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For the full version, see ISBN: 978-91-89283-18-3 (print) published by Linnaeus University Press, Växjö, 2020. Leticia Vitral Linnaeus University Dissertations No 402/2020

Leticia Vitral

Diagrammatic and the epistemic reasoning potential art of Artworks as diagrams Artworks as diagrams Diagrammatic reasoning and the epistemic potential of art

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linnaeus university press

Artworks as diagrams

Diagrammatic reasoning and the epistemic potential of art

Linnaeus University Dissertations

No 402/2020

ARTWORKS AS DIAGRAMS Diagrammatic reasoning and the epistemic potential of art

LETICIA VITRAL

LINNAEUS UNIVERSITY PRESS Artworks as diagrams – Diagrammatic reasoning and the epistemic potential of art Doctoral Dissertation, Department of film and literature, Linnaeus University, Växjö, 2020

Cover photo : /Moderna Museet ISBN: 978-91-89283-18-3 [cropped] Helene (print), Toresdotter 978-91-89283-19-0 (pdf) Published by: Linnaeus University Press, 351 95 Växjö Printed by: Holmbergs, 2020

To my grandpa Geraldo, who always encouraged me to keep the way of inquiry free.

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2 Abstract

This thesis is concerned with establishing a bridge between matters of aesthetics and epistemology, by investigating the mechanisms through which artworks allow agents to derive knowledge through the former’s manipulation. It is proposed that, in order to understand the epistemic potential of artworks, we need to approach them as diagrams, in the sense developed by Charles Peirce. The background upon which the arguments are developed are mainly those of American Pragmatism – with a special emphasis on primary literature from about semiotics and inquiry, and John Dewey about aesthetics. It is introduced that the manipulation upon artworks can be an example of an inquiry process, due to artworks’ diagrammatic symbol-type- token structure, which embody the logical relations of abduction, deduction and induction. Through Peirce’s definition of inquiry, and Dewey’s definition of an aesthetic experience, it is possible to defend that artworks deliberate create states of doubt and chance as to stimulate and guide inquiry as a way to achieve an aesthetic experience, corroborating to the claim that inquiry processes and aesthetic experience share the same ontological basis: it is in the nature of aesthetic experience to confront agents and contexts with state of chance and doubt, to be further guided through inference into a state of regularity and belief. In order to develop and test the argument, I present the development of Arthur Danto’s influential theory of aesthetics based on Andy ’s Brillo Boxes, by focusing on a review of Danto’s main writings about it. The central point that Danto developed in this theory is that what gives something the status of an artwork are not the immediately perceivable sensorial features of an artifact, but something else. I claim it to be a “diagrammatic structure” that can be potentially manipulated through an inquiry process. I conclude by establishing a possible development of my argument in relation to modelling processes: as diagrams, artworks can be understood as models, opening room for the emergence of new hypothesis and conjectures about the relationship between aesthetics and epistemology.

3 Sammanfattning

Denna avhandling handlar om att skapa en bro mellan estetik och epistemologi genom att undersöka de mekanismer genom vilka konstverk tillåter betraktare att få kunskap. Kunskap nås genom att betraktaren kan manipulera konstverket. För att förstå konstverkens epistemiska potential, argumenteras det i denna avhandling, kan de förstås som , i den mening som utvecklats av Charles S. Peirce. Med utgångspunkt i den amerikanska pragmatismen, särskilt Peirces teorier om semiotik och efterforskning, John Deweys teorier om estetik argumenteras det för att manipulationen av konstverk kan vara ett exempel på en undersökningsprocess. Det är en process som stimuleras av konstverkens diagrammatiska symbol-type-token-struktur vilken förkroppsligar de logiska förhållandena mellan abduktion, deduktion och induktion. Med hjälp av Peirces definition av inquiry/efterforskning och Deweys teori om en estetisk upplevelse kan ett konstverk beskrivas som ett avsiktligt skapat tillstånd av slump och tvivel. Detta tillstånd stimulerar och vägleder efterforskningsprocessen och möjliggör en estetisk upplevelse. Efterforskningsprocesser och estetiska upplevelser visar sig på så sätt dela samma ontologiska grund: En grundegenskap av estetiska erfarenheter är att en betraktare och en kontext konfronteras med tillstånd av slump och tvivel: Med hjälp av slutsatser vägleds publiken till ett tillstånd av regelbundenhet och tro. Argumentationen utvecklas och testas i en diskussion av Arthur Dantos inflytelserika teori om estetik baserat på Andy Warhols Brillo Boxes genom en noggrann genomgång av Dantos huvudskrifter om den. Den centrala punkten i Dantos teori är att det som ger en artefakt status som ett konstverk är inte de omedelbart förnimbara sensoriska egenskaperna, utan något annat. I denna avhandling beskrivs detta något som en ”diagrammatisk struktur” som potentiellt kan manipuleras genom en efterforskningsprocess. Avslutningsvis diskuteras avhandlingens slutsatser i relation till modelleringsprocesser: som diagram kan konstverk förstås som modeller. Det öppnar upp för att utveckla förhållandet mellan estetik och epistemologi ytterligare.

4 Contents

Abstract ...... 3 Sammanfattning...... 4 1. Introduction ...... 7 2. Preparing the discussion ground: some starting working definitions ...... 11 2.1. A working definition of artworks ...... 11 2.2. A working definition of knowledge ...... 16 3. Charles S. Peirce pragmaticism ...... 25 3.1. Evolutionary realism ...... 26 3.2. Phenomenology ...... 29 3.3. Fallibilism ...... 38 4. Peircean semiotics and the modes of inquiry ...... 43 4.1. Iconic signs and their role in the entertainment of hypotheses ...... 43 4.1.1. Hypoicons: image, diagram and metaphor ...... 47 4.2. Diagrammatic reasoning and the three inferential modes ...... 55 4.2.1. Diagrams and abduction ...... 60 4.2.2. Diagrams and deduction ...... 64 4.2.3. Theorematic and corollarial (deductive) reasoning ...... 66 4.2.4. Diagrams and induction ...... 70 5. John Dewey’s instrumentalism ...... 72 5.1. Continuity and experience ...... 74 5.2. Experience, growth and inquiry ...... 77 5.3. Inquiry and the aesthetic ...... 86 5.3.1. The role of art in aesthetic experience ...... 89 5.4. Peirce and Dewey in comparison ...... 91 6. Knowledge as experience upon diagrams ...... 95 6.1. Arthur Danto and the ’s Brillo Boxes ...... 96 6.1.1. Diagrammatic features ...... 109 6.1.2. The inquiry process ...... 120 7. Conclusion ...... 130 7.1. Models as diagrams ...... 131 7.2. Artworks as models in the context of intermediality ...... 134 8. References ...... 139

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1. Introduction

The aim of this thesis and its theoretical innovation concerns bridging the gap between two central concepts: “artworks” and “knowledge”. It is concerned with the question “how do artworks, given their diagrammatic features, allow agents to derive knowledge through their manipulation1 ?”. In order to answer it, I will I rely on a pragmatist framework, that I develop by informing contemporary uptakes, as well as resources from primary literature from Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics and John Dewey’s aesthetics. My hypothesis for answering this research question is that artworks are paradigmatic examples of inquiry process, when approached through their diagrammatic symbol-type-token structure. In order to develop this hypothesis I propose two original premises that I deduce from the theoretical background of this investigation, anchored in Peirce’s and Dewey’s writings. The first premise I work upon is that diagrams, due to their already accepted symbol- type-token structure embody the logical relations of abduction, deduction and induction. The second premise I bring is that artworks, as diagrams, are exceptional examples of inquiry processes, because it is in the nature of aesthetic experience to confront agents and contexts with state of chance and doubt, to be further guided through inference into a state of regularity and belief. The example I chose to test my premises is the paradigmatic discussion from Arthur Danto about the ontology of art, based on his experience with Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes.

I start my investigation in chapter 2. by proposing working definitions for both of the central concepts of this thesis: artworks and knowledge. They are starting definitions only, given here with the role to aid the initial moments of

1 In this thesis, the concept of “manipulation” is understood both as an experimental practice of reasoning that encompasses several different processes of thinking (Stjernfelt 2007, Pietarinen & Bellucci 2016) as well as any sensorial activity that one must perform to get in touch with the experience or phenomena in question.

7 explanation of my theoretical background. As the thesis develops, both of the concepts also develop and change from their initial working definitions. “Artworks” are initially defined through the partial combination of some selected aspects of the paradigmatic Weitz’s (1956), Dickie’s (1974), Diffey’s (1969), Danto’s (1981), and Carroll’s (1988) discussions on the nature of such artifacts. I am not aiming at an essentialist description of artworks, but at a pragmatist one, emphasizing the pluralist processual/dynamic character of these artifacts: their identity is not something fixed, but they constantly shift, shape, and are shaped by the passing of time and the experience they might afford. Further, I engage on the establishment of a working definition of “knowledge” – prioritizing this concept over the one form “meaning”, due to the fact that the latter is more closely related to matters of interpretation, linguistics and hermenutics – whereas the former is connected to epistemology and pragmatist philosophy. I develop this concept bearing some central points of convergence in the writings from those who are considered to be the three classic pragmatists: William James, Charles Peirce and John Dewey. Those points of convergence regards the dynamic and processual character of knowledge, the central role of inquiry processes in the role of knowledge in relation to matters of continuity of science, philosophy and everyday life.

In chapter 3, I present the main basic tenets of Charles Peirce’s version of pragmatism – namely, pragmaticism. The three sub-sections in this chapter are descriptions and brief analysis about some introductory conceptual foundations of this author. I conclude them by saying that: in terms of metaphysics, he conceptualizes reality as independent of any mind, and that can only be graspable by means of manipulating signs that represent that reality. Moreover, its foundations rest upon chance, unpredictability and spontaneity, and it is the role of the mind to seek for continuities and regularities on the experience of this reality, so that it can be rendered intelligible. About his ontological basis, it can be said that it follows the principles of what he calls “phenomenology”: everything that can be experienced or hypothesized is irreducibly triadic, and architectonically organized by means of derivative (and not additive) relations. Moreover, any phenomenological process of signification (semiosis) is never isolated, but organized in dynamic and processual interrelated chains. Regarding its epistemological foundations, the process of inquiry constructed as an ever ongoing, growing, fallible, and self-corrective process. And truth – although being an ideal aim – is never absolute, and should never pose itself as blocking the way of any inquiry. The review on the pragmaticism of Peirce continues in the chapter 4, however with a well defined aimed, besides the simple presentation of his ideas. In this chapter I work mainly on constructing, presenting, and grounding in relation to the theoretical background my first premise of this thesis: diagrams embody the logical relations of the three modes of inference (abduction, deduction and induction) in their symbol-type-token

8 structure. I start by presenting the Peircean concept of diagrams, as an iconic signs of relations. As such they are not defined in terms of any visual or material feature, but in terms of logical relations, and how they aid inquiry processes. I propose in this section a new model for understanding the logical symbol-type- token relation that constitute diagrams, and I follow on the exploration of the characterizations of the three modes of inference in relation to this model as to make the case for my premise.

In order to develop and defend my second premise, I turn the focus on chapter 5. Towards another of the classic pragmatists: John Dewey. The importance of bringing Dewey to the theoretical background of this present thesis lies in the fact that, unlike Peirce, he defended that the inferential method and processes of inquiry not only can but should be connected to matters of aesthetic and artistic nature. Like Peirce, Dewey also proposed an own version of pragmatism, under the name of instrumentalism. Some of the main features of instrumentalism that are presented in this chapter. First, the relationship between nature (reality) and experience, two pivotal concepts for Dewey, is explained in terms of continuity, highlight the potential connections it holds with Peirce’s evolutionary realism. Then, the nature of this relationship, with focus on the concept of experience is expanded into the idea of growth. Growth, for Dewey, is what allows experiences to be meaningful by means of regulation of chance, and as such I proposed an intertheoretical connection with Peirce’s phenomenological categories: firstness as chance, and thirdness as regulation. I demonstrate how this connection allows emergence of the claim that inquiry, as a regulating mechanism from doubt to belief, is responsible for growth in experience. Further, I propose the premise that, based on Dewey’s and Peirce’s definition of inquiry and Dewey’s concept of aesthetics, that inquiry processes and aesthetic experience share the same ontological basis: that of growth. With the central two premises of this thesis well defined and defended, I proceed on a chapter devoted to a case analysis in order to test them.

The analysis that proceeds along chapter 6 concerns Arthur Danto’s seminal contribution to the field of aesthetics regarding Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. From his first meeting with Warhol’s sculpture in 1964 until his last publication, on the year of his death, the Brillo Boxes and the philosophical problems around it were ever-present in Danto’s philosophy. I started by tracing the development of his influential theory of aesthetics along those 49 years, by focusing on a review of his main writings about it. The central point that Danto developed in this theory is that what gives something the status of an artwork are not the immediately perceivable sensorial features of a artifact, but something else. His last claim about it is that this “something else” is an “embodied meaning about something”. I, however, claim that it is a “diagrammatic structure” that can be potentially manipulated through an inquiry process. I proceed on this chapter

9 by applying the model about the structure of a diagram I proposed in chapter 4. to the example of Danto’s investigation about the Brillo Boxes. With such, I fulfill the confirmation of the first part of my first premise: that artworks can be approached as diagrams and, as such, they embody a relation structure in terms of symbol-type-token. I advance the chapter by showing how the second part of the premise also holds to be true. I do such by decomposing the diagrammatical structure of the Brillo Boxes into the abductive, deductive and inductive modes of inference and by explaining their mechanisms based on Danto’s investigation. This demonstration of the first premise leads to a confirmation of the second premise: artworks deliberate create states of doubt and chance as to stimulate and guide inquiry as a way to achieve an aesthetic experience, corroborating to the claim that inquiry processes and aesthetic experience share the same ontological basis.

I conclude my thesis in chapter 7 by returning to the two concepts presented as working definitions in chapter 2. I redefine the concept of “knowledge” as “an experience upon diagrams”, and I propose a further path for investigation on the concept of “artworks”: that due to their diagrammatic features, they can be understood as models in the espistemological sense. In the conclusive subchapters I present a brief account of what models are, and I justify the connection between the concept of diagrams and the concept of models. I finalize by providing a brief overview of how this understanding of artworks can contribute to a field that traditionally describes such processes (although not explicitly as having the nature a modelling process) in relation to artworks: intermedial studies.

10 2. Preparing the discussion ground: some starting working definitions

In order to explore the relationship between “artworks” and “knowledge” bearing the research question of this thesis, it is necessary to start by presenting a brief overview of some existing construals of these two concepts. As such, I explicate my own working definitions, that are going to be developed along the thesis.

2.1. A working definition of artworks This is a thesis about art, therefore it is necessary to understand which theories are behind the use of the concept “artworks” along the developing of this thesis. Artworks are a specific kind of artifacts that are produced, consumed, discussed within and help to shape a specific community. At the same time, they are also shaped by that community in return. I am not aiming for an essentialist description of artworks, but for a pragmaticist2 one, emphasizing the pluralist and, most importantly, the processual/relational character of these artifacts: their identity is not something fixed, but they constantly shift, shape, and are shaped by the passing of time, their spatial realization and the experience they might afford. Even though it is undeniable that artistic artifacts are “things”, the pragmaticist approach does not understand “things” as independent of relationships between themselves, of the agents manipulating them and of the spatio-temporal environment of manipulation. As such, reality is seen as a network consisting on interrelated processes, of which “things” are an essential share of its construction. As such, the actions and choices performed upon them imply consequences to ourselves and to reality as a whole. In face of this, what can be understood as the “identity” of an artwork – what makes an artwork an artwork – is also not something fixed nor does it possess an essential character. For this , there are also disagreements on a regular basis about the “identity” standards of such artifacts within the specific community that produces, consumes and discusses them (Van Camp 2006, p.43).

The concept of “artwork” that will be used in this thesis combines selected aspects of the paradigmatic Weitz’s (1956), Dickie’s (1974), Diffey’s (1969), Danto’s (1981), and Carroll’s (1988) discussions. While each of these theories

2 “Pragmaticism” is a term coined by the Charles Peirce (our main theoretical resource here) to distinguish his later philosophy from the traditional “pragmatism” approach. This concept will be further presented, in more detail, on chapter 3.

11 offers important insights, none of them provides a pragmatic satisfactory definition of artworks. In developing such a comprehensive and synthetic account, caution is taken in not claiming to piece together contradictory points of view that these theories exhibit. The presentation of a “patchworked” definition of artworks for the sake of this thesis reinforces my aim at a dynamic and plural account of artworks: I do not believe that there is one concept of “Art” or of “artwork” that changes and develops with time, but that there are several concepts and identities that shift and influence one another regarding historical, social and cultural standards. In this section I explain my choice for the merging of certain theoretical notions as developed by the above-mentioned authors. In doing so, I also explain what are the advantages of the resulting framework.

Morris Weitz (1956), a neo-Wittgensteinian philosopher, claimed that Art and artworks should be described by what he calls a “family resemblance”:

If one asks what a game is, we pick out sample games, describe these, and add, "This and similar things are called 'games'." This is all we need to say and indeed all any of us knows about games. Knowing what a game is is not knowing some real definition or theory but being able to recognize and explain games and to decide which among imaginary and new examples would or would not be called "games". (Weitz 1956, p.31)

He advocates for the existence of a relation between (i) artworks that have already been produced, consumed and acknowledged as such, and (ii) artworks that are still to be produced or acknowledged. Artworks are artifacts that constrain our understanding not only of themselves, but also of other “similar” artifacts. Hence, by having a “background” on already-known artworks and their shared “similarities” we are able to judge and nominate a yet-unknown object as being an artwork - or not. As artworks are continuously being produced, the concept of artworks and, consequently, the “similarities” that are held among them, change: “Art is (…) a field which prides itself on originality, novelty, and innovation. Thus, even if we could discover a set of defining conditions that captured all existing artworks, there would be no guarantee that future art would conform to its limits” (Shusterman 2000, p. 44). The definition of artworks, according to Weitz, depends not only on what has already been created, but also on what is being created. According to this theory, “art” cannot be defined in essential terms.

Another tentative definition of Art was proposed by George Dickie (1974), departing from the claim that artworks should not be classified nor evaluated based on a set of shared properties exclusive to this kind of artifacts, but by their

12 institutional status. The author argues that “arthood” is a status given to artifacts by those who inhabit a community called “artworld”. Therefore, an artwork is: “(1) an artifact [and] (2) a set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain institution (the artworld)” (Dickie 1979 [1974], p.179–180). According to the first part of his claim above, an artwork is an artifact. In this limited context, an artifact is something that is either the product of human labor (such as ball-pointed pen), or some sort of “raw material” that a human can make use of (even if this “raw material” is not visually or tactilely perceivable, like sound waves). For example, one can use a tree’s branch to write his/her name on the sand. In doing so, the branch is acting in a similar manner to the ball-pointed pen: as an artifact that allows making marks on a surface. Even the human body can act as an artifact under those conditions in artforms like performances, and happenings in general. According to Carroll:

It will also be an artifact, for the Institutional Theorist, if someone has merely framed or indexed the object; a ready-made is an artifact if someone puts it forth for exhibition purposes, or even points to it and says that it is an art object, as Duchamp once did with the Woolworth Building in lower Manhattan. A performance can be an artifact in this sense, since it is a product of human labor; not only objects, that is, satisfy the artifactuality condition. Moreover, the artifactuality condition is also meant to indicate that the work in question must be publicly accessible. (Carroll 1999, p.28)

The second part of Dickie’s assertion is more complex. It explicitly defines artworks by means of what is called a “procedural theory”: a theory that confers something a status in virtue of its compliance with pre-defined standards or rules – instead of conferring something a status in virtue of its functions or what it can accomplish. In other words, “what makes something art is that it is dubbed as such by someone with the authority so to declare it, and not whether it deserves the title” (Davies & Stecker 2009, p.71). According to this theory, those who confer artworks such a status are: artists, critics, curators, owners of private galleries or a general distributor, among others. To confer this status, such an agent must participate either in the production or in the distribution of such artifacts, while also having some institutional authority. A similar view on the matter is developed and proposed by Terry Diffey (1969), who argued, just like Dickie, that the status of an artwork is “a matter of institutional fact” (Diffey 1969, p.149). However, the main point of divergence between these two authors is the fact that, for Diffey, the status of art is not bestowed individually by some agents (as Dickie maintains), but collectively, by a group of people, that he names “the republic of art”:

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Anyone involved with the arts whether as creator, performer, spectator or critic of novels, plays, painting, music, poetry, etc., is thereby a firststage member of the republic. He may be a member in virtue of more than one role. First-stage membership, then, is by self-election. In setting up as a writer, painter, etc., a person declares himself elected to the republic. Not every such claim will be recognized or confirmed. Self-election may be recognized, rejected or ignored. (…) self-election may be recognized either by effectively elected members of the republic, that is by those whose own self-election is recognized by other self-elected members, or by the public. (Diffey 1969, p.150)

While Dickie conceives the idea of “artworld” as an institution formed mainly by those who either produce or make the artworks available to a public, Diffey includes the public who consumes the artworks by either discussing, buying, or contemplating them. Diffey’s theory is also procedural, but its scope of “who confers Art such a status” is socially broader than Dickie’s.

Arthur Danto (1981) provided the following definition of an artwork based on two criteria: aboutness and embodiment. In other works, in order for something to be an artwork it must (i) be about something and (ii) x must embody its meaning. This particular example is only briefly mentioned here and will be discussed in more detail later (see Chapter 6.1). Danto asserted that contemporary art “could not be analyzed in terms of mimesis, representation, or expression, and presented an appearance that did not distinguish it from non- art” (Davies & Stecker 2009, p.70). This represents a reaction to the primacy of visuality in Art History:

Visuality drops away, as little relevant to the essence of art as beauty proved to have been. For art to exist there does not even have to be an object to look at, and if there are objects in a gallery, they can look like anything at all. (…) Whatever art is, it is no longer something primarily to be looked at. Stared at, perhaps, but not primarily looked at.3

According to Danto, an agent must manipulate an artwork as an artwork, in order for it to fulfill its role as such. In that sense, artworks are not passive artifacts, that “contain” the unchangeable status of “being an artwork” within its own material essence.

3 Available at: < https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/danto-art.html> Accessed on: 17.10.2020.

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Lastly, Carroll (1988) discussed the ontological properties of art in a narratological context of analysis as a cluster of interrelated cultural practices. In his conception, art should be approached by means of what he termed a “historical narration”. As such, he shifted away from Dickie’s and Diffey’s focus on the social structural mechanisms (in the form of an “institution”) that render an artifact an artwork. Carroll argued that cultural practices are not static, nor stable. In order for cultural practices to endure and develop they need to be flexible, innovative and in constant re-creation. An important characteristic of cultural practices is their plurality, which “involves not only the diversity of artforms, whose interrelations are often evinced by their imitation of each other, but also by the different, though related, roles that different agents play in the artworld” (Carroll 1988, p.144). Because of their plural and non-static nature, cultural practices should be approached by means of narration:

One would not attempt to characterize a nation's identity by means of sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. For a nation is an historical entity whose constituent elements came together as a result of certain patterns of development, whose guiding purposes emerged in certain circumstances, and whose interests can be transformed in response to subsequent pressures. The unity of this sort of entity is best captured by an historical narrative, one which shows the ways in which its past and present are integrated. Similarly, though differences between art and a nation are readily to be admitted, the cultural practice of art is essentially historical. (Carroll 1988, p.151)

By fitting artworks in a historical narrative, Carroll asserts that we would be able not only to identify artworks among a number of artifacts (and the activities in which such artifacts are used), but also to characterize a “coherence” in the artworld – by means of a comparative generalized approach. In light of all these considerations, I define artworks as artifactual entities that belong to a community and are in a processual and relational interaction with:  Other artifacts that share the same ontological nature with those that are being addressed as artworks (as in Weitz).  Agents that participate either in the production, or in the distribution (or both) of those artifacts (as in Dickie).  Agents that consume those artifacts (as in Diffey).  Meaning about something, which, on its turn, is embodied into them (as in Danto)  Historical narratives that regard not only other artifacts that share the same ontological nature with “artworks”, but that also regard the socio- cultural practices in which they are involved (as in Carroll).

15 That this definition is sketchy is not a weakness. Because of their elusiveness, artworks need to be construed in a minimal and general way. The definition contains the necessary basic delimitations of the class of artifacts in awareness of relations established within a community, that shapes and is shaped by the interaction with them.

2.2. A working definition of knowledge The concept of “knowledge” is central to this thesis, given the latter’s concern with matters of epistemology. Due to the use, here, of quotations and references to different theoretical backgrounds and schools of thought, the term “knowledge” is sometimes used interchangeably with the term “meaning”. However, the choice of prioritizing “knowledge” instead of “meaning” regards the fact that “knowledge” is traditionally tied to matters of epistemology and to the pragmatist/pragmaticist philosophy in general - whereas “meaning” is more closely related to philosophy of language and communication studies that, despite their relevance to aspects of the discussion, will not be used as the main theoretical background here. Epistemology is fundamentally defined, in short, as the study of the nature of knowledge, while pertaining also to matters of this concept’s origin, its contexts of application and the theoretical and practical scope it is concerned with:

During the twentieth century, accordingly, epistemologists have debated (1) what knowledge consists in (e.g. justified true belief), (2) what knowledge is based on (e.g. sensory experience) and (3) what the extent of our knowledge is (e.g. objective, conceiver- independent facts as well as subjective, conceiver-dependent facts). (Moser 2005, p.133)

The traditional concept of knowledge is based on the fulfillment of three general conditions: (i) a condition of belief and/or acceptance, (ii) a condition of truth, and (iii) a condition of justification (BonJour 2010). They amount to the epistemological maxim that knowledge is “true justified belief”. However, despite the central position and attention given by epistemologists to define and understand what knowledge is, no specific analysis of it has been taken as the “official” and widely accepted one. Given this lack of consensus, I choose here to focus on a concept of knowledge that derives directly from the main theoretical background that will be explored in this thesis: that of pragmatist4 philosophy. Pragmatism is a relatively new philosophical tradition originated

4 Further along this thesis, the variants “pragmaticism” and “instrumentalism”, coined by Peirce and Dewey respectively, will be explained in more detail. So far, it behooves us to understand that both of them are being grouped under the term “pragmatism” in this chapter.

16 in the United States during the second half of the 19th century. It consists, however, not on any essential theoretical unity and is better defined as “a complex of diverse tendencies of thought that move in different directions” (Rescher 2005, p.355). The lack of a fundamental and central thesis that would be able to combine several distinct philosophers under the pragmatist umbrella is not to be seen as a fault, but as a theoretical advantage that points out to the dynamicity, vitality and ever-growing set of tensions and problems that can be encountered under such an approach:

The resistance of pragmatism to precise definition is a mark of its vitality, an indication that it is a living philosophy rather than a historical relic. This means that questions concerning its principal contentions, major themes, and central arguments are still open questions, questions that pragmatists are still working through. Pragmatism, whatever it is, is still working itself out, still trying to figure out what it is. (Talisse & Aikin 2008, p.3)

Nevertheless, when focusing on the philosophical treatment that pragmatist philosophers apply to matters of epistemology and knowledge, some points of convergence can be found. Some of the most general and evident on the works of the three classic pragmatists (William James, Charles Peirce and John Dewey) are those of: (i) action and dynamicity, (ii) centrality of inquiry processes, (iii) continuity of science, philosophy and everyday life. They are not mutually exclusive, and overlap in several manners, as it will be presented. Departing from these three convergence points, a working definition of “knowledge” is going to be developed for this thesis.

Regarding (i) “action and dynamicity”, James states in the lecture “What Pragmatism Means”, that a pragmatist

turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori , from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards facts, towards action and towards power. That means the empiricist temper regnant and the rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality, and the pretence of finality in truth. (James 1907, p.40 our emphasis)

Peirce who, together with James, are considered the “fathers of pragmatism”, published in 1878, a paper called “How to Make Ideas Clear”, in which he laid the foundational stone for pragmatism and many of its subsequent developments and varieties. In this paper he claims that “to develop [a thought’s] meaning, we

17 have simply to determine what habits it produces, for what a thing means is simply what habits it involves” (CP 5.400). Habits consist on “a general rule operative within the organism” (MS [W] 397), that “causes actions to be directed toward ends” (MS [W] 354). It is a pattern of constraints that guides the manipulation of something by an agent, either consciously or unconsciously (Anderson 2016, p.2), under a set of certain circumstances. As Peirce further develops,

(…) what a thing means is simply what habits it involves. Now, the identity of a habit depends on how it might lead us to act, not merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under such as might possibly occur, no matter how improbable they may be. What the habit is depends on when and how it causes us to act. As for the when, every stimulus to action is derived from perception; as for the how, every purpose of action is to produce some sensible result. (CP 5.400)

The meaning of something is not any essential feature that it might hold, but a dynamic and active process that involves not only practical actualities but also pure - but conceivable - possibilities. The “sensible result” that an action might produce is, together with the activity per se, the “meaning” of the given something, the “knowledge” it can afford. This central claim is further developed in the same paper into what became known as the “principle of Peirce” or “the pragmatic maxim”: “consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object (CP 5.402)”. While the pragmatic maxim exhausts the criteria for anything to be meaningful, it also points out to what should be considered meaningless: that which does not enable action leading to observable effects. The importance of providing an account of knowledge based on the necessity of active engagement which whatever is being taken into consideration is what allows inquiry to be kept on move. By dismissing essential and already-given conceptions and meanings, Peirce focus on the importance of active commitment to the investigations, on whichever subject is at stake, in order to proceed in a series of experiments and manipulations upon it. It also shows that knowledge is no static feature, and it can be subjected to change regarding the action that is taken while one is inquiring about something: “our knowledge of things does not lie in their descriptive characterization; rather it is a matter of knowing what to do with them - how they function in the setting of our own doings” (Rescher 2005, p.356). Let’s take a costumery hammer as an example, what can be known from it, or what can it mean. A hammer is usually known as an instrument that one might use to fulfill the task of hitting a nail into a surface. However, an agent might manipulate its weight and use it as a paper

18 weight. Or use it as a symbol of the working class. Or one can put two hammers together and print them on a progressive-rock album back-cover and say it is the emblem of a fictitious extreme right-wing organization. In all those different situations, the same material object triggers different habits that can lead us to different actions, hence it holds different meanings in each of those situations.

