(preliminary draft)
Blobjectivism and art
Matjaž Potrč

Austere realism allows for a multitude of non-vague objects. Blobjectivism, a species of austere realism, recognizes just one material object: the cosmos. Truth is normally a relation of indirect correspondence between language or thought and the blobject. Perception and conventional meaning are governed by normatively tight semantic standards, whereas artistic judgment is not.

Austere realism allows for a multitude of non-vague objects.
Austere realism is the view that there are not so many entities around as this is presumed by the nonreflexive approach of common sense. Common sense initially presupposes that there are cats, trees, chairs and mountains. But as it eventually gets into reflexive mode, some doubts about the existence of these entities tend to arise in common sense. The cat's composition changes as it grows from that kitten to this grown-up animal. And as it eats and drinks, it is even harder to determine which are the exact ingredients that enter into its constitution. Is it that molecule of water, or this other atom that was there in the food? As far as its physical basis goes, the composition of the cat seems to be arbitrary, and cat as an entity reveals itself to be vague. Now take a look at this mountain. You put a pin upon its top. Then you put a pin a centimeter away from the first one. And now there is the following reasoning: If the first pin is on the top of the mountain, so the second one must be upon that top as well. But the first pin is located upon the top indeed. And so has to be the second one. You continue to place pins in one centimeter distance further on along the slopes of the mountain. And as you reach what may be called the beginning of the mountain in the valley near the river, you will have to conclude that it is still located on the mountain's top. Now, you have started with the presupposition that the mountain exists. Applying the just mentioned procedure of sorites reasoning to it, you have ended up in a contradiction: the bottom of the mountain is identical to the top of the mountain. But this just cannot be the case. So you have to abandon the original presupposition that there exists a mountain. Generalizing this reasoning, you find out that vague entities that were presupposed by the common sense to be there, such as cats, trees, chairs and mountains just do not exist. So vague entities cannot be there, and this is actually recognized by the common sense itself as it gets into its reflexive mode. The result of our tiny investigation is that vague entities cannot exist. These vague entities considered as objects may be called slobjects. So slobjects cannot exist. But wait, don't we see cats and mountains to be there? This prompts us to improve our take upon things. Slobjects' existence cannot be recognized when metaphysical chips fall down, as we talk about what is there in the ultimate ontology. But slobjects may well be recognized to ex-sist in the everyday common sense mood. Anyway, the reflexive common sense comes to the conclusion that just non-vague entities may exist in the ultimate ontology. This is also the conclusion of austere realism, for austere realism allows just for the existence of non-vague entities. Let us call these non-vague entities snobjects. They are allowed to be there in their multitude. But there will be no slobjects or vague objects around.

Blobjectivism, a species of austere realism, recognizes just one material object: the cosmos.
As we said that cats, trees, chairs and mountains, being slobjects, cannot ultimately exist, according to the arbitrariness of composition and vagueness related considerations, we also said that they may still ex-sist in a metaphysically non-ultimate, ontic and not in an ontological manner. This is possible if they are just recognized, by the common sense, as ex-sisting in the world. There exists a mind and language independent world, and it has to be non-vague, as we have just concluded. Recognizing the existence of one non-vague world is a form of austere realism, which may be called blobjectivism. This monistic form of austere realism claims that there is just one material object around, the cosmos. The only existing object or cosmos may be called blobject. Blobjectivism is thus a view that recognizes just one ultimate material object, the cosmos or the blobject. It may sound strange at first sight that the world or the cosmos would be without any parts and non-vague. But some physicists recognize such a view as applying to our world. And yet, how may such a world in which there are no ultimate parts, although these are regionally recognized in language and thought, be conceivable? And how can there be no parts, if the cosmos, as it seems, is highly dynamical? Here is a rendition of a substance that may reveal the possibility of a dynamical object without any parts: the jello. There is a form of jello that comes as a toy for small children, in green or in pinkish color, looking transparent. When kids stretch that jello, the situation is highly dynamical, and yet all along these movements and transformations there cannot be found any parts in it. Eventually, some congealings are formed in the jello, that may eventually be recognized as separate entities, but still there are no parts. It may be thus conceivable that cosmos as well may be forthcoming as dynamical whole but without any parts. Notice that whatever is recognized in the blobject by the means of language and thought may appear to be vague. But vagueness is there just because of involvement of language or thought in that venue. The one material object, the cosmos or the blobject, is non-vague.

