The Definition of Art

First published Tue Oct 23, 2007; substantive revision Tue Jul 30, 2024

The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy.Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. Thephilosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also beendebated.

There is also disagreement, at a second-order level, about how toclassify definitions of art.^[1] For present purposes, contemporary definitions can be classified withrespect to the dimensions of art they emphasize. One distinctivelymodern, conventionalist, sort of definition focuses on art’sinstitutional features, emphasizing the way art changes over time,modern works that appear to break radically with all traditional art,the relational properties of artworks that depend on works’relations to art history, art genres, etc. – more broadly, onthe undeniable heterogeneity of the class of artworks. The moretraditional, less conventionalist sort of definition defended incontemporary philosophy makes use of a broader, more traditionalconcept of aesthetic properties that includes more than art-relationalones, and puts more emphasis on art’s pan-cultural andtrans-historical characteristics – in sum, on commonalitiesacross the class of artworks. Hybrid definitions aim to do justice toboth the traditional aesthetic dimension as well as to theinstitutional and art-historical dimensions of art, while privilegingneither.

1. Constraints on Definitions of Art

Any definition of art has to square with the following uncontroversialfacts: (i) entities (artifacts or performances) intentionally endowedby their makers with a significant degree of aesthetic interest, oftengreatly surpassing that of most everyday objects, first appearedhundreds of thousands of years ago and exist in virtually every knownhuman culture (Davies 2012); (ii) such entities are partiallycomprehensible to cultural outsiders – they are neither opaquenor completely transparent; (iii) such entities sometimes havenon-aesthetic – ceremonial or religious or propagandistic– functions, and sometimes do not; (iv) such entities mightconceivably be produced by non-human species, terrestrial orotherwise; and it seems at least in principle possible that they beextraspecifically recognizable as such; (v) traditionally, artworksare intentionally endowed by their makers with properties, oftensensory, having a significant degree of aesthetic interest, usuallysurpassing that of most everyday objects; (vi) art’s normativedimension – the high value placed on making and consuming art– appears to be essential to it, and artworks can haveconsiderable moral and political as well as aesthetic power; (vii) thearts are always changing, just as the rest of culture is: as artistsexperiment creatively, new genres, art-forms, and styles develop;standards of taste and sensibilities evolve; understandings ofaesthetic properties, aesthetic experience, and the nature of artevolve; (viii) there are institutions in some but not all cultureswhich involve a focus on artifacts and performances that have a highdegree of aesthetic interest but lack any practical, ceremonial, orreligious use; (ix) entities seemingly lacking aesthetic interest, andentities having a high degree of aesthetic interest, are notinfrequently grouped together as artworks by such institutions; (x)lots of things besides artworks – for example, natural entities(sunsets, landscapes, flowers, shadows), human beings, and abstractentities (theories, proofs, mathematical entities) – haveinteresting aesthetic properties.

Of these facts, those having to do with art’s contingentcultural and historical features are emphasized by some definitions ofart. Other definitions of art give priority to explaining those factsthat reflect art’s universality and continuity with otheraesthetic phenomena. Still other definitions attempt to explain bothart’s contingent characteristics and its more abiding ones whilegiving priority to neither.

Two general constraints on definitions are particularly relevant todefinitions of art. First, given that accepting that something isinexplicable is generally a philosophical last resort, and grantingthe importance of extensional adequacy, list-like or enumerativedefinitions are if possible to be avoided. Enumerative definitions,lacking principles that explain why what is on the list is on thelist, don’t, notoriously, apply todefinienda thatevolve, and provide no clue to the next or general case(Tarski’s definition of truth, for example, is standardlycriticized as unenlightening because it rests on a list-likedefinition of primitive denotation; see Field 1972; Devitt 2001;Davidson 2005). Corollary: when everything else is equal (and it iscontroversial whether and when that condition is satisfied in the caseof definitions of art), non-disjunctive definitions are preferable todisjunctive ones. Second, given that most classes outside ofmathematics are vague, and that the existence of borderline cases ischaracteristic of vague classes, definitions that take the class ofartworks to have borderline cases are preferable to definitions thatdon’t (Davies 1991 and 2006; Stecker 2005).

Whether any definition of art does account for these facts and satisfythese constraints, orcould account for these facts andsatisfy these constraints, are key questions for aesthetics and thephilosophy of art.

2. Definitions From the History of Philosophy

Classical definitions, at least as they are portrayed in contemporarydiscussions of the definition of art, take artworks to becharacterized by a single type of property. The standard candidatesare representational properties, expressive properties, and formalproperties. So there are representational or mimetic definitions,expressive definitions, and formalist definitions, which hold thatartworks are characterized by their possession of, respectively,representational, expressive, and formal properties. It is notdifficult to find fault with these simple definitions. For example,possessing representational, expressive, and formal properties cannotbe sufficient conditions, since, obviously, instructional manuals arerepresentations, but not typically artworks, human faces and gestureshave expressive properties without being works of art, and bothnatural objects and artifacts produced solely for homely utilitarianpurposes have formal properties but are not artworks.

The ease of these dismissals, though, serves as a reminder of the factthat classical definitions of art are significantly lessphilosophically self-contained or freestanding than are mostcontemporary definitions of art. Each classical definition stands inclose and complicated relationships to its system’s othercomplexly interwoven parts – epistemology, ontology, valuetheory, philosophy of mind, etc. Relatedly, great philosopherscharacteristically analyze the key theoretical components of theirdefinitions of art in distinctive and subtle ways. For these reasons,understanding such definitions in isolation from the systems orcorpuses of which they are parts is difficult, and brief summaries areinvariably somewhat misleading. Nevertheless, some representativeexamples of historically influential definitions of art offered bymajor figures in the history of philosophy should be mentioned.

2.1 Some examples

Plato holds in theRepublic and elsewhere that the arts arerepresentational, ormimetic (sometimes translated“imitative”). Artworks are ontologically dependent on,imitations of, and therefore inferior to, ordinary physical objects.Physical objects in turn are ontologically dependent on, andimitations of, and hence inferior to, what is most real, thenon-physical unchanging Forms. Grasped perceptually, artworks presentonly an appearance of an appearance of the Forms, which are grasped byreason alone. Consequently, artistic experience cannot yieldknowledge. Nor do the makers of artworks work from knowledge. Becauseartworks engage an unstable, lower part of the soul, art should besubservient to moral realities, which, along with truth, are moremetaphysically fundamental and, properly understood, more humanlyimportant than, beauty. The arts are not, for Plato, the primarysphere in which beauty operates. The Platonic conception of beauty isextremely wide and metaphysical: there is a Form of Beauty, which canonly be known non-perceptually, but it is more closely related to theerotic than to the arts. (See Janaway 1998, the entry onPlato’s aesthetics, and the entry onPlato on Rhetoric and Poetry.)

