@Bizet asks “What is love?”, a question no so far from “What is art?”. Again we might take the answer to be some set of necessary and sufficient conditions, “One is in love if and only if one is in states A, B and C”, but this might be to misunderstand our condition. Either we do not know what love is, and so when we ask “What is love?” we are in effect asking how we ought use the word “love”, or we do know what love is, and in asking “What is love?” we are seeking to explicate that knowledge.
Now if our situation is the former, our question is practical and can be answered by observing the use to which the word “love” is put in the goings on of those around us.
However if our situation is the latter, then we might well ask how it is that we will decide when our explication is correct or complete.
Suppose we find an equivalence of the sort proposed above, “One is in love if and only if one is in states A, B and C”. Do we treat this as a falsifiable hypothesis? Suppose someone claims to be in love, and on enquiry we find that they are in states A, B and D. Do we say “No, you are mistaken; you are nto in love, since being in love consists in being in states A, B, and C; you are not in state C, but in state D, and therefore you are not in love”? Or do we say “Oh, you have falsified my hypothesis, which I now need to correct: one is on love if and only if one is in states A, B, and either C or D”?
If we insist that our acquaintance is not in love, then we are simply stipulating what love is.
If we are proposing an hypothesis for review, then we are in the same position as those who do not know what love is; we are looking to see how the term is used, and modifying our own usage as we go.
The same for Art. If we affirm necessary and sufficient conditions, we are merely stipulating what is and isn’t art. Better, for both love and art, to treat our enquiry not as a petrification, but to admit that what art is, and what love is, are lived rather than exposited.
And there is so much more here, because it matters whether someone is in love or something is art. There is a normative aspect that is yet to be addressed. Mere observation will not suffice; we must participate in order to understand.