Is Lopes' buck-passing theory of art really even a theory?

The theory of art proposed by Dominic Lopes in Beyond Art (Oxford, 2014) is called the "buck passing theory of art."  It is a theory, he says, because it is "a proposition that answers a 'what is...?' question.  This is somewhat confusing since it is supposed to answer a "what is" question by "passing the buck" on answering that question.  (Normally, "passing the buck" is considered a vice.  Lopes is cleverly trying to make a vice a virtue.  But can he?  Years ago, George Dickie tried to make the circularity of his definition of art into a virtue, and he called his book The Art Circle.  The book was a great contribution to philosophy, but did he solve the circularity problem?)  It is not at all clear to me that the "buck passing theory of art" is a theory at all.  It has no real content:  it is just a formal maneuver, a clever way to suggest we stop trying to talk about art in general and just focus on individual arts.  Of course, the word "art" still appears in every question directed to an individual art:  so refusing to answer the question "what is art?" doesn't really help us to understand "what is music, as an art?" since it tells us nothing about the nature of art.  I suggested in my last post that Lopes is abandoning the "what is" question. He does not think he is.  He thinks that not answering the question, but pointing elsewhere for a possible answer, is an answer to the question.  This is like saying to the teacher "My answer is that you have the answer!"  Right.

It is noteworthy that Lopes takes a comment made by comedian Groucho Marx that "Art is Art" to be a theory (although he admits it is uninformative.)  I would not call this a theory: it is not only circular but completely without content.  It is funny.

Here is the buck-passing theory, the "theory of art" offered by Lopes (trumpets blare) "x is a work of art = x is a work of K, where K is an art."  (14)  This is a circular definition.  In a circular definition you include the term being defined in the definition.  Maybe strict circularity is avoided since the term being defined might be said to be "work of art" and not "art."  But this is quibbling.  If you explain x with a sentence that contains x you have a circularity problem.  I also think that trying to define "work of art" is not a good way of going about doing philosophy of art or asking the "what is" question about art.  Art includes not just objects but practices, institutions, roles, and ways of appreciating.  To just focus on identification of objects as works of art is to miss most of art.  But Lopes thinks "a theory of art states what makes each [of a wide variety of items from different arts] a work of art."  He thinks that, with one exception, philosophers have all interpreted the "what is art?" question as really "what is a work of art?" (he is excluding philosophers in the continental tradition, such as Heidegger.)  Lopes does admit that there are other senses of "theory of art" for example John Frow's definition in New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society (that it is "a systematic account of all or many elements in the domain of art") and that Lopes' own use of "theory" only covers, at best, a component of this.(12)  Frow's idea sounds about right to me and I have yet to see the advantage of Lopes' narrower meaning, although he is perfectly free to coin terms or give terms special meaning.

Lopes knows, of course, that the collecting of various Ks (music, video games, etc.) under "art" also demands a theory.  However, by the end of the book he thinks that prospects for such a theory are weak.  So the buck-passing theory really doesn't give us anything but a nudge to paying more attention to individual arts. 

In the definition, the term "an art" is understood by Lopes as "an art kind."  The term "art kind" is, however, ambiguous.   Photography is an art kind but only in the sense that there are photographs that are art, i.e. that there is such a thing as the art of photography.  Many photographs are not art:  photos taken by a surveillance camera with no art intention behind them, and no art context in which they can become art, are not art.  This is also true for paintings, dances, and gardens.  In each case there are examples that are art and examples that are not.  If I dance across the room (not lovely to look at) this is not an art work.  Lopes seems to be ignoring the ambiguity when he talks about art kinds, thinking that if he just lists various art kinds he can avoid defining art.  But if dance which is art is distinguished from dance which is not we still need to define art.  Lopes says "any item is a work of art if it is a work in an art kind - if it is a work of music, architecture, dance, or the life."(16)  So can he tell me whether my dancing across the room or my singing in the shower is a work of art?  Is he packing the needed distinction into the word "work" so that he can insist that since my dance is not a "work" then it is not art?  But then isn't this circular too -  since "work" needs to be defined as a work of art (as opposed to what I do in the privacy of my home.)     

Lopes has a kind of answer to a similar question, whether the coffee mug on my desk is an example of ceramic art.  He recognizes that this would be a counterexample to his theory if it were.  (Hmmm.  If I am in the business of coming up with counterexamples then am I admitting that he has a theory?)   He thinks the objection will fail if we can show that not everything made with ceramic slip is a work of ceramic art.  But then he says that it is up to the theory of ceramic art to show that the coffee mug is not art.  Similarly, I presume, it is up to the theory of dance art to show that my dance is not dance and up to the theory of music art to show that my shower song is not music.  But wait, my dance does fit some definitions of dance and my song fits at least some definitions of song, and songs are generally included as examples of music.  The point isn't that my song is not music:  it is that my song does not belong to the art of music.