This view on the validity and importance of processualism and dynamicity over essential values, conceptions and significances is also shared by Dewey, who sees the pragmatist approach as a critical tool of inquiry. According to him, by applying the pragmatist “tool”, philosophers are able to dismiss “pseudoproblematic” disputes and concepts which stand on the way of reasoning and inquiry (MW4: 14). In this sense, pragmatism is not seen as an approach concerned with providing answers to philosophical questions – but with suggesting methods to deal with them stressing the possibility of novel meanings to emerge from experience bearing its contingency: “without such contingency in life and inquiry there would be no inquiry, either in science or in common life, at all” (Philström 2011, p.210). This is a remarkable feature that consists on the main epistemic principle of pragmatism, and which will be further addressed in detail on chapter 3.3: that of fallibilism. Roughly speaking, fallibilism is the idea that any process of reasoning as well as any kind of knowledge must be subjected to failure in order to be valuable. The doctrine of fallibilism is a direct consequence of the pragmatic maxim and the focus on active and dynamic properties of knowledge and inquiry. Only by establishing that there is no essential meaning attached to conceptions in general, and by being open to failure and doubt during the inquiry process are we able to proceed freely and creatively on reasoning and acting upon whatever is given us. As such, “true knowledge” is not the goal of inquiry. Actually, the active pursuit of truth as a non-foundational and non-essential matter is what keeps inquiry moving on, since one should “not block the road of inquiry. (CP, 1.135)”. The goal of inquiry is the settlement of a rather stable belief. In that sense, even when faced with something that is regarded as a “true knowledge” of something, as its “truth”, the pragmatist attitude towards it should be to inquire further, opening the room for such truth to be doubted and even to be proven as a failed conception – so that, after trials and errors, a belief can be temporarily stabilized and settled.

The active search for truth and knowledge as described before consists in the pragmatic view that inquiry plays a central role in experience, allowing agents to interact with their environment and the possible knowledge it might hold or potentially afford. Therefore, it is possible to claim a (ii) “centrality of inquiry processes” as a persistent pragmatist topic. Peirce’s view on inquiry is a robust and cohesive application of fallibilism. It is closely connected to the notions of doubt and belief. As a short formulation, inquiry can be understood, for Peirce,

19 as any process grounded on experience, in which “belief” is replaced by “doubt”, leading, through inquiry, to a further replacement by another “belief”, and so on. This is a view on the process that is opposite to the classical Cartesian definition of inquiry: whereas in Descartes one should begin with doubt and check which beliefs can withstand with it, for Peirce “one should begin with universal belief, but should be willing to give up any specific belief when faced with contrary evidence [emerging from a state of doubt]” (De Waal 2001, p.33). Both “doubt” as well as “belief” can be defined as epistemic “states” which weigh on each other and are constantly replaced one by the other. Whereas “doubt” consists in the “state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief”, the latter “is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else” (CP 5.373). Belief is what guides and determines one’s actions and attitudes towards any sort of knowledge, and once it is disturbed by a state of doubt, inquiry must take place in order for the old belief to be reestablished or for a new one to be formed, that can guarantee such a “calm and satisfactory” state again. As such, there is no inquiry without a disturbance coming from a state of doubt. For that reason, truth, despite being a goal of inquiry, it is an abstract goal, for if the “final truth” would be achieved, no more states of doubt would emerge – and, therefore, inquiry would cease. Whereas truth is the abstract goal of inquiry, the settlement of belief is the pragmatic, practical one:

Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and that we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. (…) The most that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere to say so. (CP 5.375)

This idea that inquiry constitutes a response to a certain kind of experience which brings an epistemological state of uncertainty and instability to a cohesive and stable one is also echoed by Dewey, as he posits that “inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole” (LW12: 108). Despite both philosophers having conceptualized inquiry as such a goal- directed activity, Dewey was responsible for broadening Peirce’s idea of inquiry to the realms of politics, ethics and aesthetics, bringing inquiry to everyday life experience in general and to those specific domains as well. For Peirce, inquiry is grounded on practical affairs that are to be found in practical situations –

20 however, he defends that inquiry consists in a scientific method, and not a political, ethical or aesthetic one. Unlike Peirce, and more in tune with the Deweyian contextualization of inquiry, James saw inquiry processes as something not related to an abstract and impersonal concept of a scientific method, but more closely related to human beings as a community. For him, to inquire is to be compelled to believe in something by the way in which reality affects us: “with James, the tenability of a thesis is to be determined in terms of its experiential consequences in a far wider than merely observational sense” (Rescher 2016, p.8). The central role that inquiry as a method for the settlement of belief plays in the works of the classical pragmatists is directly related to the pragmatic maxim:

The prime function of our beliefs regarding the world is to commit us to rules for action—to furnish guidance to our behavior in point of what to think, say, and do—above all, to canalize our expectations in matters of observation and experiment in scientific contexts. (Rescher 2014, p.4)

By settling and guiding our beliefs, inquiry has the role of also guiding our actions, thoughts and expectations upon whichever is being inquired upon and, therefore, upon experience in general. As we are going to defend in this thesis, it is possible to connect Peirce’s theory of inquiry as an impersonal scientific method to other realms of life such as those of aesthetics (in tune with Dewey). Those approaches can be complementary and do not need to rule out one another. And the reason for this lies in another central claim of pragmatism: (iii) “the continuity of science, philosophy and everyday life”. For the classical American pragmatists, philosophy, as well as science, are not compartmentalized affairs that one might practice only in specialized environments. These philosophers see them as instruments that agents utilize in order to achieve a continuing reconstruction of daily life as whole, based on critical and intellectual efforts. Reality and experience have the nature of a process, and so has the knowledge they hold, as previously seen. The role of philosophy should, for the pragmatists, concern more than just discussing and analyzing the ontological boundaries of reality without any practical consequences in hand. Philosophy should “be practical, critical and reconstructive; it must aim at the successful transformation and amelioration of the experienced problems which call it forth and intrinsically situate it, and its success must be measured in terms of this goal” (Stuhr 2000, p.3). Philosophy, science and experience in general are to be here conceptualized as different – but interconnected – tools and scenarios to work upon inquiry, truth, doubt, belief and, consequently, knowledge and the experimental results of practices and actions. James, while referring to Dewey and Schiller on his seminal paper “What Pragmatism Means”, agrees that the concept of “truth” that can be found

21 in anyone’s general ideas and beliefs is the same concept of “truth” that is applied in the sciences:

(…) “truth” in our ideas and beliefs means the same thing that it means in science. It means, (…), nothing but this, that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience. (…) Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally. (James 1907, p.45)

A similar view, however between philosophy and everyday life, can be seen in some of Peirce’s early writings, in which he affirms that:

The kind of philosophy which interests me and must, I think, interest everybody is that philosophy, which uses the most rational methods it can devise, for finding out the little that can as yet be found out about the universe of mind and matter from those observations which every person can make in every hour of his waking life. (CP 1.126)

For Peirce, those three activities are strictly related in such a way that they are concerned with discovering and conceptualizing about universal experiences. Those philosophical discoveries and conceptualizations regarding such experiential features must be then be followed by applications in “every other science” (CP. 1.246). Therefore, according to Peirce, the knowledge that is derived from experience in general through philosophical inquiry, integrated to the experience itself, has practical consequences not only on philosophy and experience, but on the sciences5 as well – that, in their turn, also influences experience and philosophical activities. Given this continuity between them, it is not possible to conceptualize philosophy, experience and the sciences as separated realms. However, Peirce was more concerned with the relation that philosophy, as an inquiry practice, has in relation to the sciences. When it comes to the relation that philosophy maintains with “everyday life”, Peirce was

5 Science here, is conceptualized in a general sense, and does concern the lay notion of science as any “in lab” specialized activity: “I do not call the solitary studies of a single man a science. It is only when a group of men, more or less in intercommunication, are aiding and stimulating one another by their understanding of a particular group of studies as outsiders cannot understand them, that I call their life a science (MS 1334). Moreover, “science” also does not refer to any “body of established knowledge”, but simply to “the activity of the inquirers” (De Waal 2001, p.42).

22 extremely cautious in connecting philosophical activities to matters of ethics, religion and aesthetics:

I have not one word to say against the philosophy of religion or of ethics in general or in particular. I only say that for the present it is all far too dubious to warrant risking any human life upon it. I do not say that philosophical science should not ultimately influence religion and morality; I only say that it should be allowed to do so only with secular slowness and the most conservative caution. (CP 1.620)

The same attitude towards the relationship that ethics, religion and aesthetics hold in relation to science can also be drawn from Peirce’s writings, where he claims, when discussing the role of imagination in science, that: “there are, no doubt, kinds of imagination of no value in science, mere artistic imagination, mere dreaming of opportunities for gain. The scientific imagination dreams of explanations and laws” (CP 1.48). In the same paper, he also affirms that “one of the worst effects of the influence of moral and religious reasonings upon science lies in this, that the distinctions upon which both insist as fundamental are dual distinctions, and that their tendency is toward an ignoring of all distinctions that are not dual” (CP 1.61). This strict view concerning the application of philosophical and scientific inquiry to those realms was not shared by Dewey, who developed his pragmatism – especially during his later phases – based specially on the relations between inquiry and experience, while englobing religion, ethics, politics and aesthetics into his main topics of research. According to him, philosophy, once based on experience, is to be understood as “the ultimate authority in knowledge and conduct” (LW5: 267). For matters of religion, ethics, politics and aesthetics to be understood as experience in such a way they must be understood as possessing similar ontological and hierarchical qualities as any other experiential realm, and must not be regarded as “more fundamental” nor “superior in worth”. They can be subjected to the same rules and methods of inquiry as any other subject of experience, philosophy or science. And, as Dewey defends, it is possible to do so by stripping them of any doctrines or dogmas (in the same manner that the pragmatists also criticize the existence of doctrines and dogmas in philosophy itself, as above discussed): the “adherence to any body of doctrines and dogmas based upon a specific authority signifies distrust in the power of experience to provide, in its own ongoing movement, the needed principles of belief and action” (LW5: 267).

Taking into consideration all the points above discussed, we can synthesize them into a general conception of “knowledge” that would serve the purposes

23 of this thesis, by being able to be integrated its main theoretical framework. As such, knowledge is here defined as:

 A dynamic and active process, that does not rely on any essential feature something might hold, and that involves both practical actualities as well as pure conceivable possibilities.  No static feature of something, which can then be constantly subjected to change regarding the action that is being performed during inquiry processes.  A process which must be subjected to experiments and failure in order to be considered epistemically valuable.  The product of inquiry: a process grounded on experience, in which a state of doubt is replaced by a more stable state of belief.  A process that can take place in the realms of philosophy, the sciences and everyday experience in general, since they can all subjected to the same rules and methods of inquiry – none of them being considered more fundamental nor more superior than the other.

This is a highly simplistic conceptualization, and a more detailed description of inquiry processes - and of knowledge as its product - will be developed further. However, it provides a starting point for the descriptions and analysis of the central theoretical claims of this thesis. Charles Peirce is the pragmatist thinker who developed a theory of inquiry in a most detailed and consistent manner. John Dewey is the one who first brought those theories of inquiry in a consistent way into the realm of aesthetics. As such, the following two main chapters will present some general aspects of both Peirce’s and Dewey’s approaches to pragmatism.

24 3. Charles S. Peirce pragmaticism

Charles Sanders Peirce, as already mentioned above, is not only one of the main classic philosophers of what is roughly called “pragmatist philosophy”, but is considered by many to be the “father of pragmatism”. The term “pragmatism” was first used in a publication by William James in 1898. However, along this article, James refers to another article, published by Peirce in 1879, in which the latter published what became known as the aforementioned “principle of Peirce”, in which the maxim definition of pragmatism as a method is laid. So, despite being printed in paper as, a concept, for the first time by James, Peirce was the first philosopher to come up with the grounding stone of what would become later known as pragmatism. Nevertheless, James also states in his 1898 paper that pragmatism “should be expressed more broadly than Mr. Peirce expresses it” (James 1907, p.259). In that sense, even when regarding the two main founding figures of pragmatism, theoretical differences on both approaches to this philosophy can be found. Such divergences came up from Peirce not only towards James’ pragmatism, but towards other philosophers that approached the method from a humanistic and subjective way:

While James and, soon after him, F. C. S. Schiller generalized Pragmatism into a subjectivistic, humanistic philosophy or world view, Peirce sought to limit it to the status of a maxim in the of science that could receive its appropriate place in a comprehensive, systematic philosophy. (Apel 1981, p.160).

Because of that, Peirce decided to come up with a term of its own to designate his personal approach to this philosophy: that of pragmaticism. He wrote in 1905 that

the word [“pragmatism”] begins to be met with occasionally in the literary journals, where it gets abused in the merciless way that words have to expect when they fall into literary clutches. (…) So then, the writer, finding his bantling "pragmatism" so promoted, feels that it is time to kiss his child good-by and relinquish it to its higher destiny; while to serve the precise purpose of expressing the original definition, he begs to announce the birth of the word "pragmaticism," which is ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers. (CP 5.414)

This consists also on a revision of his own earlier approach to pragmatism, that which led James to believe that “the end of man is action” (CP 5.2-3). In a letter to Calderoni in the same year, Peirce expresses that

25 now, man cannot believe that creation has not some ideal purpose. If so, it is not mere action, but the development of an idea which is the purpose of thought; and so a doubt is cast upon the ultra pragmatic notion that action is the sole end and purpose of thought. (MS [R] L67)

By that, Peirce sought to reinforce the role of the (now) pragmaticist method as not only confined to a humanistic, objective and normative perception of an agent’s practical action – but as a universal method of logic and inquiry. The pragmaticist maxim should also apply, according to his later developments, to matters of hypothesis, pure possibilities and thought abstractions. Pragmaticism can be considered an epistemic turn on pragmatism, in which it is made clear that matters of reasoning, doubt, belief and truth are encompassed by the same method that has been previously connected to praxis and concrete actions. Knowledge and meaning, in general, are to be defined in terms of habits, and not of concrete, physical action or of contiguity relations – since, according to him, such actions and relations are also then governed by habits. By exploring the pragmaticist method in terms of habits, Peirce placed thought and action in the same hierarchical position, tearing down dichotomies such as theory and praxis, possibilities and actualities, as well as reasoning and acting. Knowledge and inquiry are conceptualized then as experience guided by general habits. Given the primary role of epistemic matters on Peirce’s view of the formerly called pragmatist philosophy, the next sections are going to describe, in more detail, some central aspects of his approach.

3.1. Evolutionary realism Peircean philosophy is primarily grounded on realist architectonic principles. Nevertheless, it is also possible, as some authors claim, to frame his philosophy as having some idealist attitudes towards certain claims. Hausman notes that, “this difference is understandable, for there is a sense in which he was an idealist and a sense in which he was a realist” (Hausman 1997, p.140). But what does it mean? And how to present and conceptualize this tension? One possible way to start dealing with this conundrum is to say that his metaphysics is closer to idealist claims, while his epistemology better relates to realist claims. His idealist metaphysics follows a tradition from Pythagoras and Leibniz, “which holds that number is the key to our understanding of the world around us” (Jappy 2013, p.56). This idealist background becomes more evident in his system of categories (which will be presented and explained in the next sections), based upon triads and the probabilistic mathematical relations among themselves. On the other hand, his realist approach to epistemology is to be found in the fact that, for him, in whichever investigation, we are dealing with

26 a reality “which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it” (CP 8.12). This means that there is a “reality” independent of a sign - that needs nevertheless to be potentially signified – and that is not determined by such a sign, but the other way around. Reality as an object of thought and knowledge is, for Peirce, independent of a mind6. However, we must put it straightforwardly here that saying that reality is “independent of a mind” cannot be equated with saying that reality “is external to a mind”. Firstly, because Peirce does not see “mind” as something internal or “mental”. And, secondly, because, even if we were to take “mind” as something internal or “mental”, it is not possible to affirm, according to Peirce, that mental phenomena are “less” real than physical phenomena. Knowledge must have real entities as its objects: "If I truly know anything, that which I know must be real" (CP 5.94). Summing up, we can say that, for Peirce, reality (as object of knowledge) is independent of any mind thinking about it or knowing about it, but it is not external to any mind or processes of reasoning and knowing. And that is why, a mind can only think and know about something in terms of signs – and not in terms of reality itself as an objective, concrete phenomenon “out there”.

Nevertheless, “realism” and “idealism” are highly charged labels, that prove themselves to be more an obstacle than a helping hand on the understanding of Peircean philosophy. Being such, Hausman (1997) proposes that we understand Peircean philosophy not in terms of realism, nor of idealism per se, but of what Hausman calls “evolutionary realism”. Although Peirce never labeled himself as such, this philosophical argumentation made by Hausman on Peirce’s original claims helps to shed a light upon the not-so-traditional realism that Peirce accounted for. This evolutionary realism consists in a processual account of reality and the relations among phenomena and events that take part in this reality. As seen, pragmatism in general is an anti-essentialist philosophic position that rejects any ontological, epistemological or metaphysical account of reality and its phenomena as possessing any sort of essential or stable substance. Whatever one might perceive as reality and even as something stable, is actually a flow (or process) of events and actualities in different temporal scales: “the only stabilities in the processes of reality consist in the relations among events” (Hausman 2002, p.13). However, Peirce believes that it is impossible to reach this reality in its totality and, for that reason, it is impossible to think, to conceptualize or to perform whichever action of signification, reasoning and communication upon something that is not a sign: “try to peel off

6 Mind, for Peirce, does not belong uniquely human beings: “Peirce used such terms as 'mind' and 'thought' in a very liberal or extended sense, by no means limited to human thought or intelligent behavior, which is only a special case. Thus, he explicitly extended it to the behavior of devices of the type which are now commonly referred to as '', on the one hand, and to the behavior of very primitive forms of life, on the other” (Ransdell 1997).

27 signs and get down to the real thing is like trying to peel an onion and get down to the onion itself” (MS [L] 387). The only way one agent can get as close as possible to what this reality might be, is through semiotic processes of signification involving (at least) a Sign, an Object and an Interpretant – namely, semiosis. Semioses work in accordance to the manners in which the mind works: it develops upon habits and dispositions of reasoning, communication and signification. As Hausman says,

it is thus impossible in principle - it is self-contradictory - to characterize the initiating object of interpretation [here used as a synonym for semiosis] prior to interpretation, for the result of such characterization would refer immediately to an object that already has been interpreted. (Hausman 2002, p.15, our commentary)

For Peirce, reality is based upon chance, unpredictability and spontaneity, and this claim consists on his cosmological metaphysical doctrine of tychism: the doctrine that absolute chance is a factor of the universe (CP 6.201). However, in order for a mind to make sense of it, it must seek for continuities and regularities of experience, so that it can render whichever phenomenon intelligible: “the continuous flow of experience is what characterizes the connections among ideas so that experience is intelligible” (Hausman 1997, p.141). This claim regards his doctrine of synechism. It consists on the idea that, despite the factors of chance and unpredictability that exists in reality, the continuity of synechism is what allows meaning and knowledge to emerge: “synechism amounts to the principle (…) that continuity is the absence of ultimate parts in that which is divisible; and that the form under which alone anything can be understood is the form of generality, which is the same thing as continuity” (CP 6.173). This continuity is what lies at the core of Peirce’s architectonic philosophy, and posits that all regularities and laws of habits found in reality and in experience are the result of growth:

The tendency to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by its own action, by habit of taking habits itself growing. Its first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules which were more and more obeyed in their own action. (CP 8.317)

As it will be explained in a deeper way in the following sections, chance is of the nature of Firstness, while regularities are of the nature of Thirdness: and only those who have the nature of Thirdness are able to convey meaning to a mind. As already said, the only feature that comes as close as possible to an

28 ideal of “stability” are the relations and connections between phenomena: for that reason, diagrams (icons of relations) are seminal for our construction of knowledge and understanding of reality. But the importance and functioning of diagrams is going to be tackled further in this thesis.

3.2. Phenomenology Phenomenology, according to Peirce, is the science which considers “the phenomenon in general, whatever comes before the mind in any way, and without caring whether it be fact or fiction, discovers and describes the elements which will invariably be present in it, that is, the categories” (MS [R] L107:18- 19). Further, he also wrote:

In the derivation of this word, ‘phenomenon’ is to be understood in the broadest sense conceivable; so that phenomenology might rather be defined as the study of what seems than as the statement of what appears. It describes the essentially different elements which seem to present themselves in what seems. Its task requires and exercises a singular sort of thought, a sort of thought that will be found to be of the utmost service throughout the study of logic. (CP 2.197)

From both these quotes we can start delineating the main characteristics of Peirce´s phenomenology: it involves something that comes before the mind; it is structured in categories; it regards an experimental study of phenomena; and it serves the study of . Before going deep into each of these aspects of his phenomenology, I would like to make a short comparison with another use of the word “phenomenology” which is broader accepted (although it does not mean the same thing): that of Husserl. Husserl’s usage of the term precedes Peirce’s for less than one year. While the former continued to use the word in a very stable and consistent way (coining it the official “label” of his philosophical thinking), the latter exchanged it for “phaneroscopy” and “categorics” several times along his writings. Spiegelberg enumerates some basic agreements between both “phenomenologies”:

(1) the program of a fresh approach by way of intuitive inspection and description to the immediately given, an approach free from preconceived theories. (2) the deliberate disregard, in so doing, of questions of reality or unreality; (3) the insistence upon the radical differences between phenomenology and psychology;

29 (4) the claim that such a phenomenology would be a rigorous science, basic not only for philosophy but even for logic. (Spiegelberg 1956, p.181)

The reason for such similarities lies not in a probable direct influence – since neither of the authors were aware at the work of the other while coming up with the terminology. It can be said, then, that one possible reason for such agreements is rooted in the fact that both of them were “originally mathematicians dedicated to the cause of establishing philosophy as a rigorous science. And both sought its foundation in a renewed and enriched approach to the phenomena given in experience” (Spiegelberg 1956, p.185). That being said, both Husserl’s as well as Peirce’s phenomenologies should be seen not as an encounter, but as two independent, but parallel accounts, that were developed in a very similar temporal context. However, despite these similarities, many were also the divergences between them (Spiegelberg 1956, Ransdell 1989). The most salient one being the fact that, especially in his later writings, Husserl departs from a typical Cartesian methodic doubt process – which Peirce rejects at utmost. This rejection is clearly visible in Peirce’s conception of experience in relation to phenomenology. The concept of “observable experience” regards, for Peirce, also possibilities – not only concrete, objective facts. Being such, phenomenology cannot be considered an empirical method in the classic Cartesian sense. Rather, it construes experience as a much more comprehensive concept. What is actual and what is possible occupy, within the same phenomenological categories, the same levels of description. According to Peirce’s division of the sciences (Figure 1), the only science which precedes phenomenology (as the first branch of philosophy) is mathematics, as a general branch. Mathematics is the foundational science for Peirce, from which all the others are derived. For him, mathematics is not what the commonsense concept of it means: it is not only about algebra, geometry, and so on. It is about the most fundamental kind of reasoning that a mind is able to perform (“necessary reasoning”7), from which hypothesis can be framed, and their consequences traced out. It is the most abstract and general of all the sciences: it does not regard the necessity of external observations, nor is concerned with asserting anything as an actual, beyond being a possibility. Mathematics, for him, concerns the study of hypothetical states of things, without asserting anything as a matter of fact.

7 Necessary reasoning is that which “the condition of the universe as a whole, or any particular part of it, is rendered, both as to its existence and quality, inevitable. [Necessary reasoning is] Opposed to both freedom and chance, but especially, in its strictly philosophical use, to chance […] or contingency” (DPP 2:143).

30

Figure 1: Peirce’s architectonic division of the sciences (as in Liszka 1996 and De Waal 2001). Phenomenology is the first science within the category of “Philosophy”, preceded only by the category of “Mathematics”.

Peirce defined phenomenology as “the doctrine of categories”. Those categories play a seminal role in his development not only of phenomenology, but of all the sciences and the way they relate to each other. The categories are fundamental categories of experience, which are made available by means of prescission. Prescission consists in the ability to tentatively and experimentally assume some from whichever experience that is being observed to be absent, leaving it out of account in favor of other information that can be further manipulated. It is a way to reduce the explicitly available information in order to identify relationships at different levels in experience. According to Houser:

Only by prescission can we make distinctions between elements universally present without basing those distinctions on differences of meaning. Prescission, therefore, provides the chief tool for phenomenology in its pursuit of objective universal categories to ground all less abstract sciences (Houser 2009, p.96).

From performing successive steps of prescission upon the phenomena and the experience in hand, Peirce believed that we would be left over with three fundamental categories – that we can use to understand qualities, relations and

31 signification: firstness, secondness, and thirdness, respectively. Before explaining what each of these categories mean, we must clarify that his whole system of relations in terms of categories is a system of logical relations: “it makes no difference in what temporal, order the elements of an argument occurred in the psychological thought-process, (…). What is important, is that they be arranged in a form suitable for logical evaluation.” (Ransdell 1983, p.78). In that sense, Peirce’s observation and derivation of the phenomenological categories is not based on any intuitionism nor any formalism – but is solidly grounded on logical principles and relations. That being said, let’s proceed to what is probably the most important ontological feature of Peirce’s philosophy: the categories and their triadism. Triadism can be considered to be one of Peirce’s most fundamental ontological features – especially in what regards the (three) categories that he uses to describe and analyze all experience, regardless of it being an actual experience or a hypothetical one. As said, the categories are called firstness, secondness and thirdness. One important notion regarding the three categories is the one of “irreducibility”. It means that the categories “cannot be reduced to one another” and that “they are complete, meaning that there is no fourthness, fifthness, sixthness, etc” (De Waal, 2001, p.12). In other words, one cannot describe triadic relations by means of second or first ones (such as “one tradic relation implies three monadic relations, or one monadic and one dyadic relation”); however, all relations involving four, five or even more entities can be reduced to simpler, triadic, ones. Although, under abstract conditions, firstness can be derived from secondness, and secondness can be derived from thirdness, “no authentic relation is ever analyzable reductively into any combination of dyadic and monadic properties, and that, similarly, no authentic dyadic property is analyzable into a combination of monadic properties” (Ransdell, 1983, p.16). The process of semiosis is a prototypical example of thirdness.

Besides the irreducibility of the triads, another important aspect regarding the phenomenological categories is their architectonical organization. This architectonical principles of organization of the categories is the result of a Kantian influence upon Peirce – especially in his early philosophy. However, Peirce proposes that, instead of applying Kant’s systematics straightforwardly, a critical reading of it should be done. As Peirce says, Kant started the tradition of constructing systems by means of architectonic precepts – however, the former does not think that “the full import of the maxim has by any means been apprehended” (CP 6.9). The Kantian architectonic organization regards the idea that philosophy, alongside with its divisions and subdivisions must be related and organized rationally in terms of logical relations. In his seminal work Critique of the Pure Reason, Kant explains what he understands by “architectonic” – and this definition is appropriated by Peirce as one of the fundamentals of how his categories are derived and organized:

32

By an architectonic I understand the art of systems. Since systematic unity is that which first makes ordinary cognition into science, i.e., makes a system out of a mere aggregate of it, architectonic is the doctrine of that which is scientific in our cognition in general (..). The unity of the end, to which all parts are related and in the idea of which they are also related to each other, allows the absence of any part to be noticed in our knowledge of the rest, and there can be no contingent addition or undetermined magnitude of perfection that does not have its boundaries determined a priori. (Kant 1988, p.691)

What Kant calls “boundaries determined a priori” is what Peirce calls “the categories”: there can only exist firstness, secondness and thirdness, and, from these categories all the sciences, observable experiences and phenomena can be systematically organized. However, this architectonic principle is a derivative and not an additive relation - as if an element were a sum of pieces or relata. By looking at the figure 1, we can notice how it works: mathematics is the science of logical possibilities and hypothesis (not actualities), therefore it is the basis from which all the others can be derived from – it is a science of firstness. Mathematics is then followed by philosophy (which, itself, can be subdivided into: phenomenology – firstness. Normative sciences, namely ethics, aesthetics and logics a.k.a. semiotics – secondness. And metaphysics – thirdness. Philosophy is the science of reflexiveness. It does not concern only what is hypothetically necessary, but also what is actual and observable. It deals with what can be discovered from ordinary everyday general experience: the universal character of real and actual things. Lastly, the special sciences are not concerned with the experience that is positively accessible to all minds, but with what is factually true. It corresponds to what is currently called “empirical sciences”: it requires a specific kind of observation (“idioscopy”) and is principally concerned with the accumulation of new facts: “[idioscopy] embraces all those kinds of investigation which are occupied in bringing to light phenomena previously unknown and which having discovered these phenomena use the same observational methods to push the study of them further” (MS [R] 1338:7). When Kant mentions “the unity of the end, to which all parts are related” he is actually referring to the universal and general character of the “a priori boundaries” (for Peirce, “categories”). Peirce also agrees with this generality of experience, in such a way that the aim for seeking out the categories relies in identifying which concepts, that one can apply to any subject (regardless of it being actual or not), are irreducible and derived from mathematics: “if it can be shown that categories hold universally in mathematics, it is shown that they hold for anything we can possibly speak of,

33 including everything in philosophy and in the special sciences” (De Waal 2001, p.9). The first category defined by Peirce regards the simplest constituent of all phenomena, as considered without relations to anything else. This property can be found in every entity and it is called a “monadic” property. This category is called Firstness and deals with the qualitative aspects of phenomena. In Peirce’s own words:

Firstness is the mode or element of being by which any subject is such as it is, positively and regardless of everything else; or rather, the category is not bound down to this particular conception but is the element which is characteristic and peculiar in this definition and is a prominent ingredient in the ideas of quality, qualitativeness, absoluteness, originality, variety, chance, possibility, form, essence, feeling, etc. (MS [R] L107:22)

The second category, namely secondness, regards relationships with “dyadic” properties (Ransdell 1983). The entities described under such category are to be found in a two-term relationship, in which something is as it is solely in virtue of being connected to another something. But this kind of relationship is still not subjected to any third entity, as Peirce states:

Category the Second is the Idea of that which is such as it is as being Second to some First, regardless of anything else, and in particular regardless of any Law, although it may conform to a law. That is to say, it is Reaction as an element of the Phenomenon. (MS [R] 339:108r)

According to Peirce (CP 1.358), the second category meets the notions of “another, relation, compulsion, effect, dependence, independence, , occurrence, reality, result” without the mediation of any other relata. Nevertheless:

(…) for even such elementary dualities or oppositions as ‘here’ vs. ‘there’, ‘this’ vs. ‘that’, and ‘now’ vs. ‘then’ already go beyond mere twoness or duality or otherness inasmuch as there must be some third entity relative to which one of them can be distinguished as being ‘here’ rather ‘there. (Ransdell, 1983, p.50)

And this distinction property is performed by a third entity, that behaves itself as a “rule”, a “law” or a “regularity” that mediates the relation between a Second and a First. This third category of representation is called thirdness and possesses “triadic” properties. According to Peirce (CP 1.328), “had there been

34 any process intervening between the causal act and the effect, this would have been a medial, or third, element. Thirdness, in the sense of the category, is the same as mediation”. But it is important to point out the fact that a Third is not an entity that command the other two relata from outside of the relation, “but rather the ordering power in its relata” (Ransdell, 1983, p.51). Peirce summarizes the three categories in the following quote:

The First is that whose being is simply in itself, not referring to anything nor lying behind anything. The Second is that which is what it is by force of something to which it is second. The Third is that which is what it is owing to things between which it mediates and which it brings into relation to each other. (EP 1:248)

For Peirce, Semiotics (also called “Logics”) is to be found in the category of thirdness: “(...) by ‘semiosis’ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or an influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs” (EP 2:411). It means that, for Peirce, semiosis stands out for being an irreducible triadic relational account of knowledge derivation/denotation/production. This irreducibility means, that no relation of signification (semiosis) can be decomposed to a two-terms or one-term, without losing its character as a semiosis. The argument he uses to defend this thesis is actually very simple: if two entities are related, the establishment of a relation constitutes in itself a third element. In his own words:

But it will be asked, why stop at three? Why not go on to find a new conception, in Four, Five, and so on indefinitely? The reason is that while it is impossible to form genuine three by any modification of the pair, without introducing something of a different nature from the unit and the pair, four, five and every higher number can be formed by mere complications of threes […]. The fact that A presents B with a gift C, is a triple relation, and as such cannot possibly be resolved into any combination of dual relations. Indeed, the very idea of a combination involves that of thirdness, for a combination is something which is what it is owing to the parts which it brings into mutual relationship. (EP 1.251-252)

For Peirce, unlike in other semiotic theories, the triadic relational conception is not something implicit, nor taken for granted, but it is the most fundamental problem for semiotic. Being such, he describes semiosis as a necessary triadic

35 relation between a sign, an object8 and an interpretant9, in which: “a sign [is] as anything which on the one hand is so determined by an object and on the other hand so determines an idea in a person’s mind, that this latter determination, which I term the Interpretant of the sign, is thereby mediately determined by that object. A sign, therefore, has a triadic relation to its object and to its interpretant” (CP 8.343). In that sense, neither of the three terms are defined by any essential feature (such as in the linguistic accounts, that derive the models for semiosis from verbal communication), but by the roles they “play” in the triadic relation they are to be found:

 A sign determines its Interpretant to refer to an object (CP 2.303).  An object is something external to and independent of the sign which determines in the Sign an element corresponding to itself [producing an interpretant] (MS[R] 145s)  An interpretant is anything that the sign, as such, effects (ILS 285), and that itself becomes a sign and so on ad infinitum (CP 2.303).

