Is the Constructionalist Program Still Relevant? Robert Cantrick The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 51, No. 1. (Winter, 1993), pp. 71-72. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28199324%2951%3A1%3C71%3AITCPSR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism is currently published by The American Society for Aesthetics.
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Discussion 3. George Dickie, Art and the Aesrheric (Cornell Un~versity Press, 1974), pp. 19-52. 4. Wollheim, Painting As an Arr, p . 14. 5. Ibid, p. 15. 6 . Dickie, Arr and rhe Aestheric, p p . 35-36. 7 . Ibid., p. 36. 8. Ibid., p. 34. 9. Ibid.. p. 38.
Is the Constructionalist Program Still Relevant? Lucian Krukowski makes some striking comparisons between art and philosophy in his article, "Aufbau and Bauhaus" [this Journal 5 0 (1992): 197-2091. For example, he writes: "Mondrian's mature thesis is that reality is artistically served not by picturing its changing moments but by revealing what remains constant between them" (p. 207). He compares Mondrian's concept with Nelson Goodman's concept of a time quale, because the latter is "an element common to all moments" (ibid.). Krukowski concludes that the constructionalist program in philosophy adumbrates such present-day trends as cognitive models for music listening and computer models for music composing. Krukowski is astute in discerning some threads of intellectual history generally overlooked. In fact. he might have taken his argument a step further-out of the realm of intellectual history and into the midst of a problem in music theory and philosophy of music still unsolved. Let me explain. Goodman's Structure of Appearance raises in a reader's mind a question which is never answered. The question concerns the identity of a time quale. A time quale for Goodman is a certain perceived aspect of a concrete phenomenon, namely a position in time of that concretum. Similarly, a place quale for Goodman is a certain perceived aspect of a concrete phenomenon, namely a location in space of that concretum. Thus, a time quale of x is whenever x is, just as a place quale is wherever x is. In ordinary language one might say that whenever x is, that is a temporal position of x. Now, any reader knows that there is a clear distinction between (a) the one and only one temporal position of x (say July 4 , 1776) and (b) the same temporal position of x again and again (say, Independence Day). Since the definite description 'the one and only one temporal position of x' identifies the one and only one temporal position of x, the definite description 'the same temporal position of x again and again' does not identify the one and only one temporal position of x. Therefore, a question of identity arises. Which definite description identifies a time quale of x: (a) or (b)? A reader has difficulty finding an explicit answer to this question in Structure
of Appearance, where the point is not to identify temporal positions, but rather to name or repeat or replicate them.? However, this identity question is to the point in music theory and philosophy of music. It arises when one distinguishes a musical work from its performance. A musical work is (b) some temporal positions which are the same again and again at every performance, whereas a performance of a musical work is (a) some temporal positions which are music once and only once. Therefore, the identity question above can be re-stated in musical terms as follows. Are time qualia in music identified by (b) referring to the same music performed again and again or by (a) referring to some music performed once and only once? Let no one suppose that Goodman answered this question in his later book, Languages of Art. The theory of notation in chapter IV of that book defines a musical work as a compliance class of its performances, a class identified by the symbols which comprise a music score. But notice that Goodman has in mind expressly the particular kind of music score symbols which were written in staff notation in the Western European cultural tradition between c. 1650 and 1950, namely conventional notes and rests.3 Now, any temporal position identified by one such note or rest symbol is (b) some temporal position which is the same at every performance, not (a) a temporal position which is music once and only once. For example, the first score notation of the "Ode to Joy" melody when it is first sung in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony identifies the same temporal position again and again at every performance, namely the first beat of measure 241 of the last m ~ v e m e n t . ~ By contrast, the theory of expression in chapter I1 of Languages of Art identifies a temporal position in music as (a) a time of x performed once and only once, not as (b) the same time of x performed again and again. To be specific, this chapter contains the statement that a conductor's gestures denote the sounds called forth from the orchestra (p. 61). This is to imply that each of the conductor's beat-gestures, each of which is obviously performed once and only once, is a symbol which identifies each temporal position of the music once and only once. Therefore, Languages of Art leaves unanswered the identity question: is a time quale in music (b) a recurring temporal position identified by a score notation, or (a) a unique temporal position identified by a conductor's beat-gesture? The continuing relevance of Goodman's concept of a time quale is not that he has mooted a fundamental question of music theory and philosophy of music, but rather that he has sharpened it. He himself might say that the question is 'When is music?'5 But this way of putting the question fails to distinguish between 'Whenever is music?' and 'When in particular is music?' These three questions are all questions about
