Arthur Danto is the Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and the most influential philosopher of art in the last half century. As an art critic for The Nation for 25 years and frequent contributor to other widely read outlets such as the New York Review of Books, Danto also has become one of the most respected public intellectuals of his generation. He is the author of some two dozen important books, along with hundreds of articles (...) and reviews which have been the center of both controversy and discussion. In this volume Danto offers his intellectual autobiography and responds to essays by 27 of the keenest critics of his thought from the worlds of philosophy and the arts. The book includes 16 pages of color art reproductions. Danto is the author dozens of books on art, philosophy, the philosophy of art, and art criticism. He is a rare philosopher who is also a public intellectual. (shrink)

Since 1984, when he became art critic for _The Nation_, Arthur C. Danto, one of America's most inventive and influential philosophers, has also emerged as one of our most important critics of art. As an essayist, Danto's style is at once rigorous, incisive, and playful. _Encounters and Reflections_ brings together many of his recent critical writings—on artists such as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, and Robert Mapplethorpe; and on the significance of issues like the masterpiece and the museum. (...) The result is a spirited brief from the front lines of current aesthetic and philosophical debate. (shrink)

In Bielefeld, Germany in April, 1997 an author conference was devoted to Arthur C. Danto's 1995 Mellon Lectures After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. This essay provides an introduction to seven essays given at that conference and expanded for this Theme Issue of History and Theory. Danto presented his view of the nature of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. He then added in the Mellon lectures a sociological perspective on the (...) current situation of the visual arts, and an Hegelian historiography. The history of art has ended, Danto claims, and we now live in a posthistorical era. Since in his well-known book on historiography, Analytical Philosophy of History, Danto is unsympathetic to Hegel's speculative ways of thinking about history, his adaptation of this Hegelian framework is surprising. Danto's strategy in After the End of Art is best understood by grasping the way in which he transformed the purely philosophical account of The Transfiguration into a historical account. Recognizing that his philosophical analysis provided a good way of explaining the development of art in the modern period, Danto radically changed the context of his argument. In this process, he opened up discussion of some serious but as yet unanswered questions about his original thesis, and about the plausibility of Hegel's claim that the history of art has ended. (shrink)

In Bielefeld, Germany in April, 1997 an author conference was devoted to Arthur C. Danto's 1995 Mellon Lectures After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History . This essay provides an introduction to seven essays given at that conference and expanded for this Theme Issue of History and Theory. Danto presented his view of the nature of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace . He then added in the Mellon lectures a sociological perspective (...) on the current situation of the visual arts, and an Hegelian historiography. The history of art has ended, Danto claims, and we now live in a posthistorical era. Since in his well-known book on historiography, Analytical Philosophy of History , Danto is unsympathetic to Hegel's speculative ways of thinking about history, his adaptation of this Hegelian framework is surprising. Danto's strategy in After the End of Art is best understood by grasping the way in which he transformed the purely philosophical account of The Transfiguration into a historical account. Recognizing that his philosophical analysis provided a good way of explaining the development of art in the modern period, Danto radically changed the context of his argument. In this process, he opened up discussion of some serious but as yet unanswered questions about his original thesis, and about the plausibility of Hegel's claim that the history of art has ended. (shrink)

Let us suppose that the idea of art can be expanded to embrace the whole range of man-made things, including all tools and writing in addition to the useless, beautiful, and poetic things of the world. By this view the universe of man-made things simply coincides with the history of art.George Kubler I filosofi, tradizionalmente, hanno creduto che le loro argomentazioni abbiano una validità assolutamente generale. Quando descrivono azioni, storia o conoscenza, pensano che la loro analisi si a...

