Behavior and expression

Chapter Behavior and expression We express ourselves in speech and non-linguistic behavior our beliefs attitudes moods intentions and emotions from hope hostility anger pity doubt and elation However not everything that belongs to us as persons can expressed in speech or non-linguistically For example my blood pressure temperature weight age are not expressible states of my person Hence we must distinguish between expressible states and non-expressible states of a person i Mental versus physical criterion We can begin with the obvious mental or psychological states can be expressed whereas physical state cannot be expressed But then sensations and perceptions are usually deemed to be psychological and yet it is not clear we express our sensations and perceptions Hence the mental-physical distinction will not serve to distinguish between expressible and non-expressible states of a person But this also suggests that the differences between say perception sensation and expressible states such as attitudes and emotions may reveal the difference we are seeking If language is any indication then it seems we do not express sensations Perhaps the expression of pain is an exception and I will deal with it later I assume that itches throbs warmth pressure bitter tastes and acrid smells are sensations and later I will also deal with perception and argue that perception follows sensation and are not expressible So we may ask what do expressions have in common such that it will exclude sensation and perception from the list of normally expressed behavior First there is no clear paradigmatic linguistic reference for an expression of sensation It would be a linguistic oddity for example to seek an expression for the sensation of heat How would be express the sensation of heat Do we open a window Complain about the weather These are expressions of discomfort but they are not expressions of the sensation of heat We could argue that sensations like beliefs or emotions can be expressed simply in saying I am hot or I feel hot But the latter is merely a description report and not an expressing of the sensation of heat If someone where to exclaim I have a peculiar throbbing I my leg this might be a description of a sensation or he might be expressing surprise concern discomfort asking for help pleading for sympathy but we would not say he was expressing his throbbing sensation Generally I think it can be argued that there are no natural or appropriate linguistic expressions of sensations as there are natural expressions of belief attitudes and emotions Of course there are responses to sensations that are appropriate and there are also natural consequences of sensations but it would surely be perverse to call scratching an expression of an itch or laughter an expression of a tickle Of course this does not deny that there are expressions intimately associated with particular sensations The odor of perfume may well evoke desire the taste of wine nostalgia But these are not expressions of the sensations They are expressions of attitudes beliefs feelings and emotions which are occasioned by sensations Laughter on hearing a joke is an expression of amusement But the laughter occasioned by a tickle is not an expression at all ii Distinction between cause and expression as a criterion Now it would be very convenient if we could simply make this distinction as one between expression and cause so that laughter occasioned by a tickle is the effect of a cause tickle whereas an expression of an attitude is never so caused say by an inner attitude But to pull this off we need to show that expressions are never caused and I think that is very difficult to do In fact I think the introduction of the concept of cause does little to distinguish between sensations on the one hand and attitude and beliefs on the other for we are still faced with the omission of sensations from the catalogue of mental psychological states that are commonly expressed iii Contribution of the person as a criterion passive-active It could be that the difference between expressible and non-expressible states consists in the degree to which a person contributes to them Sensations just happen We are passive neurological receiving mechanisms for stimuli that register particular atomic impressions whereas we are far more active in forming or structuring our beliefs attitudes and even emotions In other words we can say less about sensations than we can about expressible states The trouble is that this distinction proves too little and moreover it is psychological suspect It is simply doubtful that sensations are merely passively registered impressions by a neutral organism On the other side it is not clear just what active role we play in coming to a belief or attitude Finally even if some such distinction actually held up why are passively registered states not expressible whereas actively formed states are expressible iv Temporality as a criterion Other distinctions may also be invoked It has been suggested that expressible states are present as dispositions as well as being present as constitutive states of consciousness while sensations must exist only as immediate constituents of consciousness Or we could say that expressible states are temporal extensive states while sensations are passing and momentary But here again the distinction is suspect It is not clear that beliefs or emotions are always present as dispositions There are after all ephemeral feelings fugitive beliefs and emotions that flourish and then do not occur again Then there are enduring sensations think of the smells of childhood A passing fancy is no less real than an interminable flutter Moreover duration and disposition are not a guarantee of or the death of expression A passing belief or a sudden joy may find expression but even a lasting or recurrent sensation cannot be expressed v Intentionality about-ness as criterion A more promising distinction is the phenomenological one which claims that expressible states have objects but sensations do not have objects That is expressible states have intentional objects sensations do not Without concern for the ontological status of these intentional objects I will suggest that intentional objects are whatever objects are designated by the prepositional object of a particular mental act state That is an intentional object is designated by a prepositional object occurring in a sentence used to ascribe some state act to a person If I am fascinated by death metal apprehensive over my first violin performance angry with my inability to write or afraid of giving a lecture then death metal violin performance inability to write and giving a lecture are intentional objects We must appreciate that there may be nothing in the physical world that corresponds to an intentional object If I am fascinated by unicorns this does mean that there are creatures called unicorns More generally the truth of an intentional ascription such as A is interested in witches does not entail the truth of another statement asserting the existence of witches failure of existential generalization as for example the truth of the non-intentional statement A is walking in the garden entails that there a be a garden for A to walk in existential generalization Second the description of an intentional object is a function of what the person himself herself takes to be the attributes of whatever he she admires wishes fears or is angry with first-person claims demonstrate failure of substitution of identical linguistic expressions If I am angered by your insolence and deceit it does not follow that you were insolent or deceitful but only that I believe feel that you were Now it may appear that specifying intentional objects by way of prepositions is unduly restrictive since it is not the case that all psychological states have this sort of prepositional form If A greatly admires surgeons and B distrusts musicians clearly these lack grammatical prepositions However this is not a serious objection since we can always reformulate the sentence such that it has a prepositional structure A has great admiration for surgeons or B is distrustful of musicians without altering the meaning of the sentences The most apparent threat to the plausibility of prepositional analysis of intentionality is posed by statements such as A believes that p for example Macbeth believes that ghosts exist But we can rewrite such belief statements as follows Macbeth believes in the existence of ghosts Macbeth believes in the truth of the sentence ghost exist Macbeth agrees or is disposed to agree to the proposition that ghosts exist Obviously these three rewrites differ in their degree of naturalness but all three preserve the normal truth conditions for what Macbeth believes and at the same time clearly indicate the intentionality of the ascription We may now introduce an ancillary definition to say of a person that s he is in an intentional state is to say that some sentence radical of the above kind may be predicated of him her Thus if Macbeth fears the knife then Macbeth is in a particular intentional state the state of fearing the knife At the very least then there is some point in speaking of expressible states beliefs attitudes emotions as having intentional objects and no point in speaking at all about the objects of sensations My admiration of Bartok my approval of socialism my affection for van Gogh and my interest in biblical archeology are intentional states that are truly or falsely predicated of me But sensations are not about for over or towards anything and consequently they are not intentional Sometimes it is thought that not all emotions and feeling states are intentional that for example anxiety of objectless fear and I will come back to this Now evidently sensations are of something and of is a preposition We speak of the sensation of dizziness but note that the of is here systematically ambiguous Thus anger is not the object of my feeling and hostility is the not the object of my attitude and neither is dizziness the object of my sensation In each case we could omit the preposition and rephrase the expression We could speak of a dizzy sensation and angry feeling and a hostile attitude But while hostile attitudes and angry feelings are directed towards objects from which they are distinguishable a sensation cannot be directed towards anything In case of dizziness the sensation is not distinguishable from dizziness it is a sensation-of-dizziness or a dizziness sensation A sensation has its terminus in the mere awareness of its presence we simply have it or are it Compare for example sensation of heat with fear of darkness The of is transitive in but it is intransitive in Heat is not an object in the way that darkness is an object of fear The transitive-intransitive distinction corresponds closely to the subjective and objective genitive case in grammar We can now explain why sensations are non-intentional in spite of sometimes having prepositions as in the sensation of cold or the sensation of dizziness Sensation functions at the same level as emotion or attitude and not at the level of fear or hostility Thus the sensation of cold emotion of fear and attitude of hostility are all similar constructions in that the of is intransitive in all three cases and hence these expressions have no intentional objects But note that in the latter two cases we can go on and ask Fear of what and Hostility towards what Here the prepositions are transitive and the answers to these questions will invoke designate an intentional object of fear or hostility In contrast we cannot go on to ask cold of what or dizziness of what What is at stake here The locution sensation of is used to specify the kind of sensation that is meant just as feeling of anger is used to say what sort of feeling it is and not to name the object of the feeling What we cannot seem to do in case of a particular sensation and what we can do in case of a particular feeling belief or attitude is ask about its object Sensations admit of no transitive prepositions and hence no possibility of intentional objects Now it is true that we do not express our perceptions either and my argument for sensation also holds for perception although sensation and perception do differ in important ways as is only to evident in Anglo-American philosophy and psychology Of course there is a difference between feeling hot and feeling the paint go on the canvas or seeing spots and seeing the piano Perception normally implies an object seen and perception verbs like see hear feel do require direct objects But this does not qualify perception as intentional in the same way as attitudes emotions beliefs are intentional My perceptions are not about over from in or toward anything in the way I have beliefs about centaurs hostility towards hypocrites admiration of Bartok misgivings over politics Perceptions cannot be granted or withheld like beliefs or fulfilled and frustrated like desires cannot be justified renounced adopted cultivated misguided and like sensations perceptions cannot be expressed I will qualify this claim later Finally we can distinguish between the causes and the objects of such states as hatred fear and faith e g the face object which inspires delight is not on that account also the cause of inspiration The child believes in Santa Claus because her father has assured her he exists Sensations have causes but no objects Thus if I choose to call the tickle in my arm sensing a feather I am assigning a cause to a sensation I am not mentioning the object towards which the sensation tickle is directed But if I speak of my hatred as hatred of the Yemenites I am not revealing a cause of my hatred but I am referring to its target object Hence I tentatively conclude that intentionality is characteristic of those states of persons that are expressible and that states of persons not so expressible are not intentional I have argued that we do not and cannot express sensations and perceptions and I have maintained that intentionality is a necessary condition for expression If correct this claim should contribute significantly to a deeper understanding of the concept of expression and we can now support this with some further theoretical scaffolding i Intentionality of expression and action toward an object First let us consider actions as a class of expressions Actions are typically undertaken in accord with beliefs attitudes and desires The expression of a desire may be undertaken in order to satisfy or fulfill that desire an expression of belief may be an action undertaken in the belief that something is the case and an expression of an attitude may be undertaken in accord with that attitude We can also speak of actions undertaken in accord with relevant conditions In each case the