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  • The modality principle and work-relativity of modality
    Šuster, Danilo
    The bell curve Davies argues that the ontology of artworks as performances offers a principled way of explaining work-relativity of modality. Object oriented contextualist ontologies of art ... (Levinson) cannot adequately address the problem of work-relativity of modal properties because they understand looseness in what counts as the same context as a view that slight differences in the work-constitutive features of provenance are work-relative. I argue that it is more in the spirit of contextualism to understand looseness as context-dependent. This points to the general problem - the context of appreciation is not robust enough to ground modal intuitions about objective entities. In general, when epistemology dictates ontology there is always a threat of antirealism, scepticism and relativism. Davies also appeals to the modality principle an entity's essential properties are all and only its constitutive properties. Davies understands essentiality in a traditional way: a property P is an essential property of an object o iff o could not exist and lack P. Kit Fine has recently made a convincing case for the view that the notion of essence is not to be understood in modal terms. I explore some of the implications of this view for Davies' modal argument for the performance theory.
    Source: Acta analytica : philosophy and psychology : [international periodical for philosophy in analytical tradition]. - ISSN 0353-5150 (Vol. 20, no. 4, Fall 2005, str. [41]-52)
    Type of material - article, component part ; adult, serious
    Publish date - 2005
    Language - english
    COBISS.SI-ID - 14416904

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