Hi David,

Yes, your approach is quite rigourous and you are right to ask such questions. But I am not, as you guessed, interested in defining art or amateur activities.

My concern can be seen as quite parochial in tte same way that taking a motif in a certain period and tracing its origins in art history might seem to be parochial and uninteresting to some. However, it is quite a large period that you mention from 1600s although the kind of framing I am talking about can actually be seen in the Renaissance period and much earlier and in many other cultures. Of course you are right that any old frame can be used in a basic functional way but coupled with reflexive devices such as mirrors, paintings in paintings, scenes in scenes where the artist is embedding one narrative insdie another so that you ahve a split narrative shows a certain amount of deliberation, a certain amount of self-consciousness which is qualitatively distinct mental state or states that art in these cases and with these devices seems to stimulate in very interesting ways.

It involves the viewer/artist thinking about representation and its means, rather than just the story, and sometimes helps to engage us in reflection on how one sees. You could say that there are many ways art does this, but I am only looking at one particular way to illustrate a point about how some visual devices encourage HOTs -- I can't do a comprehensive analysis of all the ways, although somebody could. But it's important, I think to show philsophers that HOTs are not merely lexical devices or mental constructs detached in the mind, that they are also visually experienced engaging in painting a picture and visually enjoying it, sometimes instantly, yet also in a sustained way in rather intricate patterns which often seem to reference each other. In a way they are enacted in art rather than just mentally detached.

The fact that deliberate framing devices are found in many cultures to enhance various narrative strategies is important because it stops us from privileging western art as the only kind of reflexive art. Indian miniatures, for example, are not naive childlike pictures -- some of them use narrative devices in very complex, reflexive and self aware ways, we shouldn't just credit Velazquez and Vermeer as 'intellectual' painters. 

In a small way I am only trying to move the rather dry debates we have in philosophy about the qualities of self-consciousness into the visual world. I am an art historian interested in directing some (not all) philsophical issues to some, not all, kinds of art because I believe that there is an interesting, mutually illuminating relationship that sometimes occurs. It doesn;t always work, it sometimes may not get us closer to defining what art is, but sometimes it is important to be able to demarcate a large field in order to focus on some specific areas.