action bears a specifiable relation to the objects of the belief attitude or desire There is no comparable sense in which we act in accord with objectless sensations One way in which we commonly identify actions as actions under a given description is to observe the relation between the behavior and the objects at against towards or from which the behavior is directed Thus we have an essential link between states expressed in actions and the objects of those states I cannot express tenderness pity or respect without directing my behavior in some appropriate way to their respective objects and conversely the objects of my feelings are disclosed in my actions this is even more evident in verbal than non-verbal behavior since verbal behavior frequently necessitates explicit reference to an object That we can act in accord with our desires and beliefs provides us with a means of identifying the objects of those states Of course we can be misled here unless the notion of an object is clarified There are at least three important senses in which the term object may be used in the following ii Nature of the object of expressions Suppose I am angry with my friend and strike out at him and then in the next moment apologize and tell him that I was angry at my instructor for the low grade he granted my paper But after the next session with my analyst I discover that I was neither angry with my friend nor with my instructor but with my father We can distinguish here the object of my expressive behavior object of my anger immediate the object I take or believe to be the target of my feeling virtual and the object which is offered as the real or ultimate if not the immediate object of my anger latent Of course it is possible that all three objects coincide but where they do not we are open to error both in our behavior and in our belief feeling Thus if the intentional instructor and immediate friend object of my anger fail to coincide I am guilty of misplaced expression If the intentional instructor and latent object father fail to coincide I am guilty of a mistaken belief It is sometimes argued that being mistaken about an object of my desires feelings mistaken about what I really want or feel is a question of being self-deceived as to the intentional object of my desire feeling But I cannot see how it is possible to be deceived about what I believe or take to be the object of my feelings in any case the distinction between intentional or virtual and latent objects should cover this possibility without requiring that we use the notion of intentional object in an equivocal manner Since the intentional and immediate object need not coincide mere observation of an action will not always reveal the identity of the intentional object You would be misled in believing I was expressing anger with my friend even though it is apparent that I was directing my anger at him What is significant is that we assume the existence of some intentional object whenever some condition of a person is expressed in action It is appropriate that is that a person should be able to provide an account of his action which includes a description of whatever he takes to be the object of his desire frustration or anger In theory then it is always possible to locate the intentional object of a state or condition of the person expressed in action even when the observation of the action does not disclose the object or where the action indicates the wrong object because of misplaced expression Again the possibility of acting in accord with our desires and beliefs suggests that there are observable links between states expressed in action and their intentional objects And wherever the intentional and immediate objects are identical we have a paradigm case of behavioral expression iii Involuntary and voluntary action and the nature of expression Expression is not exhausted in action of course and we must also take account of involuntary behavior which counts as expressions We need to consider the role of intentional objects in involuntary expressions if I am to sustain the thesis that intentionality is a necessary condition for expression If voluntary expressions are exemplified in actions directed in various ways toward their objects involuntary expressions occur characteristically as reactions to intentional objects My stammer and blush of embarrassment over my inept teaching is an expression and involuntary reaction to a situation in which I am ashamed of my failure to teach properly That my performance or rather bad performance is the intentional object of my embarrassment is evident if we consider that I will be embarrassed so long as I continue to believe that my performance is inadequate And this belief may persist independently of whether my performance is in fact inadequate or what other may think of it Corresponding intentional objects can be found wherever there is an occurrence of involuntary expressive behavior An involuntary expression of fear shame anger disgust is a reaction to the intentional object of the expressed state Thus there is some parity between voluntary and involuntary expressions Both entail the presence of intentional objects although the relation of expression to the object is an action towards in one case and a reaction to in the other case iv The grammar of intentional expression Another issue of importance hinges on a grammatical possibility Consider a situation in which a child is crying over a lost doll because it was one given to her by her father Here the situation is one in which a child is crying state or act of grieving over the intentional object of grief lost doll and the cause of the grief is the complex relation between child and father and doll Whether my analysis holds up here or not my immediate concern is the possibility of raising two importantly distinct questions about the expressive behavior We can ask what the behavior is expressive of is the crying an expression of grief joy sorrow hunger etc We can ask what the expressive behavior is about seeing the child crying we can ask what the child is crying about Clearly an answer to the first is not necessarily an answer to the second question The questions belong to different categories The child s crying is an expression of grief but she is crying about her lost doll Thus the first question is a request for a description of the state of the child expressed in her behavior crying The child s crying behavior is of a state best described as grieving The second question is a request for a description of the intentional object of the expressed state grief of the child The child crying behavior is about an intentional object her lost doll Both questions may be asked of any instance of expressive behavior what state of the person is expressed in his her behavior and what is the expressive behavior about Thus it is possible even if somewhat awkwardly to talk of the aboutness of expressive behavior in referring to its intentional character It might be objected that we can ask what the expressive behavior is of but we cannot ask what the expressive behavior is about But this objection misses the point for it is the behavior under its description grieving as behavior crying shouting etc and not under its description as an expression aboutness that constitutes the referent of crying in both what is the crying expressive of and what is the crying about Both questions refer to the behavior under the same description and consequently no equivocation is involved Hence the aboutness character of expressive behavior further supports my argument that intentionality is inseparable from its expression Here it is evident that the answer to the first question implies and answer to the second at least if the description of the behavior is to be expressive v Interlude on the expression of pain I have argued that we do not and cannot express sensations But one objection that seems obvious is the sensation of pain Pain is a sensation and we express pain This would seem to constitute a counter example to my contention that sensations are not expressible and therefore fatal to the argument that intentionality is a requisite condition for the occurrence of an expression But the counter example is not decisive but merely equivocal Let me indicate just briefly Apparently there are two general theories of pain In one pain is not a special sensory mode but an effect of over-stimulation of receptors for heat cold or pressure In the other theory pain is a sensory mode with special peripheral nerve fibers and conduction pathways in the spinal cord Each theory has it difficulties and also something to recommend them It is also thought that if one theory is right the other must be wrong Against the over-stimulation theory it has been found that there are special pain spots on the skin which even when slightly stimulated will result in pain Against the specific sensory mode theory it is known that its receptors must be free nerve endings and these are also known to mediate pressure and it is also known that brief or weak stimulation of pain spots on the skin produces no pain There is also the consideration that there would appear to be no specialized cortical area for pain as there is for example for touch The evidence from introspective literature also appears to bear out the contention that pain is not a coherent and discriminable sensory mode Thus subjective evidence does not establish a separate modality for pain internally unified and distinct from other modalities Now it has been contended that the two theories are not incompatible even as the neurological evidence is inconclusive Whatever turns out to be the case and I leave this battle to the neurologists and psychologists it is clear that pain is very different from emotion attitudes and beliefs It is more like a sensation than any other discernable part of experience Since Aristotle it has been noted that pain is a passion of the soul a feeling state not a specific sensation Generally until the end of the th c pain was considered a feeling state Later when anatomically mechanisms were discovered interest focused on the perception of pain and it became clear that pain is a specific sensation And yet there is an intimate linkage between the sensation of pain and the feeling of pain one suffers pain and it is this suffering is perhaps its most prominent experience In conclusion we may well admit that there is a specific class of anatomically sensations called pain and also that there are natural and recognizable expressions of pain and at the same time deny that when we express pain we are expressing a sensation If the most relevant aspect of pain as experienced is a feeling state then it should not be difficult to maintain that which is expressed is this feeling state and not the sensations of pain Expressions of pain are like expressions of distress discomfort dislike distaste namely expressions of feeling states and hence are intentional The object of an expression of pain is the sensation itself but what is expressed is an attitude or feeling having the sensation of pain as its object If you reject this argument then you must show that the expression of pain is simply an expression of a sensation and then you must also show that why this and not other sensations can be expressed and to show the relevant difference between pain pressure or heat sensations Admittedly pain is phenomenologically a complex experience unlike sensing heat pressure of throbs or tickles and pulsings and that pain encompasses an irreducible dimension of feeling or emotion which is then articulated in expression My argument has been thus far that intentionality is at least a necessary condition for expression What are some consequences of this position The concept of expression is associated with the image of pressing out etymologically L ex out -pressare to press or to make manifest to reveal by external tokens to make appear almost exclusively with respect to feelings or personal qualities inner But the meaning is revealing in a dual sense If we hear someone burst out in nervous laughter as an expression of embarrassment we are ware of something inside and that there is some situation occasion real or imagined which is embarrassing Thus expression simultaneously points in two directions backward to the person and forward to the object even as the object need not be immediately present in consciousness or physically exists It is characteristic of the concept of expression to make implicit allusion to both these features of the total situation Hence it is incomplete to simply talk of the expression of fear or the expression of desire and until the object of fear and desire is disclosed the description is vague or vacuous The expression of fear of communism and the expression of fear of failure may have little in common and the expression of a desire for recognition little in common with the expression of desire for oblivion Consequently it is misleading to analyze expressions as a simple two-place relation such as X expresses Y where X is some pattern of behavior and Y some mental state manifested in the behavior of the type of which X is a member For this suggests that the analysis is complete when we show that the expressive behavior reveals or refers back to the person But this assumes that all expressions of say fear have something in common or that we can identify fear as what is being expressed simply on the basis of the fear behavior Rather we cannot make sense of the notion of an expression unless we are willing to fuse this reflexive revelation with an indication of the intentional object in our analysis of the meaning of an expressive behavior A complete analysis of expression must include a reference to the intentional aboutness character of the expressed condition vi Expressions and signs symptoms An adequate analysis of the concept of expression should also allow us to distinguish between expressions and other indicative relations such as signs and symptoms For example can we distinguish between nervous laughter as a sign and as an expression of embarrassment Obviously breaking out in a rash is a sign of measles but the rash is not an expression of measles Generally non-intentional states may have signs but not expressions So that measles can be signified but not expressed because measles are not an intentional state of a person Of course we can be aware of measles but they do not attain expression Spots are a sign of measles because they are symptomatic of a non-intentional state of the person If sign and expression are both applicable we may be confronted by signs of intentional states This explains why some behavioral manifestation of our fears sweating loves blushing envies sarcasm are sometime referred to as signs or expressions But usually revelations of intentional