The folk concept of art — TEI-tagged view

Elzė Sigutė MikalonytėpersName, Markus KneerpersName (2024date). “The folk concept of art.” Synthesetitle·j.

Object of study — the folk concept of artterm - the concept of artterm shared by ordinary people (non-experts), and whether it is structured as an essentialist, cluster, or disjunctive conceptterm

Research question — does the folk concept of artterm fit an essentialist, cluster, or disjunctive accountterm, and what is the relative importance of intentional creationterm, aesthetic valueterm, and institutional recognitionterm to lay classifications of artterm

Contribution — two preregistered vignette experiments (N = 888, paintings and musical works) orthogonally manipulating intentional creationterm, beautyterm, and institutional recognitionterm, providing empirical evidence that none of the three is individually necessary and that the folk concept of artterm is best modelled as a cluster conceptterm

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What is the folk concept of artterm? Does it track any of the major definitions of artterm philosophers have proposed? In two preregistered experiments (N = 888) focusing on two types of artworksterm (paintings and musical works), we manipulate three potential features of artworksterm: intentional creationterm, the possession of aesthetic valueterm, and institutional recognitionterm. This allows us to investigate whether the folk concept of artterm fits an essentialist definitionterm·def drawing on one or more of the manipulated factors or whether it might be a disjunctive or cluster conceptterm. The results suggest that none of the three manipulated properties alone suffices for an object to be considered artterm. The folk concept of artterm might thus well be a cluster conceptterm instead of an essentialist concept.

1 Introduction The definition of artterm has been one of the central topics in philosophical aesthetics in the last century. However, finding a satisfactory definition of artterm turned out to be very difficult: traditional definitions of artterm often include objects that are not artworksterm or exclude objects that are, in fact, artworksterm. Thus, a second question has gained more and more attention in the last few decades: Is it possible to define artterm at all? If so, what kind of definition would it be? Are there any individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an object to be artterm? Is it rather a disjunction of minimally sufficient conditions that makes something artterm? Are these conditions (or set of conditions) determinate or indeterminate, i.e., is the concept of artterm closed, or is it open?

In response to these questions, three kinds of accounts of artterm have emerged: essentialist accounts propose individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. Disjunctive accountsterm claim there are individually sufficient and jointly necessary properties. According to cluster theories of artterm, there is a set of properties that make an object artterm, but the set is not determinate and might change: the concept of artterm is open if its conditions of use are “amendable and corrigible” (Weitz, 1956: p. 31).

Although most philosophers see the definitional project as (at least partially) descriptiveterm – that is, they regard it as dependent on how we do think about artterm rather than on how we should think about artterm – there is very little empirical research on what ordinary people identify as artterm. In this paper, we distinguish between two kinds of projects in the philosophy of artterm: essentialist definitionsterm·def of artterm on the one hand, and non-essentialist definitions – cluster or disjunctive accountsterm – on the other. Our goal is to explore which of these approaches correspond best to the folk concept of artterm, or the concept of artterm shared by non-experts. We present an overview of different types of accounts of artterm (Sects. 2 and 3) and discuss the role empirical research can play in elucidating the concept of artterm (Sects. 4 and 5). In Sects. 6 and 7 we report two experiments that aim to answer the questions of whether (i) the folk concept of artterm is an essentialist, cluster, or disjunctive conceptterm, as well as (ii) the relative importance of three properties of artworksterm – intentional creationterm, aesthetic valueterm, and institutional recognitionterm– that are often considered the most important ones by philosophers.

2 Essentialist and non-essentialist accountsterm of artterm As already sketched above, there are three categories of theories of artterm: essentialist definitionsterm·def that specify individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions, disjunctive definitions that present a list of properties at least one of which must be satisfied, and cluster accounts of artterm that hold that none of the properties are individually sufficient.

In the following, we will briefly present a few essentialist definitionsterm·def.Footnote 1 Historical accounts emphasize the relation between a work of artterm and some earlier works, such as the intended resemblance of an artworkterm to some acknowledged earlier pieces (Carroll, 1993). One prominent historical account– the intentional-historical view– requires artistic intentions for an artworkterm to be regarded in the same way as other objects belonging to this category. Whether something falls under the concept of artterm thus depends both on what was seen as artterm in the past, and on whether the creator’s intention tracks previous artterm in relevant ways (Levinson, 2002). For example, whether or not a painting counts as artterm would depend, as Levinson outlines, on factors such as the painter’s attention to colour and painterly detail, awareness of stylistic features, the artworkterm’s historical background, and so forth (1989: p. 24).

Consider a different kind of essentialist definitionterm·def. According to functionalist accountsterm, artterm is defined by its purpose: there is some specific function that all works of artterm must embody, to satisfy some specific need that artterm can fulfil. The most common functionalist accountterm is the aesthetic view, according to which the function of artterm is to satisfy the need for aesthetic experiencesterm (Beardsley, 1982; Zangwill, 1995). Other functionalist definitions (e.g. Stecker, 2005) do not specify a precise function. There are many possible functions of artterm, for example, according to Pignocchi, “bearing formal or expressive properties, imitating nature, inducing an aesthetic experienceterm, bearing embodied meaning, inducing awe, being key elements of ceremonies, faithfully representing a certain reality, drawing attention to a social or ecological problem, stimulating thinking about artterm, criticizing its futility, ostensibly violating the rules tacitly employed by an artistic genre in order to revive its language” (2014: pp. 428–429).

A hybrid functionalist accountterm– the procedural-institutional view– claims that the status of being artterm is conferred upon an object by someone with authority (Danto, 1981; Davies, 2004a, 2004b; Dickie, 1974). Advocates of this account mention procedures such as the object’s being created by an artistterm, held by someone with authority, presented to the artworld, and discussed by artterm critics and artterm historians.

