Gábor Bács

the Mona Lisa, the Mondscheinsonate, the Chanson d’automne are works of art, the salt shaker on your table, the car in your garage, or the pijamas on your bed are not. the basic question of the metaphysics of works of art is this: what makes a thing a work of art? that is: what sort of property do works of art have in virtue of which they are works of art? or more simply: what sort of property being a work of art is? In this paper we argue that things are works of art in virtue of what they are like, their intrinsic features, that is, in virtue of the fact that they have the perceptual (auditory, visual, etc.) properties they have. In other words: being a work of art supervenes on perceptual-intrinsic features. Currently, this metaphysical view is extremely unpopular within the philosophy of art. It is unpopular because there allegedly exists a knock-down objection to it, the well-known argument from indiscernible counterparts. our thesis implies, among other things, that every perceptual duplicate of a work of art is also a work of art. according to the argument from indiscernible counterparts, however, there could be (or even: there are) indiscernible counterparts such that one of them is a work of art while the other is not. hence things cannot be works of art solely in virtue of what they are like. Our paper divides into three parts. In the first part we state our views. In the second part we defend it against various versions of the argument from indiscernible counterparts. (In doing so our position will become more plausible, we hope). In the final part we provide some meta-reflections on the matter.

In the paper I discuss and defuse Miklós Márton and János Tőzsér's phenomenological objection to mental fictionalism. The phenomenological objection states that mental fictionalism is phenomenologically undermotivated, because mental fictionalism is motivated by doubt in the existence of the subject matter of folk psychology but there undoubtedly exist conscious experiences which are subject matters of folk psychology. While one could argue, in the spirit of realist fictionalism, that mental fictionalism is not necessarily motivated by doubt in the existence of the subject matter of folk psychology, I choose a more direct approach. I defuse the phenomenological objection on the grounds that its premises cannot both be true, because conscious experiences which indubitably exist and conscious experiences which are subject matter of folk psychology are different things. In other words, their argument is either not sound or is invalid, because it commits an equivocation. So I defend mental fictionalism, but I am no mental fictionalist myself. I defend mental fictionalism, because I am against the idea of phenomenologically undermotivated theory of mind as such. The general point I want to make is that no theory of mind is phenomenologically undermotivated, that the metaphysics of mind is not on a short phenomenological leash.