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Full Idea
No definition of art is possible (since it is a referential activity), …but the symptoms of art are syntactic density, semantic density, syntactic repleteness, exemplificationality, and multiple and complex reference.
Gist of Idea
Art is a referential activity, hence indefinable, but it has a set of symptoms
Source
Nelson Goodman (Languages of Art (2nd edn) [1968], p.22-255), quoted by Alessandro Giovannelli - Nelson Goodman (aesthetics) 4
Book Ref
'Key Thinkers in Aesthetics', ed/tr. Giovannelli,Alessandro [Continuum 2012], p.178
A Reaction
I wish these labels were more self-explanatory. Goodman seems to want to assimilate art to his earlier interests in linguistic anti-realism and mereology. I wouldn't have thought he now had many followers.
| 23927 | Aestheticism invites artist to create beauty, but with no indication of how to do it [Bell,C] |
| 23932 | Art is the expression of an emotion for ultimate reality [Bell,C] |
| 23887 | Art (like philosophy) establishes a relation between world and self, and between oneself and others [Weil] |
| 20440 | Art is a referential activity, hence indefinable, but it has a set of symptoms [Goodman] |
| 22709 | We should first decide what are the great works of art, with aesthetic theory following from that [Murdoch] |
| 20348 | A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition [Wollheim] |
| 20326 | Early 20th cent attempts at defining art focused on significant form, intuition, expression, unity [Lamarque/Olson] |
| 20384 | The idea that art forms are linked into a single concept began in the 1740s [Davies,S] |
| 20390 | Defining art as representation or expression or form were all undermined by the avant-garde [Davies,S] |
| 20392 | 'Aesthetic functionalism' says art is what is intended to create aesthetic experiences [Davies,S] |