Diagrams and the Crossroads Between Aesthetics and Epistemology

Non/Cognate Approaches Relation & Representation • Editors Ivan Mladenov and Aleksandar Feodorov 2019 This book is published as part of the research project “Non/Cognate Approaches in the Humanities”, realized with the financial support of the Program for career development of young scientists at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences © ИЗДАТЕЛСТВО „ПАРАДИГМА” ISBN 978-954-326-375-2 CONTENTS Miihály Szívós Highlighting the ontological background of the most important peircean sign classification. Relationships and representations in semiotic and philosophical contexts.................................................................. 5 Ivan Mladenov Before a thought appears (The notion of the ‘ground’ in peirce’s thought) .........15 Gregory Phipps Peircean firstness and the poetics of doubt: Charles peirce’s philosophy of subjectivity and Emily Dickinson’s “These tested our horizon -.” ..........47 Aleš Vaupotič Theory of discourse and semiotics: Foucault, Bakhtin, Peirce ...........................................................67 Sebastian Feil The power of habit ..........................................................................85 Reni Yankova Habit change in Charles Peirce’s philosophy: the unexpected necessity of feeling and imagination ....................................................................................... 103 Aleksandar Feodorov The esthetic grounding of Peirce’s philosophy ..........115 Letícia Vitral Diagrams and the crossroads between aesthetics and epistemology ................................................. 127 Vasil Penchev Why anything rather than nothing? The answer of quantum mechanics ....................................151 Contributors .........................................................................................173 Diagrams and the crossroads 127 LETÍCIA VITRAL DIAGRAMS AND THE CROSSROADS BETWEEN AESTHETICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY Abstract: The philosophical branches of aesthetics and epistemology, although sharing several problems in common, do not seem to have been in active dialogue, particularly in what regards the systematic investigation of the mechanisms through which artifacts usually regarded as sources of aesthetic experience (such as artworks) might be able to derive knowledge. In this paper, it is going to be presented one possible way to start approaching such investigation: I believe it is possible to study the epistemic potential of artworks by approaching artworks as diagrams in the Peircean sense. It is going to be explored here how (i) diagrams cannot have the experiences they produce reduced to a fixed and final response, how (ii) diagrams are constantly shaped by experimental interactions with an agent and its environment, how (iii) diagrams and the experiences they produce are part of the same process, and how (iv) diagrams are in a continuum of science and everyday life, by means of modifying and sharpening perception on general. In order to investigate and illustrate each of these features of diagrams, the artwork “Brillo Boxes” of Andy Warhol is going to be analyzed regarding its diagrammatic properties. It will be concluded that, by explicitly assuming this diagrammatic role of artworks we can proceed to investigate how art can be used to derive knowledge. Only by doing such, we can then advance to develop a more refined and detailed account of the diagrammatic reasoning process that allows an agent to process the possible knowledge that might be derived of an artwork as diagram. Keywords: diagrams, aesthetics, epistemology, Peirce, Warhol 128 Letícia Vitral Introduction 1 Many are the problems shared between what is broadly called aesthetics and epistemology: matters of fictionality, perception, representation, mediation, abstraction, creativity, imagination, mimesis and meaning have been constantly discussed throughout the development of Western philosophy. However, aesthetics and epistemology seemed, so far, not to be in dialogue with each other as much as they should, especially concerning the systematic investigation of the mechanisms through which artifacts usually regarded as sources of aesthetic experience (such as artworks) might be able to derive knowledge. The crossroads between aesthetics and epistemology have to deal not only with problems of what we know about aesthetic artifacts, but also with the processes that give us experiential knowledge through those aesthetic artifacts. In that context, artworks are tools that aid us in the deriving, denoting or producing of knowledge. As Gaut says, this discussion, although dating since Plato and Aristotle, is still reverberating in contemporary aesthetics in what he calls “the epistemic question”: “Can art give its audience knowledge?” (Gaut 2003: 436). Some other questions revolve around this central epistemic one, like: “If art does give us knowledge, which kind of knowledge is it?”, “Is it knowledge or mere understanding?”, among others. The aim of this paper is not to provide a clear-cut answer to any of those questions, but to propose a theoretical framework that would allow us to pursue a deeper investigation of the mechanisms through which art might provide an agent with knowledge. By regarding artworks as diagrammatic signs, we would be able to provide a solid basis for the discussion regarding the questions posited above. In this article I will present some important features of artworks that can be described and understood by means of Peirce’s concept of diagrams. In order to tackle the questions raised here, we should first start investigating the ontological features of artworks as diagrams. Peircean Semiotics? Peircean Semiotics is a formal attempt to describe and systematize processes of signification in general. As a general theory, it opens up to the possibilities of a more integrated and interdisciplinary theory of 1 Acknowledgements: The author would like to acknowledge Pedro Atã, Tálisson Melo and