In a book that first appeared in 1965 entitled Analytical Philosophy of History, Arthur Danto argues that historical inquiry cannot be conceived as an attempt to reconstruct the past along the lines of an "ideal chronicler." The ideal chronicler "knows whatever happens the moment it happens, even in other minds. He is also to have the gift of instantaneous transcription: everything that happens across the whole forward rim of the Past is set down by him, as it happens the (...) way it happens." Historians cannot aspire to this ideal because they inevitably use what Danto calls "narrative sentences," that is, sentences that describe one event by referring to one or more later events. For example, "The Thirty Years War began in 1618" is a sentence typical of historical inquiry but unavailable to the chronicler because it goes beyond what could have been known at the time it occurred, that is, that the war was to last thirty years. Danto reasons that because of the indispensability of narrative sentences to historical understanding, we can never give a complete description of past events since this presupposes knowledge of all relevant later events. The consequence is that our descriptions of past events will inevitably change as history unfolds. This discovery is remarkable and incontrovertible: descriptions of past historical events will and must always be reconceived not just because of the unearthing of new documents or the changing interests of the historian but because of the peculiar narrative structure of historical understanding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Artforum, Andy Warhol, and the Art of Living:What Art Educators Can Learn from the Recent History of American Art WritingDavid Carrier (bio)When around 1980 I began writing art criticism, Artforum was much concerned with historical analysis.1 When presenting the work of younger painters and sculptors, it seemed natural to explain artists' accomplishments by identifying precedents for their work. Much of my criticism published in the 1980s presented post-formalist accounts (...) of abstract painting. Seeking precedents for the painting I admired, I looked to the history of art. But such pleas for the value of tradition were doomed. Commentators preaching the values of tradition lost out to the writers emphasizing a break with the past. Much of interest for art education can be learned by studying the history of this very influential, small circulation journal.Only in retrospect did the urgency of this felt need for a break with the past become apparent. The history of responses to Abstract Expressionism suggested a different way of thinking about moments of change. HaroldRosenberg's conception of "action painting" implied that Pollock broke dramatically with the past. Clement Greenberg, by contrast, in a famous phrase said: "I do not think it exaggerated to say that Pollock's 1946-1950 manner really took up Analytic Cubism from the point at which Picasso and Braquehad left it...in their collages of 1912 and 1913."2 Greenberg's counter-intuitive analysis, asking us to see very different looking paintings as essentially similar, had prevailed. So it was not unreasonable to expect that after Greenberg, concern with tradition would remain important. But that was not what happened.Demand for a break with the past often carries political overtones. Historians debate whether the French Revolution broke with the past, or merely developed trends of the old regime. The idea of a complete break with tradition can seem attractive, but of course such dramatic ways of thinking underestimate real continuities. Struggle among post-Greenbergian artwriters to define a new critical paradigm mimics conflicts among artists to define the [End Page 1] leading post-Abstract Expressionist tradition. Once a critical paradigm has been established, debate may proceed peacefully. But when defining a period style is at issue, the stakes are high, and so conflicts are ferocious. Of course, struggle is always accompanied also by co-operation, but failing to grasp the real role of conflict leads to all-too-pious visions of what is possible.Greenberg developedthe most influential critical approach, and so when his way of thinking was rejected, a radically different approach was of most interest. Here we are dealing with what Harold Bloom famously called the anxiety of influence. Just as the most interesting painting after Abstract Expressionism deconstructed that tradition, so in criticism no ways of thinking too similar to Greenberg's stood a chance of being important. I think it interesting to reconstruct the process rationally in which an individual obtains such power. A totem, Freud explains, is "an animal (whether edible and harmless or dangerous and feared) and more rarely a plant or a natural phenomenon (such as rain or water), which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan."3 The communion bread and wine are just bread and wine, but for the believer they become Christ's body and blood. Rationally speaking, a representational painting is just pigment on canvas; and a minimalist sculpture, just shaped metal. But in what Arthur Danto calls the "transfiguration of the commonplace," "a work of art...has qualities to attend to which its untransfigured counterpart lacks...We are dealing with an altogether different order of things."4 Greenberg became a totem. He was not just an important writer whose arguments entitled him to reasonable respect. The mere mention of his name invoked irrational fears.Greenberg was obsessed with tradition. Abstract Expressionism was rooted in early modernism, so that the era from Manet through Pollock defined a period style. Greenberg's historiography may seem inescapable. How can a young painter be understood except by seeking precedents for her achievement? Cannot the now famous artists who emerged in the 1980s be understood in these terms? Barbara Kruger comes out of John Heartfield and dada... (shrink)

