An overview of attempts to define music in the Western philosophical tradition.

I propose a minimal account of authorship that specifies the fundamental nature of the author-relation and its minimal domain composition in terms of a three-place causal-intentional relation holding between agents and sort-relative works. I contrast my account with the minimal account tacitly held by most authorship theories, which is a two-place relation holding between agents and works simpliciter. I claim that only my view can ground productive and informative principled distincitons between collective production and collective authorship.

This paper surveys some of the central issues in the philosophy of creativity and argues that an adequate treatment of them requires attention to the rich psychological literature on creativity. It also shows that the range of interesting philosophical questions to be raised about creativity is much wider than concerns its role in art. Issues covered include the definition of ‘creativity’; the relation of creativity to imagination; whether the creative process is rational; whether it is teleological; the relation of creativity (...) to knowledge; whether creativity can be explained; computational and Darwinian theories of creativity; whether creativity is a virtue; the relation of creativity to tradition; the aesthetic value of creativity; and whether creative activity is different in science and art. (shrink)

Paisley Livingston claims that an artist’s intentions are successfully realized and hence determinate of the meaning of a work if and only if they are compatible and “mesh” with the linguistic and conventional meanings of the text or artefact taken in its target or intended context. I argue that this specific standard of success is not without its difficulties. First, I show how an artist’s intention can sometimes be constitutive of a work’s meaning even if there is no significant meshing (...) between the artist’s intention and his work. Second, I argue against the claim that the artist’s intentions need to be compatible with the linguistic and conventional meanings of a text. Third, I discuss a case that creates a particular puzzle for Livingston since the intentions of the artist concerned are clearly not successfully realized, though they are compatible and mesh with all the relevant data. I conclude my paper by suggesting a solution to this puzzle. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship (or lack thereof) between authors’ intentions and the meaning of literary works. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of Extreme and Modest Actual Intentionalism, Conventionalism, and two versions of Hypothetical Intentionalism, and discusses the role that one’s theoretical commitments about the robustness of linguistic conventions and the publicity of literary works should play in determining which view one accepts.

Rae Langton and Caroline West famously argue that pornography operates like a language game, in that it introduces certain views about women into the common ground via presupposition accommodation. While this pragmatic model explains how pornography has the potential to change its viewers’ beliefs, it leaves open how pornography changes people's desires. Our aim in this paper is to show how Langton and West's discourse-theoretic account of pornography can be refined to close this lacuna. Using tools from recent developments in (...) discourse theory, we propose that pornography issues implicit directives, and thereby introduces bouletic components into the discourse. (shrink)

This paper explores what happens when artists fail to execute their goals. I argue that taxonomies of failure in general, and of failed-art in particular, should focus on the attempts which generate the failed-entity, and that to do this they must be sensitive to an attempt’s orientation. This account of failed-attempts delivers three important new insights into artistic practice: there can be no accidental art, only deliberate and incidental art; art’s intention-dependence entails the possibility of performative failure, but not of (...) failed-art; and art’s intention-dependence is perfectly compatible with the role that luck plays in artistic creation. (shrink)

Abstract creationism about fictional characters is the view that fictional characters are abstract objects that authors create. I defend this view against criticisms from Stuart Brock that hitherto have not been adequately countered. The discussion sheds light on how the number of fictional characters depends on authorial intention. I conclude also that we should change how we think intentions are connected to artifacts more generally, both abstract and concrete.

Libet’s timing experiments have resulted in some strong and unsavoury claims about human agency. These range from the idea that conscious intentions are epiphenomenal to the idea that we all lack free will. In this paper, I propose a new type of response to the various sceptical conclusions about our agency occasioned by both Libet’s work and other experiments in this testing paradigm. Indeed, my argument extends to such conclusions drawn from fMRI-based prediction experiments. In what follows, I will provide (...) a brief description of these experiments, sketch arguments one may be tempted to draw on their basis, and argue that such arguments rely on a questionable premise: that experimental subjects have relevant proximal intentions. (shrink)

This essay details that which is arguably the essential nature of a ubiquitous kind of visual display prominently involved in a great many phenomena that people have in mind when they think and talk about the cinema. My argument begins with a summary and critique of an important precedent, Noël Carroll’s essentialist definition of the detached moving image display. The remainder of my discussion concentrates on the structure and dynamics of a particular sort of luminescent display. This display is essential (...) to what I call the cinematic display. As I understand it, the cinematic display is neither the or a medium of cinema nor perforce a vehicle for artistic content. It is, rather, a luminescent display in service of someone’s presentational intentions. I conclude with thoughts about the ontological relation between cinematic displays and works, the latter tentatively defined as a display of expressive or artistic agency. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the importance of emotions for ethical reflection on technological developments, as well as the role that art can play in this. We review literature that argues that emotions can and should play an important role in the assessment and acceptance of technological risk and in designing morally responsible technologies. We then investigate how technologically engagedartcan contribute to critical, emotional-moral reflection on technological risks. The role of art that engages with technology is unexplored territory and gives (...) rise to many fascinating philosophical questions that have not yet been sufficiently addressed in the literature. (shrink)

