33 ideas
| 14064 | If a statue is identical with the clay of which it is made, that identity is contingent [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: Under certain conditions a clay statue is identical with the piece of clay of which it is made, and if this is so then the identity is contingent. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This initiated the modern debate about statues, and it is an attack on Kripke's claim that if two things are identical, then they are necessarily identical. Kripke seems right about Hesperus and Phosphorus, but not about the statue. |
| 14066 | A 'piece' of clay begins when its parts stick together, separately from other clay [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: A 'piece' of clay is a portion of clay which comes into existence when all of its parts come to be stuck to each other, and cease to be stuck to any clay which is not a part of the portion. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], I) | |
| A reaction: The sort of gormlessly elementary things that philosophers find themselves having to say, but this is a good basic assertion for a discussion of statue and clay, and I can't think of an objection to it. |
| 14067 | Clay and statue are two objects, which can be named and reasoned about [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: The piece of clay and the statue are 'objects' - that is to say, they can be designated with proper names, and the logic we ordinarily use will still apply. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], I) | |
| A reaction: An interesting indication of the way that 'object' is used in modern analytic philosophy, which may not be the way that it is used in ordinary English. The number 'seven', for example, seems to be an object by this criterion. |
| 14069 | We can only investigate the identity once we have designated it as 'statue' or as 'clay' [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: To ask meaningfully what that thing would be, we must designate it either as a statue or as a piece of clay. What that thing would be, apart from the way it is designated, is a question without meaning. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], III) | |
| A reaction: He obviously has a powerful point, but to suggest that we can only investigate a mysterious object once we have designated it as something sounds daft. It would ruin the fun of archaeology. |
| 14076 | Essentialism is the existence of a definite answer as to whether an entity fulfils a condition [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism for a class of entities is that for one entity and a condition which it fulfills, the question of whether it necessarily fulfills the condition has a definite answer apart from the way the entity is specified. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], VII) | |
| A reaction: Yet another definition of essentialism, but resting, as usual in modern discussions, entirely on the notion of necessity. Kit Fine's challenge is that if you investigate the source of the necessity, it turns out to be an essence. |
| 14077 | Essentialism for concreta is false, since they can come apart under two concepts [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism for the class of concrete things is false, since a statue necessarily fulfils a condition as 'Goliath', but only contingently fulfils it as 'lumpl'. On the other hand, essentialism for the class of individual concepts can be true. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], VII) | |
| A reaction: This rests on his definition of essentialism in Idea 14076. He rests his essentialism about concepts on an account given by Carnap ('Meaning and Necessity' §41). The essence of a statue and the essence of a lump of clay do seem distinct. |
| 14070 | A particular statue has sortal persistence conditions, so its origin defines it [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: A proper name like 'Goliath' denotes a thing in the actual world, and invokes a sortal with certain persistence criteria. Hence its origin makes a statue the statue that it is, and if statues in different worlds have the same beginning, they are the same. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], III) | |
| A reaction: Too neat. There are vague, ambiguous and duplicated origins. Persistence criteria can shift during the existence of a thing (like a club which changes its own constitution). In replicated statues, what is the status of the mould? |
| 14073 | Claims on contingent identity seem to violate Leibniz's Law [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: The most prominent objection to contingent identity (as in the case of the statue and its clay) is that it violates Leibniz's Law. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], V) | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by a property. The trickiest one would be that the statue has (right now) a disposition to be worth a lot, but the clay doesn't. But I don't think that is really a property of the statue. Properties are a muddle. |
| 14065 | Two identical things must share properties - including creation and destruction times [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: For two things to be strictly identical, they must have all properties in common. That means, among other things, that they must start to exist at the same time and cease to exist at the same time. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], I) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept that coming into existence at time t is a 'property' of a thing. Coincident objects give you the notion of 'existing as' something, which complicates the whole story. |
| 14074 | Leibniz's Law isn't just about substitutivity, because it must involve properties and relations [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: As a general law of substitutivity of identicals, Leibniz's Law is false. It is a law about properties and relations, that if two things are identical, they have the same properties and relations. It only works in contexts which attribute those. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], V) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced about relations, which are not intrinsic properties. Under different descriptions, the relations to human minds might differ. |
| 14072 | Possible worlds identity needs a sortal [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: Identity across possible worlds makes sense only with respect to a sortal | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], IV) | |