Art historians interpret artworks, tell the history of art and compare diverse artistic traditions. This chapter presents one key portion of Krauss's theorizing, Arthur Danto's definition of art, and compares and contrasts their accounts. Responding to radically original contemporary art, Krauss offered a challenging philosophical argument about the nature of art. Danto offers a completely general account, one that identifies the essence of all art. His written commentaries on Warhol tell what is embodied in Brillo Box, which is (...) a commentary on the meaning of visual art in a commodity culture. Danto believes that essentialism is the only satisfactory basis for philosophy. Sometimes appealing to essentialism involves a conservative ideal that at bottom nothing ever changes. Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, a textbook that discusses a variety of philosophical writers. In the nineteenth century, Kant's and Hegel's philosophies played a crucial role in the formative development of art history writing. (shrink)

This paper examines Allen Carlson's influential view that knowledge from natural science offers the best (and perhaps only) framework for aesthetically appreciating nature for what it is in itself. Carlson argues that knowledge from the natural sciences can play a role analogous to the role of art-historical knowledge in our experience of art by supplying categories for properly 'calibrating' one's sensory experience and rendering more informed aesthetic judgments. Yet, while art history indeed functions this way, Carlson's formulation leaves out a (...) second (and often more important) role played by art-historical knowledge over the last century - namely, providing the context needed for interpretations of meaning. This paper explores whether natural science can also inform our aesthetic experience of nature in this second sense. I argue that a robust sense of meaning from our aesthetic experience of nature is indeed made possible by coupling our aesthetic experience of animals with knowledge from the natural science of animal ethology. By extending the scope of Carlson's analogy to include interpretations of meaning, my argument shows that the cognitive, scientific model can accommodate a wider range of aesthetic engagement with nature than previously recognised. (shrink)