Recent work on the problem of truth in serial fiction has focused on the semantics of certain sentences used to talk about serial fictions, as in Ross Cameron’s (2012) “How to Be a Nominalist and a Fictional Realist” and Andrew McGonigal’s (2013) “Truth, Relativism, and Serial Fiction,” or semantic properties of works themselves, as in Ben Caplan’s (2014) “Serial Fiction, Continued.” Here I argue that these proposed solutions are mistaken, and, more importantly, that the general approach to the problem is (...) mistaken: the problem of truth in serial fiction is an instance of the problem of change. Fictions can undergo change, much like you and me in certain respects. As a result, what is true in or according to them changes as well. (shrink)

The article reveals the interdisciplinary potential of empirical aesthetics, including from the perspective of the formation of the concept of a "global art project". The main emphasis in the material is on the conceptualization of empirical aesthetics in comparison with other levels of aesthetic scientific reflection, such as philosophical aesthetics, analytical, receptive and others. It is shown that it is precisely in the aspect of the development of empirical aesthetics that relevant research practices have been developed that make it possible (...) to study art from the point of view not of a form of social consciousness, but as an independent phenomenon of individual and collective human life. The article also provides arguments in favor of the opinion that art grasps reality, revealing its consolidating properties. Thus, the background of empirical aesthetics is revealed, which is necessary for understanding its scientific strategy. The research methodology is based on an interdisciplinary approach, as well as system analysis. These directions allow us to reveal the purpose of the article and solve the tasks set in it, in particular, the use of such a method as event analysis contributes to the formation of the so-called "global art project". The evaluation of this project is carried out at the theoretical and applied levels. A special contribution of the authors to the study of the "global art project" is the chosen perspective of the conceptualization of this research area, as well as the assessment of the heuristic value of the proposed methods and research practices in line with empirical aesthetics, confirming the importance of the "global art project". The main results of the undertaken work include the following provisions: (1) the specificity of empirical aesthetics in the study of the deployment of social reality and the meanings of human individual and collective existence in art is revealed; (2) it is established that the theoretical background of empirical aesthetics arises not only under the influence of the philosophy of art or classical aesthetics, but also in interaction with social knowledge and in particular, with the sociology of art; (3) The experience of using event analysis in the study of art is summarized. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy of art, the intentionalist debate is about whether the author’s intention is relevant to the interpretation of her work. Various positions have been proposed, and in this paper I defend what I call hypothetical author-hypothetical intentionalism, the position that interpretation is based on the intention attributed to the author constructed from the work. There are three aims to achieve: (1) to give a general account of hypothetical author-hypothetical intentionalism; (2) to present a moderate version of hypothetical (...) author-hypothetical intentionalism; (3) to defend the moderate version of hypothetical author-hypothetical intentionalism against actual intentionalism and actual author-hypothetical intentionalism. Against the current trend that focuses on actual authors, I hope to show that the hypothetical author account is still a sustainable contender in the intentionalist debate. (shrink)

The utterance model is a popular basis for theories of interpretation in the contemporary analytic philosophy of literature. This model suggests that interpretation should be constrained by a work's identity‐relevant factors in its context of production because a work, like an utterance, acquires its identity and content in part from its relations with that context. From a descriptive point of view, I argue that the implied author account of interpretation best describes critical practice following the current positions based on the (...) utterance model. That is, people who interpret in accordance with these positions end up interpreting an implied author. (shrink)

This article surveys the current debate among analytic philosophers and film narratologists about the logic and phenomenology of cinematic narration. Particular attention is given to the question of whether every film that represents a fictional narrative also represents a narrator's fictional narration.