states cannot be adequately described as signs of those states Voluntary and object directed actions are naturally thought of as expressions and not signs for example we prefer to speak of tenderness and gentleness as expressions and not signs of love Conversely involuntary and reactive expressions of intentional states are frequently referred to as signs of those states as for example blushing as a sign of guilt Note that if we were to speak of signs of such states as desire intention we would imply that we were aware only of something contingently connected to the antecedent conditions of behavior But clearly our desires and intentions are non-contingently connected with the behavioral patters associated with them That is we cannot describe our intentions in such a way that they identifiably independently of the action that is undertaken to implement them The fact that intentions are non-contingently related to behavior explains why we chose to speak of their expressions rather than their signs which are contingently related to their states If the relation between action and intention was merely the conjectured correlation between two independent events then the pairing of sign and significandum could be invoked indicating that certain observable features of the action signified the presence of an unobservable intention But as we have seen the description of an intention is parasitic of the description of the action hence these are not independent events The same holds good for desire although there may be exceptions as we do speak of signs of sexual desire but these exceptions occur only where we are not concerned to characterize the aboutness of the behavior but only to indicate that a person is in a certain state of desire Even in the latter however the fact say of restlessness may be a sign of sexual desire can only be ascertained because such restlessness in the past is stilled say in masturbation So unlike the relation between sign and significandum the relation between expression and what is expressed may be non-contingent e g not all states of anger result in expressions of anger indeed the state of anger may be expressed by excessive kindness It is important to emphasize however that this is not a necessary condition for all expressions though it is what is implied by talking of the natural expressions of certain states In any case wherever the relation is non-contingent description of behavior as an expression cannot be given independently of the description of the condition that is expressed Part of what mean by desire is the disposition to act in certain ways and such actions are the expression of desire Hence part of what we mean by desire is the disposition to initiate appropriate expressive behavior If this is the case then clearly the relation between desire and behavioral expression is non-contingent and any description of the behavior which presents it as an expression is to that extent a function of the description of the desire Thus the description of behavior as expressive of a particular desire is also a partial description of the desire Now this should help to explain why actions express rather than signify intentions and desires The concept of a sign is inadequate to describe a relation such as between intention and action or desire and action in which the terms are non-contingently connected Expression is the only logically adequate word we have for indicating a complex in which both object-directed actions and non-contingently related conditions of the agent are present In summary then the concept of intentionality conjoined with those of action and contingency should enable us to map significant areas of coincidence and divergence between signs and expressions and this strengthens the case for choosing intentionality as a foal point in my analysis of expression vii States without objects I want consider one further objection to the claim that intentionality is a necessary condition for expression It runs as follows We do speak of the expression of such states as anxiety and depression and yet these states lack objects in the sense that hope fear and affection have objects Thus it is said that say depression remains much the same whether it has an object objective or whether it is caused by obscure unconscious physiological causes It is said that many feelings moods emotions just happen spontaneously out of the unconscious workings of the body soul Just as alcohol consumption may generate enthusiasm But this claim is unclear about whether we could still ask about the objects of such states The manner in which a feeling or emotional state is generated tells us nothing about the existence of an object of that state Alcohol induced elation may still be elation over something something trivial perhaps or something that in a sober state would hardly generate elation but which nevertheless is an intentional object Narcotically induced euphoria is not objectless just because its origin is organic and not psychological The psychedelic person is still fascinated by the color of the room or absorbed in the sound of rain In fact emotions that are often described as objectless are in fact not so Just because in a state of depression everything seems pointless does not mean that the depression is objectless It is just that all the objects of depression seem black Even Freud adopted the view that anxiety angst is not the fear of nothing but rather the fear of Je ne sais quoi which is not the absence of an object but an object which is unknown It is at least plausible to maintain that objects of anxiety are elusive not because they are non-existent but because anxiety describes a condition of being afraid where the object of fear is unknown unrecognized or repressed or where it is simply too diffuse to be easily located or precisely described Pervasive moods and all-encompassing attitudes Weltanschauungen also suffer from this form of imprecision and yet we say that such states have diffuse or indeterminate object but we do not say they have none That my mood casts a shadow over everything I encounter does not mean my moods cast no shadow at all It does seem inappropriate to ask about the objects of moods depression and anxieties But this is no because we are asking for a description of a non-existent object rather because it is difficult to describe an object which is either unknown vague discerned indeterminate or diffuse A person may be paralyzed by a conviction of impending doom even as he can give no account of what it is he dreads but this does not permit us to infer that because he can give no such account this is proof there is no object of his dread Of course one could argue that neither is it proof that there is an object of dread but to speak of objects which are undetected unrecognized indeterminate or diffuse is at least a reasonable alternative to there are no objects of these feelings Moreover this alternative is at least consistent with the analysis of intentionality I have given for expressive behaviors and moreover there surely is no conclusive reason that seemingly objectless states are a decisive counter-example to my thesis that intentionality is necessary to expression Chapter Inference and expression Now that I have established a criterion for determining which states of a person are expressible in behavior we may ask about the link between behavioral expressions and those states of person that are said to be expressed Before trying on a discussion of this link I would like first to note an important distinction marked by a difference in syntactic form Consider the following A sad expression is a mark of a thoroughbred beagle An expression of sadness crossed her face as she watched him close the gate Now note that a sad expression does not mean expression of sadness and we see this when we attempt to substitute in sentences whose grammatical subjects denote insensate objects Thus cypress trees may have sad expressions but their expressions are not expressions of sadness Sad expressions are to expressions of sadness as anger-like behavior is to the expression of anger Thus anger expressions may occur without anger but the expression of anger cannot occur without anger Hence sad expressions may occur without sadness e g the beagle has a sad expression but it is not for that reason sad but the expression of sadness cannot occur without being sad Moreover the syntactic arrangements cannot in many cases be shuffled at all There are sneering expressions but there are no expressions of sneer A sneering expression may well be expressive of something- say of contempt or disdain but we cannot discover what it expresses by a simple syntactic maneuver translating a sneering expression into an expression of sneering Even where there are symmetrical syntactic possibilities where a sneering expression and an expression of sneer are both available a particular occurrence of a sneering expression need not be an expression of sneer The two syntactic constructions are logically independent What is the nature of this logical independence Whenever the qualifier appears before the noun expression it is a description of certain observational features of the situation but whenever the expression of occurs it warrants an inference relating some intentional state of a person to particular aspects of his behavior Now my concern is with the latter and we can lessen the possibility of confusion if we keep this distinction in mind The first locution expression presents no problem apart from any problem pertaining to descriptive discourse and I will return to it later Still there must be some connection between sad expressions and expressions of sadness even if sneering expressions are not so related to expressions of sneer ing It cannot be a coincidence that some objectively discernable features of the world expressions also happen to be connected with the expression of certain states of mind or character The thing is that I think this connection is genetic psychological historical not logical the relation is not between sadness and the expression of sadness which is a logical relation in the sense of being non-contingent but rather the relation is between sad expressions and the expressions of sadness Innumerable expressions of human sadness have deposited a calcified and conventional image of sadness the human figure bend over the slackened mouth the downcast eyes etc It is around this calcified image that the descriptive content of sad expression has crystallized Without such conventions no consistent descriptive meaning could be attached to any instance of a expression and it is conventions of this sort that explains in part our capacity to project sadness anger despair into the non-human world But we must be careful to notice the dissociation between the two syntactic forms The convention enables us to describe a set of features as a expression without any implication as to the state expressed A malformed face may bear an unmistakably cruel expression but this perception alone allows us to say nothing about the inclination to cruelty of its owner In contrast when we speak of an expressions of cruelty in a face this does license an implication that its owner is inclined to cruelty Conventional expectations for expressions of cruelty are not as binding as expressions and we may develop novel and bizarre ways of expressing our intentional states The very possibility of novel expressions depends on their not being conventional rather on their having an open texture Sad expressions are conventions are relatively fixed within a particular language cultural setting on risk that otherwise they would have not useful function Hence there is no logically binding link between cruelty expressions and expressions of cruelty the latter is not inferable from the former just because a person manifests a cruel expression does not mean they are expressing cruelty and similarly just because a person is expressing cruelty does not mean they manifest a cruel expression and indeed the former may not be typical or conventional as cruelty expressions must be so conventional Before turning to the link between behavioral expression and the state of the person said to be expressed I should emphasize that I am not first of all concerned with the psychological practical difficulties involved in recognizing and expression rather I am concerned with the logical inferential relation that is implied in calling something an expression Accordingly we may outline the logic of expression of as follows If A s behavior B is an expression of X then there is a warrantable inference from B to an intentional state of A such that it would be true to say that A has or is in state S where S and X are identical I want to defend this scheme and then I want to indicate how we can distinguish expressing from imitating acting and pretending Behavior is expressive if it discloses something about the person exhibiting the behavior A mincing walk a timorous voice a seductive gesture are expressive when these behaviors reveal something of the person and if what I have said so far is right then what these behaviors reveal are intentional states It is clear that our intentional states are not always voluntarily displayed in fact the most familiar human expressions are often involuntarily engendered For example loss of muscular control and vocal constriction in fear and blushing in embarrassment are largely involuntary In fact their involuntariness guarantees their consistency and hence their recognition Hence we have the following grammatical form to mark this distinction voluntary A expressed his f for x by phi-ing a person expressed his abhorrence of goat cheese by grimacing differs from involuntary A s phi-ing expressed his f for x a person s grimacing at the sight of goat cheese was an expression of his abhorrence Note that in both cases the behavior reveals the same intentional state but in the first case the implication is that the behavior is voluntary or deliberate whereas in the second case it is not It is important to keep this distinction in mind since the relation of a person s expressive behavior to the intentional state it reveals will vary from one grammatical form to another Let s now go on to explore the relation between expressive behavior and those intentional states that are revealed displayed or manifested in the behavior First I will argue that there is no distinctively descriptive class of performances or bodily movements that constitute expressive behavior The concept of expression implies that certain inferences are warranted and it cannot be located by scrutiny of the descriptions of the behavior alone Explosive laughter facial grimaces a shudder or a periodic tic are neither expressive nor non-expressive and only if we have reason to connect these