Kant has a definition of art, and of fine art; the latter, which Kantcalls the art of genius, is “a kind of representation that ispurposive in itself and, though without an end, nevertheless promotesthe cultivation of the mental powers for sociable communication”(Kant,Critique of the Power of Judgment, Guyer translation,section 44, 46).) When fully unpacked, the definition hasrepresentational, formalist and expressivist elements, and focuses asmuch on the creative activity of the artistic genius (who, accordingto Kant, possesses an “innate mental aptitude through whichnature gives the rule to art”) as on the artworks produced bythat activity. Kant’s aesthetic theory is, for architectonicreasons, not focused on art. Art for Kant falls under the broadertopic of aesthetic judgment, which covers judgments of the beautiful,judgments of the sublime, and teleological judgments of naturalorganisms and of nature itself. So Kant’s definition of art is arelatively small part of his theory of aesthetic judgment. AndKant’s theory of aesthetic judgment is itself situated in ahugely ambitious theoretical structure that, famously, aims, toaccount for, and work out the interconnections between, scientificknowledge, morality, and religious faith. (See the entry onKant’s Aesthetics and Teleology and the general entry onImmanuel Kant.)

Hegel’s account of art incorporates his view of beauty; hedefines beauty as the sensuous/perceptual appearance or expression ofabsolute truth. The best artworks convey, by sensory/perceptual means,the deepest metaphysical truth. The deepest metaphysical truth,according to Hegel, is that the universe is the concrete realizationof what is conceptual or rational. That is, what is conceptual orrational is real, and is the imminent force that animates and propelsthe self-consciously developing universe. The universe is the concreterealization of what is conceptual or rational, and the rational orconceptual is superior to the sensory. So, as the mind and itsproducts alone are capable of truth, artistic beauty is metaphysicallysuperior to natural beauty (Hegel,Lectures, [1886, 4]). Acentral and defining feature of beautiful works of art is that,through the medium of sensation, each one presents the mostfundamental values of its civilization.^[2] Art, therefore, as a cultural expression, operates in the same sphereas religion and philosophy, and expresses the same content as they.But art “reveals to consciousness the deepest interests ofhumanity” in a different manner than do religion and philosophy,because art alone, of the three, works by sensuous means. So, giventhe superiority of the conceptual to the non-conceptual, and the factthat art’s medium for expressing/presenting culture’sdeepest values is the sensual or perceptual, art’s medium islimited and inferior in comparison with the medium that religion usesto express the same content, viz., mental imagery. Art and religion inturn are, in this respect, inferior to philosophy, which employs aconceptual medium to present its content. Art initially predominates,in each civilization, as the supreme mode of cultural expression,followed, successively, by religion and philosophy. Similarly, becausethe broadly “logical” relations between art, religion andphilosophy determine the actual structure of art, religion, andphilosophy, and because cultural ideas about what is intrinsicallyvaluable develop from sensuous to non-sensuous conceptions, history isdivided into periods that reflect the teleological development fromthe sensuous to the conceptual. Art in general, too, develops inaccord with the historical growth of non-sensuous or conceptualconceptions from sensuous conceptions, and each individual art-formdevelops historically in the same way (Hegel,Lectures; Wicks1993, see also the entries onHegel and onHegel’s Aesthetics).

For treatments of other influential definitions of art, inseparablefrom the complex philosophical systems or corpuses in which theyoccur, see, for example, the entries on18th Century German Aesthetics,Arthur Schopenhauer,Friedrich Nietzsche, andDewey’s Aesthetics.

3. Skepticism about Definitions of Art

Skeptical doubts about the possibility and value of a definition ofart have figured importantly in the discussion in aesthetics since the1950s, and though their influence has subsided somewhat, uneasinessabout the definitional project persists. (See section 4, below, andalso Kivy 1997, Brand 2000, and Walton 2007).

3.1 Skepticisms inspired by views of concepts, history, Marxism, feminism

A common family of arguments, inspired by Wittgenstein’s famousremarks about games (Wittgenstein 1953), has it that the phenomena ofart are, by their nature, too diverse to admit of the unification thata satisfactory definition strives for, or that a definition of art,were there to be such a thing, would exert a stifling influence onartistic creativity. One expression of this impulse is Weitz’sOpen Concept Argument: any concept is open if a case can be imaginedwhich would call for some sort of decision on our part to extend theuse of the concept to cover it, or to close the concept and invent anew one to deal with the new case; all open concepts are indefinable;and there are cases calling for a decision about whether to extend orclose the concept of art. Hence art is indefinable (Weitz 1956).Against this it is claimed that change does not, in general, rule outthe preservation of identity over time, that decisions aboutconcept-expansion may be principled rather than capricious, and thatnothing bars a definition of art from incorporating a noveltyrequirement.

A second sort of argument, less common today than in the heyday of acertain form of extreme Wittgensteinianism, urges that the conceptsthat make up the stuff of most definitions of art (expressiveness,form) are embedded in general philosophical theories which incorporatetraditional metaphysics and epistemology. But since traditionalmetaphysics and epistemology are prime instances of language gone onconceptually confused holiday, definitions of art share in theconceptual confusions of traditional philosophy (Tilghman 1984).

A third sort of argument, more historically inflected than the first,takes off from an influential study by the historian of philosophyPaul Kristeller, in which he argued that the modern system of the fivemajor arts [painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and music]which underlies all modern aesthetics … is of comparativelyrecent origin and did not assume definite shape before the eighteenthcentury, although it had many ingredients which go back to classical,mediaeval, and Renaissance thought (Kristeller 1951). Since that listof five arts is somewhat arbitrary, and since even those five do notshare a single common nature, but rather are united, at best, only byseveral overlapping features, and since the number of art forms hasincreased since the eighteenth century, Kristeller’s work may betaken to suggest that our concept of art differs from that of theeighteenth century. As a matter of historical fact, there simply is nostabledefiniendum for a definition of art to capture.

A fourth sort of argument suggests that a definition of art statingindividually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for a thingto be an artwork, is likely to be discoverable only if cognitivescience makes it plausible to think that humans categorize things interms of necessary and sufficient conditions. But, the argumentcontinues, cognitive science actually supports the view that thestructure of concepts mirrors the way humans categorize things –which is with respect to their similarity to prototypes (orexemplars), and not in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.So the quest for a definition of art that states individuallynecessary and jointly sufficient conditions is misguided and notlikely to succeed (Dean 2003). Against this it has been urged thatpsychological theories of concepts like the prototype theory and itsrelatives can provide at best an account of how peopleinfact classify things, but not an account ofcorrectclassifications of extra-psychological phenomena, and that, even ifrelevant, prototype theory and other psychological theories ofconcepts are at present too controversial to draw substantivephilosophical morals from (Rey 1983; Adajian 2005).

