Abstract

Goodman criticizes the how-what definition of style as how something is said by contrast with the content or substance of what is said. He rejects a literal version of the definition as applying too specifically only to literature and other artworks in which linguistic expression is possible. He also complains that in many artworks what is said and how it is said are so intertwined that it is impossible to distinguish the two for purposes of identifying an artistic style. Goodman then argues for an alternative account, according to which style is a metaphorical signature involving the characteristic symbolic functioning of an artwork. I raise a number of conceptual difficulties about Goodman's proposal, suggesting that where symbols are not narrowly linguistic, Goodman's category of symbolic functioning is so broad as to include natural objects to which it is implausible to attribute style. In its place, I defend a modified expanded formulation of the how-what definition by describing what any activity or its result does at a higher level of abstraction than the description of how it is done, in order to avoid confusing the what of substance with the how of style.