Truth is normally a relation of indirect correspondence between language or thought and the blobject.
One question that can be asked is how may the just sketched blobjectivist view allow for any truth. If there exists just one blobject, the world or the cosmos, how may the sentence such as “The cat is on the mat” be true at all? For, if there exists just one blobject, there cannot exist any cat, and any such sentence cannot be true. Let us now take a view at truth. Despite that there are several approaches to truth, perhaps the most natural way to tackle it is that of direct correspondence. According to that one, there exist entities such as E1, ..., En and properties P1, …, Pn. The already stated sentence is true just in case where entities and properties mentioned in it match the items that are there in the world. This construal of truth as direct correspondence meets its hurdles though once as these entities and properties are not recognized to exist in the ultimate ontology, as this is the case for austere realism and for blobjectivism as its monistic version. Just the cosmos exists, according to this one. Now, the construal of truth that may fit to such a view is that of indirect correspondence. As we say that “The cat is on the mat” this sentence may still be true, if we refer to the cosmos, to the blobject or to the world in a direct manner. But as we mention cats and mats, we refer to that same world in an indirect manner, in the way as it appears cat-ishly region-ishly. And as we mostly talk about cats and mats in our everyday dealings with the world, truth happens to be normally construed in the form of indirect correspondence. The normativity is changing from involving regional ontic ontology to the ultimate ontological view. “Do cats exist?” – “Of course.” – “But do cats really exist?” – “No way.” This small dialogue is consistent because the normativity has changed from the everyday ontic scores, concerning whatever ex-sists as being recognized in the world, to the ultimate ontological scores where just the existence of the one world or the blobject may be recognized.  

Perception and conventional meaning are governed by normatively tight semantic standards, whereas artistic judgment is not.
The construal of truth as indirect correspondence is compatible with the monistic austere realism view of the world. Notice that normative scores have shifted from treating cats as ontologically ultimate entities towards treating them as the just recognized ontic entities ex-sisting region-ishly in the blob. In this sense, perception provides a form that supports truth as indirect correspondence. Perception does not normally involve the presence of other people or of community. Given that presence of community shows itself in obligations and similar normative matters, perception may be called non-deontic. But it certainly seems the case that perception is tight, in the following sense. Whatever is perceived seems to be well placed and well delimited by something such as perceptual fence. Usually we would immediately recognize a cat, without inference of normative stuff. Yet if blobjectivism is right, perception is a form of indirect correspondence.
	Let us take a look at the word “cat” and at its meaning. This is not private, proper just to myself as perceiving subject, as perception seems to be. Meaning of a word seems to be deontic in the sense that it appears as something proper to a community; it involves the presence of other people. The meaning of the word “cat” is proper to a language, and I am a member of that language if I share that meaning with everybody else inhabiting the language. One may say that we all need to hold the rope in a tight manner in order to get the meaning of “cat”. It is a conventional meaning, which may also be called core meaning of that world.
	As we mentioned core meaning of a word, we were invoking tight semantic normative standards. Could there be something else? We all share the meaning of “cat”, we hold the conventional rope, the conventional meaning providing rope in a tight manner, if the already introduced comparison may be used. But as I own a small white cat, she owns an old black cat, and he lives with a siamese cat in his apartment, there will be disparities for each of us underneath the conventional meaning which we all share.
	The disparities that are there in our private cat meanings are constitutively there for some other areas of discourse. In an interesting judgment involving philosophical or political debate there may be rational disagreement between the involved participants, for all of which we may presume skilfully mastering all the argumentative and inferential moves that may be forthcoming in the debate. Similarly it goes for juridical discourse which becomes interesting once as there is disagreement in respect to how judgment is made, the dispute being attached to the same evidence. Moral discourse as well is rooted upon basic diversity of judgmental intuitions: consequentialists and deontologists will stick to radically different interpretations of the same data, and they will eventually fall diverse judgments. One can say that normativity concerning such discourses is not tight anymore, for besides to the core meaning of terms involved into judgment there is a constitutive semantic slack.
	Art, we take it, does not stick to semantically tight normative standards. Rather, the artistic judgment builds upon a constitutive semantic slack. The very material constitution of works of art pushes towards normative non-tightness, towards normative diversity of opinion, so that each one involved as addressed by art encounters one's own qualitative touch with the world, with the cosmos or with the blobject. Core meaning of works of art is put in secondary position, and qualitative, phenomenology involving approach gets promoted. It is not just rational disagreement that we are talking about. It is a possibility to form a unique qualitative phenomenology supported judgment. If shoes are depicted in a painting, they point to the whole complex and qualitatively forthcoming world. Artistic judgment with its constitutive normative and semantic slack points to the quality and dynamical intertwinedness of the one blob.

Literature
	Horgan, T. and Potrč, M. (2002). Blobjectivism and Indirect Correspondence. Facta Philosophica, vol. 2 no. 2: 249–270.
	Horgan, T. and Potrč, M. (2008). Austere Realism: Contextual Semantics Meets Minimal Ontology. MIT Press.
	Horgan, T. and Potrč, M. (2008). Contextualist Semantics and Particularist Semantic Normativity. In M. Lance, M. Potrč and V. Strahovnik (eds.) (2008) Challenging Moral Particularism. Routledge NY, 123-139.