A fifth argument against defining art, with a normative tinge that ispsychologistic rather than sociopolitical, takes the fact that thereis no philosophical consensus about the definition of art as reason tohold that no unitary concept of art exists. Concepts of art, like allconcepts, after all, should be used for the purpose(s) they bestserve. But not all concepts of art serve all purposes equally well. Sonot all art concepts should be used for the same purposes. Art shouldbe defined only if there is a unitary concept of art that serves allof art’s various purposes – historical, conventional,aesthetic, appreciative, communicative, and so on. So, since there isno purpose-independent use of the concept of art, art should not bedefined (Mag Uidhir and Magnus 2011; cf. Meskin 2008). In response, itis noted that some account of what makes various concepts of artconcepts ofart is still required; this leaves open thepossibility of some degree of unity beneath the apparent multiplicity.The fact (if it is one) that different concepts of art are used fordifferent purposes does not itself imply that they are not connectedin ordered, to-some-degree systematic ways. The relation between (say)the historical concept of art and the appreciative concept of art isnot an accidental, unsystematic relation, like that between riverbanks and savings banks, but is something like the relation betweenSocrates’ healthiness and the healthiness of Socrates’diet. That is, it is not evident that there exist a mere arbitraryheap or disjunction of art concepts, constituting an unsystematicpatchwork. Perhaps there is a single concept of art with differentfacets that interlock in an ordered way, or else a multiplicity ofconcepts that constitute a unity because one is at the core, and theothers depend asymmetrically on it. (The last is an instance ofcore-dependent homonymy; see the entry onAristotle, section on Essentialism and Homonymy.) Multiplicity alonedoesn’t entail pluralism.

A sixth, broadly Marxian sort of objection rejects the project ofdefining art as an unwitting (and confused) expression of a harmfulideology. On this view, the search for a definition of artpresupposes, wrongly, that the concept of the aesthetic is acreditable one. But since the concept of the aesthetic necessarilyinvolves the equally bankrupt concept of disinterestedness, its useadvances the illusion that what is most real about things can andshould be grasped or contemplated without attending to the social andeconomic conditions of their production. Definitions of art,consequently, spuriously confer ontological dignity and respectabilityon social phenomena that probably in fact call more properly forrigorous social criticism and change. Their real function isideological, not philosophical (Eagleton 1990).

Seventh, the members of a complex of skeptically-flavored arguments,from feminist philosophy of art, begin with premises to the effectthat art and art-related concepts and practices have beensystematically skewed by sex or gender. Such premises are supported bya variety of considerations. (a) The artworks the Western artisticcanon recognizes as great are dominated by male-centered perspectivesand stereotypes, and almost all the artists the canon recognizes asgreat are men – unsurprisingly, given economic, social, andinstitutional impediments that prevented women from making art at all.Moreover, the concept of genius developed historically in such a wayas to exclude women artists (Battersby, 1989, Korsmeyer 2004). (b) Thefine arts’ focus on purely aesthetic, non-utilitarian valueresulted in the marginalization as mere “crafts” of itemsof considerable aesthetic interest made and used by women for domesticpractical purposes. Moreover, because all aesthetic judgments aresituated and particular, there can be no such thing as disinterestedtaste. If there is no such thing as disinterested taste, then it ishard to see how there could be universal standards of aestheticexcellence. The non-existence of universal standards of aestheticexcellence undermines the idea of an artistic canon (and with it theproject of defining art). Art as historically constituted, andart-related practices and concepts, then, reflect views and practicesthat presuppose and perpetuate the subordination of women. The datathat definitions of art are supposed to explain are biased, corruptand incomplete. As a consequence, present definitions of art,incorporating or presupposing as they do a framework that incorporatesa history of systematically biased, hierarchical, fragmentary, andmistaken understandings of art and art-related phenomena and concepts,may be so androcentric as to be untenable. Some theorists havesuggested that different genders have systematically unique artisticstyles, methods, or modes of appreciating and valuing art. If so, thena separate canon and gynocentric definitions of art are indicated(Battersby 1989, Frueh 1991). In any case, in the face of these facts,the project of defining art in anything like the traditional way is tobe regarded with suspicion (Brand 2000).

An eighth skeptically-flavored argument concludes that, insofar asalmost all contemporary definitions foreground the nature ofartworks, rather than the individualarts to which(most? all?) artworks belong, they are philosophically unproductive(Lopes 2014).^[3] The grounds for this conclusion concern disagreements among standarddefinitions as to the artistic status of entities whose status is fortheoretical reasons unclear – e.g., things like ordinarybottleracks (Duchamp’sBottlerack) and silence (JohnCage’s4′33″). If these hard cases areartworks, what makes them so, given their apparent lack of any of thetraditional properties of artworks? Are, they, at best, marginalcases? On the other hand, if they are not artworks, then why havegenerations of experts – art historians, critics, and collectors– classified them as such? And to whom else should one look todetermine the true nature of art? (There are, it is claimed, few or noempirical studies of art full stop, though empirical studies of theindividual arts abound.) Such disputes inevitably end in stalemate, itis claimed. Stalemate results because (a) standard artwork-focuseddefinitions of art endorse different criteria of theory choice, and(b) on the basis of their preferred criteria, appeal to incompatibleintuitions about the status of such theoretically-vexed cases. Inconsequence, disagreements between standard definitions of art thatforeground artworks are unresolvable. To avoid this stalemate, analternative definitional strategy that foregrounds the arts ratherthan individual artworks, is indicated. (See section 4.5.)

3.2 Some descendants of skepticism

Philosophers influenced by the moderate Wittgensteinian stricturesdiscussed above have offered family resemblance accounts of art,which, as they purport to be non-definitions, may be usefullyconsidered at this point. Two species of family resemblance views willbe considered: the resemblance-to-a-paradigm version, and the clusterversion.

On the resemblance-to-a-paradigm version, something is, or isidentifiable as, an artwork if it resembles, in the right way, certainparadigm artworks, which possess most although not necessarily all ofart’s typical features. (The “is identifiable”qualification is intended to make the family resemblance viewsomething more epistemological than a definition, although it isunclear that this really avoids a commitment to constitutive claimsabout art’s nature.) Against this view: since things do notresemble each othersimpliciter, but only in at least onerespect or other, the account is either far too inclusive, sinceeverything resembles everything else in some respect or other, or, ifthe variety of resemblance is specified, tantamount to a definition,since resemblance in that respect will be either a necessary orsufficient condition for being an artwork. The family resemblance viewraises questions, moreover, about the membership and unity of theclass of paradigm artworks. If the account lacks an explanation of whysome items and not others go on the list of paradigm works, it seemsexplanatorily deficient. But if it includes a principle that governsmembership on the list, or if expertise is required to constitute thelist, then the principle, or whatever properties the experts’judgments track, seem to be doing the philosophical work.

