It is often thought that the boundaries and properties of art-kinds are determined by the things we say and think about them. More recently, this tendency has manifested itself as concept-descriptivism, the view that the reference of art-kind terms is fixed by the ontological properties explicitly or implicitly ascribed to art and art-kinds by competent users of those terms. Competent users are therefore immune from radical error in their ascriptions; the result is that the ontology of art must begin and (...) end with conceptual analysis. Against this tendency towards concept-driven ontology, I offer a trio of objections derived from: the cultural and temporal variability of concepts of art, the systematic tendency, on the part of would-be ontological assessors, to err on the side of familiar categories or, conversely, to exaggerate minor differences between familiar and unfamiliar practices, and the influence artworld precedents exert over expert and folk concepts alike. These considerations, I argue, mandate an epistemic humility that is simply unavailable to the concept-descriptivist. (shrink)

We discuss how analysis of contemporary artworks has shaped philosophical theories about the concept of art, the ontology of art, and artistic media. The rapid expansion, during the contemporary period, of the kinds of things that can count as artworks has prompted a shift toward procedural definitions, which focus on how artworks are selected, and away from definitions that focus exclusively on artworks’ features or effects. Some contemporary artworks challenge the traditional art–ontological dichotomy between physical particulars and repeatable entities whose (...) occurrences are physical particulars. And nontraditional techniques and materials employed in contemporary art violate the boundaries of conventional media, prompting a rethinking of what artistic medium might be. (shrink)

Most modern definitions of art fail to successfully address the issue of the ever-changing nature of art, and rarely even attempt to provide an account that would be valid in more than just the modern Western context. This article develops a new theory that preserves the advantages of its predecessors, solves or avoids their problems, and has a scope wide enough to account for art of different times and cultures. It argues that an object is art in a given context (...) iff some person culturally competent in this context have afforded it the status of a candidate for appreciation for reasons considered good in this context. This weakly institutional view is supplemented by auxiliary definitions explaining the notions of cultural contexts, competence, and good reasons for affording the status. The relativisation to contexts brings increased explanatory power and scope, and the ability to account for the diversity of art. (shrink)

Dominic McIver Lopes and Yuriko Saito claim that the Japanese tea ceremony, or chadō, is a non‐Western art form. Stephen Davies also defends that claim. In this article, I utilize the tea ceremony as a test case for pancultural definitions of art that claim to be inclusive of non‐Western cultures without relying on Western ethnocentrism to justify their status as artworks. I argue that Davies's (2015) hybrid definition is not justified in assuming a homogenous art tradition and/or a unified conception (...) of artistic practices in a non‐Western culture. Moreover, the cladistic structure of his definition fails to accommodate the spontaneous instantiation of new art traditions. Additionally, Jerrold Levinson's Intentional‐Historical definition cannot satisfactorily accommodate chadō. First, the nonart origins that were formative for the regard that is required for appreciation of the tea ceremony mean that the relational interpretation of the definition fails. Second, Rikyū’s tea ceremony does not count as art incidentally, as it is not a form of mimesis nor does the Japanese wabi aesthetic that is central to chadō have a precursor in known Western art. Third, if chadō does satisfy Levinson's extended theory, it comes at the cost of embracing Western ethnocentrism. (shrink)