inferentially to some desire intent or conflict are we entitled to treat it as an expression What sorts of logical features of inferential relations are warranted by the phrase behavioral expressions If a friend who is afflicted with a spasmodic tic is a victim of no organic failure but is despondent and chronically repressed and whose emotional difficulties are directly related to the appearance of his tic then we have good reason to believe that his tic is an expression of an emotional state Here the relation between the tic and the emotional state is direct cause and effect each is independently describable and conjoined All we need do is to add that the cause is psychological i e intentional not physical But it is clear that the tic behavior by itself is not sufficient to indicate whether it is an expression But there are cases where our description of the behavior already indicates the kind of inferential move that is warranted Let s take an example A has a red face A s face is flushed A is blushing Obviously to describe a thing as having a red face does not imply any relation between the color of the face and a correlated psychological state Having a red face is a little like having an arm it ascribes describes a property to a person If A s face is flushed however this implies a change in the person s complexion but it still does not imply a psychological state it is in a sense neutral with respect to its cause When A blushes we could admit of the inference that the behavioral expression of blushing has some connection to a psychological state of say embarrassment or shame Note here that the truth conditions what makes the ascription true for saying A is blushing are logical related to the truth conditions for saying that A s appearance of blushing is an expression of his embarrassment or shame For example consider how this description or ascription may be falsified If we discover that A has been eating very hot chili peppers or drinking heavily we might be led to retract the ascription and replace it with something more neutral like A s face looks blushed or A s face is red An ascription description like A is blushing carries with it an intentional implication conceptually linking the observable features of the face with the intentional state of the person That there may be conceptual and causal linkages between the behavior and the inner state brings us to another significant point Psychological predicates as is well-known occupy a crucial position in our speech practices That is psychological predicates cover both public and private domains both outer manifestation and inner agitation Anger jealousy depression acquire their meaning from a coalescence of the public outer and inner private Thus jealous behavior is not only evidence for jealousy but is importantly a constituent element a complex referent named jealousy Thus P F Strawson Individuals claims that depression is one and the same thing felt experienced by the depressed person and observed by others Or as J L Austin How to do things with words claims being angry is a little like having the mumps it describes patterns of events like symptoms occasions feelings and other manifestations Of course in my example above the jealous spouse may conceal his her jealousy but doing so usually requires considerable effort involving suppression or else disguising his inclinations to act jealously which would accompany the feelings of jealousy On the other hand we could accuse someone of jealousy if in spite of his her protestation his her behavior makes it sufficiently obvious such as preventing his her spouse from associating with others that we are entitled to say of him her that s he is jealous even if the person disavows any feelings of jealousy As with most psychological predicates their meaning is never just scandalously public or surreptitiously private We might conclude by saying that behavior which is expressive of anger jealousy etc is a constituent part of a psychological state and hence it is not a causal inference from behavior to the expressed state and in fact it is not an inference at all but a part of a complex to another part or the whole This is what the grammarian calls a synecdoche A mast is not merely evidence of an approaching ship rather the mast stand for the whole ship approaching here the mast is not an effect mast of a cause ship nor is the mast a sign related to designating a significandum Expressive behavior of jealousy is not merely evidence is the presence of jealousy rather it is part of a complex pattern which comprises the full meaning and significance of jealousy Of course there may be jealousy without jealous behavior expression just as there are ships without masts but this does not mean that when the mast or the jealous behavior is present these are not proper constituents of ships and jealousy When we use psychological predicates we employ and imprecisely extended range of criteria none of which are strictly speaking necessary but many of which are sufficient to use the predicate Hence we do use psychological predicates on the basis of the behavior alone and in the absence of introspective awareness Similarly we use these predicates on the basis of feeling alone in the absence of the behavior It could be argued that that we no need no inferences from the expressive behavior at all But this is a mistake since the ascription of expressive behavior always implies an associated set of attitudes beliefs feelings emotions and motives Here we need to remind ourselves that the meaning of a term jealousy and its criteria of use need not be identical or may be very different This kind of analysis suggests a resolution of the apparent antinomy that we can see anger etc in a gesture bodily movement face and it is impossible to see anger etc directly their presence can only be inferred from the expression But if the relation between states and their expression is analogous to the rhetorical relation of synecdoche it should be possible to avoid the antinomy there is no inference is required it is all part of a larger complex of jealousy inner outer and object The appearance of a mast on the horizon usually justifies that a ship has been sighted and the objection that the ship is not yet visible and hence inferred from its mast is misguided since a part of the ship has been sighted its mast Here the part is a part of the whole Similarly we make a mistake if we regard expressive behavior of intentional states as external indices of inner happenings as public events contingently related to private inner states rather than both as constituent parts of a complex occurrence We see the jealousy in a person s behavior if that behavior is itself a constituent part of the referent of jealousy and just as readily we cannot directly observe a person s jealousy if by jealousy we now mean the whole of the referential complex including a private feelings sensations The antinomy is generated only when we attempt to restrict the reference of psychological predicates to either wholly private inner or wholly public outer occurrences Note that my analysis of expressive behavior avoids the Cartesian model that casts doubt on all inferences about mind as inner causes having outward effects On a Cartesian model expressive behavior is merely an instance of a physical event signaling an unobservable mental event but this is just not how we use psychological predicates namely as expressions and not as signs Hence to speak of an expression is not to refer to a special class of observable discriminable movements but to imply a particular inferential pattern of part to whole I have said that there is nothing intrinsic to behavior which marks it as expressive nothing that is that identifies the behavior as an expression of I suggested that reference to behavioral expressions implies a relation between the behavior and the intentional state of a person who behaves However there is a surface to expressive behavior that may become detached The child who pretends the actor who portrays the mime who imitates the hypocrite who feigns all these attempt in different ways to strip the surface of expressive behavior from the intentional state of character it normally reveals thereby suggesting behavior can be expressive even though there is no intentional state which it expresses Note that if pretending children portraying actors imitating mimes and feigning hypocrites were engaged in expressive behavior then my claim that expressive behavior warrants an inference to the whole would not be valid But I will claim that in fact these modes of expression are parasitic on genuine expressions and that we must distinguish between genuine expression and behavior that is merely an expressive mask The actor who portrays King Lear s despair on the heath I will argue is not expressing his own despair but merely portrays despair namely the despair of the character he plays Rather it is King Lear who expresses despair and the actor who plays him merely portrays represents the despair Lear expresses Method acting advocates insist that ideally the emotions of the actor and the character he portrays should be identical and qualitatively similar If that were the case then the actor s expression of despair is his her own as well as that of the character he portrays But even so if both actor and the character portrayed are grief-stricken it is not the case that the actor is expressing King Lear s grief Rather the actor is expressing his own grief which then represents King Lear expressing King Lear s grief We may say that Lawrence Olivier is expressing Lear s grief but only because there is only one sequence of actions in sight on stage But this single sequence of grief-expressing actions requires two distinct descriptions the actor s and Lear s just because it is a theatrical performance In a sense there are histories of two lives before us one of which is fictional Lear These histories are presented in the actions of a single person actor but this should not obscure the recognition that a single action may both express and represent an expression Lear s and the actor respectively The actor may express himself through the roles he plays but s he cannot while expressing him herself simultaneously represent his own expression just as one cannot both act and simultaneously imitate his actions though the actor may act in imitation of others or in imitation of himself at other times Here the parallel with imitation is instructive The imitation of an action requires another action and the gap between the actions cannot be closed Imitation is inflexibly relational and to conflate the imitated from the imitating actions would dissolve the relation Self-imitations are possible only over time Imitating is the same as copying or forging and nothing can be an imitation forgery or copy of itself Similarly there is gap between the represented and the representing which cannot be bridged Even self-portraits are not portraits of themselves The actor cannot both express himself and represent his her own expressions since there is no requisite relational space and since to act is to represent if s he is merely expressing him herself s he cannot also be acting Where a single action is both an expression and a representation of an expression we should expect to find distinct logical subjects persons for the expressions in this case the actor and the character s he is acting Even though the expressions of the actor and the character art contingently identical it does not follow that they are equally and indifferently objects of dramatic interest just as it does not follow that the contingent identity of the morning star and the evening star planet Venus means that what we admire in the morning star is the brilliance of the evening star Contingent identity is not a license for substitution in all predicative contexts failure of substitution of identicals Understanding the semantic restrictions on expression and representation explains the necessity for separate though parallel descriptions of theatrical performances If we collapse or mix the descriptions of separate life histories we get hybridized statements which are ok for morning newspapers but profoundly misleading where we are trying to understand the complex relations among expression and portrayal actor and character We can say that the actor s expression of despair as the portrayal representation of Lear s despair is superb while we doubt the appropriateness of Lear s despair in Shakespeare s drama King Lear Note that if expression were the standard of successful acting theatrical performances would be judged by determining whether the actor succeeded in expressing him herself through the role s he plays on stage But theatrical performance no matter how satisfying as an expression from the perspective of the actor remains to be judged by its adequacy as a representation of the expressive behavior of Lear Iago or Willy Loman the actor portrays Method acting may well be a powerful technique for generating effective representations of expressive behavior but it is no crutch for the theorist who wants to argue that successful expression is the object of our deepest theatrical interests If you are only moved by Olivier s grief you have lost sight of Lear Which is why film which so forefronts the person of the actor often loses the character of the story and we get Jack Nicolson in every film In fact if expression were indeed the key to successful theatrical performance then it is hard to understand why an actor should study his her craft or why acting is a craft at all An actor studies his her gestures intonations etc NOT because s he needs to infer what feelings he is expressing but because s he has to determine whether her his actions whatever they express also effectively and appropriately represent the expressions of the character he portrays Finally these kinds of considerations suggest that acting is best thought of NOT as a species of expressive behavior but rather as an activity which appropriates the surface of expressive behavior for representational purposes Where genuine expression does occur in the theatre or on film it is a means and not an end The relation of the actor to the expressive surface of behavior is then reasonably clear but what can we say of the child who pretends to be afraid Is the child also pretending to express fear Or does the child accomplish the pretense by actually really expressing fear Either alternative is distressing for my analysis Pretending to express fear has no paradigmatic role in language when contrasted with pretending to be afraid and hence it is difficulty to see what would count as pretending to express fear Similarly accomplishing to express fear is also an unhappy alternative If we say that the pretender is actually