Roger A. Shiner

ROGER A. SHINER

The

Mental

Life

a

of

Work

of

Art

When we do philosophy we are like savages, primitive people, who hear the expressions of civilized men, put a false interpretation on them, and then draw the queerest conclusions from it. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 194. I. At the end of his detailed and subtle study of the concept of expression,1 Alan Tormey refers to The prevalent assumption that a reference to expression in art is either (a) a reference to something lying behind or beyond the work-a thought, feeling, mood or attitude to which the work stands in some external relation-or (b) a reference to something immediately presented to perception as an aesthetic "surface."

Let me introduce the terminology of "Atheories" and "B-theories" to refer to the philosophical approaches which proceed from one part or the other of this disjunctive assumption. A-theories would be characteristically associated with a Romanticism about expression in art, and about artistic criticism. Collingwood, Dewey, Ducasse, and others are uncontroversial examples of A-theorists.2 B-theories would be characteristically associated with a Formalist approach both to art and to criticism. The term "surface" is specifically emphasized by Prall's analysis of expression,3 and Beardsley refers to expressive qualities4 as "regional qualities" of the artwork.5 Discussions of expression in art do indeed tend to oscillate between A-theories and B-theories, not the least, one imagines, because theories of both art itself and of artistic criticism tend to oscillate between Romanticism and Formalism. The initial theme of my paper is that both the existROGERA. SHINER is professor of philosophy at the University of Alberta.

ence and persistence of this seemingly insoluble dispute about the nature of expressive qualities of artworks is caused by the unnoticed influence of a certain confused picture of the mind. I shall argue later (cf. pp. 260) that the influence of this picture is not the whole story, but it is a very important part of the story. This confused picture of the mind is dominant also in philosophy of mind itself. We must therefore turn to philosophy of mind and argue the point for a while there, before returning to aesthetics. II. The false view of the mind I shall call the "Cartesian" view. I use that terminology more for intra-paper identification than for advancing historical scholarship, though I do not wish to ignore relevant connotations. I say "false view of the mind"; however, it would be better to speak of a false view of the mind, the body, and the human being. To think of the mind in terms of the Cartesian view is also to have a certain view of the body and of what it is to be a human being. So I shall speak also of the Cartesian view of the body, and of the Cartesian view of the human being. I shall also refer to any rival theory which takes its essential framework from the Cartesian view as also a Cartesian view. The reason for this is that I wish to emphasize as strongly as possible the common ground between the Cartesian view proper (as it were) and other views.