Diese Studie will zeigen, daß die Antwort auf das Problem des historischen Erkennens nicht in der Alternative zwischen Objektivismus und Subjektivismus zu suchen ist. Im Mittelpunkt der Analyse stehen drei zeitgenössische Philosophen, Gadamer, Habermas und Danto, die das objektivistische Modell für inadäquat halten. Dies führt zu einer weiterentwickelten Konzeption der Zukunftsorientiertheit des historischen Erkennens und strebt einer Widerlegung aller Arten des Objektivismus an, auch derjenigen in subjektivistischer Verkleidung, ohne in den Subjektivismus zurückzufallen.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cavellian Conversation and the Life of ArtDavid GoldblattThe issue of the death or end of art has led me think about its life. Although I will be writing about the life of art, it should be made clear that my use of that phrase is only tangentially related to the issue resurrected by Arthur Danto in his essay "The End of Art."1 In that essay and elsewhere (...) class='Hi'>Danto recognized a new period of ahistorical art—an art without a progressive history and relieved of the burden of perpetual self-definition. After the end of art artworks cease to become the carriers of their own history. In a post-historical art world, happily he says, anything can happen. Artworks can engage in ways that are, in a limiting case, uniquely personal and so a work that instigates in this personal manner also may be art. A comparative glance at the art world, say of 1950 and the institutional practices of art today would seem to bear him out.Less ambitiously, however, this essay attempts to connect what I will call the life of artworks with the idea of conversation, a term of great interest, I want to show, in the writing of Stanley Cavell. It is this way of artworks being alive that is perfectly compatible with its death in the Dantonian sense of the term and perhaps, given the posthistorical world it has left as a residue, even lubricated by it. This essay has two points of embarkation: the act of the ventriloquist where conversational exchange between ventriloquist and dummy enlivens the latter for both the former and an audience. The second is the Wittgensteinian remark, [End Page 460] a question really, suggesting that the sign itself is dead, only in its use does it become alive. The ventriloqual analogy interests me, not because it draws bounds between artworks and non-artworks, but rather because of what I hope it will bring into prominence among artworks—that it will help to explain how some works gain a life in a culture while others are aesthetic dead-ends or mere taxidermies, to repeat a term used by Danto—how some art is resurrected, and some, as they say, stand the test of time. It is part of this story that whatever is needed to say about art in a culture it should include a relationship between persons and things that I dramatically refer to as conversational. And those conversations, by the artist with her own work and those by an audience with the artist's work, lie somewhere at the beginning of its cultural animation. What would follow on this perspective would be the conversations that are generated by artworks among their audience members, sometimes inviting or forcing our return to the works that were their cultural origins.If Wittgenstein is right that the relationship between meaning and use is, at least in a large number of cases, an intimate one, and if works of art are objects of meaning, then looking at their use may be a way of seeing their life, something like the way Wittgenstein in his later writings came to look at words in their life situations, often bringing them back from what he called metaphysics. Nelson Goodman, I believe, was on to something like this when he suggested in his essay "When Is Art?" that, "Just by virtue of functioning as a symbol in a certain way does an object become, while functioning, a work of art... a Rembrandt painting may cease to function as a work of art when used to replace a broken window or as a blanket."2 Although I am suggesting here that we should tend to the ways artworks are used, unlike Goodman, I am not interested in their cessation as artworks. I am hoping to draw out one way artworks function, one way we do art without necessarily making artworks. But I am not here interested in the borders between art and the rest of the world.The idea of conversation extends or annexes the notion of interpretation, of saying what artworks say, but allowing for a more personal, less rigid domain of discourse that takes as... (shrink)

In this chapter, the author begins with Arthur Danto's reflections upon art and evolution in his 1985 David and Marianne Mandel Lecture in Aesthetics presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics. “Primitive” artifacts influenced modernist artists because the “conceptual complexity and aesthetic subtlety” of such artifacts revealed to them artistic possibilities that transcended the “prevailing aesthetic canons” of late nineteenth‐century European art. Danto's argument has drawn widespread criticism, many of his critics, including Vogel (...) herself, questioning the role played in that argument by the anthropological thought experiment. Danto might be more sympathetic to Gell, who prefaces his own proposal by rebuking anthropologists of art for remaining in the thralls of a “reactionary” aesthetic conception of art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to My CommentatorsDavid CarrierI am immensely thankful to Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Klaus Ottmann, and Sean Ulmer for their comments on my book. And to Daniel A. Siedell for organizing this mini-symposium, which really is an author's dream. By gently pressing me to think about important issues, these sympathetic commentators have advanced dialogue.When writing Museum Skepticism I became very aware that there are two (...) kinds of literature that discuss museums. There are memoirs of curators or other museum employees, and there are the commentaries by academics, which usually look at museums from the outside. My ambition was to look at this institution in a way that would both be sympathetic to the practical concerns and embody a theoretical point of view. One otherwise sympathetic reviewer complained that I was only looking at the museum from the outside.1 That certainly is correct, but for obvious reasons people who work in museums are unusually unwilling to describe their inner workings. To have a good theory of the museum, you need to be practical. Often, for example, critics complain about the proliferation of shops and restaurants, urge that admission be free, or say that blockbuster shows are destructive and overcrowded. However one judges such moralizing, the museum director who needs to balance the budget can hardly be guided by such reasoning. One can be critical, as I am, about the power of the super-rich in museum life. But in what other way could funding be found? The history of debates about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) points to obvious ways in which, in America at least, reliance on public funding poses problems. My goal, then, was to develop a realistic analysis.Sean Ulmer correctly notes that to understand the art in museums, we must consider its prior history. Chinese paintings, Islamic decorations, Maori sculpture, and premodern European art were not made to be displayed in public galleries. And so there are legitimate questions about how to set it alongside modernist art, whose natural home is the art museum. Allowing this much, I am not sure why he thinks it impossible to describe museums in a single book. We need to understand how artifacts with such varied origins can be coherently displayed in one building. Here, then, we get to Ulmer's second concern—museum displays. Recently museums have experimented with thematic displays. The Museum of Modern Art in New York did that before its recent reconstruction; the Tate Modern has such a system; and during summer 2006 the Whitney tried such a plan. I understand the need of museums to experiment, to find new ways to attract visitors to the permanent collection. Still, a straight chronological display has the obvious advantage of presenting that history of art in which, for example, Impressionism leads to Cubism, and then on to Abstract Expressionism. The obvious danger of thematic displays is that they bewilder the larger public. [End Page 22]When I said that museums are top-down institutions, I was thinking of the grander public museums where the function of the trustees is to raise money, either by giving themselves or by networking. These people who provide funding no doubt have their own agendas, but they, in turn, respond to larger economic and political concerns. I would be astonished if the Metropolitan Museum of Art asked Arthur Danto or Leo Steinberg to be a trustee; or, to look closer at hand, if the Carnegie Museum of Art or the Cleveland Museum of Art asked me to play that role. Since we are mere professors, what practical help could we provide? I expect that at smaller museums the situation is different. But here, again, it is important to be realistic. Cleveland's art historians have not had any influence on the rebuilding plan for the Cleveland Museum of Art. Of course I would be flattered if the new director asked for my opinion, but to be honest, I am not sure that I could tell him anything useful. When Ulmer discusses the comparative role of permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, he touches on a very important point. Like him, I... (shrink)

Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory collects a selection of Lydia Goehr's recent essays. In them she traces “a history of attraction and reaction … of music to philosophy, drama, birdsong, crime, film, and nationhood” . Goehr examines the ways that philosophers, the ideas that they present, and works of art display “elective affinities”. Her procedure is like that of an art historian who presents parallel slides to reveal visual affinities, even between artists who themselves were (...) unaware of each other. Her analyses are erudite, lucid, and always suggestive, but what I found most admirable in Elective Affinities is Goehr's extraordinarily brave experimentation with a novel form of philosophy-writing, the adumbration of which is the focus of this review. Her book is strange enough to be genuinely magnificent and lastingly influential. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, and KuhnDavid GormanThe American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, and Kuhn, by Giovanna Borradori; translated by Rosanna Crocitto; xii & 177pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, $32.00 cloth, $12.95 paper.The idea for this book, first published in Italian in 1991, was good—to assemble a collection of (...) interviews with the key figures in American philosophy. And the list of philosophers whom Giovanna Borradori chose as representing the best in contemporary American thought was very good—as becomes especially clear when in her introduction she mentions the ones who, for whatever reason, got away: Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Nelson Goodman, Saul Kripke, John Rawls, and John Searle (p. 5). Add these names to those of the philosophers whom she was able to interview for this volume, and you have an impressively complete roster of the thinkers who have made the postwar era in the United States arguably one of the great periods of philosophy.Unfortunately, the execution of the book does not fulfill the promise of its conception. And perhaps nothing could have; the fact remains, however, that Borradori proves herself singularly ill-equipped, in terms both of background knowledge and of intellectual orientation, to bring out very much of importance in these important philosophers’ ideas, either in the interviews that she conducts with them or in the prefatory material that she supplies to bind the collection together.The essence of Borradori’s problem is that she approaches these professional academic philosophers with the incongruous assumption that they are [End Page 388] people with interesting general ideas about history, society, art, religion, or whatever—she assumes in short that these professors are intellectuals. But that is scarcely a term that describes your typical American philosopher. Nor do I mean this condescendingly: on the contrary, just what is significant and valuable about contemporary philosophers in the analytic mold (as almost all of Borradori’s interviewees are) is the narrowness of their focus on problems and methods of logic and the natural sciences, the two Archimedean levers by which analytic philosophy has come far closer than anyone could have predicted to moving the conceptual universe decisively.Of course, not everyone views matters this way, and Richard Rorty in particular has made a spectacular career out of disputing this image—largely a self-congratulatory one, as he takes it—of the analytic tradition. Whether his dissent is justified or not, his role in the collection constitutes another of its problems, because he is not just one of the group of thinkers whom Borradori is interviewing: beyond this, it is Rorty’s ideas which supply Borradori with an intellectual program (in default of one of her own), which necessarily distorts her presentation of the other philosophers’ thoughts, and her line of questioning in these interviews. So, for example, all the interviewees are subjected to questions about American Pragmatism generally and John Dewey in particular, not because these things are of any inherent significance to most of them (as several of them point out, politely), but because Rorty thinks that they should be, and because Borradori follows his line unquestioningly. Thus most of the conversations recorded here are at cross-purposes to start with.Borradori provides brief introductions for each interview, betraying little familiarity with the work of the philosophers, particularly when the work involved is at all technical, or more than about ten years old. Except to summarize these summaries her general introduction for the volume does no more than to indulge in the kind of military and cartographic metaphors made tiresomely familiar by such recent European thinkers as Foucault. Little seems to have been lost in the retranslation of this volume from the Italian, except that the historian of science George Sarton has somehow become “Georges Sardon” (p. 31).David GormanNorthern Illinois UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In our article, we argue, following Nelson Goodman and Arthur Danto, that in contrast to the essentialist conception of authenticity, it is more fertile to consider authentic patterns not as the inner core of the person, but as a case of metaphorical exemplification. According to our approach, if we accept that authentic style is a metaphorical exemplification, then, based on Richard Rorty’s concepts of language and metaphor, style can be seen as an exaptation or reuse of symbols previously adapted (...) through cultural selection to other specific functions. To support this approach, we proceed as follows. First, using Goodman’s and Danto’s model, we argue that authentic style can best be grasped through metaphorical exemplification. We then show that the metaphorical use of linguistic, pictorial, and other symbols is the result of exaptation. According to our results, the authentic style is the exaptation of symbols previously adapted to culturally selected functions. We then separate authenticity from creativity through the concepts of style and manner—borrowed from Danto—and we point out that whether a particular symbol is authentic or not is not affected by whether creative or mechanical mental processes are responsible for its creation. Finally, we examine the relationship between authenticity and autonomy, and we show that in an environment that promotes autonomous decisions and authentic style, agents that originally generated inauthentic symbols may be able to produce authentic ones. (shrink)