expressing fear we have no way of distinguishing between really expressing fear and merely going through the motions of being afraid The second alternative commits us to identifying really expressing fear and going through the motions of expressing fear but this is strange he is really expressing fear but he is not really afraid Consider the following parallel A sentence which is asserted when uttered on one occasion may be uttered non-assertorically on another occasion I am English may be assertoric when uttered be uttered by Bertrand Russell and non-assertoric when uttered by a Tahitian language student rehearsing his grammar exercise We can speak of the same sentence occurring on both occasions Analogously a behavioral pattern which expresses fear on one occasion may occur in another occasion non-expressively But perhaps this parallel is misleading For consider that we began by asking whether the behavior in pretense was expressive behavior and it might be objected that the analogy has been distorted Thus the same sentence may be used to inform or deceive depending on context but in both cases it is used assertorically Lying depends on this I lie by asserting something I believe to be false The analogy then would appear to be this the same behavioral pattern may occur on separate occasions to reveal or dissimulate character but in both cases it is expressive behavior Accepting this analogy would lead us to say that a person who pretends to be afraid is using behavior to express an emotion which he knows he does not have and more generally to say that expression like assertion is compatible with intentional dissemblance But for a number of reasons this is a misleading analogy For one thing it suggests that there is an identity between expression and a discrete class of behavioral patterns isolated from whatever inferential structures they may imply We would then be committed to say give a description of certain gestures or facial configuration that these patterns either were or were not expressions of a certain state and we would be committed to do so without further effort It would then be sufficient to know a particular look had crossed the human face to claim incorrigibly that an expression of x had occurred and this claim would then also be immune from correction in terms of a person s further feelings or thoughts Rather the fact is that we are prepared to modify or retract our ascription of an expression whenever we discover that the gesture or look was accompanied by thoughts or feeling or intentions different from those had supposed or in fact by none All distinctions among imitating pretending acting and expressing would then dissolve Remember our problem was to determine whether the child who pretends to be afraid is also pretending to express fear or whether the child is actually expressing fear as a means of accomplishing his her pretense and I think both alternatives are risky The child is only pretending to express fear and s he is really expressing fear leaves us to choose between the meaningless and paradoxical The way out is apparent if we only recognize the oddness of the question is the child who pretends to be fearful also expressing fear The logic of pretending and expressing are incompatible activities A is expressing fear implies that A is fearful or has fear whereas A is pretending to be afraid implies that A is not fearful or fears If I pretend then I cannot express and if I express I cannot pretend The child is neither pretending to express fear nor really expressing fear The child is pretending to be afraid and this description pretending bars expression Pretending and expressing are rivals concepts Now it may be objected that pretense does not exclude expression e g my pretense to be annoyed may be an expression of my desire for attention But remember the logic of expression above that If A s behavior B is an expression of X then there is an warrantable inference from B to an intentional state of A such that it would be true to say that A has or is in state S where S and X are identical And hence if I am expressing annoyance I am annoyed and it is this identity that pretending precludes No doubt I am expressing something when I pretend to phi but I cannot if I am pretending to phi also be expressing phi Pretense differs from expression just in that it rules out the identity of S state and X expression of Acting and imitating along with pretending feigning and simulating etc are to be clearly distinguished from expressing The surface of expressive behavior is easily detached and reproduced and much of our time is taken up with such pursuits both in play and in earnest But we gain nothing by identifying such activities with expression Rather the relation of these activities to expression is parasitical exploiting the surface of expressive behaviors for purposes of deceit or diversion social reasons for the sake of impact conformity and status etc which are never genuinely expressive We might briefly consider this claim in the context of ritual or ceremonial There are ritual displays of emotional behavior often as rites of passage For example the practice of keening at an Irish wake does not require that those who wail and moan are genuinely grief-stricken and hence on my account does not require the expression of grief But neither is keening a case of pretense since there is no attempt to mislead or to deceive Keening comes closer to acting than to expressing pretending or imitating But acting is not an entirely accurate description either So there are behaviors somewhere in between I have now established that both intentionality and certain forms of inference are critical to the correct use of the term expression as given above The truth conditions of A s behavior B is an expression of X are such that a particular statement of this form is always false when it can be shown that a there is no relation between B and some intentional state S of the person or b S and X are not identical If acting and pretending were also forms of expression these criteria would fail as logical parameters of expression but as I tried to show they do not fail and hence that the relation of these activities to expression is parasitic or derivative Chapter III Language and expression Since at least the th c a distinction has been made between two functions of language the representative or designative and the expressive function Almost all the conscious and unconscious movements behavior of a person express something of his her feelings mood dispositions to reaction and the like Therefore we take all movements including speech movements as symptoms from which we may infer something of the person s feelings or his her character That is the expressive function of movements and words Besides the expressive function there are a portion of linguistic utterances e g this book is black that also have a designative function these utterances tell us something about a certain state of affairs and these utterance assert something predicate something they judge something these are represent something In the Anglo-Saxon philosophical tradition these two functions of language are carefully distinguished the expressive being symptomatic of mental or physical states and the representative being theoretical that is containing knowledge about some state of affairs Many linguistic utterances are analogous to laughing in that they have an expressive function but no representative function For example crying and lyrical poems express the feelings of the poet and are intended to incite similar feelings in us Thus a lyrical poem has no assertional sense no theoretical sense it contains no knowledge I have paraphrased the above from Rudolf Carnap s Philosophy and Logical Syntax pp - perhaps the most articulate spokesman of a philosophy of science called Logical Empiricism in the th c Carnap held to the view that there are utterances which both express and represent both express states of persons and make theoretical claims to knowledge but words sentences which are not used to represent have no sense no theoretical content knowledge and are purely expressive But this hard and fast distinction which has been characteristic of middle to late th c positivism and what is sometimes called analytical philosophy cannot bear the weight of reflection for example sentences in the sciences belong to representative class and sentences in the arts to the expressive class even as the distinction itself may well be a useful starting point for discussion First of all we should note that Carnap maintains that there are two kinds of functions of language and not two kinds of languages This is important because sometimes many thinkers including Carnap himself have written as if there are certain words phrases and syntax of language which are inherently expressive or inherently representative for example Humbug is expressive whereas the barn is red is representative or descriptive Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations paragraph suggested that sentences such as I am in pain are forms of learned pain behavior a linguistically sophisticated substitute for the more primitive ouch So that the indicative syntactical form namely the statement I am in pain is functionally equivalent to the more primitive expression of pain ouch Hence we infer that the indicative statement I am in pain may be expressive of pain in that it replaces the naturally occurring expression ouch There is a similar and converse argument Consider this case you are asked How was DeGaulle received in Algiers and you answer Boo conveying He was greeted with audible hostility Clearly we may react to Boo not necessarily as an expression of personal antagonism but rather the outburst is an exclamation give in response to a request for information much like we might spontaneously react to a bad performance of Arnold Schoenberg s Verklarte nacht Transfigured night It is often argued in support of the expressive-representative or descriptive dichotomy that descriptions are cognitively significant and hence bearers of truth whereas purely expressive constructions cannot meet such conditions of truth But surely we can ask whether such exclamations Boo or Hurrah is true or false for exclamations do imply even as they do not explicitly assert propositions whose truth is in question It is often pointed out that exclamations like Hurrah and Bravo neither name nor describe nor refer to anything Hence it is argued that such exclamations are purely expressive or effusions of feelings i e contain nothing cognitive But surely these are not the only alternatives Suppose that following the duet from Traviata Act IV I shout out loud not Bravo but Brava Brava refers not to the soprano as say Renata Renata Tibaldi - does but it clearly has reference to her and distinguishes her from the tenor as the object of my enthusiasm If such expressions were merely effusions of feeling the grammatical distinction between Bravo and Brava would be irrelevant and obviously it is not If we take seriously fashionable imperative to abandon hypostatized meanings in favor of the concepts of use and function it becomes increasingly evident that there are no descriptive expressive or performative words or sentences there are only the employment of these words and sentences But we can ask is red not a descriptive term and is hurrah not an exclamation Perhaps usually for the grammarian but the trouble comes when these grammatical categories are invariantly concretized in distinct forms of discourse We expect to find that predicables nominals are used to represent to describe to predicate hence it is the case that some words and expressions are assigned the property of being descriptive However there are contexts where exclamations can be given a descriptive or informative role in discourse Similarly predicables may be used to express Moreover usually these functions are not exclusive but can be used to both describe and express Two points emerge here exclamations may function in certain contexts to convey information or describe some state of affairs and these exclamations may be replaced by a syntactically indicative expression without altering the force of its descriptive content The test of truth functional equivalence can be successfully applied wherever an exclamation can be substituted for an indicative utterance without altering the descriptive or informative content the truth value of both will be identical Whatever distinction Carnap was trying for I think that the distinction can only be applied to functions of language expressive and descriptive or representative performative and prescriptive and not to lexical or grammatical components of language per se I now want to consider the expressive function of language in relation to non-linguistic expressions and to related but distinguishable linguistic acts expressions Let s first consider the linguistic expression of belief I will consider how these expressions-in-language differ from other linguistic acts such as assertions and from non-verbal behavioral expressions It follows from my previous conclusions above that if A expresses the belief that p A must necessarily have that belief and assuming that A is expressing the belief that p is true then we are entitled to the inference that A is in some psychological state or is disposed to act or respond in certain ways Now G T Geach Philosophical Review LXXIV - maintains that assertions are like expressions and that a syntactically indicative utterance may be either an assertion or an expression That is to claim that an assertion or an expression has occurred is to claim more than that certain words have been uttered it is in fact to claim that a particular kind of inference is warranted Hence Geach claims that assertion and expression are thus closely linked and it might appear as if every instance of the linguistic expression of belief must also be an assertion of the belief The Hittites were morally inferior to the Maccabees when uttered assertorically would also be an expression of the belief that the Hittites were morally inferior to the Maccabees But note that this kind of symmetry breaks down in cases where it is possible to express a belief without directly asserting it If I utter There will be no ball game today this may express my belief that it will rain today but it does not say so Or if I should say The whole concert tonight will certainly be boring and if it happens that I am bored only by Mozart then the statement may be an expression of my belief that the program of tonight s concert will consist entirely of works of Mozart This potential for indirection that is characteristic of expression should help to distinguish expressions of belief from the assertion profession and affirmation of belief none of which can