The cluster version of the family resemblance view has been defendedby a number of philosophers (Bond 1975, Dissanayake 1990, Dutton 2006,Gaut 2000). The view typically provides a list of properties, no oneof which is a necessary condition for being a work of art, but whichare jointly sufficient for being a work of art, and which is such thatat least one proper subset thereof is sufficient for being a work ofart. Lists offered vary, but overlap considerably. Here is one, due toGaut: (1) possessing positive aesthetic properties; (2) beingexpressive of emotion; (3) being intellectually challenging; (4) beingformally complex and coherent; (5) having the capacity to conveycomplex meanings; (6) exhibiting an individual point of view; (7)being original; (8) being an artifact or performance which is theproduct of a high degree of skill; (9) belonging to an establishedartistic form; (10) being the product of an intention to make a workof art (Gaut 2000). The cluster account has been criticized on severalgrounds. First, given its logical structure, it is in fact equivalentto a long, complicated, but finite, disjunction, which makes itdifficult to see why it isn’t a definition (Davies 2006).Second, if the list of properties is incomplete, as some clustertheorists hold, then some justification or principle would be neededfor extending it. Third, the inclusion of the ninth property on thelist,belonging to an established art form, seems toregenerate (or duck), rather than answer, the definitional question.Finally, it is worth noting that, although cluster theorists stresswhat they take to be the motley heterogeneity of the class ofartworks, they tend with surprising regularity to tacitly give theaesthetic a special, perhaps unifying, status among the propertiesthey put forward as merely disjunctive. One cluster theorist, forexample, gives a list very similar to the one discussed above (itincludes representational properties, expressiveness, creativity,exhibiting a high degree of skill, belonging to an establishedartform), but omits aesthetic properties on the grounds that it is thecombination of the other items on the list which, combined in theexperience of the work of art, are precisely the aesthetic qualitiesof the work (Dutton 2006). Gaut, whose list is cited above, includesaesthetic properties as a separate item on the list, but construesthem very narrowly; the difference between these ways of formulatingthe cluster view appears to be mainly nominal. And an earlier clustertheorist defines artworks as all and only those things that belong toany instantiation of an artform, offers a list of seven properties allof which together are intended to capture the core of what it is to bean artform, though none is either necessary or sufficient, and thenclaims that having aesthetic value (of the same sort as mountains,sunsets, mathematical theorems) is “what art isfor” (Bond 1975).

4. Contemporary Definitions

Definitions of art attempt to make sense of two different sorts offacts: art has important historically contingent cultural features, aswell as trans-historical, pan-cultural characteristics that point inthe direction of a relatively stable aesthetic core. (Theorists whoregard art as an invention of eighteenth-century Europe will, ofcourse, regard this way of putting the matter as tendentious, on thegrounds that entities produced outside that culturally distinctiveinstitution do not fall under the extension of “art” andhence are irrelevant to the art-defining project (Shiner 2001).Whether the concept of art is precise enough to justify this muchconfidence about what falls under its extension claim is unclear.)Conventionalist definitions take art’s contingent culturalfeatures to be explanatorily fundamental, and aim to capture thephenomena – revolutionary modern art, the traditional closeconnection of art with the aesthetic, the possibility of autonomousart traditions, etc. – in social/historical terms.Classically-flavored or traditional definitions (also sometimes called“functionalist”) definitions reverse this explanatoryorder. Such classically-flavored definitions take traditional conceptslike the aesthetic (or allied concepts like the formal, or theexpressive) as basic, and aim to account for the phenomena by makingthose concepts harder – for example, by endorsing a concept ofthe aesthetic rich enough to include non-perceptual properties, or byattempting an integration of those concepts (e.g., Eldridge, section4.4 below) .

4.1 Conventionalist Definitions: Institutional and Historical

Conventionalist definitions deny that art has essential connection toaesthetic properties, or to formal properties, or to expressiveproperties, or to any type of property taken by traditionaldefinitions to be essential to art. Conventionalist definitions havebeen strongly influenced by the emergence, in the twentieth century,of artworks that seem to differ radically from all previous artworks.Avant-garde works like Marcel Duchamp’s“ready-mades” – ordinary unaltered objects likesnow-shovels (In Advance of the Broken Arm) and bottle-racks– conceptual works like Robert Barry’sAll the thingsI know but of which I am not at the moment thinking – 1:36 PM;June 15, 1969, and John Cage’s4′33″,have seemed to many philosophers to lack or even, somehow, repudiate,the traditional properties of art: intended aesthetic interest,artifactuality, even perceivability. Conventionalist definitions havealso been strongly influenced by the work of a number ofhistorically-minded philosophers, who have documented the rise anddevelopment of modern ideas of the fine arts, the individual arts, thework of art, and the aesthetic (Kristeller, Shiner, Carroll, Goehr,Kivy).

Conventionalist definitions come in two varieties, institutional andhistorical. Institutionalist conventionalism, or institutionalism, asynchronic view, typically hold that to be a work of art is to be anartifact of a kind created, by an artist, to be presented to anartworld public (Dickie 1984). Historical conventionalism, adiachronic view, holds that artworks necessarily stand in anart-historical relation to some set of earlier artworks.

4.2 Institutional Definitions

The groundwork for institutional definitions was laid by Arthur Danto,better known to non-philosophers as the long-time influential artcritic for theNation. Danto coined the term“artworld”, by which he meant “an atmosphere of arttheory.” Danto’s definition has been glossed as follows:something is a work of art if and only if (i) it has a subject (ii)about which it projects some attitude or point of view (has a style)(iii) by means of rhetorical ellipsis (usually metaphorical) whichellipsis engages audience participation in filling in what is missing,and (iv) where the work in question and the interpretations thereofrequire an art historical context (Danto, Carroll). Clause (iv) iswhat makes the definition institutionalist. The view has beencriticized for entailing that art criticism written in a highlyrhetorical style is art, lacking but requiring an independent accountof what makes a contextart historical, and for not applyingto music.

The most prominent and influential institutionalism is that of GeorgeDickie. Dickie’s institutionalism has evolved over time.According to an early version, a work of art is an artifact upon whichsome person(s) acting on behalf of the artworld has conferred thestatus of candidate for appreciation (Dickie 1974). Dickie’smore recent version consists of an interlocking set of fivedefinitions: (1) An artist is a person who participates withunderstanding in the making of a work of art. (2) A work of art is anartifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public. (3)A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in somedegree to understand an object which is presented to them. (4) Theartworld is the totality of all artworld systems. (5) An artworldsystem is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by anartist to an artworld public (Dickie 1984). Both versions have beenwidely criticized. Philosophers have objected that art created outsideany institution seems possible, although the definition rules it out,and that the artworld, like any institution, seems capable of error.It has also been urged that the definition’s obvious circularityis vicious, and that, given the inter-definition of the key concepts(artwork, artworld system, artist, artworld public) it lacks anyinformative way of distinguishingart institutions systemsfrom other, structurally similar, social institutions (D. Davies 2004,pp. 248–249, notes that both the artworld and the“commerceworld” seem to fall under that definition). Earlyon, Dickie claimed that anyone who sees herself as a member of theartworldis a member of the artworld: if this is true, thenunless there are constraints on the kinds of things the artworld canput forward as artworks or candidate artworks, any entity can be anartwork (though not all are), which appears overly expansive. Finally,Matravers has helpfully distinguishedstrong andweak institutionalism. Strong institutionalism holds thatthere is some reason that is always the reason the art institution hasfor saying that something is a work of art. Weak institutionalismholds that, for every work of art, there is some reason or other thatthe institution has for saying that it is a work of art (Matravers2000). Weak institutionalism, in particular, raises questions aboutart’s unity: if absolutely nothing unifies the reasons that theartworld gives for conferring art-hood on things, then the unity ofthe class of artworks is vanishingly small. Conventionalist views,with their emphasis on art’s heterogeneity, swallow thisimplication. From the perspective of traditional definitions, doingsso underplays art’s substantial if incomplete unity, whileleaving it a puzzle why art would be worth caring about.

