Barroso, Paulo2018-06-252018-06-252008Barroso, Paulo M.Meaning (de)coding of symbolic experiences, Trabalho apresentado em Arts, Culture and the Public Sphere – Expressive and Instrumental Values in Economic and Sociological Perspectives, In Proceedings of the Arts, Culture and the Public Sphere – Expressive and Instrumental Values in Economic and Sociological Perspectives, Veneza, 2008.http://hdl.handle.net/10400.19/5014This article is about a particular and central subject of study within the scope of the conceptual investigations on Aesthetics: the definition of art. I propose an analysis of this question in order to defend the thesis of the impossibility to present a definition of art. According to my perspective, based on Wittgenstein’s latter work, art could be understood like a game: both cannot be defined if we isolate its essential qualities or rules. There is nothing in common to all games as well as there is nothing in common to all works of art. Wittgenstein did not answer to the main question “What art is?”, but he presented the concept “family resemblance” as a metaphor able to be used to give some meaning to words of our ordinary language, like “art” and “game”.engWittgensteinArtconference object2018-06-21