be accomplished through a similar kind of indirection as expression Thus to talk of expression of belief authorizes an inference about the one who expresses that belief and the nature of that inference will depend on whatever significance is assigned to the word belief For example if we analyze belief as a disposition then we might infer certain tendencies or dispositions to act or react in certain ways when one has a belief We might also analyze belief as allowing inferences relating the expression to a certain class of neurological or psychological states of belief A third analysis of belief might have us see in direct linguistic expressions of belief e g I believe that p a performative act that is the giving of an unqualified assurance of its truth expressed say by I know that p None of these three analyses are incompatible and it is possible that a single expression of belief would entitle us to inferences of all these types that is tendencies to act react the expressions of some neurological psychological state and as a performative or the claim to know However it is not clear whether a performative analysis of belief expressions does allow us to make inferences of the speaker after all in a sense there is nothing behind the performative as for example when someone makes a promise it is entirely in the public domain and no inference required I see no reason that there are any expressions of belief which are merely performances After all we express beliefs but we make give promises There may however be expressions other than those of belief which are purely performative See below To bring out more clearly some distinguishing features of the linguistic expression of belief I want to explore the dissimilarity of the conditions for the application of the terms belief and opinion a look at the conditions will reveal the importance of distinguishing between linguistic and non-linguistic expressions It seems to make little difference whether we express beliefs or opinions opinions being a kind of belief Perhaps opinions are beliefs of a kind Like beliefs opinions advance a weaker claim than knowledge although we are often prepared to give reasons for opinions It is interesting that we withhold opinions from animals whereas we often say for example that when the dog barks she believes anticipating that there is someone at the door But we would never say that the dog s opinion is that that there is someone at the door What is at issue here is language Representational language theorists often maintain that animals infants or Robinson Crusoe are all capable of beliefs that is possess cognitive states but none of these express opinions We can ask whether opinions are then merely beliefs formulated or formulable in language And we can also ask whether there are beliefs that are resistant to articulation in language If not is it senseless to talk about animals having expressing beliefs But perhaps it is merely arbitrary to suggest that animals have no beliefs Or should we say that there are non-verbal expressions of belief other than those expressed in language My cat believes that there is someone at the door or his expression on hearing the doorbell and running towards the door indicates his belief that there is someone at the door but can he formulate his belief that there is someone at the door Obviously my cat that does not believe the proposition which asserts that there is someone at the door rather his behavior of running towards the door when hearing the bell is as it were an expression of that belief In principle we can formulate all beliefs in language but this does not mean that a belief must be or can be formulated in language by the one who expresses it say on a dispositional analysis of belief above On the other hand an opinion though it may be a belief must be a belief that is consciously entertained and expressible as propositions to which the believer gives or withholds assent An opinion unformulated in language is no opinion at all This is why we speak of forming an opinion but usually not of forming a belief Opinion has part of its meaning that we attempt in some cognitive process to articulate a belief Yet not every expression of an opinion is an expression of belief For example value judgments and of likes dislikes are expressible as opinions Compare What is your opinion of Bartok s quartets and What is your belief about Bartok s quartets But here too when we speak of values and preferences as opinions we imply that these are expressible in language rather than say as dispositions or tendencies to act or react I may express my preference for Bartok over Stravinsky but this is not the same as having an opinion about them Language is a requisite condition for the possession of opinions but not perhaps for the possession of beliefs Opinions too are intentional It is sometimes suggested that language is also a requisite for having expressing beliefs I will talk about this in class with an extended example That is if creatures have no language we would not know what could be meant by attributing to them opinions But here opinion and belief are used interchangeable and I suggested that while we may not be able to attribute opinions to non-linguistic creatures we might well attribute to them beliefs on say a dispositional analysis of belief If there are those who claim that beliefs require language as indeed I would so argue later we might protest that it seems possible to express beliefs non-linguistically without demanding that the believer is ready to express the belief in language It has also been argued that the relation between belief and language is not merely contingent matter of fact but then what are we to make of the notion of an unexpressed belief which is clearly not an absurdity Also if a belief which is expressed in words is a belief in this statement rather than that we should have to conclude that a belief expressed in words is always equivalent to an assertion of this statement rather than that and that any statement that expressed a belief would necessarily assert that belief as well But here again we see how language may express beliefs indirectly yet not precisely Expression and assertion may coincide but they are not interchangeable Assertion may be a species of expression It is important for the study of expression that we insist on the distinction between belief and opinion Language is the ability to perform a set of actions which are expressions of states of oneself for which there are no equivalent behavioral expressions In contrast it is claimed that the belief that it is about to rain is equally expressible by a linguistic utterance I think it is going to rain and simply by raising an umbrella here the behavior and the belief is inferentially warranted Notice here that in raising the umbrella this action might express my belief that it will rain but it could also indicate express many other beliefs it seems that non-verbal expression of belief is always interpretatively ambiguous in a way say that saying it will rain is not A belief that is expressible in language alone is also an opinion and the capacity to have opinions which is identical with the ability to express them is evidence of the greater wealth of states attributable to language users than to creatures whose behavioral are limited to non-verbal displays But we should not discount the possibility that there are intentional states best expressed non-verbally such as say sexual desire or hatred where their linguistic expression is a mere substitute sublimation In any case the ability to express an opinion in language is a necessary condition for having the opinion This does not imply that an opinion need always be expressed in language of course But the non-verbal expression of an opinion is justified only if we already believe that the opinion could be expressed in language In this way opinions are perhaps different from beliefs I am hesitant at this point for it seems to me that beliefs are necessarily expressed in language on risk that non linguistic expressions of belief remain ambiguous For example one may love someone completely yet unless the phrase I love you is spoken of none or any of the actions expressing love can we unequivocally say that they indicate love Now opinions are not the only intentional states attributable solely to language users Wishing regretting hoping are also only predicable of language users What does it mean to say that only language users can wish hope etc Just this for it to be true that A hopes that p A must be able to use and understand the expression I hope that p And if A does not understand or cannot use language then no sense can be given to A hopes that p Moreover unlike non-verbal behavior language can allude to what is absent non-existent or possible conceivable etc that is language can be appropriate and inappropriate to that which is not both particular and present It is characteristic of hoping that we hope only for those outcomes or events which we cannot or believe we cannot bring about or ensure through our efforts alone To hope that p is among other things to believe that there is some condition for the occurrence of p that I cannot control Hoping here differs from intending that p just insofar as I believe that there are requisite conditions necessary for the occurrence of p which are somehow under my control My non-linguistic behavior may express my intent to do what I can to secure some object event etc but there is an additional dimension to hoping that cannot be adequately expressed non-verbally There is nothing I can do to express the residual difference between intending to bring about a state of affairs and hoping for its occurrence without employing the linguistic expression I hope that p To hope that p is then to be able to say or inscribe sincerely a sentence of the form I hope that p And to be in a state of hoping is minimally to be able to use and understand such expressions The requisite expressive potential for being in a state of hope is to possess natural language containing the equivalent of I hope I wish etc We may conclude that natural language extends the intentional states that are predicable of persons In order to sharpen our view of the distinctive features of linguistic expression it will be useful to explore in greater detail the domain where expression shades over through parenthetical to performative uses of language functions If I assert that tonight s concert has been cancelled it is clear that in addition to expressing my belief that the concert has been cancelled I may also be expressing my disappointment usually carried by intonation contours of tone of voice Now something similar though more complex occurs when I say I admire the way you insulted the host Here we have in this sentence a propositional element manner of insulting host and a non-propositional element I admire In uttering this sentence sincerely I imply that you did in fact insult the host propositional content and I also express my attitude of admiration towards your actions That is in this sentence the propositional content is modified by the propositional attitude feeling value of admiration for what you did We might call such propositional attitudes modal operators propositional attitudes change or operate on the modality of the propositional content say from assertion to admiration Modal operators may precede the propositional content of a sentence in different ways Thus the messenger who must inform a mother that her son has died in battle might say Madam I regret to inform you that your son has been killed in action Note the word regret here is neither used expressively nor hypocritically rather it serves to indicate that the news is of a certain regrettable nature We have such parenthetical uses of modal operators in the ceremonial uses of language as when the Chancellor of the University addresses his audience at graduation and says I am very pleased to inform you of the Senate s decision to award you your decrees In fact the verb express may itself be used parenthetically Allow me to express my deepest sympathy is a formality not a necessarily genuine expression of how the speaker feels what he believes etc What distinguishes the parenthetical use of a modal operator from its expressive use as propositional attitudes qualifiers is that it is pointless to ask whether the statement as a whole were true or false No one asks whether the messenger sincerely regrets or whether the Chancellor is truly pleased since regret and being pleased are used parenthetically In contrast the expressive use of modal operators requires us to ask whether the utterance as a whole is true or sincere as in when I say I hope you get better do I really hope Insofar as we can always ask about the implicit mode of having a propositional content in speaking or writing it we can attribute to the person a expression not necessarily of sincerity or genuine hope but in discharging his responsibility of office say as an officer charged with bringing bad news say of informing the family of the death of their son in battle We can distinguish a further difference between linguistic expressions utilizing modal operators in the way they undergo different fates in the process of tense transformation Propositional attitudes and parenthetical utterances are limited to the present tense When their tense is changed I regretted or I will regret these no longer characterize or express the speaker s present regret but merely report on past or predict some occurrence future There are no comparable past or future uses for parenthetical expressions Thus it makes no sense for the messenger to say I regretted informing you that your son has been killed in battle since to say so would transform the parenthetical into an actual expression modifying the manner in which the propositional content is entertained But actual expression defeats the formality of the ceremonial use of modal operators We can also bring out the parenthetical character of modal operators by the fact that we can predict or report their occurrence If I am to describe what the messenger had done I cannot say simply He regretted informing her that her son was dead rather we can avoid the implication of the expression of regret by simply saying he said I regret to inform you that your son has been killed in battle direct quotation or just omitting the parenthetical phrase he told her son had unfortunately died It is admittedly often difficult to decide whether a particular sentence element is intended as genuinely expressive modifying the propositional content or merely as parenthetical I regret I cannot attend the wedding Here context is necessary to discern the nuances of language is the regret genuine expression or mere convention formality If it is important