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Although few philosophers agree about what it is for something to be art, most, if not all, agree on one thing: art must be in some sense intention dependent. <em>Art and Art-Attempts is about what follows from taking intention dependence seriously as a substantive necessary condition for something's being art. Christy Mag Uidhir argues that from the assumption that art must be the product of intentional action, along with basic action-theoretic account of attempts (goal-oriented intention-directed activity), follows a host of sweeping implications for philosophical enquiry into the nature of art and its principal relata such as authorship, art forms, and art ontology: e.g., DT An informative distinction between art, non-art, and failed-art that any viable theory of art must capture.DT A far more productive minimal framework for authorship not only capable of systematically addressing issues of collective authorship appropriation, etc. but also one according to which artists just are authors.DT A coherent and structurally precise account of art forms based upon the relation between artists, artworks, and the sortal properties thereof.DT A unified and far less metaphysically suspect ontology of art according to which if there are such things as artworks, then artworks must be concrete things.Ultimately, Mag Uidhir aims neither to propose nor to defend any particular, precise answer to the question "What is art?" Instead, he shows the ways in which taking intention-dependence seriously as a substantive necessary condition for being art can be profoundly revelatory, and perhaps even radically revisionary, as to the scope and limits of what any particular, precise answer to such a question could viably be.
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Art and Art-Attempts This page intentionally left blank Art and Art-Attempts Christy Mag Uidhir 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Christy Mag Uidhir 2013 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–966577–8 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1 1. Art and Failed-Art 1.1 To be or not to be . . . or to fail to be 1.2 , non- , almost- , and failed- 1.2.1 An instructive example: lawyers and failed-lawyers 1.3 A theory of attempts 1.3.1 An instructive example: bluffs and bluff-attempts 1.3.2 Attempts to versus -attempts (attempts de re versus attempts de dicto) 1.3.3 Intentions in art and attempts in art theory 1.4 Failed-art and failed-art theory 1.4.1 1.4.2 1.4.3 1.4.4 1.4.5