William... My quick short "realist" remarks are inserted between your lines.
The remarks are based on my current understanding of pragmatism. W: If all truth is fallible then what of falsehood? Is falsehood fallible? If so, is the false falsehood truth? That implies that truth does exist in the sense that all truth is false. Thus the false is the true. F: What is false of true is generally the consequence of any sign. Any sign that is mainly an icon however must be neither false nor true. Any sign that is mainly a causal index must be either false or true. Any sign that is mainly a conventional symbol must be only true. W: I'm really not at odds with the idea that empirical truth is conditional since scientific process often leads to new facts replacing old facts that stand until falsified. But how are art facts falsified? F: If art is mainly an icon, then falsification is irrelevant. If art is mainly an index or symbol, then disempowering its form may falsify it. It may be that all art is not of any "logical" truth, but is of some ideal. W: What art or metaphysical truth can be tested? Indeed, what art truth can be replicated? F: Metaphysics is of phenomenal haze, and not prone to empirical samples or tests. All truth is of law and all law is of habit derived from disposed traits. Metaphysical truth and law can only be assumed by inner personal observation. The observation is then given to outer expression in reports to other experts. W: In Western art history there are examples of that effort. Perspective, for example, is an art truth, I suppose, since it was invented to provide convincing pictorial aims in artistic composition. The same goes for the study of human anatomy and for all the other quasi-scientific methods and ends of art. F: The properties of law and truth and art are objective facts that are sensed. Properties like perspective are of formal iconic similarities that are given. They are found or discovered accidentally as inclined traits by sense in mind. They are not made or invented arbitrarily as subjective mental constructs. W: This kind of science as art is the thesis of Gombrich's notion and it was a feature of the Western canon in art. Now toppled. With the advent of modernist end-game art like Duchamp's and Warhol's, it seems that no art fact can be invalidated. Anything can be truthful art. But not anything can be truthful science. F: Speculative theories and interpretive histories in formal science are fictions. They are culled from conditional propositions, and are not truthful science. F: The formal normative science of aesthetics might be well applied to art. Aesthetics however is mainly preparatory to ethics and contributory to logics. Some science or theory or doctrine of artistic forms would be nice to have. W: Peircian philosophy becomes fuzzy in the face of the different tokens regarded as art and science. To escape by saying that both are questing truth is not good enough if there's no recognition that the concept art and the concept science are separate "tokens", signal different concepts, by Peircian thinking. Is this a contradiction of his theory? I take it that for Peirce, a token was something that stands for a concept. Separate tokens referred to separate concepts. Frances may correct my error. F: The tone and token and type in Peircean realism and pragmatism is intriguing. Separate tokens for separate tones and types may be incorrect for ideals. If tones and types are only mental concepts, then they are general. Thus many various tokens can stand for the same sole concept. Allow me to remark more on this token thread in a later message to follow.