By being described only according to the relational roles that each constituent plays in a triad, it can be asserted that, for Peirce, semiotics is a dynamical and processual activity – which becomes obvious by his choice of calling his doctrine of signs “semeiotic”: meaning, literally, “action of signs”. Each constituent of a semiotic triad is only such when in a functional and processual relation with the other two relata (Figure 2).

8 The notion of “object” within Peirce’s theory of signs doesn’t necessary regard “objects” as “things” in the common-sense notion. According to him “the object is the antecedent of the meaning […] the object is the idea or thing that the sign finds, the meaning what it leaves” (MS [R] 318:26). Or, in a more direct sense: “By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about” (MS [R] 966).

9 The notion of “interpretant” is neither equivalent to “interpreter” nor to “interpretation”. It is the “effect” or “outcome” that the relation between sign and object produces: “By the interpretant of a sign is meant all that the sign can signify, mean, or itself convey of new, in contradistinction to what it may stimulate the observer to find out otherwise, as for example, by new experience, or by recollecting former experiences” (MS [R] 640:9).

36

Figure 2: an example of a sign-object-interpretant triad.

According to Merrell, and in tune with one of the cores of pragmatism in general, “Peirce’s emphasis on semiosis as process rests not on content, essence, or substance, but, more properly, on dynamic relations” (Merrell 1995, p.78). In that sense, his triadism is directly connected with his evolutionary realism: nothing is as such in virtue of them having essential features, but in virtue of their role in a process. The same entity or phenomenon can play the role of the sign in a semiotic triad X, while being the object in another semiotic triad Y, or even the interpretant in a third semiotic triad Z. Such a thing is possible because one semiosis (semiotic triad process) never happens in isolation, but is always interconnected in a chain or net consisting on a virtually infinite number of other semiosis. So, an interpretant, produced by the relation between a sign and an object in a given semiosis 1, has itself the function of grounding a further sign in a given semiosis 2, and so on (Figure 3):

37

Figure 3: A model of a network of different semioses (here numbered from 1 to infinite). “R” is for the sign, “O” for the object, and “I” for the interpretant (Merrell 1997, p.19).

We can see clearer now, that the ideals of development, growth, dynamicity, process and evolution are not only central to Peirce’s metaphysical understanding of reality, but also to his phenomenological ontology concerning the categories and how they relate among themselves. In the next section I explain how these approaches also play a seminal role on his epistemology through the doctrine of what he calls “fallibilism”.

3.3. Fallibilism Peircean semiotics is, according to Pietarinen (2006, p.377), “the art of reasoning and the theory of self-controlled, deliberate thought” where signs are understood not only as “stuff” which we reason about, but also as the means through which we perform reasoning. Given Peirce’s evolutionary realism, and the impossibility of reaching reality in itself, by itself, it can be asserted that without signs, one cannot perform any sort of reasoning at all. The scientific method, according to Peirce, is a process of continuous creation and experimentation upon hypotheses. According to him, “a hypothesis on which no verifiable predictions can be based should never be accepted” (CP 5.599), for it is not possible to perform any kind of experimental tests upon it. When explaining the Peircean method of experimental investigation, Hookway (2002, p.181) notes that “we advance towards the truth by a carefully monitored sequence of interactions with the objects and the events that we investigate, acting upon them and observing the consequences of our actions.” Crucially,

38 for Peirce, in tune with the pragmatic maxim, the result of the experimentation is not the establishment of a theory that is “confirmed” by the method, but the method itself.

One might then posit the following question: is truth, for Peirce, then the prime aim of inquiry? As already pointed out in section 2.2, the “aim” in a process of inquiry is what guides an agent towards a series of decision-making processes - replacing belief, for doubt, for a further belie -, and also determines when the agent should cease a step of the inquiry, and proceed to a further one. As Hookway exemplifies it:

(…) my aim of finding out the time of the next train to London guides me in adopting suitable means for acquiring that information; and it also determines when I can stop my inquiry. Once I have discovered the time of the train, I can stop inquiring. In order to know when to stop, I need to be able to recognize when I have succeeded in my aim. (Hookway 2007, p.5) Drawing a parallel from this quote above, we can rephrase the question on the previous paragraph as: for Peirce, should an agent cease inquiring about something once its truth is apparently reached? For him, as well as for other pragmatists, by adopting the premises that “truth” has a positive character, the answer is “no”. And the reason for such is that any process of inquiry is fallible, since “we cannot in any way reach perfect certitude nor exactitude. We never can be absolutely sure of anything, nor can we with any probability ascertain the exact value of any measure or general ratio” (CP 1.147-149). The reason why we can never be sure whether something is true or not, lies in the fact that: (i) there is no obvious and recognizable sign in whichever experience one might label as true that might distinct it from being false – like “with a mark like the date in the corner of a photograph that distinguishes them from falsehoods” (Davidson 2005, p.6); (ii) the rate of success in an inquiry whose aim is to reach the truth, is by no means proportional to the amount of time spent inquiring; and (iii) there is no means of knowing if the beliefs we might take as guidance during our inquiry are, actually, true and reliable for us to achieve such an aim. It is possible to conclude from those claims, that truth is something hardly recognizable once it is reached by an agent – and also hard to distinguish from failure. However, to say that truth and knowledge are fallible, is not the same thing as to say that it is not possible to have knowledge about something. Peirce was against the agnostic ideal "which philosophers often set up across the roadway of inquiry [that] lies in maintaining that this, that, and the other never can be known" (CP 1.138). Inasmuch as reality is independent of thought, he asserted that it is possible to know (i.e. detain meaning through a semiotic process) by means of signs. In that sense, signs are not what separate us from reality – but a bridge connecting us with what is real. What can be known about

39 reality, is that which is conveyed by signs. But is also does not mean, that reality is somehow “hidden” or “encoded” behind signs. Bearing the pragmatic maxim, the effects of an experiment upon signs is what we consider to be the effects of reality. Consequently, what we know from experimenting with signs corresponds to the knowledge we get to have from whatever in reality is being represented by the signs in question. As already said here, it does not mean that the reality is dependent on or even influenced by the action of signs: “all experience and all knowledge is knowledge of that which is, independently of being represented" (CP 6.95). According to Chen, what led some philosophers to believe that the realist approach to philosophy implies the fact that reality is, actually, unknowable10 to us

(...) is that they fail to recognize that things-in-themselves are related to or represented in the human mind, thereby depriving things-in-themselves of all determinations that are known to us. Only when things-in-themselves are considered as mere empty abstractions without any determination or representation, is there nothing in them that we may possibly know. (Chen 1994, p.46)

But, knowing something about something else does not mean that such a knowledge is certain: and that’s where fallibilism gets into the spot. Fallibilism is the doctrine that all reasoning and all knowledge are subject to failure – actually, that all reasoning and knowledge must be subject to failure, in order to be valuable at all. In that sense, the judgmental value of reasoning and inquiry, cannot be found in any positive 11 concept of truth. So, how does Peirce conciliate the concept of truth with the doctrine of fallibilism as the guidance for processes of inquiry? In 1899 Peirce wrote about what he called “The First Rule of Reason”, which opens with a maxim that, according to him, should be adopted first and foremost during the performance of whichever process of inquiry:

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be

10 “Not unknowable” means that there is no thing from which we cannot detain knowledge about it – and not that there is no thing we know about. The latter would be called “not unknown”: “There may be things of which we have no knowledge as yet, but there is no thing which is precluded from being known in the future if the conditions for knowing them be satisfied” (Chen 1994, p.47).

11 Peirce radically rejects Comte’s positive concept of truth, since according to the former, part of our knowledge comes from fictions and appearances – and not necessarily from observable and verifiable impressions: “"Comte's own notion of a verifiable hypothesis was that it must not suppose anything that you are not able directly to observe" (CP 5.597), therefore “"[l]ike the majority of Comte's ideas, this is a bad interpretation of a truth" (CP 5.597).

40 satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry. (CP 1.135 our emphasis)

What is very interesting about this passage is that, when he asserts that no one should block the way of inquiry, he is not only talking about a negative reaction to inquiry. He does not mean something like a prohibition to inquire, or the establishment any sort of obstacle that might create difficulties to proceed with the process of inquiry, such as - as already said - maintaining the idea that there are unknowable features of reality. He is, in fact, talking about asserting something as absolute, and about “holding that this or that law or truth has found its last and perfect formulation” (CP 1.140). As such, he rejected vigorously the idea of any absolute truth that would cease the process of inquiry. Truth can never be absolute because it depends both on the conceptual resources that agents performing the inquiry possess, and on the pragmatic conditions that constrain the relation in question: “As long as learning continues and pragmatic conditions change, truth in this sense cannot be fixed in eternal stagnation” (Houser 2006, p.5). The search for the absolute truth is thus something like Zeno’s famous dichotomy paradox in which, for an agent to move from point A to point B, he must always arrive at the half-way distance between his current location and the final point B (Figure 4) – making his journey infinite since, no matter how long the agent moves, he will always be half-way from its goal in relation to the distance that still needs to be travelled.

Figure 4: visual representation of Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox.

Similarly, no matter how much or how long we inquire, we will always be half- way behind reaching the goal of the absolute truth. Being such, we do not reach truth by collecting “absolute” and “final” theories and results, but by continuously experimenting and performing actions on the signs we are investigating. Scientific progress, according to Peirce, is an ongoing process of creating hypotheses, followed by experimental tests upon them – regardless of the results being positive or negative to the expected outcome derived from the hypothesis. In fact, failing and committing mistakes and errors are seminal steps

41 for the scientific advance towards truth. Truth and error are not opposites, but hold a dialectic relation with each other:

Knowledge is a process of growth in which truth and error are inseparable. (…) Moreover, error and the discovery of error may stimulate the progress of knowledge. Indeed, any scientific proposition or hypothesis that can be refuted may be erroneous, but the very error is "just what the scientific man is out gunning for more particularly," because the refutation of such hypothesis and the correction of its error may open up the way to further scientific inquiry. (Chen 1994, p.50)

Under the doctrine of fallibilism, epistemology involves inquiry as dynamic and processual, knowledge as evolutionary and always under development, and truth as non-absolute. Scientific inquiry is, therefore, a self-correcting method of reasoning, which grows as it develops further through abduction, deduction and induction – the three modes of inquiry.

To conclude: in terms of Metaphysics, Peirce conceptualizes reality as independent of any mind, only able to be graspable by means of manipulating signs that represent that reality. Moreover, reality’s foundations rest upon chance, unpredictability and spontaneity, and it is the role of the mind to seek for continuities and regularities on the experiences of reality, so that it can be rendered intelligible. About his Ontological basis, it follows the principles of what he calls “phenomenology”: everything that can be experienced or hypothesized is irreducibly triadic, and architectonically organized by means of derivative (and not additive) relations. Moreover, any phenomenological process of signification (semiosis) is never isolated, but organized in dynamic and processual interrelated chains. Regarding his Epistemological foundations, the process of inquiry is an ever growing and fallible process; and truth – although being an ideal aim – is never absolute, and should never pose itself as blocking the way of any inquiry. Another important remark is that Peirce never claims that signs and signification are only able to be manipulated by humans: they are phenomena of mind, and can be found in human and non-human processes (such as it is studies in the field of Biosemiotics12).

12 “Biosemiotics is the name of an interdisciplinary scientific project that is based on the recognition that life is fundamentally grounded in semiotic processes” (Hoffmeyer 2008, p.3), including all forms of living beings.

42 4. Peircean semiotics and the modes of inquiry

Peircean Semiotics is a formal attempt to describe and systematize processes of signification in general. As a general theory, it opens up to the possibilities of a more integrated and interdisciplinary theory of signification. As a general theory, it means that the underlying properties and mechanisms of whichever experience and phenomenon in question can be described and analyzed by the same relational standards. By calling it a “formal” attempt, it is meant that it deals with the following question: “in order for something to count as whatever it is, what sort of features would it have to have, and, given those features, what are the various ways in which it can be?” (Liszka 1996, p.1). So, by being a formal science, Peircean semiotics deals not only with “what is”, but also with “what must be” (CP.2.227), opening room for experimentations with hypotheses, conjectures and possibilities in general. As discussed in the previous sections, all thought and reasoning can only happen with and through signs and, as such, semiotics is concerned with the formal conditions of how signs ought to be employed, transmitted and developed (Liszka 1996): “Every reasoning consists in interpreting a sign. For whenever we think, we think in sign. Every action of thought is either the formation, or the application, or the interpretation of sign, or else it is some kind of action upon a sign or signs” (MS[R] 654:3). For that reason, Peirce’s sign theory (semiotics) and his scientific method of inquiry are indubitably connected: in order to inquiry, one must do so upon signs. It is important to understand the semiotic basis of signification in order to properly approach the mechanisms that regulate inquiry processes. For that reason, on the next sections, his three modes of inquiry (abduction, deduction and induction) are going to be presented and discussed on the basis of what he considered to be the fundamental “epistemic sign”: diagrams, a subcategory of iconic signs.

4.1. Iconic signs and their role in the entertainment of hypotheses As described in the section 3.2., every process of semiosis possesses a triadic nature, being constituted by the irreducible relation between a sign, an object and an interpretant. Following the architectonic principle of categories, in which his phenomenology is grounded, Peirce provided a classifying system for the possible S-O-I combinations in terms of three trichotomies, structured according to the ontological features of firstness, secondness and thirdness:

43  The first possible relation is the one that a sign holds to itself, and comprises (i) a qualisign as a quality (EP 2:291), as an indefinite possibility (MS [R] L67:36); (ii) a sinsign as a definite individual or event (MS [R] 284:59); or (iii) a legisign as general types, laws or habits (MS [R] 800:4).  The second one describes the relation between a sign and an object, as (i) an iconic relation, in which the sign refers to its object due to the former’s own qualities (MS [R] 800:4); (ii) an indexical relation, in which a sign relates to its object through a contiguous and factual relation (MS [R] S104); or (iii) a symbolic relation, in which a sign represent its object simply due to the fact that the former will be interpreted as to refer to the latter (MS [R] L67:38-39).  The third one describes the relation between the sign, the object, and the interpretant, as (i) a rhematic relation, in which the “sign whose proper interpretant ignores all difference between the sign and its object” (MS [R] 800:5); (ii) a dicent relation, in which the “sign whose proper Interpretant represents the object of the sign to be different from the sign itself, but ignores the distinction between the sign and its interpretant” (MS [R] 800:5-6); or (iii) an argumentative relation, which involves “a sign which has the form of tending to act upon the interpreter through his own self-control, representing a process of change in thoughts or signs, as if to induce this change in the interpreter” (CP 4.538).

The S-O-I combinations above described can be organized in terms of the categories as such ( 1):

Firstness (S) Secondness (S- Thirdness (S-O- O) I) Firstness Qualisign Icon Rheme Secondness Sinsign Index Dicent Thirdness Legisign Symbol Argument

Table 1: the possible relations among the S-O-I relata, distributed according to the architectonic principle of the categories.

When it comes to the mechanisms in action during inquiry processes, iconic signs, due to several of their features, play a central role in reasoning. To start with, icons are the only class of S-O relation in which the sign can represent whichever object through the former’s own qualities. They do not merely fulfill the function of “substituting something else” for they hold their own signification capacities thanks to their own features - that are not a one-to-one mirroring of the features from the object they are signifying. The epistemic

44 value of this feature lies in the fact that icons are autonomous entities in relation to the object hey are referring to – while still representing them. As such, they remain functional as a tool of investigation about an object while still being distinct from it: iconic signs not only signify something else (a given object), but also themselves, simultaneously. This feature makes iconic signs extremely useful in cases of reasoning, experimentation and investigation, since it allows agents to investigate something else (that, for whichever reason, might not be at hand) by means of the sign’s own manipulation – while still allowing the investigation of itself at the same time. But this is not the only feature of iconic signs that can be highlighted as seminal for inquiry process: “An icon is a representamen13 which fulfills the function of a representamen by virtue of a character which it possesses in itself, and would possess just the same though its object did not exist” (CP 5.73), and

An icon is a representamen of what it represents and for the mind that interprets it as such, by virtue of (…) say by virtue of characters which belong to it in itself as a sensible object, and which it would possess just the same were there no object in nature that it resembled, and though it never were interpreted as a sign. (CP 4.447)

These two quotes not only describe the feature above mentioned, but also introduce another important characteristic of icons: they do not need a “real” object “in the wild” in order to signify something. This feature is as such due to the fact that iconic relations have the ontology of firstness. As seen in section 3.2., firstness is the phenomenological category characterized by being as it is regardless of something else but itself. Being such, it embraces not only facts and positive observations, but also abstractions and possibilities. Given to its nature of firstness, icons are the only class of signs that can represent possible- only, abstract objects, affording new and unexpected knowledge, that was nothing but a pure possibility before the manipulation of the iconic relation took place. They do not always correspond to facts and impressions regarding the “real world”, but also to states of affairs that inhabit the realms of imagination, hypothesis and possibilities-only. They hold the potential of being manipulated in order to reason upon, to present hypothesis, and to allow observation and the creation of claims about, potentially, everything that can be conceived and imagined. The representative potential of icons is thus strictly connected to matters of imagination, idealization and abstraction not only upon “real” entities but also upon supposed-only states of facts. Given this feature, iconic signs are

13 “Representamen” is another word used by Peirce in his earlier writings to refer to “sign” as one of the relata: “I use “sign” in the widest sense of the definition. It is a wonderful case of an almost popular use of a very broad word in almost the exact sense of the scientific definition. [—] I formerly preferred the word representamen. But there was no need of this horrid long word” (MS [R] L463).

45 those which can afford the process of emergence, adoption and entertainment of hypotheses:

The quantified subject of a hypothetical proposition is a possibility, or possible case, or possible state of things. In its primitive sense, that which is possible is a hypothesis which in a given state of information is not known, and cannot certainly be inferred, to be false. The assumed state of information may be the actual state of the speaker, or it may be a state of greater or less information. (CP 2.347 his emphasis)

Hypothesis14 is where we find some very curious circumstance, which would be explained by the supposition that it was a case of a certain general rule, and thereupon adopt that supposition. Or, where we find that in certain respects two objects have a strong resemblance, and infer that they resemble one another strongly in other respects. (CP 2.624)

This process of observation of a curious or surprising circumstance, followed by the supposition and selection of a given hypothesis, is the first step of inquiry, namely abduction (sometimes also referred to as “retroduction”, “abductive reasoning”, or “hypothesis”) and will be further approached here in this thesis in detail. So far it concerns us to build a bridge with what was presented here on chapter 3.2., connecting the nature of abductive reasoning to the character of mathematics as a science. As said, any kind of reasoning that rests upon abstract and hypothetical states of things are to be found within the realm of mathematics. As the foundational science, it is also categorized as possessing the nature of firstness. For that reason mathematics regards those operations that allow a mind to generate hypotheses based on anything that can be possibly imagined, regardless of it being externalized in a material way or not. Mathematics, then, is strongly concerned with the process of hypotheses formation and entertainment: “(…) the proper definition of mathematics is that it is the study of the substances of hypotheses, which it first frames and then traces to their consequences” (MS [R] 14:3). Iconic signs play a pivotal role in such processes, by being the only class of signs that can stand for a pure possible and hypothetical affair. Further, a specific class of iconic sign is the chief car of the whole process: the iconic diagrammatic signs: “(…) the mathematician observes nothing but the diagrams he himself constructs; and no occult compulsion governs his hypotheses except one from the depths of mind itself” (NEM 4:267-268). According to Peirce every kind of reasoning performed upon a diagram is, in itself, mathematical reasoning. The reason behind it concerns

14 Here as a synonym for “abduction” or “retroduction”.

46 the fact that both of them rely on conditions of necessity15, without excluding matters of possibility. Diagrams can be approached as a fundamental kind of S- O relation when it comes to the understanding and the development of Peirce’s pragmaticist epistemology: “all necessary reasoning is diagrammatic” (NEM 4:314). All other modes of reasoning that do not have necessity as their main constraint still have their assurances conceded through necessary reasoning at some point. Therefore, all kinds of reasoning an agent can perform rely on diagrams, either directly or indirectly. Without reasoning upon diagrams it would be impossible for any agent to perform necessary reasoning at all – and therefore, it would also be impossible for any inquiry processes to take place.

Before going into a more in-depth analysis of the nature of diagrams, of diagrammatic relations and of their connection to the three modes of inquiry (abduction, deduction and induction) it is necessary to introduce Peirce’s typology of iconic signs as the starting point for understanding the place diagrams occupy on it due to their nature.

4.1.1. Hypoicons: image, diagram and metaphor In order to introduce the concept of hypoicons and their three-part classification, it is necessary to first frame the concept of what a “pure icon” is. In the previous section it was presented that iconic signs are those able to signify through their own characteristics16. Further, it was also argued that the objects partaking in an iconic relation can also be inexistent “in the wild”, abstract or possible-only. Taking in these points, and the fact that the phenomenological nature of icons (firstness) concerns that of possibility, no sign can actually be a pure icon. Pure icons are, “strictly speaking, a logical possibility, and not something existent, even because, within the possibilities of relation of the sign to its object, relations of an existential nature are better described as indexical, not iconic” (Farias & Queiroz 2006, p.290). Since this thesis aim to deal with the manipulation of artworks bearing their representative value and epistemic potential, we are not concerned with matters of pure logical qualitative possibilities, but with those of existential entities that can be hypothesized upon. For that reason, the definition of hypoicons fits better our purpose, since: “If a substantive be wanted, an iconic representamen [i.e. sign] may be termed a hypoicon. Any material image, as a painting, is largely conventional in its mode of representation; but in itself, without legend or label, it may be called a

15 According to Peirce, when talking about necessary reasoning “we do not mean, of course, that it is infallible. But precisely what we do mean is that the conclusion follows from the form of the relations set forth in the premiss” (CP 4.531).

16 “For a pure icon does not draw any distinction between itself and its object. It represents whatever it may represent, and whatever it is like, it in so far is. It is an affair of suchness only” (CP 5.74).

47 hypoicon” (CP 2.276). Hypoicons concern those relations between sign and object in which a given entity functions as an iconic sign if, and only if (i) they have a quality embodied on itself which grants it the iconic character; (ii) relates to its object mainly in virtue of its iconic features, but also possesses indexical and symbolic features playing a role in the semiosis as a whole; (iii) and include a principle of selection of qualities and of relations with an object that fulfill those of icons as described in the previous section17.When it comes to the classification of hypoicons, Peirce applies the three phenomenological categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness to describe them:

Hypoicons may be roughly divided according to the mode of firstness of which they partake. Those which partake of simple qualities, or first firstnesses, are images; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams; those which represent the representative character of a representamen by representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors. (CP 2.277 our emphasis)

Images, as hypoicons characterized by the nature of firstness, are pure qualisigns, those signs which are a simple quality: “a simple quality is sufficient for the sign in which it inheres to function as a sign: qualities are such as they are independently of anything else (…)” (Jappy 2004 18 ). Diagrams are hypoicons of secondness, since they represent analogous relations that form the parts of its objects through relations between the own parts of itself (Hoffmann 2005, Stjernfelt 2007). The objects of diagrams are always relations. Lastly, metaphors are hypoicons with the nature of thirdness. They relate themselves with their objects by means of the effect that such a relation produces: “it is by a triadic relation that metaphors achieve their signification” (Hiraga 1994, p.15).

In the next section we are going to present a more detailed description of diagrams, justifying and focusing on their potential to create and further aid inquiry processes.

4.1.2. Diagrams, according to Peirce Diagrams have been ordinarily understood as mostly two-dimensional visual aids for reasoning - such as equations or with lines and numbers. However, they go beyond such kinds of representations. When it comes to

17 For more information on those points, see Johansen 1993.

18 Available at: Accessed on: 20.04.2020.

48 Peirce’s account of diagrams, they can be defined as any kind of representation, either material (which does not necessarily equate with “visual”) or “in the mind’s eye”, whose main role regards its potential to make available the abstract relations from their objects accessible on the diagrammatic sign itself. As it will be further discussed here, this potential holds a highly important character on processes of inquiry. Despite this logic characterization that goes beyond diagrams as mere material artifacts, in the present thesis we are concerned with providing a diagrammatic account of artworks, exploring how it is possible to derive knowledge from them. For that reason, in the next sections we will focus mainly on the logical aspects of diagrams, and on their manipulation as artifacts. The part played by material diagrams in inquiry processes concern their ability to “provide sensory stimuli for cognition” (Kazmierczak 2003, p.186) as they

are coupled to a cognitive system that does not merely catalogue component parts but generates knowledge by eliciting study of those parts in new and unpredictable formations guided to a large extent by the individual user’s personal orientation, life experience, and expertise. Curiosity, the hunger to know, is the motor force that brings to life the inert materials (…). (Marrinan 2016, p.54)

By defending the claim that artworks can be manipulated as diagrams in the Peircean sense, it is being brought to foreground the fact that artworks are sensorially available signs, on which relations are embodied in such a way that we can observe them and manipulate them in order to come out with hypothesis that can be further worked upon. As Giardino (2016, p.77) asserts, human reasoning is heterogeneous in terms of the representational formats it relies on, and those different representations. And their combinations, can play and trigger different responses on the enhancement of human cognition in general. Given this heterogeneous character, we must turn ourselves not to an analysis of artworks focusing on their material features and their immediately perceivable representational formats, but on the logical mechanisms that they are able to trigger when manipulated as artifactual diagrams – as Peirce points out, while coming up with hypotheses, one must bear that this kind of process regards “not the subject of which it treats, but its method, which consists in studying constructions, or diagrams” (CP 3.556). By explicitly regarding artworks as diagrams, we are actually focusing on the mechanisms through which this specific class of signs allow agents to derive knowledge and process information, by partaking in inquiry processes, since “it is by icons only that we really reason, and abstract statements are valueless in reasoning except so far as they aid us to construct diagrams” (CP 4.127). For that reason, we must turn now to describing the logical relations that constitute diagrammatic signs –

49 more specifically, to the way in which symbols, types and tokens are structured in this class of signs. By doing this we are addressing the problem regarding the distinction between diagrams, in the logical sense, and the lay definition of them, mentioned in the beginning of this section.

As briefly presented here, a symbol concerns a sign, with the nature of thirdness, which is to be found in a relation to its object due to a convention that leads the former to be interpreted as referring to the latter:

A symbol is defined as a sign which becomes such by virtue of the fact that it is interpreted as such. (…) A symbol is adapted to fulfill the function of a sign simply by the fact that it does fulfill it; that is, that it is so understood. It is, therefore, what it is understood to be. (…) Hardly any symbol directly signifies the characters it signifies; for whatever it signifies it signifies by its power of determining another sign signifying the same character. (EP 2:317)

The interpretant of a symbolic S-O relation is generated by a determinative relation regarding a law, rule or convention, that brings both the sign and the object into a signification interaction. An easy example of a symbolic relation between sign and object is that of words and the meaning they are assigned to. The word “dog” signifies a being not because they share qualities in common (as with an iconic relation), nor because of any sort of contiguity (as with an indexical relation): it is a simple matter of convention. A non-English speaker, who never had contact with the English language before, wouldn’t be able to establish the relationship between the word “dog” and a dog, unless it is taught to adhere to such a convention. Symbolic signs can also have the nature of a habit: “a habit (…) is a general law of action, such that on a certain general kind of occasion a man will be more or less apt to act in a certain general way” (CP 2.148).

A type is an iconic legisign which “requires each instance of it to embody a definite quality which renders it fit to call up in the mind the idea of a like object” (CP 2.258). Tokens are iconic sinsigns that regard “any object of experience in so far as some quality of it makes it determine the idea of an object” (CP 2.227). Let’s take, for example, the inscription on paper of the following letters that form that word “the”. The sequence of t+h+e, is a general type, “in the sense in which “the” is one word only, no matter how many times it may occur” (MS [R] 498). However, in the previous paragraph we are able to find nine individual ocurrences of such a sequence of letters – in other words, we can find nine tokens of the type “the”. When talking about diagrams that are materially realized, we can talk about them in terms of type/token distinction.

50 According to Peirce, every single materialization of a diagram “is in the first place a token, or singular object used as a sign; for it is essential that is should be capable of being perceived and observed” (CP 3.92).

Bearing the symbol-type-token constitution of a diagram, we should firstly point out that, generally speaking, diagrams communicate a habit embodied in a type, through its materialization in tokens, in order to constrain the behavior of the agent manipulating them, as a result of qualities that the diagrams share in common with their objects. This shared quality is manifested in the above- mentioned symbol-type-token relation, and not necessarily in their morphological material features, since “many diagrams resemble their objects not at all in looks; it is only in respect to the relations of their parts that their likeness consists” (CP 2.282). Another point to be made explicitly here is that, as seen, diagrams, despite belonging to the category of iconic signs, are hypoicons and not pure icons – for that reason, despite possessing mainly characters of firstness, they are, nevertheless, mixed signs, partaking also in characters of thirdness (the symbol and the legisign) and secondness (the sinsign):

A diagram is a representamen which is predominantly an icon of relations and is aided to be so by conventions. Indices are also more or less used. It should be carried out upon a perfectly consistent system of representation, founded upon a simple and easily intelligible basic idea. (CP 4.418)

When it comes to the mechanisms that rule such a three-part structural logical relation in a diagram, it is possible to assert that the diagram, as a general type, is only able to be communicated to agents by means of its instantiation in particular tokens. Agents are able to “rule out” some features of the general type through the process of prescissive abstraction19, turning something general (type) into a particular (token), which is then further manipulated by agents bearing the habits embodied on it. As seen in section 4.2., habits are patterns of constraints responsible for guiding the manipulation or the behavior of something, either consciously or not (Anderson 2016, p.2). Nevertheless, the manipulation of diagrams based on the habits they embody is always placed in a context: “diagrams are not only prevalent and efficient media in everyday affairs. They are everpresent in all cognitive affairs” (Pietarinen 2016, p.125). As a result, the response of this manipulation might differ from case to case, which causes several tokens to be able to be derived from a type. However, this “context-based” feature is not something exclusive to diagrammatic signs: as

19 See section 4.2.

51 Peirce makes clear along all his speculative grammar20, signs can be described and can behave as such only once there are put in a relation to something else: a sign is only a sign in actu. As such, “diagrams” (as well as any other class of sign) do not concern any essential property of the sign – it concerns the sign’s dynamic aspects as a relational and context-based entity. Diagrams can, then, be understood as signs whose foundational operational feature concerns the triggering and aiding of a process of derivation of habits through the manipulation of a token which is derived from a general type, inscribed in a context.