Dr. Péter Makai for the discussions and the general assistance with this paper. Diagrams and the crossroads 129 signification. By using this framework to address artworks, we are not making a tentative effort to couple artworks with epistemic properties departing from any standard set up by the “inside-the-lab-sciences” 2 . As a general theory, it means that the underlying properties and mechanisms of both the arts and the “sciences” (as well as any other system concerned with reasoning and communication in general) can be described and analyzed by the same relational standards. By calling it a “formal” attempt, it is meant that it deals with the following question: “in order for something to count as whatever it is, what sort of features would it have to have, and, given those features, what are the various ways in which it can be?” (Liszka 1996: 1). So, by being a formal science, Peircean semiotics deals not only with “what is”, but also with “what must be” (CP.2.227), opening room for experimentations with hypotheses, conjectures and possibilities in general. According to him, all thought and reasoning can only happen with and through signs (CP 1.191, 5.520) and, as such, semiotics is concerned with the formal conditions not only of “signs,” but also with the formal conditions of how they ought to be employed, transmitted and developed (Liszka 1996): “Every reasoning consists in interpreting a sign. For whenever we think, we think in sign. Every action of thought is either the formation, or the application, or the interpretation of sign, or else it is some kind of action upon a sign or signs” (MS[R] 654:3). Therefore, Peircean semiotics is not only about actual communication, but also about inference and perception; it does not only occur between two living entities, but also within oneself, or among a general group of beings; it does not only entail linguistic signification, but non-linguistic as well. Based on that, “matters of communication, meaning and inference are not just accidentally conjoined in this and that particular subject-matter but can ultimately be understood in terms of the same basic theoretical relationships” (Ransdell 1977: 157). Although Peirce does not mention aesthetics 3 when talking about 2 As in the commonsense idea of an isolated and specialized empirical practice of inquiry. 3 Regarding aesthetics, Peirce never wrote any substantial and systematic works about the subject. Although Peirce considered “esthetics” one of the normative sciences (alongside ethics and logic, the latter also known as semiotics), he only provided short descriptions of what the understood as such: “For Normative Science in general being the science of the laws of conformity of things to ends, esthetics considers those things whose ends are to embody qualities of feeling, ethics those things whose ends lie in action, and logic those things whose end is to represent something” (CP 5.129). But, as he also states, in the same passage: “As for esthetics, although the 130 Letícia Vitral logic (since, according to his 1902’s division of the sciences, esthetics [sic] is a normative science other than logic), he extends the idea of observation and inquiry further to those of science as an essentially technological and instrumental practice and its purposes. For him, science also concerns everyday experience in general, in terms of representation, communication and interpretation. In the same way, aesthetic experience is not seen as a compartmentalized experience, distinguished from “scientific” experience. For pragmatist philosophers, there must be a necessary continuity “between Art and Science and everyday experience in terms of their use of intelligent, purposeful behavior and problem solving” (Shusterman 2013: 99). Thus, both the arts and the traditional conception of science are forms that go beyond describing reality and actively engage with it, transforming reality while being transformed by it. This idea is in opposition to traditional aesthetics insofar as it regards aesthetic experience as something “disinterested,” concerned mainly (if not only) with pleasure, emotions, subjective sensuality and immediacy. As the pragmatists see it, aesthetic experience and perception are not just immediate, but must also assimilate inferential reasoning. Artworks are not objects of disinterested, distanced and immediate contemplation, but active tools that we use to order and cope with experience: “The work of esthetic art satisfies many ends, none of which is laid down in advance. It serves life rather than prescribing a defined and limited mode of living” (Dewey 1987: 140). In that sense, artworks are not tools created in order to provide humans only (or mostly) with a specialized kind of experience, namely, the aesthetic experience: “they work to modify and sharpen perception and communication; they energize and inspire because aesthetic experience is always spilling over and getting integrated into our other activities, enhancing and deepening them” (Shusterman 2000: 24). In that sense, artworks are not passive objects, waiting for an agent to contemplate it, but active artifacts with epistemic potential: tools that we can use for inquiry and experimentation. In light of this, I believe that the Peircean pragmatist approach might be the most suitable approach that can help us to investigate the epistemic potential of artworks – in other words, the potential that artworks can have to derive knowledge about itself or/and something else. In the following sections I am going to explore how Peirce’s concept of first year of my study of philosophy was devoted to this branch exclusively, yet I have since then so completely neglected it that I do not feel entitled to have any confident opinions about it”. Diagrams and the crossroads 131 diagrams might provide us with a very interesting and original conceptual basis for exploring the mechanisms through which art gives us epistemic experience. Diagrams within Peircean Semiotics According to Peirce, diagrams are a specific class