ABSTRACT
Art is typically thought to be intention-dependent, which means that the artist’s intentions are a necessary component of art-making. This is because all artworks are supposed to be artifacts or performances, and the difference between an artifact or performance and a natural object or process, like the driftwood, is that the artifact or performance is the result of someone’s intentional activity. Although skepticism about the definition of art was quite fashionable for a time, it soon came under heavy fire. In particular, it was observed that the metaphor of family resemblance itself suggested a different result: family members are not identified by virtue of their overt physical resemblance, but rather by the fact that they have a common genetic heritage. Skepticism about the possibility of defining art thus somewhat paradoxically gave rise to a decades-long cottage industry of attempted definitions.