In this book, which thoroughly revises and greatly expands his classic work Sameness and Substance, David Wiggins retrieves and refurbishes in the light of twentieth-century logic and logical theory certain conceptions of identity, of substance and of persistence through change that philosophy inherits from its past. In this new version, he vindicates the absoluteness, necessity, determinateness and all or nothing character of identity against rival conceptions. He defends a form of essentialism that he calls individuative essentialism, and then a (...) form of realism that he calls conceptualist realism. In a final chapter he advocates a human being-based conception of the identity and individuation of persons, arguing that any satisfactory account of personal memory must make reference to the life of the rememberer himself. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

"Popular summaries of existentialism and Sartre's ideas have ensured a wide currency for such words as 'absurdity', 'nothingness', 'engagement', 'shame', and 'anguish'. But for Sartre, each of these words embodies a precise philosophical concept which he applies and explores further in his fiction and plays. Synthesized in 'Being and Nothingness' and 'Critique of Dialectical Reason', these concepts comprise a fully articulated philosophical system which, as Arthur C. Danto argues, in its vision and scope, logical responsibility and human relevance, takes (...) its place among the greatest of philosophical achievements. This book offers a synoptic and sympathetic reconstruction of the Sartrean system and in particular Sartre's analysis of the nature of language, consciousness, knowledge, self, and values." --Descripción del editor. (shrink)