of iconic signs: they represent, by their own means, the interrelated parts that construct the internal structure of their objects, in order to aid and create potential reasoning: …a Diagram is an Icon of a set of rationally related objects. By rationally related, I mean that there is between them, not merely one of those relations which we know by experience, but know not how to comprehend, but one of those relations which anybody who reasons at all must have an inward acquaintance with. This is not a sufficient definition, but just now I will go no further, except that I will say that the Diagram not only represents the related correlates, but also, and much more definitely represents the relations between them, as so many objects of the Icon (NEM 4:316). Diagrams are able to represent their objects, by means of their own representational qualities – and this feature is exactly what defines them as iconic signs: “An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own and which it possesses, just the same, whether any such Object actually exists or not” (CP 2.247). It means that the object of the iconic sign does not need to be explicit, recognizable, or even to exist as a phenomenon “in the wild” in order for the iconic sign to be able to signify it. Although diagrams are usually understood as mainly two-dimensional visual aids for reasoning, and very often equated with visual symbolic representation, they are defined by Peirce as any kind of representation that can be sensorially perceived (regardless of it being visual or not), and that makes abstract properties and relations from the object accessible in the sign itself, by allowing a very specific kind of manipulation, namely diagrammatic reasoning. Peirce defines diagrammatic reasoning as follows: By diagrammatic reasoning, I mean reasoning which constructs a diagram according to a precept expressed in general 132 Letícia Vitral terms, performs experiments upon this diagram, notes their results, assures itself that similar experiments performed upon any diagram constructed according to the same precept would have the same results, and expresses this in general terms (NEM 4:47-48). The role of material diagrams is to “provide sensory stimuli for cognition” (Kazmierczak 2003, p.186). Here, I defend the claim that artworks can behave as diagrams in the Peircean sense: they can work as sensorial available signs that embody relations we observe and manipulate. By explicitly regarding artworks as diagrams, we are, in fact, shedding light upon the mechanisms through which this class of material representations are able to derive knowledge and process information. Artworks as Diagrams: Arthur Danto and the Brillo Boxes from Andy Warhol In 1974, Danto published a highly influential article called “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace,” whose opening lines already describe the state-of-the-art of the arts after the avant-garde movements of the turn of the century well (the Dadaist one, in particular): In the present state of the artworld, it is possible that a painting be exhibited which is merely a square of primed canvas, or a sculpture shown which consists of a box, of undistinguished carpentry, coated with a banal tan chemtone applied casually with a roller (Danto 1974: 139). He proceeds in the same paragraph to claim that some people accuse such works of being “empty” by comparing them to the masterpieces of the Early Renaissance and Classical Antiquity. But behind this common lay critique of modern and contemporary art lies an ontological problem: how can “a box, made of undistinguished carpentry, coated with a banal tan chemtone applied casually with a roller” can behave as something else then “a box, made of undistinguished carpentry, coated with a banal tan chemtone applied casually with a roller”? Or, more precisely: how can it behave as art? What are the ontological distinctions of a thing that can be, at the same time, a regular package of commodities and a work of art? Where to draw the ontological line of distinction here if the crude materiality of the thing itself remains almost the same in both of the cases? These questions were triggered Diagrams and the crossroads 133 in the philosopher’s studies by the contact he had with Andy Warhol’s 1964 installation “Brillo Boxes (Soap Pads)” (Figure 01) in the Staple Gallery. The installation was made of several visually similar wooden copies of cardboard boxes of the homonymous soap pads, designed originally by James Harvey (Figure 02). Figure 01: “Brillo Boxes (Soap Pads)” by Andy Warhol. Screenprint and ink on wood. 1964. (Source: https://www. philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/89204.html) Figure 02: Brillo soap pads cardboard boxes at a warehouse in Michigan (right) in the second half of the 2010s. (Source: https://www.fbem.org/who-we-are/financials-reports/) 134 Letícia Vitral Danto himself described this moment of persistent epiphany some decades later, bringing to light the necessity of a theory of art that would allow us to solve or at least properly approach this ontological riddle: The problem, as I saw it – and still see it – arose for me initially with Warhol and his Brillo Box, which was perceptually so like the workaday shipping cartons in which Brillo was transported from factory to warehouse to supermarket that the question of distinguishing them became acute […]. I mean: distinguish them not epistemologically but rather ontologically – sooner or later one would discover that one was made of plywood, the other not. The question was whether the difference between art and reality could consist in such discoverable differences. I thought not, but from the beginning my strategy was to find how there could be differences that were not perceptual differences. My thought was that there had to be a theory of art that could explain the difference. […] My sense was that there had to be reasons for calling Brillo Box art” (Danto 2013: 143-144, emphasis added). In the same book of 2013, he brings one more problem