ABSTRACT
One early avenue of attack targeted the relationship between an artwork and the stuff out of which it is made since, as people saw, this stuff can be a mere real thing. The thought experiment has also been criticized on structural grounds. The worry here is that it points people in the direction of a single conclusion, rather than asking them which of two or more options jibe with their intuitions. So, while it may well be the case that the indiscernibility thesis applies to the particular case of the nine red squares, it’s a whole other ball game to think it applies to all art everywhere. Some have drawn the more radical lesson that an artwork just is its meaning: the material stuff of which it’s made is nothing more than a vehicle for expressing that meaning.