I said that this is a kind of answer (see his page 17), but isn't it just a circular answer?  Lopes, if I am reading him right, is saying that the coffee mug is not art because, even though it is made of the same materials as ceramic art (ceramic slip) and through similar processes, it is not an example of ceramic art, since it does not fit under the (not yet stated) definition of ceramic art (although this definition avoids answering the question "what is art" which has been ceded to the various art forms of which ceramic art is one).  My head spins.  

Morris Weitz has an advantage over Lopes on one point.  Lopes has no resources for dealing with new art forms.  His theory of a work of art depends on there being certain art forms that are already established.  New art forms pose a problem for him.  What if there is something that seems to fit no previous art form.  Lopes gives the example of Barry's Inert Gas Series, which is neither painting or sculpture.  Weitz simply asks the relevant authorities (mainly art critics and art historians, I think) to decide whether something is sufficiently similar to things previously called art to be admitted into the realm of art, probably by way of coining a term for a new art kind, e.g. "conceptual art."  "Sufficiently similar" is vague, and I think that Weitz should have said "essentially similar" or similar in the sense that it too fits under the essence of art.  I discuss this in my unpublished book (see "pages"). 

Above I implied that the buck-passing theory is not informative.  Lopes argues that it is no less informative than buck-stopping theories (i.e. traditional theories of art, for example "art is significant form.") Neither is informative since "both set us off to think more about the individual arts."  (20)  Wait!  "Art is significant form" tells us something about the essence of art and also tells us what makes an art form and art form.  The buck-passing theory tells us nothing about art or about the what makes an art form an art form.  It is therefore less informative.

Lopes argues that a theory is correct if it is viable and informative.  As we have seen, his "theory" is neither viable (it is open to the counterexamples offered, e.g. the coffee mug and the problem of introducing new art forms) nor informative (it tells us nothing, and certainly less than the traditional theories).  Nor is it even a theory.

Actually, I really hate the kind of paragraph the previous one is.  A good reader, in my view, should not just be dismissive, but should alternate between combat and charity.  With no sympathetic side, reading is pointless as a communicative enterprise.  Reading is also pointless in philosophy if there is no combative side.  There are no knock-down arguments, only stages in an unending path.  Sympathetic open-mindedness to the point of acceptance is also unworthy of philosophy.  Balance between the two is needed but difficult to achieve.

I even have a problem with this style of philosophy. Lopes' style is typical for analytic philosophy and my own when I start talking in the same style.  This style takes the methods of logical analysis we teach in critical thinking classes too seriously since it typically reduces complex nuanced arguments and positions to a series of premises and a conclusion none of which (usually) were ever actually asserted by the proponent (an example of this is on page 39).

Yet there is much value in Lopes' book (not in the so called "theory" but in the theoretical thinking presented in the book as a whole): it is exciting to have something so intelligent and so maddening to think through and argue with, and I look forward to writing further posts.  

Beyond Art by Dominic Mciver Lopes

Dominic McIver Lopes' new book, Beyond Art (Oxford, 2014) is a hot item in small world of analytic aesthetics.  After attending a session on it at the American Society for Aesthetics conference at Asilomar, California, I thought I would see what all the fuss was about.  Lopes is the current President of the American Society for Aesthetics, and this is probably the highest distinction someone can receive in contemporary Anglo-American aesthetics.  So one should take his new book very seriously if you care about the future of aesthetics.

I find myself in deep disagreement with Lopes from the very start.  He writes that "the ambition of this book is to show that it is not mandatory to centre the philosophical study of art on the question 'what is art?'" and even further, that the question is "the wrong question for philosophy."  I am OK with the notion that asking the question is not mandatory:  why should anything be mandatory in philosophy beyond blatantly contradicting yourself?  More disturbing is "the wrong question for philosophy."  What is philosophy but a series of "what is" questions: "what is knowledge?" "what is truth?" "what is beauty?" and "what is art?"?  There are some other types of questions, but Plato's Socrates led the way in showing how philosophy works through asking such questions and trying to answer them.  If you are going to have a "philosophy of" (e.g. "philosophy of psychology") the key question in that philosophy of will be the "what is" question.  For example the key question in philosophy of science is "what is science?"  Sure, there are some slight problems with this.  The most important question in philosophy of religion is not "what is God?" but "is there a God?"  Then again, one cannot begin to ask whether God exists without asking about what is meant by the word "God."  Lopes does not deny that the question "what is art?" can be useful:  he thinks that it can "help us to appreciate some works of art by prompting thoughts that are suited to...appreciation of the work...but not to the task of theorizing."  (2)  He will have to work  hard to convince me that what is good for appreciation of art should be cut off so completely from what is good for theorizing about art.  

