>From Frances to Tom McCormack and interested others...
The statement below seems to be a good approach to antirealist
nominalism, which for me is subjective and psychologistic and
mentalist and even rationalist. The approach however fails as a
global account of all nonlingual and lingual signs, and the
signed objects they refer to. It denies that denoted extensions
as meanings and general types or overall classes can exist
objectively and independent of mind. It cannot hold to say
mathematical laws for example as being objective objects and
material constructs that mind merely discovers and finds
accidentally and also labels linguistically. This kind of
antirealist nominalism is in effect a roadblock to curiosity and
inquiry and discovery, and especially to the advance of science.
If a group of normal learned experts for example agree by a
consensus of opinion that an agreed object of truth is to be
tentatively believed, such as one plus one equals two, then that
truth is now a real objective object and not a deluded illusion
regardless of what any individual mind in the communal group
might think of it. The object of such an agreed truth is an
existent reality, and must be conditionally accepted as it is
given, and not as it is wished or willed or wanted or even
needed. If an abstract object like a mathic law ever could be
found as true, then it probably will be found true in the long
run, regardless of whether it ever actually will be. It is the
ongoing search that is important, and not some absolute final
end, which is impossible in any event for the human mind. All
that any mind can do is make a good guess that the agreed truth
is a real fact. The percipient of an abstract object that is
signed nonverbally by a signage sign or signed verbally by a
language sign, such as the beauty of an artwork or the legality
of an equation, is brought into a relation with the object of
sense, and not with their own inner sense of the object, because
it is after all the objective object that is held to be sensed or
nice or true, and not the subjective sense of it. The external
object of matter however must be related in a ground with the
internal subject of mind. Any perfect world of say beauty and
truth without any mind to sense it would be pointless and
meaningless and useless. Subjective theories like nominalism are
useful, but only in special particular instances. Given the
present state of evolving human knowledge, the best global
approach to signing is idealist realism as currently posited by
naturalist pragmatism.
(This is my take against notionalism and nominalism as culled
from Peircean philosophy, and is an ongoing study for me.)
Tom McCormack wrote...
Kate and William are far beyond me in realizing and
articulating the evolving styles in visual art. As usual, in my
efforts to be a philosopher of language and related ontology, I'm
deeply interested in the way aestheticians' language REIFIES
things.
What do I have in mind with 'reify' there? Think of it
this way. When William writes, "The History of Art in its most
recognized use denotes an academic discipline..." his phrasing is
in effect assuming the > existence of three different "entities":
A "The History", a "discipline", and the action-entity
"denoting". We'd all recognize the distinction between a TERM
and a THING it's often used to label. Where I balk is at the
assumption that a term actually DOES anything. It's our MINDS
that are acting, not the term. We label; the term does not. If
someone says "salt" to you, all that initially enters your mind
is a sound. What follows in your consciousness is then a function
of your memory inventory, your retrieving mechanism, and your
mosaicking mind. Say "salt" to a Tibetan, and he'll receive the
same sound you would. But everything thereafter that arises in
the Tibetan's mind will be different from what arises in yours.
We assume the printed scription 'salt' carries out an action we
call "means". But word-sounds never "mean", ever. The act of
"meaning" that we attribute to sounds, and scribbles and gestures
and ruins, is imaginary, a delusion.
In aesthetics, this mistaken assumption that sounds and
scribbles "mean" wreaks a befuddling effect beginning with the
scription 'art', coupled with 'is'. See William's phrases
(below), "one did not need to know what was art but simply...",
and "If the form fit, it's art, even if it was recognized in
something previously unclassified as art." That's simply
Winkleman's fiat about when to use the sound "art". But I could
utter comparable fiats about the sounds "miracle", "sins",
"souls", the hexing of "curses", the ongoing activity of a "lucky
man's" "luck". That doesn't mean there are any such "real world"
entities -- only notional ones.
My position is that the sound-scribble 'art' does not
DENOTE anything. I claim Kripke is harmfully wrong in his belief
that a sound can carry out an action of denoting, referring,
meaning, designating, picking out. All such alleged activity is
by our various brains, and what arises in a given brain depends
on the person's experience, memorizing apparatus, and personal
reconfiguring. Think of sounds as the OCCASIONS but not the
intrinsic CAUSES of what finally arises in a given person's
consciousness.
