Statements on Art

1) An art object has non-physical properties.

The object has relatioanl properties, perhaps to any or all of the following: artist, viewer, potential viewer, critique, local art culture, art culture at-large, general population, and probably others.

2) Art is not a natural kind, art objects need not be a member of a natural kind set.

I take the tell-tale sign of a natural kind to be that the members of the natural set have physical properties (for viewers of a given culture/age) that make them part of the set. Most of the time these are readily transparent to the viewer (such as mammals having fur), but it may be that the viewer has to go through training to learn how to see the physical property (a theory-laden-ness that can be problamatic, but is beside the current point, so will be avoided). The main elelment here is that the object has the property, it is not the relation of the object to something else that has the property. (There is nothing you can look at in/on Boston to know that it is 40 miles from Providence. That is a relational rather than a physical property of the city of Boston. Such properties often make poor natural kind sets.)

3) Art has many relational properties. It is the explication of these properties (for our culture) that seems to me the primary need in the philosophy of art today (though certainly not the only need). The explication of these properties, the creation of un-natural kind sets, is a task for psychology, sociology and logic.

4) That explication is a future project.