  An eighth argument sort of skeptical argument concludes that, insofar as almost all contemporary definitions foreground the nature of artworks, rather than the individual arts to which (most? all?) artworks belong, they are philosophically unproductive (Lopes,  2014).[2]  The grounds for this conclusion concern disagreements among standard definitions as to the artistic status of entities whose status is for theoretical reasons unclear – e.g., things like ordinary bottleracks (Duchamp’s Bottlerack) and silence (John Cage’s 4′33″). If these hard cases are artworks, what makes them so, given their apparent lack of any of the traditional properties of artworks? Are, they, at best, marginal cases?  On the other hand, if they are not artworks, then why have generations of experts – art historians, critics, and collectors – classified them as such? And to whom else should one look to determine the true nature of art? (There are, it is claimed, few or no empirical studies of art full stop, though empirical studies of the individual arts abound.) Such disputes inevitably end in stalemate. Stalemate results because (a) standard artwork-focused definitions of art endorse different criteria of theory choice, and (b) on the basis of their preferred criteria, appeal to incompatible intuitions about the status of such theoretically-vexed cases.  In consequence, disagreements between standard definitions of art that foreground artworks are unresolvable. To avoid this stalemate, an alternative definitional strategy that foregrounds the arts rather than individual artworks, is indicated. (See section 4.5.)