Some recent versions of institutionalism depart from Dickie’s byaccepting the burden, which Dickie rejected, of providing asubstantive, non-circular account of what it is to be an artinstitution or an artworld. One, due to David Davies, does so bybuilding in Nelson Goodman’s account of aesthetic symbolicfunctions. Another, due to Abell, combines Searle’s account ofsocial institutions with Gaut’s characterization of art-makingproperties, and builds an account of artistic value on thatcoupling.

Davies’ neo-institutionalism holds that making an artworkrequires articulating an artistic statement, which requires specifyingartistic properties, which in turn requires the manipulation of anartistic vehicle. Goodman’s “symptoms of theaesthetic” are utilized to clarify the conditions under which apractice of making is a practice ofartistic making: onGoodman’s view, a symbol functions aesthetically when it issyntactically dense, semantically dense, relatively replete, andcharacterized by multiple and complex reference (D. Davies 2004;Goodman 1968; see the entry onGoodman’s aesthetics). Manipulating an artistic vehicle is in turn possible only if theartist consciously operates with reference to shared understandingsembodied in the practices of a community of receivers. So art’snature is institutional in the broad sense (or, perhaps better,socio-cultural). By way of criticism, Davies’neo-institutionalism may be questioned on the grounds that, since allpictorial symbols are syntactically dense, semantically dense,relatively replete, and often exemplify the properties they represent,it seems to entail that every colored picture, including those in anycatalog of industrial products, is an artwork (Abell 2012).

Abell’s institutional definition adapts Searle’s view ofsocial kinds: what it is for some social kind,F, to beF is for it to be collectively believed to beF(Abell 2012; Searle 1995, 2010; and see the entry onsocial institutions). On Abell’s view, more specifically, an institution’s typeis determined by the valued function(s) that it was collectivelybelieved at its inception to promote. The valued functions collectivebelief in which make an institution an art institution are thosespelled out by Gaut in his cluster account (see section 3.1, above).That is, something is an art institution if and only if it is aninstitution whose existence is due to its being perceived to performcertain functions, which functions form a significant subset of thefollowing: promoting positive aesthetic qualities; promoting theexpression of emotion; facilitating the posing of intellectualchallenges, and the rest of Gaut’s list. Plugging inGaut’s list yields the final definition: something is an artworkif and only if it is the product of an art institution (as justdefined) and it directly effects the effectiveness with which thatinstitution performs the perceived functions to which its existence isdue. One worry is whether Searle’s account of institutions is upto the task required of it. Some institutional social kinds have thefollowing trait: something can fail to be a token of that kind even ifthere is collective agreement that it counts as a token of that kind.Suppose someone gives a big cocktail party, to which everyone in Parisis invited, and things get so out of hand that the casualty rate isgreater than the Battle of Austerlitz. Even if everyone thinks theevent was a cocktail party, it is possible (contrary to Searle) thatthey are mistaken: it may have been a war or battle. It’s notclear that art isn’t like this. If so, then the fact that aninstitution is collectively believed to be an art institutiondoesn’t suffice to make it so (Khalidi 2013; see also the entryonsocial institutions).^[4] A second worry: if its failure to specify which subsets of the tencluster properties suffice to make something an artwork significantlyflaws Gaut’s cluster account, then failure to specify whichsubsets of Gaut’s ten properties suffice to make something anart institution significantly flaws Abell’sinstitutionalism.

4.3 Historical Definitions

Historical definitions hold that what characterizes artworks isstanding in some specified art-historical relation to some specifiedearlier artworks, and disavow any commitment to a trans-historicalconcept of art, or the “artish.” Historical definitionscome in several varieties. All of them are, or resemble, inductivedefinitions: they claim that certain entities belong unconditionallyto the class of artworks, while others do so because they stand in theappropriate relations thereto. According to the best known version,Levinson’s intentional-historical definition, an artwork is athing that has been seriously intended for regard in any waypreexisting or prior artworks are or were correctly regarded (Levinson1990). A second version, historical narrativism, comes in severalvarieties. On one, a sufficient but not necessary condition for theidentification of a candidate as a work of art is the construction ofa true historical narrative according to which the candidate wascreated by an artist in an artistic context with a recognized and liveartistic motivation, and as a result of being so created, it resemblesat least one acknowledged artwork (Carroll 1993). On another, moreambitious and overtly nominalistic version of historical narrativism,something is an artwork if and only if (1) there are internalhistorical relations between it and already established artworks; (2)these relations are correctly identified in a narrative; and (3) thatnarrative is accepted by the relevant experts. The experts do notdetect that certain entities are artworks; rather, the factthat the experts assert that certain properties are significant inparticular cases is constitutive of art (Stock 2003).

The similarity of these views to institutionalism is obvious, and thecriticisms offered parallel those urged against institutionalism.First, historical definitions appear to require, but lack, anyinformative characterization of art traditions (art functions,artistic contexts, etc.) and hence any way of informativelydistinguishing them (and likewise art functions, or artisticpredecessors) fromnon-art traditions (non-art functions,non-artistic predecessors). Correlatively, non-Western art, or alien,autonomous art of any kind appears to pose a problem for historicalviews: any autonomous art tradition or artworks – terrestrial,extra-terrestrial, or merely possible – causally isolated fromour art tradition, is either ruled out by the definition, which seemsto be areductio, or included, which concedes the existenceof a supra-historical concept of art. So, too, there could be entitiesthat for adventitious reasons are not correctly identified inhistorical narratives, although in actual fact they stand in relationsto established artworks that make them correctlydescribablein narratives of the appropriate sort. Historical definitions entailthat such entities aren’t artworks, but it seems at least asplausible to say that they are artworks that are not identified assuch. Second, historical definitions also require, but do not provide,a satisfactory, informative account of the basis case – thefirst artworks, or ur-artworks, in the case of theintentional-historical definitions, or the first or central art-forms,in the case of historical functionalism. Third, nominalistichistorical definitions seem to face a version of theEuthyphro dilemma. For either such definitions includesubstantive characterizations of what it is to be an expert, or theydon’t. If, on one hand, they include no characterization of whatit is to be an expert, and hence no explanation as to why the list ofexperts contains the people it does, then they imply that what makesthings artworks is inexplicable. On the other hand, suppose suchdefinitions provide a substantive account of what it is to be anexpert, so that to be an expert is to possess some ability lacked bynon-experts (taste, say) in virtue of the possession of which they areable to discern historical connections between established artworksand candidate artworks. Then the definition’s claim to beinterestinglyhistorical is questionable, because it makesart status a function of whatever ability it is that permits expertsto discern the art-making properties.

