produces p for a sign at time t1 to b that q’. (‘cP1’ is defined as a certain function of ‘P1’. In a strictly analogous fashion, ‘cP2’ could be defined as a function of ‘P2’.) IV Up till now the examples have avoided much reference to uses of linguistic forms. (It is obvious that deliberate sign-making and authorship do not necessarily involve the use of linguistic forms.) We will use ‘Sx’ to abbreviate the proposal that ink, graphite, or noise x has the sentential form or structure S. To deal with linguistic authorship we need only substitute ‘Sx’ for ‘p’ in Definitions 3.1, 4.1 and the like. (Nb : Interpret ‘Ay, t1’ as equivalent to ‘A magazine was being got ready for printing in and around y during an interval that includes time t1’. A characteristic of the inadequacy of this substitute for ‘q’ will be dealt with later.) ii Suppose that for appropriate values of the variables in question, Formula (14) was true. Also suppose that a’s purpose as indicated was achieved, so that b read the message as intended. We can record this in Formula (16) (16) Rt [b, Bt (a, Sx) P1t, t1(a, Sx, b, q)]. On the other hand, b might have received the message, identified its author and recognised it to be a message, but nonetheless been unable to guess its meaning. In that case, (16) would be false; (17) would be correct : E sign-event. (17) Rt {b, Bt (a, Sx) ( q) [P1t, t1 (a, Sx, b, q)]}. Also b might have received the message but misinterpreted it. Then Formula (16) would be false. Formula (18) differs from Formula (16) only in respect of ‘r’ in place of ‘q’. (18) Rt [b, Bt (a, Sx) P1t, t1 (a, Sx, b, r)]. We will consider why it is the case that with a candid signevent, as in 4.1, the author cannot but expect the offered sign, Bt (a, p), to be read as a sign of some purpose as entertained by the author. This purpose may be feigned or actual. (14) Dt {a, Sx, Rtl [b, Bt (a, Sx), Pt, t1 (a, Sx, b, q)]}. i We may consider the reading activity of an interloper who merely comes across the section of the letter with “The second magazine is ready for printing” typed on it. (And nothing else.) E (15) Rt [i, Sx ( By definition 3.1, this is equivalent to : (20) Dt {a, Sx, Rt [b, Bt (a, Sx), q]}. From (20), by Law 1,24, it follows that : (21) Pt {a, Rt1 [b, Bt (a, Sx), q]} The reason why a should have this purpose is that by Law 2.2, the thing purposed entails that Tt (b, q) : (22) Rt [b, Bt (a, Sx), q] U For example, Kevin Lole is writing a letter (in Coventry) to Ian Burn in New York. At time t, Lole types ‘x’ which takes the form “The second magazine is ready for printing” (S) in order to bring it about at time t1 that Burn will apprehend that Lole has done this at time t and will infer that Lole did this so that he would infer from reading the letter that (q) Lole would have him know the magazine was ready to print at time t. It might seem that those values being fixed as they were, the value of ‘q’ should have been the magazine was ready by time t, rather than Lole would have Burn know that… (This will be dealt with subsequently.) But we may accept that Formula (14) contains variables that identify all the elements that are ordinarily discriminable in the analysis of productive sign-events : a is the author, x is the sign-token, S is the sign-type, t is the time of utterance, Bt (a, Sx) is the utterance, b is the addressee and q is the intended signification of the utterance. Suppose : (19) P1t, t1 (a, Sx, b, q). Tt1 (b, q). A natural assumption would be : (23) Wt {a, Rt1 [b, Bt (a, Sx), q],Tt1 (b, q)}. By Law 1.19, Formulas (20) and (23) imply : (24) Dt [a, Sx,Tt1 (b, q)]. And from (24) by Law 1.24, it follows that : (25) Pt [a,Tt1 (b, q)]. But suppose : (26) cP1t, t1(a, Sx, b, q). , , a, b, y) CPt1, t2 (a, Sx, b, Ay, t1)]. t1 t2 77 By Definition 4.1, this is equivalent to : (27) Dt {a, Sx, Rt1 [b, Bt (a, Sx), P1t, t1 (a, Sx, b, q)]}. Suppose a to be successful in that the bringing about of Sx does have the purposed consequence, so that : (28) Rt1 [b, Bt (a, Sx), P1t, t1(a, Sx, b, q)]. It then follows by Law 