to distinguish between the expressive and parenthetical uses of language it is even more important to distinguish between expressive and performative uses of language The reason is that both the criteria of intentionality and inference warranting nature expressions are threatened by failing to distinguish expressions from performatives usually by reducing expressions to performatives Thus if Mayor Mandel gives notice that he approves of the Rapid Transit extension I would not hire a detective to observe the signs of emotion whether Mandel really approves The notice Mandel announces writes is the approval That is such linguistic expressions of approval are performatives or performative uses of language which may be said to do something rather than to say or express something It would absurd to regard performatives such as promises warnings apologies christenings etc as expressing something done rather in saying them what we do is we perform them When christening a ship and I say I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth I am not describing the christening ceremony or expressing anything I am performing the christening Or when I say I do to this person who is to be my wedded partner I am not reporting on a marriage in which I did or expressed something I am acting speaking such as to consolidate the marriage When J L Austin proposed the distinction between performatives and other uses of language he was attacking the descriptive fallacy to the effect that all language is a form of naming representing or designating in particular of inner happenings which could then be evaluated as true or false either describing or expressing some inner state accurately But how could we describe inner states at all before we expressed them in the context of intentional objects Performatives are neither true nor false or it is difficult if possible to make sense of their truth and falsity but neither are they straightforwardly descriptive of what occurred or is occurring Where they are explicit they are first person present tense utterances and their being uttered under appropriate conditions and in appropriate circumstances is sufficient for the truth of a descriptive statement attributing the corresponding action to a speaker Thus if A says I promise or I bet or I do in an appropriate setting then the corresponding description A promises or A bets is fully an automatically warranted That is no further behavior by A or disclosure of what is in A s mind is required Breaking the promise or reneging on the bet may be evidence of savory character but that is no reason for cancelling the description after all A did promise and he did bet In my example of Mayor Mandel his linguistic expression of approval is equivalent to a performative use of language that is the bestowal of his approval Any report of the Mayor s approval could then be analyzed as follows i That the Mayor expressed approval of the plan ii That his doing so was a performative bestowing approval on the plan and iii That both a and b are interchangeable and equivalent descriptions of the Mayor s actions But I think that we must distinguish a and b because while the Mayor approved the plan of extending Rapid Transit he did not necessarily express his approval The Mayor might well have private doubts about the plan and does not approve of its going ahead but as a performative say city council approved by majority vote we know that the plan will go ahead We can say that the under the rules of local democratic government all those including the Mayor who do not approve of the plan nevertheless approve of it once the majority of council approved it We must distinguish here between the expressive and the performative uses of language Expressions unlike performatives carry with them inferential implications about the intentional state of speakers The Mayor may sanction the plan and hence also approve of it without being favorably disposed towards it To say I approve is not necessarily an expression of approval According to Austin we can make or give promises but we need not express them we do not express bets christenings warnings threats or commands as these are performatives even as we may in betting christening warning threatening or commanding express something else such as recklessness belief fear hatred or authority respectively In fact we could use what is obviously expressive language but in a performative manner I promise to love honor and obey expressive of devotion love spoken at an enforced shotgun marriage ceremony is a performative that may not be expressive at all of the partner s feelings at all Of course a performative can be uttered sincerely One can make a promise such that it is both a performative and an expression of an intention to keep the promise Apologies regret contrition and sorrow can be sincere expressive even as these are also performative In fact if regret sorrow and love and their performatives may suggest insincerity if they are also not expressed They must be spoken and meant yet in uttering the words I do not do two things perform them and express them I do one thing I utter them In uttering them I might only perform them or I might also express and perform them or I might just perform them or just express them What is important is that the question of sincerity which may be raised with respect to an expression is not raised with respect to performatives Whether your expression genuine is not a concern when at a marriage ceremony one utter I do it is sufficient to say I do even if uttered insincerely to validate the ceremony of marriage that is the marriage remains judicially valid even if I was insincere in uttering I do Consider that judges do not sentence criminals sincerely or insincerely judges feelings etc are irrelevant to the exercise of their judicial office Of course judges may feel contempt or pity in passing sentence but this plays no role in the binding nature of their judicial decision A surgeon may well feel he really wants to heal you but whether he does or not makes little difference to his professional procedure of surgery In fact the less he knows of you or feels for you the more likely we hold his skills in high regard The surgeon performs the surgery well quite apart from his feelings for you or his desire to heal you Even the question of sincerity varies considerably For example to apologize without contrition is less devious than to promise without intent What is at stake here is the social and cultural expectations elicited by performatives An apology offered publicly is itself a climatic ceremony there is nothing further expected such as you really feel sorry or contrite Love means never having to say I am sorry That is genuine love expressed never requires the formality of an apology since whatever damage in incurred is overshadowed by genuine love Trite but it makes the point The apology as performative ends the tension and repairs the damage in circumstances where love is not an issue To ask whether it was offered sincerely makes little difference to its public consequences Something like this is what I suspect we mean by courtesy Acts of courtesy even when insincere are acts of courtesy Hence courtesy is important in circumstances where there is no intimacy In contrast a promise excites expectation of future behavior namely behavior that would demonstrate that the promise is in fact kept Thus the relation between promise and intending to keep the promise is more intimate than the relation between apology and being sorry or feeling contrite Apologies need not be accompanied by inner gestures promises however are discredited immediately the moment we have the inkling that there is no intent to keep the promise Diplomacy is a great arena for performative uses of language one can apologize for saying of certain countries that they constitute the axis of evil because it is diplomatic to do so not because one really thinks or feels that they are not Another way in which performative and expressions differ is in the way they come off or suffer some infelicity For performatives to come off i e for them to be felicitous there are some conditions that must be met There must be some accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect which includes uttering certain words by certain people in certain circumstances The particular persons and circumstances in the given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure performative invoked or uttered The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly and completely Where as often the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts and feelings or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant then a person participating in and so invoking the procedure must in fact have those thoughts or feelings and the participants must intend to so conduct themselves and must so actually conduct themselves Failure of these conditions will result in infelicity unhappiness in the performative utterance The rules can be placed into two categories those whose infraction results in failure to accomplish the intended action failure of the performative to come off and those whose infraction does not nullify the act but qualifies it as insincere I will fail to marry even though I utter the words I do in appropriate circumstances if say I am already married breaking rules - But if I thank someone effusively without gratitude I have not thereby failed to thank him but I have done so insincerely breaking rules and Now expressions may be unhappy infelicitous through being false unsuccessful inappropriate unapt exaggerated or insincere False expressions are like false friends unlike false promises that is s he is not a friend False smiles are false expressions because they fail to express what they purport to express as in a host s smile at an unwelcome guest A false promise is one that is insincere or deceitful but remains a promise performative nonetheless But a false friend is not a friend Unsuccessful expressions resemble false expressions in failing to express although there may well be an implication of intent to express For example I want to express my annoyance but I am too inhibited so my inclination to express annoyance is dissipated in fidgeting Of course one can argue that fidgeting is still a displaced expression of annoyance but if so then we need a place for unsuccessful expression as one which fails to realize its intentions in appropriate behavior Unapt or exaggerated expressions fall under the category of inappropriateness Obviously here there are vast possibilities also in works of art as we will see but inappropriate expressions unlike false expressions and unsuccessful expressions are still expressions although unhappy in other ways On the other hand the conditions which render a performative inappropriate usually nullify the performative as well If an officer commands a civilian who is outside his domain of proper authority his command is issued inappropriately and so fails to come off that is fails to carry over into the intended action In contrast inappropriate expression no matter how bizarre is still expression if voicing my unrestrained glee over the cakes at a funeral is grotesque and inappropriate it is still an expression Hence differences emerge depending on the conditions under which performatives and expressions may succeed or fail The happy execution of a performative relies on conventional procedures circumstances relationships and the ordered following of prescribed ceremonies all social and cultural conditions Performatives also depend on their successful communication quite simply one must hear and understand the performative uttered However a faulty performative may be a genuine expression for example if I give you my word that I will be faithful to you and do so while you are miles away and unmindful of my promise it fails as a performative but I may yet be giving expression to my intentions hopes or my fears Unlike performatives expression does not rely on communication Nor does expression require communication in order to be successful I may intent or hope to communicate something by saying or doing but what I say or do is not a condition of expression that this should be so or that I should succeed which is always the case for performatives in getting another to understand Finally insincere expressions can be assimilated to false expressions Performatives such as an apology or a promise given insincerely are still an apology or promise but the insincere expressions of admiration is nothing but hollow flattery and it is not an expression of admiration at all Awareness of the difference between the performative and expressive functions of language should dispel any temptation to collapse them and should enable us to preserve their relative autonomy The distinctions I have made hardly exhaust the issues that arise over the peculiarities of linguistic expressions They do however conceptually triangulate the manner I which linguistic expressions can be located in relation to other language acts and to non-linguistic behavioral expressions Linguistic expression like its non-verbal behavioral counterpart preserves the inferential connection with intentional states of the person and what they have in common distinguishes the linguistic act of expression from other linguistic acts Where linguistic expressions and non-verbal behavioral expressions part company we can discern particular states of persons for which language provides no alternative but is the necessary and singular means of expression IV Art and expression a critique If the distinctions I have developed in the previous three sections are anywhere near correct or appropriate it should be possible to derive from them a number of implications bearing on our attempt to understand art as a form of expression The history of art could be written as the study of the significance of a handful of concepts The successive replacement of imitation by representation and of representation by expression marks one of the more revealing developments in the literature of aesthetics From the close of the th c to the present the concept of expression has dominated both aesthetic theorizing and aesthetic criticism Below I want to explore the claim that works of art or the work of the artist can best be understood in terms of the concept of expression Let me first turn to some philosophers of aesthetics who have advanced expressive theories of art First we recognize that some distinction must be made between the process of creation and the product which is the work of art It matters in other words whether expression is predicated of the process the product or both Many including Dewey Reid Ducasse Santayana and Collingwood see handout of quotations from Expression Theorists explicitly distinguished