This is not Art Should we go

Revisionist about Works of Art?

Tibor Brny
*
Budapest University of Technology and Economics; Central European University
Abstract. To propose a revisionist ontology of art one has to hold that our
everyday intuitions about the identity and persistence conditions of various
kinds of artworks can be massively mistaken. In my presentation I defend
this view: our everyday intuitions about the nature of art can be (and some-
times are) mistaken. First I reconstruct an inuential argument of Amie L.
Thomasson (2004; 2005; 2006; 2007a; 2007b) against the fallibility of our
intuitive judgments about the identity and persistence conditions of vari-
ous kinds of artworks. Second, I present three objections to this account:
two of them concern the semantic and pragmatic rules regulating the use of
art-kind terms, while the third one is based on the assumption that the his-
tory of art partly comprises a series of successful attempts of transgression
of artistic conventions and expectations, therefore our artistic intuitions
are dynamic. Taking this point I nally argue that in philosophy of art we
need a reverse methodology: rst we have to provide a general denition,
containing all the sucient and necessary conditions of artworks (being
an artwork) in any period within the history of art. Only after complet-
ing this task are we ready to answer the metaphysical question about the
ontological status of works of art.
1. Introduction: Metaphysical Background
To propose a revisionist ontology of artfor example, by claiming that
Mondrians Broadway Boogie-Woogie is an action-type which can survive the
burning of any canvasone has to hold that our everyday intuitions about
the identity and persistence conditions of various kinds of artworks can
be massively mistaken. What does this mean?
Ontologists usually attempt to answer two questions which, although
related, are nevertheless dierent. The rst one concerns the real con-
stituents of the world:
*
Email: barany.tibor@gmail.com
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(I) What is there?
Or, in plain prose: What are those things in our world which can rightly be said to
be genuine elements in the objective structure of the universe? (Of course thing
and world are used here philosophically neutrally and in the broadest
sense possible.) To be or not to be is a matter of theoretical categorization:
to be assumed as a thing is to be subsumed under one of the categories in
our coherent ontological theory.
1
While enumerating real constituents of
the world, the ontologist has two ways of pairing things familiar from ev-
eryday life (or from scientic theories) with ontological categories. Either
she takes the existence of familiar entities (chairs, pebbles, persons, works
of art etc.) for granted and assigns to them a category (or a combination of
categories) or she takes the categories (and the possible combinations of
categories) for granted and tells us which familiar objects should be sub-
sumed under them. To take an example: if our ontology consists of, say,
particulars and (Platonic) universals, the question of chairs (as one of the
paradigmatic cases of ordinary physical objects) should be raised in this
form: is there any category or combination of categories in the theory
that we can appeal to in accounting for the existence of chairs (answer:
yes, every chair is a particular [object] instantiating the form of chairness).
Whenever a familiar entity cannot be linked to any ontological category,
we should say that there is no such entity in the world; it simply does not
exist.
Revisionism in ontology is often interpreted by making reference to
our natural, pre-philosophical conceptual scheme. To propose a revision-
ist (or revisionary) ontology of X, where X can be replaced by an expression
functioning as a name of some everyday type of entities (e.g. types of or-
dinary objects, including artworks), is to maintain thatcontrary to what
we might think in normal circumstancesXs in fact do not exist.
The second question posed by ontologists concerns the nature of ex-
isting things:
(II) What is the nature of existing things?
1
Put it in Quinean terms: to be is to be the value of a bound variable in a rst-order
theory, the predicates (viz. the only non-logical vocabulary) of which can be interpreted
as ontological categories.
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Or again, in plain prose: What are the identity and persistence conditions of those
entities that are considered to be genuine elements in the objective structure of the
universe? The identity and persistence conditions for a thing determine
what kind of changes the given thing can undergo without ceasing to be
that particular (type of) thing. For example, if our metaphysical theory
of chairs denes an equivalence relation between elements with respect
to which they belong to the set of chairs by appealing, at least partly, to
functional concepts (e.g., a chair is a physical object consisting of a seat,
legs, back, and often arms, designed to accommodate one person), then a
physical object which, due to any change, is unable to fulll this function,
is not a chair anymore. (Of course, a chair cannot survive its physical de-
struction either. That is why we emphasized that the equivalence relation
in question is only partly dened by functional concepts.)
