Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T04:44:44.129Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modality, Individuation, and the Ontology of Art1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Carl Matheson  and
Ben Caplan
Carl Matheson
Affiliation:
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MBR3T 2M8
Ben Caplan
Affiliation:
Ohio State University, Columbus, OH43210, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1988, Michael Nyman composed the score for Peter Greenaway's film Drowning by Numbers (or did something that we would ordinarily think of as composing that score). We can think of Nyman's compositional activity as a ‘generative performance’ and of the sound structure that Nyman indicated (or of some other abstract object that is appropriately related to that sound structure) as the product generated by that performance (ix). According to one view, Nyman's score for Drowning by Numbers — the musical work — is the product generated by Nyman's compositional activity (namely, an abstract object) and, more generally, artworks are identified with the products generated by compositional or other creative activities. Let's call this view The Product Theory. By contrast, according to another view, Nyman's score for Drowning by Numbers is the generative performance itself (namely, Nyman's compositional activity) and, more generally, artworks are identified with generative performances themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 491 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Cameron, Ross and Roca, Sonia. 2006. ‘Rohrbaugh and deRosset on the Necessity of Origin.’ Mind 115: 361–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, Gregory. 1989. An Ontology of Art. New York, NY: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1969. ‘The Individuation of Events.’ In Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel. Rescher, Nicholas ed. Dordrecht: Reidel. 216–34. Reprinted in Davidson 1980: 163–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1987. ‘Knowing One's Own Mind.’ Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 60: 441-58. Reprinted in Davidson 2001: 15–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 2001. Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Clarendon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, David. 2004. Art as Performance. New Directions in Aesthetics 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, David. 2005. ‘Reperforming and Reforming Art as Performance: Responses.’ Acta Analytica 20: 64–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dodd, Julian. 2007. Works of Music: An Essay in Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Kit. 1994. ‘Essence and Modality.’ Philosophical Perspectives. Vol. 8 (Logic and Language). Tomberlin, James E. ed. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview. 1–16.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. 1976. ‘Events as Property Exemplifications.’ In Action Theory: Proceedings of the Winnipeg Conference on Human Action. Brand, Myles and Walton, Douglas eds. Synthese Library 97. Dordrecht: Reidel. 159-77. Reprinted in Kim 1993: 33–52.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. 1993. Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays. Cambridge Studies in Philosophy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kivy, Peter. 1983. ‘Platonism in Music: A Kind of Defense.’ Grazer philosophische Studien 19: 109-29. Reprinted in Kivy 1993: 35–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kivy, Peter. 1987. ‘Platonism in Music: Another Kind of Defense.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 24: 245-52. Reprinted in Kivy 1993: 59–74.Google Scholar
Kivy, Peter. 1993. The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Saul A., Kripke 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold. 1980a. ‘What a Musical Work Is.’ Journal of Philosophy 77: 5-28. Reprinted in Levinson 1990b: 63–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold. 1980b. ‘Autographic and Allographic Art Revisited.’ Philosophical Studies 38: 367-83. Reprinted in Levinson 1990b: 89–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold. 1985. ‘Titles.’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 44: 29-39. Reprinted in Levinson 1990b: 159–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold. 1990a. ‘What a Musical Work Is, Again.’ In Levinson 1990b: 215–63.Google Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold. 1990b. Music, Art, and Metaphysics: Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold. 1992. Review of Currie 1989. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52: 215-22. Reprinted as ‘Art as Action’ in Levinson 1996: 138–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold. 1996. The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. 1968. ‘Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic.’ Journal of Philosophy 65: 113-26. Reprinted (with postscripts) in Lewis 1983: 26–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 1971. ‘Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies.’ Journal of Philosophy 68: 203-11. Reprinted in Lewis 1983: 47–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 1983. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. 1986a. ‘Events.’ In Lewis 1986b: 241–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 1986b. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. 1986c. On the Plurality of Worlds. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Matheson, Carl and Caplan, Ben. 2007. ‘Fine Individuation.’ British Journal of Aesthetics 47: 113–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robertson, Teresa and Forbes, Graeme. 2006. ‘Does the New Route Reach its Destination?’ Mind 115: 367–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrbaugh, Guy. 2003. ‘Artworks as Historical Individuals.’ European Journal of Philosophy 11: 177–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrbaugh, Guy. 2005. ‘I Could Have Done That.’ British Journal of Aesthetics 45: 209–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrbaugh, Guy. ms. ‘The Timeless and the Timely: Reply to Dodd.’Google Scholar
Rohrbaugh, Guy and deRosset, Louis. 2004. ‘A New Route to the Necessity of Origin.’ Mind 113: 705–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrbaugh, Guy. 2006. ‘Prevention, Independence, and Origin.’ Mind 115: 375–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stecker, Robert. 2003. Interpretation and Construction: Art, Speech, and the Law. New Directions in Aesthetics 1. Malden, MA: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stecker, Robert. 2005. Review of Davies 2004. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63: 75–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suster, Danilo. 2005. ‘The Modality Principle and the Work-Relativity of Modality.’ Acta Analytica 20: 41–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Van Cleve. 1985. ‘Why a Set Contains its Members Essentially.’ Noûs 19: 585–602.Google Scholar
Wiggins, David. 2001. Sameness and Substance Renewed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar