Social Kinds, Reference, and Meta-Ontological Revisionism
Keywords:
art-kinds, natural kinds, reference, folk-theoretic modesty, revisionism, descriptivism, social kinds, meta-ontological realismAbstract
Julian Dodd has characterized the default position in metaphysics as meta-ontologically realist: the answers to first-order ontological questions are thought to be entirely independent of the things we say and think about the entities at issue. Consequently, folk ontologies are liable to substantial error. But while this epistemic humility is commendable where the ontology of natural kinds is concerned, it seems misplaced with respect to social kinds since their ontology is dependent upon the human social world. Using art and art-kinds as paradigmatic examples of social kinds, I argue that meta-ontological realism sets conditions that are too strict to apply to social kinds. Nevertheless, I argue that we should not be too quick to embrace the conclusion that our folk theories of social kinds cannot err substantially. By modelling the reference of social kind-terms on that of natural kind-terms, it becomes clear that in both cases, our sole epistemic privilege lies in our ability to pinpoint the subject of our inquiries.
References
Brand, Peg Zeglin (2000): “Glaring Omissions in Traditional Theories of Art.” In: Noël Carroll (Ed.): Theories of Art Today. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, p. 175–183.
Constant, Benjamin (1952): Journaux Intimes. Ed. A. Roulin and C.H. Roth. Paris: Gallimard.
Davies, Stephen (2003): “Essential Distinctions for Art Theorists”. In: Stephen Davies and Ananta Ch. Sukla (Eds.): Art and Essence. Westport: Praeger, p. 3–16.
Davies, David (2004): Art as Performance. Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470774922
Davies, David (2009): “Dodd on the ‘Audibility’ of Musical Works”. In: British Journal of Aesthetics 49. No. 2, p. 99–108. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayp001
Davies, David (2016): “The Function of Generalization in Art History: Understanding Art across Traditions”. In: Arts and Literary Studies p. 8–19.
Davies, David (2017): “Descriptivism and its Discontents”. In: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75. No. 2, p. 117–129. https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12348
Dodd, Julian (2007): Works of Music: An Essay in Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199284375.001.0001
Dodd, Julian (2008): “Musical Works: Ontology and Meta-Ontology”. In: Philosophy Compass 3. No. 6, p. 1113–1134. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00173.x
Dodd, Julian (2013): “Adventures in the Metaontology of Art: Local Descriptivism, Artefacts and Dreamcatchers”. In: Philosophical Studies 165. No. 3, p. 1047–1068. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9999-z
Friend, Stacie (2012): “Fiction as a Genre”. In: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112. No. 2pt2, p. 179–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9264.2012.00331.x
Goehr, Lydia (1992): The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greenberg, Clement (1960): “Modernist Painting”. University of Chicago Council on Advanced Studies. http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/wittgenstein/files/2007/10/Greenbergmodpaint.pdf (accessed July 2013). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429498909-2
Guala, Francesco (2016): Understanding Institutions: The Science and Philosophy of Living Together. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400880911
Hacking, Ian (1995): “The Looping Effects of Human Kinds”. In: Dan Sperber, David Premack and Ann James Premack (Eds.): Causal Cognition: A Multi-Disciplinary Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 351–383.
Hacking, Ian (1999): The Social Construction of What? Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Haslanger, Sally (1995): “Ontology and Social Construction”. In: Philosophical Topics 23. No. 2, p. 95–125. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics19952324
Haslanger, Sally (2012): Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892631.001.0001
Khalidi, Muhammad Ali (2010): “Interactive Kinds”. In: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61, p. 335–360. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axp042
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1905 [1766]): Laocoön: An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd.
Levinson, Jerrold (1980): “What a Musical Work Is”. In: Journal of Philosophy 77. No. 1, p. 5–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/2025596
Levinson, Jerrold (2011): “What a Musical Work Is, Again”. In: Jerrold Levinson (Ed.): Music, Art and Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 215–263.
Lewis, David K. (1986): On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Lopes, Dominic McIver (2014): Beyond Art. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591558.001.0001
Mag Uidhir, Christy (2013): Art & Art-Attempts. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665778.001.0001
McTaggart, J. M. E (1908): “The Unreality of Time”. In: Mind 17. No. 68, p. 457–473. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/XVII.4.457
Putnam, Hilary (1975): “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”. In: Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 215–271. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511625251.014
Putnam, Hilary (1990): “Is Water Necessarily H2O?” In: James Conant (Ed.): Realism With a Human Face. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 54–79.
Rohrbaugh, Guy (2003): “Artworks as Historical Individuals: Lessons from Photography”. In: European Journal of Philosophy 11. No. 2, p. 177–205. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0378.00182
Ruben, David-Hillel (1989): “Dismantling Truth”. In: Hilary Lawson and Lisa Appignanesi (Eds.): Realism in the Social Sciences. London: Weidenfeld, p. 58–75.
Thomasson, Amie L. (1999): Fiction and Metaphysics. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511527463
Thomasson, Amie L. (2003): “Realism and Human Kinds”. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67. No. 3, p. 580–609. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00309.x
Thomasson, Amie L. (2005): “The Ontology of Art and Knowledge in Aesthetics”. In: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63. No. 3, p. 221–229. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-8529.2005.00202.x
Thomasson, Amie L. (2006): “Debates about the Ontology of Art – What Are We Doing Here?” In: Philosophy Compass 1. No. 3, p. 245–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00021.x
Thomasson, Amie L. (2007): Ordinary Objects. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195319910.001.0001
Walton, Kendall (1970): “Categories of Art”. In: The Philosophical Review 79, p. 334–367. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183933
Walton, Kendall (2007): “Aesthetics – What?, Why?, and Wherefore?” In: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65. No. 2, p. 147–162. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2007.00246.x
Wilcox, John (1953): “The Beginnings of l’art pour l’art”. In: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11. No. 4, p. 360–377. https://doi.org/10.2307/426457
Xhignesse, Michel-Antoine (2018): “Fake Views – Or Why Concepts Are Bad Guides to Art’s Ontology”. British Journal of Aesthetics 58. No. 2, p. 193–207. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayy009
Xhignesse, Michel-Antoine (forthcoming): “What Makes a Kind an Art-Kind?” British Journal of Aesthetics. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayaa027
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Michel-Antoine Xhignesse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
