Exemplification and the Cognitive Value of Art Douglas J. Dempster Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 49, No. 3. (Mar., 1989), pp. 393-412. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28198903%2949%3A3%3C393%3AEATCVO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society.
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. XLIX, NO. 3, March 1989
Exemplification and the Cognitive Value of Art DOUGLAS J . DEMPSTER
Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
Introduction Nelson Goodman has claimed that the arts and the sciences are not so different after all: the arts and the sciences, he thinks, are all "symbol-minded" activities whereby artistic and scientific communities try to construct more "fitting" or appropriate or true renderings of the world.' Both the arts and the sciences, he also claims, by virtue of being symbolic activities, are cognitively valuable: [Tlhe arts must be taken no less seriously than the sciences as modes of discovery, creation, and enlargement of knowledge in the broad sense of advancement of understanding, and thus the philosophy of art should be conceived as an integral part of metaphysics and epistemology. [WOW, p. I O ~ ] "
And Goodman complements this view by deriding the commonplace suggestion that works of art are essentially valuable in some hedonistic sense. The arts and sciences are unified and distinguished within the framework of Goodman's theory of symbols, which is laid out in Languages of Art and elaborated in his later works: Scientific discourse is characterized by the employment of unambiguous, notational symbol systems; the arts I would like to thank Jerrold Levinson and Colin Lyas for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. See also LA, p. 255-65. All references to the works of Nelson Goodman will be abbreviated as follows: Languages of Art (LA), (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968); Ways of Worldmaking (WOW), (Cambridge: Hackett, 1978); Of Mind and Other Matters (MOM), (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1984); Problems and Projects (PP), (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.)
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are characterized by the employment of non-notational symbol systems that tend toward ambiguity and repleteness. An obvious obstacle to Goodman's ideas about the symbolic function and cognitive value of art is that much art, and certainly most music, is not seemingly meaningful or representational in any way. But works of art, even when not representational, may still be expressive. Goodman turns that observation to advantage by construing expressiveness as a symbolic relation of a special kind. Expressiveness in art, he says, is metaphorical exemplification.' Exemplification is, in turn, a strain of reference, and refGoodman calls exemplifying symbols erence a variety of symb~lization.~ 'samples', and believes that works of art are "symptomatically," though not necessarily, sample^.^ Consequently, Goodman's assimilation of the arts to his theory of symbols depends importantly on his account of works of art as samples or exemplifying symbols. In the second and third parts of this paper, I shall consider Goodman's account of exemplification. I shall argue that his account, insofar as it can be made clear, is neither necessary nor sufficient, and that it fails to distinguish exemplification from other elementary forms of reference. More exactly, I cannot see how Goodman can manage t o give a referential account of exemplification within the ontological constraints of nominalism. In order to salvage his claims about exemplification and the cognitive value of art, I shall argue that either the referential analysis of exemplification or the nominalist constraints will have to be abandoned. Before turning to that argument, I want to suggest, in the first part of this paper, that Goodman's account of exemplification may also play an essential role in his nominalist solution to the problem of fictive descriptions and representations. His well knpwn solution to these problems seems to require something like an exemplificational relation between predicates with empty extensions and descriptions of those predicates. If his account of exemplification should have difficulties, as I think it does, then it will also jeopardize his proposed solution. And if that solution Philosophers of art have traditionally been troubled by talk of the expressive properties of art because such attributions usually include psychological predicates: works of art are often described as being despairing, anguished, exuberant, light hearted, etc. But at least on the face of the matter, paintings, performances, and other media do not have the psychological stuff that such states are made of. Though it is not his principal concern. Goodman's account of expressiveness also addresses this traditional problem in a fairly standard way: descriptions of the expressive properties of a work of art are in some sense metaphorical attributions. And to his credit, Goodman gives an account of metaphor to support his solution. But I mean to avoid in this paper any discussion of metaphor. See LA, p. 59. See also LA, pp. 252-55;WOW, pp. 67-69;MOM, pp. 135-38.
