Multiple Artworks as Abstract Entities
David P. Davies · 2024
Abstract This chapter argues that a workable distinction between singular and multiple artworks can be drawn in terms of being p-multiple: admitting of a plurality of strict p-instances. This is elucidated through Wollheim’s idea of multiple artworks as ‘types’. Types, Wollheim maintains, are posited when we wish to correlate a group of particulars with a piece of human invention. He identifies various ways in which multiple artworks, so conceived, can be initiated through such invention. P-multiplicity is built into the very methods whereby such works are initiated: methods that permit a plurality of strict p-instances to be generated, where this is both intended and internal to the very process of initiation. In the case of art forms traditionally regarded as singular, on the other hand, this is not the case. It is explained how Wolterstorff and Dodd have understood the ontological implications of treating multiple artworks as types. For Wolterstorff, multiple artworks are ‘norm-kinds’ admitting of both properly and improperly formed tokens. The sharing of predicates between multiple artworks and their tokens involves ‘analogical predication’. Dodd defends a related position. Musical works are norm-types individuated according to the timbral sonic properties required in properly formed tokens. He claims ‘default status’ for the type-token theory because it provides a straightforward explanation of a work’s ‘repeatability’ and ‘audibility’. He also identifies four features that works of music must have if they are types: they must be abstract, unstructured, modally and temporally inflexible, and eternally existing, discovered rather than created.