between process and product and favor expression for both That is these critics are committed to maintaining that there is a non-contingent and specifiable relation between the artist s activity and the work of art More precisely they are committed to the view that the artist in creating the work is expressing something feelings attitudes mood outlooks which is then embodied infused of objectified in the work of art For these theorists the central problem of the aesthetic attitude concerns the question of how what is expressed got into the object of art see Bernard Bosanquet s Three lectures on aesthetics p or alternatively how the artist in expressing his inner life embodies it into the art work Some exponents of Expression Theory of Art Dewey J Art as experience NY Putnam s Ducasse C J The philosophy of art NY Dover Collingwood R R The principles of art Oxford Claredon Reid L A Feeling and expression in the arts expression sensa and feelings Journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism XXV - Santayana G The sense of beauty NY Scribner s Thomas V A The concept of expression in art In J Margolis Ed Philosophy looks at the arts NY Scribner s Hospers J - The concept of artistic expression Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LV - Carritt E F What is beauty Oxford Claredon Tolstoy L What is art Tr A Maude New York Oxford Common to all these theories are two assumptions that an artist in creating a work of art is invariably engaged in expressing something and that the expressive qualities of the art work are the direct consequence of the artist act of expression I will argue that there is no reason to accept these assumptions But first I want to consider the prior contention which is almost universally accepted by Expression Theorists This contention is that aesthetic or artistic expression is something quite different from the symptomatic behavioral display of inner states see section above on the distinction between expression and signs or symptoms Consider what Vincent Thomas who endorses this contention has written behavior which is merely symptomatic of feeling such as blushing when one is embarrassed or swearing when one is angry is not artistic expression of feeling Collingwood says it is just a betrayal of feeling Dewey says it is just a boiling over of a feeling and Ducasse says it is a mere impulsive blowing off of emotional steam As Hospers says A person may give vent to grief without expressing grief Unlike merely giving vent to or betraying a feeling artistic expression consists in the deliberate creation of something which embodies or objectifies the feeling p The corollary is that embodying or objectifying a feeling is equivalent to artistically aesthetically expressing it You should notice that these distinctions have been made in the interest of sustaining some favored version of Expressivist theory of art Since the appropriation of the term expression for this purpose namely as embodying or objectifying involves a significant departure from ordinary usage we may reasonable demand some justification for the expressivist theorist claim that expression for aesthetic purposes means objectifying and embodying On this point John Dewey is most articulate and I will confine my critique to his version of aesthetic expression as objectifying and embodying in distinction from the ordinary usage of expression Dewey writes Not all outgoing human activity is of the nature of expression At one extreme there are storms of passion that break through barriers and that sweep away whatever intervenes between the person and something he would destroy There is activity but not from the standpoint of the one acting expression An onlooker may say What a magnificent expression of rage But the enraged being is only raging quite a different matter from expressing rage Or again some spectator may say How that man is expressing his dominant character in what he is saying and doing But the last thing the man I question is thinking of is to express his character he is only giving way to a fit of passion p Dewey is concerned to protect us from the error which has he claims invaded aesthetic theory that the mere giving way to an impulse native or habitual constitutes aesthetic expression He adds that emotional discharge is necessary but not a sufficient condition of expression on the grounds that while there is no expression unless there is an urge from within outward the welling up must be clarified and ordered by taking into itself the values of prior experiences before it can be an act of expression Thus there can be no expression without inner agitation but the mere discharge of this agitation is insufficient to constitute expression to express is to stay with to carry forward in development to work out to completion and where there is no shaping of the materials in the interest of embodying excitement there is no expression Now Dewey provides these remarks in support as evidence for of the Expression Theory ET of art But note in fact these remarks hold good only if one has already assumed the truth of the theory The circularity can best be seen in Dewey s refusal to admit anything as an expression which does not result in the production of an object or state of affairs that embodies some aesthetically valuable quality But there are also more serious objections to Expression Theory Dewey wants to confine expression to activities which are intentionally or voluntarily undertaken from the standpoint of the one acting The involuntary venting of rage is ruled out with his comment that the last thing the man in question is thinking of is to express his character he is only giving way to a fit of passion But I have made a distinction between voluntary and involuntary expression and Dewey provides no argument that would support abandoning this distinction other than to assert his support for the Expression Theory of Art One reason that Dewey restricts expression to the voluntary is obviously that many of our behavioral expressions are irrelevant to the production of aesthetic objects works of art Most Expression Theorists agree that the artist is engaged in something quite different from the person who simply vents his rage or airs his opinions But the fact that the artist is doing something so different when s he expresses ought to suggest not that the artist alone is expressing and us ordinary folk are not but that perhaps the activity the artist is engaged in is not an expression at all So rather than making manifest by way of expression where expression has the restricted meaning Dewey attributes to Expression Theory we ought to question Expression Theory itself as a debatable theory of aesthetic production Thus rather than follow Dewey and other expression theorist in distinguishing between aesthetic expression and other meanings of expression we might ask whether the artist is engaged in doing something other than expressing this other being the making techne of aesthetic qualities in the created product the work of art In turning to aesthetic qualities of the work of art itself we are not leaving behind the act of expression For by focusing on the work itself or as Dewey writes the object that is expressive and that speaks to us we are reminded as Dewey continues that isolation of the act of expressing from the expressiveness possessed by the object leads to the notion that expression is merely the discharge of personal emotion and that expression as personal act and objective result are organically connected with each other p But it precisely here in the connection between the act and the object that Expression Theorists have failed to provide an adequate understanding Expressions theorists customarily argue somewhat as follows aesthetic objects including works of art are said to possess certain perceptible physiognomic or expressive qualities such as sadness gaiety longing nostalgia and where these are qualities of intentionally structured objects it is reasonable to assume that their presence in the object is the intended consequence of the productive activity of the artist But this characterization is not enough for the Expression Theorist and hence the Expression Theorists will go on to assert that since the relevant aesthetic qualities of the object are expressive qualities the productive activities of the artist must have been expressive i e acts of expression and moreover the act of expressing just those feeling states whose analogues are predicated of the object That is the aesthetic qualities of the object of art if these qualities are expressive express just those feeling states of the artist which the artist intents to give expression to in the object More schematically Expression Theory including Dewey Ducasse Collingwood Carritt Gotshalk Santayana Tolstoy and Veron whatever their other differences may be described as follows I will call this the schema of Expression Theory Thus ET is defined as follows If art object O has expressive quality Q then there is a prior act C of artist A such that by doing C A expressed his F for X by imparting Q to O where F is a feeling state and Q is the qualitative analogue of F Harold Osborne Aesthetics and criticism summarizes Expression Theory in a somewhat different way He writes paraphrasing the underlying theory in its baldest form is that the artist lives through certain experiences s he then makes an artifact which in some way embodies that experience and through appreciative contemplation of this artifact other people are able to duplicate in their own minds the experience of the artist What is conveyed to others is then an experience of their own which is as similar as possible to the artist s experience in all it aspects In contrast my schematic formulation above is intended to draw attention to relation between aesthetic qualities and the activity of the artist Now the schematic formulation contains an error and this error is that it treats all cognate forms of expression as terms whose behavior is logically similar In particular the error of Expression Theory is that the purported existence of expressive qualities in the object work of art implies a prior act of expression Now to say that a work of art object contains expressive qualities or has a particular expressive quality is evidently to say something about the object Even those who argue that the music is sad can be translated as the music makes me feel sad or has the disposition to make me and others feel sad will agree that their accounts are only plausible on the assumption that the object has some properties qualities which are at least causally relevant to inducing in percipients feelings of sadness But the Expression Theorist is committed to a further assumption of a necessary link between the qualities in the work and certain states of the artist Now critics have been quick to reply that this second assumption would make all art works autobiographical revelations More so it would entail that descriptions of expressive qualities in the work object were falsifiable in a peculiar way Thus if it turned out that Gustav Mahler had experienced no state of mind remotely resembling despair or resignation during the period that he was composing Das Lied von der Erde the Expression Theorist would be obliged to conclude that we are mistaken in saying that the final movement Der Abschied of that work was expressive of despair or resignation But this hardly seems plausible since it implies that statements ostensibly about the music itself the work of art are in fact statements about the composer It might be countered that the composer is in fact expressing something that he remembered or some unconscious residue but if so I can strengthen the argument by supposing it to be false that the composer had ever experienced consciously or otherwise the feelings corresponding to the qualities attributed to the music If works of art were indeed expressions in the way that I spoke of behavioral expressions of states of persons then that is precisely what we would say After all normally attributions of expressions are falsifiable and the assertion that a person s behavior constitutes an expression of something is defeated falsified when it can be show that the imputed inference is unwarranted But statements about the expressive qualities of a work of art remain irresolutely statements about the work itself and any revision or rejection of such statements can be supported only by referring to the work itself That is a sad piece of music cannot be falsified by saying No the composer wasn t sad or The composer was just pretending Rather we would say you haven t listened carefully or you must listen again there are almost no minor progressions and the tempo is allegro moderato hence the work is sad Thus descriptions attributing expressive qualities to works of art are not subject to falsification through discovering any truths about the inner life of the artist An Expression Theorist could of course argue that the presence of quality Q in O is sufficient evidence of the occurrence of state S in A such that A felt F for X see my schema above But this claim rules out the possibility of independent and conflicting evidence of the artist feeling states and makes the Expressivist Theorist claim that art is expression analytically true and therefore empty It is in fact remarkable that the Expressivist Theory as a theory of art has been so widely embraced I think this is largely due to the misunderstanding of the nature logic of expression and expressive I would maintain that statements attributing expressive or physiognomic to works of art should be construed as statements about the work itself and that the presence in works of art of expressive properties qualities does not entail a prior act of expression Expressive as in expressive properties despite its grammatical relation to expression as in acts of expression do not play the logical role one might expect Thus sometimes we can substitute one term for another as for example His gesture was an expression of impatience for which we substitute His gesture was expressive of impatience But there are other contexts in which the two terms are significantly different in meaning for example Livia has a very expressive face does not mean that Livia is adept at expressing her inner states or that she is blessed with an unusually large repertoire of feelings and moods which she displays in many facial configurations To clarify this we need to refer back to a distinction I made previously between two syntactic forms expressions A and expressions of B Remember that this distinction was intended to establish that instances of B are inference-warranting whereas instances of A are descriptive and that A and B are logically independent in the sense that no instance of A or B entails