Defenders of historical definitions have replies. First, as regardsautonomous art traditions, it can be held that anything we wouldrecognize as anart tradition or anartisticpractice would display aesthetic concerns, because aesthetic concernshave been central from the start, and persisted centrally forthousands of years, in the Western art tradition. Hence it is anhistorical, not a conceptual truth that anything we recognize as anart practice will centrally involve the aesthetic; it is just thataesthetic concerns have always dominated our art tradition (Levinson2002). The idea here is thatif the reason that anythingwe’d take to be a Φ-tradition would have Ψ-concerns isthat our Φ-tradition has focused on Ψ-concerns since itsinception, then it is not essential to Φ-traditions that they haveΨ-concerns, and Φ is a purely historical concept. Butthis principle entails, implausibly, that every concept is purelyhistorical. Suppose that we discovered a new civilization whoseinhabitants could predict how the physical world works with greatprecision, on the basis of a substantial body of empirically acquiredknowledge that they had accumulated over centuries. The reason wewould credit them with having ascientific tradition mightwell be that our own scientific tradition has since its inceptionfocused on explaining things. It does not seem to follow that scienceis a purely historical concept with no essential connection toexplanatory aims. (Other theorists hold that it is historicallynecessary that art begins with the aesthetic, but deny thatart’s nature is to be defined in terms of its historicalunfolding (Davies 1997).) Second, as to the first artworks, or thecentral art-forms or functions, some theorists hold that an account ofthem can only take the form of an enumeration. Stecker takes thisapproach: he says that the account of what makes something a centralart form at a given time is, at its core, institutional, and that thecentral artforms can only be listed (Stecker 1997 and 2005). Whetherrelocating the list at a different, albeit deeper, level in thedefinition renders the definition sufficiently informative is an openquestion. Third, as to theEuthyphro-style dilemma, it mightbe held that the categorial distinction between artworks and“mere real things” (Danto 1981) explains the distinctionbetween experts and non-experts. Experts are able, it is said, tocreate new categories of art. When created, new categories bring withthem new universes of discourse. New universes of discourse in turnmake reasons available that otherwise would not be available. Hence,on this view, it is both the case that the experts’ say-so alonesuffices to make mere real things into artworks, and also true thatexperts’ conferrals of art-status have reasons (McFee 2011).

4.4 Traditional (mainly aesthetic) definitions

Traditional definitions take some function(s) or intended function(s)to be definitive of artworks. Here only aesthetic definitions, whichconnect art essentially with the aesthetic – aestheticjudgments, experience, or properties – will be considered.Different aesthetic definitions incorporate different views ofaesthetic properties and judgments. See the entry onaesthetic judgment.

As noted above, some philosophers lean heavily on a distinctionbetween aesthetic properties and artistic properties, taking theformer to be perceptually striking qualities that can be directlyperceived in works, without knowledge of their origin and purpose, andthe latter to be relational properties that works possess in virtue oftheir relations to art history, art genres, etc. It is also, ofcourse, possible to hold a less restrictive view of aestheticproperties, on which aesthetic properties need not be perceptual; onthis broader view, it is unnecessary to deny what it seems pointlessto deny, that abstracta like mathematical entities and scientific lawspossess aesthetic properties.)

Monroe Beardsley’s definition holds that an artwork is“either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable ofaffording an experience with marked aesthetic character or(incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type ofarrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity”(Beardsley 1982, 299). (For more on Beardsley, see the entry onBeardsley’s aesthetics.) Beardsley’s conception of aesthetic experience is Deweyan:aesthetic experiences are experiences that are complete, unified,intense experiences of the way things appear to us, and are, moreover,experiences which are controlled by the things experienced (see theentry onDewey’s aesthetics). Zangwill’s aesthetic definition of art says that something is awork of art if and only if someone had an insight that certainaesthetic properties would be determined by certain nonaestheticproperties, and for this reason the thing was intentionally endowedwith the aesthetic properties in virtue of the nonaesthetic propertiesas envisaged in the insight (Zangwill 1995a,b). Aesthetic propertiesfor Zangwill are those judgments that are the subject of“verdictive aesthetic judgments” (judgements of beauty andugliness) and “substantive aesthetic judgements” (e.g., ofdaintiness, elegance, delicacy, etc.). The latter are ways of beingbeautiful or ugly; aesthetic in virtue of a special close relation toverdictive judgments, which are subjectively universal. Otheraesthetic definitions build in different accounts of the aesthetic.Eldridge’s aesthetic definition holds that the satisfyingappropriateness to one another of a thing’s form and content isthe aesthetic quality possession of which is necessary and sufficientfor a thing’s being art (Eldridge 1985). Or one might defineaesthetic properties as those having an evaluative component, whoseperception involves the perception of certain formal base properties,such as shape and color (De Clercq 2002), and construct an aestheticdefinition incorporating that view.

Views which combine features of institutional and aestheticdefinitions also exist. Iseminger, for example, builds a definition onan account of appreciation, on which to appreciate a thing’sbeingF is to find experiencing its beingF to bevaluable in itself, and an account of aesthetic communication (whichit is the function of the artworld to promote) (Iseminger 2004).

Aesthetic definitions have been criticized for being both too narrowand too broad. They are held to be too narrow because they are unableto cover influential modern works like Duchamp’s ready-mades andconceptual works like Robert Barry’sAll the things I knowbut of which I am not at the moment thinking – 1:36 PM; June 15,1969, which appear to lack aesthetic properties. (Duchampfamously asserted that his urinal,Fountain, was selected forits lack of aesthetic features.) Aesthetic definitions are held to betoo broad because beautifully designed automobiles, neatly manicuredlawns, and products of commercial design are often created with theintention of being objects of aesthetic appreciation, but are notartworks. Moreover, aesthetic views have been held to have troublemaking sense of bad art (see Dickie 2001; Davies 2006, p. 37).Finally, more radical doubts about aesthetic definitions center on theintelligibility and usefulness of the aesthetic. Beardsley’sview, for example, has been criticized by Dickie, who has also offeredinfluential criticisms of the idea of an aesthetic attitude (Dickie1965, Cohen 1973, Kivy 1975).