If someone proposes a revisionary ontology in the second sense, she
must claim that our intuitive judgments about the identity and persistence
of things are incorrect. In everyday life we are inclined to think that a par-
ticular novel cannot survive the destruction of all its physical tokens and
the memories thereof (despite Professor Wolands memorable words in
Mikhail Bulgakovs The Master and Margarita: manuscripts dont burn).
However, a revisionist metaphysician working with a Platonic ontology
will most probably claim that we are in deep error: in genuine reality nov-
els are eternal forms that need not be spatiotemporally instantiated. If
she wants to convince her philosophically uninitiated audience, the best
she can do is to suggest an error theory, which explains why our intuitive
judgments are mistaken. For instance, she might argue that the reason why
we systematically confuse genuine beings with their particular instances is
that in everyday life we use our senses, not our intellect to grasp the ex-
istence of things. (One might deny that this line of argument can even in
principle be appropriate for convincing anybody who is not well-equipped
with sophisticated philosophical tools. But this objection is of no impor-
tance here. Nothing hinges on the particular details of the error theory
oered by the revisionist metaphysician; the crucial point is that she bears
the burden of providing some explanation for the systematic error in our
intuitive judgments. This is a stringent demandnot always met by revi-
sionist ontologists.)
In sum: while the rst question (What is there?) aims at understanding
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by what ontological categories we can theoretically segment reality, the
second question (What is the nature of existing things?) concerns the iden-
tity and persistence conditions of those segments. Naturally, identity
and persistence conditions on the one hand and ontological categories on
the other hand are two sides of the same coin: identity and persistence
conditions are derivable from the corresponding ontological category, and
categories should be individuated by these conditions. Nevertheless, the
answers to these metaphysical issues perform slightly dierent explana-
tory tasks in a full-edged ontological theory: enumerating existing things
type-by-type only implicitly entails that we specify the nature of the things
belonging to these types, and vice versa.
In what follows I will reconstruct an argument against the very possi-
bility of a viable revisionary theory of art. Many of the current metaphys-
ical debates about ontology of art are devoted to answering the second
question: What is the real nature of artworks? This question is very of-
ten formulated in terms of their ontological status, whilst there is no
universally accepted denition of ontological status among philosophers.
Roughly, there are two ways of interpreting a question like What is the
ontological status of paintings?. Either it means To what ontological
category do paintings belong, hence what type of identity and persistence
conditions do paintings have?, or it means What are the particular iden-
tity and persistence conditions for paintings? These are not the same
questions. We can easily imagine two philosophers of art who fully agree
that paintings are, say, abstract entities (Platonic universals, propositions,
action-types etc.), but embrace completely dierent theories about the
equivalence relation dening the set of paintings. Paintings as paintings can
be equivalent to each other with respect to intrinsic/qualitative properties
(Kivy, Stephen Davies), extrinsic properties (Walton, Levinson, Dickie)
and even normative ones (Wolterstor)depending on what kind of the-
ory we happen to accept. If we are only interested in what type of beings
paintings (or works of art) are, then we do not need an elaborate theory
providing the dierentia specica for paintings (or works of art) to discern
them from other things which also belong to the same ontological cat-
egory. However, insofar as our account is elaborate enough to provide
some property (or cluster of properties) as dierentia specica for artworks,
we have an explicit denition for being an artwork.
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2. An Argument against Revisionism in Art Theory
Now lets see an argument by Amie L. Thomasson (2004; 2005; 2006;
2007a; 2007b) concerning the possibility of providing a revisionary onto-
logical theory of art. (This will be my reconstruction, but I think Thomas-
son would accept my formulation. At least I hope so.)
1. If someone proposes a revisionary ontology of art (or of an art kind),
she must hold that our everyday intuitions about the identity and
persistence conditions of various kinds of artworks can be massively
mistaken.
2
2. Whenever an intuition or an intuitive judgment is mistaken, the sen-
tence expressing the intuitive judgment is false.
3. Sentences expressing our intuitive judgments can be false if and only
if competent speakers of language L are able to use singular expres-
sions and sortal terms in L in an intuition-neutral way. (Otherwise
they will be analytically or quasi-analytically true.)