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has historically been conceptualized in anthropomorphic terms. Some algorithms deploy biomimetic designs in a deliberate attempt to effect a sort of digital isomorphism of the human brain. Others leverage more general learning strategies that happen to coincide with popular theories of cognitive science and social epistemology. In this paper, I challenge the anthropomorphic credentials of the neural network algorithm, whose similarities to human cognition I argue are vastly overstated and narrowly construed. I submit that three alternative supervised learning (...) methods—namely lasso penalties, bagging, and boosting—offer subtler, more interesting analogies to human reasoning as both an individual and a social phenomenon. Despite the temptation to fall back on anthropomorphic tropes when discussing AI, however, I conclude that such rhetoric is at best misleading and at worst downright dangerous. The impulse to humanize algorithms is an obstacle to properly conceptualizing the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. (shrink)

Few philosophers are as widely read or as widely misunderstood as Friedrich Nietzsche. When Danto's classic study was first published in 1965, many regarded Nietzsche as a brilliant but somewhat erratic thinker. Danto, however, presented a radically different picture, arguing that Nietzsche offered a systematic and coherent philosophy that anticipated many of the questions that define contemporary philosophy. Danto's clear and insightful commentaries helped canonize Nietzsche as a philosopher and continue to illuminate subtleties in Nietzsche's work as (...) well as his immense contributions to the philosophies of science, language, and logic. This new edition, which includes five additional essays, not only further enhances our understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy; it responds to the misunderstandings that continue to muddy his intellectual reputation. Even today, Nietzsche is seen as everything from a precursor of feminism and deconstruction to a prophetic writer and spokesperson for disgruntled teenage boys. As Danto points out in his preface, Nietzsche's writings have purportedly inspired recent acts of violence and school shootings. Danto counters these misreadings by elaborating an anti-Nietzschian philosophy from within Nietzsche's own philosophy "in the hope of disarming the rabid Nietzsche and neutralizing the vivid frightening images that have inspired sociopaths for over a century." The essays also consider specific works by Nietzsche, including _Human, All Too Human_ and _The Genealogy of Morals_, as well as the philosopher's artistic metaphysics and semantical nihilism. (shrink)

What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, _What Art Is _challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by (...) the viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in _The Republic_, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. (shrink)

A sympathetic and systematic reconstruction of Sartre's philosophy, explaining its relation to other major philosophical theories. Among the themes elucidated are the relation between reality and our representation of it; the parities between language and consciousness; the relationship between the world as it may be and as we structure it in our interventions as engaged beings; the conceptual interdependence of the self and others; and the connections between factual beliefs and systems of value.--Adapted from book jacket.

A collection of 14 essays honoring the life and work of Oxford philosopher Wiggins touching on topics from ancient philosophy to ethics, metaphysics and the theory of meaning. The contributing scholars debate many of the seminal issues of Wiggins' work, including the determinancy of distinctness, relative identity, naturalism in ethics, logic and truth in moral judgments, and the practical wisdom of Aristotle. The collection uniquely features replies by Wiggins to each of the papers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, (...) OR. (shrink)

Drawing on work of the past decade, this volume brings together articles from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, and many other branches of the biological sciences. The volume delves into the latest theoretical controversies as well as burning questions of contemporary social importance. The issues considered include the nature of evolutionary theory, biology and ethics, the challenge from religion, and the social implications of biology today (in particular the Human Genome Project).