To these criticisms several responses have been offered. First, theless restrictive conception of aesthetic properties mentioned above,on which they may be based on non-perceptual formal properties, can bedeployed. On this view, conceptual works would have aestheticfeatures, much the same way that mathematical entities are oftenclaimed to (Shelley 2003, Carroll 2004). Second, a distinction may bedrawn between time-sensitive properties, whose standard observationconditions include an essential reference to the temporal location ofthe observer, and non-time-sensitive properties, which do not.Higher-order aesthetic properties like drama, humor, and irony, whichaccount for a significant part of the appeal of Duchamp’s andCage’s works, on this view, would derive from time-sensitiveproperties (Zemach 1997). Third, it might be held that it is thecreativeact of presenting something that is in therelevant sense unfamiliar, into a new context, the artworld, which hasaesthetic properties. Or, fourth, it might be held that(Zangwill’s “second-order” strategy) works likeready-mades lack aesthetic functions, but are parasitic upon, becausemeant to be considered in the context of, works that do have aestheticfunctions, and therefore constitute marginal borderline cases of artthat do not merit the theoretical primacy they are often given.Finally, it can be flatly denied that the ready-mades were works ofart (Beardsley 1982).

As to the over-inclusiveness of aesthetic definitions, a distinctionmight be drawn between primary and secondary functions. Or it may bemaintained that some cars, lawns, and products of industrial designare on the art/non-art borderline, and so don’t constitute clearand decisive counter-examples. Or, if the claim that aesthetictheories fail to account for bad art depends on holding that someworks have absolutelyno aesthetic value whatsoever, asopposed to some non-zero amount, however infinitesimal, it may bewondered what justifies that assumption.

4.5 Hybrid (Disjunctive) Definitions

Hybrid definitions characteristically disjoin at least oneinstitutional component with at least one aesthetic component, aimingthereby to accommodate both more traditional art and avant-garde artthat appears to lack any significant aesthetic dimension. (Suchdefinitions could also be classified as institutional, on the groundsthat they make provenance sufficient for being a work of art.) Hencethey inherit a feature of conventionalist definitions: in appealing toart institutions, artworlds, arts, art functions, and so on, theyeither include substantive accounts of what it is to be anart institution/world/genre/-form/function, or areuninformatively circular.

One such disjunctive definition, Longworth and Scarantino’s,adapts Gaut’s list of ten clustering properties, where that list(see 3.5 above) includes institutional properties (e.g., belonging toan established art form) and traditional ones (e.g., possessingpositive aesthetic properties); see also Longworth and Scarantino2010. The core idea is that art is defined by a disjunction ofminimally sufficient and disjunctively necessary conditions; to saythat a disjunct is a minimally sufficient constitutive condition forart-hood, is to say that every proper subset of it is insufficient forart-hood. An account of what it is for a concept to have disjunctivedefining conditions is also supplied. The definition of art itself isas follows: ∃Z∃Y (Art iff (Z∨Y)), where (a)Z andY, formed fromproperties on Gaut’s cluster list, are either non-emptyconjunctions or non-empty disjunctions of conjunctions or individualproperties; (b) there is some indeterminacy over exactly whichdisjuncts are sufficient; (c)Z does not entailYandY does not entailZ; (d)Z does notentail Art andY does not entail Art. Instantiation of eitherZ orY suffices for art-hood; something can be artonly if at least one ofZ,Y is instantiated; andthe third condition is included to prevent the definition fromcollapsing into a classical one. The account of what it is for conceptC to have disjunctive defining conditions is as follows:C iff (Z ∨Y), where (i)Z andY are non-empty conjunctions or non-empty disjunctions ofconjunctions or individual properties; (ii)Z does not entailY andY does not entailZ; (iii)Zdoes not entailC andY does notentailC. A worry concerns condition (iii): as written, itseems to render the account of disjunctive defining conditionsself-contradictory. For ifZ andY are eachminimally sufficient forC, it is impossible thatZdoes not entailC and thatY does not entailC. If so, then nothing can satisfythe conditions said to be necessary and sufficient for a concept tohave disjunctive defining conditions.

A second disjunctive hybrid definition, with an historical cast,Robert Stecker’s historical functionalism, holds that an item isan artwork at timet, wheret is not earlier thanthe time at which the item is made, if and only if it is in one of thecentral art forms att and is made with the intention offulfilling a function art has att or it is an artifact thatachieves excellence in achieving such a function (Stecker 2005). Aquestion for Stecker’s view is whether or not it provides anadequate account of what it is for a function to be an art function,and whether, consequently, it can accommodate anti-aesthetic ornon-aesthetic art. The grounds given for thinking that it can arethat, while art’s original functions were aesthetic, thosefunctions, and the intentions with which art is made, can change inunforeseeable ways. Moreover, aesthetic properties are not alwayspreeminent in art’s predecessor concepts (Stecker 2000). A worryis that if the operative assumption is that ifx belongs to apredecessor tradition ofT thenx belongs toT, the possibility is not ruled out that if, for example, thetradition of magic is a predecessor tradition of the scientifictradition, then entities that belong to the magic tradition butlacking any of the standard hallmarks of science are scientificentities.

A third hybrid definition, also disjunctive, is the cladisticdefinition defended by Stephen Davies. who holds that something is art(a) if it shows excellence of skill and achievement in realizingsignificant aesthetic goals, and either doing so is its primary,identifying function or doing so makes a vital contribution to therealization of its primary, identifying function, or (b) if it fallsunder an art genre or art form established and publicly recognizedwithin an art tradition, or (c) if it is intended by itsmaker/presenter to be art and its maker/presenter does what isnecessary and appropriate to realizing that intention (Davies 2015).(In biology, aclade is a segment in the tree of life: agroup of organisms and the common ancestor they share.) Artworlds areto be characterized in terms of their origins: they begin withprehistoric art ancestors, and grow into artworlds. Hence all artworksoccupy a line of descent from their prehistoric art ancestors; thatline of descent comprises an art tradition that grows into anartworld. So the definition is bottom-up and resolutelyanthropocentric. A worry: the view seems to entail that art traditionscan undergo any changes whatsoever and remain art traditions, since,no matter how distant, every occupant of the right line of descent ispart of the art tradition. This seems to amount to saying that as longas they remain traditions at all, art traditions cannot die. Whetherart is immortal in this sense seems open to question. A second worryis that the requirement that every art tradition and artworld stand insome line of descent from prehistoric humanoids makes it in principleimpossible for any nonhuman species to make art, as long as thatspecies fails to occupy the right location in the tree of life. Whilethe epistemological challenges that identifying artworks made bynonhumans might pose could be considerable, this consequence of thecladistic definition’s emphasis on lineage rather than traitsraises a concern about excessively insularity.