Now let’s try to proceed with a more in-depth description of how the symbol- type-token relation is structured in a diagram. Regarding a first semiotic S-O-I triad, the diagram as type occupies the role of the interpretant of a series of discrete, finite, but indeterminate symbolic signs that are determined by an acquired or inborn habit (CP 2.297) – since habits possess the character of thirdness, by being “general rules to which the organism has become subjected” (CP 3.360). However, as already said, the habits embodied in a given general type can only be accessed and manipulated through the type’s instantiation in singular, particular tokens. The tokens that are derived from the general type become signs in a second triadic relation involving sign-object-interpretant. Then, when a given token “X” is manipulated, agents doing such are actually performing the rules of manipulation constrained by the symbolic habit “X” that was responsible for signifying the features, in the general type, from which the token “X” was derived. This whole symbol-type-token structure can be visualized as such (Figure 5):

20 As seen on chapter 4.2., “speculative grammar” corresponds to one of the three branches divided from Semiotics – together with general logic and methodeutic. Speculative grammar is the branch which concerns the description of the basic aspects and components of signs in general, as well as their classification in relation to the categories. Its task is “to ascertain what must be true of the representamen [aka sign] used by every scientific intelligence in order that they may embody any meaning” (CP 2.229).

52

Figure 5: The visual representation of the symbol-type-token structure in a diagram. On the left of the picture are the firstly described S-O-I triads, where the signs are symbols determined by different habits. Despite having different objects and signs, they all signify the same interpretant: the general diagram type. The dotted arrows connecting the interpretant of the first S-O-I triad to the sign of the second S-O-I triad represent the manipulation performed upon the diagram-type according to each of the habits that constrained its signification. The manipulation of the general type, being constrained by a specific set of habits produces the respective given diagram-tokens, represented in the image above as the signs in the second S-O-I triad21.

For the sake of an example, let’s take an equilateral triangle, with a bright red frame and no (or white) fill color, as a general type and see how it relates to the two different sets of S-O-I triads above mentioned. The same type can be used as a token in a geometry as a visual aid for an agent to perform Euclidian geometric calculus on the size, the angles and the proportions of an equilateral triangle, through the application of habits of Euclidean geometric representations. However, the exact same type can be also used as a token in traffic graphic signalization as a yield sign: both of these tokens, despite being

21 The present model consists on a development from the one presented in Vitral 2019.

53 derived from the same type, embody different habits of manipulation. The aforementioned scenario can be represented in a symbol-type-token structure as such (Figure 6):

Figure 6: a possible symbol-type-token structure of a diagram, applied in the case of a diagrammatic type being an equilateral triangle, with a bright red frame and no (or white) fill color.

This structure allows a diagrammatic token to be manipulated in order to reveal habits from an a S-O-I triad, that is other than the triad in which the object of the token is present, echoes one important definition of iconic signs given by Peirce: “For a great distinguishing property of the icon is that by the direct observation of it other truths concerning its objects can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its construction” (CP 2.279). From this quote, we can see that the traditional definition of icons as “signs that resemble their objects”22 is put aside in favor of a definition that highlights the potential of

22 According to Stjernfelt, this property is known as the “operational criterion of iconicity” (Stjernfelt 2007, 2011). It should be, however, pointed out that the operational criterion of iconicity and the traditional definition of icons based on their resemblance with their objects are not conflicting

54 iconic signs to provide agents with new and/or unexpected information about other than the ones from its object which determined the sign’s construction. Diagrammatic tokens, as iconic signs, hold a crucial capacity to aid the formation of hypotheses not only about itself and about its object, but also about habits that are external to its triadic singular structure (but still govern it, as they are potentially embodied in the diagrammatic type). Therefore, by focusing on this structural definition of diagrams, we can see that its main feature does not concern the morphology of the sign, but its experimental value as a sign that allow the raising of hypotheses about itself, its object or its embodied habits, that can further worked upon in inquiry processes: “the defining feature of the diagram – its possibility of being rule bound transformed in order to reveal new information – is what makes it the base of Gedankenexperimente, ranging from routine everyday what-if to scientific invention” (Stjernfelt 2007, p.102). Diagrams must be manipulated and experimented upon: they are not signs in virtue of any substantial feature alone. As pointed out previously, in order for something to behave as a sign in a S-O-I triad, it has to be manipulated as such a sign:

Whenever one forms a diagram that represents thoughts, reasoning as its inevitable effect is called to action. We find the clarification of the meaning of what initially remained vague not in the diagrams as such but in the effects of experimenting on the relationships exhibited in diagrams. (Pietarinen 2016, p.131)

In short, diagrams are only perceived as diagrams once they are engaged with agents in an active experimental inquiry interaction, namely, diagrammatic reasoning.

4.2. Diagrammatic reasoning and the three inferential modes Before dwelling on the specific inquiry mechanisms at stake in the process of diagrammatic reasoning, we must briefly recall the general context regarding Peirce’s concepts and ideas about scientific methods and scientific investigation (Chapter 3.). The investigation of a hypothesis through a scientific method is, for him not something defined merely as a goal-oriented activity, but as a dynamic and continuous process that involves several steps of experimentations upon one or more given hypotheses. As such, the whole process of inquiring and reasoning upon hypotheses and premises is what constitutes the “scientific definitions. As Stjernfelt (2007, p.78) asserts it is actually “an elaboration on the concept of similarity”, that focus on the epistemological effects of an iconic relation.

55 result” - more than any “correct” conclusion that can be reached through these hypotheses and premises. As already said, diagrams are the most epistemically important class of signs in such kind of processes, by allowing us to discover, gather and organize information and knowledge. The process of inquiry upon diagrammatic signs, namely diagrammatic reasoning, is “valuable because we can experiment upon manipulable icons when we cannot experiment upon reality. Experiment upon and manipulation of icons replaces experiment upon and observation of reality” (Hookway 1992, p.189). The process is defined by Peirce as follows:

By diagrammatic reasoning, I mean reasoning which constructs a diagram according to a precept expressed in general terms, performs experiments upon this diagram, notes their results, assures itself that similar experiments performed upon any diagram constructed according to the same precept would have the same results, and expresses this in general terms. This was a discovery of no little importance, showing, as it does, that all knowledge without exception comes from observation. (Peirce NEM 4:47-48)

From the quote above we can extract the description of procedures that correspond to the three modes of inquiry: abduction, deduction, and induction. “Reasoning which constructs a diagram according to a precept expressed in general terms” consists in the abductive process of observing certain habits X (which, by partaking on the nature of thirdness, have the character of a general), and proposing a hypothetical diagram type from it (Figure 7). Abduction regards the imaginative and creative process which forms a possible explanatory hypothesis on the basis of the introduction of a new idea.

Figure 7: the abductive process as one of the steps of the diagrammatic reasoning process.

The passage stating that one should proceed by “perform[ing] experiments upon this diagram, not[ing] their results” corresponds to the deductive process of

56 manipulation of a given abducted hypothesis, and it consists on an analytic mode of inference (in contrast to abduction and induction, which are synthetic modes of inference). In deductive reasoning, once the premises are taken to be true, its conclusion would be certain (Figure 8). The diagram general type, as an abducted hypothesis turns into a manipulable and singular instantiated diagram token, upon which experiments can be perfomed.

Figure 8: the deductive process as one of the steps of the diagrammatic reasoning process.

Lastly, when talking about how an agent “assures itself that similar experiments performed upon any diagram constructed according to the same precept would have the same results, and expresses this in general terms” regards the inductive process of reasoning. In this last mode of reasoning, “our inference is valid if and only if there really is such a relation between the state of things supposed in the premises and the state of things stated in the conclusion” (CP 5.161). Induction gives us a major, general premise, from a minor premise applied to a given result. Unlike abduction and deduction, induction is the mode of inference that can secure a specific kind of truth that is only likely to be true in the “long run” – or a truth of a habit. In this process, a singular diagram token is manipulated upon as to induct a new and/or unexpected habit (Figure 9), since “In fact, habits, from the mode of their formation, necessarily consist in the permanence of some relation (...)” (CP 1.415) and, as already said here, diagrams are iconic signs that represent relations.

57

Figure 9: the inductive process as one of the steps of the diagrammatic reasoning process.

Given the short descriptions above, and their isolated representations in the figures 7, 8 and 9, we can reconstruct the figure 5 presented in the previous section, making explicit how the process of diagrammatic reasoning consists in the process of scientific inquiry thanks to the symbol-type-token structure of diagrams (Figure 10):

58

Figure 10: the three modes of inference represented according to the symbol-type-token structure of a diagram, highlighting one set of triads that develop upon the habits of X.

The description of process above can be found in another passage, in which Peirce states that:

The purpose of a Diagram is to represent certain relations in such a form that it can be transformed into another form representing other relations involved in those first represented and this transformed icon can be interpreted in a symbolic statement. (…) The Diagram is an Interpretant of a Symbol in which the signification of the Symbol becomes a part of the object of the Icon. (MS [R] 339:286r)

The last sentence of this passage regards the abductive and the deductive steps in relation to the diagrammatic structure. An abducted diagram type represents a certain set of relations as the interpretant of a symbolic habit. In the last part of this sentence we have a remark of the triad semiotic structure that represents

59 the deductive process, in which the object of the diagrammatic type embodies the habits that generated it in the abductive process, guiding their manipulation during the performance of deduction. The first part of the passage describes the semiotic structure of the deductive and inductive process in a diagram: the purpose of a general diagram type is to represent relations that are transformed, through deduction, in a singular diagrammatic token, which is manipulated upon up to the inductive process, that then represents the diagrammatic token as well as its object, in a symbolic statement. The symbolic statement, in this case, is the habit as interpretant of the token. However, it must be pointed out that Peirce, often enough, did not connect neither abductive inference nor inductive inference to the manipulation of diagrams. When talking about induction he states that, in this mode of reasoning, “instead of experimenting on Diagrams . . . experiments upon the very Objects concerning which it reasons” (MS 293). And, in relation to abduction, he claims that its validity “consists in the generalization that no new truth is ever otherwise reached while some new truths are thus reached. This is a result of Induction; and therefore, in a remote way Abduction rests upon diagrammatic reasoning” (MS 293). However, in other passages, he contradicts himself by stating that, for example

“the limitation of the Graphs to the representation of necessary reasonings, which was imposed upon them in my “Prolegomena”, was needless: they are equally capable of representing the creations of explanatory conjectures [a.k.a. abduction], as well as the whole process of induction” (MS 296 our emphasis and comment).

In this thesis I intend to revisit Peirce’s claims and propose that the three inference modes are not only related to diagrammatic reasoning, but also inherent to the diagrammatic structure of a sign, as above stated. I believe one of the reasons for such a problem lies in the fact that, despite proposing the differentiation of diagrams in tokens and types, Peirce rarely specifies which kind of diagram he is talking about when addressing them: if it is a diagrammatic token, a diagrammatic type, or the diagrammatic structure as a whole, which comprises a general type and an individual set of tokens. In order to pursue this goal, the three modes of inference are going to be presented in more detail in the next sections.

4.2.1. Diagrams and abduction To start with, there are two kinds of reasoning, generally speaking. The first one is the explicative (analytic) one, and the second one is the ampliative (synthetic) one (Shin 2016, p.57). The former concerns those reasoning processes in which the certainty of the conclusion is guaranteed when the premises are assumed or

60 guaranteed to be true: it is a matter of necessity: “in explicative inference the conclusion follows from the premises necessarily while in ampliative inference the conclusion does not follow from the premises with necessity” (Fann 1970, p.7). Deductive reasoning, as it will be shown in the next section, is an example of explicative reasoning. The latter kind regards those kinds of reasoning in which, regardless of the premises being true, the conclusion is not guaranteed to be true. Abductive and inductive reasoning are ampliative modes of reasoning. Abduction differs itself from induction in several aspects. A crucial difference between them is that abduction concerns reasoning towards a hypothesis – whereas induction (as well as deduction) is reasoning performed from a given hypothesis onwards. Abduction is envisioned by Peirce as the starting point of scientific inquiry, by triggering a process, grounded on imagination23 and speculation, in which a hypothesis is suggested in relation to the surfacing of a “surprising fact”. In his later writings, Peirce acknowledges the fact that, for many, abduction has been mistaken by ordinary “perception”, which led to several cases of it being neglected as a logical argument, due to its alleged logical weakness:

For the question is whether that which really is an abductive result can contain elements foreign to its premisses. It must be remembered that abduction, although it is very little hampered by logical rules, nevertheless is logical inference, asserting its conclusion only problematically or conjecturally, it is true, but nevertheless having a perfectly definite logical form. (CP 5.188)

However, this neglection of abductive reasoning based on its allegedly weak logical structure has led to a failure in the description of inquiry processes and of how they also concern the spontaneous creation of hypotheses. Abduction “stands as the logical form/process upon which the movement of science depends. Abduction provides a “reason to suspect” and, consequently, a reason to test and theorize” (Kaag 2014, p.80). As such, abduction possesses a double temporal logic, that emphasizes the continuous character of inquiry and reasoning processes, insofar as it recommends a course of action: “by its hopeful suggestion, abduction keeps inquiry on the move but at the same time constrains future moments of investigation” (Kaag 2014, p.80).

Even though Peirce dedicated a considerable part of his writings to abduction – up to the point of considering “the logic of abduction” the central point of “the

23 „When a man desires ardently to know the truth, his first effort will be to imagine what that truth can be. He cannot prosecute his pursuit long without finding that imagination unbridled is sure to carry him off the track. Yet nevertheless, it remains true that there is, after all, nothing but imagination that can ever supply him an inkling of the truth. He can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way” (CP 1.46).

61 question of pragmatism”24, he expressed different views and provided different descriptions of the process along the development of his pragmaticism. Despite its low level of security, compared the necessity of deduction and also to the other ampliative inference mode, induction, abduction is the mode of reasoning that provides agents with the highest level of abundance in terms of new information, since its regards not only what is necessary and factual, but everything that can be possible: “Thus, from deduction to induction and to abduction the security decreases greatly, while the uberty increases greatly” (Fann 1970, p.8). Despite the low certainty and the weak logical structure of it, it is still a logical inference that is being performed - and this is the importance of the Peircean account on the process of arriving at scientific hypothesis: while not being traditionally regarded as a logical inferential process, Peirce asserts that not only it does have a perfectly definite logical form, but can also be expressed in syllogistic terms. However, since his logics of abduction developed along his philosophy, what could be initially expressed as such

was further developed beyond a simple inversion of the deductive one in Aristotelian terms (as above). With that in mind, he came up with the following syllogism in his later writings:

By giving “a reason to suspect”, abductive processes concern the mechanisms through which agents are able to make conjectures and claims about something. And diagrams, Shin (2016, p.71) claims, “is one of the items which facilitate abductive reasoning more efficiently. Why is it the case? I claim diagrammatic representation stimulates our mind so that we may introduce a new object more easily than with corresponding symbolic representation”. We can see, in this

24 „If you carefully consider the question of pragmatism you will see that it is nothing else than the question of the logic of abduction. That is, pragmatism proposes a certain maxim which, if sound, must render needless any further rule as to the admissibility of hypotheses to rank as hypotheses, that is to say, as explanations of phenomena held as hopeful suggestions; and, furthermore, this is all that the maxim of pragmatism really pretends to do (…). (CP 5.196).

62 quote a symbolic representation (in our structure previously presented, a habit) should be abductively embodied in a diagram type, introducing us a new sign, even if as a possible-only one, and not necessarily a material one. The abducted diagram type would allow then a further trial-and-error process of consecutive manipulations that would bring the generality of the type into the singularity of a token to be further manipulated. However, there is no “guideline” on how to perform, successfully, the steps from which the observation of a surprising fact can bring up a hypothesis about it (especially in contrast to the necessary character of deduction, and the logical strength of both deduction and induction): “This step of adopting a hypothesis as being suggested by the facts is what I call abduction. (…) There would be no logic in imposing rules, and saying that they ought to be followed, until it is made out that the purpose of hypothesis requires them” (CP 7.202). Also, when something is suggested as a hypothesis, given its general character, it maintains itself as a tentative suggestion of a hypothesis, not ruling out the fact there might be other hypotheses to be suggested (since the generality of a type derives from a set of more than one symbolic habit). So, the following question arises: what and how should an abducted hypothesis be conceptualized as, in order to be accepted as a further object of deductive investigation? According to Fann (1970, p.44), and in tune with the basis of the pragmatist maxim “a very important condition is that it must be capable of experimental verification”:

That is, pragmatism proposes a certain maxim which, if sound, must render needless any further rule as to the admissibility of hypotheses to rank as hypotheses, that is to say, as explanations of phenomena25 held as hopeful suggestions; and, furthermore, this is all that the maxim of pragmatism really pretends to do, at least so far as it is confined to logic (…). (CP 5.196)

Another criterion that plays a role in the admissibility of abducted hypotheses concerns what is called the “economy of research”. When an agent encounters a probable hypothesis that both satisfies the condition of being able to explain the facts, as well as being capable of experimental verification, the choice of one hypothesis instead of another becomes a choice in which “one out of a number of possible hypotheses ought to be entertained becomes purely a question of economy" (CP 6.528). According to Peirce, the following factors come into play once an agent is considering adopting a hypothesis in terms of economy: “economy, in general, depends upon three kinds of factors: cost; the value of the thing proposed, in itself; and its effect upon other projects” (CP 7.220). By (i) “cost”, he means a hypothesis which, when being experimented

25 As Fann (1970, p.45) rightly points out, by saying that a phenomenon is capable of being explained, tested and verified does not disregard those which are done so by means of imagination.

63 upon requires the smallest expense of any kind, “for even if it be barely admissible for other reasons, still it may clear the ground to have disposed of it”. Under the head of the (ii) “value” of a given hypothesis, what comes into play is the tendency it might have towards the expectation that it might hold itself true. This expectation of truth can be either supported by instinctive means or by reasoned ones. In what regards the instinctive means, Peirce asserts that “it is a primary hypothesis underlying all abduction that the human mind is akin to the truth in the sense that in a finite number of guesses it will light upon the correct hypothesis”. When it comes to the reasoned means of establishing the value of a hypothesis, it concerns the question whether it is likely to be objectively probable, in such a way that

this likelihood is an indication that the hypothesis accords or discords with our preconceived ideas; and since those ideas are presumably based upon some experience, it follows that, other things being equal, there will be, in the long run, some economy in giving the hypothesis a place in the order of precedence in accordance with this indication. (CP 7.220)

The last factor, the one which regards the (iii) “effect upon other projects” arises to cover the fact that agents “very rarely can (…) positively expect a given hypothesis to prove entirely satisfactory; and we must always consider what will happen when the hypothesis proposed breaks down” (CP 7.220). Once a hypothesis is adopted bearing all the points mentioned above, it must then be tested in a way that its probable necessary consequences can be verified by means of deductive reasoning.

4.2.2. Diagrams and deduction Once a hypothesis has been abducted over a surprising factor, a deductive verification has to take place in order for a to be established, that can be further tested upon. As abduction was defined as a reasoning process towards a hypothesis, deduction is a reasoning mode that concerns inferring from a given hypothesis. From the three modes of inference, deduction is the only one that operates on matters of necessity and, therefore, is classified as the only explicative mode of reasoning, among them. This means that the validity of this mode of reasoning does not rely “upon the experience of an ulterior knowledge” (Rodrigues 2011, p.128), but on the premises that are given: the information manipulated in a deduction that should lead to a necessary conclusion are already present in the premises. Shortly, once the premises are taken to be true, its conclusion would be certain:

64 An Obsistent Argument, or Deduction, is an argument representing facts in the Premiss, such that when we come to represent them in a Diagram we find ourselves compelled to represent the fact stated in the Conclusion; so that the Conclusion is drawn to recognize that, quite independently of whether it be recognized or not, the facts stated in the premises are such as could not be if the fact stated in the conclusion were not there; that is to say, the Conclusion is drawn in acknowledgment that the facts stated in the Premiss constitute an Index of the fact which it is thus compelled to acknowledge. (CP 2.96)

In the syllogistic form, deduction is expressed as such:

Hence, if the deductive reasoning is correctly performed, the truth of the conclusion is made certain through its premises. Traditionally, diagrammatic reasoning has been intimately connected to the deductive steps of an inferential process. By being the process from which someone constructs a diagram in order to operate with the premises, it is possible to say that deduction motivates the creation of a diagram-token from the general abducted diagram-type. Diagram-tokens are the epistemological tools that allow agents to access hypothetical general diagram-types:

Thus, every deduction is diagrammatic of nature and the logic of diagrams is an extension of the traditional concept of deduction (tied to truth- preserving operations in symbolic logic) to cover a large range of phenomena not usually considered as deduction (unless translated into symbolic form) - but describable as such in so far as they qualify as necessary movements of diagrammatic thought. (Stjernfelt 2000, p.369)

This close relation between diagrammatic reasoning and deductive inference is made explicit in Peirce’s writing in several passages, such as:

Deduction is that mode of reasoning which examines the state of things asserted in the premisses, forms a diagram of that state of things, perceives in the parts of that diagram relations not explicitly mentioned in the premisses, satisfies itself by mental

65 experiments upon the diagram that these relations would always subsist, or at least would do so in a certain proportion of cases, and concludes their necessary, or probable, truth (CP 1.66).

The truth, however, appears to be that all deductive reasoning, even simple syllogism, involves an element of observation; namely, deduction consists in constructing an icon or diagram the relations of whose parts shall present a complete analogy with those of the parts of the object of reasoning, of experimenting upon this image in the imagination, and of observing the result so as to discover unnoticed and hidden relations among the parts (CP 3.363).

But Mill is wrong in supposing that those who maintain that arithmetical propositions are logically necessary, are therein ipso facto saying that they are verbal in their nature. This is only the same old idea that Barbara in all its simplicity represents all there is to necessary reasoning, utterly overlooking the construction of a diagram, the mental experimentation, and the surprising novelty of many deductive discoveries (CP 4.91).

However, by taking into consideration the two last quotes above, we can notice an aspect of deduction that might sound contradictory to the idea of this mode of reasoning being explicative and necessary: through deduction, one is able to “discover the unnoticed and hidden relations among the parts”, and that deductive “discoveries” might present us with “suprising novelty”. This almost abductive-like description of the effects of deduction can be better understood once the difference between theorematic deduction and corollarial deduction is taken into consideration. 4.2.3. Theorematic and corollarial (deductive) reasoning Given Peirce’s views on the process of scientific inquiry, it is no surprise that even when talking about the nature of logical necessity, he would posit the importance of questioning and performing tentative testing upon experience and phenomena. For such a reason, even when talking about deduction, one should highlight its investigative and experimental character. In order to do such, he came with the distinction between theorematic and corollarial proofs in deductive reasoning:

It [deduction] is either Corollarial or Theorematic. A Corollarial Deduction is one which represents the conditions of the conclusion in a diagram and finds from the observation of this diagram, as it is, the truth of the conclusion. A Theorematic

66 Deduction is one which, having represented the conditions of the conclusion in a diagram, performs an ingenious experiment upon the diagram, and by the observation of the diagram, so modified, ascertains the truth of the conclusion. (CP 2.267)

Corollarial reasoning concerns the traditional description of deductive processes, in which the conclusion follows trivially or immediately from the premises, without the introduction of any new element into them: “any corollary (as I shall use the term) would be a proposition deduced directly from propositions already established without the use of any other construction than one necessarily suggested in apprehending the enunciation of the proposition” (NEM 4:288). It is the mode of deductive reasoning where the only necessary feature for it to hold true conclusions regards the truth of the premises - as in ordinary syllogisms. However, not all deductive reasoning is corollarial, and the discovery of a second kind of deductive reasoning, called theorematic, is what Peirce called his “first real discovery about mathematical procedure[s]” (NEM 4:49). This discovery is closely bound to his definition of mathematics, which is concerned not with the assertion of matters of facts or “real” entities, but with the construction and manipulation of hypothesis and the tracing of their consequences. Mathematical knowledge, by being hypothetical and focused on operations that concerns pure and abstract possibilities, is not concerned with positive truth whatsoever, but with hypothetical truth “that is, with what could or could not be necessarily concluded from the imaginary hypotheses constructed” (Rodrigues 2011, p.143). However, mathematics pertains also to the realm of necessary conditions and necessary truth, being therefore, in its own nature, a deductive science. In order to solve the problem about how can both mathematics and deduction be grounded in necessity, while at the same time concerning the realm of imagination, pure possibilities, abstractness and creation of hypothesis, Peirce proposed that deductive reasoning can be not only of the corollarial kind, but also theorematic:

What the distinction between the two forms of deductive reasoning shows is that mathematical reasoning is not only the observation of what is evident in a formal representation of a state of things, but it is also a constructive activity of such representations, by means of observing and modifying other representations. (Rodrigues 2011, p.144).

In the case of theorematic deductive reasoning, an agent takes a given diagram, “performs an ingenious experiment upon the diagram, and by the observation of the diagram, so modified, ascertains the truth of the conclusion” (CP 2.267). Being such, in comparison to the corollarial kind, theorematic deduction demands creativity and a more experimental practice upon the diagram type,

67 adding new elements to the premises in hand, before reaching a conclusion and deducing a diagram token from it. But how to choose or come up with the new element(s) that should be added to the premises, since there is no clear or obvious suggestion inside the premises themselves about what should be added to them in this stage of the experimentation? Shin (2016, p.64), proposes a three- item list of some components in play during the theorematic step, and the problems they raise, concerning specifically the adding of new element(s) to the premises: (i) the “multiple choices” problem, in which there is, usually, a considerable set of different legitimate elements that can be introduced – and not only one; (ii) the “no algorithm” problem, regarding the lack of any specific guideline or algorithm to aid in the choice of element(s); and (iii) the “ex-post evaluation” problem, which states that only after the deductive proof is performed, one gets to know “which is the right one among multiple permissible choices”. We can see that, despite deductive reasoning being traditionally defined as the mode of reasoning which delivers certainty to the agents in relation to its method, it is actually not a certain process. Due to the lack of any explicit guideline showing agents how to introduce new elements to the premises, “how do we navigate through available premises and rules to make the right choice?” (Shin 2016, p.65). In the theorematic deductive cases, a meta- abductive guess should be made – in which the three criteria presented in section 4.2.1. should be applied also to the choice of the new element to be introduced in the deductive premises26. Nevertheless, despite proposing that, Shin rightly points out to the fact that the abductive stage of reasoning and the theorematic deductive one have different aims in relation to what they intend to explain: whereas in the former, a new information is abducted in the form of a hypothesis to explain any possibility, fact or data, in the latter one new information is introduced into the deductive process “to demonstrate the logical consequence from premises to the conclusion by bridging a gap between what we know and what we want to know” (Shin 2016, p.69).

When it comes to connecting both the corollarial as well as the theorematic steps of deductive reasoning to the manipulation of diagrams, I propose a revision on Stjernfelt’s (2011) description of the diagrammatic reasoning process as a deductive process. According to him, it consists on first taking a given diagram token, and subjecting it to a process of prescission, or prescissive abstraction in order to reach its type. The decision to abstract some information in favor of others during this process comes also from the question guiding the manipulation process, and not only from the system of representation itself. This process described by Stjernfelt would consist in taking a given diagrammatic token as the premiss that would allow agents to deduce a type from it:

26 However, such a link between abduction and theorematic deductive reasoning has never been made by Peirce himself.

68 once the type is grasped, (…) by the intermediary of its physical token, (…) [it is] subjected to experimental manipulation, (…) [where] certain types of transformation are allowed, others not so, corresponding to truth-preserving logical reasoning steps” (Stjernfelt 2011, p.307).

I propose that this description given by him consists in the corollarial step of the deductive process, that an agent performs on top of a given token diagram. Since the token was derived from a type, it is a matter of necessity, that the type can be prescinded from the token. However, in order to successfully manipulate a type in order to deduce a token from it (as shown in figure 10), some new information has to be introduced – which I propose to be the symbolic habits, that caused the abduction of a type to start the whole diagrammatic reasoning process. The symbolic habits are already embodied in the diagrammatic type, but are not explicit and can remain as a pure possibility of embodiment. The allowance or not of these transformations to take place are exactly guided by the possible habits of manipulation on the type from which the token can be deduced, and it corresponds to the theorematic step of the deductive manipulation of diagrams. Taking the example from figure 6 about the red triangle, we can say that:

 The corollarial process is the one in which an agent would open a geometry book, see the representation of the equilateral triangle printed on a page, and prescind a general type, consisting only in an equilateral triangle, with a bright red frame and no (or white) fill color. Possible information like notes about the angle or the size of the sides of the triangle are prescinded in the case, in favor of the shape and the color of the representation.  In the theorematic case, an agent would be faced with an equilateral triangle, with a bright red frame and no (or white) fill color, and nothing more. However, by accessing the habits of Euclidean geometric representations, which are embodied in the type as a possibility, he would proceed on using it as a token in order to prove a given Euclidean theorem at hand.

As such, it is not necessary for any physical or morphological change to be made on the type in order for a token to be deduced from it. The “new element” added can be nothing more than a habit. The newly transformed diagram, which now has the character of a token, can exist only in one’s imagination, while maintaining its material qualities intact as in the type. After that, a new mode of inference has to take place in order for the newly deducted token to confirm if such habits of manipulation can indeed be applied to it:

69 The next step is to test the hypothesis by making experiments and comparing the predictions drawn from the hypothesis with the actual results of the experiment. When we find that prediction after prediction is verified by experiment we begin to accord to the hypothesis a standing among scientific results. This sort of inference it is, from experiments testing predictions based on a hypothesis, that is alone properly entitled to be called induction (CP 7.206).

4.2.4. Diagrams and induction Just as with the abductive step, the inductive step of the reasoning process consists in an ampliative one: it does not rely on necessity, as the deductive step did. Induction consists of a self-correcting method of reasoning, in which the experimental testing upon something (as we propose here, a diagrammatic token) might lead to the establishment of some rule (which can be the confirmation of an already given habit, or the establishment of a new one). Its justification lies in the fact that, even if it is the case that the conclusion reached during the manipulation of the token through inductive means shows itself to be erroneous at some point, the further inductive manipulation of it, following the same method, will correct the error. When it comes to the syllogistic representation of induction, we have:

Induction, departs from a minor premise and a theory, and proceeds on measuring the degree of concordance in their relation, in order for a general to be induced from them. It is a mode of reasoning not concerned with “truth” but with “trustworthiness”, and must rely on experimental testing. Unlike deduction, it is not a method of approaching truth, but of providing agents with a “high probability of rejecting false hypotheses” (Mayo 2005, p.305). Therefore, it is a phase of continuous experimentation, in which the information that is derived by the previous reasoning modes is valid not only for the specific set of information in hand, but also for all other representations of the same kind that allow the deriving of similar information. When it comes to the manipulation of diagrams, it is possible to assert that the inductive phase is an act of generalization, that shows “a very important point about diagrammatic reasoning, namely that here the generality of the states-of-affairs represented is depicted by the continuum of variations to which it is possible to subject the

70 diagram without essentially changing its conditions” (Stjernfelt 2007, p.XII). This general that is brought up through induction, in the case of diagrams is a habit, as seen in figure 9: “[the conclusion of reasoning] is a general idea to which at the suggestion of certain facts a certain general habit of reason has induced us to believe that a realization belongs” (CP 2.146).