All of the discussed definitions can be interpreted as essentialist: they invoke necessary and sufficient conditions for an object to be considered an artworkterm, or at least emphasize one factor as the most important, while others are treated as more peripheral. This view is challenged by anti-essentialists, who object to essentialist definitionsterm·def with counterexamples that are intended to demonstrate that the respective views are over- or underinclusive. We can distinguish between cluster and disjunctive anti-essentialist theories, both of which draw inspiration from Wittgenstein’s idea of ‘family resemblanceterm’ (Wittgenstein PI, 2009: §67, Weitz, 1956; Ziff, 1953; Dean, 2003). To illustrate this concept, take Wittgenstein’s example of a ‘game’. There are board games, card games, Olympic games, ball games etc., but, Wittgenstein argues, there is no single property (or set of properties) they all have in common. However, and this is what it means for two concepts to bear a family resemblanceterm, if something shares similarities with several things that have been called games before, the concept of game is extended to include a new example. The concept of game thus has no rigid boundaries.

Artterm, or so anti-essentialists argue, is similar in this regard. Although artworksterm do not all share a single property (or set of properties), each artworkterm has at least one property in common with other objects that are considered artterm. In Berys Gaut’s words, Suppose we can construct some set of properties […]. And suppose it can be shown that if various subsets of them obtain, then an object is artterm, that none of these properties has to be possessed by all artworksterm, but that all artworksterm must possess some of them. Then we cannot define “artterm” in the sense of giving individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for it, but we can offer a characterization of it– and account of what it is in terms of criteria or characteristics. Note that this account allows a great deal of indeterminacy in whether the obtaining of a particular subset of properties is sufficient for something to be artterm: there will be many cases where it is not clear whether this is so; what is important is that there are some subsets the obtaining of which is sufficient for something to be artterm. (Gaut, 2000: p. 27) There might be cases that would invite us to reconsider the use of the concept of artterm in a way that would allow it to cover new objects (Weitz, 1956: p. 31). According to Roy Cook, the openness of the concept of artterm should be seen as an epistemological thesis, in the sense that we are unable to specify which objects are or could be artterm (either at present or in the future) (Cook, 2013: p. 69).

One defender of the first type of anti-essentialism, i.e. a cluster account, is Gaut. On his view, properties that are ordinarily regarded as counting towards an object’s status as a work of artterm include (1) possessing positive aesthetic qualities; (2) being expressive of emotion; (3) being intellectually challenging; (4) being formally complex and coherent; (5) having a capacity to convey complex meanings; (6) exhibiting an individual point of view; (7) being an exercise of creative imagination; (8) being an artifact or performance which is the product of a high degree of skill; (9) belonging to an established artistic form; and (10) being the product of an intention to make a work of artterm (Gaut, 2000: p. 28). Dutton (2009) has argued for an account with a similar cluster of properties.

Other anti-essentialists have put forward disjunctive accountsterm (Davies, 2015; Hazelwood, 2021; Longworth & Scarantino, 2010; Stecker, 1994). Such accounts specify a disjunction of sufficient conditions for an object to be considered artterm, with no condition’s being individually necessary: properties such as P or Q are individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary. For example, Stephen Davies offers such a definition: he holds that an object is artterm (a) if it shows excellence of skill and achievement in realizing significant aesthetic goals, and either doing so is its primary, identifying function or doing so makes a vital contribution to the realization of its primary, identifying function, or (b) if it falls under an artterm genre or artterm form established and publicly recognized within an artterm tradition, or (c) if it is intended by its maker/presenter to be artterm and its maker/presenter does what is necessary and appropriate to realizing that intention (2015: p. 375).

Properties included in disjunctive definitions are seen as constitutive of what it is to be an instance of artterm. Nevertheless, such disjunctive accountsterm are incompatible with classical essentialist definitionsterm·def, because possessing any property from the list suffices to be artterm, and there must be more than one property on the list. To illustrate, on Longworth and Scarantino’s disjunctive theory, the following conditions must be met for an object to be considered artterm: (DTA): ∃Z ∃Y (Artterm ↔ (Z ∨ Y)), where (i) Z and Y are either non-empty conjunctions (e.g. P & Q & R) or non-empty disjunctions of conjunctions (e.g. (Q & R & S & T) ∨ (P & Q & W) v...); (ii) there is some indeterminacy over exactly which disjuncts are sufficient; (iii) Z does not entail Y and Y does not entail Z; (iv) Z does not entail Artterm and Y does not entail Artterm. (2010: 163) This definition specifies that none of the disjuncts entail each other, and none of them entail an object’s being artterm. It ensures that disjuncts are not individually necessary, and that artterm cannot be defined merely by listing types of artterm.

In brief, although cluster and disjunctive theories standardly share some of the very properties that are individually emphasized by other (essentialist) definitions of artterm, the main difference is that cluster and disjunctive theories deny that any of these properties are individually necessary. In contrast to disjunctive theories, cluster accounts of artterm hold that none of the properties are individually sufficient.

3 The most influential essentialist accounts From among the considerable variety of classical views briefly surveyed in the previous section, three accounts have proven particularly influential: The institutional accountterm (Dickie, 1974), the aesthetic accountterm (Beardsley, 1982), and the intentional-historical accountterm (Levinson, 1979). Dickie’s institutional definition claims that a work of artterm is “(1) an artifact, (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 social institution (the art-world)” (Dickie, 1974: p. 34).Footnote 2 In other words, an artifact is considered an artworkterm if it is recognized as such by people belonging to and acting in the name of relevant institutions. According to Beardsley’s aesthetic definition, an artworkterm is “either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of affording an experience with marked aesthetic character or (incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type of arrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity” (Beardsley, 1982: p. 299). Put differently, artworksterm are, roughly, objects with dispositions to trigger aesthetic experiencesterm.Footnote 3 According to Levinson’s historical-intentional definition of artterm, X is an artterm work at t = df X is an object of which it is true at t that some person or persons, having the appropriate proprietary right over X, non-passingly intends (or intended) X for regard-as-a-work-of-art, i.e., regard in any way (or ways) in which objects in the extension of ‘artterm work’ prior to t are or were correctly (or standardly) regarded (1979: 240).Footnote 4 Differently put, on Levinson's view, an artworkterm is something that has been intended by someone to be treated in a way that some earlier artworksterm were treated (Levinson, 2007: 74).

These three definitions are the most obvious candidates for an empirical study for several reasons. First, according to Stephen Davies’ seminal book “Definitions of Artterm” (1991), there are two basic approaches to the question of how to define artterm: procedural and functional, and all (essentialist) theories of artterm can be reduced to one or the other of these two types of definitions. Dickie’s institutional and Beardsley’s aesthetic definitions are typical examples of procedural and functional approaches, respectively. Artterm, just like other social kinds, is often defined in terms of its function, as people create objects in order to satisfy certain needs. The function of artterm can be defined in different ways but is usually expected to provide a rewarding aesthetic experienceterm.

