ROGER A.
SHINER
The Mental Life
When we do philosophy we are like savages, primitive people, who hear the expressions
of civilized men, put a false interpretation on them, and then draw the queerest conclu-
sions from it.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 194.
I.
At the end of his detailed and subtle study
of the concept of expression,1 Alan Tormey
refers to
The prevalent assumption that a reference to
expression in art is either (a) a reference to some-
thing lying behind or beyond the work-a thought,
feeling, mood or attitude to which the work
stands in some external relation-or (b) a refer-
ence to something immediately presented to per-
ception as an aesthetic "surface."
Let me introduce the terminology of "A-
theories" and "B-theories" to refer to the
philosophical approaches which proceed
from one part or the other of this disjunc-
tive assumption. A-theories would be char-
acteristically associated with a Romanticism
about expression in art, and about artistic
criticism. Collingwood, Dewey, Ducasse,
and others are uncontroversial examples of
A-theorists.2 B-theories would be character-
istically associated with a Formalist ap-
proach both to art and to criticism. The
term "surface" is specifically emphasized by
Prall's analysis of expression,3 and Beards-
ley refers to expressive qualities4 as "re-
gional qualities" of the artwork.5
Discussions of expression in art do in-
deed tend to oscillate between A-theories
and B-theories, not the least, one imagines,
because theories of both art itself and of
artistic criticism tend to oscillate between
Romanticism and Formalism. The initial
theme of my paper is that both the exist-
ROGERA. SHINER is professor of philosophy at the
University of Alberta.
of a Work of Art
ence and persistence of this seemingly in-
soluble dispute about the nature of expres-
sive qualities of artworks is caused by the
unnoticed influence of a certain confused
picture of the mind. I shall argue later (cf.
pp. 260) that the influence of this picture is
not the whole story, but it is a very impor-
tant part of the story. This confused picture
of the mind is dominant also in philosophy
of mind itself. We must therefore turn to
philosophy of mind and argue the point
for a while there, before returning to aes-
thetics.
II.
The false view of the mind I shall call
the "Cartesian" view. I use that terminol-
ogy more for intra-paper identification than
for advancing historical scholarship, though
I do not wish to ignore relevant connota-
tions. I say "false view of the mind"; how-
ever, it would be better to speak of a false
view of the mind, the body, and the human
being. To think of the mind in terms of
the Cartesian view is also to have a certain
view of the body and of what it is to be a
human being. So I shall speak also of the
Cartesian view of the body, and of the Car-
tesian view of the human being. I shall also
refer to any rival theory which takes its es-
sential framework from the Cartesian view
as also a Cartesian view. The reason for
this is that I wish to emphasize as strongly
as possible the common ground between the
Cartesian view proper (as it were) and other
views.