Failed-Art and Failed Art-Theory

Abstract

An object being non-art appears only trivially informative. Some non-art objects, however, could be saliently ‘almost’ art, and therefore objects for which being non-art is non-trivially informative. I call these kinds of non-art objects ‘failed-art’ objects—non-art objects aetiologically similar to art-objects, diverging only in virtue of some relevant failure. I take failed-art to be the right sort of thing, to result from the right sort of action, and to have the right sort of history required to be art, but to be non-art by having failure where being art requires success. I assume that for something to be art that thing must be the product of intention-directed action. I then offer an account of attempts that captures the success conditions governing the relationship between intention-directed actions and their products. From this, I claim that to be failed-art is to be the product of a failed art-attempt, i.e., to be non-art as the result of the particular way in which that art-attempt failed. An art-attempt I take to be an attempt with success conditions, that, if satisfied, entail the satisfaction of the conditions for being art—whatever those may be. To be art, then, is to be the product of a successful art-attempt. As such, any art theory incompatible with my account of failed-art is an art theory for which the notions of success and failure do not matter, and therefore an art theory for which being art needn't be substantively intention-dependent. So, any theory of art unable to accommodate my account of failed-art is ipso facto false.

Notes

¹Distinct from lawyers who fail to achieve the minimum standard for being a good lawyer.

²If we assume for simplicity's sake a rigid notion of what it is to pass the bar exam, then should a faulty scoring machine incorrectly score A's exam as failing and B's exam as passing, then B would be a non-lawyer that everyone regards as a lawyer, and A would be a lawyer that everyone regards as a non-lawyer, but neither would be a failed-lawyer.

³Moreover, being a failed-lawyer suggests certain interesting or salient features (e.g., having desired to practise law, having gone to law school, having or expecting to do the things lawyers typically do). Of course, the better specified the notion of what it is to be a lawyer (e.g., perhaps also requiring one to have attended or graduated from law school), the better specified (and thereby more informative) the notion of what it is to be a failed-lawyer.

⁴Again, not to be confused with art objects that fail to satisfy the conditions for being good art (e.g., perhaps objects such as Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, Martin Amis' Night Train, the poems of William McGonagall).

⁵Weitz-inspired accounts typically claim that art is a prototype concept. For broad support of art as a prototype concept see Dean 2003; for arguments against, see Adajian 2005. For support of prototype concepts in cognitive science see Rosch 1973 and Ramsey 1998, and for arguments against see Fodor 1998 and Fodor and Lepore 2002.

⁶The truth of Gaut's cluster account appears consistent with Meskin 2007, if not an endorsement of Davies 2004, the broadly definitional project in art.

⁷A few theories are expressly non-definitional in a less reactionary manner, preferring instead to address how we identify art [Carroll 1993 or the functions of artworld institutions [Iseminger 2004.

⁸I assume that my use of ‘substantively’ is meaningful and unproblematic—minimally: non-trivially/non-accidentally and maximally: exhaustively/essentially.

⁹Note that even Gaut 2000 implicitly endorses attempt-dependence as a necessary condition in virtue of explicitly claiming that artworks must be the product of intentional action [29].

¹⁰The notion of intentional action I employ should be as broad and commonsensical as possible [Mele & Moser 1997. This should be broad enough to be incorporated without loss into ascriptivist accounts [Davidson 1980, causalist accounts [Davis 1997, explanatory accounts [Ginet 1990, decision theoretic accounts [Pollock 2002, or planning accounts [Bratman 1999 and even ‘improvisational’ accounts [Velleman 2000. I avoid issues regarding intensity of attempts [McInerney 2006 as well as particular semantic views of ‘attempt’[Hunter 1987.

¹²For example, consider my bluff-attempt in poker: to have my opponent fold a stronger hand to my weaker hand brought about by my performing some action with the intention that my opponent read that action as indicative of my hand's being stronger than her own. My bluff-attempt succeeds if and only if my opponent folds in the manner I intended her to fold; otherwise, it fails. A simple failed bluff-attempt would be one in which my opponent takes my action to be transparent, perhaps one of desperation, and therefore calls. A complex failed bluff-attempt would be one in which my opponent takes some incidental feature of my action not intended to indicate strength to in fact indicate strength, and only this causes her to fold (e.g., I intended that the amount bet be seen as indicating strength, but my opponent ignores the bet amount, instead takes the incidental manner in which I pushed the chips into the pot as indicating strength, and for that reason folds).

¹¹One of Ginet's sufficient conditions for trying is ‘intending of her G-ing that by so acting she would find out whether she could F by that G-ing’2004: 93].

¹³Dickie 1997 requires artworks to be made with the intention to be presented to an artworld public.