2.23, that : (29) Tt1 [b, P1t, t1 (a, Sx, b, q)]. That is, b thinks exactly that which was postulated in Formula (19). Now it will not seem difficult for b to move to the conclusion reached in Formula (25). It would be reasonable to infer from (29) that : Examining the point just made, if cP1t, t1 (a, Sx, b, q), then the value of q is also a value of Pt [a, f (b, q)]. That is, in candidsign-events the utterance is always to be read as a sign of some purpose of the author, of a purpose, moreover, that the addressee stand in some relation to some specific proposition. In honest discourse, the author actually has the signified purpose; in dishonest discourse he does not. (30) Tt1 {b, Pt [a, Tt1 (b, q)]}. Several things may be purposed by the author. If we suppose him engaged in candid sign-making the following Formulas describe that which he purposes (they do not affirm that he purposes so and so). We can suppose it to be true that : (32) Dt {a, Sx, Rt1 [b, Bt (a, Sx), Pt (a, f (b, q))]} b might reach the condition described in (29) in several ways : by Law 1.24, a purpose that : (33) Rt1 {b, Bt (a, Sx) Pt [a, f (b, q)]}. i It could have come about through a’s presenting a candid sign (26) that has its intended effect, (28). Since by 2.2, (33) implies (34), we may assume that a purposes that : ii a might simply have produced a deliberate, but not candid sign as in (19) and b might have ‘seen through’ a’s purpose. (34) Tt1 {b, Pt [a, f (b,q)]}. iii b might have reached a belief (29) without there being any grounds, ie. neither (19) nor (26) having been true. If a were being honest and purposed (34), he would have done so because first he purposed that f (b, q), and second he believed that b could bring about f (b, q). If a took b to be cooperative he could have purposed (34) as a means to : iv a would not have sought the outcome (30) if (26) were true. (35) Bt1+1[b, f (b,q)]. v by arriving at the outcome of iv (the consequence of (28)) via a re-enactment of (19) through to (25), b could summarise his attainment as follows : This latter replies the relatively remote purposing of : (36) f (b, q). (31) Rt1 {b, Bt a, Sx), Pt [a,Tt1(b, q)]}. It seems that in cases of addressed authorship the sign may legitimately be read as signifying a purpose of the author; which is signifying a purpose that the addressee stand in some relation to some proposition. In Formula (31) this relation is specified as that of believing : Tt (b, q). We may generalise from that f (b, q). That is, any relation, f, holding between b and q of such a sort that b could conceivably bring about this relation or refrain from bringing it about. Such examples are : Tt (b, q) ~ Tt (b, q) Tt (b, ~q) t t B (b, q) ~B (b, q) Bt (b,~q) t t P (b, q) ~P (b, q) Pt (b, ~q) (Other examples are not formalizable in this symbolism : b tells a whether or not q. b finds out whether or not q.) 78 (The advantage of ‘f (b, q)’ over ‘Tt (b, q)’ is that it permits the analysis of imperatives and interrogatives and not just declaratives.) If a assumes to be antagonistic, so that if (34) were true it would cause : (37) Bt1+1 [b, ~f (b, q)], which implies : (38)~f (b, q), then a might have purposed that (34) as a means to the relatively remote purpose (38). In which case (32), which signifies a purposing of (36), would have been a lie. Reference David Harrah, Communication : a Logical Model, MIT Press, 1963 David Harrah, ‘The Adequacy of Language’, Inquiry 3, 1960 David Harrah, ‘A Logic of Questions and Answers’, Philosophy of Science, 1961 A & M Prior, ‘Erotetic Logic’, Philosophical Review 64, 1958 H S Leonard, ‘Interrogatives, Imperatives, Truth, Falsity and Lies’, Philosophy of Science 26, 1959 H S Leonard, ‘Authorship and Purpose’, Philosphy of Science, 1959 J N Findlay, ‘Godelian Sentences : a non-numerical approach’, Mind 51, 1942 D Van Dantzig, ‘Some Informal Information on Information’, Synthese 9, 1955 Art & Language INDEX 02, Hayward Gallery, London, 1972 79 Exhibition, Models and Metaphors, Concepts and Conceits, Lanchester Gallery, Coventry, 2010 80