4. Competent speakers of L are not able to use singular expressions
and sortal terms in an intuition-neutral way, because [CC] singular
expressions and sortal terms refer by means of conceptual content
associated with the terms by competent speakers of L, and [OS] the
conceptual content associated with the terms incorporates intuitive
judgments of competent speakers of L about the ontological status
of the referred thing or kind.
5. Therefore, sentences expressing our intuitive judgments cannot be
false.
6. Therefore, our intuitive judgments cannot be mistaken.
7. Therefore (from 1. and 6.), revisionary ontologies of art are non-
starters.
2
Instead of intuitive judgments about the identity and persistence of artworks below
I use intuitive judgments for shorthand.
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Thomassons argument is formally valid: the truth of the conclusion is en-
tailed by modus tolens from the succession of conditional (and bi-conditio-
nal) statements. What is at stake is the viability of the premises.
The innocence of the rst premise is beyond doubt: it is true due to
the (stipulative) denition of revisionary ontology. The second premise
may be supported by a principle claiming that the truth of any proposi-
tional content p does not depend on the bearer of the content; if p, the
propositional content of a mental state is true, then p must also be true
if it is the propositional content of a sentence. (Granted that it does not
contain indexical elements the interpretation of which is determined by
the actual bearer of the content or it is not self-referring in a way that xes
the connection between the bearer and the content.) Thus the onus is on
the third and fourth premises.
Thomasson makes three theoretical moves in order to support the
third and the fourth premise. The rst one concerns how expressions get
their reference in natural languages; the second consists of acknowledging
the supposed theoretical consequences of the so-called qua problem; the
third one draws a philosophically important distinction between natural
kinds (natural kind terms) and artifactual kinds (artifact-kind terms).
Reference for singular terms and sortals. Setting aside the details and taking
the question in its most abstract form, there are two models of how nat-
ural languages carry out reference to objects. A (singular or sortal) term
picks out its reference in the world either by means of some conceptual con-
tent associated with it by the speaker and the audience (or by the properly
weighted majority of the members of the speech community), or there
is an established connection between expressions and referents which guar-
antees the attainment of reference without any conceptual transmission.
The best candidate for this role of grounding the reference of linguistic
items may be some (at least partly) causal relation obtaining between the
referent and the expression.
According to the rst model (hereafter dubbed the Conceptual Model),
whenever linguistic expressions refer, they refer to those (type of) things
in the world which uniquely satisfy the requirements specied in the con-
ceptual content. According to the second model (hereafter dubbed the
Causal Model), by contrast, whenever the appropriate (causal) relation ob-
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tains, linguistic expressions do referirrespective of what properties the
referents actually have (or thought to have by the language users).
There are many arguments for and against each model and about the
range of applications of them in describing natural languages. (E.g. whe-
ther the second model ts well with proper names, as claimed by the pro-
ponents of direct reference theory, but has serious diculties whenever
we try to extend the theory to artifact-kind terms. And so on.) But what
is important here is the general structure of interpreting metaphysical de-
bates in the frame of these models.
Thomasson seemingly accepts that ontological disagreements can be
settled in entirely dierent ways depending on the nature of reference in
the language used by debate participants. If sortal terms are mere tags
(denoting all members of the kind solely in virtue of there being a causal
relation between the rst, introductory use of the term and a sample of
the kind), then we have a genuine opportunity for substantial metaphysical
debates about the true nature of a given kind, while both parties are using the
same terms. According to Thomasson (2005, p. 221), the discovery view of
knowledge is based on the assumption that
the world contains a broad range of fully determinate, mind-indepen-
dent facts about which everyone may be ignorant or in error, but
(some of) which the scientists seek to discover by substantive em-
pirical investigations. Thus, one acquires knowledge about, say, the
biological nature of whales by ostensively applying the term whale
to this kind of thing and undertaking substantive empirical investiga-
tions about them (their internal structure, genetics, etc.) in order to
discover the real truth about whales biological nature, which may
overturn our common-sense views about them.
The picture lurking behind the theory is roughly the following: human
beings rst tag segments of reality by newly introduced linguistic ex-
pressions, and then try to discover the nature of the segments tagged
expressions are perfect means to secure the common ground for alterna-
tive scientic and metaphysical views.