With the concept of the open work, Umberto Eco addressed the poetics to which art turned with modernism. In the article the author analyzes the notion of the open work, the references relevant to this concept and the relations of this concept to similar concepts introduced by other scholars such as Roland Barthes. Scholars discussing the openness of art were deriving primarily from Paul Valéry, and they distanced themselves from the myth of the artist as a genius and from the (...) concept of art as a vehicle for communication to transmit the truth and instead emphasized the performative character of art. Art on this track aimed at poetic use of its own media. The author argues that Eco’s definition of the open work comprises different dimensions of openness, i.e. the semantic and formal openness of the works of art, as well as the notion addresses the perceptual openness of the world. The author examines how the concept of the openness of art placed stress on the relevance of interpretation instead of the author’s intention and how it was part of a broader debate on interpretation and weak thought. By establishing autonomous poetic situations and exploring the means of art, art began performing philosophical discussions about itself, wherein, as the author argues, the notion of the open work is linked to the notions of the end or the death of art and denotes the dissolution of art into philosophy. Other sorts of dissolution of art which mean the death of art regard the dissolution of art into culture in a broader sense and its subordination to propagandist or political goals, which means art loses its autonomy. Finally, the author questions participatory art as a potential contemporary successor of the open work and argues that this mode of art, though it actively involves the participant, remains semantically closed. (shrink)

Do artists have control over their ideas for new artworks? This is often treated as a question about spontaneity, or the experience of control: does the event of having an idea for a new artwork occur unexpectedly and without foresight? I suggest another way of interpreting the question—one that has mostly been neglected by philosophers, and that is not settled by claims about spontaneity. According to that interpretation, the question is about agency: are the events of having ideas for new (...) artworks exercises of mental agency? I argue that the answer is no. I apply the results of this argument to questions about what is and is not intentional in the creative process. I conclude by examining another type of control artists might exercise over their creative mental events, which I call ‘facilitation’. (shrink)

There are a number of recent discussions on the question of when an artwork is complete. While it has been observed that a work might be complete in one way and not in another, the impact of this observation has been minimal. Discussion has been continued as if there is only one real sense of completion that matters. I argue that this is a mistake. Even if there were only one (or one most important) kind of completion, extant theories of (...) completion would be bad candidates for that one kind. The best explanation of the failure of extant theories is that there are many kinds of completion, many corresponding senses of “completion,” and no kind of artwork completion is objectively more important than any other. We have a good reason to think that this is the case given the disparate interests we have when we ask completion questions. Once we have realized that those concerns track properties that are often unrelated, the question for theorists to answer becomes, “In how many ways can an artwork be complete?”. (shrink)

La pregunta y el planteo por el Ser encuentran un relieve particular al interior del análisis heideggeriano de la obra de arte. Su análisis en términos de una contienda entre la “instalación” de un Mundo y la “elaboración” de la Tierra, fundado en un acontecer de la verdad en la obra como esencia del arte, resulta sustancial para interés que la estética y la filosofía del arte prestan a la caracterización de la naturaleza propia de lo artístico. A partir de (...) dicho tratamiento es posible pensar una modalidad del acontecer estético del arte que confronta y articula con toda una serie de teorizaciones de especial relevancia en el siglo XX para la filosofía ocupada del tema. El presente escrito busca indagar en la caracterización heideggeriana de la obra de arte la existencia de claves conceptuales que permitan el establecimiento de continuidades, tanto como la evaluación de la relevancia de su planteo para el tratamiento del problema de la definición del arte, objetivo perenne de la estética filosófica. Parte de la tarea supone, así, la recuperación de algunas de las mutaciones teórico-prácticas experimentadas por el arte en su instancia contemporánea como fundamento de dicha indagación. (shrink)

During the last decades, there has been a debate on the question whether literary works are utterances, or have utterance meaning, and whether it is reasonable to approach them as such. Proponents of the utterance model in literary interpretation, whom I will refer to as “utterance theorists”, such as Noël Carroll and especially Robert Stecker, suggest that because of their nature as linguistic products of intentional human action, literary works are utterances similar to those used in everyday discourse. Conversely, those (...) whom I will refer to as “appreciation theorists”, such as Stein Haugom Olsen and Peter Lamarque, argue that literary works are by no means comparable to conversational utterances, and treating them in terms of utterances mistakenly dismisses their literary features. The aim of this article is twofold: to defend a central aspect of the utterance theory and to reconcile the two main positions about central issues in the debate on the meaning of literary works. On the one hand, I shall argue that it is both legitimate and reasonable to discuss the utterance meaning of a literary work on the basis of an interpretative approach interested in the author's “message”. My aim is to show that literary works should be considered utterances in a conversational approach which aims at examining the illocutionary actions conveyed through the work. On the other hand, I attempt both to show that there are various legitimate interpretative approaches which are governed by the interpreter's purposes, and to suggest that the debate between utterance theorists and appreciation theorists is actually about merely different emphases. (shrink)