The requirement for intentionality is so common in the literature that almost all definitions of artterm require an artworkterm to be the product of an intentional action. For instance, Christy Mag Uidhir claims that this position is almost universally accepted in the literature. He argues that any artworkterm must be the product of a successful attempt to make artterm (Uidhir, 2013). Moreover, the requirement of intentional creationterm is also highly influential in the psychological literature. Paul Bloom has extended Levinson’s theory of artterm to all kinds of artifacts, claiming that an object becomes a member of an artifact kind if it is created with the intention for it to belong to that kind (Bloom, 1996).

Second, properties emphasized by these three definitions of artterm also usually figure in the cluster and disjunctive theories, and they are usually among the first to be discussed. For example, they are part of both Gaut’s (2000) and Dutton’s (2009) sets of properties that “count towards being artterm”. The same can be said about Longworth and Scarantino’s Disjunctive Theory of Artterm (2010) because it borrows properties from Gaut’s list. Our three key properties also correspond to the three disjuncts in Stephen Davies’ definition of artterm (2015) and are similarly emphasized by Stecker (2000) and Hazelwood (2021).

The third reason for choosing intentional creationterm, beautyterm and institutional recognitionterm as the key factors of our research regards extant empirical work, in which they also figure prominently. We will discuss this point in further detail in the following sections, in particular Sect. 5.

4 The role of empirical research Many philosophers of artterm claim that the project of defining artterm is descriptiveterm, i.e. that any plausible definition must not stand in tension with how artterm is commonly thought of (e.g. Kania, 2011: p. 5, Stecker, 2000: p. 60) or that it must “cohere with a wide spread of intuitions about the terms in which artterm is discussed and interpreted” (Davies, 1991: p. 46).

An empirical inquiry into the folk concept of artterm can fulfil two tasks: (i) It can reveal the structure of the concept of artterm (e.g. whether it is essentialist or not), And (ii) it can settle the question of descriptivists, namely which– if any– of the many proposals from the philosophical literature on offer is consistent with the folk concept of artterm. Both strands of the inquiry are of key importance for philosophical debates about artterm (Cova et al., 2015). According to Pignocchi, the work of cognitive scientists and the work of philosophers who seek descriptiveterm definitions are strikingly similar, except that philosophers rely on their own intuitions while cognitive scientists test them with a wider set of participants (2014: p. 427). Denis Dutton, for example, claims that it is the folk concept of artterm that is being analysed, and the folk concept guides further expert investigation: The cluster criteria tell us what we already know about the artsterm. They may be adjusted at the edges, with items subtracted or added to it, but they can be expected to remain largely intact into the foreseeable future, governing what counts as investigation into the artsterm by neurophysiologists, philosophers, anthropologists, critics, or historians. (Dutton, 2009: p. 60) In contrast to descriptiveterm accounts, there are views that provide a normativeterm, or partially normativeterm, definition of artterm (e.g. Gaut, 2000: p. 39). Definitions of this sort aim to describe not how artterm is actually thought of, but how it should be thought of, or what the concept of artterm really consists of (whether or not the folk agree). In this case, empirical findings may also be important for philosophers seeking to create normativeterm definitions. Empirical findings can provide philosophers with a background against which the normativeterm theories might be created and refined; they uncover problems and inconsistencies found within actual usage (Monseré, 2016: p. 15). Any normativeterm project must start with a descriptiveterm step, as it is impossible to revise a concept without knowing how it actually functions (Meskin et al., 2018). A philosopher offering a normativeterm definition must explain, in a first step, what people’s intuitions are, and only then can they offer an explanation of why said intuitions are mistaken (see also Pignocchi, 2014).

To date, empirical work in aesthetics has mostly focused on topics such as folk objectivism and subjectivism about aesthetic judgements (i.e. whether the folk see aesthetic judgments as objective or subjective; Cova & Pain, 2012; Rabb et al., 2020; Cova et al., 2019; Bonard et al., forthcoming), imaginative resistance (i.e. psychological difficulties in engaging in certain imaginative activities; Black & Barnes, 2017, 2020; Kim et al., 2019; Liao et al., 2014), aesthetic adjectives (terms that are used to communicate aesthetic judgments; Liao & Meskin, 2017; Liao et al., 2016), the ontology of musical works (for instance, the question of what it means to play the same musical work twice; Bartel, 2018; MikalonytėpersName, 2022; MikalonytėpersName & Dranseika, 2020, 2022; MikalonytėpersName & Canonne, 2023; Puy, 2022), the interaction between aesthetic and moral qualities (Doran, 2021), and other topics (for a review, see Cova (forthcoming)). However, to date, there is very little empirical research on the folk concept of artterm.

MikalonytėpersName and KneerpersName (2022) have investigated intuitions concerning artterm created by artificial intelligence. When presented with stories about either an AI system or a human creating a painting and asked to what extent they agree with the claim that the painting is artterm, people expressed similar levels of agreement regardless of whether the painting was made by AI or a human creator. However, despite this, participants were not very willing to call AI-creators artiststerm, and they refused to attribute artistic intentions to them. These results suggest that an object does not have to be created intentionally to be considered artterm. However, many other factors that figure in the most influential definitions of artterm have not been tested in that study.

Liao et al. (2020) claim that the ordinary concept of artterm is a dual character conceptterm: a concept that has both descriptiveterm and evaluative dimensions. In their interesting paper, they present evidence that the concept artterm behaves distinctly from clear-cut evaluative concepts such as masterpieceterm or stroke of genius on the one hand, and also from clear-cut descriptiveterm concepts such as comic or sonnet.

There exist two studies that were designed specifically to put various definitions of artterm to the test (Kamber, 2011; Kamber & Enoch, 2018). Kamber (2011) ran an online survey with a large number of objects (photographs, paintings, poems), asking participants– the vast majority of whom were artterm professionals– whether they considered them artterm. Most objects were “hard cases” discussed by philosophers of artterm. Kamber found many discrepancies between the intuitions of artterm professionals and philosophers’ claims about hard cases: for instance, almost half of the artterm professionals in the study categorised a Bugatti car as artterm. He concluded that none of the existing philosophical artterm theories succeed in tracking lay intuitions.