Proponents of the Conceptual Model would describe the situation in
a radically dierent way. Let K be an arbitrary kind term, and p
1
p
n
the
properties that jointly constitute the conceptual content associated with
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K. Whatever is the real nature of members of K, it is beyond dispute that
all of them have p
1
if the term refers at all, it must refer to something
which is p
1
. Consequently, we can have genuine debates only about such
properties and features that are not determined by the conceptual content
associated with the term. (The chemical structure of water might provide
adequate illustration. It is reasonable to suppose that in natural languages
the conceptual content associated with names of natural kinds contains
only observational, perceptual properties. However, one can argue that
this piece of knowledge concerning the structure of H
2
Omoleculesdue
to scientic educationhas already been built into the conceptual con-
tent associated with water in the last fty years.) As far as metaphysical
debates are concerned, everything hinges on which properties we take to
be constitutive to the conceptual content associated by the term. If these
properties actually x the ontological status of the things/kinds in ques-
tion, revisionary proposals are nonstarters or at best should be understood
as advices of some reform in language use (or proposals for revisions to our
somewhat messy conceptual scheme [Thomasson, 2007a, p. 200]).
The qua problem. Thomasson (2004; 2005; 2007a) argues that as far as
singular expressions and sortal terms are concerned we should embrace a
hybrid descriptive/causal theory of reference. Her main motivation in tak-
ing this movei.e. proposing a hybrid account of reference according to
which meanings of terms are determined partly by the concepts of com-
petent speakersis to avoid the so-called qua problem (DevittSterelny,
1999). The qua problem immediately arises when a new term is intro-
duced: on such occasions, the reference of a new singular/general term
is radically indeterminate. E.g., is the speaker tagging the demonstrated
shape (of which there are several instances) or the specic object in front
of her? To adequately determine the reference of an expression, Thomas-
son and others argue, groundersthose who introduce the new term with
a specic referenceneed a disambiguating concept specifying the kind
of thing (or sort of kind) to be picked out by the term to be introduced.
What is more, this disambiguating concept is doing full-blooded meta-
physical work indeed: specifying the kind of thing (or sort of kind) to be
picked out by the term is in fact xing the ontological category which the
thing belongs to, thus implicitly laying down the identity and persistence
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conditions, which makes it that very kind of thing.
3
So we have good rea-
sons to accept [CC] and [OS] in premise 4. But we need one more step to
fully assess the perspectives of revisionary metaphysics of art.
Names for artifact-kinds. According to Thomasson, there is an interesting
asymmetry between natural kind terms and artifact-kind terms (such as
novel, painting, symphony). As she (2007b, p. 65) puts it:
Accepting a hybrid view of reference may still leave much of the
spirit of the above view [the view that general terms may refer di-
rectly to genuine kinds in the world with natural boundaries, so that
the terms extension is determined by the nature of the kind, in-
dependently of all human beliefs and concepts] intact, for it does
not impugn the idea that general terms may pick out their referents
independently of any human concepts about the particular nature
(though not the category) of the kind involved.
Artifacts as artifacts are made with some specic intention on their cre-
ators part (creation here involves intentional use of the object without
altering its found features)and the relevant sort of intention to make a
thing of artifactual kind K must involve a substantive (and substantively
correct) concept of what a Kis, including an understanding of what sorts
of properties are K-relevant (Thomasson, 2007b, p. 59). Therefore rst
creators of artifactssome of them can be considered as grounders of
artifact-kind terms and all of them as grounders of proper names for par-
ticular artifactsare epistemically privileged as far as the nature of artifac-
tual kinds is concerned. It cannot turn out that Mona Lisa would survive
through complete destruction of its canvas, simply because Mona Lisa is
a painting, and the grounders of painting decided to use this term to
such things that cannot survive their physical destruction (and Leonardo
da Vincis creative intentions were in accordance with his predecessors).
4
3
The things ontological category is already xed, independent of the grounders.
What is being xed is that the term in question picks out that thing of that ontological
category.
4
Julian Dodd (2012) proposes an alternative account based on Gareth Evans theory
of reference according to which we are not forced to take this third move.
