Abstract
In his paper, “Aesthetic Terms, Metaphor and the Nature of Aesthetic Properties”, Rafael De Clercq claims to (i) offer a category-based explanation of the metaphorical uninterpretability of aesthetic terms, and (ii) establish that the concept of an aesthetic property is fully analyzable in non-aesthetic terms. Both would be interesting and noteworthy achievements if accomplished. However, I argue in this discussion piece that he fails to achieve either goal.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
De Clercq (2005), 27.
Ibid.
While many passages in the paper are consistent with a strong formulation, De Clercq ultimately disavows it. See the next footnote for citation. However, I include the strong formulation here to show that there are costs either way for a category mistake theorist.
The weak formulation is the one De Clercq explicitly endorses. He says: “The foregoing does not imply that the application of aesthetic terms is entirely unconstrained - clearly, aesthetic terms apply to some objects and not to others. However, what it does imply is that the application of aesthetic terms is not restricted to a specific category of objects. In a sense, then, there is no category of aesthetic objects.” (Ibid., 29)
To this, he adds: “Perhaps it is not clear how I am able to combine these two claims: that there is no category to which the applicability of aesthetic terms is restricted; that there are categories in which aesthetic terms do not even in principle apply. If so, think of the following analogy. My passport allows me to travel to several countries: all countries belonging to the European Union, the United States, and (part of) China. So there is not a particular country to which my itineraries are restricted. After all, the union of Europe, the United States and China is not itself a country. It does not follow that I can travel to any country. For example, I still need a visa to enter Vietnam.” (From De Clercq’s comments delivered at ____, my emphases)
Interestingly, if we do apply an aesthetic term such ‘tacky’ or ‘edgy’ to describe a non-artifactual object that lacks intentional design or style – e.g., a tacky electron, some edgy produce, etc., the terms appear to automatically default to a fictive reading, e.g., one in which the produce becomes animate and starts behaving in an edgy way, rather than a metaphorical one – e.g., one in which the produce is somehow metaphorically edgy.
(i) “[F]or life is a kind of chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and evil events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it.’ (Benjamin Franklin)
(ii) “This is a game of chess. We musn’t make the wrong move.” (Defense attorney, Kitt Devereux, played by Melanie Griffith, talking to her investigator/friend about the case in the film, Shadow of Doubt)
I take the term ‘self-standing’ to mean context-independent, as De Clercq himself does not elaborate on what he means by the term..
Chomsky (1995)
In the case of ‘tea’ or ‘coffee’, we have: (i) “You are the cream in my morning coffee”; (ii) “Three Cups of (Jasmine) Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School At A Time”; (iii) “I didn’t invite you over here for milky tea and scones.”
Stanley, J. (2002)
Soames (2002), 286–297.
The category, bottle, has a vague and indeterminate boundary of application. Psychologist, Adrienne Lehrer, for instance found that if all optional semantic features - i.e., those regarded as unnecessary by more than 90 % of the informants - of the term ‘bottle’, such as [made of glass], [narrow at top], [for containing liquid], etc. are disregarded, there are not enough features left with which to distinguish it from other terms, such as ‘flask’. On the other hand, if all optional features are made obligatory, then an intuitively true sentence like ‘Some bottles are not made of glass’ would be marked as contradictory. (Goatly 1997, 20–21)
(i) “I am standing water.” (The Tempest, Act 2, scene 1, line 225)
(ii) “I to the world am like a drop of water That in the ocean seeks another drop (Comedy of errors, I, 2, 197)
(iii) “Jed’s been hitting the ol’ bottle again.”
“[C]ategories are based on natural similarity.” (De Clercq, 29)
“[W]hat I have in mind are categories to which entities belong necessarily. In other words, if an entity falls under the corresponding concept, then necessarily so.” (De Clercq, 29)
Medin, D. (1989)
“People only buy what they can safely sell to others, or defend if challenged. Our job as whale hunters is to equip and train the buyers to defend themselves from the attacks that will come later.” (Tom Searcy, CEO of Hunt Big Sales, a sales consulting and training company) [my emphasis]
E.g., prison bar and raging river can belong to the relational category, barrier, despite sharing no intrinsic or “natural” similarity.
(Asmuth and Gentner 2005)
Gentner makes the analogy that relational categories are to entity categories as verbs are to nouns. This means relational categories, relative to object categories, behave as verbs do, relative to nouns. She shows that verbs are more mutable under semantic strain in (Gentner and France 1988) and argues that relational categories are more likely to adapt their meanings to the current context than are nouns.
(Kurtz and Genter 2001) (i)–(iv) don’t directly undermine the claim that we should expect to find few, if any, metaphors derived from relational categories. Only (v) does so directly. But given that traits (i)-(iv) are strongly associated with metaphor, (i)-(iv) would also appear to be indirect evidence that intrinsic similarity is not necessary for metaphor generation.
De Clercq later remarks in section IV of his paper that, strictly speaking, he does not need to appeal to the particular category of visual (or nonvisual) entities in order to make his argument go through. Premises (2) and (3) above could very well have been changed to (2′) and (3′) below without altering the force of his conclusion.
(2′) If the applicability of aesthetic terms is never restricted to a particular category of objects, then a fortiori it is never restricted to a category of nonperceptual objects.
(3′) If the applicability of aesthetic terms is never restricted to a category of nonperceptual objects, then all aesthetic terms are applicable to perceptual objects…
But this only strengthens my objection that the category of perceptual or conceivable objects is not too gerrymandered or disunified to be considered a genuine category. For, De Clercq himself admits that he might as well have appealed to such a category in order to drive his argument to its final conclusion.
References
Asmuth, J. Gentner, D. (2005). Context Sensitivity of Relational Nouns. Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 163–168.
Barr, R. A., & Caplan, L. J. (1987). Category representations and their implications for category structure. Memory & Cognition, 15, 397–418.
Chomsky, N. (1995). Language and nature (pp. 1–57). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Clercq, R. (2005). Aesthetic terms, metaphor and the nature of aesthetic properties. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63(1), 27–32.
Gentner, D., & France, I. M. (1988). The verb mutability effect: Studies of the combinatorial semantics of nouns and verbs. In S. L. Small, G. W. Cottrell, & M. K. Tanenhaus (Eds.), Lexical ambiguity resolution: Perspectives from psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence (pp. 343–382). San Mateo: Kaufmann.
Goatly, A. (1997) The Language of Metaphors. London: Routledge.
Kurtz, K. J., & Gentner, D. (2001). Kinds of Kinds: Sources of Category Coherence. Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 522–527.
Medin, D. (1989). Concepts and conceptual structure. American Psychologist, 44(12), 1469–81.
Sibley, F. (1959). Aesthetic concepts. Philosophical Review, 68(4), 421–450.
Soames, S. (2002) Beyond Rigidity: The Unifinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stanley, J. (2002). Nominal restriction. In Preyer & Peter (Eds.), Logical form and language (pp. 365–88). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walsh, D. (1974). Aesthetic objects and works of art. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 33(1), 7–12.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kim, H. Aesthetic Terms, Metaphor, and Categories: a Reply to De Clercq. Philosophia 43, 1059–1066 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9639-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9639-x