A fourth hybrid definition is the “buck-passing” view ofLopes, which attempts an escape from the stalemate betweenartwork-focused definitions over avant-garde anti-aesthetic cases byadopting a strategy that shifts the focus of the definition of artaway from artworks. The strategy is to recenter philosophical effortson different problems, which require attention anyway: (a) the problemof giving an account of each individual art, and (b) the problem ofdefining what it is to be an art, the latter by giving an account ofthe larger class of normative/appreciative kinds to which the arts(and some non-arts) belong. For, given definitions of the individualarts, and a definition of what it is to be an art, if every artworkbelongs to at least one art (if it belongs to no existing art, then itpioneers a new art), then a definition of artwork falls out:x is a work of art if and only ifx is a workofK, whereK is an art (Lopes 2014). When fullyspelled out, the definition is disjunctive:x is a work ofart if and only ifx is a work belonging to art₁orx is a work belonging to art₂ orx isa work belonging to art₃ …. Most of the explanatorywork is done by the theories of the individual arts, since, given theassumption that every artwork belongs to at least one art, possessionof theories of the individual arts would be necessary and sufficientfor settling the artistic or non-artistic status of any hard case,once it is determined what art a given work belongs to. As to whatmakes a practice an art, Lopes’ preferred answer seems to beinstitutionalism of a Dickiean variety: an art is an institution inwhich artists (persons who participate with understanding in themaking of artworks) make artworks to be presented to an artworldpublic (Lopes 2014, Dickie 1984). Thus, on this view, it is arbitrarywhich activities are artworld systems: there is no deeper answer tothe question of what makes music an art than that it has the rightinstitutional structure.^[5] So it is arbitrary which activities arearts. Two worries. First, the key claim that every work of artbelonging to no extant art pioneers a new art may be defended on thegrounds that any reason to say that a work belonging to no extantartform is an artwork is a reason to say that it pioneers a newartform. In response, it is noted that the question of whether or nota thing belongs to an art arises only when, and because, there is aprior reason for thinking that the thing is an artwork. So it seemsthat what it is to be an artwork is prior, in some sense, to what itis to be an art. Second, on the buck-passing theory’sinstitutional theory of the arts, which activities are arts isarbitrary. This raises a version of the question that was raised aboutthe cladistic definition’s ability to account for the existenceof art outside our (Hominin) tradition. Suppose the connection betweena practice’s traits and its status as an art are whollycontingent. Then the fact that a practice in another culture thatalthough not part of our tradition had most of the traits of one ofour own arts would be no reason to think that practice was an art, andno reason to think that the objects belonging to it were artworks. Butit seems doubtful that we are really so in the dark when it comes todetermining whether practices in alien cultures or traditions arearts.

4.6 Evolutionary Approaches;

The bearing of evolutionary considerations on the explanation andunderstanding of art is emphasized by some theorists. Some do soindirectly, and in bottom-up manner, by focusing on the neuralmechanisms of perception or aesthetic experience. An approach that isbroader and more pertinent to the definition of art is pursued by theethologist Ellen Dissanayake. On the basis of studies of theperformance arts, especially music, and the static arts (including,notably, petroglyphs), Dissanyake hypothesizes the existence of adistinctively human capacity she terms “making special” or“artifying” (Dissanayke 2018, 2013). The activity ofmaking-special – i.e., making the ordinary“extra-ordinary” – is practiced by allpeople at all times, and is aesthetically or proto-aestheticallymotivated (Dissanayake 2013). It underlies art, ritual, and play; has“antecedents and counterparts in ritualized and play behaviorsin nonhuman animals”; and can be manifested in pre-verbal,non-verbal, cross-modal, participative, and affiliative contexts.(Dissanayake 2018, 2013) Making-special involves capacities that areprimarily emotional, not narrowly cognitive. It originates in patternsof ancestral mother-infant interaction, according to the hypothesis.These patterns (characterized cross-culturally by emphasis on vocalmovement, emphatic contour, glissando, and dynamic variation) emergedin humans in the Pleistocene. Since the mother-infant relationshippromotes infant survival and maternal reproductive success, the typesof interactions that power that relationship continue to influencehuman behavior and cognition. Making-special in mother-infantinteraction can be operationalized by five aesthetic orproto-aesthetic operations:formalization, which includes“shaping, composing, simplifying or forming a pattern orcomprehensible whole,” rather than leaving the“ordinary” thing as it is naturally;repetitionof elements, “often in a regularized, even rhythmicmanner” different from the ordinary disposition of thoseelements;exaggeration of motifs;elaboration ordynamic variation of motivs; andmanipulation of theperceiver's expectations (e.g., peek-a-boo) (Dissanayake 2013). Theseoperations are characteristic of all artificers, across media, whethermaking-special/artifying artifacts, events, places, utterances,sounds, movements, or ideas. So artists, and mothers with infants, arefocused on the same things: “attracting attention from anaudiences, sustaining interest, and evoking and manipulatingemotion” (Dissanayake 2018). Infants’ receptivity toexactly these operations suggests, then, that humans are born withaesthetic or proto-aesthetic capacities. The “elements that madepossible successful ancestral mother-infant interaction comprise thebiological seedbed from which individuals and cultures could later goon to create their arts”; mother-infant interactions“prepare infants to be artists in the broadest sense of theterm” (Dissanayake 2018). One worry is whether the concept ofmaking-special is so broad that it includes everything humans findinteresting, not just the artistic and the aesthetic (Davies 2012). Ifso, the theory may provide the underpinnings or genus of, while beinginsufficient for, a definition of art. (See also the discussion ofaesthetics and evolution in the entryaesthetics and cognitive science.

5. Conclusion

Conventionalist definitions account well for modern art, but havedifficulty accounting for art’s universality – especiallythe fact that there can be art disconnected from “our”(Western) institutions and traditions, and our species. They alsostruggle to account for the fact that the same aesthetic terms areroutinely applied to artworks, natural objects, humans, and abstracta.Aesthetic definitions do better accounting for art’straditional, universal features, but less well, at least according totheir critics, with revolutionary modern art; their further defenserequires an account of the aesthetic which can be extended in aprincipled way to conceptual and other radical art. (An aestheticdefinition and a conventionalist one could simply be conjoined. Butthat would merely raise, without answering, the fundamental questionof the unity or disunity of the class of artworks.) Which defect isthe more serious one depends on whichexplananda are the moreimportant. Arguments at this level are hard to come by, becausepositions are hard to motivate in ways that do not depend on priorconventionalist and functionalist sympathies. If list-like definitionsare flawed because uninformative, then so are conventionalistdefinitions, whether institutional or historical. Of course, if theclass of artworks, or of the arts, is a mere chaotic heap, lacking anygenuine unity, then enumerative definitions cannot be faulted forbeing uninformative: they do all the explaining that it is possible todo, because they capture all the unity that there is to capture. Inthat case the worry articulated by one prominent aesthetician, whowrote earlier of the “bloated, unwieldy” concept of artwhich institutional definitions aim to capture, needs to be takenseriously, even if it turns out to be ungrounded: “It is not atall clear that these words – ‘What is art?’ –express anything like a single question, to which competing answersare given, or whether philosophers proposing answers are even engagedin the same debate…. The sheer variety of proposed definitionsshould give us pause. One cannot help wondering whether there is anysense in which they are attempts to … clarify the same culturalpractices, or address the same issue” (Walton 2007).

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