In another study, Kamber and Enoch (2018) presented their participants with the same set of objects and asked them to categorize the objects as artterm or not artterm. In addition, they asked the participants to consider a set of fourteen possible reasons for their judgments. The latter included that the object was made by a conscious agent, intended by its makers to be an object of aesthetic interest or appreciation, intended by its makers to evoke or communicate intention, or that the object invites interpretation, provides an imaginative experience, or is beautiful (Kamber & Enoch, 2018: p. 21). Although intentional justifications were the most popular, the results suggest that none of the tested artterm definitions are fully in accordance with intuitions of artterm professionals. Kamber and Enoch note that Beardsley’s aesthetic definition of artterm is more successful than the others. Based on Kamber’s findings, Winner (2018) has argued that the concept of artterm is open, as proposed in a Wittgensteinian manner by Weitz (1956): there are no necessary properties, just family resemblancesterm, and the conditions for the application of the term might even change over time.

In both studies conducted by Kamber, the majority of the participants were artterm professionals (2018) or half artterm professionals, half “artterm buffs” (both groups consisted mainly of university faculty members) (2011). As such, these studies do not speak to the folk concept of artterm. Moreover, the studies have been described as employing an “informal approach” of testing a large number of definitions using only one or two instances of artworksterm (Winner, 2019: p. 21). Thus, although these results are interesting and important, the actual folk concept of artterm remains largely unexplored.Footnote 5 5 Empirical work relating to the three core factors Let us take a deeper look at three factors– intentional creationterm, aesthetic valueterm, and institutional recognitionterm– and at the cognitive mechanisms that could lie behind the folk concept of artterm. Each of these three factors enjoys some support from the psychological literature and from psychological studies that were conducted with a view to exploring only one or two aspects of the folk concept of artterm. We will survey the literature relevant to each of these factors: aesthetic valueterm (5.1.), institutional recognitionterm (5.2.), and intentional creationterm (5.3.).

5.1 Aesthetic valueterm Alessandro Pignocchi hypothesized that the concept of artterm seems intuitively appropriate in cases where people consider an artifact as intended to fulfil a function that other artworksterm typically fulfil (2014: p. 439). Two factors, he claims, are key: the functions that the judging person (e.g. the study participant) accepts as being normally fulfilled by artterm, and the intentions that they ascribe to the creator of that artifact. Although Pignocchi mentions several possible functions of artterm, we will limit ourselves to what Davies claims to be the most typical– that of inducing aesthetic experiencesterm.

Empirical research has shown that artifacts are often categorized in terms of functions and intentions (Boyer & Barrett, 2004). Function-based explanations of artifacts, and even natural objects, are held to be a cognitive default (Kelemen, 1999; Kelemen et al., 2013) inherent in the reasoning of children (DiYanni & Kelemen, 2005) and adults (Kelemen & Rosset, 2009), also in non-Western cultures (Schachner et al., 2017).

An additional motivation to test the aesthetic definition derives from Kamber and Enoch’s (2018) results, which suggest that Beardsley’s aesthetic definition of artterm is more successful than the others. If the folk concept of artterm is not radically different from that used by artterm professionals, we might expect their intuitions to favour the aesthetic definition. Moreover, research by Pelowski et al. (2017) shows a strong correlation between the classification of objects as artterm and ratings of liking, which suggests that appraisal and classification are interrelated. These results also offer some prima facie support for the aesthetic definition.

5.2 Institutional recognitionterm McCallum et al. (2019) offer an explanation of how the institutional theory of artterm might work from a cognitive point of view. They claim that the institutional theory matches the main claims of relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Presentation of an object as a work of artterm (such as putting it into a gallery) is an ostensive act. It suggests for the viewer two kinds of authorial intentions: not only informative (to communicate some information to the audience), but also communicative (an intention to point out the informative intention to the audience). According to McCallum and colleagues, institutional recognitionterm and presentation “as a candidate for appreciation” is a kind of ostensive act which not only intentionally draws attention to an object, but also gives a reason to think that interpreting the object is worthy and will provide worthwhile cognitive effects (2019: 25). This theory, then, points to both institutional and intentional factors in artterm status ascriptions.

Kamber’s studies suggest that both institutional recognitionterm and aesthetic valueterm might be important in judgments on what is artterm. However, in the 2011 study, more than half of the people were willing to categorize an aesthetically bad painting as artterm, while an even bigger number of participants categorized works as artterm that were institutionally recognized but unlikely to provoke aesthetic experiencesterm. These results suggest that neither the aesthetic nor institutional theory fully tracks folk intuitions on what is artterm on their own.

5.3 Intentional creationterm Inferences about the mental states of creators are as important in categorizing works of artterm as they are for other artifacts. According to Bloom (1996), authorial intent is relevant to determining the kind of an artifact even if it is not directly connected to the object’s appearance or function. Thus, intuitions on whether an object was created with the intention for it to belong to the category of artworksterm must play an important part in judgments on whether an object should be categorized as artterm.

Several empirical studies have suggested that intention is essential for the way we think about artterm. Intentions have been found to be crucial for what people categorize as artterm (Jucker et al., 2014; Newman & Bloom, 2012)– even more important than the appearance of the object (Newman & Smith, 2018). Moreover, in Kamber’s studies, when asked to provide reasons for categorizing an object as artterm, participants mentioned “being made by a conscious agent”, “being intended by its makers to be an object of aesthetic interest”, and “inviting interpretation” more often than other kinds of justifications for their judgments (Kamber, 2018: p. 81). If ordinary folk deploy the same concept of artterm as artterm professionals, intentions must be an important factor. However, in another study on folk intuitions as to whether AI can create artterm, MikalonytėpersName and KneerpersName (2022) found that intentional creationterm is not seen by non-experts as a necessary condition for an object to be considered artterm. These results reveal that the exact role of intentional creationterm in judgments of what counts as artterm is still not fully understood.