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism temporal identity in music. If the concept of a time quale provides no clear answer to these identity questions, nevertheless that is the very reason it seems relevant. It remains relevant because it remains a useful tool for clarifying a fundamental problem of music theory and philosophy of music, namely: how can a temporal position in music be identified? ROBERT CANTRICK
Performing Arts Department SUNY College at Buffalo
1. "We cannot somehow literally detach a quale or a concretum or any other part of experience from the rest; but we can analyze the stream of phenomena into elements of any of these kinds for purposes of systematic description." Nelson Goodman, Structure of Appearance, 2d ed. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1966), p. 356. 2. Naming not identity is discussed in XI, 2. Repeatability not identity is discussed in VII, 8. Replication not identity is discussed in XI, 2. 3. Goodman acknowledges that other systems of music notation have been developed in diverse historical periods and diverse cultural traditions of the world, but categorically denies that they have been of any great influence or significance. To discuss this controversial denial here would exceed the limits of a brief note. 4. This score notation also identifies a concrete phenomenon which is in this temporal position, namely the baritone soloist singing the first syllable of 'Freude', the German word for 'joy'. In other words, this score notation conflates two things Goodman distinguishes, namely a time quale and a concretum. 5. He gave the title "When Is Art?" to a lecture presented at SUNY College at Buffalo in 1972; later he gave the same title to an article in The Arts and Cognition (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), and it has been reprinted as a chapter of Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978).
Hutcheson and Complex Ideas A Reply to Peter Kivy I can, I think, accept the possibility of reading the specific texts under discussion, in Peter Kivy's reply to my "Lockean Aesthetics," as he proposes, though his reading of "obtains" seems to me stretching a bit.* We are not in basic disagreement about how ideas work in Locke and Hutcheson, and Kivy is, as usual, admirably clear. (I will deal with the contradiction he sees in my way of construing the text shortly.) We disagree, I think, about Kivy's basic argument which I take to be as follows: Senses produce only simple ideas; the internal sense is a sense for Hutcheson; so what results from an internal sense must be a simple idea.3 Several points support this position. Simple
ideas are the Lockean building blocks, and sense is their only source. It does not follow from that alone that simple ideas are all that sense produces. But that seems the clear implication since comlex ideas are compounds of simple ideas and not themselves original sources. Further, the irreducibility which marks simple ideas seems to arise from the specific nature of senses-one sense, one idea. Finally, others in the same traditions to which Hutcheson belongs clearly state that senses produce only simple ideas. For example, Alexander Gerard claims "that taste is properly a kind of sensation, can scarce be called in question, by any one who has clear and distinct ideas. It supplies us with simple perceptions, entirely different from all that we receive by external sense, or by r e f l e ~ t i o n . "Moreover, ~ Gerard defends the identification of taste as a sense by including among the "phenomena" of senses the following: "It is a power which supplies us with such simple perceptions, as cannot be conveyed by any other channel to those who are destitute of that sense."Werard attributes his position on sense to Hutcheson, so evidently the identification of sense and simple ideas seemed obvious at the time. Therefore, Kivy certainly seems justified in thinking that senses produce only simple ideas for Hutcheson. Once he establishes that, the crucial passages can be read in a way that makes beauty the product of a sense, the conclusion follows. The idea of beauty must then be a simple idea. In contrast, I accept that the ideas in question are the product of an internal sense; yet I deny that it requires that they be simple ideas (though they may be). I want to make two points in defense of this position. First, in spite of its plausibility, it is not clear to me that Hutcheson is committed to Kivy's basic argument. Locke explicitly includes beauty among complex ideas, and for Locke, complex ideas are the product of reflection which he also calls an internal sense, so evidently Locke does not subscribe to the claim that a sense must produce only simple ideas. However, Locke is obviously using "internal sense" in an analogical way, and Hutcheson rejects Locke's way of describing reflection. Nevertheless, for Hutcheson the workings of an internal sense are still analogical (there is not organ of internal sense, for example), and one must take into account what the analogy is supposed to accomplish and what its limits are. Kivy is really quite good here in one respect. The internal sense has as its objects ideas, and those ideas may be complex. I think Hutcheson has extended "internal sense" at this point so that it plays the role Locke assigns to reflection. In that case, the analogy to sense is intended to accomplish what Lockean reflection accomplishes-it is a second source of ideas. But because it occuplies the hierarchical position of reflection, its ideas correspond to the position that Locke assigns to ideas of reflection, and that might