By taking the three modes of reasoning in relation to diagrammatic reasoning, considering the intrinsic symbol-type-token diagram structure here proposed, I conclude that diagrammatic reasoning describes how an agent transits between the realm of potential (through abduction), to that of actualities (through deduction), and reaches a general (through induction). This is an attempt to formalize a process in which one observes something as a mere hypothesis (a possible general), materializes it in a token, and proceeds then to another general claim in the form of a habit from which new abductions can be performed upon, keeping the scientific method on the move.

However, as said previously, Peirce defended that the scientific method is not applicable to aesthetic and artistic matters. As this thesis is concerned with a demonstration of how artworks can aid inquiry and produce knowledge through their manipulation, it is necessary to introduce another pragmatist philosopher, who investigated the role of art in relation to meaning and experience. By doing so, I will propose that inquiry not only can be performed with and in artworks, but also that this is a feature of their aesthetic potential.

71 5. John Dewey’s instrumentalism

John Dewey, one of the three classic pragmatists, was the responsible for pragmatism to remain in the American spotlight in the first half of the 20th century. Like Peirce and James, his pragmatism was also highly concerned with stressing the role of mind in making sense of reality and experience through inquiry. On the course of his writings, he constantly emphasizes the role of continuity against any dualist or unitarian approaches: “mind and matter, means and end, reality and appearance, fact and value, theory and practice, art and life, all these are modified in his hands and shown to differ only as aspects of a greater whole” (Mounce 2002, p.127). Like Peirce, in his later years, Dewey also started to build divergences towards James’ approach on pragmatism. Most consistently in relation to James’ conception of truth and meaning (Bertman 2007, p.75-77). However, Dewey also criticized Peirce, despite considering him “the most original philosophical mind produced by this country” (LW 11:421). His divergences towards Peirce consisted mostly on the fact that, for the former, pragmatism should be strictly understood in terms of a logical method, bearing little or no social concern. In his mature writings, Dewey’s view on pragmatism can be approached as playing the role of a bridge between James’ broad humanistic concerns and Peirce’s strict logical concerns. Whereas James and Peirce dealt with each of those concerns in an almost mutually exclusive way, Dewey was decided to bring both of them together, as depending on each other. Given this conflict on the approach towards pragmatism, Dewey started to avoid the term in his writings and lectures, claiming that:

The word “Pragmatism” does not, I think, occur in the text. Perhaps the word lends itself to misconception. At all events, so much misunderstanding and relatively futile controversy have gathered about the word that it seemed advisable to avoid its use. (…) But in the proper interpretation of “pragmatic”, namely the function of consequences as necessary tests of the validity of propositions, provided these consequences are operationally instituted and are such as to resolve the specific problem evoking the operations, the text that follows is thoroughly pragmatic. (LW 12:4)

“Pragmatic” here is used as an adjective, replacing “pragmatism” as a label. In the spirit of Peirce’s pragmaticism, Dewey also defines the method as a tool for agents to manipulate the consequences of things as a necessary test of the validity of them. But those consequences should not be those only imagined and idealized, but must also bear the result of actions in a not-so abstract way: “the term ‘pragmatic’ means only the rule of referring all thinking, all reflective

72 considerations, to consequences for final meaning and test” (MW 10:366). He defended the importance of combining both reasoning processes concerning possibilities, as well as actualities, “where actuality supplies contact and solidity while possibility furnishes the ideal upon which criticism rests and from which creative effort springs” (LW 3:147). As Jackson explains, pragmatism under Dewey is committed to what “is possible from a close study of what is actual, rather than by attempting to realize some ready-made ideal that has been handed down from above or seized upon and applied without clear reference to the particular circumstances at hand” (Jackson 2006, p.61). As a direct consequence of this approach, instead of occupying himself only with possible actions and consequences, Dewey was greatly concerned with the impact of pragmatism as a method and an attitude to be taken in relation into “every area where inquiry may fruitfully be carried on” (MW 4:100). This view upon pragmatism can be seen, objectively, in the fact that Dewey’s writings were diverse enough in what comes to their rhetoric and their means of publication, making them available for different audiences comprising philosophers, professional educators and the larger lay public as well. This is a crucial feature of Dewey’s philosophy that is present along the development of his pragmatism: the necessity for a continuity between theory and practice in the form of a strong linkage between matters of philosophy, science, society, individual life, ethics, politics and aesthetics:

[I]n my treatment philosophy is love of wisdom; wisdom being not knowledge but knowledge-plus; knowledge turned to account in the instruction and guidance it may convey in piloting life through the storms and the shoals that beset life-experience as well as into such havens of consummatory experience as enrich our human life from time to time. (LW 16:389)

Bearing this position towards pragmatism, which emphasizes the method as a tool, an instrument, to reason upon actualities and possibilities in a continuous manner in relation to different realms of realities and specialized fields, Dewey coined the term “instrumentalism” to label his approach. The central idea behind instrumentalism is that “action and opportunity justify themselves only to the degree in which they render [human] life more reasonable and increase its value” (LW 2:19). By applying the method upon something that is being approached and inquiring upon, agents are actually turning this something into an instrument for working and coping with experience and its problems. As such, instrumentalism is not a thesis about the ontology of reasoning and reality, but an epistemic thesis that focuses on the use of concepts and things and their dynamic development on space and time through inquiry. In tune with the general pragmatist view that emphazises dynamicity, action and with the fallibilism thesis, Dewey’s instrumentalism can be seen as an effort to

73 unite the scientific and ethical strivings of men, while at the same time avoiding any absolutes. Since scientific and all other ideas are but means for change, he suggests that it is possible to treat them as instrumental ideas, rather than as universals or finalities. (…) all such ideas receive their validation from within the realm of evolving human experience, he claims that such a method is itself incapable of becoming absolute, but is rather a continually self-correcting tool. (Bloom et al. 1958, p.16)

In the next sections we are going to focus on some central aspects of Dewey’s instrumentalism, bringing it into dialogue with the previous sections about Peirce, and contextualizing it with matters of the arts and aesthetics in order to provide a ground for the model of diagrammatic manipulation of artworks, as an inquiry process that follows Peirce’s scientific method.

5.1. Continuity and experience Dewey’s philosophy, in the same manner of Peirce’s, has also been the aim of tentative placements between idealist and realist claims. His earlier philosophy (before the publication of Nature and Experience in 1925) is more concerned with establishing the boundaries and main features of the methods of instrumentalism in closer tune to some Hegelianist and idealist claims. On the other hand, his later writings are meticulously constructed in terms of defining the metaphysics of experience, incorporating some realist claims to it. However, it is possible to say that his philosophy, as well, cannot be easily compartmentalized in neither of these two major conceptual traditions as a whole. For that reason, we are going to see that, while trying to establish the relationship between “nature27” and “experience” in terms of a continuum, Dewey’s metaphysics is similar to Peirce’s evolutionary realism in many points – while it also brings new insights and perspectives to the matters of aesthetics.

As a first clarification, Dewey’s philosophy is constructed on the basis of the problems regarding human experience, and not of those about experience as a general for different species and minds – as Peirce’s thoughts provide the open door for the latter problems to be also conceptualized in the same terms as human experience and vice-versa. The chief question, leading Dewey’s thoughts and problems, especially on his later phase, is: how does experience and the process of inquiry situates humans in a direct relationship to both nature and knowledge? The answer to this question lies primarily on his principle of continuity, which departs from the claim that experience, taken in isolation,

27 The concept of “nature” for Dewey regards the same phenomena described by the concept of “reality” for Peirce (Shook 2017). For that reason, “nature” and “reality” are used interchangeably here.

74 cannot constitute knowledge at all. In the general pragmatism manner, “experience” as a concept for Dewey denotes, at the same time, the process of “experiencing” as well as “what” is being experienced and the results of such experience altogether:

The word "experience" is here taken non-technically. Its nearest equivalents are such words as "life," "history," "culture," (in its anthropological use). It does not mean processes and modes of experiencing apart from what is experienced and lived. The philosophical value of the term is to provide a way of referring to the (…) totality between what is experienced and the way it is experienced, a totality which is broken up and referred to only in ready-made distinctions or by such words as "world”, "things", "objects" on the one hand and “mind”, "subject", "person", "consciousness" on the other. (MW 13:351)

Continuity instead of discreetness and dualisms is a central feature of Dewey’s thought, permeating all the corners of his philosophy, as the foundation upon which his instrumentalism develops. Even processes that are usually described in terms of “cause” and “effect” as discrete units are to be seen as mere “conceptual abstractions, in contrast to the continuous processes of actual experience” (Bennett 1980, p.266). The experience of knowing a cause of something creates a continuous process of change in the whole attitude to the phenomena in hand, including the way its effects are, as well, experienced in relation to what caused them. Processualism, being one of the most important general pragmatist tenets, takes the form in Dewey’s writings of the most basic ground for experience as a whole: by seeing reality as a process based not on discrete entities, but on intertwined relations, experience takes the form of a continuous of events and relations. Like reality, experience itself cannot be decomposed into parts, forms, and units. Phenomena and their observation, descriptions, as well as the reasoning processes they might trigger are not separated entities: “[experience] is ‘double-barrelled’ in that it recognizes in its primary integrity no division between act and material, subject and object, but contains them both in an unanalyzed totality” (LW 1:19).

Experience and nature share such grounding features when it comes to the relationship to one another. Just as experience and reality cannot be understood unless as a continuum, the relationship between them holds the same feature: one cannot understand experience without considering reality and vice-versa. In short, they are continuous and cannot be grasped or understood separately. This is a view that echoes Peirce’s evolutionary realism: reality is only understood as such through what is experienced from it, and it is impossible to achieve any sense of “real” through the manipulation of reality itself – simply

75 because it is impossible to manipulate reality directly. What is real is what is experienced as real. This does not mean, however, that Dewey held a constructivist view on the relationship between experience and reality. Existence as a phenomenon is not something artificially imposed “top-down” towards reality, but it is the product of inquiring upon what is available to agents. As such, experience should not be constructed out of reality, “but to be organized and controlled, directed, if possible, toward desirable ends. In short, it needed reconstruction and it needed to have the possibility for its reconstruction safely contained within it” (Alexander 2012, p.72). Just like Peirce uses the peeling of an onion as a metaphor for the fact that reality cannot be grasped as a separate entity “out there” by itself only, Dewey also believes that the only method that allows agents to disclose knowledge about reality is through manipulating and inquiring upon what is given to us. For neither Peirce nor Dewey this meant that reality and experience are identical – as if one consists in a mirror image of the other, or if they are combined in some sort of cause-effect relationship, in which the former is grasped through an identical reconstruction from the latter:

The most common error is the confusion of continuity with identity. To assert continuity is not to assert identity. Because Dewey asserted the continuity of experience and nature, Santayana understood him to be saying that experience and nature were identical, and so called Dewey and idealist. (Alexander 2012, p.95)

The relationship between reality and experience is not a relation of opposition, nor of completion: reality and experience are not two sides of the same coin. They are not alien to each other, nor is experience “a veil that shuts man from nature; it is a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature” (LW 1:5). It also does not mean that they hold a relation of contiguity. Talking about Peirce, but also opening the possibility for a description of Dewey’s principle of continuity, De Waal says that the

notion of continuity should not be confused with the notion of contiguity. Two things are contiguous when they are in a state of actual contact. Here the connection is an existential one. On the other hand, two things are continuous when they can be subsumed under a single general law. Continuity thus points at a law like connection that includes not only the actual instances of the law, but also all its possible instantiations. (De Waal 2001, p.56)

As a continuum, reality constrains the possibilities of experience, while on the other hand, experience discloses reality to agents. Experience only exists as a

76 development of the possibilities given by nature, and nature is only grasped and understood as experience. And experience, for Dewey, must concern not only philosophy and science, but all the possible realms of human activity, embracing matters of aesthetics, ethics, religion, education and politics as well. Here lies the importance of bringing Dewey’s instrumentalism to this thesis: what Peirce’s evolutionary realism implies (that reality in general can only be graspable through inquiry processes performed upon signs), Dewey makes it explicit. All sorts of experience, regardless if it concerns scientific contexts or not, are disclosures of reality and, therefore, all of these sorts can be subjected to the same methods of inquiry: the goal of all inquiry and reasoning is to attain unity, taken from reality as a possibility, leading to experience as a general.

5.2. Experience, growth and inquiry As seen in the previous section, the only way knowledge can be constituted in and through experience is by means of attaining unit and keeping a continuous relation with both reality and itself. The idea of a unified experience does not mean that experience should achieve the state of being a “cohesive concrete chunk” of relations and things. It means that, to be meaningful, experience should seek for regularities and habits that grow from the state of chance, spontaneity and unpredictability held by reality: “nothing in Dewey's thought, especially his theory of aesthetic meaning, makes sense unless the basic doctrine that experience grows, and in growing takes on meaning, is remembered” (Alexander 2012, p.80) 28 . Through experience the potentialities of reality become apparent, and the further manipulation and inquiry of such potentialities reveal habits that allow the attainment of regularity. Therefore, the relationship between growth and the continuity principle goes both ways: whereas the goal of continuity as a regulative principle is the expansion of knowledge as growth from chance to regularity, continuity can only be apprehended and realized through the emergent growth of knowledge. In this context, the role of inquiry is seminal for Dewey, as the process through which regularities grow from chance, spontaneity and qualities. According to him, inquiry as “reflective knowledge is the only means of regulation. Its value as instrumental is unique” (LW 4:174–75).

In tune with Peirce’s phenomenology and the architectonical structure of the categories, it is possible to affirm that Dewey’s concept of reality has the quality of firstness, and a regulated experience has the quality of thirdness. It is possible to affirm then, that growth, for Dewey consists on the growth from firstness to

28 The concept of growth, for Dewey, has its ultimate application as a normative concept guiding matters of morals, values, politics and especially education. However, here we approach it insofar as it consists on a metaphysical feature concerning the relation between reality/nature and experience.

77 thirdness. The principle of irreducibility of the categories also applies to Dewey’s description of reality and experience in terms of logical mechanisms:

The primary postulate of a naturalistic theory of logic is continuity of the lower (less complex) and the higher (more complex) activities and forms. (…) But its meaning excludes complete rupture on one side and mere repetition of identities on the other; it precludes the reduction of the “higher” to the "lower" just as it precludes complete breaks and gaps (LW 12:26, 30).

A state of regularity (the “higher”) cannot be decomposed into several states of chance (the “lower”). In the same manner, regularity, as thirdness, cannot be developed into fourthness, and so on. It means that, once the state of regularity is faced with chance by means of something, chance is not added to the regularity (as if a state of firstness is added to the state of thirdness, resulting in a “fourthness”): it is rather the case that regularity is disturbed by chance. In terms of inquiry processes, it means nothing else than a state of belief being disturbed by a state of doubt. In face of such, inquiry must take place in order for a new regularity to be established on the long run. What Dewey calls “intelligently directed experience” is the inquiry process as a monitored sequence of interactions upon a given sign, comprising investigations, actions upon it and the observation of the consequences of those actions, aiming towards a regulated state governed by settled habits. With experience, we manipulate reality in such a way that, through the growth from chance to regularity, we “form habits of reasonable expectation on the basis of what we know about the world, our fellows, and ourselves to the extent that we can cope with an ever-changing environment, [and] make sense of new experience” (Hook 1959, p.1014). Habits do not only give agents a guidance in terms of action, but also in terms of expectations as hypotheses, allowing new experience (and therefore) habits to rise and be settled throw inquiry. Since knowledge only grows through inquiry, and given the principle of continuity, it is possible to affirm that knowledge as a settled belief or habit must always be disturbed in order to keep growing. For Dewey, just like for Peirce, inquiry must be fallible in order to keep growing. Experience must afford both truth and error: “there is growth and growth. There is the growth which generates obstacles to further growth, and the growth which creates the conditions for further growth. There is growth which prevents and growth which encourages (…)” (Hook 1959, p.1013).

When it comes to Dewey’s concept of inquiry (a method to achieve continuous growth and to settle habits) we can see that it has a broader application than that of Peirce, while still maintaining some of the basic features already delineated

78 by the latter. Johnston summarizes Dewey’s understanding of inquiry process in four main topics:

1. Inquiry transforms problematic situations into understandable and manageable ones. When we inquire, we develop distinctions and relations out of the situation that allow us to see through problems. 2. Inquiry is inclusive of common sense and science, and has varying techniques, though there is a common structure (or pattern) to inquiry. 3. Past inquiries are (in part) the context for further inquiries. We use what we have already learned in present and future problem solving. 4. Inquiry helps to solve “the problems of men” (…). (Johnston 2009, p.8)

The first point, regarding the (i) transformative role of inquiry, comprises what has been said so far in this section: “problematic situations” are the states of doubt, of chance and unpredictability that agents encounter in experience. Through inquiry, they are able to manipulate the present state of doubt and bring it to a state of settled beliefs. The transformative character also applies to the nature of the habits that are regulating experience: former habits are transformed and new habits emerge. Important to notice on this first point is the fact that inquiry is described as a process that develops relations, that allow us to investigate and solve problems. As seen along chapter 4., diagrams are signs that allow agents to observe and manipulate relations from the signs’ objects, thus playing a seminal role in inquiry processes. Relations are embodied in the very own diagrammatic structure, allowing agents to manipulate them and come up with hypotheses that can be further worked with, until a new or modified habit can be derived from them. The process of forming habits is closely connected to the idea of fallibilism and, as said, there is no transformation nor growth without error: “because of the importance of attitudes, ability to train thought is not achieved merely by knowledge of the best forms of thought. Possession of this information is no guarantee for ability to think well” (LW 8:135). Being prone to error, inquiry is, for Dewey, just like for Peirce, a self- corrective method, which resonates in itself the principle of continuity: given to the persistence of errors breaking the regularity of a given settled habit, conditions that were taken to be general and regular need to be treated again as a hypothesis:

Until agreement upon consequences is reached by those who reinstate the conditions set forth, the conclusions that are announced by an individual inquirer have the status of hypothesis,

79 especially if the findings fail to agree with the general trend of already accepted results. (LW:484)

As such, inquiry must be always taking place in order to minimize (which does not mean “to exclude”) errors, doubt and chance results and aim for more stability and generality in a state of belief. On the quote above it is also worth highlighting the fact that, just like for Peirce, inquiry is not an individual practice, and the acceptance and applicability of new habits by a community of inquiry is necessary for habits to be settled and to keep being self-corrected. Furthermore, the more agents are involved in the inquiry, the higher is the probability for failure and doubt to emerge and trigger the start of new processes.

The second point mentioned by Johnston is an important breakthrough of Dewey’s approach to inquiry processes, especially in relation to Peirce’s. For Peirce, inquiry constitute in a scientific method and, despite his notion of science being highly broad and inclusive, it does not apply to matters of common sense, ethics, politics, religion and aesthetics. On the other hand, for Dewey, not only is inquiry applicable to the common sense as much as it is for science, but it is especially necessary and efficient when it comes to ethical, political, educational and aesthetical issues. According to him

No kind of inquiry which has a monopoly of the honorable title of knowledge. The engineer, the artist, the historian, the man of affairs attain knowledge in the degree they employ methods that enable them to solve problems which develop in the subject-matter they are concerned with. (LW 4:176)

In a first glance, it is reasonable to think that inquiry in such different areas will assume different characteristics. Some aspects of the process are sensitive and adaptable according to the field and to the sign that is being manipulated:

Many of the tools used in one context will not work in another, and to avoid difficulties requires deliberate and careful selection of techniques. (…)One cannot simply transpose the techniques and methods of laboratory science onto, for example, problems of a public nature, and expect the appropriate consequences to ensue. (Johnston 2009, p.8)

On the quote above, which describes the problem regarding the broad scope of application of Deweyan theory of inquiry, we can see that the concepts that describe such need for variety and adaptability are “tools”, “techniques” and even “methods”. None of them refers to the intrinsic structure of the inquiry

80 process. Here lies some fundamental contributions of the present thesis, bringing Peirce and Dewey together on the matters of epistemology and aesthetics. First, by adopting the premise that diagrams are such by means of their logical structure – and not by means of any morphological feature the sign holds -, the relevance of the material constraints of the tools in hand during the inquiry process are put in a second row in favor of a strong relational structure involving symbol-type-token. What matters when manipulating a diagram is not necessarily how the material features, and even the context of manipulation, constrain the agent during the process but, most importantly, how such inferential relations constrain the manipulation. In other words, how the structure of a sign constrains an agent to diagrammatically reason upon it and with it. Second, as a consequence of the aforementioned premise, we propose that within such diagrammatic structure is the common structure of inquiry, according to Peirce. By manipulating signs as diagrams, bearing its symbol- type-token structure, we are performing the inferential steps of abduction, deduction and induction: we are departing from a given habit, abducting a type, deducting a token and inducting a new or modified habit. By accepting these two points, we are then able to understand how inquiry might include different tools, techniques and methods, being applicable to a broad variety of fields, but still maintaining its character as inquiry given its inherent diagrammatic structure. The morphological features of a sign, as well as the context or field of inquiry, are relevant and play an important role during the process. But what defines such manipulation as an inquiry process is its abduction-deduction- induction structure – and not the specificities regarding the context and its tools, techniques and methods. Despite being primarily concerned with matters of education and learning, Dewey never presented a robust account on the structure of inquiry and went as far as claiming that the “mathematicization of logic has prevented otherwise intelligent practitioners from seeing the contexts in which logic takes place” (Johnston 2009, p.17). However, we can see that some of his descriptions of the process can be understood under the light of the Peircean structure of inquiry. Taking the following quote as an example:

only when existential consequences are anticipated; when environing conditions are examined with reference to their potentialities; and when responsive activities are selected and ordered with reference to actualization of some of the potentialities, rather than others, in a “final existential situation,” has inquiry properly speaking, begun. (LW 13:111)

In this loose description from Dewey, inquiry is also divided in three different stages. The first one concerns the anticipation of “existential consequences”. To anticipate consequences is to think about what will experience accomplish in a given scenario, it is to “think of manipulating our environments to effect a

81 potential improvement. [To] contemplate what the actualization of this manipulation will accomplish” (Johnston 2009, p.18). It is to come up with a hypothesis from a habit through abduction. Or, in Dewey’s words, to select constituents of a settled situation and come up with ideas as the anticipation of consequences of such constituents in the given settled situation: “Ideas are operational in that they instigate and direct further operations of observation; they are proposals and plans for acting upon existing conditions to bring new facts to light and to organize all the selected facts into a coherent whole” (LW 13:116). The second step is the examination of given conditions, bearing their potentialities. This regards the deductive process, where such conditions constitute a set of premises contained in a type, which allow the derivation of several potential tokens. The third step consist on the selection and order of an actualization of these potentialities, and the establishment of a “final existential situation”. The actualization of potentialities are the actualized tokens, which are selected and manipulated in order to induct and establish a new or modified habit. As induction requires, this is a continuous process of self-correction, and at this stage the inducted habit can either be settled, or give rise to a new hypothesis, that would trigger new inquiry processes. Another passage from Dewey that corroborates the theoretical comparison between his theory of inquiry and Peirce’s made above follows below, in which he distinguishes five, not three different steps in inquiry:

(i) a felt difficulty; (ii) its location and definition; (iii) suggestion of possible solution; (iv) development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (v) further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection; that is, the conclusion of belief or disbelief. (MW 6:237).

However, despite pointing out five steps, according to him, “the first and second steps frequently fuse into one”, and they correspond to the pre-abductive phase, which is the observation and acknowledgment of a surprising state of affairs. The third step is the abductive one, which he describes as a suggestion of consequences or conclusions in the form of an idea: “synonyms for this are supposition, conjecture, guess, hypothesis, and (in elaborate cases) theory” (MW 6:239 our emphasis). The fourth step, which he names “reasoning” is the deductive phase and, as being such, “reasoning shows that if the idea be adopted, certain consequences follow” (MW 6:240). And the third one, named “experimental corroboration or verification” consists in induction:

If it is found that the experimental results agree with the theoretical, or rationally deduced, results, and if there is reason to believe that only the conditions in question would yield such results, the confirmation is so strong as to induce a conclusion—

82 at least until contrary facts shall indicate the advisability of its revision. (MW 6:240 our emphasis)

The third point, for Johnson, concerns (iii) the role of past inquiry process in relation to new or ongoing ones. One big difference between Dewey’s and Peirce’s ideas regarding the relation between inquiry processes is that, for the former, the relation between the habit that triggers the abductive process and the habit that stems from induction is a relation strongly tied to temporality – whereas for Peirce, it is a purely logical relation. Given his Darwinian background and his concern with matters such as those of the social sphere and of education, Dewey constantly highlights the development of habits as a temporally and spatially situated process. This means that different stages are distributed over time and space, but also connected to each other due to their temporal and spatial situatedness:

We can think about a moment of experience in isolation from all that went before and think of it stripped of all elements of anticipation, but this does not prove that experience can occur in such isolated moments or that the nature of such a moment can be adequately represented in this way. (Tiles 1988, p.182)

The lack of a strong approach towards the temporality of inquiry is for Dewey one of the central problems of modern epistemology at the time, having these problems “a single origin in the dogma which denies temporal quality to reality as such” (LW 1:120). However, this does not present a strong clash of views, since Dewey’s view on temporality in relation to inquiry does not accord to the idea of temporal relations being understood and portrayed as a sequence, an order of events. According to him (LW 1) this understanding of temporal relations is immediate, but in a real scenario, communication, meaning and thought (as inquiry and reasoning) actually affect the temporal qualities of experience and therefore, of reality: inquiry “extends the scope whereby the temporally distant can inform the temporally immediate” (Tiles 1988, p.183). What he means by that is that inquiry in the present should have an aim, even if it is constructed in terms of a mere possibility in the future. On this view, Dewey echoes Peirce, who says that “an action that had no other aim than to be congruous to its aim would have no aim at all, and would not be a deliberate action” (CP 5.560). It should be pointed out, however, that whichever the subject-matter of the inquiry is, the aim of the process can blur with this subject- matter. And here is the importance of the temporal quality for Dewey: a subject- matter that triggers inquiry is changed by the inquiry process itself, becoming a future different subject-matter than the previous, past, one. As such, the aim of inquiry suffices as aim if it is understood as a process developing towards the change and growth of a subject matter X to X1– and not if it is understood as a

83 process aiming towards the inquiry for the sake of inquiry upon a subject matter X: “as long as inquiry is going on the object is an objective because it is still in question. The final object represents some objective taking settled and definite form” (MW 13:45). This view is in tune with the diagrammatic structure proposed in this thesis, which contains the inferencial process within itself. A given artifact as type, that contains a set of habits which triggered the inquiry and its derivation, allowing for the emergence, in tokens, of another set of new or modified habits. The morphological features of the artifact might not necessarily have changed, but it is possible to recognize a set of habits that were “previous” to the inquiry and another set that is “posterior” to the process:

[Dewey] repeatedly affirmed that coming to know results in changes in the situation and in the initial experience which elicited inquiry, but this was not a claim that coming to know should be allowed materially to affect either the (warranted) answer to specific questions posed in an inquiry or the test of (hypothetical) answers by subsequent experience. (Tiles 1988, p.124)

Nevertheless those habits that arise from inquiry and are posterior to the ones that triggered the process were somehow already conjectured before being reached, since temporality for Dewey does not imply sequentiality. When talking about situated and not purely abstract inquiry, the relationship is, then, not only a logical relationship, but also a temporal (however, not sequential) one.

The final point from Johnston focuses on the (iv) contextual nature of inquiry, and it develops in a similar manner as the second point, which concerns the relationship between inquiry and its tools, techniques and methods. Dewey defends that not only the tools, techniques and methods of matters of ethics, aesthetics, politics, education and common-sense can be applied in inquiry process – but also that the contextual features of such fields are prone to aid and afford inquiry. Whichever given context of experience is faced with a state of doubt and disturbance upon its regulating habits is prone to inquiry. Adding to that, Dewey highlights that the experience that provides agents with the perception of doubt and disturbance is not a private one, but a contextual one. What is disturbed is not the agent, but the context (which, on its turn, affects the agents):

It is the situation that has these traits. We are doubtful because the situation is inherently doubtful. Personal states of doubt that are not evoked by and are not relative to some existential situation are pathological; when they are extreme they constitute the mania

84 of doubting. Consequently, situations that are disturbed and troubled, confused or obscure, cannot be straightened out, cleared up and put in order, by manipulation of our personal states of mind. (LW 12:109–10)

The relationship between the context and the agent performing the inquiry goes both ways. The state in which a given context presents itself to the inquirer determines the state of the inquirer (either a state of doubt and disturbance or a state of belief and regularity). On the other hand, the agent, by performing inquiry affects and transforms the problematic context in which the disturbing situation arose, where she finds herself. Inquiry changes and reconstructs experience, and reality is what is experienced as reality. Changing the habits and the diagrammatic relations that governs an agent’s experience (or the experience of a group of agents) implies that the contextual habits and diagrammatic relations are also affected: “the change in the knower cannot be treated in isolation from the resulting change in the total situation, nor from the difference this change in the situation makes to the knower’s environment” (Tiles 1988, p.124-125). As such, Dewey distances himself from the dyadic modern approach to epistemology, constituted by object and subject. Instead, he proposes a triadic approach to it, constituted by inquirer, subject-matter and objective. Inquirers are “individuals seeking more information about the subject-matters that make up the context within which they are immersed”. Subject-matters are the sign being manipulated in question, in relation to a context. They “can be investigated from various perspectives, depending on the ‘objective’ of inquiry”. This definition distances itself from the typical Cartesian concept of an object of inquiry that holds that they afford one objective, since it possesses one truth, which is real. Instead, “the primacy of any particular set of results can only be judged in relation to the purposes of inquiry. It is not a direct intuition of the single, ‘really real’ structure hidden behind appearances” (Boisvert 1998, p.36). Depending on the objective and the context of the situation in which the inquirer finds himself, the subject-matter can be approached from a set of varied perspectives. Nevertheless, as I defend here, the structure of the inquiry process as abduction, deduction and induction maintains itself.

As previously said, for Dewey, inquiry’s value for instrumentalism is unique and seminal, since it consists on the only means of regulating experience in a relation to reality. In his later works, most specifically in the book Art and Experience (1934), Dewey articulates the relationship between instrumentalism and aesthetics, by claiming that “instrumentalism only gains its significance because of the aesthetic possibilities of experience to have directly funded consummatory meaning and value” (Alexander 2012, p.184). Since inquiry is fundamental for instrumentalism and instrumentalism’s significance depends

85 on aesthetics, a relation between inquiry and the arts needs to be traced and described.

