On Dec 9, 2012, at 12:25 PM, William Conger <[email protected]> wrote:
> Why do so many folks insist that inanimate things 'contain' meaning or can
> 'communicate' meaning? This must be a carry-over from our primitive,
magical
> past history.
But we've talked about this before, and it recalls the first chapter of
Danto's "Transfiguration of the Commonplace." Upon seeing a square of canvas
stretched across a wooden frame and painted red, the viewer ponders what it
"means" (in Danto's phrasing, what it is "about"). There is something evient
in the object that strongly conveys to the viewer that (a) it was made
intentionally, and (b) that there are characteristics in its physical
appearance that can be connected to a "meaning" or intention. The meaning
isn't contained in the object, but the object's form can reliably evoke that
meaning ("notion in someone's head," or NISH) if one is receptive (understands
the language, e.g.)
Consider things unearthed in paleolithic digs. I'm not thinking of the Venus
of Willendorf or abstruse inscriptions carved in ivory but of rudimentary
stone arrowheads and hand-axes. I've seen photos of them. The arrowheads look
like random chips of stone and the axes look like ovoid rocks with a pointed
end. I do not see the "evidence" of workmanship in many of them but trained
archaeologists do and claim that these objects are intentionally made, not
just rubble in a gravesite. The objects contain the physical properties that
call forth an interpretation by a viewer. No animist magic.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Michael Brady
