Frances to Geoff and other members... One of the ongoing longstanding debates here on this list that seemingly remains unresolved is whether some general "classes" exist objectively outside and aside from any mind in an ontological sphere of the world, or if all general "classes" exist subjectively and only inside the mind; and then further if "art" is a general class at all, regardless of whether art exists as an objective material construct or as a subjective mental construct. The current debate over "existence" however is somewhat new to me here, although it is an important issue to wrestle with in its own right as regards both art and nonart.
Geoff asked several questions, here partly listed by me in effect... (1) Is social constructivism and set theory relevant to this subject? (2) Is art as a class necessarily only a subjective mental construct? (3) Does pragmatism differentiate the existence of tokens and types? (4) Does value impact in any way on the kind of meaning a sign yields? Frances attempts a pragmatist reply to those questions... (1A) My understanding of "social constructivism" as you presented it is that the theory holds to a position of communal psychologism, in that normal humans interpretively impose themselves on all they sense or perceive, because they cannot know actual concrete factuality in any direct way for sure, therefore upon an individual sensing stuff it falls to the collective group of percipients to determine what is seemingly or really sensed, hence the private sense moderates stuff while the public group confirms if the sensed stuff is real for all concerned. Much of this could be supported by realist pragmatism. The term "reality" here however may be a thorn for you, in that under pragmatism any fact that may be sensed as real would be a mental construct, so that a fact is only as real as sense. (1B) The issue of a singular thing or self as a particular member and its class as a general "set" is admitted to be in the world by realist pragmatism, where furthermore the self and the set is also permitted to be auto representational, and thus the self can act as its set or the set can act as its self, but this idea goes to a broader metaphysical theory of early phenomenal evolution. An example might be the particulate essence of an emerging subatomic structure; but this idea of self and set becoming interchangeable can be carried forward to include say the mental psyche of a normal human, where their own inner self and their own outer person as its set confusingly behave as one. Indeed logically, only a special token or singular self can be sensed to stand for a general tone or a universal type as a set, because tonal quales and typical norms cannot be pointed to without pointing to a token sample that represents them. (2A) If we align art with say tech and science as major human acts, then these class sets are clearly objective states of things, or at least objective laws of things, that just happen to possibly have token members in their typical classes. For example, to sense a singular token artwork is to sense at once at least two properties simultaneously in the one particular object, which are the specific artwork and the generality of art that it is a part of. The real and the ideal are sensed instantly together in combination. For another example, to sense a token human person is to also sense tonal humanness and typical humanity. We simply cannot sense a token without also sensing its tone and its type. (2B) Incidentally, the general inclined laws of nature and science and mathematics are found by pragmatism to be objective logical constructs that mind accidentally discovers, therefore the general inclined qualities of art sensed in artworks are also easily identical with this finding. (3A) The fact of "existence" is not a predicate upon which all things in the world can rest, such as say god for example, but it is likely that say art might or would be predicated to exist. (3B) The product of a single football exists as a token artifact, but the game of football exists as an ideal typical class of existent token football games, so to sense a specific football game is also to sense the general game of football, therefore the token and the type exist, and the token furthermore is an iconic sign that indicates its own tone and type. The product of a football artifact or the activity of a football game can also be used as an iconic metonym to stand as a part for say the whole of sport in general; in the same way that a pair of hands are the workers, or a set of wheels is the car, or the Whitehouse is America or its government or its president. (4A) Any sign has value to the extent that its referred and effected object satisfies the need of a signer as its user. The value is of semiotics alone, and is aside from any methodic goods, such as any aesthetical beauties, or any ethical rights or deeds or morals, or any logical truths. (4B) Any meaning yielded by a sign can emerge in acts of semiosis at the behest of the signer, but meaning need not emerge for a sign to exist as such. It is however the peripheral margin as a sphere or domain or realm of the sign that determines the kind of meaning there will be. The determination of meaning is a limit bound by the margin of the related signs involved. The meaning then determines or limits the value of a sign, and the value in turn determines or limits the worth of a sign. It is hence the bounded margin and not the valued need that determines or limits the degree or level of meaning, such as its quality or continuity and its complexity or intensity or simplicity. For pragmatism the meaning of a sign is only a semantic entity, and then one of only critical interpreted evaluation. This broadly entails the definitive subject matter of a sign, such as its defined object or content or meaning. (4C) If a signer arbitrarily assigns or reassigns or confers some private reference to a sign, such as a secret cipher, this alternative or additive reference is not in any way part of the definition of the sign nor of its meaning. It is of course semantic, but of informative grammar only, and thus is simply a substitutive code of syntax, much like the Morse code is. Informative semantic referentions or referents like coded ciphers are limited by the peripheral "grounds" that sign vehicles and sign objects lay in together, which grounds may of formal iconic similarity or causal indexic contiguity or conventional symbolic arbirarity. Evaluative semantic definitions or defines like subjected meanings are limited by the peripheral "margins" that sign values and sign subjects lay in together, which margins may be of spheres or domains or realms. The signer is therefore relatively free to confer any referred object upon a sign, but is less free when it comes to conferring any defined subject upon a sign. The semantic margins of signs are much more restricted than are the semantic grounds of signs, therefore any meaning that signs yield at the behest of signers is tethered by semiotics.