This essay brings together questions from aesthetic theory and museum management. In particular, I relate a contextualist account of the value of copies to a pluralistic understanding of the purpose of museums. I begin by offering a new defence of the no longer fashionable view that the aesthetic (as opposed to the ethical, personal, monetary, historical, or other) value of artworks may be detached from questions regarding their provenance. My argument is partly based on a distinction between the process of (...) creating a work of art and the artwork in question.Next, I defend a pluralism about the purpose of museums and their exhibitions. I combine this with a pluralist account of the value of replicas which falls out of the above argument, exposing our preference for originality as being frequently fetishistic. I maintain that the importance of the provenance of artworks is relative to the specific purposes of any given exhibition or museum. Those that are primarily educational (such as encyclopaedic ones) are in many cases best served with high-quality replicas. This view may be extended to artefacts that are not artworks, such as fossils and dinosaur skeletons. Finally, I expound the variety of roles that replicas may play in museums and relate these to notions of authenticity. (shrink)

Imagine an artist creating new work, a painter applying paint to canvas with a brush, for example. Assuming she acts intentionally, is she responsible for the work she creates? Is she responsible, in particular, for whatever value her finished work has? In the first part of the paper, I formulate an argument for the claim she is not; I call this the Luck Argument. According to that argument, an important aspect of the work's value is due to luck, so not (...) something for which the artist is responsible. I then go on to challenge the Luck Argument. I suggest that intentional control is not the only type of control artists exercise over their bodily activity. There is another type, which I call receptive control. The concept of receptive control makes it possible to challenge a crucial premise in the Luck Argument. (shrink)

What is the value of art? Standard responses draw on the different kinds of value that we tend to ascribe to individual artworks. In that context, none have been more significant than aesthetic value and moral value. To understand what makes an artwork valuable we then need to examine the interaction between these two kinds of value and how this contributes to the artwork's final value. The main aim of this article is to highlight two areas of concern for interaction (...) theories, in order to improve our understanding of the dynamic relations between kinds of value in art. In the first instance, I shall outline the main tenets of the three leading interaction theories. Next, I shall discuss what it might mean to say that an artwork has moral value, in an attempt to establish on what grounds interaction theories base their central claims. Subsequently, I will look at how our conception of art's moral value affects the possibility of a bona fide form of value interaction, or one capable of shaping a work's final value in conjunction with its aesthetic value. Finally, I shall turn to a discussion of the notion of aesthetic value. (shrink)

En este artículo evaluamos las fortalezas y limitaciones de dos enfoques que privilegian dimensiones materiales de la tecnología en sus respectivas teorías de la agencia técnica: la teoría ecológica de Tim Ingold y la teoría de la agencia material de Lambros Malafouris. Ambos autores rechazan la intencionalidad centralizada de enfoques clásicos a favor del externalismo, lo cual los lleva a sostener que los affordances ecológicos y materiales son los principales impulsores de la acción y los determinantes de la forma final (...) de los artefactos. Aquí argumentamos que estos enfoques tienen dificultades significativas para dar cuenta de algunas de las características claves de la agencia técnica ampliamente reconocidas en los debates en la filosofía de la tecnología, a saber, de sus aspectos normativos y teleológicos. (shrink)

Monroe C. Beardsley's unavailability argument is one of the most underrated anti‐intentionalist arguments in the philosophy of interpretation. The main idea of this argument is that, since independent evidence of authorial intent is normally unavailable, the literary interpreter should focus on what a text means rather than on what the author intends it to mean. In this article I propose a revised version of the argument to show that the unavailability of authorial intent suffices to make actual intentionalism untenable as (...) a recommendation for finding out textual meaning. (shrink)

Although the cinematic medium can be used in philosophically valuable ways, bold contentions about how films 'do philosophy' in an independent, innovative and exclusively cinematic manner are highly problematic. Philosophers' interpretations of the stories conveyed in cinematic fictions do not actually support such bold claims about film's independent philosophical value; nor do they offer adequate appreciations of the films' artistic value. Different kinds of interpretations having different goals and conditions of success should be kept in view if we are to (...) take a sufficiently critical perspective on contributions in this area. In particular, 'as if' interpretations in which a philosophical problematic is freely applied to elements of a movie's story are contrasted to interpretations that target a film author's actual philosophizing. (shrink)