5.3. Inquiry and the aesthetic In the human context of reality and experience, Dewey claims that the activities performed by humans, in order to be meaningful and valuable, must aim at regulating and organizing reality as a significant and integrated unity. Without regulation, experience, and therefore, reality, cannot be apprehended and cannot afford knowledge. In a surprising manner, Dewey defends that the philosophical ability to understand experience is not in the practice of inquiry (as a regulating method) per se, but in the mechanisms around the aesthetics dimension. And the reason for it lies in the fact that the arts and its aesthetic constrains hold the ability to approppriate and transform experience not only in a logical way, but in a creative and intelligent way: ”construction that is artistic is as much a case of genuine thought as that expressed in scientific and philosophical matters, and so is all genuine esthetic appreciation of art, since the latter must in some way, to be vital, retrace the course of the creative process” (LW 5:262). However, as I will propose further in this section, this is not a problem about the dismissal of inquiry in favor of aesthetics. Neverthelss, it is necessary to point out straight away that Dewey has been severely criticized on the behalf of the interpretation that his theory undresses the arts from the traditional features of aesthetic experience – which, according to traditional aesthetics, are the features that make aesthetic experience and, therefore, aesthetic artifacts unique such as the normative judgment of taste, their immediate sensuous quality, the disinterestedness of their contemplation and their unrelatedness to cognition and reasoning.

For Dewey, what differentiates aesthetic experience from general of experience (or from other forms of experience that are to be found in different contexts, requiring different tools and methods), is that it relies on its expressiveness potential, situated in a context of temporal development, in which experience, as such, is endowed with a regulated, meaningful and directed quality. Expressiveness potential, for him, is the ordering of a creative impulse, which converts obstacles and problems into something that can be regulated (in a similar manner to the logic of abduction): ”for Dewey, every creative process begins with an ’impulsion’. Impulsion, which is a movement of the entire organism, is the beginning of a complete experience” (Leddy 2012, p.103). Creativity, expressiveness, signification, intelligence and freedom are the chief features of the aesthetic experience:

While this quality remains tacit in ordinary experience, it is explicitly felt in aesthetic experience. This is what allows for

86 meaning to be concretely embodied or directly funded in experience. Because art heightens this feeling, the experience is immediately felt to be developing in an intelligent and consummatory manner. (...) Aesthetic quality thus becomes one with the capacity of experience to open up toward those ideal ends which give significance, direction, and fulfillment to human action. (Alexander 2012, p.185)

In order to achieve such a fulfillment, art must be liberated from its traditional “high art”, “museum concept” view. Dewey clearly expresses this view on the first pages of Art and Experience:

Many a person who protests against the museum conception of art, still shares the fallacy from which that conception springs. For the popular notion comes from a separation of art from the objects and scenes of ordinary experience that many theorists and critics pride themselves upon holding and even elaborating. (LW 10:12)

The theorization and application of concepts to artifacts that are endowed with an aesthetic nature must not be those that revolve around the historic western tradition. Ideals such as “distancing”, “disinterestedness”, “immediacy sensorial experience” as well as a the hierarchical division between “fine” and “high”, art and “not-“ or “bad-art”, must be left behind when approaching artworks and the aesthetic experience they trigger on agents and in general experience. The arts and the aesthetic need, for Dewey, to concern both matters of the human everyday life, experience and reality, as well as must be connected to reasoning processes and the idea of growth and continuity. He aims towards “restor[ing] continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience” (LW 10:9). This view should not be misunderstood, though, with the idea that everything in life provides humans with aesthetic experience – or that the experience of everything around humans is aesthetic. What Dewey means is that, the experience of reality by humans has the potential of achieve the aesthetic, as long as it meets some criteria:

For only when an organism shares in the ordered relations of its environment does it secure the stability essential to living. And when the participation comes after a phase of disruption and conflict, it bears within itself the germs of a consummation akin to the esthetic. (LW 10:20)

87 I propose a relation between the quote above and the basic description of inquiry given by both Dewey and Peirce. After a phase of disruption and conflict (a state of doubt), aesthetic consummation is achieved by ordering the relations available in the environment, such as to achieve stability (a state of belief and regulation). By performing inquiry upon available relations (diagrams being the signs that make the relations of their objects available on themselves), the aesthetic is reached: “in a real sense, growth is equivalent to aesthetic experience” (Stroud, 2014, p.35). If growth is only achieved through inquiry, and the former is equivalent to an aesthetic experience, I affirm that, bearing Dewey’s thought, developing from Peirce, inquiry is an aesthetic practice, and that, in order to achieve the experience of aesthetics, one must perform inquiry. Experience as

Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it (…) And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed” (LW 10:19).

In tune with the diagrammatic model of inquiry presented in this thesis, by the end of the inductive phase of inquiry, agents are not faced with the habitual conditions that were prior to the abductive phase, but with a new or modified set of habits, which are the logical consequence of the inquiry process as a diagrammatic operation. It does not constitute in a reduction of aesthetic experience into an epistemological one (or vice-versa), but in the identification of a common root, from which both experiences arise. It is the affirmation that they are not mutually exclusive, and are actually connected to one another. As a consequence, aesthetic experience also possesses the four features of inquiry presented in the section above: (i) it is transformative, in a way that the experience (comprising subject-matter, agent and objective) is developed during the process; (ii) extends itself to areas beyond the traditionally approached by it (the latter being those of aesthetics and philosophy of art); (iii) has a strong temporal character (has the quality of non-linear events) and; (iv) is contextually based (it relates itself to its surrounds and its experiences). Those four points allows Dewey to set himself apart from the view that aesthetics is immediate29 (it is in fact, transformative and develops temporally), disinterested

29 The idea of immediacy in aesthetic experience, from Dewey, is different from the idea defended by traditional aesthetics. Whereas the latter see immediacy as a lack of mediation and of reasoning and cognitive processes behind it, for the former it consists on a temporal relation: ”art celebrates with peculiar intensity the moments in which the past reinforces the present and in which the future is a quickening of what now is” (LW 10:24).

88 (it must relate itself to an objective, and to the context of the experience in hand), and specialized (it can be found in experiences other than those of the high arts and of nature). Also, it disagrees with the view that aesthetics is unrelated to reasoning processes: it must actually develop through inquiry, in order to grow and achieve a state of regularity. Given the fact that aesthetic has an inferential character, and that it can be found in a multitude of different experiences, we must now turn to Dewey’s understanding of art, and the role that the arts play in the achievement of the aesthetic experience. 5.3.1. The role of art in aesthetic experience As already mentioned, for Dewey, art must not be understood through the traditional “museum conception of art”. The continuity between art and everyday life must be restored in order for aesthetic experience to be properly achieved and contemplated. It does not consist of a rejection of the idea of museums and galleries in themselves – but of the idea of such spaces existing as an isolated context, separated from everyday life: “Dewey sees art not as existing in a separate niche but as a celebration of everyday life. It develops, accentuates, and idealizes what is valuable in life” (Leddy 2012, p.103). The separation between the arts and the everyday life can lead to nothing but the mislead of inquiry and aesthetics. When it comes to the conception of what an artwork is, Dewey reinforces that one should not confuse the artwork with the factual material object that affords the experience in question. Without manipulation, inquiry and experience, there is no artwork. The material object that is manipulated can be merely named as an “art product”, while “the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience” (LW 10:9). It means that, as in the same manner of inquiry, the methods, tools are materials that are used in the context of the arts are not the defining features to characterize it as an aesthetic experience. They aid on constraining the process, but do not define the nature of the process as neither aesthetic not inferential. The experiental process as that of growth and settlement of a state of regularity is what characterizes experience as aesthetic and inferential. This feature constitutes what Dewey calls “an experience”. To start understanding what an experience is, works of art must be seen as a process created with and through the aesthetic experience, bearing their intrinsic potential to create and guide inquiry.

Such struggle, tension and activity have a special place in the arts, which is what guarantees the arts central spot in matters of aesthetics. This is because of the potential and the possibilities within it to trigger inquiry, as mentioned above. Dewey never proposes it in a straightforward way, but some claims point out to such a direction:

89 The logic of artistic construction and esthetic appreciation is peculiarly significant because they exemplify in accentuated and purified form the control of selection of detail and of mode of relation, or integration, by a qualitative whole…Artistic thought is not however unique in this respect but only shows an intensification of a characteristic of all thought. (LW 5:251 our emphasis).

Its special ability to produce aesthetic experiences is not and end on itself, such as in the traditional accounts that justify artworks based on their deliberate feature of achieving the aesthetic. Consequently, aesthetic experience as an end in itself also does not suffice. Art must be understood not as objects created with the purpose of control, support and cultivate aesthetic experience exclusively for the sake of it. As seen previously, inquiry as an end in itself is of no value. By triggering, guiding and aiding inquiry, artworks are influencing experience as a general and, consequently, reality as well. The special place they hold in matters of the aesthetic is then due to the fact that they have room for the deliberate creation of tension and states of doubt. They allow creative experiments to be made not only by the artist, but also by those who manipulate the artwork. They are an experimental means of cultivating states of doubt, which can lead to growth in experience in general. Artworks intentionally produce tension and doubt “not for their own sake, but for their potentialities, bringing to living consciousness an experience that is unified and total” (LW 10:21).

Along Art and Experience, Dewey makes the point that ordinary experience is marked by “distraction and dispersion”, the disinterestedness in the traditional aesthetic account of experience. In contrast, artworks, as an experience, for him, must engage, challenge, and trigger investigation as ways to achieve fulfillment as growth: “art represents the most successful effort to control the chance conditions by which such experiences are had” (Alexander 2012, p.200). However, by rejecting the idea of artworks producing a distanced, disinterested and distracting experience, he is not proposing that art has a utilitarian function:

The existence of activities that have no immediate enjoyed intrinsic meaning is undeniable. They include much of our labors in home, factory, laboratory, and study. By no stretch of language can they be termed either artistic or esthetic. So we optimistically call them "useful" and let it go at that, thinking that by calling them useful we have somehow justified and explained their occurrence. (…)The characteristic human need is for possession and appreciation of the meaning of things, and this need is

90 ignored and unsatisfied in the traditional notion of the useful” (LW 1:271-272).

Further, the ability of artworks to challenge agents, and present them with doubt and tension should not be equated to the typical modernist avant-garde standards of art as producer of novelty. What today is understood as pre-historic and ancient art, were tools and artifacts that allowed humans to explore and experiment with their environment through different materials and techniques. They possessed a utilitarian value, but also an aesthetic one (since the aesthetic is not an exclusive feature of experience). Religious art in general had the “utility” of creating different atmospheres and feelings and, as such, they possessed habits that were different of those of everyday life, and other realms of experience, directly affecting how humans in that period would construct their general experience in life. The mechanism was at stake in the case of court art in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. The state of doubt does not need to be novel. It simply needs to disturb, in any qualitative sense, a given state of regularity in experience. Artworks not only create the disturbance, but also guide the process to regulate experience again: “in an experience the conclusion is not merely a terminus or an ending, but a moment which brings a process to fulfillment: it is the outcome of a guided process of action which organizes and unifies the experience” (Alexander 2012, p.200). Another interesting point brought up by Dewey is the social character of an experience. Peirce describes the scientific studies as a social practice, that goes beyond “the solitary studies of a single man”, and is only realized through a group agents communicating, aiding and stimulating one another (see footnote on page 22). Art, for Dewey, in a similar manner, cannot be compartmentalized in one person’s experience:

By subjecting a medium to the forms of the art, an experience becomes sharable among many. Art not only comes to be a potential ground for the shared experience of a community at a particular moment in time, but it continues to have power in the historical life of the culture. (Alexander 2012, p.202)

Art forces us to think about how human beings are related to the world and to each other. Through experience, art allows agents, not in isolation, to grasp other experiences and reality itself.

5.4. Peirce and Dewey in comparison Before going into the chapters reserved for the defense of my main argument here and the following analysis, it is necessary to sum up and the main theoretical contributions from Peirce and Dewey, bearing its points of convergence and divergence, that will aid on the defense of my argument on

91 bridging the gap between aesthetics and epistemology. When it comes to the disagreements between Peirce and Dewey, we can say that:  For Peirce, pragmatism should concern a logical method in a strict manner, not extending itself to humanistic, moral and social concerns. For Dewey, pragmatism should be a method applicable to all sorts of experience, since they are all disclosures of reality.  Specifically, for Peirce, matters of religion, ethics, politics and aesthetics do not afford scientific methods of inquiry. Whereas for Dewey, such methods are it is especially necessary and efficient when it comes to ethical, political, educational and aesthetical issues  Whereas Peirce does not circumscribe the pragmatic method to human experience solely, Dewey develops his philosophy around matters of human experience.  Despite the agreement between them on the pragmatist method being a tool for agents to manipulate the consequences of processes as a necessary test of their validity, Dewey defended that such consequences should bear the results of processes in a not-so abstract, imagined and idealized way.  Peirce provided a highly detailed theory and analysis of scientific inquiry, focusing on each inferential mode in a robust and consistent way. Dewey focused more on a descriptive presentation of inquiry as a whole, not going into the specificities of logics and mathematics.  When it comes to the understanding of the relations between the inferential modes, Peirce stresses them as purely logical. Dewey focuses on the temporal aspects of it, however not in sequential terms.

Such disagreements prove fruitful for an intertheoretical approach, where a similar philosophical background connects both philosophers, since the differences between them corroborate to the necessity of bringing them together, as they fill each other’s gaps when it comes to the investigation of the epistemic potential of art. Nevertheless, despite some disagreements, the similarities on their accounts of matters of inquiry, experience and reality furnish a fertile ground for the development of my argument here. The main similarities that need to be explicitly summed up are:  When it comes to the apprehension of a concept of a given phenomenon, the former denotes, simultaneously, the process of manipulating the latter as well as on the “what” is being manipulated, and the results of such manipulation.  Continuity and processualism are the basis of reality and of experience – instead of discreetness, dualisms and essentialisms.  It is not possible to apprehend any sense of “real” through the manipulation of reality itself. In fact, it is not possible to manipulate reality itself. It is only possible to disclose knowledge about reality

92 through manipulating and what is given to us in and with experience: signs.  Reality and the experience made out of it do do not relate in terms of opposition, completion or contiguity, but of continuity: reality constrains the possibilities of experience, while on the other hand, experience makes the possibilities of reality available to agents.  To be meaningful, experience must seek for habits and states of regularity (for Peirce, thirdness) that grow from chance, spontaneity and states of doubt (firstness) held by reality.  The role of inquiry is central for regularities to grow from chance and be settled as habits guiding experience.  Inquiry must be fallible in order for experience to keep growing. Experience must afford both truth and errors, so hypotheses can be traced, that lead to further new or modified habits to emerge and be settled.  By being prone to error, inquiry must be a self-corrective method. As such, inquiry is transformative: former habits that are settled and regulate experience are transformed through inquiry and new habits emerge from it.  For Peirce science has a social character insofar as it goes beyond the studies of a single agent, being realized through a group agents communicating, aiding and stimulating one another. The same applies for Dewey’s understanding of the aesthetic and the arts. As such, they both converge on the idea that inquiry must not bear a personal, but a social character.  When it comes to the context of inquiry, the state in which it presents itself to the inquirer determines if the latter is experiencing a state either of doubt or of belief. On the other hand, by inquiring, the agent affects and transforms the context in which the state of doubt arose.  Inquiry must not be an end in itself. As an aim, it only suffices if understood as a process that develops towards the change of something X to something X1. It does not mean that the morphological or material features of X have changed during the process. What changes is the set of habits governing them.  Despite Peirce defining inquiry as consisting in three modes of inference, and Dewey defining it in terms of either three five different steps, their accounts match each other. For the two first stages merge into each other and consist in what Peirce describes as a pre-inferential stage.  What Peirce calls “abduction”, Dewey defines as the anticipation of “existential consequences”. However, for both of them, it is the creative stage in which hypothesis emerge.

93  The second step, defined by Peirce as “deduction” and by Dewey as “reasoning”, is the one where consequences follow necessarily from premises.  The final step, “induction” for Peirce, and experimental corroboration or verification” for Dewey, consists in a continuous process of self- correction, where a habit can either be settled, or give rise to a new hypothesis, that would trigger new inquiry processes.

As we can see, Peirce provided us with a robust account of inquiry, but did not connected it to the field of the aesthetics and arts. Dewey, on the other hand, was extremely interested in matters of the aesthetics, however his descriptions of inquiry processes are not as detailed and systemic as Peirce’s. Both accounts provide each other with insights on what the other lacks. For that reason, this intertheoretical approach is necessary in order to establish a pragmatist bridge between epistemology and art. In the next section, I am going to connect inquiry and the arts, departing from the points above and from the diagrammatic model proposed here in chapter 4. I will defend and demonstrate that artworks, due do their diagrammatic features, allow agents to derive knowledge and to establish an aesthetic experience through the performance of inquiry upon them by agents.

94 6. Knowledge as experience upon diagrams

The main research question of this thesis, stated in the introduction is: “how do artworks, given their diagrammatic features, allow agents to derive knowledge through their manipulation?”. I propose the short answer for this question to be “because artworks are paradigmatic examples of inquiry, when approached through their diagrammatic symbol-type-token structure”. The answer of this question stems from two different, but intertwined, arguments I develop. They have been mentioned several times along this thesis as the theoretical basis was being presented. In this section, I am going to make them explicit and elaborate on their importance for the present thesis. The first argument I propose claims that (i) diagrams (such as artworks), due to their symbol-type-token structure, embody the logical relations of abduction, deduction and induction; and the second one is that (ii) artworks are great examples of inquiry processes, since the aesthetic experience they afford allow agents to be confronted with a state of chance and doubt, and to be further guided through inference into a state of regularity and belief. As such, it is possible to affirm that the experience upon artworks as diagrams is that of inquiry and knowledge. In tune with pragmatists, “knowledge” is here not understood as “knowledge about something”, as if it constitutes on a proposition, definition or truth about a given subject-matter. It is not in the interests of the present thesis to explore and define the ontology of the knowledge afforded through art – but on the mechanisms that make it available. The inferential potential of art and its epistemological features are not an end on itself. Artworks are actively engaged with their experience and experience in general, transforming them at the same time as they are being transformed by them: artworks “work to modify and sharpen perception and communication; they energize and inspire because aesthetic experience is always spilling over and getting integrated into our other activities, enhancing and deepening them” (Shusterman 2000, p.24). By proposing that knowledge is experience upon diagrams, such a concept is striped out of any foundational or essentialist property, and “one might even go so far as to say that there are as many kinds of valid knowledge as there are conclusions wherein distinctive operations have been employed to solve problems set by antecedently experienced situations” (LW 4:157). We are not proposing an answer to the question “what knowledge is’, but to the question “how knowledge works”.

In the analysis that is going to follow in this chapter, I propose that the artworks’ potential to afford inferential and aesthetic experience is grounded on a logical structure. The consequence of it is that the materiality and the morphological features of artworks do not suffice to justify and describe neither the epistemic

95 nor the aesthetic potential of artworks. Of course such features are important when it comes to the constraints that are established upon agents during the manipulation processes, and this will be explained along the analysis. But the ground of both the inferential and aesthetic experience in and with artworks does not lie in matters of materiality, since “a piece of parchment, of marble, of canvas, it remains (…) self-identical through the ages. But, as a work of art, it is recreated every time it is esthetically experienced” (LW 10:113). However, by focusing on the logical structure behind the experience of artworks, I am not aiming at defining and describing artworks and their experience solely in terms of logical inferential standards. It is not a reduction of art to inquiry. Artworks can produce a multitude of experiences that are qualitatively different, and none of them is exclusive nor more important in relation to the others. What I am proposing is that inquiry can consist on an aesthetic experience that seeks a state of regularity and fullfillment, and that aesthetic experience can be understood through inferential terms as growth from a state of doubt to a state of belief.

The example that is going to be analyzed in this chapter was chosen bearing the principle of fallibilism and of inquiry being an ongoing process, the path of which should not be blocked. It concerns Arthur Danto’s important contribution to the theory of aesthetics regarding Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes 30 . He developed his theory on top of the Brillo Boxes experience for almost 50 years, until his death, always correcting it, and looking for the mistakes and misunderstandings previously settled. The idea behind it regards the fact that the artist brought, to the inside of a traditional museum institution, an object constructed with the same morphological features of an every object: transportation boxes of Brillo soap pads. The initial doubt raised by the habits of an everyday object in a museum context led to a process of inquiry that concluded its inductive phase with the generation of a whole new set of habits regarding the ontology of art – as Arthur Danto derived a whole new aesthetic theory on the basis of this experience with the Brillo Boxes. In that case, the hypothesis that the transportation boxes could be categorized as art is confirmed through the inquiry process performed upon it by Danto through his whole career.

6.1. Arthur Danto and the Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes Born in the United States in 1928, Andy Warhol is one of the most prominent American artists of the 20th century. Considered to be one of the leading figures

30 Warhol’s artwork is going to be addressed here in this thesis in italics, as a way to distinguish it from the boxes of Brillo soap pads in its non-artwork sense.

96 in the pop-art movement in the sixties, his art “drew directly from, and (…) indeed celebrated, the form of life lived by Americans, including what Americans ate, and who Americans considered icons in their own right, mainly figures from mass culture, like movies and popular music” (Danto 2009, p.x). Inspired by the Bristish pop-artists, Warhol started to create paintings based on advertisements and comic books in the early sixties. His first endeavor in sculpture, already as a recognized artist in the American scene, came in 1964, when he

employed carpenters to construct numerous plywood boxes identical in size and shape to supermarket cartons. With assistance from Gerard Malanga and Billy Linich, he painted and silkscreened the boxes with different consumer product logos: Kellogg’s corn flakes, Brillo soap pads, Mott’s apple juice, Del Monte peaches, and Heinz ketchup.31

Despite the use of different materials, Warhol’s Brillo Boxes (Figure 11) were visually indistinguishable from the Brillo soap pads transportation boxes (Figure 12), originally designed by James Harvey, that could be found in warehouses and supermarkets all over the country.

Figure 11: “Brillo Boxes (Soap Pads)” by Andy Warhol. Screenprint and ink on wood. 1964. (Source: https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/89204.html Copyright held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Accession Number 1994-79-1—3)

31 Available at: Accessed on: 17.10.2020.

97 Figure 12: Brillo soap pads cardboard boxes at a warehouse in Michigan (right) in the second half of the 2010s. (Source: https://www.fbem.org/who-we-are/financials-reports/)

The Brillo Boxes were exhibited for the first time at the Stable Gallery, in New York City, in the year of 1964: “the show consisted of hundreds of what looked like commonplace grocery boxes, piled up as they would be in a supermarket stockroom. Among these were Brillo Boxes, which looked like the real thing” (Danto 2009, p.xiii-xiv). When visiting the Stable Gallery for this exhibition, Arthur Danto encountered the Brillo Boxes, and decades later (Danto 2009) he describes this contact as a transformative experience: the one which turned him into a philosopher or art. In the preface of the 2005 Brazilian edition of the book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Danto describes this “transformative experience” as such:

I promptly accepted them as art, but then I questioned myself why those boxes were art, while the regular supermarket packages were not. Then I understood that this question had the form of a philosophical problem. (…) The philosophers tell us that things that seem completely different from one another are the same, while completely identical things are different. This is exactly what was happening between the Brillo Boxes from Warhol, exhibited in the gallery, and the same packages of Brillo soap pads stored in warehouses. To say that the difference, in a last analysis, is due to the difference between the gallery and the

98 warehouse as institutions is to cover up and brush aside the problem. (Danto 2005, p.2)32.

From this first meeting in 1964 until the end of his career, the Brillo Boxes and the philosophical problems around it were ever-present in his philosophy. Arthur Danto is considered one of the greatest philosophers of art and aesthetics in the second half of the 20th century, and his philosophy kept revolving around this moment of interaction with Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. From the publication of The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, first as an article in 1974, then as a whole book in 1981, a considerable amount of the contemporary discussions and publications, both in academia as well as in art specialized circles, stemmed from his ideas (Rollins 2012, Bacharach 2012). Among the various topics approached by him, the most consistent and present one regards the ontological discussion about what makes an artifact an artwork. Before the publication of the above mentioned article in 1974, most of the discussions around it revolved around the manifested and sensorially perceived properties of artworks (with a few exceptions, such as the accounts provided by Weitz and Diffey, in section 2.1.): artworks were defined as such based on the way they looked, smelled, sounded, etc. Artifacts were granted the status of an artwork given their immediate features, and the consequent apprehension from agents through the senses: “Any object that qualified as art did so in virtue of the object’s manifest properties and, as a result, artworks were defined in terms of their visual, aural, and so on properties” (Bacharach 2012, p.146). Danto defied this tradition, and created an influential aesthetics theory, which maintained that for something to be understood and classified as an artwork, its non-manifest and non-perceptual features must be taken into account as central points in the evaluation. In this section, I am going to present the line of thought and argumentation given by Danto after his encounter with the Brillo Boxes, focusing on some of his most influential writings about it. In the following subsections, I will recall and analyze Danto’s thoughts and argumentations, and Warhol’s artwork in tune with the present thesis’s research questions and arguments.

The first article published by Danto after his encounter with the Brillo Boxes was done in the same year, under the title of The Artworld. The article starts with the philosopher’s prompt rejection of the theory of mimesis and imitation in art, claiming that since the achievements of Kandinsky and abstract art, those features of mimesis “have been relegated to the periphery of critical concern” (Danto 1964, p.571). In the first section of this article, Danto surprisingly proceeds on the construction of a relationship between art and science, on terms of discovery. According to him, discovery in art (such as the discovery of a new

32 The original publication is in Portuguese, and the translation of the quote was made by the author of this thesis, thus being no official translation of it.

99 class of artworks) holds characteristics that are analogous to discovery in the science (in the case of the discovery of a new class of facts, for example). He brings up such comparison in order to treat the theory of mimesis and imitation in art. He proceeds then by saying that:

In science, as elsewhere, we often accommodate new facts to old theories via auxiliary hypotheses, a pardonable enough conservatism when the theory in question is deemed too valuable to be jettisoned all at once. (…) Suppose, then, tests reveal that these hypotheses fail to hold, that the theory, now beyond repair, must be replaced. And a new theory is worked out, capturing what it can of the old theory's competence, together with the heretofore recalcitrant facts. (Danto 1964, p.572-573).

In this passage, he is laying down the stepping stone for what he is about to propose. He does not intend to come up with an “auxiliary hypothesis” to “repair” the theory of mimesis and imitation in art. He wants to come up with a new theory for the ontology of art, based on a newly suggested hypothesis that came up to him through his experience with the Brillo Boxes. This artwork, like other many artworks from the pop-art movement are not aiming at imitating objects from the everyday life. In many cases, like with Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg, the objects are exactly those from the everyday life, put inside a museum. Despite the Brillo Boxes being constructed by Warhol and his associates, does it make the case of imitation? What differentiates the Brillo Boxes from Brillo boxes, and what makes them alike? Most importantly, how such differences and commonalities interact such as to the former be able to be classified as art, and the latter not? What is it that makes some artifacts share a “double citizenship” (Danto, 1964, p.582), belonging, at the same time, to the realm of the everyday life, and to the realm of the arts? In this first attempt to address and tentatively answer these questions Danto proposes that what gives something the status of art are theories:

What in the end makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo Box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is (in a sense of is other than that of artistic identification). (…)It is the role of artistic theories, these days as always, to make the artworld, and art, possible. (Danto 1964, p.581).

One decade after The Artworld, Danto published an article called The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, which was later expanded into a whole book. In this article, Danto starts from a similar point as in the previous one: by

100 stating the existence of evaluative and qualitative judgments on artifacts supposed to be artworks, and with the rejection of mimesis and interpretation. When it comes to judgments, especially the qualitative ones (such as “this is good art”, “this is bad art”, “this artwork is empty”), it must be understood that such judgments are only possible once a presupposition, or a hypothesis, is already either laid in front of us, or accepted: the hypothesis that such artifacts, being called bad, good or empty, are artworks:

For "empty" as applied to our works is an aesthetic and critical judgment, presupposing that its subjects are artworks already, however inscrutable may be the differences between them and objects which, since not artworks, reject such predicates as a class (Danto 1974, p.139).

This is no banal assumption, and is importantly tied to this thesis’ argument: in order to proceed with a judgment upon artworks, which might lead to either the confirmation, the rejection, or to some sort of qualitative evaluation of them (such as ”empty”), one must already manipulate it in accordance to the hypothesis that it is artwork. Such a common judgment of modern and contemporary art (especially from lay sources), has deeper implications when it comes to matters of the ontology of art. Namely, that in order to settle the matter of the differentiation of artworks ”we must go outside the objects and into the atmosphere of their ontological status, and seek criteria underdetermined by retinal indiscrimination” (Danto 1974, p.140). Therefore, Danto developed his concerns, already present in the article from 1964, in the following question: where to draw the ontological line of distinction between art objects and non- art objects (or even “empty” art objects) if the crude materiality of the artifact itself, as perceived through the senses, remains almost the same (while sometimes holding a few differences) in both of the cases? In the case of the Brillo Boxes, we can articulate the questioning as such: how can “a box, made of undistinguished carpentry, coated with a banal tan chemtone applied casually with a roller” behave as something else than “a box, made of undistinguished carpentry, coated with a banal tan chemtone applied casually with a roller”? In a more specific manner: how can such an artifact behave as an artwork?

One of the premises given by Danto, developing from his initial critique on the theory of mimesis and imitation, is that when it comes to the matters of general perception, it is possible for two things to hold completely different meanings, while materially resembling one another. Resemblance as a criterion for the definition of art (or for the rejection of something as art, such as in “this looks exactly like a box used to transport good in a warehouse, therefore it cannot be art”) ends up putting aside an important feature of the arts and the history of art: it is constructed on the basis of styles, genres and revolutions. “Revolutions”

101 not in the modernist sense, but in the sense which embraces the developments of new techniques, the attainment of new thematics, the incorporation of new materials, the development of new discourses: “icon33-defining characteristics only by grace of historical accident may serve as art-defining traits: and revolutions are conceptually entertainable in which artworks no longer satisfy the traits of iconicity” (Danto 1974, p.141). So if resemblance cannot be a criterion to define something as art, it should also not suffice as a criterion to define something as non-art. Because of that, he argues that a condition for something to provide agents with whichever sort of meaning (including artistic and aesthetic ones) is the existence of “certain assumptions with regard to its causes. And causes are not the sorts of things we can read off the surfaces of alleged effects” (Danto 1974, p.141). What he means is that what causes something to be art (or at least be assumed to be art) lies beyond the material surfaces of the artifacts in hand. It could even be the case, that there is no determination relation between the materiality of the artifact and its status as an object of art. The question there regards where is it or what is that, which causes something to be preceived as art.

