Abstract
A widespread intuition is that words, musical works, and flags are intentionally produced and that they’re abstract types that can have incorrect tokens. But some philosophers, notably Julian Dodd and Nicholas Wolterstorff, think intention-dependence isn’t necessary; tokens just need to have certain relevant intrinsic features to be tokens of a given type. I show how there’s an unappreciated puzzle that arises from these two views: if tokens aren’t intention-dependent and types can admit of correct and incorrect tokens, then some driftwood that washes up and forms what seems like the word ‘cat’ may simultaneously be a misspelling of ‘act’ and innumerable other misspelt words. I consider various ways Dodd and Wolterstorff can respond to this counterintuitive result and argue that biting the bullet, as well as nearby views, are implausible. Thus, they need to give up one of the two commitments, and I argue that requiring the intention-dependence of tokens, rather than the mere possession of certain intrinsic properties, is the best option.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Wetzel (2009, 60–70) for criticism of both Maggie’s and Lucy’s intuitions.
As far as I’m aware, no one in the literature has appreciated the difficulty the combination of these theses leads to.
The aesthetics literature is far from being in agreement with Dodd and Wolterstorff on this point. Eaton (1969) argued early on in favour of (2) over (1), albeit in the context of poetry rather than music. In fact, Dodd and Wolterstorff seem to be in the minority here; the etiological condition is far more widespread than the intrinsic condition. As I’ll argue, the driftwood puzzle adds further support for (2).
One principal difference is that Dodd (2007, 11–15) takes abstracta to be causally efficacious, while Wolterstorff (1970, 171–172) does not. Dodd’s view is controversial, but see Friedell (2020) for a recent defense and see Juvshik (2018, 2020) for recent support of the more orthodox view that Wolterstorff takes.
For Dodd, abstracta are only distinguished by their lack of spatial location where normally they are taken to lack both a spatial and temporal location. See Christmann (2019) for a recent defense of this view.
Although, as Hugly and Sayward (1981) argue, physical objects aren’t intrinsically tokens, but are only tokens relative to a type, language or system. However, Dodd (2007, 77-78) argues that while work tokens must be relative to a type, they need not be relative to a language and thus we can have a word type without a language, though a word type might later enter into a new language in virtue of new patterns of use by speakers.
See especially Dodd (2007, 112ff.) for a defense of composition as creative discovery.
The example of the Ford Thunderbird is originally Levinson’s (1980, 81), also introduced in the context of a theory of music.
For Dodd as well, this just follows from their commitment to a plenitude of types and their forming a unified ontological category.
Since word tokens can be utterances, we can construct a similar wind puzzle but with word tokens. All the same considerations apply; the case of words and works of music are parallel.
Wetzel (2009, 59) also entertains this idea.
Dodd (2007, 32–33).
E.g. the Andorran, Romanian, and Chadian flags; the flags of Italy, Ireland, Bulgaria, and Hungary, etc.
Wolterstorff (1980, 86–87) comes close to adopting this view since he acknowledges two distinct kinds of musical work, the A and B senses. These correspond to the etiological condition and the intrinsic condition, respectively. However, both senses of musical work are norm types, so on the B sense the driftwood puzzle is a problem. Acknowledging a second kind of musical work doesn’t avoid this. Wolterstorff thinks both senses are present in our musical practices but admits that the A sense is more intuitive, but he conditionalizes (Wolterstorff 1980, 88) his view on the future possibility that some considerations be found that decide univocally in favour of either A or B.
Although Goodman was a well-known nominalist, so wouldn’t have had any truck with types.
Note that Dodd (2007, 32–3) avoids Goodman’s paradox by embracing vagueness between an improper token and a failed token. For Dodd, an improper token is missing a few features normative within the type and at some point the number of missing normative features is so great that the performance isn’t an improper but a failed token.
Moreover, an utterance of ‘red’ is simultaneously an utterance of ‘read’ since the token satisfies the intrinsic condition for both types. Thus, rejecting norm types leads back to tokens of multiple types.
A similar issue arises with malapropisms – we understand the author’s meaning even though they tokened the wrong word. See Davidson (1986) for discussion of malapropisms.
Eaton uses this to support the claim that a monkey hammering away on a typewriter wouldn’t produce a poem, but the resulting string of letters can become a poem if someone intentionally presented it as such. We seem able to appropriate things for such uses as when I move a piece of driftwood from the beach to an art gallery and ‘make’ a sculpture or into my kitchen so as to ‘make’ a wine rack.
See Stebbing (1935) for an early version of this view.