6 Experiment 1: painting Our first experiment explores the extent to which the three most common factors in definitions of artterm– intentional, aesthetic, and institutional– are consistent with the folk concept of artterm. We thus manipulated all three features in a between-subjects design, i.e. (i) whether or not the object was created intentionally, (ii) whether or not it is beautiful,Footnote 6 and (iii) whether or not it received institutional recognitionterm. As a second core dependent variable, we explored to what extent people were willing to deem the creator of the different types of objects an artistterm. Furthermore, we wanted to explore the mental-state requirements as well as their possible interaction with beautyterm and institutional recognitionterm and thus asked participants to what extent the creator desired, believed, and intended to make a work of artterm.

At a more general level, our study, as described, explores (H1) whether any of the three features constitute necessary and/or sufficient properties for something being artterm, and (H2) whether the folk concept of artterm is essentialist, or whether it is a cluster or disjunctive conceptterm. In contrast to Kamber’s studies, our participants are not artterm professionals or amateur-experts, but, rather, ordinary people. The online appendix, as well as materials, data, and preregistrations of this and the second experiment can be found on the project’s OSF page, https://osf.io/96f57/.

6.1 Participants We recruited 797 participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk. The IP address was restricted to the United States. In line with the preregistered criteria,Footnote 7 336 participants who were not native English speakers, failed an attention check or took less than twenty seconds to answer the main questions (including reading the prompt) were excluded, leaving a sample of 461 participants (female: 48%; age M = 44 years, SD = 14 years, range: 19–90 years).

6.2 Methods and materials We explored peoples’ concept of artterm in a 2 (intention: intentional v. accidental creation) × 2 (beautyterm: beautiful v. ordinary-looking) × 2 (institutional recognitionterm: present v. absent) between-subjects study. There were thus 8 conditions in total, to one of which participants were randomly assigned. The scenarios were composed of the following elements (labels in bold excluded, stating either the presence ( +) or absence (−) of the key features): Intention [+] A person decides to create a painting. She takes an empty canvas and applies paint onto it.

[−] A person accidentally brushes against some jars of paint that spill onto an empty canvas.

Beautyterm [+] The resulting object looks beautiful, featuring an elegant interplay of different lines of paint. It captures the viewers’ attention and evokes awe and wonder.

[−] The resulting object looks ordinary and uninteresting. It leaves the viewers bored and unimpressed.

Recognition [+] Soon this object gets recognized by artterm critics, finds its way into a museum and some years later it appears in artterm history books.

[−] This object never gets exhibited in artterm galleries or museums, and it never receives any attention from artterm critics.

Having read the scenario, participants had to rate to what extent they agreed with the following claims on a Likert scale anchored at 1 with “completely disagree” and 7 with “completely agree” (labels in brackets excluded): (1) “The object is artterm.” [Artterm] (2) “The object was made by an artistterm” [Artistterm] (3) “The person wanted to make a painting” [Desire] (4) “The person believed they were making a painting” [Belief] (5) “The person intentionally made a painting” [Intent] 6.3 Results A between-subjects ANOVA for artterm determined that participants were more inclined to judge the painting to be artterm if it resulted from intentional action (F(1,453) = 59.02, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.12, a medium-large effect), if it was beautiful (F(1,453) = 43.52, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.09, a medium-sized effect), and if it received institutional recognitionterm (F(1,453) = 7.67, p = 0.006, ηp2 = 0.02, a small effect). No significant interactions were observed (all ps > 0.255). As suggested by the ANOVA main effects and illustrated in Fig. 1, the impact of institutional recognitionterm was marginal. What is interesting, however, is that– even in the absence of recognition– either beautyterm or intentional action suffice for judgments to significantly exceed the midpoint (one sample t-tests, all ps < 0.009, see Online Appendix, Table 6).Footnote 8 Differently put, on the folk view, one can accidentally create genuine artterm if the creation is beautiful. One can also intentionally create genuine artterm if the creation is not beautiful. But if intentionality and beautyterm are lacking, institutional recognitionterm does not, by itself, suffice to make the work a piece of artterm.

As regards the creator’s status as an artistterm (see Fig. 2), people were more willing to judge her as an artistterm if the painting was made intentionally (F(1,453) = 49.04, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.10, a medium-sized effect), whereas the painting’s being beautiful or receiving institutional recognitionterm did not influence the judgment of the creator’s status as an artistterm (ps > 0.480). The results revealed small but significant interactions between intention and the other two factors (ps < 0.035, ηp2s < 0.03). All other interactions were nonsignificant (all ps > 0.074 see Online Appendix, Table 3). In contrast to the object’s status of artterm, being deemed an artistterm requires acting intentionally: The creators of accidental artworksterm, even if beautiful and enjoying recognition, are not deemed artiststerm (significantly below the midpoint 4 for all four accidental conditions, one sample t-tests, all corrected and uncorrected ps < 0.001, see Online Appendix, Table 6).

The manipulation checks suggest that participants understood the scenario as intended. Aggregating across beautyterm and institutional recognitionterm, attributions of belief, desire, and intention to make a painting in the intentional condition significantly exceeded those in the accidental condition (all ps < 0.001, all ηp2 > 0.35, indicating large effects, see Online Appendix, Tables 7–9 for detail). All three mental states correlated strongly with the judgment that the resulting object was artterm (r = 0.57-0.59; all ps < 0.001; see Online Appendix, Table 4) and judgments that its creator is an artistterm (r = 0.76-0.81, all ps < 0.001).

6.4 Discussion Our experiment produced several findings. First, among the three manipulated factors, intentionality and beautyterm manifested a significant and pronounced impact on art judgmentsterm·var, whereas the effect of institutional recognitionterm was significant yet small. Importantly, the creation was judged artterm (significantly above the midpoint of the scale) if it was specified either as intentionally created or beautiful. This suggests that, on the folk view, neither intentionality nor beautyterm are necessary features of an artworkterm (as suggested by Denis Dutton and Berys Gaut). However, each of them is sufficient (at least for the scenario at hand). Our results are consistent with Liao et al. (2020): the ordinary concept of artterm seems to be associated with both descriptiveterm (institutional) and evaluative (aesthetic) criteria. The results are also consistent with MikalonytėpersName and KneerpersName (2022), who found that intentionality is not a necessary condition for being artterm.