While investigating the causes of that, in relation to the idea of resemblance, Danto makes a case about the idea of an imitation: performing something so as to resemble something else. His point is that, in the case of a human imitating the sound of an animal, one might find pleasure and entertainment in such an act once some premises are taken. Some of them can be: (i) the sound is coming from a human; (ii) humans do not usually sound like that; (iii) it is known which animal usually sounds like that. These premises, together, create the hypothesis that the human is imitating an animal, therefore one’s reaction of pleasure and entertainment derives from this contextual premise: it is a human imitating the sounds of a crow, not a crow itself making its usual noise (Danto 1974, p.144). In other words, the sound of a human imitating a crow might be performed with such an exatitude as to perfectly resemble that of a crow - but what makes agents react differently to the noise, though, is not on the material and morphological features of the noise itself, but to something that, despite being materially ”external” to the noise, governs the process from which meaning, and therefore a reaction, is derived from it: ”that is to say, they must be initially appreciated as imitations and hence not real” (Danto 1974, p.144). According to Danto, this something that allows such an apreciation is a belief 34 , and the following

33 “Icon”, here, is used in the narrow sense of a sign which resembles its object – and not in the complex sense presented here in the section 4.1.

34 He is careful, though, to distinguish an imitation from an illusion in terms of belief: “It is here that imitations must be distinguished from illusions, for the latter depend upon causing false beliefs, namely that one is seeing or hearing something different from what in fact one is seeing or hearing” (Danto 1974, p.144).

102 accordance to such a belief. The same, he argues, happens in the case of art. Despite the causes of such beliefs being variable - such as a belief that is constructed trought contextual cues (this is art because it is in a museum), or a belief that is constructed through an ennouciation (this is art because a critic said so) -, they are always something conventionalized and not ”internal” to the material and morphological features of the artifact in hand.

However, a point for Danto, that seems to distance him from Dewey’s theory of the aesthetic is that, for the former, “the importance of art must be bound up with the logical fact that it puts reality at a distance” (Danto 1974, p.145). This must be carefully presented and discussed here, since its origins and implications are not as simple as the quote supposes it to be. The reason why Danto comes up with this claim is related to his own experience in artistic exhibitions of pop-art, which he describes as:

I think of the singular intoxication the first pop-art exhibits brought to spectators when they saw such crass objects as ironing boards and vacuum cleaners in a space where they no longer had any power over us, standing helpless and impotent, like stranded sea-monsters, in the neutralizing space of the gallery. (Danto 1974, p.146)

Danto is talking about the experience of an art exhibition, inside a gallery. However, it is an exhibition that displayed objects that conventionally (and also practically) belong to contexts and uses of experiences from outside an art gallery, such as ironing boards and vacuum cleaners. By “putting reality at a distance”, he means that the beliefs that are being attached to the artifacts such as to constrain their manipulation are those different from the everyday life beliefs that are usually tied to ironing boards and vacuum cleaners. It does not mean that reality does not affect art, and neither that art does not affect reality. In fact, they can do such, through a contrastive relation of beliefs, that instigate the exploration of why something that has been conventionally connected to a meaning is now behaving such as to produce a different effect on agents other than getting the wrinkle out of their clothes or their floors cleaned. By manipulating an artifact through a belief that is “distanced” from the one that governs the manipulation of the artifact in everyday-life – in other words, through distancing the artifact from every-day life in conventional terms – a context in which beliefs are contested rise. Consequently, new assumptions and hypotheses rise as well, that would not have been risen in the traditional manipulation of such artifacts in a context outside of a gallery. In that way, pop- art, by distancing it from reality in terms of relating an artifact to a belief that does not concern its everyday usage, actually makes everyday objects, that would not be manipulated as art in another contexts, behave according to artistic

103 habits. And this phenomenon counts as an interesting case for the claim that the materiality of the objects affect, but do not determine the beliefs and meanings that are attached to them. Danto builds his new aesthetic theory on top of that.

Given his background on analytic philosophy, Danto finishes the article proposing that the assumptions that cause something to be art are not theories, as he initially proposed in 1964. He claims them to be a “semantical structure” incorporated in the material object as a vehicle for its transmission. This idea, despite its novelty for the aesthetics, is problematic because it presupposes a dualistic differentiation of an object, as a vehicle for the transmission of something else, which is a content in the form of a semantical structure. It also consists on an essentialist claim, that describes art in terms of a given set of features, and not in terms of process and relations. However, as it is going to be seen on the next subsections ahead, by tracing the development of Danto’s quest for an essentialist claim about the ontology of art, we arrive at the conclusion that the Brillo Boxes consisted on a process, going beyond a material thing, and beyond the simple definition of an ontological category such as “art”. It was an experience, temporally and spatially distributed, based on growth, and constructed through diagrammatic manipulation of the Brillo Boxes as an artifact of art.

In the following years, Danto kept on working on this definition, since the idea of art being as such due to incorporated semantical structures was, apparently, not enough for him. In 1998, another important paper for the present discussion was published under the name of The End of Art: a Philosophical Defense. In this article Danto summarizes major developments in his theory, that were published in the books The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981) and After the End of Art (1997). It was a paper written with the role to give a response to criticisms towards his theory of the end of art. However, many of those criticisms are directed to claims that, in fact, developed from his initial investigations, decades before, on the Brillo Boxes. The intersecting claims have to do with the search for an ontological universal definition of art, with the role of aesthetics beyond a discipline (while also addressing the relationship between art and philosophy), with the logic behind theories of mimesis and imitations and, obviously, with “the method of using indiscernible counterparts, like Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and the Brillo cartons it resembles” (Danto 1998, p.127). When it comes to the ever-present question in his philosophy, that of “what is art?”, Danto admits that he is aiming towards an essentialist definition of art, that would consist on an absolute truth that can be applied everywhere and to art in general. Nevertheless, he argues that one of the features of such an essentialist definition should be the acceptance of pluralism in the arts: “I believe, that there is an essence of art that makes artistic pluralism a possibility. But that means that art's essence cannot be identified with any of its instances,

104 each of which must embody that essence, however little they resemble one another” (Danto 1998, p.128). An universal, essential concept, he argues, can only be possible through the consideration of “extreme differences” in objects and styles of art. And, as we have seen so far, for Danto, a definition of art should not concern materials, techniques, or any other features that can be immediately sensorially perceived from the given artifact. As a consequence of it, the criterion of resemblance became a problem in which, as in the Brillo Boxes, “for any non-artwork, an artwork could be imagined which resembled it as closely as might be required. And for any artwork, a non-artwork could be imagined like it to whatever degree” (Danto 1998, p.130). From here, he starts to develop upon what he believes to be the unifying character of art, as published in both of the books above mentioned, leaving behind the idea of a semantic structure. For him, artworks, in order to be perceived as such, must bear two irreducible features: (i) aboutness, and (ii) embodiment. The first feature implies that artworks, unlike their indiscernible non-artworks counterparts, must be about something. The meaning given to an artwork is done so through the artist, who affirms a thesis through the artifact. Neverthless, “one could always, on the hypothesis that one was dealing with an artwork, ground an interpretive hypothesis - an ascription and a meaning - on certain of its properties, which would have no particular salience if the object were merely an object” (Danto 1998, p.130). From the possibility to manipulate an art object so as to reach its meaning either by means of an interpretative hypothesis, or by means of an assertion from the artist or the curator, Danto arrives at the second feature of an artwork: its ability to embody (interpretative) meaning. However, the meaning is something latent in it, and involves a process of manipulation that can either confirm or deny the hypothesis based on a given belief. As it might be obvious at this point, Danto is, in a simplistic and purely descriptive way, implying that one must manipulate the artwork through inquiry (this will be analyzed in more depth in the following subsections).

However, despite leaving behind the “semantic structure” concept, the dualistic idea that there is a material form and vehicle, and there is a content that is transmitted through it remains. Even though Danto acknowledges the possibility of new hypothesis regarding the meaning of the artwork to be raised through its manipulation, Danto still attaches to this idea of something, that is absolutely not related to the materiality of the artifact, that gives a meaning to it. Further, he assumes an interesting point in what regards the Brillo Boxes and boxes of Brillo pads and the theory of the “embodied meaning”. According to him, what he failed to perceive is that the Brillo carton boxes also embody a meaning: “it is about something - Brillo, namely - and it embodies its meaning. The difference is only that it is commercial art, whereas Brillo Box is fine art” (Danto 1998, p.141). Despite this assertion, Danto proceeds on developing it by

105 calling the distinction between ”fine-” and ”commercial-art” a matter of prejudice, since

In fact, the design of the Brillo cartons is exceedingly ingenious, as I have explained elsewhere. It celebrates the product it contains through a certain visual rhetoric, enlisting color, shape, and lettering. (It may even make the worse soap-pads look better than their competitors!). (Danto 1998, p.142)

So, if both the Brillo Boxes, as well as the boxes of Brillo fit in the criteria of aboutness and embodiment, what makes one art and one not? Despite not willing to propose a third criterion, Danto acknowledges that the distinction might be in the treatment of meaning that is given by each of the cases. In the case of the Brillo Boxes and, therefore, in the case of art, the questions and hypothesis that are raised share a metaphysical space with the questions and hypothesis that are raised in philosophy. On the other hand, the “the Brillo box as a piece of commercial art merely strives by rhetorical means to make Brillo preferable to other soap pads” (Danto 1998, p.142). Danto is, even though he does not acknowledge it explicitly, pointing towards a differentiation based on the kind of reasoning that is behind the process, which concerns the construction and further entertainment of questions and hypothesis.

In 2009, Danto wrote a biography of Andy Warhol, that can actually be considered a philosophical “biography” of Warhol’s artistic production. In a chapter dedicated to the Brillo Boxes Danto narrates two situations which brings some more questions to the problem of imitations, indiscernibles and, of course, the ontology of art and its meaning. In the year of 1968, Warhol prepared an exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. The Brillo Boxes were to be exhibited there. Together with this artwork Warhol also ordered, from the Brillo company, around five hundred cardboard boxes of Brillo to be exhibited together with the Brillo Boxes and other works. Those “original” Brillo carton boxes “were used to create the atmosphere of a stockroom, but which were in no sense considered works of art, either in their own right or in the aggregate” (Danto 2009, p.52). In that scenario, there were several units of Brillo Boxes and boxes of Brillo being exhibited in the same context. What differentiated them as art and not art? Further, after Warhol’s death, the curator of the Moderna Museet, Pontus Hulten, in 1990, ordered the fabrication of around 120 fake Brillo Boxes, with a counterfeited certificate stating that they were made by Warhol in 1968. The so-called “Stockholm-type” Brillo Boxes were sold at the time as originals. Were they, by being forgeries, also able to embody the same meaning as the originals? Both of the questions raised here in face of those examples are not answered by Danto. However, they will be discussed in the next section.

106 In the same chapter of this book, Danto also discusses the original boxes of Brillo in terms of aesthetic qualities, as a way to make the case against an ontology of art based on immediate sensorially perceived characteristics. The designer behind the original creation for the Brillo boxes was James Harvey. He was, in fact, an abstract expressionist artist, who worked mainly with paintings and, as a part-time job, he designed packages (Figure 13).

Figure 13: James Harvey, in front of one of his paintings, holding a box of Brillo (Source: http://www.artbouillon.com/2013/02/that-brilliant-brillo-box-pops-debt-to.html).

Danto narrates that Harvey was indeed present at the opening of Warhol’s 1964 exhibition at the Stable Gallery,

realizing that he had designed the very boxes that the Stable Gallery was selling for several hundred dollars, while his boxes were worth nothing. But Harvey certainly did not consider his boxes art. They were, one might admit, commercial art. And as commercial art they were brilliant. (Danto 2009, p.64)

107 As a matter of fact, the boxes of Brillo were not the only packages that were being presented as artworks in the exhibition of 1964: packages of Kellogg’s corn flakes, Mott’s apple juice, Heinz’s ketchup, Campbells’ tomato sauce and DelMonte’s peaches were also exhibited (Figure 14). But the Brillo Boxes were the star of the show, and Danto believes that “there has to be an explanation of why everyone remembers the Brillo box, but not, say, the Mott’s apple juice box” (Danto 2009, p.64). And the explanation, according to Danto, lies in the excellence of Harvey’s design:

Andy gets no credit for the brilliance of Brillo Box’s design. The credit is entirely Harvey’s. What Andy gets credit for is making art out of what was an entirely vernacular object of everyday life. He turned what no one would have considered art into a piece of sculpture. (Danto 2009, p.64).

Figure 14: Other packages that were exhibited together with the Brillo Boxes in the 1964 exhibition at the Stable Gallery (Source: https://walkerart.org/calendar/2010/1964-2) .

In his last book, called What Art Is, published in 2013, the same year of his death, Danto maintains the focus of his half a century long quest for the ontology of art, based on the problems risen by the Brillo Boxes. In fact, the cover of the book consists in a picture displaying two of the original 1964 Brillo Boxes. Besides other topics, Danto constantly comes back to the matter of the aesthetic excellence of the design of the boxes of Brillo by Harvey. And this was due to its design, which Danto enthusiastically describes, in length and detail, as such:

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The 1964 box is decorated with two wavy zones of red separated by one of white, which flows between them and around the box like a river. The word “Brillo” is printed in proclamatory letters: the consonants in blue, the vowels - i and o - in red, on the river of white. Red, white, and blue are the colors of patriotism, as the wave is a property of water and of flags. This connects cleanliness and duty, and transforms the side of the box into a flag of patriotic sanitation. The white river metaphorically implies grease washed away, leaving only purity in its wake. The word “Brillo” conveys an excitement which is carried out in various other words - the idioms of advertising - that are distributed on the surfaces of the box, the way the idioms of revolution or protest are boldly blazoned on banners and placards carried by demonstrators. The pads are GIANT. The product is NEW. It SHINES ALUMINUM FAST. The carton conveys ecstasy, and is in its own way a masterpiece of visual rhetoric, intended to move minds to the act of purchase and then of application. And that wonderful river of purity has an art historical origin in the hard-edged abstraction of Ellsworth Kelly and Leon Polk Smith. As I suggested above, the design exalts its own contemporaneity and that of its users, who belong to the present the way members of what was called the “Pepsi generation” were congratulated for their nowness. (Danto 2013, p.41-42)

The aesthetic excellence of the design, was carefully constructed by Harvey in order to celebrate Brillo soap pads: in other words, in order to sell Brillo soap pads. However, despite this excellence being responsible for differentiate this design from the other designs from the exhibitions (and probably, from other soap pads in grocery stores), it was not, Danto claims, responsible for it to be read as an artwork. For what makes something art are its “invisible properties” (Danto 2013, p.40). Given all the background given in this chapter so far, in the next subsections I will analyze it in relation to the aim of this thesis. I agree with Danto in what comes to the claim that what makes something art are not the tacit material features of an artifact, but something “invisible”. However, instead of claiming it to be a “embodied meaning”, I will defend that it is a “diagrammatic structure” that can be potentially manipulated through an inquiry process. 6.1.1. Diagrammatic features As defended in the section 4.1.2., diagrams can be defined as whichever kind of representation, either material or not, that makes the abstract relations of their objects, available in the diagrammatic sign. However, one important role that

109 material diagrams can play is to generate and provide sensory stimuli for reasoning processes. As such, by approaching artworks as diagrams, we are sharing an important principle with Danto’s theory of art and experience of the Brillo Boxes. Diagrams are such not because of the material features they hold, which can be sensorially perceived. What confers a sign the role of a diagram, are the logical relations it embodies. In the same way, as repeatedly seen, Danto argues that what confers an artwork such a status are not its material features, but something it embodies. The question for Danto was to find out what is embodied, and how is it embodied in such artifacts. Therefore, diagrams for Peirce, just like artworks for Danto, must be approached through their “non- manifest and non-perceptual features”. Human reasoning and inquiry processes have, as argued, heterogeneous characteristics, when it comes to the representational formats it relies on. Another preliminary theoretical consideration that also brings Peirce’s concept of diagrams and Danto’s understanding of artworks together bears the problem of resemblance. Iconic signs, the class of S-O relations that diagrams belong to, are commonly and superficially approached as signs that merely resemble their objects. And, usually, this resemblance is understood in terms of sensorially perceived qualities such as a dog and the drawing of a dog (which would make the latter an icon of the former). However, icons (just as artworks) go beyond simple resemblance features in terms of representation, and cannot be understood just as a one-to-one mirroring of sensorially perceived features. Icons are autonomous in relation to their objects in the sense that they represent the latter through their own means of representation. The same holds in the case of artworks. Further, just like icons, artworks can “show” something (in the sense of: “can make something sensorially available) that is not the object they are signifying at all. Equations show numbers, letters and characters – but it does not mean that the object of a given equation are numbers, letters and characters. Instead, it can be, for example, the speed through which a given body might hit a given surface. Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (Figure 15) “shows” a black square on a white background, but its object can be “the feeling of non- objectivity” (Malevich 1959, p.68) or any other habit from the Suprematist movement.

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Figure 15: Malevich’s Black Square. 1915. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square_(painting) Copyright held by Tretyakov Gallery)

Icons and artworks, due to their signifying potential not being dependant on a similar sensorial reconstruction of an object, have an incredibly high potential of experimentation, since they can, basically, refer to anything – existent “in the wild” or not – including mere possibilities and supposed-only states of affairs. I can make an icon of the possible-only idea of a square Earth, and further manipulate it to conjecture how the Earth would behave (or even simply look like) if it was square. In a similar manner, I can make a tapestry of a unicorn inside a rounded fence, to conjecture how it would be if horses had horns (Figure 16).

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Figure 16: The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (from the Unicorn Tapestries). 1495–1505. (Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/467642)

When it comes to the description of diagrams themselves, I start by adapting the case of the Brillo Boxes and its similar artifacts into the model from the section 4.1.2, in order to investigate and analyse Danto’s claims in light of a diagrammatic structure. By taking Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, the transportation boxes for Brillo soap pads, the Stockholm-type boxes and the original Brillo boxes that were used to decorate an exhibition, the model would look as such (Figure 17):

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Figure 17: the visual representation of the symbol-type-token relationship in the case of Brillo soap pad boxes as a diagrammatic structure35.

Here we have four different S-O-I triads in the left of the image, where the sign of each triad consist in a set of habits: the ones from (i) an artwork, (ii) a transportation box, (iii) an exhibition’s decoration, and (iv) an artwork’s forgery. The interpretant of all those four triads are the material features of what can be recognized as a box of Brillo soap pads36 as a general type. The dotted

35 The present model consists on a development from the one presented in Vitral 2019.

36 As previously said, the boxes for the transportation of Brillo soap pads and the boxes used as decoration in the exhibition made in the Moderna Museet are made of cardboard – whereas the Brillo Boxes and the Stockholm-type boxes are made of plywood. However, the treatment given by Wahrol

113 arrows connecting the first set of triads to a second one represent the manipulation process performed by agents, upon boxes of Brillo soap pads as a general, according to each habit that has the role of a sign in the first triads. Finally, the second set of four S-O-I triads at the bottom of the image represent the result of such manipulations, producing four different tokens: (i) the Brillo Boxes, (ii) the boxes for transporting Brillo soap pads, (iii) the Brillo boxes that were used to decorate the exhibition at the Moderna Museet, and (iv) the Stockholm-type boxes. Each of these final signs derive from a manipulation based on habits given on the first triads.

Danto’s investigation into an ontological description of artworks that fits both the criteria of generality and plurality, at the same time, takes with an extreme importance the discovery of what are the commonalities and what are the differences between something that is considered to be art, and a materially identical object that, on its turn, is not art. By looking at the figure 17 we can start to understand what are the things that the Brillo Boxes share with its similars, and the ones that they do not. What they all share in common is that they, as tokens, can all be deduced (as we will describe in the next section) from the same type. The different feature that each one of the tokens have in relation to the other, are their connections to specific habits that generated the type as interpretant. Let’s analyze each of the constituents of the diagrammatic structure (habit as symbol, type and token) and contextualize them to the example of figure 17.

Since his first paper concerning the Brillo Boxes conundrum, Danto had a hint that what causes something to be art is not in the material features of it, but somehow “external” to the materiality of the artifact in hand. He starts by proposing that they might be theories, and develops further into suggesting semantic structures incorporated in the artifact, until he reaches the idea of meanings about something embodied in the artifact. When it comes to the metaphysics of these three suggestions given by Danto, we can see that they all share some grounding features in common: (i) they are not part of the materiality of the artifact, (ii) they have the role of regulating the behavior of the artifact in question, and (iii) they have the role of mediating between the artifact and the agent manipulating it. Those three features are descriptive of what Peirce calls the category thirdness. They all consist of some sort of convention and regulation upon something that, through its mediating role, guides action and behavior. It is clear that such a thing would be “underdetermined by retinal indiscrimination” in the words of Danto. However, it is an ever-present category without which there would be no signification and the forger to the boxes made them visually indistinguishable from the cardboard ones. For that reason, they are grouped here as such in terms of their material’s immediate sensorial perception.

114 process (semiosis) at all. From the three elements that consist of the structure of a diagrammatic sign, one of them consist on an element with the nature of thirdness: habits. Habits govern and determine actions by providing general rules that subject organisms to behave as such. More than that, habits ascribe meaning to phenomena, processes and artifacts:

If there be a unity among our sensations which has no reference to how we shall act on a given occasion, as when we listen to a piece of music, why we do not call that thinking. To develop its meaning, we have, therefore, simply to determine what habits it produces, for what a thing means is simply what habits it involves. Now, the identity of a habit depends on how it might lead us to act, not merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under such as might possibly occur, no matter how improbable they may be. What the habit is depends on when and how it causes us to act. (CP 5.400 his emphasis)

As such, the “meaning” that is embodied in the artwork for Danto is, instead, according to this account, a “habit”. And the habit is what determines the meaning. In the above quote we can see that the nature of a habit is determined by circumstances where they are “likely to arise” and “might possibly occur”: it depends on the contexts and situations that it might cause agents to act. It might also depend on what is already known about the habit or the artifact in question: habits are “brought up into present consciousness by a bond that had already been established between it” and something else (CP 6.141). In the case of the four tokens above described, it is possible to see that they behave differently, due to the context and situations each of them are to be found, as well as due to information that bonds them not only to the same context and situation, but also to tokens of the same nature. In the case of the Brillo Boxes, they were connected to the habits of an artwork for several reasons: they were in an art gallery, they were announced as art, they were part of an already existing movement that used to bring regular everyday objects to the status of art, they were connected to an artist whose name was already established in the scene. Therefore, even with the initial surprise that might have struck Danto the first time he saw the Brillo Boxes, he already had constructed the hypothesis that he was seeing an artwork, and therefore manipulated them according to the habits of an artwork. In the case of the transportation boxes of Brillo soap pads, they are connected to another habit due to the fact that: they can have Brillo soap pads inside them and they are to be found in warehouses (where products are usually transported inside boxes) or grocery stores (where products are usually sold inside boxes). None of those habits share characteristics with the habits of artworks – therefore it would be extremely unlikely that the boxes of Brillo soap pads would be manipulated as an artwork inside a warehouse, by

115 someone transporting them. In the third case, boxes of Brillo soap pads were used as decoration for an exhibition in 1968 at the Moderna Museet and, as such, were not manipulated according to the habits of an artwork, nor according to those of a transportation box. In 1968 the Brillo Boxes were already a famous artwork and, for those who were visting the exhibition, it was either already know or announced there through a book from Olle Granath that those sculptures were a facsimile of transportation boxes of an American product. Besides that, the carton boxes used for decoration were not mixed with the Brillo Boxes, but put around the room in what Granath describes as “a magnificent mountain of boxes which accentuated the repetition theme of the exhibition” (Figure 18). The acknowledgment of a difference between the already established Brillo Boxes as sculptures and the carton boxes, as well as the separated display (both in spatial terms as well as in terms of disposition as “a mountain of boxes”) of the carton boxes contributed for the access to the habits of a decoration for the exhibition room.

Figure 18: the cardboard boxes of Brillo soap pads as exhibited in 1968 at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (Photo: Nils-Göran Hökby)

Lastly, the Stockholm-type boxes. When they were fabricated in the Swedish city of Malmö, in 1990 (three years after Warhol’s death), they were showcased

116 in a retrospective exhibition about the artist in the Moderna Museet and sold for around $6.000. At that time they were believed to be originals and, therefore, were manipulated (and sold for the price) of Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. However, when the truth about their provenience came into light in 2007,

the news sent shock waves through the art world. Now the collectors who spent thousands—in some cases hundreds of thousands—of dollars on those boxes were anxiously awaiting final word from the Andy Warhol Art Authentification Board about the status of their “Stockholm type” Brillo boxes, as they have come to be called.37

From this point onwards, the exact same objects that were first subjected to the habits of an artwork, started to behave according to habits of an artwork’s forgery, due to the efforts of the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board up to the point that they even received a new name (“Stockholm type boxes”) in order to mark the difference between them and the originals. From these considerations about habits and tokens in the diagrammatic structure, we can already address the following points from Danto. First, what is embodied in the each of the possible tokens is not a “meaning”, but a habit. A disposition towards action that determines, in the long run, the meaning that can be apprehended through and from a token. And, what something means are the habits it involves. The advantage of this is that the dualistic conception of “form and content” or “vehicle and meaning” is ruled out, in favor of a unitary approach in which habit, token and meaning are all connected in terms of a logical and processual relationship, and not in a differentiation based in terms of a given materiality. Habits allow the deducing of tokens while, at the same time, tokens allow the exploration of habits. Further, habits have the nature of being part of a signification process, while also guiding the same process through conventions and regulations. They cannot be defined neither by “external to the form” nor “internal to the form” criteria: as seen in figure 17 habits are part of the logical structure of a diagram, in the first triad on the left - and also play the role of a regulating mechanism, in the second triad on the bottom. And second, the problem regarding the “double citizenships” of pop- art artworks is solved and the relation between token and habit, seen as a process that also involves a context and its dispositions, explains why is it possible for two artifacts that materially resemble each other to behave differently, and afford different meanings. Moreover, it provides another point of view on the idea of “imitations”. In terms of logical relations, both the original box designed by Harvey as well as Warhol’s Boxes are considered to occupy the same

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117 descriptive level: that of a token. The concept of a token instead of that of an imitation, does not subject the artworks to the judgment of being a “mere copy” of something else.

However, two factors must be pointed out here: first, Warhol indeed saw the potential of an artwork in a box from a warehouse (that, in such a situation, was subjected to the habits of a transportation box, and not to those of an artwork) and, second, as Danto says, the Brillo Boxes were “the star of the show” when compared to the other box-like sculpture that were sharing the space with them. The explanation for these remarks are to be found in the nature of the general type and its relation to the habits and the tokens. As type is not an existing individual object, but a general “which does not exist but governs existents, to which individuals conform” (CP 8.313). It consists of a quality, or set of qualities, that are shared among all its tokens. It does not need to be a set of material qualities that is shared by the tokens of a type, but in the present case study, Danto’s investigation revolved around the idea that what those different kinds of Brillo boxes share are its material features. For that reason, I claim here that the type in question consisted of a general set of features that were materialized in all of the tokens, that could be derived from it. We call this set of features “Boxes of Brillo soap pads”, and they refer to everything that can be sensorially perceived in all the tokens, including, as Danto calls it “the aesthetic excellence”. The phenomenon of a type in the case of artworks regards the phenomenon described as the claim in favor of the material features of an artifact do play a role in how the artifact is going to be perceived and manipulated. In this regard, I object to Danto’s idea that in order to search for a definition and an understanding of what art is, we must distance ourselves completely from the artworks material features. As a type, the general set of material features of all the box tokens does not determine the habits that are going to be attached to the tokens, but embodies all those habits from which the type emerged as an interpretant. Tokens conform themselves to regularities of a type due to the embodiment of habits in it. Without the intermediation of a type, it would be possible to argue in a naïve manner that anything could be an artwork, as long as would be manipulated according to a chosen habit. Because of the existence of a type, habits cannot be chosen from an imaginary “array of all habits in the world”, but need to be chosen based on their potential embodiment on a type. In other words, tokens can only be manipulated according to habits that are embodied in the logical structure of a type (that consist of the sign which generated the type as interpretant). The aesthetic excellence of the general type of “Boxes of Brillo soap pads” contains on itself the habits of an artwork and the habits of a transportation commercial box that “celebrates its product”. And this generality is what allowed Warhol to see the possible potential of the boxes of Brillo soap pads to behave as art: they afforded, in Warhol, the emergence of a similar hypothesis as that from Danto

118 – that those boxes could be art. That those boxes could be successfully manipulated according to the habits of an artwork. The aesthetic excellence of the general type is also what caused the Brillo Boxes, as Danto extensively narrates, to stand out in relation to the other boxes that were similarly produced and exhibited with them.

At this point we might be arriving at a similar stage to that of Danto’s investigation in 1998, where he asserted that both the Brillo Boxes and boxes of Brillo soap pads fitted in the criteria of aboutness and embodiment. We see that all the four cases above described (the Brillo Boxes, the transportation boxes, the decoration boxes and the Stockholm-type boxes) share the same diagrammatic structure of a habit as symbol, type and token. So, what differentiated the Brillo Boxes from the others? What makes them more susceptible to behave according the habits of an artwork? At this point it would be of great philosophical shallowness to defend that the contextual and situated rules and conventions of the space where the token is to be found are the ones responsible for it. One good argument against this idea that the context is the one responsible for it are the cases of “contemporary art museum pranks”, where a mundane object (such as a pair of glasses) can be placed inside a museum38. The pair of glasses might even be momentarily manipulated as if they were art, but at some point it becomes clear to the agents doing it that the glasses are indeed not art, but a prank on the very same idea that the context determines something to be art. Putting something inside a museum does not confer something the status of art. I propose an answer to the two questions above that is not very distanced from Danto’s answer – it is however a more systematic one. Danto says that, in 1964, he found himself asking a question in “the form of a philosophical problem”, which led him to propose, in the paper from 1998, that art allows the emergence of questions and hypotheses which “share a metaphysical space with the questions and hypothesis that are raised in philosophy”. Here we must return to Dewey’s ideas, presented along the whole the chapter 5., and to the conclusion we derived from an intertheoretical approach with Peirce. One quote from Dewey presented in the the section 5.3. contains the following claim: “construction that is artistic is as much a case of genuine thought as that expressed in scientific and philosophical matters, and so is all genuine esthetic appreciation of art”. As such, as we propose in this thesis, what caused the Brillo Boxes to be experimentally manipulated as art is that it, due to their type, the habits that are relation to them and the contextual situatedness, they are susceptible to an inferential manipulation process: a process of inquiry consisting in the modes of abduction, deduction and induction. However, what causes them to be art is that they afforded an aesthetic

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119 experience that took agents from a state of chance to a state of regulation. As it is going to be seen on the next section, by confirming the original hypothesis39 that emerged from a state of doubt (“Brillo Boxes are artworks”), the process was then brought to a state of regulation, leading to the induction of a new modified habit. 6.1.2. The inquiry process One of the contributions of the present thesis is an account of diagrammatic reasoning as the process that, due to the symbol-type-token structure of a diagram, affords abduction, deduction and induction to be performed. In this section we are going to demonstrate how Danto’s investigation process consisted on a diagrammatic manipulation, in the form of an inquiry process, on Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. It is also going to be made evident the case for the second argument of this thesis: how the aesthetics experience of artworks are great examples of inquiry processes. From the general diagrammatic structure shown in figure 17, we can derive a specific version of it, concerning only the Brillo Boxes’ token (Figure 19):

Figure 19: the diagrammatic structure of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes as derived from figure 17.

