¹ Some prominent examples of contemporary aestheticians who are motivated by extensional adequacy are the following. George, Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974),Google ScholarThe Art Circle (New York; Haven, 1984)Google Scholar. Arthur Danto, ‘The Artworld’, Journal of Philosophy, 1964, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).Google ScholarJerrold Levinson, Music, Art, and Metaphysics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

² It is presumably not the case that the content of propositional attitudes concerning works of art is fixed by our causal interactions with works of art; for as physical things, there is nothing significant in common between them. The case will not be like our thought about natural kinds.

³ See his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), and Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982)Google Scholar

⁴ See Roger, Scruton, The Aesthetic Understanding (London: Methuen, 1983), chapter 1.Google Scholar

⁵ In my ‘Doughnuts and Dickie’ (Ratio, 1994) I argue that Dickie′s institutional theory fails to explain our interest in art.Google Scholar

⁶ I expound and defend a theory of art which appeals to aesthetic properties in ‘The Creative Theory of Art’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1995.

⁷ For example, George, Dickie, Aesthetics, pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

⁸ Perhaps there is something to be said for the appeal to paradigms in the philosophy of art.

⁹ I am grateful for helpful comments from Simon Evnine, Jerry Levinson, and the editor. A version of this paper was given as a talk at the Open University summer school.