By contrast, the status of being viewed as an artistterm depended only on whether the object was created intentionally. Whether or not the object was beautiful or recognized institutionally did not matter. Our finding that beautiful accidental creations are artterm, even if they have no artistterm, is very surprising, bearing in mind that there is no artistterm to claim credit for aesthetically valuable artworksterm created in this way.

Paintings are not the only objects of artterm. In order to explore whether our findings generalize to another domain of artistic creation, we ran a similar, second experiment for music.

7 Experiment 2: music In Experiment 2, we want to replicate the findings of Experiment 1 for another aesthetic domain. We thus adapted the vignette to the context of music, again manipulating intentionality, beautyterm, and institutional recognitionterm.

7.1 Participants We recruited 714 participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk. The IP address was restricted to the United States. In line with the preregistered criteria,Footnote 9 287 participants who were not native English speakers, failed an attention check, or took less than twenty seconds to answer the main questions (including reading the prompt) were excluded, leaving a sample of 427 participants (female: 48%; age M = 43 years, SD = 13 years, range: 21–77 years).

7.2 Methods and materials The design of the experiment was near-identical to the one employed in Study 1. The only difference concerned the mode: This time, the agent does not create a painting but a musical work. We again manipulated intention, beautyterm, and recognition, making for a total of eight individual conditions to which participants were assigned randomly. The scenarios were composed of the following elements (labels in bold excluded, stating either the presence (+) or absence (−) of the key features): Intention [+] A person decides to compose a piece of music. She opens a blank stave sheet on a music notation software, writes notes on it, and carefully chooses instrumentation.

[−] A person uses a new music notation software for the first time. She opens a blank stave sheet, writes random notes on it, and chooses random instrumentation.

Beautyterm [+] The result sounds beautiful, featuring an elegant interplay of parts. It captures the listeners’ attention and evokes awe and wonder.

[−] The result sounds ordinary and uninteresting. It leaves the listeners bored and unimpressed.

Recognition [+] Soon the piece gets recognized by music critics, is performed in concert halls and some years later it appears in music history books.

[−] The piece never gets played in concert halls, and it never receives any attention from music critics.

As in Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate on a 7-point Likert scale whether the resulting work is artterm, its creator an artistterm, and whether the latter had a belief, desire, and intention to produce the piece.

7.3 Results For artterm (see Fig. 3), an ANOVA revealed a small main effect of intention (F(1,419) = 14.76, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.03), a medium main effect of beautyterm (F(1,419) = 59.10, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.12) and a small main effect of institutional recognitionterm (F(1,419) = 14.77, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.03). There was a significant yet small beautyterm*recognition interaction (F(1,419) = 9.47, p = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.02). As in Experiment 1, even in the absence of recognition, either beautyterm or intentional action (by and large) suffices for a creation to be deemed artterm, as none of the ratings are significantly below the midpoint (for corrected and uncorrected one-sample t-tests, see Online Appendix, Table 15). In contrast to visual artterm, in the context of music, an accidentally produced, non-beautiful piece is viewed as artterm if it receives institutional recognitionterm (M = 4.47, SD = 1.68, uncorrected p = 0.041, corrected p > 0.05, see Online Appendix, Table 15).

As regards the creator’s status as an artistterm (see Fig. 4), an ANOVA revealed that people were more willing to judge the creator as an artistterm if she acted intentionally (F(1,419) = 23.41, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.05, a small to medium effect), if the piece was beautiful (F(1,419) = 24.07, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.05, a small to medium effect), and if it was institutionally recognized (F(1,419) = 5.83, p = 0.016, ηp2 = 0.01, a small effect). There was also a small yet (just about) significant beautyterm*recognition interaction (F(1,419) = 3.90, p = 0.049, ηp2 = 0.01). All other interactions were nonsignificant (all ps > 0.169, see Online Appendix Table 12). In contrast to the domain of painting (Experiment 1), the requirements regarding the status of an artistterm are less stringent for the domain of music. Independently of recognition, those who produce musical works are deemed artiststerm as long as the resulting works are either made intentionally or beautiful (significantly above the midpoint 4, one-sample t-tests, all uncorrected ps < 0.006, see Online Appendix, Table 15).Footnote 10 As in Experiment 1, the manipulation checks suggest that participants understood the scenario as intended. Aggregating across beautyterm and institutional recognitionterm, attributions of belief, desire, and intention to produce a musical work in the intentional condition significantly exceeded those in the accidental condition (all ps < 0.001, all ηp2 > 0.04, see Online Appendix Tables 16–18 for detail).

All three mental states correlated strongly with the judgment that the resulting object was artterm (r = 0.43–0.48, all ps < 0.001) and its creator an artistterm (r = 0.61–0.62, all ps < 0.001, see Online Appendix Table 13 for detail).

7.4 Joint analysis We conducted joint analyses for the entire sample of the two experiments. This allowed us to make artistic domainterm·var (visual artterm v. music) a fourth factor beyond intentionality (intentional v. accidental), beautyterm (yes v. no), and institutional recognitionterm (yes v. no). For art judgmentsterm·var, we found a small though significant main effect for artistic domainterm·var (p = 0.029, ηp2 = 0.01). The beautyterm*recognition and the intention*domain interactions revealed significant though small effects (ps < 0.009, ηp2s = 0.001), for detailed results, see Online Appendix, Table 20). For artist judgmentsterm·var, we found a small though significant main effect for artistic domainterm·var (p = 0.008, ηp2 = 0.01). The interactions for beautyterm*recognition, beautyterm*domain, recognition*domain and intention*beautyterm*domain revealed significant though small effects (ps < 0.046, ηp2s = 0.001), for detailed results, see Online Appendix, Table 21. Overall, we found a significant yet rather small impact of domain on both artterm and artist judgmentsterm·var.Footnote 11 7.5 Discussion Consistent with Experiment 1, beautyterm had a considerable effect on art judgmentsterm·var, whereas institutional recognitionterm, again, had but a small effect. As concerns intentionality, the findings differed somewhat across experiments: This factor had a strong effect on judgements of artterm in the domain of visual artterm, whereas its effect was considerably smaller in the realm of music. Interestingly, each of the three factors sufficed for an object to be judged as artterm. Only in the absence of all three factors was mean artterm attribution significantly below the midpoint.