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should fail, then doubt is cast on Goodman's entire theory of meaning and symbol systems. In the final section of the paper, I shall make some brief suggestions about how to salvage claims about the cognitive value of art in more pragmatic terms while abandoning the need to characterize all works of art as having a symbolic or referential function. I thereby reserve the prospect of nominalism.
As a nominalist, Goodman excludes intensional entities, such as meanings, senses, or concepts, from his ontology. This makes for special difficulties in explaining differences of meaning between "fictive" terms, predicates, or descriptions. (In this section I am going to follow Goodman in using the term 'predicate' in a pretty causal way. A predicate, for Goodman, seems to be any expression that has a denoting function.) A fictive predicate is not one that is itself a fiction, but one that would denote fictional or otherwise non-existent entities if any existed. Common sense insists that the predicates 'centaur' and 'unicorn' have different meanings, but they clearly have identical empty extensions. So not even the nominalist can attribute all differences of meaning to differences of extension. Goodman attempts to solve this problem while avoiding "the dismal search through Never-Never land for some ghostly entities call 'meanings"' [PP, p. 2251. He proposes that two predicates have the same meaning just in case they have the same primary and secondary extensions [PP, p. 2271. Everything denoted by a predicate comprises its primary extension. Everything denoted by compound expressions in which a predicate appears comprises its secondgry extension [PP, 2271. So, 'centaur' and 'unicorn' have the same empty primary extension, but they have very different secondary extensions due to the fact that not all descriptions of centaurs are descriptions of unicorns and not all pictures of centaurs are pictures of unicorns. Thus, the secondary extension of the terms differ, at least with respect to some of their compounds, and that difference makes the semantic difference that Goodman is looking for. Now this proposal has to be qualified in order to meet some obvious objections. First, the secondary extension of a predicate must not influence the truth value of existential sentences in which it appears. No predicate will have, on Goodman's view, an empty secondary extension; but that fact alone must not guarantee the falsehood of any negative existential claim. Second, Goodman warns that compounds of the predicate 'unicorn', such as 'a picture of a unicorn' or 'a description of a unicorn', must not be construed as relational predicates. Something can be a picture of a uni-
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corn without there being a unicorn that the picture is a picture of. These predicates are to be construed as one-place predicates, and he adopts the convention of hyphenated predicates to emphasize this point: e.g., rather than talk about a picture of a unicorn he talks about a 'unicorn-picture' [PP, 2261. Now it looks as though Goodman is here treating the meaning of a predicate as at least partly syncategormatic. That is, the meaning of a predicate is partly a matter of the systematic influence it has on the mean. ~ rest of ing of linguistic environments into which it can be i n ~ e r t e dThe the predicate's meaning is straightforwardly a matter of its primary extension. But this cannot be, contrary to appearances, exactly what Goodman means. Not every expression into which a predicate can be syntactically inserted can have a bearing on the secondary extension of that predicate: If extensions of both 'a unicorn-description' and 'a non-unicorn-description' contribute to the secondary extension of the term 'unicorn', then the secondary extension of 'unicorn' will include all descriptions. And the secondary extension of 'centaur', by the exact same reasoning, will prove also to include all descriptions. And this point can be readily generalized. Thus, the difference in meaning between the predicates 'unicorn' and 'centaur' would be reflected neither in their primary nor secondary extensions so long as all compounds of those predicates are regarded as semantically relevant. The semantic problem for Goodman is to find some expression or expressions whose denotation can serve to fix the secondary extension of a fictive predicate. By showing the predicates stand in some semantic relation to the extension of other expressions he hopes to provide a nominalistic basis for distinguishing the meaning of different fictive predicates. But if not just any compound has a bearing on the secondary extension of an included predicate - and thus on its meaning -then which of a predicate's many possible compounds are semantically relevant? Goodman offers no solution - no principled solution, anyway - to this problem. He offers examples. His favorite illustration of an expression that determines the secondary extension of a predicate F is the expression 'F-description'. That expression is interesting because ( I ) it denotes, among other things, the predicate F itself, and ( 2 ) it guarantees, Goodman thinks, that for any two (lexically distinct) predicates F and G, their secondary extensions will differ. He says
For a much more systematic development of syncategormatic meaning see Paul Ziff, Semantic Analysis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960).