to the table. In 1990, after Warhol’s death, the Swedish curator Pontus Hulten ordered 105 copies of the “Brillo Boxes” to be made: not only were the so-called “Stockholm-type” pieces fake, their certificate of authenticity was also counterfeited – although both were visually similar to Warhol’s originals. So, here we have three different tokens (a commercial package of commodities, an artwork, a forgery) from the same type (Brillo soap pads’ boxes), each of them deriving different meaning from the same, visually similar material basis. Danto tried to solve this conundrum by claiming that such a thing is only possible because artworks are their own embodied meaning (which, in turn, must be different from the embodied meaning of a package of commodities and from that of a forgery): In a crude way, my definition had two main components in it: something is a work of art when it has a meaning – is about something – and when that meaning is embodied in the work – which usually means: is embodied in the object in which the work of art materially consists. My theory, in brief, is that works of art are embodied meanings. (Danto 2013: 149) Diagrams and the crossroads 135 However, for Danto, this “embodied meaning” is something that the artist’s intention is responsible for. He argues that it is the indexical intention of the artist that transfigures a regular box of cleaning pads into an artwork: “the transfiguration of the everyday occurs because the artist’s intention makes a Brillo Box art, and the lack thereof prevents a Brillo carton of becoming art” (Snyder 2010: 148). Although we believe that what causes this ontological distinction among materially similar things is, indeed, some sort of “embodied meaning,” we do not share his idea that it lies solely in the artist’s intention. We believe it to lie in the diagrammatic features of an artwork that involve not only the creation of the artwork as a diagram, but also in the manipulation of the artwork as a diagram. In order to understand the mechanisms through which we can derive this special kind of meaning from an artwork, we must first defend the thesis that artworks can behave as diagrams, and further establish the conditions and consequences of addressing them as such. In the following sections, I am going to investigate Peirce’s concept of diagrams as epistemic signs from which an agent is able to derive knowledge. I do so by exemplifying each of these claims with comments about Warhol’s Brillo Boxes problem. Diagrams Cannot Have the Experiences they Produce Reduced to a Single, Fixed, Final Response Let’s start by analyzing the relational structure of a diagram as Peirce envisions it. Diagrams are a class of iconic signs that signify the interrelated parts which construct the internal structure of their objects by means of their own qualities in order to afford potential necessary 4 reasoning. To talk about a diagram’s potential to derive different meanings, we must take a closer look at the logical relations found in a diagram. More specifically, at how the symbol-type-token relation is structured. A diagram general type is only communicated through particular tokens, and the process of precisive abstraction 5 is what allows agents to “rule out” the manipulation some features of the type, 4 Necessary reasoning is that which “the condition of the universe as a whole, or any particular part of it, is rendered, both as to its existence and quality, inevitable. [Necessary reasoning is] Opposed to both freedom and chance, but especially, in its strictly philosophical use, to chance […] or contingency” (DPP 2:143). 5 This kind of diagrammatic manipulation assumes that some information from the diagrammatic representation is absent, leaving it out of account in favor of other information that can be found in the same diagrammatic representation. It is a way to reduce sensory information in order to identify relationships at different levels in the diagrammatic representation in a clearer way. 136 Letícia Vitral and turn something general (type) into a particular (token), which the agent further manipulates according to the habits embodied on each token. The concept of habit within Peircean semiotics can be defined as “a general rule operative within the organism” (MS [W] 397), that “causes actions to be directed toward ends” (MS [W] 354). It is a pattern of constraints that guides the manipulation of something by an agent, either consciously or unconsciously (Anderson 2016: 2), under a set of certain circumstances. Since a manipulation based on habits is always inscribed in a context, the response of this manipulation might vary – and several tokens can be derived from a type. This “context-based” property is not singular to diagrams. As it is clear along Peirce’s whole speculative grammar, 6 signs can have a specific set of characteristics only in relation to something else: “icon” and, consequently, “diagram” are not essential properties of a sign, but dynamic and relational categories. However, with diagrams, we have the process of deriving habits of manipulation from a type in order to perceive it as a token as its foundational operational feature: by manipulating a diagram, we are able to contemplate its epistemic potential. With regard to a first sign-object-interpretant triad, the diagram-type is the interpretant of series of discrete, indeterminate and finite symbolic signs: habits. But, this general type can only be accessed through its instantiation in particular tokens: “A Diagram, in my sense, is in the first place a Token, or singular Object used as a Sign; for it is essential that it should be capable of being perceived and observed” (NEM 4:315316n1). These tokens participate in a second triadic sign-object-interpretant relation. In this second triad, the sign is the token, composed of specific features of the type, related to the symbolic habits that produced these features. When manipulating a token “X”, we perform the rules contained in the symbolic habit “X” that generated the features in the type