_Identity and Discrimination_, originally published in 1990 and the first book by respected philosopher Timothy Williamson, is now reissued and updated with the inclusion of significant new material. Williamson here proposes an original and rigorous theory linking identity, a relation central to metaphysics, and indiscriminability, a relation central to epistemology.__ Updated and reissued edition of Williamson’s first publication, with the inclusion of significant new material Argues for an original cognitive account of the relation between identity and discrimination that has been (...) influential in the philosophy of perception Pioneers the use of epistemic logic to solve puzzles about indiscriminability Develops the application of techniques from mathematical logic to understand issues about identity over time and across possible worlds. (shrink)

This paper is a talk that the late Richard Wollheim gave at Loughborough University in September 1998. It is published here with the permission of Loughborough University and Wollheim's literary executors. The paper begins by reflecting on modes of artistic evaluation, distinguishing evaluations of interest from evaluations of quality. The former, the subject of the paper, are relativized to works of art within particular art forms, and concern ‘the extent to which the methods and the resources of the particular art (...) to which the work belongs have been fruitfully exploited’. The essentialist view of art implicit in this account is recognized and defended, the view that there are necessary truths about each art form explained in terms of the medium used. An examination of drawing is offered, its techniques and achievements explored, with the principal focus on the ways that the media of drawing are utilized in the service of representing an object. The methods of delineation and form-drawing are highlighted: ‘form-drawing, like delineation, has to be understood through the co-operation between artist and spectator, and, in both cases, it is ultimately the hand of the artist that has to respond to the eye of the spectator’. (shrink)

Can indistinguishable objects differ aesthetically? Manifestationism answers ‘no’ on the grounds that (i) aesthetically significant features of an object must show up in our experience of it; and (ii) a feature—aesthetic or not—figures in our experience only if we can discriminate its presence. Goodman’s response to Manifestationism has been much discussed, but little understood. I explain and reject it. I then explore an alternative. Doubles can differ aesthetically provided, first, it is possible to experience them differently; and, second, those experiences (...) reflect differences in the objects’ themselves. A range of objections to this position is considered, but all are found wanting. (shrink)

Mr. Danto argues that recent developments in the artworld, in particular the production of works of art that cannot be told from ordinary things, make urgent the need for a new theory of art and make plain the factors such a theory can and cannot involve. In the course of constructing such a theory, he seeks to demonstrate the relationship between philosophy and art, as well as the connections that hold between art and social institutions and art history. The book (...) distinguishes what belongs to artistic theory from what has traditionally been confused with it, namely aesthetic theory and offers as well a systematic account of metaphor, expression, and style, together with an original account 0f artistic representation. A wealth of examples, drawn especially from recent and contemporary art, illuminate the argument. (shrink)

What defines a work of art and determines the way in which we respond to it? This classic reflection was written with the belief that the nature of art has to be understood simultaneously from the artist's as well as the spectator's viewpoint.