Why do we disagree so much.  Maybe it is because Lopes begins his discussion with something Monroe Beardsley said in 1983 about why the problem is so important.  Beardsley gave four reasons for the importance of the "what is art?" question.  First, philosophers should be curious to know what they are philosophizing about.  This strikes me as a strange way of putting things since philosophizing about art, on the Socratic view, just is asking the "what is" question.  They are not two different projects.  Beardsley's second reason was that it would be important for cases of import duties and censorship.  It is true that lawyers and politicians concern themselves with defining key terms:  however, asking "what is art?" in the context of philosophy is very different from doing so in these other contexts.  It is not at all clear that one can be very helpful for the other.  In philosophy, "what is art?" has to do with all of the other central issues in philosophy:  what is man?  what is reality? what is value?  It is a philosophical question.  Thirdly, Beardsley thought that answering the question would help out people in the social sciences who need a definition.  I don't much like this idea of treating philosophers as providers of nice definitions for other sciences, as though the question of the nature of knowledge is not more deeply shared than that.  Sometimes the Europeans have a better idea about this.  Someone like Bourdieu, who is interested in the sociology of art, is hardly going to accept any definition of art, or of sociology for that matter, that we might come up with, at least not without a philosophical fight.  Asking the "what is" question in a philosophical way is "doing philosophy" regardless of what department one happens to reside in.  Finally, Beardsley thought that answering the "what is art" question could provide criteria for critics to decide what to criticize.  Again,  I do not think this is needed by critics any more than by sociologists.  Beardsley just failed to see how philosophy pervades all aspects of our society and not just philosophy departments.  Critics like Clive Bell figure prominently in aesthetics textbooks.  Why should such a critic look to professional philosophers to solve this deep human problem. 

Of course Lopes does not accept Beardsley's ideas, but he uses Beardsley to set the agenda.  If this is what the Socratic quest is all about then it is a trivial thing, and this leads to it making sense to stop asking the "what is" question in philosophy...what Lopes recommends.  [On reading the entire book now, this may not be fair. Sometimes it seems the Lopes just thinks that "what is art?" is a bad question and that it should be replaced by other "what is" questions, like "what is music?" and "what is architecture?" although there are other times in which he seems to reject this as well.  He just thinks there is not enough common between the various arts to make the "what is art" question useful.]  I am not arguing that Lopes has Socrates wrong, or is wrong about philosophy, because his view is different from Socrates' view, but I do believe that Plato's Socrates' has a much richer, interesting and more powerful idea about what philosophy can be than I have seen so far in this discussion.  

But perhaps I am unfair to Lopes because he does say one right thing here:  "Philosophy is not taxonomy.  It does not take phenomena fixed in advanced [sic] and then answer, for each phenomenon X, 'what is X?" (4)  He is right:  nothing is fixed in advance:  categories of interest to philosophy shift and change over history.  On the other hand, as soon as you fix on a term, for example, "piety," then you can engage in a philosophical debate for the essence of that term, and the result is going to be something called "the philosophy of piety" which itself is probably closely allied to "the philosophy of religion."  If, however, Lopes is simply recommending that we back off from the "what is art?" question and ask other philosophical questions like "what is painting?" or "what is improvisation?" there is nothing wrong with that (although I do think that once one has fiddled with these more particular questions for awhile one should try moving up the ladder a bit and ask the 'what is art?' question again).   

Lopes' worry about "art" is summed up in the phrase "grab bag of phenomena that are not illuminated by lumping them together as a unity" (4).  What "induces queasiness" in him is the idea of placing "Chardin's still lifes alongside John Coltrane's improvisations, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Mies van der Rohe's office towers."  (3)  One begins to see what he finds problematic:  how can there be something that these diverse things have in common?  I wouldn't put it past Plato to pick three very different things called "pious" and asking Euthyphro what he thinks they all share in common.  It might be that "art" is a more hodge-podge concept than most, and that because of this we should avoid queasiness and go for collections of things that have a more plausible unity. In the next post I will discuss the actual theory posed.  My own view of defining art can be found in this post.