from with the token “X” was derived. This symbol-type-token structure can be visualized as such (figure 03): 6 Speculative grammar is one of the three branches of semiotics, alongside general logic and methodeutic. The task of speculative grammar is “to ascertain what must be true of the representamen [aka sign] used by every scientific intelligence in order that they may embody any meaning” (CP 2.229). It is the branch responsible for describing the basic components and aspects of a sign as well as to classify them. Diagrams and the crossroads 137 Figure 03: The skeleton of the semiotic relation symbol-type-token in a diagram. On the left are the S-O-I relations, in which all the signs are symbols that represent habits of something. All these symbols have the same diagram-type as a general interpretant. The dotted arrows represent the manipulation of the diagram-type by means of each of the habits that produced the type. The manipulation of features of a diagram-type together constrained by a specific set of habits, produces the respective diagram-tokens, represented on the bottom of the image, as signs in a new S-O-I relation. Furthermore, diagrams are signs of possibility (icons), which means that they do not need an existing object for the diagram-tokens to signify – the only necessary condition is that the object of the diagram-token should be logically possible. But not necessarily existentially possible “in the wild”. This feature of diagrams is of extreme importance for its capacity to hold an epistemic potential: it allows agents to physically manipulate, observe, make claims, reason, create and test hypotheses about, potentially, everything that can be diagrammatically represented – including boxes of Brillo soap pads. 138 Letícia Vitral In the case of the example given in section 4, we can see how the same general type (transportation boxes of Brillo soap pads) can generate different tokens (an artwork, a package of commodities and an artwork’s forgery) according to the habits it derives from. The relationship of symbol-type-token in this example would look something like this (Figure 04): Figure 04: The skeleton of the symbol-type-token relationship in the case of Brillo soap pad boxes as a diagrammatic structure. This relationship is what explains an artwork’s ability to arise from a very “mundane” or general materiality that in any other context of manipulation wouldn’t be manipulated as an artwork. When approaching an artwork as a diagram, we must be aware not only of the general type from which the particular token is derived, but also of the habits that are employed in the process of manipulating that token. In the case of the Brillo boxes, although in all of the three diagram-tokens we have almost the same material features, each one of them embodies a different set of habits – which, consequently, leaves them to produce different interpretants, from which different meaning can be derived. Diagrams and the crossroads 139 Diagrams as Artifacts That Are Constantly Shaped by Experimental Interactions With a Manipulative Agent and its Environment According to Stjernfelt, one of the distinguishing features of diagrams in the “Iconic Sign” category is its experimental value: “As soon as an icon is contemplated as a whole consisting of interrelated parts whose relations are subject to experimental change, we are operating on a diagram” (Stjernfelt 2007: 92, emphasis added). This is a very important property that highlights diagrams as signs of possible relations that are revealed to an agent, when experimented upon. Another important aspect is the fact that Peircean semiotics only considers something a sign in actu, which means: for something to behave as a sign, it has to be manipulated as such a sign. This idea extends itself to all the categories in his speculative grammar, including diagrams. Diagrams are only perceived as such, when engaged in an active experimental interaction, namely diagrammatic reasoning, with an agent. Besides, in order for a diagram to be engaged in such an active experimental interaction with an agent, it also has to be spatiotemporally instantiated in a token, since “there is no cognitive ability without a corresponding object 7” (Hoffmann 2011, p.19). This spatiotemporal instantiation is, nevertheless, not a stable point, nor a substance, but a process 8 , since an environment of manipulation has a dynamic character – which means, it changes and transforms itself over time. This environment can be understood as “the locus in which habits become available for semiosis” (Atã and Queiroz 2016: 116) 9. As such, the habits of an artwork are usually available in a different environment of manipulation, under a different set of conditions, then those of a package of commodities, for example. And, as these environments and conditions are always in constant change, the habits that can be derived in one environment also change in accordance with the conditions and the environment itself. Let us look at our example of the Brillo soap cleaning pads’ boxes. The “carton boxes for transporting Brillo soap pads” tokens of the general type “boxes of brillo soap pads” were designed, as said in section 4, 7 Object, here, is in the sense of “artifact”, and not as one of the parts of a Sign-Object-Interpretant triad. 8 “Process”, here is approached as a category of metaphysical understanding (see Rescher 2000 for more details). 9 This notion of “environment of manipulation” is derived from “cognitive niche”. See Atã and Queiroz 2016 for a more extended account on the matter. 