Clearly the predicate "centaur-description" applies while the predicate "unicorn-description" does not apply to an inscription of "a centaur that is not a unicorn." [PP, p. 2281
And that difference of denotation, on his view, accounts for the difference of meaning between the predicates 'centaur' and 'unicorn'. This example suggests the following principle: a difference in meaning between two fictive predicates can be captured by the difference of extension of all the expressions that denote the two fictive predicates. But this is clearly too strong. Not every difference between two predicates is a semantic difference; differences of spelling, for example, are semantically irrelevant. The foregoing principle, however, would make every describable difference between two predicates a semantic difference: 'unicorn' is a seven letter predicate denoted by the expression 'a seven-letter-description'. 'Single-horned horse' is a seventeen letter predicate denoted by the expression 'seventeen-letter-description'. These two expr,essions have very different extensions; consequently, if their extensions are semantically relevant to the fictive predicates, then the secondary extensions of 'unicorn' and 'single-horned horse' will also be different secondary extensions. It would follow then that merely on the basis of a difference of spelling, 'unicorn' and 'single-horned horse' will have very different meanings. And that does not seem right. Clearly some, but not all, of the expressions that denote some predicate should determine the secondary extension of that predicate, and thus semantically differentiate that predicate from others. But which of all those expressions that denote some predicate play that semantic role? In his early discussions of fictive predicates, Nelson Goodman offers no generalizations on this matter. Goodman faces a similar problem, I think, in his widely discussed account of pictorial representation. Common usage of the expression 'a picture of x', he thinks, is ambiguous with respect to the difference between what a picture represents, a referential relation, and what it represents something as, which he construes not triadically but monadically. In order to reform common usage, Goodman once again adopts the hyphenation convention in order to distinguish the relational predicate 'x is a picture of y' from the one-place predicate 'x is an F-picture', and these two predicates, he claims, are logically independent of one another. The problem for this distinction arises when we ask the following: which of the many possible descriptions of a picture constitute semantic characterizations (i.e., characterizations of the picture's "representing as" function) as opposed, say, to mere material or formal characterizations of the picture? A blue picture, for example, does not necessarily represent its
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subject as blue anymore than a miniature need represent its subject as small. And where two pictures have fictive subjects, there can be no recourse to differences in extension to capture some intuitive difference in representational content. But beyond some perspicuous illustrations, Goodman offers no very complete picture of his semantic theory of picturing. Goodman does suggest -without working out the suggestion -that a nominalist solution to the problem of fictive predicates and fictive pictures is to be found in the relation of exemplification.' Goodman construes exemplification as a form of reference distinct from denotation. Though a predicate such as 'unicorn' denotes nothing, it still exemplifies unicorndescriptions, of which there are many, and it does not exemplify centaurdescriptions, of which there are many others. What is more, not every property possessed by a predicate or picture is exemplified by it; so this suggestion would seem to offer a solution to our problem. If we take this proposal seriously, then the secondary extension of predicates and pictures will be determined by what a predicate or picture exemplifies. What I have accomplished so far is simply to show that Goodman's account of exemplification is important not only to his proposed unification of the arts and sciences, his claims about the cognitive value of art and his solution to the puzzle of expressiveness in art, but it also seems to play an important role in completing his nominalist accounts of synonymy and pictorial representation. That makes exemplification worth thinking about.
(ii) In Languages of Art, Nelson Goodman presents a "systematic inquiry into the varieties and functions of symbols . . ." [p. xi]. Symbols are, for Goodman, things that "stand for," "pick out," "apply to," or "refer to'' other things, or are the right sort of things in a system of such relations. A symbol is a functional kind of thing: so long as some entity satisfies the proper position in the referriilg relation, it is a symbol. O n Goodman's view, reference comes in at least two fundamentally distinct varieties: denotation and e ~ e m ~ l i f i c a t i oAccordingly, n.~ symbols
' From
LA, p. 66: "[Flictive description and fictive representation reduce to exemplification of a special kind. 'Centaur' or a picture of a centaur exemplifies being a cen. taur-description or a centaur-picture, or more generally, being a centaur-label. Description-as and representation-as, though pertaining to labels, are likewise matters of exemplification rather than of denotation." And in MOM, p. 88: "Representation, representation-as, and fictive representation can all be explained in terms of, rather than as, species of reference." See LA, pp. 65 and gz. Goodman suggests some odd things about exemplification and
..