| A reaction: See Gibbard's other ideas from this paper. I fear that the sortal invoked is too uncertain and slippery to do any useful job, and I can't see any principled difficulty with naming something before you can think of a sortal for it. |
| 14078 | Only concepts, not individuals, can be the same across possible worlds [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: It is meaningless to talk of the same concrete thing in different possible worlds, ...but it makes sense to speak of the same individual concept, which is just a function which assigns to each possible world in a set an individual in that world. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], VII) | |
| A reaction: A lovely bold response to the problem of transworld identity, but one which needs investigation. It sounds very promising to me. 'Aristotle' is a cocept, not a name. There is no separate category of 'names'. Wow. (Attach dispositions to concepts?). |
| 14079 | Kripke's semantics needs lots of intuitions about which properties are essential [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: To use Kripke's semantics, one needs extensive intuitions that certain properties are essential and others accidental. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], X) | |
| A reaction: As usual, we could substitute the word 'necessary' for 'essential' without changing his meaning. If we are always referring to 'our' Hubert Humphrey is speculations about him, then nearly all of his properties will be necessary ones. |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
| From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
| 14071 | Naming a thing in the actual world also invokes some persistence criteria [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: The reference of a name in the actual world is fixed partly by invoking a set of persistence criteria which determine what thing it names. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], III) | |
| A reaction: This is offered as a modification to Kripke, to deal with the statue and clay. I fear that the 'persistence criteria' may be too vague, and too subject to possible change after the origin, to do the job required. |
| 23928 | Good art produces exaltation and detachment [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The contemplation of pure form leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete detachment from the concerns of life. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: The last part is what gets the arts a bad name with the people who do deal with the concerns of life (which won't go away, even for an artist!). However, being totally trapped in the concerns of life is probably a recipe for misery. |
| 23922 | The word 'beauty' leads to confusion, because it denotes distinct emotions [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The word 'beauty' connotes objects of quite distinguishable emotions, and the term would land me in confusions and misunderstandings. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.I) | |
| A reaction: His main example is a comparison of beautiful women with beautiful art. Personally I don't think the word aspires to be precise, so there is no problem. Maths has beautiful solutions, golf has beautiful shots, cooking has beautiful results. Wow! |
| 23921 | Our feeling for natural beauty is different from the aesthetic emotion of art [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: It is not what I call an aesthetic emotion that most of us feel, generally, for natural beauty. …Most people feel a very different kind of emotion for birds, flowers and butterfly wings from that we feel for pictures, pots, temples and statues. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.I) | |
| A reaction: Not convinced. I think the main difference is our awareness that art is a human production, the result of choice, whereas nature is a given. Beethoven 9 and a good sunset don't seem to me far apart in our responses. |
| 23929 | We only see landscapes as artistic if we ignore their instrumental value [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: It is only when we cease to regard the objects in a landscape as means to anything that we can feel the landscape artistically. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.I) | |
| A reaction: This sounds as if only the exploitative attitude blocks the artistic view, but I would expect the scientific view (of an ecologist, for example) to do the same. |
| 23923 | Visual form can create a sublime mental state [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: Pure visual form transports me to an infinitely sublime state of mind. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.I) | |
| A reaction: Unusual for anyone to use to term 'sublime' for works of art, and I suspect that Bell was the last to do so. Bell offers a quasi-religious role for art. I accept that being struck by something exceptionally good in art is a very distinctive experience. |
| 23927 | Aestheticism invites artist to create beauty, but with no indication of how to do it [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The danger of aestheticism is that the artist who has got nothing to do but make something beautiful hardly knows where to begin or where to end | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: Aestheticism strikes me as the main motivation for art nouveau artifacts, which I love. You start with beautiful lines, and then find ways to implement them. Bell has a point, though! |
| 23932 | Art is the expression of an emotion for ultimate reality [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: My hypothesis is that art is the expression of an emotion for ultimate reality. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.II) | |
| A reaction: So later in his discussion the word 'ultimate' has crept in, after a chapter about the close relation between religious and artistic attitudes. He also sees good art as deeply 'spiritual'. It seems that religious belief is essential to his theory of art. |
| 8115 | Only artists can discern significant form; other people must look to art to find it [Bell,C, by Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Bell thinks that only artists can discern significant form directly in the natural world, and that all others must look to art for significant form. | |
| From: report of Clive Bell (Art [1913]) by Sebastian Gardner - Aesthetics 3.3 | |
| A reaction: I have a horrible feeling that 'significant' form will turn out to be the sort of form that artists can see. Presumably the form spotted by geologists won't be quite so 'significant'. Not a promising theory. |