140 Letícia Vitral by James Harvey, an abstract expressionist artist, who worked as a freelancer designer. When describing the response of the audience to Harvey’s design through Warhol’s tokens of the boxes, Danto says: Harvey’s work was appropriated by Warhol, along with the works of various other package designers in the 1964 exhibition at the Stable Gallerythe Kellogg’s Cornflakes carton, the Del Monte Peach Half carton, the Heinz Tomato Juice carton, etc. But the only box that is generally remembered is Brillo Box—it was the star of the show and is almost as much Warhol’s attribute as is the Campbell’s Soup label (Danto 2013: 147). He then asserts that the reason why Harvey’s box was “the star of the show” lies in the fact that it already had representational features that triggered an aesthetic response in the audience: And this is because of its aesthetic excellence. Its red, white, and blue design was a knockout. As a piece of visual rhetoric, it celebrated its content, namely Brillo, as a household product used for shining aluminum. The box was about Brillo, and the aesthetics of the box was calculated to dispose viewers favorably toward Brillo. Warhol, however, gets no credit for the aesthetics for which Harvey was responsible. That is the aesthetics of the box, but whether or not that aesthetics is part of Warhol’s work is another question altogether (Danto 2013: 147-148). So, a question arises: if the “aesthetic excellence” was already present in the carton transportation box tokens, why haven’t they been regarded as artworks until Warhol appropriated them? According to our approach of artworks as diagrams, the answer is pretty straightforward: because they haven’t been manipulated as such, in an environment that would allow agents to manipulate them as such, by accessing the habits of an artwork. By putting a Brillo box inside the closed space of a museum or a gallery, we diagrammatically relate the boxes to the set of habits of that kind of space (even if somebody disagrees that the Brillo boxes belong to that space – this person is disagreeing upon the habits that are being presented, therefore stating at least the existence of such habits for such a kind of space). This established relation between the artifact and its environment constrain agents to manipulate the boxes Diagrams and the crossroads 141 as artifacts that also belong to the class of artifacts they are sharing the space with – since this is one of the main habits of an art museum or an art gallery: a place where artworks are displayed. But the simple display of something inside an art museum or gallery per se, does not automatically make something an artwork: this is where the experimental character of the manipulation of diagrams comes to the spotlight. Diagram Tokens and the Experiences They Produce Are Parts of the Same Process To understand the nature of diagrammatic experimentation, we must first provide the context of Peirce´s ideas of scientific investigation and scientific methods. Peircean semiotics is, according to Pietarinen (2006: 377), “the art of reasoning and the theory of self-controlled, deliberate thought” where signs are understood as means of reasoning. Within this context, the scientific method, according to Peirce, is a process of continuous creation and experimentation upon hypotheses. According to him, “a hypothesis on which no verifiable predictions can be based should never be accepted” (CP 5.599), for it wouldn’t be possible to perform any kind of experimental tests upon it. When explaining the Peircean method of experimental investigation, Hookway (2002, p.181) says that “we advance towards the truth by a carefully monitored sequence of interactions with the objects and the events that we investigate, acting upon them and observing the consequences of our actions.” Crucially, for Peirce, in tune with the Pragmatic Maxim 10, the result of the experimentation is not the establishment of a theory that is “confirmed” by the method, but the method itself. We do not settle beliefs and reach truth by collecting theories and positive results, but by continuously experimenting and performing actions on the signs we are investigating. Scientific progress, according to Peirce, is an ongoing process of creating hypotheses, followed by experimental tests upon them – regardless of the results being positive or negative to the expected outcome derived from the hypothesis. In the same way, for Dewey – the most prominent pragmatist aesthetician – the value of art lies in that it does not rely on artworks as 10 In 1878, Peirce published a paper named “How to Make our Ideas Clear,” in which he presents for the first time the “Pragmatic Maxim,” also known as “the principle of Peirce”: “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (EP1: 132). In other words: we consider something to be, what we experiment upon and observe as the effects of this “something.” 142 Letícia Vitral merely artifactual entities “that conventional dogma identifies and then fetishizes as art” (Shusterman 2000, p.22). He claims that art would be a procedural development of an activity, with a highly experimental character, that not only creates such artifacts, but also makes them available for interpretation and processes of signification in general: “He therefore distinguished between the physical ‘art product’ that, once created, can exist ‘apart from human experience’ and ‘the actual work of art’ [which] is what the product does with and in experience” (Shusterman 2000, p.22). Art, thus, is neither just a collection of artifacts, nor any sort of essential substance or feature shared among those artifacts: Art is, according to Dewey, “a quality of experience”. So, “Art” is not a static thing nor a static quality, but a whole process that can be subjected to failure and, as seen in the previous section, involves at least (i) an artifactual diagram token, (ii) and agent manipulating it, (iii) an environment of manipulation, and (iv) a set of habits and conventions that are subject to regular change during time. So, we can notice that Peirce’s concept of the scientific method is very similar to Dewey’s concept of Art: not as a means to an end, but as an experience, a process that develops and changes not only itself, but also everything that is also involved in it. However, Peirce makes it clear that Science is the active pursuit of truth or, in other words, the process of fixation of belief. Could this statement be extended to the idea of Art? If yes, how would truth