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Before I present my objections to Thomassons account in part 3, I
would like to oer a few remarks aimed at clarication. First, the afore-
mentioned ontological disambiguation should not be considered as achie-
ved by a philosophical and explicit decision on the part of grounders about
what their term will refer to, but rather by appeal to background prac-
tices already in place that co-evolve with the use of the art-kind term
(Thomasson, 2005, p. 225). Therefore doing (non-revisionary) philosophy
of art does not simply mean providing some sort of conceptual analysis
carried out in the philosophers armchair; she must investigate current
practices of art as well.
5
Second, Thomasson (2006, p. 250) openly de-
clares that artwork or work of art is not a category-specifying term
(like thing, object or entity), because it does not come associated
with the criteria of identity that are needed to disambiguate the cate-
gory of entity to be referred to. However, she thinks that conventional
names for particular art-kindssuch as sculpture, painting, collage
are category-specifying terms, so we could give precise answers to the
question of the ontological status of (the members of) these kinds by an-
alyzing their proper use of the terms and investigating the related artis-
tic practices. (As far as Thomassons own metaphysical position is con-
cerned, she claims that some types/kinds of artworks are abstract artifacts
[Thomasson, 2004].) Third, while in Ordinary objects Thomasson explic-
itly identies associated conceptual content (what is in the head) with
the meaning of the term in question and claims that basic identity and ex-
istence conditions are xed analytically in xing reference (Thomasson,
2007a, p. 63), proponents of the Conceptual Model need not hold that
the associated conceptual content should be taken as a part of (or should
be identied with) the meaning of the singular or sortal term. The crucial
point is thatin the case of artifact termsthe conceptual content that
5
Thomasson (2006, p. 249) illustrates her point with the following examples: That
is, we help establish what ontological sort of thing we are referring to by, e.g. considering
works to be observable under some conditions but not others (as, e.g., a painting may be
seen this month at the museum, a performance of a musical work may be heard tonight
only, while the work itself may be heard in any of three major cities any night this month);
or by treating works as destroyed (or not destroyed) in various circumstances (e.g. a re
may destroy a painting but not a symphony); or by way of what we consider to be saleable
and moveable (e.g. whether we treat the work itself, or only rights to it or copies of it to
be capable of being bought and sold), and so on.
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was used to x the reference at the rst, introductory use is somehow
present in the subsequent uses of the term as well. So statements express-
ing the identity and persistence conditions of an artwork as a particular
type of artwork are true only by virtue of the structure of our conceptual
schemes.
3. Fallibility of Artistic Intuitions and the Task of Philosophy of
Art
In what follows I will outline three objections to Thomassons argument
against the fallibility of our intuitive judgments about the identity and per-
sistence conditions of various kinds of artworks. The rst and the second
concern the (semantic and pragmatic) rules regulating the use of art-kind
terms, while the third one is based on the role of intuitions in philosophy
of art.
First Objection. Thomassons account oers us a somewhat strange philo-
sophical package deal: we can buy the possibility of genuine metaphys-
ical debates (proposing revisionary theories of art by using the same vo-
cabulary as in everyday life) only if we purchase the (Purely) Causal Model
in addition. She claims that the fallibility of our intuitive judgments about
artifacts stands or falls on the possibility of using artifact-kind terms as
mere tagsbut this inference is too quick. Irrespective of whether sortal
terms refer directly or rather via some kind of associated conceptual con-
tent (which establishes the reference of terms), in everyday situations com-
petent speakers are able to cancel or withdraw conceptual contents which
are pragmatically or semantically connected to linguistic items. There-
fore, the friend of everyday intuitions and the revisionist philosopher can
in principle have common grounds for debating the ontological status of
one and the same thing.
(Imagine a revisionary philosopher saying the following to the friend
of intuitions: Yesterday I saw Mona Lisa hanging on the wall in one of
my friends apartment. I mean, I saw a painting that you would think of
as a forgery of the Mona Lisa. But look, in my theory paintings are indi-
viduated by intrinsic aesthetic properties, so every perceptual duplicate of
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Mona Lisa is also the Mona Lisa. If you are interested in this topic, next
time I will tell you whats the problem with your nave conception of art-
works.)