¹⁴For instance, an F could be such that there could be: i) neither an attempt to F nor an F-attempt, ii) an attempt to F but no F-attempt other than an attempt to F, iii) an attempt to F and F-attempts other than an attempt to F, or iv) no attempt to F but F-attempts that are not attempts to F.

¹⁵I use ‘possession’ in a non-technical sense, where ‘w possesses F’ can stand in for ‘w is an F’.

¹⁶Doghouses are the results of successful doghouse-attempts; whereas, the tree stump in which my dog resides is a non-doghouse that is being used as a doghouse (satisfies the function of a doghouse) [Thomasson 2007.

¹⁷I do not use ‘make’ and its cognates to avoid entailing or suggesting physical alteration. Note that my employment of F-attempts ought to appeal to those who think ‘make’ is a sort-relative predicate [Fine 2003. Also, I use the passive voice to avoid overt commitment to any particular view about the source for the relevant directing-intentions.

¹⁸Of course, at first blush, definitional circularity seems afoot as artworks are defined in terms of how artworks are or have been regarded. In order to be a substantively informative theory, the regard-chain must end with an artwork not defined in terms of previous regard. These works Levinson refers to as ur-art [1990: 40]. Of course, this simply redirects the question ‘What is art?’ to the nature of the ur-works, on which Levinson hasn't been particularly forthcoming.

¹⁹Levinson requires that the regard intentions be non-passing (serious, stable), so I assume that the relevant directing intentions for attempts likewise must be non-passing.

²⁰Note that for Levinson an agent falsely believing that [r is not a way in which pre-existing artworks have been regarded] doesn't matter—if w is the product of an r-attempt, then w is art. Likewise irrelevant should be an agent falsely believing that [way of regarding p is a way in which pre-existing artworks have been regarded]—if w is the product of a p-attempt, then w is non-art. Such cases clearly cannot be cases of failed-art.

²¹In addition to incurring obvious semantic problems for ‘attempt’ should the possibility of failure be excluded [Schroeder 2001.

²²Similarly for observed thing—a thing in an observer's visual field that is the object of observation; non-observed thing—a thing that is not the object of observation; a subspecies of non-observed thing is unobserved thing (overlooked thing)—a thing in an observer's visual field but not the object of observation. Also note that I can attempt to be observed by A but fail to be observed by A in virtue of the way in which my attempt to be observed failed.

²³Perhaps what I call ‘failed-art objects’ are simply art objects that fail to be any good precisely because they feature a failed art-attempt. This won't do. Presumably, good- and bad-making properties of an artwork ought to seize onto or track the properties which make that thing an artwork, so to claim that failed-art objects are just bad art rather than non-art entails having the failure and success of art-attempts both descriptively absent and arbitrarily present in art evaluation, so such a reply only compounds the problem by making intention-dependence an ad hoc evaluative consideration.

²⁴I can of course later appropriate the products of my own failures, but this clearly is another art-attempt.

²⁵The contrast with Levinson should now be obvious, i.e., Levinson claims roughly that w is an artwork if and only if w is a work intended to be F, while Stecker by contrast claims roughly that w is an artwork if and only if w is a work and w is F.

²⁶Shifting the burden onto the first disjunct cannot be an option for Stecker, since doing so would allow natural objects equally capable of achieving excellence in fulfilling a function of art to become art.

²⁷On Stecker's theory, an artefact that is non-intentionally F is art, but a natural object that is non-intentionally F is non-art—natural objects can't be art objects because natural objects can't be artefacts. For intention-dependence to ground any meaningful divide between the natural world and the art world, it must be the case that natural objects can't be art because natural objects can't be Fs in the right sort of way, that is, objects for which being F is substantively intention-dependent.

²⁸Anyone rejecting the claim that art must be substantively intention-dependent must nevertheless endorse the following claim: any theory of art for which something is an art object if that thing is the product of a successful attempt of a certain prescribed sort must also be a theory for which something is a failed-art object if that thing is the product of a failed attempt of that certain prescribed sort.

³⁰Attempts can entail other attempts—a constitutive part of an F-attempt may be a successful N-attempt (e.g., bringing it about that w has N in the manner intended so as to bring it about that w has F).

²⁹Zangwill's own bare formulation is as follows:

Something is a work of art because and only because someone had an insight that certain aesthetic properties would depend on certain nonaesthetic properties; and because of this, the thing was intentionally endowed with some of those aesthetic properties in virtue of the nonaesthetic properties, as envisaged in the insight.

[2007: 36]

For the more detailed formulation, see [2007: 57].

³¹For example, I make the work fragile with the intention that the work be delicate, and the work is delicate as a result of my attempt but not in the manner intended (in virtue of its fragility).

³²I am grateful to the Cornell University Sage School of Philosophy faculty and graduate students for their support and encouragement, and in special measure, Derk Pereboom and Carl Ginet. Thanks also to the two referees for the Australasian Journal of Philosophy for their extremely helpful suggestions.