manifest itself in the realm of art? To discuss these questions, let´s return to Peirce´s pragmatic maxim. This passage, which establishes the basis for Peirce´s whole system of philosophy, posits that for an agent to assert meaning to something, there must be a set of conditional connections between this something and the meanings it might generate. But, these conditional connections are not a closed set of connections, but a necessary and conceivable set of real 11 connections. According to Hoffmann: That is, in any experiment we presuppose a “reality” independent of our opinions about it, and, in addition to this, we presuppose also that this reality should become “visible” in the relations between defined starting conditions and observable consequences. That exactly is the situation of applying the Pragmatic Maxim (Hoffman 2004: 296). We are only able to speculate the meaning of something, when 11 See Hoffmann 2004 for a discussion of Peirce’s realism in relation to his Pragmatic Maxim. Diagrams and the crossroads 143 we presuppose the existence of habits between the something and its set of possible meanings. By bringing this idea together with our symbol-type-token discussion on the section 4.1, we can propose the following conjecture: “A set of necessary and conceivable connections between something and the meanings that can be derived from it” can be understood as “a set of necessary and conceivable relational habits between a type and the tokens that can be derived from it”. Further, if we consider that these habits are responsible for constraining certain kinds of manipulation upon a type – so that we derive a token from it – we can approach these habits as the realities that assure the truth of a proposition, such as, for example Danto’s proposition that “the Brillo boxes by Andy Warhol are artworks because they have some sort of embodied meaning.” According to Peirce’s approach to what is “real” (as in our example, the reality of an artwork), it is: that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge (CP 5.311). Therefore, regardless of what are the contemporary standards of what the reality of an artwork might be – since there is no such a thing as “forever real” (Hoffmann 2004: 297) that cannot be experimented upon without the possibility of failure – we can only define something as an artwork if it is inscribed in a process of diagrammatic manipulation constrained by the habits of that reality. An artwork has to be experimentally manipulated as diagram, and, depending on the result of the manipulation, one can then start regarding that artifact as an artwork or not (or even be unsure whether it is an artwork or not). Of course, by being an experimental interaction, it cannot avoid failure, and agents can be misguided on their manipulation in several ways: for example, in typical “contemporary art pranks,” in which a thing is placed in the floor of a museum and starts to attract people around it as if it was an artwork – or also in the case of forgeries, such as the “Stockholm-type boxes.” In the case of Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, we can see that the “aesthetic excellence” of the boxes was already present in the design of the “package of commodities” token of the boxes. But only from the moment that this aesthetic excellence was manipulated while 144 Letícia Vitral constrained by the habits of an artwork, it was able to be revealed to the agents of the manipulation as the aesthetic excellence of an artwork. Before this habit-oriented manipulation, this aesthetic excellence of an artwork was only a possibility, a conceivable feature of the boxes – only able to asserted as true, after the manipulation constrained by the habits of an artwork took place. Diagram Tokens as Artifacts in a Continuum with Science and Everyday Life, Modifying and Sharpening Perception in General According to Stjernfelt, the main strength of Peirce’s concept of diagrams lies in the broad spectrum of phenomena and theories that it covers (2007: 107). And this feature is directly related to Peirce’s division of the sciences (figure 05): Figure 05: Peirce’s architectonic division of the sciences (as in Liszka 1996 and De Waal 2001). Mathematics is the foundational science for Peirce, from which all the others (including logic) are derived. In his hierarchy of the sciences, mathematics is the only one that does not rely on any other science. As he explains the relationship between mathematics and logics: “It does not seem to me that mathematics depends in any way upon logic. It reasons, of course. But if the mathematician ever hesitates or errs in his Diagrams and the crossroads 145 reasoning, logic cannot come to his aid (…). Indeed, all formal logic is merely mathematics applied to logic” (CP 4.228). Mathematics, for him, is a self-correcting science that deals with acts of necessary reasoning embedded in practice, which is up for failure or not (i.e. is pre-logical) and is grounded in principles that precede any “analysis of conceptually represented knowledge” (i.e. is pre-philosophical) (Hull 1994: 274). But, how does mathematics relate to diagrams? For Peirce, all diagrammatic reasoning is mathematical reasoning. And this is because both of them really on conditions of necessity. As such, diagrams are the fundamental kind of sign not only for Peirce’s epistemology, but for his whole system of sciences: since a diagram is used to derive meaning from something, diagrams help us to construct the concept of the same thing, whatever it may be. Without having diagrams to reason upon, we are unable to perform necessary reasoning at all. This idea of reasoning and thought as praxis and performance also finds its place in contemporary aesthetics, as in Mersch’s “Epistemologies of Aesthetics” (2015). In Mersch’s view, in tune with our claims in the previous sections, “art (…) unveils its own phenomena through the process of exploring them” (Mersch 2015: 35). However, the relationship between Art and Science has been a troubled one, especially regarding