| 23924 | Maybe significant form gives us a feeling for ultimate reality [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: When we strip things of all associations and significance, what is left is 'the thing in itself', or 'ultimate reality'. …Artists can express an emotion felt for reality through line and colour. …So through 'significant form' we sense ultimate reality. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The thing in itself is a Kantian idea. He offers this as a speculation, rather than a fact. Maybe quantum physics gets us closer to the thing in itself? Bell knows that his faith in significant form needs more justification than an emotion. |
| 23931 | Significant form is the essence of art, which I believe expresses an emotion about reality [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: My view that the essential quality in work of art is significant form was based on experience I am sure about. Of my view that significant form is the expression of a peculiar emotion felt for reality I am far from confident. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.II) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to understand the idea of 'significant' form without a clear proposal for the nature of the significance. A detective doesn't stop at the point where evidence is seen as significant. Why should a 'peculiar' emotion matter? |
| 20434 | 'Form' is visual relations, and it is 'significant' if it moves us aesthetically; art needs both [Bell,C, by Feagin] |
| Full Idea: By 'form' Bell means the relations of lines, colours and shapes. Forms are 'significant' when the relationships of lines and so on move us aesthetically. If something is art it must have, to at least a minimum extent, significant form. | |
| From: report of Clive Bell (Art [1913], p.17) by Susan Feagin - Roger Fry and Clive Bell 3 | |
| A reaction: So art has two necessary conditions - that it move us aesthetically, and that it does so by means of its form. The obvious problem is to explain which forms are 'significant' without mentioning the aesthetic feeling they have to invoke. |
| 23934 | The only expression art could have is the emotion resulting from pure form [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: If art expresses anything, it expresses an emotion felt for pure form and that which gives pure form its extraordinary significance. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], III.I) | |
| A reaction: I don't think 'expresses' is the right word here. Artists express, but works just transmit. I personally doubt whether anything can have 'extraordinary significance' simply because it expresses one particular emotion. Why art, but not geometry? |
| 23925 | Mere copies of pictures are not significant - unless the copies are very exact [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: A literal copy is seldom reckoned even by its owner a work of art. Its forms are not significant. Yet if it were an absolutely exact copy, clearly it would be as moving as the original, and a photographic reproduction of a drawing often is. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: What if the original artist made the copy? In 1913, Bell begins to spot this modern problem. He undermines his own theory of significant form here, if the form only becomes significant once we have checked it is an original. |
| 23926 | Art is distinguished by its aesthetic emotion, which produces appropriate form [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The characteristic of a work of art is its power of provoking aesthetic emotion; the expression of emotion is what gives it its power. ...Rightness of form is invariably a consequence of rightness of emotion. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: Bell doesn't dig very deep, because the obvious next question, not really addressed, is what makes the emotion 'right'. He suggests that significant form reveals reality, but why would an emotion do that? Does each work have a distinct emotion? |
| 23933 | Aesthetic contemplation is the best and most intense mental state [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: Art is not only a means to good states of mind, but, perhaps, the best and most potent that we possess; …there is no state of mind more excellent or more intense than the state of aesthetic contemplation. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.III) | |
| A reaction: Why does intensity make it good? It is pretty intense being involved in a road accident, but that doesn't make it good. There are many states of mind we enjoy or value highly, but we need more than that to prove them objectively 'excellent'. |
| 23935 | Aesthetic experience is an exaltation which increases the possibilities of life [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: Those who have been thrilled by the pure aesthetic significance of a work of art …carry a state of excitement and exaltation making them more sensitive to all that is going forward about them. Thus they realise …the significance and possibility of life. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], IV.III) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a bit of an afterthought, because he struggles to explain why his 'significant form' is so important. He shifts between it being an end - an intrinsic value - or a moral state, or now an increaser of life potential. |
| 22691 | Only artistic qualities matter in art, because they also have the highest moral value [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The only relevant qualities in art are artistic qualities: judged as a means to good, no other qualities are worth considering; for there are no qualities of greater moral value than artistic qualities, since there is no greater means to good than art. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.III) | |
| A reaction: Wishful thinking, I suspect. I can't see anyone acquiring a moral education just by looking a Cezannes. This seems to be a late manifesto for the aesthetic movement. |
| 23930 | Religion sees infinite value in some things, and irrelevance in the rest [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The essence of religion is a conviction that because some things are of infinite value most are profoundly unimportant. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.I) | |
| A reaction: The aspect of religion which most worries atheists like Nietzsche. You can end up with a rather cool and detached view of genocide, if you really believe that worldly matters are unimportant. Do souls in heaven worry about the next life after that? |