Our findings suggest that the folk concept of artterm might be a cluster or a disjunctive conceptterm, but it is not evident which of the two accounts is correct from an empirical point of view. In the literature, cluster and disjunctive definitions are usually quite similar (Davies, 2004a, 2004b; Longworth & Scarantino, 2010). What distinguishes them is that a cluster conceptterm, in contrast to a disjunctive one, is not governed by a definitive set of criteria for application. The fact that we have only tested three criteria is an evident limitation of our study. What is more, if the criteria of application can change in the future, as hypothesized by some, empirical studies of the sort conducted here will always be partially incomplete (Cook, 2013; Weitz, 1956).

That said, we can draw some very tentative lessons from the data as regards the two non-essentialist accountsterm under consideration. Consider a contextualist interpretation of cluster conceptsterm, akin to cluster accounts of the concept of knowledge in (see e.g. DeRose, 1992; Cohen, 1999; Stanley, 2004). If the difference between cluster and disjunctive conceptsterm is essentially a question of whether their conditions of application are context-sensitive, then our results show some support for the cluster theory. The application conditions for the concept of artterm change across domains (painting v. music). In our study concerning music, institutional recognitionterm was a sufficient criterion for an object’s being considered artterm, whereas in the study concerning visual artterm, it was not.

As regards the status of being an artistterm: In the context of visual artterm, only intentionality mattered; in the context of music, all three manipulated factors proved significant. Intentionality or beautyterm of the object was sufficient by itself for people to deem the creator an artistterm, and only in the case where the object lacked all three tested properties did people clearly refrain from judging the creator as an artistterm. While it is not surprising that being an artistterm and creating intentionally is tightly related, we found that, in some cases, intentional action is not a necessary condition for the folk to consider someone an artistterm.

8 General discussion 8.1 Overview of findings At the beginning of the paper, we distinguished between essentialist accounts of artterm on the one hand, and two particular non-essentialist accountsterm – the cluster and disjunctive views – on the other. Essentialism requires a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an object to be artterm. According to cluster and disjunctive accountsterm, by contrast, an object can constitute artterm if it manifests one or several individually nonessential properties from a set of features.

Our empirical inquiry has explored (Q1) whether any of the three properties are seen by the folk as necessary and/or sufficient properties for an object’s status of artterm, and, more generally, (Q2) whether the folk concept of artterm is an essentialist concept.

As regards the first question (Q1), we found that none of the three properties proved necessary: Mean artterm ratings exceeded the midpoint of the scale in both the visual artterm and musical context if the object manifested only beautyterm or only intentionality. Correlatively, this suggests that either property was sufficient for an object to be deemed artterm.Footnote 12 Beautyterm exerted a substantial impact on art judgmentsterm·var in both artistic contexts, whereas the impact of intentionality was less pronounced in the musical context. Institutional recognitionterm was clearly the least important feature of artterm: In the visual artterm context, it proved insufficient by itself (though in the musical context, mean artterm ratings for objects which only had the feature of recognition exceeded the midpoint and just about reached the significance threshold). Furthermore, we detected an interesting interaction between beautyterm and recognition: For nonbeautiful objects, the presence of recognition tended to substantially raise the level of art judgmentsterm·var.

Given that none of the three properties that feature most prominently in the literature capture a necessary feature of the folk concept of artterm, the folk concept of artterm might not be essentialist in nature (as stated, of course one could test further potential properties). Instead, it seems to be either a cluster or a disjunctive conceptterm, and all three features tested seem to be part of the cluster of properties that can, by themselves or in conjunction with others, confer the status of artterm. According to our findings, in each context, beautyterm suffices to confer the status of artterm. Intentionality does in the visual context and is trending in the musical context. Recognition is (just about) sufficient by itself in the musical context, though does not suffice when it comes to paintings. However, recognition exerts a significant influence on art judgmentsterm·var when the object lacks beautyterm. Both the context-sensitivity of the factor’s relative impact and the significant beautyterm*recognition interaction provide some support for the hypothesis that the folk concept of artterm is a cluster conceptterm: Consistent with what cluster theories would predict, the impact of each factor can change from situation to situation. The concept of artterm is sensitive both to artistic domainterm·var and the presence or absence of other features. In different contexts, different criteria might be relevant for categorising objects as artterm or not artterm.

We have also gathered data on the question under what conditions a creator is deemed an artistterm. Broadly speaking, whether or not an agent is considered an artistterm does – expectedly – track whether or not the object they created is deemed artterm. However, and this is an interesting and surprising finding, in the visual context, we found a divergence: Beautiful, accidentally produced creations (recognized or not) are considered artterm, though their creators are not considered artiststerm. What this suggests, at least prima facie, is that people are willing to attribute the status of artterm to objects that were created without a creative intention and not created by artiststerm. This is surprising for several reasons: First, most authors in the philosophy of artterm assume that whatever is the real nature of artterm, it must be the result of intentional action (Dutton, 2009; Mag Uidhir, 2013). Artworksterm are almost always described as artifacts, which entails that they must be the product of intentional creationterm. The role of intention for artterm status and artterm interpretation has been emphasized extensively not only by philosophers but also in the psychological and empirical literature (Bloom, 1996; Jucker et al., 2014; Kamber & Enoch, 2018; Newman & Bloom, 2012; Newman & Smith, 2018).

Second, quite obviously, being an artistterm and being the source of art-making intentions is closely related, because any object that is the product of intentional action must have a creator. For instance, according to Mag Uidhir, “if what it is to be an artworkterm is to be the product of a successful art-attempt, then presumably what it is to be the artistterm of a particular artworkterm is to be the source of the intentions directing the actions constitutive of the successful art-attempt of which that particular artworkterm is the product. From this, it follows that an artworkterm must have an artistterm.” (2013: 45). According to the standard view, then, artterm must be intentionally made, and it must have an intentionally acting creator. That people are willing to recognize artworksterm that do not have an artistterm might sound paradoxical at the outset. However, it is less so when we think of artterm created by non-human agents, such as artificial intelligence. Although AI-driven robots are standardly not deemed artiststerm, their creations (in experiments similar to the ones here presented) frequently are considered artterm nonetheless (see MikalonytėpersName & KneerpersName, 2022). One could wonder if people simply ascribe the creative intention to the human creator of AI instead of the AI-driven machine itself and consider the human creator the source of artistic intentions. However, the results of the current study show that people are open to the idea of artterm being created without a creator in a more general sense.