the hierarchy of the sciences. One common critique among those who try to defend or at least understand artistic practices as research practice is that what happens the most is the “coupling [of] art with epistemic power, whose standards are set by the sciences, rather than [the] defining [of] independent standards for art. This is perhaps the most usual and widespread art research discourse” (Mersch 2015: 38). The Peircean position on the matter (that of mathematics being the foundational science) rules out both the first as well as the second “discourses” mentioned by Mersch. Since the practice of necessary reasoning is foundational for all sciences, one does not simply couple art with “in-the-lab science” reasoning standards – and this is not a case of setting independent reasoning standards for art, either: both “science” and art have the same basis for practical experimentation and necessary reasoning – that of mathematics: That is, wherever necessary reasoning occurs, a mathematical structure lies behind. Mathematics ceases to be a special science, close to or even part of the natural sciences – mathematics rather becomes first science, turns up everywhere, only most often not identified as such because of the 146 Letícia Vitral simplicity of the math used in most everyday reasoning. In the special sciences, necessary, that is, mathematical reasoning belongs to their conceptual, metaphysical basis. (Stjernfelt 2007:296) Of course, art can also provide its agents with experiences other than those of epistemic nature, such as aesthetic experience – although it can also be argued that even in the case of “unmotivated” aesthetical contemplation, we are reasoning with icons and imagining diagrammatic relations (Stjernfelt 2007, Pietarinen & Bellucci 2016). But, by approaching artworks as diagrams, we extend the idea of observation and inquiry not only to science as an essentially technological and instrumental practice and its purposes – but to everyday experience in general, in terms of representation, communication and interpretation. As Kieran puts it, “when engaging with art works we entertain imaginings about make-believe worlds. The artistic techniques and conventions deployed prompt particular imaginings and thereby shape our responses” (Kieran 2011, p.376). By manipulating the boxes of Brillo pads through constraints set by the habits of an artwork, we were able to derive meaning from the boxes themselves as a sign (that would arguably not be derived by a manipulation of the same boxes, but constrained by other habits, such as those of a package of commodities or a forgery), and also from what an artwork, and what the habits of an artwork are. Final comments and further developments In this paper I presented a possible way to open up the discussion regarding the epistemic potential of artworks by approaching them as diagrams in the Peircean sense. I believe that this is the first step for a more ambitious project: to study the mechanisms through which artworks can derive knowledge by serving as sensory stimuli for diagrammatic reasoning processes. I discussed the following diagrammatic features of artworks by analyzing Warhol’s Brillo boxes as example of a diagram-token, whose manipulation is constrained by the habits of an artwork. I analyzed here: • how artworks do not have the experiences they produce reduced to a single, fixed, final response; • how artworks are constantly shaped by dynamic interactions with the agents that manipulate them, as well as with the environment in which they are to be manipulated; Diagrams and the crossroads 147 • how artworks hold relations with their manipulative agents and environments, in such a way that the artworks and the experience they produce are, in fact, the same process; and • how artworks are not involved in a compartmentalized, immediate, disinterested and distanced kind of experience, but in a continuum with science and everyday life, by modifying and sharpening perception and communication in general. Although the Brillo Boxes example is an example of contemporary art, I believe them to be a very good sample for the discussion regarding the ontological and epistemological boundaries of art in relation to the experience artworks might afford us. It also highlights how the change in the habits of something is not an instant transformation. It is an ongoing process that involves several steps of manipulation and experimentation, open to failure and doubt, as well as to a strong resistance of more conservative views on the matter. This process of diagrammatic experimentation potentially leads to a reconfiguration of the habits and the own ontological categories to which each token belongs, as well as to the discovery of new habits and ontological categories – or even of new tokens. The diagrammatic experimentation of artistic artifacts modifies our perceptions of their meaning-making process as a whole, allowing us to redesign and redefine our general behavior, our expectations and our engagement with such artifacts and their habits and environments. By considering artworks as diagrams, we are able to see them as tokens that can be addressed as tools for deriving knowledge either about itself or about something else. “Knowledge” here is understood as a non-foundational property that “one might even go so far as to say that there are as many kinds of valid knowledge as there are conclusions wherein distinctive operations have been employed to solve problems set by antecedently experienced situations” (Dewey 1984: 157). Only by explicitly assuming this diagrammatic role of artworks can we proceed to investigate how art can be used to derive knowledge. The next step of this investigation should be directed to further analysis of examples of artworks, in a more refined and detailed account of the diagrammatic reasoning process that allows an agent to process the possible knowledge that might be derived of a diagram. 148 Letícia Vitral References: Anderson, M. 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