come in two parallel varieties: denoting symbols or "labels," and exemplifying symbols or "samples." Among labels Goodman groups pictures, diagrams, scores, descriptions, models, maps, scripts, and texts. Samples are taxonomically less tractable, including, among other things, tailors' swatches, color chips, specimens, demonstrations, and, presumably, artistic expressions. What exactly, on Goodman's view, are depotational and exemplificational reference, or alternately, what are labels and samples, and what are the differences between them? Goodman says: Consider a tailor's booklet of small swatches of cloth. These function as samples, as symbols exemplifying certain properties. But a swatch does not exemplify all its properties. . Exemplification is possession plus reference. To have without symbolizing is merely to possess, while to symbolize without having is to refer in some other way than by exemplifying. The swatch exemplifies only those properties that it both has and refers to. [LA, p. 531
. .
Consistent with nominalist strictures, Goodman construes all talk of the possession of properties as talk of individuals being denoted by or complying with labels: Exemplification relates the symbol to a label that denotes it, and hence indirectly to the things (including the symbol itself) in the range of that label. [LA, p. 921
A sample is just any thing that satisfies the functional relation of exemplifying something. What is exemplified is not a property, but a label, and labels are clearly not abstract entities on Goodman's view. A sample that exemplifies some label is "indirectly related," he says, to the denotata of that label.9 Presumably, this "indirect relation" is a semantic relation that, among other things, fixes the secondary extension of a fictive label, predicate, or representation. To put this more precisely, Goodman holds that denotation. On the one hand, he says that they are species or varieties of reference. But then he immediately qualifies this remark by saying that "an element may come to serve as a symbol for an element related to it in almost any way," as if to say that rather than being species of reference, denotation and exemplification are two different ways symbols "come to refer" to something. He also says, in the same passage, that not every case of symbolization is referential. Thus, in this passage at least, Goodman suggests that exemplification and denotation are non-exhaustive species (though perhaps exclu~ive)of reference, which is in turn a non-exhaustive species of symbolization. In LA, Goodman is concerned solely with referential symbols, and he commonly uses 'symbol' to stand for referring symbols. I shall follow his usage. We should wonder in what sense the sample and the extension of its referent are "indirectly related"? Are they referentially related? Does a sample s refer to something x in virtue of referring to 'x'? If so, exemplification would be an odd sort of symbol, one that managed to refer to the referents of anything it referred to.
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'x exemplifies y' is true if and only if
(i) y denotes x and (ii) x refers to y. [LA, pp. 52-53]
He goes on to say that there is a "difference in direction" of symbolization by labels as opposed to samples, in denotation as opposed to exemplification [LA, pp. 52,65,92]. Labels are symbols for what they denote; samples are symbols for what denotes them. The tailor's swatch may be denoted by the labels 'seersucker', 'light weight', and 'made in the U.S.A.' And depending upon how it is functioning (i.e., what sort of exemplificational symbol scheme is employed), it will exemplify some of these labels only if it is both denoted by those labels and refers back to them. There are two serious difficulties for Goodman's view: I.
Condition (i) entails that a necessary condition on an exemplificational symbol, a sample, is that it be denoted by the relevant labels. But for many samples there seem to be no such relevant labels or descriptions. In fact, it is exactly those cases where no appropriate label or description is available that we are most in need of the often clumsy device of samples, examples, and illustrations. If there are such cases, or if such cases are the norm, then they present straightforward counterexamples to Goodman's analysis. Goodman has given this objection a good deal of worry.
2.
