Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Art and Its Objects' and 'Philosophical Remarks'

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21 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 5. Class Nominalism
Classes rarely share properties with their members - unlike universals and types [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: Classes can share properties with their members (e.g. the class of big things is big), but this is very rare. ....In the case of both universals and types, there will be shared properties. Red things can be exhilarating, and so can redness.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 92)
     A reaction: 'Exhilarating' is an extrinsic property, so not the best illustration. This is interesting, but would need checking with a wide range of examples. (Too busy for that right now)
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 3. Objects in Thought
An 'object' is just what can be referred to without possible non-existence [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: What I once called 'objects', simples, were simply what I could refer to without running the risk of their possible non-existence.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Remarks [1930], p.72), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 52 'Simp'
     A reaction: For most of us, you can refer to something because you take it to be an object. For these Fregean influenced guys (e.g. Hale) something is an object because you can refer to it. Why don't they use 'object*' for their things?
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 4. Objectification
We often treat a type as if it were a sort of token [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: Much of the time we think and talk of a type as though it were itself a kind of token.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 35)
     A reaction: A helpful way of connecting what I call 'objectification' to the more conventional modern philosophical vocabulary. Thus I might claim that beauty is superior to truth, as if they were two tokens.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 2. Meaning as Mental
Language pictures the essence of the world [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: The essence of language is a picture of the essence of the world.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Remarks [1930], p.85), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 17
     A reaction: Hence for a long time the study of language seemed to be the way to do metaphysics. Now they study mathematical logic, with the same hope.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
You can't believe it if you can't imagine a verification for it [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: It isn't possible to believe something for which you cannot imagine some kind of verification.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Remarks [1930], p.200), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 13 'Constr'
     A reaction: In 1930 LW was calling this his 'old principle'. As it stands here it is too vague to assert very much.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude
Interpretation is performance for some arts, and critical for all arts [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: Performative interpretation occurs only with certain arts, but critical intepretation pertains to all.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 38)
     A reaction: Fairly obvious, but this is the first point to make about the concept of 'interpretation'. Does the word in fact have two meanings? Or do I perform a painting when I look carefully at it?
A love of nature must precede a love of art [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: We could not have a feeling for the beauties of art unless we had been correspondingly moved in front of nature.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 43)
     A reaction: Wollheim offers this in defence of Kant's view, without necessarily agreeing. Similarly one could hardly care for fictional characters, but not for real people. So the aesthetic attitude may arise from life, rather than from art. Is art hence unimportant?
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 1. Defining Art
A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: Maybe, rather than defining art, it would be more fruitful, and more realistic, to seek a general method of identifying works of art.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 60)
     A reaction: The whole enterprise is ruined by Marcel Duchamp! I'm more interested in identifying or defining good art.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 2. Art as Form
If beauty needs organisation, then totally simple things can't be beautiful [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: It is said that beauty cannot consist in organisation because, if it did, we would not be able to predicate beauty of totally simple objects.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 59)
     A reaction: [He says this idea originates in Plotinus] I'm struggling to think of an example of something which is 'totally' simple and beautiful. Maybe a patch of colour like the breast of a bullfinch?
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 4. Art as Expression
Some say art must have verbalisable expression, and others say the opposite! [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: The view that a work of art expresses nothing if it can't be put into other words ...is reduced by the view that a work of art has no value if what it expresses or says can be put into (other) words.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 49)
     A reaction: I prefer the second view. Poetry is what is lost in translation. Good art actually seems to evoke emotions which one virtually never feels in ordinary life. But how could that be possible? What are those emotions doing there?
It is claimed that the expressive properties of artworks are non-physical [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: The argument that works of art have properties that physical objects could not have characteristically concentrates on the expressive properties of works of art.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 10)
     A reaction: Since the idea of an object having non-physical properties strikes me as ridiculous, this gets off to a bad start. If artworks are abstract objects, then all of their properties are non-physical.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 6. Art as Institution
Style can't be seen directly within a work, but appreciation needs a grasp of style [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: 'Style' would seem to be a concept that cannot be applied to a work solely on the basis of what is represented and yet it is also essential to a proper understanding or appreciation of a work.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32)
     A reaction: Sounds right. One long held musical note creates an expectation which depends on the presumed style of the piece of music. A single bar from a piece may well not exhibit its characteristic style.
The traditional view is that knowledge of its genre to essential to appreciating literature [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: From Aristotle onwards it has been a tenet of the traditional rhetoric that the proper understanding of a literary work involves the location of it in the correct genre, that is, as drama, epic or lyric.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32)
     A reaction: Walton argues this persuasively. I've seen the climax of a Jacobean tragedy ruined by laughter from the audience. Genre dictates appropriate responses, so it is a communal concept.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 7. Ontology of Art
If artworks are not physical objects, they are either ideal entities, or collections of phenomena [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: In denying that works of art are physical objects, one theory (the 'ideal') withdraws them altogether from experience, and a second theory ('phenomenal') pins them too it inescapably and at all points.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 21)
     A reaction: I incline towards them being transient ideals, created by human minds. As with so much, we idealise and objectify them as 'works', and abstract their image from the instance(s) we encounter.
The ideal theory says art is an intuition, shaped by a particular process, and presented in public [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: The ideal theory of Croce and Collingwood says art is first an inner intuition or expression of the artist, resulting from a particular process of organisation and unification, which can be externalised in public form.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 22)
     A reaction: [compressed] As stated this doesn't sound very controversial or 'ideal'. I take it the theory is intended to be more platonist than this expression of it suggests. I think the idea that it is an 'expression' of the artist is wrong.
The ideal theory of art neglects both the audience and the medium employed [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: Because the ideal theory makes a work of art inner or mental, the link between the artist and the audience has been severed .....and it also totally ignores the significance of the medium.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 23)
     A reaction: Emily Dickinson had virtually no audience for her poetry. The medium used to perform Bach's 'Art of Fugue' seems unimportant. For paintings of painterly painters paint matters. For some visual art many different media will suffice.
A musical performance has virtually the same features as the piece of music [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: With the usual reservations, there is nothing that can be predicated of a performance of a piece of music that could not also be predicated of that piece of music itself.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37)
     A reaction: He offers this as evidence that it fits the performance being a token, and music (and all other art) being a type. There are quite a few 'reservations'. Music too difficult to perform. Great music always badly performed.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 8. The Arts / a. Music
An interpretation adds further properties to the generic piece of music [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: Interpretation may be regarded as the production of a token that has properties in excess of those of the type.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37)
     A reaction: I suppose so. If you play accurately everything that is written in the score, then anything else has to be an addition. If you play less than the score, you aren't quite playing that piece of music.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 3. Artistic Representation
A drawing only represents Napoleon if the artist intended it to [Wollheim]
     Full Idea: It is necessary, if a drawing is to represent Napoleon, that the draughtsman should intend it to be Napoleon.
     From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 13)
     A reaction: Does a perfect and intended representation of a person also count as a representation of the person's identical twin? The families of both might well order copies.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 5. Infinite in Nature
Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless.
     From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield]
     Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime.
     From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus
     A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea.