Languages of Art

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Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols is a book by the American philosopher Nelson Goodman. It is a work of 20th century aesthetics in the analytic tradition. Originally published in 1968, it was revised in 1976. Goodman continued to refine and update these theories in essay form for the rest of his career.

Contents

A general theory of symbols

Languages of Art ostensibly concerns only the philosophy of art, but in the book's introduction, Goodman says that by the "languages" in the book's title, he means "symbol systems" in general. Central to the book's thesis is the concept of reference .

Resemblance vs. representation

In the first section of the book, Goodman demonstrates the absurdity of the common assumption that something must resemble another thing to represent it. He does by appealing both to common sense and to mathematical relation theory. Instead, he suggests that representation be seen as a particular type of arbitrary denotation.

Denotation vs. exemplification

Denotation and exemplification are both types of reference. Goodman calls denotation the "core of representation." (5) Something is denoted when it is referred to by a label but does not "possess" it.

Exemplification is possession plus reference. "While anything may be denoted, only labels may be exemplified." (57)

Authenticity: autographic vs. allographic

In this section of the book, Goodman calls attention to a peculiar problem in the philosophy of art: why is it that a painting can be forged while a piece of music cannot? After verifying that there is indeed an important aesthetic difference between an original and a forgery and clarifying its nature, Goodman suggests an answer to the question. His answer is that works in a form of art can be forged if and only if ("iff") there is no possible notation to specify which are and are not authentic works.

In other words, a piece of music can be written down as a score, so any performance which corresponds suitably to the score is counted as authentic; there is no such notation to define what is and what isn't an authentic instance of a painting, so a painting can be forged.

Theory of notation

In this, the key section of the book, Goodman expands on his idea of a notational system introduced in the previous chapter. For Goodman, a symbol system is a formal language with a grammar consisting of syntactic rules and semantics rules. A symbol system is called notational if it meets certain properties, notably that its symbols are non-compact.

Score, sketch and script

Goodman evaluates the common notational methods of musical and theatrical performance, drawing and painting, dance and architecture. None of the art forms adhere to his ideal notation, but they are nonetheless sufficient for their purpose. Despite the critiques Goodman makes of the common vocabulary of art discussion, he does not believe that, "the exigencies that dictate technical discourse need govern our everyday speech." (187)

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Irrealism is a term that has been used by various writers in the fields of philosophy, literature, and art to denote specific modes of unreality and/or the problems in concretely defining reality. While in philosophy the term specifically refers to a position put forward by the American philosopher Nelson Goodman, in literature and art it refers to a variety of writers and movements. If the term has nonetheless retained a certain consistency in its use across these fields and would-be movements, it perhaps reflects the word's position in general English usage: though the standard dictionary definition of irreal gives it the same meaning as unreal, irreal is very rarely used in comparison with unreal. Thus, it has generally been used to describe something which, while unreal, is so in a very specific or unusual fashion, usually one emphasizing not just the "not real," but some form of estrangement from our generally accepted sense of reality.

A bracket, as used in British English, is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'right' bracket or, alternatively, an "opening bracket" or "closing bracket", respectively, depending on the directionality of the context.

In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For instance, the word "warm" may evoke calmness or cosiness, but these associations are not part of the word's denotation. Similarly, an expression's denotation is separate from pragmatic inferences it may trigger. For instance, describing something as "warm" often implicates that it is not hot, but this is once again not part of the word's denotation.

In linguistics and semiotics, a notation is a system of graphics or symbols, characters and abbreviated expressions, used in artistic and scientific disciplines to represent technical facts and quantities by convention. Therefore, a notation is a collection of related symbols that are each given an arbitrary meaning, created to facilitate structured communication within a domain knowledge or field of study.

In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional, as when a word is uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, as when a symptom is taken as a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste.

In formal semantics and philosophy of language, a definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. The definite description is proper if X applies to a unique individual or object. For example: "the first person in space" and "the 42nd President of the United States of America", are proper. The definite descriptions "the person in space" and "the Senator from Ohio" are improper because the noun phrase X applies to more than one thing, and the definite descriptions "the first man on Mars" and "the Senator from some Country" are improper because X applies to nothing. Improper descriptions raise some difficult questions about the law of excluded middle, denotation, modality, and mental content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nelson Goodman</span> American philosopher (1906–1998)

Henry Nelson Goodman was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics.

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A direct reference theory is a theory of language that claims that the meaning of a word or expression lies in what it points out in the world. The object denoted by a word is called its referent. Criticisms of this position are often associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Depiction is reference conveyed through pictures. A picture refers to its object through a non-linguistic two-dimensional scheme, and is distinct from writing or notation. A depictive two-dimensional scheme is called a picture plane and may be constructed according to descriptive geometry, where they are usually divided between projections and perspectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Representation (arts)</span> Signs that stand in for and take the place of something else

Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements. Signs are arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations.

A sign relation is the basic construct in the theory of signs, also known as semiotics, as developed by Charles Sanders Peirce.

In philosophy of mind, the computational theory of mind (CTM), also known as computationalism, is a family of views that hold that the human mind is an information processing system and that cognition and consciousness together are a form of computation. Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts (1943) were the first to suggest that neural activity is computational. They argued that neural computations explain cognition. The theory was proposed in its modern form by Hilary Putnam in 1967, and developed by his PhD student, philosopher, and cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Despite being vigorously disputed in analytic philosophy in the 1990s due to work by Putnam himself, John Searle, and others, the view is common in modern cognitive psychology and is presumed by many theorists of evolutionary psychology. In the 2000s and 2010s the view has resurfaced in analytic philosophy.

In semantics, semiotics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metasemantics, meaning "is a relationship between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they intend, express, or signify".

Exemplification, in the philosophy of language, is a mode of symbolization characterized by the relation between a sample and what it refers to.

(Robert) Paul Ziff was an American artist and philosopher specializing in semantics and aesthetics.

A reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to refer to the second object. It is called a name for the second object. The second object, the one to which the first object refers, is called the referent of the first object. A name is usually a phrase or expression, or some other symbolic representation. Its referent may be anything – a material object, a person, an event, an activity, or an abstract concept.

This is an index of Wikipedia articles in philosophy of language

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to aesthetics:

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