Although our results suggest that creative intention at the moment of an action that results in a work of artterm is not necessary, it is hard to imagine intentionality being entirely absent from artterm. In similar cases, intentionality often becomes relevant during the artworkterm selection or curation process. One familiar example is the creative process of AI-generated artterm, where the human user of the system is often presented with multiple outputs and selects the best one. Another example is animal artterm or human creations made by accident, both of which can be seen as instances of artterm made without artistic intention. However, the pieces ultimately presented to the audience are not chosen randomly but are often intentionally selected by humans. In the context of artterm created without a creative intention, intentionality is unlikely to disappear completely, at least not from the process of conferring artterm status: artistic intention here is replaced by curatorial intentionterm. We leave these interesting, more sophisticated aspects of intentionality to be explored in future research.

8.2 Limitations While we have delivered substantial evidence that the folk concept of artterm is a cluster conceptterm and not an essentialist one, much work is needed to elucidate said concept in more depth.

First, our inquiry is limited to only two artistic contexts (painting and music). Given that even across these two contexts we detected some differences, it stands to reason to explore a wide variety of further artistic domainsterm·var, and ideally employ several distinct scenarios for each to test for potential intra-domain variation. This would also help to ensure that differences found between artistic contexts have not been determined by differences between scenarios or perhaps differences in the plausibility of the stories.

Second, as one reviewer has helpfully pointed out, a full factorial design with three distinct factors (and thus eight individual conditions), could give rise to some combinations of factors that might sound less plausible than others. It might thus be helpful to also test each factor in separate experiments, maximizing plausibility for both the absence and presence condition of the factor at issue.Footnote 13 It might also be helpful to rerun the full factorial design with extensive manipulation checks (ours are limited to intentionality).

Third, future experiments should randomise the order of the three (or more) factors. Since information about intention and beautyterm was always presented earlier than institutional recognitionterm in our scenarios, order effects cannot be ruled out.

Fourth, although we have tested several properties that have prominently featured in both essentialist and disjunctive or cluster accounts of artterm, the net should be cast wider. Dutton, for instance, lists (though does not limit himself to) twelve distinct criteria in his cluster account; (1) direct pleasure, (2) skill and virtuosity, (3) style, (4) novelty and creativity, (5) criticism, (6) representation, (7) special focus, (8) expressive individuality, (9) emotional saturation, (10) intellectual challenge, (11) artterm traditions and institutions, (12) imaginative experience, and, in addition, intentional creationterm as a necessary condition (Dutton, 2009).

Fifth, in future research, it would be useful to make a clearer distinction between the intent to produce something that falls under the concept of artterm and other intentions of the appropriate kind that do not involve having a concept of artterm– for instance, an intention to create a rhythmical sound structure or to sketch something resembling a horse (see Lopes, 2007).

Sixth, empirical research in the social sciences tends to oversample populations from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries in general, and US Americans in particular (Henrich et al., 2010, see also De Block & Kelly, 2022). Some have argued for a surprising stability of experimental-philosophical findings across populations and cultures (Knobe, 2019, 2021), citing studies that report cross-cultural convergence on topics ranging from the metaphysics of free will (Sarkissian et al., 2010), central intuitions in epistemology (Rose et al., 2019) and intentionality attribution (Lin et al., 2019), norms of assertion (KneerpersName, 2021), to key concepts in philosophy of law (Hannikainen et al., 2021, 2022). Others have countered this contention (Stich & Machery, 2022), pointing to studies where results vary strongly across cultures. In the experimental philosophy of aesthetics, there is but one study to date which reports some, yet limited, divergence concerning intuitions of intersubjective validity in aesthetic judgments across 19 different countries (Cova et al., 2019). A systematic inquiry into the folk concept of artterm thus requires cross-cultural experiments.

Seventh, given potentially diverging reasons for identical or similar responses, quantitative research of the sort reported in this paper might need to be supplemented with qualitative data, asking participants why they responded as they did. Given technological advances, corpus analysis constitutes another possibility (for examples see Baumgartner & KneerpersName, 2025; Sytsma et al., 2019; Sytsma & Fischer, 2023; Reuter & Baumgartner, 2024; for general discussion, see e.g. Andow, 2016; Chartrand, 2022; Fischer & Curtis, 2019; Plou, 2023).

Eighth, novel experiments are needed to better distinguish between cluster and disjunctive definitions. Future experiments can proceed in two directions: (1) further explorations of the context-sensitivity of the concept of artterm, and (2) the possibility of new cases: under what conditions might the current application conditions be reconsidered?

Finally, whereas the vignette-based approach has its strengths as it allows experimenters to tightly control the manipulated factors, one might argue that an essential part of aesthetic evaluation lies in a first-hand aesthetic experienceterm, and the present studies do not involve such an experience. After all, textual vignettes leave out many details which must be filled in by a reader in her imagination. Readers tend to choose different details, which leads to different intuitive verdicts. However, this problem can– at least in the domain of aesthetics – be solved by using visual (or aural) stimuli (Weinberg, 2018: p. 237). It has been demonstrated in experimental philosophy of music, for instance, that using acoustic stimuli in addition to text vignettes (vs. text vignettes only) influences people’s intuitions (Puy, 2022). Hence, it might be helpful to include actual or potential works of artterm among the stimuli to explore the robustness of the findings here presented.

9 Conclusion Whereas it is notoriously difficult to pick out the correct definition of artterm, the broadest question in the literature on artterm theories – and also the question we aimed to investigate in this study – concerns the type of concept the expression “artterm” most plausibly denotes. Can artterm be defined by individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions or by a disjunction of minimally sufficient conditions? If the latter is true, is the set of conditions determinate or not?

Our initial exploration of the three most widely discussed factors – intentional creationterm, aesthetic valueterm and institutional recognitionterm – showed that none of them is deemed individually necessary. Although further factors, such as emotional expressivity or formal complexity, could be explored in follow-up studies, our findings constitute tentative evidence that the folk concept of artterm is not an essentialist concept and that it is a cluster conceptterm instead. If the correct account of artterm must be consistent with the folk concept of artterm – and there are good reasons to assume that this is the case– the cluster theory of artterm is the most promising one we have at our disposal.