6
Second Objection. There is a common mistake lurking behind this inference
and Thomassons analysis of the qua problem: namely, ignorance about the
communicative aspects of language use. Once we realize that so-called
grounding situations (initial baptism by a singular term or a sortal) are
real communicative situations, the qua problem evaporates. In real com-
municative situations, there are many ways in which what is in the head
can contribute to specifying the information that the competent speaker
intends to convey: relying on semantically encoded linguistic meaning is
only one of them. Perhaps it may be true that external context alone is
inadequate to determine what our terms refer to (Thomasson, 2006, p.
248), calling for either contextual presuppositions (which are activated only
in some types of conversational environment), or encyclopedic knowledge
(which constitutes the cognitive background of our utterances in every-
day situations) that can enter into the process of reference-xing. These
two aspects cannot, however, be assumed to remain constant for all sub-
sequent uses: we have no reason to assume that contextual presupposi-
tions varying with conversational environments and encyclopedic knowl-
edge permanently overridden and updated by new information about the
(physical and social) world can regulate every subsequent use of the term
in question. Fixing the reference by the rst, introductory use is not a
matter of invariant factors that are somehow present in the whole life of
the term.
In sum: in order to account for the terms rst, introductory use by
appealing to what is in the head, we do not need to posit some kind of
structured propositional content which determinesin a direct way (be-
ing part of the meaning) or indirect way (being part of the current practices
of treating and using the referents) every subsequent use of the terms.
Third Objection. Finally, there is a further problem with Thomassons ac-
count. [OS] suggests that our ontological intuitions are statica suspicious
6
Cf. BcsTzsr (2013).
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claim when it comes to the metaphysics of art. The history of art partly
comprises a series of successful attempts to transgress artistic conventions
and expectations. Once we realize this subversive character of art, our
intuitive judgments about the identity and persistence conditions of art-
works become dynamic: we have no reason to assume that future artworks
will have the same nature (ontological status) as the now-familiar ones. (Of
course this is not necessarily so: a member of some art community may
be reluctant to appreciate new forms of art. Perhaps certain revisionary
proposals were motivated by this reluctance.)
7
Accordingly, everyday intuitions cannot be used the same way as else-
where in philosophy: they cannot serve as a basis for a timeless, robust
(but perhaps inconsistent) folk ontology. Given the essentially subversive
character of art, any account is highly implausible if it is based on the as-
sumption that the basic identity and persistence conditions of an art kind
(e.g. painting, symphony, novel, etc.) are xed quasi-analytically by the
rst, introductory use.
I nd that from this last point we can also draw a more general moral:
in philosophy of art we need a reverse methodology. First we have to pro-
vide the general denition of an artwork containing all the sucient and
necessary conditions of artworks (being an artwork) in any period within
the history of art. (ADanto-style denition, which grasps the common na-
ture of artworks by some representational property, would be a potential
candidateif providing such a denition is indeed possible)
8
Once this
is done, we are ready to answer the question: To which ontological cate-
gory must an artwork belong in order to fulll the identity and persistence
conditions determined by the denition of art? Our answer will be essen-
tially revisionist in nature: any intuition that is based on some restricted
(and partly normative) concept of art can, in principle, be mistaken. In
sum: in the philosophy of art, providing a revisionist ontology of art is not
7
Thomasson (2006, p. 251), interestingly enough, considers this kind of subversivity
but she allows for such variations appearing in dierent cultures, only in the case of the
general term artwork. However, an artwork cannot be subversive as an artwork without
being subversive as a special kind of artwork. Therefore if Thomasson claims that artwork
is not a category-specifying term, on what grounds does she maintain that artifact-kind
names are?
8
Cf. Danto (1981).
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simply one of several possible roads: its the only road to travel.
9
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9
I am very grateful to Dvid Mrk Kovcs, Rbert Mtysi, Mikls Mrton, Anna
Rz, Jnos Tzsr, Mt Veres and Zsa Zvolenszky for very helpful comments on ear-
lier drafts of this paper. I owe a great debt to comments and criticism that I received
from various members of my audience in Prague (ESA Conference, 17th June 2013); in
particular, I would like to thank Maria Elisabeth Reicher-Marek. The research leading
to these results has received funding from the project BETEGH09 supported by MAG
Zrt.
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