Although Dodd (2018) would push back here since he’s recently argued that, while 4′33″ is individuated by silence (rather than environmental sounds), it isn’t a work of music, but a piece of performance art in the genre of conceptual art. However, if performance art is repeatable, as 4′33″ seems to be, then Dodd’s type-account would presumably apply to such cases as well.
Wetzel (2009, 70, 119–120) also takes species kinds to be norm types.
In what sense is a three-legged polar bear an ‘improper’ polar bear? Disabilities such as congenital deafness are now usually taken to be ‘abnormal’ only relative to whatever is normal in the population. Thus, a three-legged polar bear is only an improper polar bear because most other polar bear tokens have four legs. This seems importantly different from why a performance with a wrong note is an improper performance, since the normativity comes from, perhaps, the composer or the nature of the type.
Although there are two distinct conceptions of species, the causal-historical conception that individuates species by evolutionary origin, and an intrinsic conception that individuates species by relations between organs ultimately governed by DNA. Dodd and Wolterstorff could adopt the intrinsic account to alleviate the implausibility.
This is Dodd’s example, but domesticated animals are plausibly artifactual. See Sperber (2007).
Contrast this with Amie Thomasson’s (2006) descriptivist approach to ontology (or what she calls easy ontology) whereby the project is largely one of codifying and clarifying our practices. Davies (2016) is an attempt at a middle ground between these two approaches whereby the commitments of our theories and our practices are balanced against each other in a process of reflective equilibrium.
References
Bloom, P. (1996). Intention, history, and artifact concepts. Cognition, 60, 1–29.
Christmann, J. A. (2019). The power of negativity: A theory of abstract entities. Philosophia, 48, 507–517. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00105-4.
Davidson, D. (1986). A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs. In E. Lepore (Ed.), Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (pp. 433–446). Malden: Blackwell.
Davies, D. (2016). Descriptivism and its discontents. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 75(2), 117–129.
Dodd, J. (2007). Works of music: An essay in ontology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Dodd, J. (2012). Defending the discovery model in the ontology of art: A reply to Amie Thomasson on the Qua problem. British Journal of Aesthetics, 52(1), 75–95.
Dodd, J. (2018) What 4’33” is Australasian Journal of Philosophy vol. 96 no. 4 : 629–641.
Eaton, M. (1969). Art, artifacts, and intentions. American Philosophical Quarterly, 6(2), 165–169.
Evnine, S. (2016). Making objects and events: A hylomorphic theory of artifacts, actions, and organisms. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Friedell, D. (2020). Abstracta are causal. Philosophia, 48(1), 133–142.
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of art: An approach to a theory of symbols (2nd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.
Hawthorne, J., & Lepore, E. (2011). On words. The Journal of Philosophy, 108(9), 447–485.
Hilpinen, R. (1992). On artifacts and works of art. Theoria, 58, 58–82.
Hugly, P., & Sayward, C. (1981). Expressions and tokens. Analysis, 41, 181–187.
Irmak, N. (2018). An ontology of words. Erkenntnis, 84, 1139–1158.
Juvshik, T. (2018). Abstract objects, causal efficacy, and causal exclusion. Erkenntnis, 83(4), 805–827.
Juvshik, T. (2020). Relativity and the causal efficacy of abstract objects. American Philosophical Quarterly, 57(3), 269–282.
Kaplan, D. (1990). Words. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 64, 93–119.
Katz, J. (2000). Realistic rationalism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Levinson, J. (1980). What a musical work is. Journal of Philosophy, 77(1), 5–28.
Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, truth and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simons, P. (1982). Token resistance. Analysis, 42(4), 195–203.
Sperber, D. (2007). Seedless Grapes: Nature and Culture. In E. Margolis & S. Laurence (Eds.), Creations of the Mind (pp. 124–137). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stebbing, S. (1935). Sounds, shapes and words, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supp., 14, 1–21.
Thomasson, A. (2003). Realism and human kinds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67(3), 580–609.
Thomasson, A. (2006). Debates about the ontology of art: What are we doing Here? Philosophy Compass, 1, 245–255.
Wetzel, L. (2002). On types and words. Journal of Philosophical Research, 27, 237–263.
Wetzel, L. (2009). Types and Tokens: On Abstract Objects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wolterstorff, N. (1970). On universals: An essay in ontology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wolterstorff, N. (1980). On Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Patrick Grafton-Cardwell, Hilary Kornblith, Ned Markosian,
Linda Wetzel, and the audience at UMass Amherst for helpful comments and criticisms.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