Goodman's speciation of the forms of symbolization turns back on itself in an unilluminating manner. What was wanted was a distinction between de'notational symbolization (i.e., reference) and exemplificational symbolization (i.e., reference). What is offered is a characterization of exemplification in terms of denotation and reference. But this account both fails to differentiate denotation from exemplification and threatens circularity.
I shall consider each of these objections in greater detail. First, many samples, though denoted by many labels or predicates, are not readily described or denoted by any label sufficiently precise or appropriate to satisfy Goodman's conditions on exemplificational reference. For instance, if I hope to match an old pair of seersucker pants to a new seersucker coat, I shall use a portion of the old fabric to match against the new for the very reason that just being seersucker is not enough. The old fabric is sure enough seersucker, just as it is fabric, just as it is light weight; both
the labels 'seersucker' and 'a fabric' denote my coat. But the property that the old fabric exemplifies, at least for my purposes, is no more simply that it is seersucker than that it is a fabric. Just any old seersucker, just any old fabric, will not do. The relevant property seems unlabelled in English, or at least in my dialect it is unlabelled. Perhaps a haberdasher would have the words to describe the old fabric. Nonetheless, I would say that in spite of being imprecisely labelled - indeed, precisely because it is unlabelled -the piece of fabric from my old seersucker pants has to turn the trick of exemplifying just the properties I mean to find in some new fabric. What this example suggests is that it is a mistake to think of samples as exemplifying labels or as being samples of predicates. In other words, it suggests that there are real difficulties with Goodman's nominalist account of sampling and exemplification. A swatch of seersucker fabric may be denoted by 'seersucker', but the swatch, if it is a sample of anything, is a sample of the relevant properties possessed by my old suit, whether or not such properties are labelled in my dialect. Or, at one remove from Platonic havens, it is a sample of all the members of a set of fabrics that would pass some matching test were it performed. The swatch is not a sample of the label 'seersucker' or any other label that in this case does, as a matter of fact, denote the swatch. And why should we have thought Goodman's account plausible in the first place? If anything were to exempliQ a description of seersucker fabric, it would surely be something like the expressions 'seersucker' or ' x is a seersucker fabric', but it would not be a piece of seersucker fabric. And when not wrapped up in Goodman's theory, we would surely say that a particular piece of seersucker fabric, if it exemplifies anything, exemplifies other seersuckers or the property of seersuckerness, but not any descriptions of those things. Richard Peltz modifies Goodman's account of exemplification in light of the forgoing considerations.'" He analyzes exemplification as follows: "A exemplifies B" can mean '"B' denotes A ( A possesses B ) and 'A' denotes what 'B' denotes. . . ." That this redchip exemplifies "red" can be taken to mean that "red" denotes this chip and that this chip refers to "red," i.e., this chip denotes whatever "red" denotes. Again, Churchill exemplifies "man" in that "man" denotes Churchill and Churchill refers to "man," i.e., Churchill denotes whatever "man" denotes including Churchill. Churchill then both denotes and exemplifies."
"Nelson Goodman on Picturing, Describing, and Exemplifying," Journal of Aesthetic Education 6 ( 1 9 7 2 ) :71-86. " Peltz, pp. 81-82. lo
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For reasons that will become clear shortly, Peltz interprets a sample's returned reference as denotational reference, thus construing exemplification as a "conjunction of denotations." But for the moment, what is important is that his analysis seems to require that a sample refer not to the label that denotes it, but to those things denoted by the label, including the sample itself." Peltz's view, unfortunately, is confused by a use-mention muddle. There are three terms in his analysis: A, 'A', and 'By.1n brder to avoid confusion, where he uses a symbol to refer to its referent(s) I shall speak of the referent(s) of the symbol (e.g., the referent(s) of the symbol 'A'). Where he uses the quoted symbol to refer to the symbol itself, I shall speak of the symbol itself (e.g., the symbol 'A'). Replacing terminology, his analysis of exemplification is as follows:. "The referent(s) of the symbol 'A' exemplifies the referent(s) of the symbol 'B"' means that (i) the symbol 'B' denotes the referent(s) of the symbol 'A' and (ii) the symbol 'A' denotes the referent(s) of the symbol