_A lively meditation on the nature of art by one of America's most celebrated art critics_ What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, _What Art Is _challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always (...) defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in _The Republic_, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

According to dispositionalism about modality, a proposition <p> is possible just in case something has, or some things have, a power or disposition for its truth; and <p> is necessary just in case nothing has a power for its falsity. But are there enough powers to go around? In Yates (2015) I argued that in the case of mathematical truths such as <2+2=4>, nothing has the power to bring about their falsity or their truth, which means they come out both (...) necessary and not possible. Combining this with axiom (T), it is easy to derive a contradiction. I suggested that dispositionalists ought to retreat a little and say that <p> is possible just in case either p, or there is a power to bring it about that p, grounding the possibility of mathematical propositions in their truth rather than in powers. Vetter’s (2015) has the resources to provide a response to my argument, and in her (2018) she explicitly addresses it by arguing for a plenitude of powers, based on the idea that dispositions come in degrees, with necessary properties a limiting case of dispositionality. On this view there is a power for <2+2=4>, without there being a power to bring about its truth. In this paper I argue that Vetter’s case for plenitude does not work. However, I suggest, if we are prepared to accept metaphysical causation, a case can be made that there is indeed a power for <2+2=4>. (shrink)

Japan and the Enemies of Open Political Science argues that Eurocentric blindness is a scientific failing, not a moral one. In a way true of no other political system, Japan's greatness has the potential to enliven and reform almost all the main branches of Western Political Science. David Williams criticizes Western social science, Anglo-American Philosophy and French Theory and explains why mainstream economists, historians of political thought and postculturalists have ignored Japan's modern achievements. Williams demonstrates why the renewal of (...) social science and the nurturing of a "a philosophy of the Pacific Century" requires a sustained act of intellectual demolition. (shrink)

Why study notations, diagrams, or more broadly the variety of nonverbal “representations” or “signs” that are used in mathematical practice? This chapter maps out recent work on the topic by distinguishing three main philosophical motivations for doing so. First, some work (like that on diagrammatic reasoning) studies signs to recover norms of informal or historical mathematical practices that would get lost if the particular signs that these practices rely on were translated away; work in this vein has the potential to (...) broaden our view of the specific normativity of mathematics beyond logical proof. Second, some work focuses on signs to highlight the open-ended and “nonrigorous” aspects of mathematical practice, and the role of these aspects in the historical development of mathematics. The third motivation is based on the following observation: the reason differences in signs matter in mathematics is that humans are finite agents, with cognitive and computational limitations. Accordingly, studying signs can be a way to study how human computational constraints shape the mathematics that we do, and to tackle the topic of mathematical understanding. (shrink)

The author of this book has traced the major lines of argument over those years in a most engaging style with clear descriptions of the concepts and ideas.

Interpretation -- Introduction -- Interpreting Plato -- The political culture of Plato's early dialogues -- Dialogue -- Character and history -- The mouthpiece principle -- Forms of evidence -- Desire -- Socrates and eros -- The subjectivist conception of desire -- Instrumental and terminal desire -- Rational and irrational desires -- Desire in the critique of Akrasia -- Interpreting Lysis -- The deficiency conception of desire -- Inauthentic friendship -- Platonic desire -- Antiphilosophical desires -- Knowledge -- Excellence as wisdom (...) -- The epistemic unity of excellence -- Dunamis and technê -- Goodness and form -- The epistemological priority of definitional knowledge -- Ordinary ethical knowledge -- Method -- The Socratic fallacy -- Socrates' pursuit of definitions -- Hupothesis -- Two postulates -- The geometrical illustration -- Geometrical analysis -- The method of reasoning from a postulate -- Elenchus and hupothesis -- Knowledge and aitia -- F-conditions -- Cognitive security -- Aporia -- Forms of aporia -- Dramatic aporia -- The example of Charmides -- Charmides as autobiography -- The politics of Sôphrosunê -- Critias' Philotimia -- Self-knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge -- Knowledge of knowledge and knowledge of the good -- Philosophy and the polis. (shrink)