By observing the relations on the diagrammatic structure of the Brillo Boxes above presented, we are going to furnish a description of the inquiry process based on its three inferential modes. As such, we can transform the image above in accordance to the previously presented figure 10 (Figure 20):

39 The reason why the Brillo Boxes are art, but the glasses on the floor of the museum are not is that the first confirmed the hypothesis that was created upon the confrontation with a state of chance, transforming this hypothesis in a regularity: in a habit.

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Figure 20: the diagrammatic structure of the Brillo Boxes in relation to the three inferential modes: abduction, deduction and induction.

The first inferential mode, abduction, is the one which triggers the inferential process, by aiding on the construction of a hypothesis. It recommends a course of action with “a reason to suspect”, creating conjectures and claims through which the deductive and the inductive phase are further constrained. Hypothesis, here, derive from the observation and the acceptance of a habit as a regularity, that has been disturbed by something which created a state of doubt. The state of doubt, in relation to a habit, can emerge from two possibilities: either (i) something that was supposed to behave according to the habits in hand does not behave as such, or (ii) something that was not supposed to behave according to the habits in hand, do behave as such. In the case of the Brillo Boxes, we have the latter: a material artifact, that conventionally behaves according to a different set of habits (those of a transportation box), was behaving according to another set of habits (those of an artwork). What Danto calls “the existence of certain assumptions with regard to its causes, which we cannot read off the surfaces of alleged effects” he is talking about “certain hypothesis with regards to a given set of habits that potentially allowed their derivation. The description of this reasoning process with the Brillo Boxes in a syllogistic form would look like this:

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This process, when represented in relation to a semiotic S-O-I triad, considering the diagrammatic structure of abduction has the following form (Figure 21):

Figure 21: the abductive process with the Brillo Boxes, in accordance to a diagrammatic structure, represented as an S-O-I triad.

As said, the state of doubt was brought into the experience from the perception that something, that was not supposed to behave according to the habits of an artwork, was indeed behaving according to them. The hypothesis created from the abductive method has, here, the form of a general type. It is a general type because, for Danto, it did not conjecture that only those specific artifacts, Warhol’s Brillo Boxes exhibited in the Stable Gallery in 1964, in front of him were art. But that a general concept of boxes of Brillo soap pads, due to their aesthetic excellence, can behave as art by embodying habits of an artwork. By being a type, it is not ruled out that they can also embody habits other than those of artworks. What is being hypothesized is that, being a type, boxes of Brillo soap pads can embody habits that are not only the ones that were usually attributed to them. The possibility of it embodying habits of an artwork does not rule out the other possible habits that can be embodied on them. In 1974, when discussing the problem of imitations, Danto claimed that, what allows the appreciation of something as something else is a belief, and the following accordance to the belief in question. According to him, this consists on an act of judgment, the constrains the whole following process of appreciation and

122 observation of something. In several passages, that can be traced since the beginning of his philosophy, Peirce describes beliefs as having the logical nature of a habit:

A judgment is an act of consciousness in which we recognize a belief, and a belief is an intelligent habit upon which we shall act when occasion presents itself. (CP 2.435)

A belief is a habit; but it is a habit of which we are conscious. (CP 4.53)

The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect. (CP 5.370)

A belief is an habitual connection of ideas. (CP 7.359)

The question is what passes in consciousness, especially what emotional and irritational states of feeling, in the course of forming a new belief. The man has some belief at the outset. This belief is, as to its principal constituent, a habit of expectation. (CP 8.270)

By considering the hypothesis that the Brillo Boxes can be artworks, due to their behavior according to the habits of an artwork, we can say that the belief that artworks cannot be things such as transportation boxes was disturbed, and came to the nature of a state of doubt. The hypothesis created by Danto (that they indeed can behave as artworks) are an attempt to bring regularity back by the settlement of a new or modified belief regarding the ontology of artworks. As such, this hypothesis guides the following phases of the inquiry process (deduction and induction), that then are going to take place on the basis of this assumption. When it comes to the acceptance that this hypothesis is possible, we can see that the a general type of boxes of Brillo soap pads, behaving as art, matches the criteria presented in section 4.2.1.. First of all, it is capable of experimental verification, due to the accessibility of the type, and the robustness of the habits that were being disturbed. Secondly, given the fact that Warhol was already an established artist, and that the pop-art movement was already accepted by critics, historians and appreciators of art in general (even though the mechanisms of it being art were not obvious, hence Danto’s importance to the philosophy of art) it would be even more costly to simply disagree with all of them, and claim that the Brillo Boxes were not art. Third, the value of this hypothesis, as well as the potential effect it would cause upon other projects is of a great importance. It would allow the settlement of a habit, that of artworks,

123 that would influence a whole field of production, consumption and theorization. It would provide an answer to a problem that has not been dealt with, despite having already being recognized. It would furnish ground for the grammar and specifications of artworks to be broadened, bringing incentive to new productions. It would made agents see the aesthetic potential in their everyday experience, on things that were not previously accepted to have such potentials, thus reconfiguring experience in general.

Before moving to the deductive phase, let’s make a brief remark on the following quote from Danto, already presented here on page 62: “one could always, on the hypothesis that one was dealing with an artwork, ground an interpretive hypothesis - an ascription and a meaning - on certain of its properties, which would have no particular salience if the object were merely an object”. What is being said here, is that artworks allow the creation of hypotheses concerning given meanings that, even in the case of a facsimile artifact of the same type, in everyday life or whichever other context, would have not been created if the artifact were to be seen as ”merely an object”. The reason for this is that hypotheses are not derived from tokens as ”mere objects”, but from a possible, latent, set of habits that might govern these objects.

The next step on the inquiry process regards the deductive phase, it consists of a formal and systematic verification of the hypothesis, in order to establish a conclusion that can the further verified through induction. It relies on matters of necessity, which means that, if the premises are true, so will be the conclusion. The present case of the Brillo Boxes can be adapted into a deductive syllogistic form as such:

When it comes to the representation of the above process as an S-O-I that bears our case of the Brillo Boxes, we have the following (Figure 22):

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Figure 22: the deductive process with the Brillo Boxes, in accordance to a diagrammatic structure, represented as an S-O-I triad.

The premises of the deductive process in hand are constructed as a general rule, and a general case, which are further deducted into an individual result. In other words, the premises are the general habit, as an operative rule, and a general type, as the case in hand. According to the diagrammatic structure, what is deducted from a habit and a type is a token. Given the Brillo Boxes example, we have the habits of artworks as a general rule, taken to be embodied in the type – while the type itself consists of a general case to which the rule is applied so as to deduct a result: the token corresponding to Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. However, by analyzing the case of Danto presented in the section 6.1., we can suggest that the deduction performed by him is not a simple case of corollarial deduction but of a theorematic one. This means that there is an “unnoticed and hidden relation” among the one established between the habit and the type. In Danto’s case would be a premise that not only boxes of Brillo soap pads can contain habits of artworks and, thus be artworks – but that, potentially, whichever object, consisting on whichever given material form, can behave as art. Danto is not concerned in making a point about the Brillo Boxes only: he is concerned in using the Brillo Boxes to actually make a point about the ontology of artworks in general. Therefore a new premise, that has the form of a new hypothesis is added to syllogism previously presented: if it is true the boxes of Brillo soap pads can embody the habits of an artwork, it is possible that other artifacts, regardless of their materiality can also embody the habits of an artwork. As such, the Brillo Boxes token that results from the deduction contain another rule (and, therefore, another habit) embodied in it. As such, the syllogism would present itself in the following form:

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This added premise consists of what Shin describes as a “meta-abductive guess”, being subjected to the same criteria of choice that subjected the first abducted hypothesis. The role of this added premise is to bridge a gap between the rule and case that was already implied in the abductive process of the original hypothesis upon the habit that triggered the inquiry process, since a “habit plays a double part; it serves to establish the new features, and also to bring them into harmony with the general morphology and function of (...) [that] which they belong [to]” (CP 6.300). As already implied by the habit that artworks, in general, behave according to habits of artworks it is expected that the Brillo Boxes case would work not only for itself, but also for other material artifacts as well. It is important to notice that the added premise does not need to add anything to the material qualities of the deduced token. It can work solely in terms of logical relations. With the deducted token of Brillo soap pads as artworks, namely the token of the Brillo Boxes, it is necessary now to test and verify the abducted result through induction.

Induction, as the last step of an inquiry process in terms of its three modes is the one responsible for the establishment of a new state of regularity, but the settlement of a belief (habit). It has a self-corrective nature that can keep revolving until a new state of doubt emerges, that triggers a new abductive phase. As a syllogism, the induction process of the Brillo Boxes case is the following:

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As an S-O-I triad, it can be represented as such (Figure 23):

Figure 23: the inductive process with the Brillo Boxes, in accordance to a diagrammatic structure, represented as an S-O-I triad.

A successfully performed induction, as the final phase of an inquiry process, settles a habit that is either completely novel, or possesses some modifications in relation to the previous habit from which the hypothesis stemmed from during the abductive phase. This newly settled habit has the nature of a belief and it should guide “expectation of the future in all cases” (CP 8.294). According to the diagrammatic structure, the induction is performed upon a case, which consist in a token, and a result that stemmed from the previous deductive phase which considered the added premise. The result of it is a habit. Now, this is no banal assumption. What is being made explicitly here is that habits can only emerge and be settled through the manipulation of diagrams. According to Peirce ”habits, from the mode of their formation, necessarily consist in the permanence of some relation” (CP 1.415). ”Some relation” here consists of the nature of the diagrammatic sign as a whole: through its symbol-type-token structure it represents the relations in the objects of the sign. If habits must necessarily consist of the settlement of relations, it must consist of the settlement of the diagrammatic relations that produced it. In the Brillo Boxes case the token being manipulated are Warhol’s Brillo Boxes but, due to the previous deductive phase being that of the theorematic kind, a new premise was added, which broadened the scope of the case: the habits that are being induced

127 do not only conform themselves to the Brillo Boxes, but to art as a general ontological category of artifacts. As it is expected from the inductive phase of an inquiry process, it has a self-correcting method, and the habits that were being inducted by Danto, kept being reviewed and corrected by him along the years, from the original idea of “theories” giving something the status of an artwork until his concept of artworks as “embodied meanings about something else”. With induction, a new state of belief and regularity was settled, through a modified habit regarding the nature of artworks. At this point, as a conclusion of the analysis, we must recall Dewey’s ideas about inquiry and the aesthetics.

For Dewey, as said, the process of inquiry consist in an aesthetic practice since, when performed correctly, it brings agents and contexts to a state of regularity and belief, following a state of chance and doubt. In other others, to perceive an experience as aesthetic, one must perform the methods of inquiry. A such, the relationship between aesthetics and inference is constructed on the basis of two central concepts in Dewey’s philosophy: continuity and growth. In the example narrated and analyzed in this section, we can see that both concepts were not only present, but also crucial for the experience produced. The principle of continuity is present in several moments: in the experiencial continuity of an art exhibition that raised philosophical questions about scientific methods of inquiry and perception in general; in the continuity between art and everyday life, where objects from outside of artistic circles were exhibited my Warhol and conventionalized as art through philosophy by Danto; and as a regulative principle of experience as a whole, which grows from firstness to thirdness. The principle of growth, as it has been made explicit with this analysis plays a role in the whole process, from which a general habit was disturbed by the Brillo Boxes as seen by Danto, who then inquired upon it for almost half a century in order for this disturbed state to grow into a state of regularity, of thirdness, again through the establishment of a new modified habit. Four features of Dewey’s concept of inquiry were presented here: (i) it is transformative; (ii) it extends itself to areas beyond the traditionally approached by it; (iii) it has a strong temporal character; and (iv) it is contextually based. All these four points were covered in the description and analysis of the Brillo Boxes case. It transformed a set of habits that were responsible to govern the experience of art, transforming the concept of art itself. Further, it also transformed the ontological boundaries of the possible group of artifacts that can be understood as art, highlighting the aesthetic potential on everyday artifacts. It extended itself beyond the realm of arts and aesthetics, by bringing everyday artifacts into philosophical discussion, and similarly bringing philosophic discussion as a potential into everyday life with those artifacts. It had a temporal character not only in the sense that Danto worked on the case for almost 50 years, but also that it worked in terms of predictions about the future and the behavior of not only artifacts, but of art as a whole ontological category. It was contextually

128 based in a way that, as discussed, some habits were only made explicit due to contextual cues, being related to the surrounding and the experiences that are conventionally tied to them. Another point from Dewey that must be recalled here is his aversion to museums as an institution marked by conservative western traditions. He frequently advocated from a liberation of art from the “high art museum” concept. And this liberation was exactly the rhetoric of the Brillo Boxes (and pop-art in general), as well as the guiding point of Danto’s investigation. Warhol and other pop-art artists brought everyday life objects into the “sacred” space of museums and galleries submitting them to new habits. Danto, because of this, developed a whole theory of aesthetics that objected itself to the traditional standards of the arts holding their status due to such western traditional standards of distancing themselves from everyday life and everyday experience.

The Brillo Boxes example also highlighted the potential that Dewey atributes to artworks to deliberate create states of doubt and chance as to stimulate and guide inquiry as a way to achieve an aesthetic experience. It was not the case that boxes of Brillo soap pads were put inside an art gallery by mistake or accident. They were intetionally constructed to have a potential of triggering states of doubt. And not only they cultivate states of doubt, but they also, as diagrams, aid and guide the further manipulation process that must be performed with and upon then in order to a state of regularity to be achieved. Inquiry, thus has an aesthetic form in a way that it restores states of regularity. Which does not mean that inquiry is necessarily a feature of the arts. However, what differentiates the aesthetic experience of inquiry with and upon artworks from other instances of inquiry processes is that artworks highlight the creative potential of inquiry.Due to what Dewey calls ”expressivenes potential” creative impulses are ordered by converting obstacles and problems into something that can be regulated. As such, art holds the ability to both appropriate experience as well as to transform it from firstness to thirdness in a creative way, which allows the emergence of new habits. As such artworks are, in themselves, an experience that goes beyond their artifactual materiality: as already said here, “the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience” (LW 10:9).

To finalize I would like to comment on how Danto, in an interesting and somehow ironic manner, had his quest for an essentialist definition of the arts constituting a great empirical example that artworks must, actually, be described in terms of processes, and not of essences.

129 7. Conclusion

Let’s return, one more time, to the main research question from this thesis: “how do artworks, given their diagrammatic features, allow agents to derive knowledge through their manipulation?”. As it was presented in the last section, artworks, as diagrams, embody a symbol-type-token relation in their own structure, which contains the logical processual relationship of abduction, deduction and induction in it. By bringing in the aesthetics philosophy of John Dewey in accordance to Charles Peirce’s concept of diagrams, I aimed at an epistemic approach to artworks that would not eliminate their aesthetic features, nor put them in a background position. The idea of inquiry as an aesthetic practice that seeks regularities out of chance fulfills my aim to provide a bridge between matters of aesthetics and of epistemology, without subjugating neither of them to the other. The success of those arguments raised here was attested through the description and analysis of a diagrammatic manipulation process that transformed the field of aesthetics and philosophy of art in the 20th century: the case of Arthur Danto and Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. The first attitude that must be taken in face of that is a reformulation of both the working definitions that were provided in the beginning of this thesis as a way to guide its reading. Knowledge was then understood here through the lenses of a process, that affects particular experiences, general experience and reality. It allows us to redesign and redefine our engagement and general behavior towards such artifacts, their habits, their contexts, as well as habits and contexts from other kinds of experiences. I conclude by proposing that knowledge is experience upon diagrams. But what about artworks? Artworks also have here the ontology of a process, that contains in itself the diagrammatic structure that allows the exploration of inferential methods for the settlement of habits in a creative and intelligent way. Knowledge is able to be derived from artworks due to an intrinsic feature that they hold: their ability to be manipulated as diagrams. However, artworks are not the only kind of artifacts that hold such abilities. As such, I would like to go one step ahead, and propose the idea that artworks are models in the epistemological sense. In the next conclusive subchapters I am going to point out towards a justification about the connection between the concepts of diagrams and models. Then, I will provide a brief overview of how this understanding of artworks can contribute to a field that traditionally describes such processes (although not explicitly as having the nature a modelling process) in relation to artworks: intermedial studies.

130 7.1. Models as diagrams Models possess a highly heterogeneous character when it comes to their materiality (Achinstein 1965; Downes 1992; Giere 2004; Rothbart 2004; Frigg & Hartmann 2005; Knuuttila 2005a, 2005b; Knuuttila & Boon 2011; Bokulich 2011). They can be used “for the purposes of scientific reasoning, theory construction and design of experiments and other artefacts” (Knuuttila, 2005a, p.310-311), and can “function as proto-theories, pedagogical devices, or as tools for generating and testing hypothesis. (…) models can perform an explanatory function as well” (Bokulich, 2011, p.33). They can perform different functions, from simply carrying a message about its object up to aiding problem-solving situations. As a consequence, artifactual models can assume different configurations in order to be more suitable for each practice it may be designated for. Thus, although a model can be considered an artifact that signifies something else, by means of representing something else, it does such through a process that selects and focus on some specific characteristics of this something, in light of the application to which the model is being built or used. As seen on chapter 4., the most basic definition of iconic relations between a sign and an object, can be understood as what is generally regarded as simple description of modelling processes: the process in which a given entity (which can be described as an Object in a semiosis), is communicated to an agent by means of the own qualities of another entity (a Sign in a semiosis). Even though it is common to find accounts of modelling processes described as “X is a model of Y”, what is really at stake in this short assertion are a series of features and processes that can be explained through the nature of iconic-diagrammatic signs.

First, the fact that iconic signs are able to represent their objects through the formers’ own qualities. This is a feature present in several descriptions of modelling processes, in different fields of studies. In fields 40 such as communication studies, media studies, translation studies and intermedial studies, this feature is usually described in terms of features from one media forming the basis of the meaning that is produced in another media, by means of the representational features of the latter. A movie adapted from a book, for example holds what is broadly called “features” from the book, however those features are adapted to the movie’s own representational qualities. By being able to signify through their own features, the definition of iconic signs is also in accordance to modelling theories that highlight the fact that models are not

40 Even though those fields do not explicitly talk about these processes through the term “modelling”, Marais presents us an extensive list with more than sixty different names used to describe either the process as a whole, steps of it, or some features of it – and all these names only in the humanistic and communicational sciences. Some of them are: translation, transposition, adaptation, transmediation, remediation and, of course, modelling (Marais 2019, p.3-4).

131 “substitutes” for what there are modelling, since they are only able to represent a specific set of features. As seen on section 4.1., about iconic signs, they work not through any kind of one-to-one mirroring41, but as a “partial representation” that “either abstracts from, or translates into another form, the real nature of the system or theory, or one that is capable of embodying only a portion of a system” (Morgan and Morrison 1999, p.28). The authors go further on claiming that this grants models with the status of “autonomous entities”, that have the power of remaining functional yet distinct from whichever they are modelling. This is such because they fulfill the task of mediating between agents and something else, through their own structural features – resulting in fact that they signify not only something else, but also themselves, at the same time. As such, they represent features of their objects not in an exact way, but through idealizations, abstractions, simplifications and approximations of their objects. Usually “what might appear to be misrepresentation could also be a part of a purposeful representational strategy” (Knuuttila 2005a, p.315), where “(…) adjustments are made where literal correctness does not matter very much in order to get correct effects where we want to get them; and very often (…) one distortion is put right by another” (Cartwright 1983, p.140). this would not be possible to be achieved unless the own representation qualities of the models (as iconic signs) themselves could afford it. And the Peircean account of iconic signs and iconic relations constantly highlights the fact that, signs that are put in such a relation with an object signify by virtue of their own nature.

In section 4.1. it was shown how iconic signs do not need for their objects to be existent as “real” entities. They can signify something else that is not existent simply because they can signify through their own qualities. As such, this characteristic of iconic signs is a development of the previously presented one. This is possible since iconic signs are defined by the phenomenological category of firstness, “the Mode of Being of that which is such as it is positively and regardless of anything else. It is thus an abstract possibility, it can therefore only be known to us immediately” (CP 5.469). As such, icons are the only kind of signs that can represent objects that are only mere possibilities. Modelling processes are often approached as a creative strategy, since they produce not only new artifacts, but also afford the emergence of new and unexpected habits, that were nothing but a pure possibility before the modelling process took place: modelling processes have the nature of providing agents with an “actualization of one possibility among many other possibilities” (Torop 2007, p.164). Further, models are usually approached under the label of “fictions”, which recognizes that they do not always correspond to facts and impressions regarding the “real world”, but also to states of affairs that inhabit the realms of

41 In my Master’s dissertation (Vitral 2016) I provide an extensive account regarding the problematics of the concept of isomorphism in the context of iconic diagrammatic signs and models.

132 imagination, hypothesis and possibilities-only. An important question follows from this view: “What kind of epistemic value could the positing of such vague imaginary objects have?” (Knuutilla 2017, p.2). Scholars who advocate in favor of fiction in models tend to, surprisingly, find one of their main arguments regarding the epistemic value of fictions in philosophy of art (!): the value of fictions lies in the potential such entities hold to make-believe, in the sense of Walton’s magnum opus Mimesis as Make Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts:

Dolls and hobbies are valuable for their contributions to make- believe. The same is true of paintings and novels. These and other props stimulate our imaginations and provide for exciting or pleasurable or interesting engagements with fictional worlds. (..) What in real life is a mere stick enables a child fictionally to ride around on a horse, the better to chase bandits or stray cattle. (…) But props are not always tools in the service of make-believe. Sometimes make-believe is a means of understanding props. The props themselves may be the focus of our attention, and the point of regarding them as props in (actual or potential) games of make- believe may be to provide useful or illuminating ways of describing or thinking about them (Walton 1993, p.39).

Needless to say, what Walton calls “props” are nothing else but what scholars in favor of a fictional theory of models call “models”. In a two-way handed manner, models not only allow agents to manipulate the possible features of a something else – but also allow agents to manipulate the model’s own features and possibilities. As such, they hold the potential, due to its iconic- diagrammatic features, of being manipulated in order to reason upon, to present hypothesis, and to allow observation and the creation of claims about, potentially, everything. For that reason, several of the accounts on modelling bring to foreground the fact that the models are artifacts that we do not only use to think about something, but to think with something (in that case, themselves): they help us to investigate states of affairs and potentialities through their own manipulation. From this feature emerges the problem-solving potential that models can afford, by selecting and organizing characteristics, qualities and potentialities from the artifacts and the contexts of the manipulation: to model is to improvise and explore forms of expression and communication that would be adequate to our senses of a given experience:

The medium is not so much the message as it is a site of interrogation wherein the unique possibilities and power, also the sensuous qualities and textures, of this medium are exploited for the sake of articulating just this experience, or narrating just this

133 sequence of actions and events, or simply giving expression to something urgent or pressing or in some other respect having the power to elicit the energy and imagination, the obsessions and fanaticism, of some singular sensibility. (Colapietro 2010, p.111- 112).

And, as presented and defended in the section 4.1., this ability of allowing hypothesis and conjectures about phenomena to emerge, due to its fictionality potential, is what makes iconic signs (and, therefore, models) important tools in processes of inquiry, since they are able to trigger the inferential mode of abduction. Kralemann and Lattmann (2013) present other possible connections between the definition of iconic signs and the concept of models, however, I want to point towards the idea that models are not only iconic signs. As said previously, I believe them to be iconic-diagrammatic signs. And the reason for that is because (i) by manipulating models we are actually performing the stages of abduction, deduction and induction, that are afforded by the artifact’s own relation structure, and (ii) what is being modelled is neither a phenomena (or a theory, or a concept) as whole, but a selection of features, relationships and constraints of something that constitutes a governing habit. What scholars from different fields and traditions call “features”, “characteristics” or even “meaning” (which are being modelled) are, in fact, a habit (or a set of habits) that are made available to the person either building or manipulating the models, in the form of relations. These features need to be investigated in more detail and consistency, however I believe that this direction of investigation is an important development towards the understanding of the nature of such processes.

7.2. Artworks as models in the context of intermediality So, if artworks are models, what are they modelling? I propose that, due to their diagrammatic structure, they make available the constraints that can potentially be imposed upon artifacts, ideas, and actions by a given set of habits in the form of a relation. As such, they model habits in the form of relations. As seen, in a two-way handed manner, models not only allow agents to manipulate the possible relations embodied in something else – they also allow agents to manipulate the model’s own relational structure. They signify something else, at the same time they signify themselves. The Brillo Boxes of Andy Warhol, as seen, led to the settlement of a habit as interpretant not only of itself as a token, but also of a whole class of artifacts known as “artworks”. I believe that the proposal that artworks are models is a fruitful “next step” on this investigation about the epistemic potential of artworks. This is, however, by no means an advocation in favor of a universal theory that can explain and describe all the

134 nuances and kinds of such process when taking artworks into consideration – I tend to believe that, such a thing is not only even possible, but also not as helpful and useful as it might seem to be. What can be possibly gained from this idea is that, by approaching artworks through the general lenses of modelling processes, we are opening room for the emergence of new hypothesis about the relationship between aesthetics and epistemology, bringing into the problem a whole new set of tools from fields such as communication studies, digital humanities, intermedial studies, and, of course, aesthetics, epistemology and semiotics. By proposing that artworks can work as models, an interdisciplinary link would be created (which is not as obvious in the statement that “artworks can work as diagrams”), which would possibly allow future scholars to notice relations between phenomena that have not been previously seen as sharing a common basis. Further, the noticing of those relations would allow new hypothesis and conjectures to be proposed, that would probably not be noticed without such a comparative awareness. This move, at the same, would allow not only a broadening in the very own conceptualization of this process, but also of the contexts and the disciplines in which it is pertinent to study modelling processes and artworks. As such, I am going here to briefly present how the idea of modelling is already implicit in a field that is traditionally concerned with the description of such process with artworks: intermedial studies. By making explicit that this field is actually relying on the idea of modelling, we are making room for a stronger rapproachment between artworks and their potential to trigger and aid inquiry, bringing them beyond the idea of simply “representing or communicating something else”.

When it comes to intermedial studies, processes of communication are usually defined by means of mediation. Mediation is a process in which, in irreducible terms, an agent exchanges meaning about something, through a material entity with a second agent. According to Elleström:

Understanding mediality is the key to understanding how meaning, (…), is created in human interaction, whether directly through the capacities of our bodies (what I call our internal technical media) or with the aid of traditional or modern external technical media. (Elleström 2014, p.2)

In the actual contexts, intermedial studies can be defined an approach inside communication and media studies, in which media42 are seen as means of

42 “A medium should be understood in a broad way as the intermediate stage of communication; thus, the term medium here refers not only to mass media, but also media used in more intimate communication; not only media based on external technological devices, but also media based on corporeality; not only premeditated media, but also casual media; not only media used for practical purposes, but also artistic media – and so forth” (Elleström, 2018, p.2-3). Media is here understood as something material that is not necessarily easily pin-pointed in some spatial-temporal location, as a single

135 expression and exchange of meaning, depending on one another for such expression and exchange to happen: “they interact as elements of various communicative strategies; and they are constituents of a wider social and cultural environment” (Jensen 2016, p.1). It does not take the relations among media for granted: intermedial studies is concerned specifically with the relational aspects of communicational processes. It is a contemporary theoretical re-thinking of traditional approaches to communication and medialities. According to Eilittä, “the term intermediality is one of the most promising concepts introduced into the present discussion, in which new paradigms and the tradition of artistic [medial] interrelatedness remain interconnected” (Eilittä 2012, p.vii). As an approach focused on the studies of relations among media, the phenomenon of modelling43 appears very often in texts and lectures from scholars of the area – under a multiplicity of names:

 Clü ver (2007, p.24), introduces the term intersemiotic transposition, when describing the notion of ekphrasis as “the transformation of a text into a self-sufficient text in a different medium or sign system”;  Wolf (2002, p.19) defines intermedial transposition as a relation between media, “in which discernibly similar contents or formal aspects appear in works of different media and where at the same time a clear origin can be attributed for them in another medium”;  Rajewsky (2005, p.51) proposes three different individual subcategories of intermediality: intermedial references, media combination and medial transposition. She defines the latter as “the transformation of a given media product (a text, a film, etc.) or of its substratum into another medium”;  Schober (2010, p. 164) defends the use of the term intermedial translation, “for it emphasizes the tension between the notion of accuracy on the one hand and creative originality on the other hand. Furthermore, the idea of ‘translation’ implies a perspective that is not restricted to the semiotic level, in terms of a simple shift between different sign systems. As with any translation process, intermedial translation also has considerable cultural and aesthetic implications resulting from the interaction of two culturally and historically embedded artefacts”; isolated artifact - or even as an isolated network of artifacts. Being such, media, under the intermedial approach, is conceptualized more as a relational function: an “intermediate” role that something might play in order for meaning to be exchanged, regarding different levels of relations from intra to inter when involving different media, agents and contetxts.

43 However, it is important to highlight that intermediality does not restrain itself to the study of diachronic processes and relations among media, such as modelling processes. It concerns also synchronic relations and relations with a general different nature than those here addressed.

136  Elleström (2014) distinguishes processes of transmediation and media representation as, respectively, “repeated mediation of equivalent sensory configurations by another technical medium” (p.14), whereas the latter “involves the notion of one medium representing another medium” (p.15);  Among others.

As we can see from the definitions given above, scholars from the intermedial studies approach try to understand this relation not in terms of essential features it might hold – but in terms of the effect it produces: that of features from one media forming the basis of the meaning that is produced in another media, by means of the representational features of the latter. Nevertheless, most of the definitions above highlight the change in the materiality, either by conceptualizing it as a “different media”, “transformation of given media product or its substratum”, “shift between sign systems” or “mediation of equivalent sensory configurations”. Interesting claims and arguments can be made and found in this way of approaching the process, and I believe that by also opening room for its understanding as a modelling process can help us to develop further argumentations about relations among media. Especially when it comes to how do such relations, as processes, allow us to derive knowledge from artifacts such as media or artworks.

By understanding those artifacts involved in intermedial relations as models (and, therefore, as diagrams) we are given a new path for approaching them due to many factors that were presented and discussed here. The philosophical background of pragmatism allow us to see beyond artefactual and material essences, and to focus on the metaphysical underlining of processes. The idea of inquiry provides us with a clear epistemological standard for the “success” of the processes without disregarding its aesthetic features: these processes must aim at a stage of regularity and belief in order for an aesthetic experienced to be fulfilled (which, of course, can also be understood as the “success” in communication or mediation processes). The ontological basis of phenomenology provides us with a ground from which relations and their descriptions can be derived and described: firstness, secondness and thirdness. The universal general character of these three categories allows a description of an artifact not only through its material and morphological configurations only, but through a system of logical relations – that is affected by the materiality, but is not subjected to it. And, most importantly, the diagrammatic structure here provided gives us a hint of what is being “translated”, “transmediated”, “transferred” or “communicated” between artifacts that does not rely on dualisms such as “context” and “form”, or “meaning” and “vehicle”: they are habits that embody relations and constrain manipulation processes. Those are possible conjectures of how the field of intermediality and its studies of the arts

137 and the media can grow and develop further theories and argumentations based on the ideas here proposed. As such, inquiry on the relationship between aesthetics and epistemology proceeds, with no block on its way.

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