This article examines the artistic potential of forms of image-making that involve registering the features of real objects using mind-independent processes. According to skeptics, these processes limit an agent’s intentional control over the features of the resultant “automatic images,” which in turn limits the artistic potential of the work, and the form as a whole. I argue that this is true only if intentional control is understood to mean that an agent produces the features of the work by their own (...) bodily movements alone. Not only is this an unrealistic standard to uphold, but I show that a definition of intentional control based on the skeptic’s position does not prohibit an agent from realizing the features of an image by means beyond their own actions. An agent can exercise intentional control over the features of an image if they successfully anticipate the effect that the remote consequences of their actions will have on these. This, I argue, entails that to exert intentional control over the features of an image is to exercise “creative agency,” which is a species of executive agency. Consequently, I defend the idea that the origin of automatic images in creative agency grounds their artistic significance. (shrink)

Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an assistant (...) or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. (shrink)

The statement “Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth” seems true in Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice (even though it may not actually appear in the text) while the statement “Mr. Darcy is a detective” seems false. One explanation for this intuition is that when we read or talk about fictional stories, we implicitly employ the fictional operator “It is fictional that” or “It is part of the story that.” “It is fictional that Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth” expresses a true proposition (...) while “It is fictional that Mr. Darcy is a detective” does not. Fictive statements can be abbreviated as “In F, P”. Determining what statements are fictionally true in a story requires providing truth conditions for statements of the form “In F, P.” This paper proposes an analysis of truth in fiction and examines the notion of make-believe. (shrink)

This article brings together two prominent topics in the literature over the past few decades—the ethical criticism of art and art interpretation. The article argues that debates about the ethical criticism of art have not acknowledged the fact that they are tacitly underpinned by a number of assumptions about art interpretation. I argue that the picture of interpretation that emerges from the analysis of these assumptions is best captured by moderate actual intentionalism. Reflection upon the nature of ethical criticism, I (...) argue, offers new reasons to prefer moderate actual intentionalism to hypothetical intentionalism. I conclude by arguing for the necessity of broadening our conception of ethical criticism. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that some intentional actions are not triggered by proximal intentions; i.e. there are actions which are intentional, but lack relevant proximal intentions in their immediate causal history. More specifically, I first introduce various properties of intentions. I then argue that some actions (such as some spontaneous actions) are triggered by mental states which lack properties typically ascribed to intentions, yet these actions are still intentional. The view that all intentional actions are triggered by proximal intentions (...) is thus false. (shrink)

In this thesis the appropriate aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes is explored. The overarching research question for this thesis is: What is an appropriate appreciation of a designed landscape as a designed landscape? This overarching research question is split into sub-questions. The first sub-question is: What is the current theoretical basis for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes and does it provide appropriate arguments for aesthetic evaluations? Two important points about the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes were found in the (...) existing literature on environmental aesthetics and in critical evaluations of designed landscapes. Modern environmental aesthetics is focussed on natural environments as it has been shaped in response to early 20th century aesthetics, which was dominated by questions on art. The designed landscape phenomenologically related more to environments, but is ontologically closely related to artworks. Designed landscapes thus fall between two fields. The designed landscape has gone largely unacknowledged by philosophers and geographers. The lack of a specific theory for the appropriate appreciation of designed landscapes has made it easier for landscape architects and critics to miss out on the current insights of environmental aesthetics, leading to the inconsistent belief among landscape architects and landscape architecture critics that landscapes are scenic entities. Actual design criticism as offered in the Landscape Architecture Europe books is shown to be based on the inconsistent belief that aesthetic experiences of works of landscape architecture are mostly visual. To explore what an appropriate appreciation should be based in, first the ontology and phenomenology of one example, the post-war design for the landscape of Walcheren, is described and discussed. To explore its ontology, a literature research has revealed the design process and decisions. To explore the phenomenology, the descriptions of two walks on the island made by the author were analysed. The descriptions of ontology and phenomenology of Walcheren offer insights into the relevance for the aesthetic evaluation of this landscape of being designed and of the sensorial richness of this designed landscape. In both fields of ontology and phenomenology insights into aesthetic value go beyond the visible. The second and third part of the research answers the sub-questions about appropriate appreciation regarding respectively ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in general. The literature on topics adjacent to the field of landscape architecture, such as design and architecture aesthetics, was surveyed for aspects that might also be relevant for the aesthetic evaluation of landscape architecture. These aspects were then weighed according to a philosophical method of reasoning from first principles. Starting from a principle of appropriate appreciation, different cues were tested to see whether or not they have to be considered in such an appropriate appreciation. Following descriptions of the True Appreciation Principle (TAP) as provided by Lopes, cues were tested against the Appropriate Appreciation Principle for Designed Landscapes (AAP-DL): An appreciation of landscape L as a designed landscape is appropriate only as far as it does not depend counterfactually on any belief that is inconsistent with the truth about the nature of designed landscapes. Examples are provided where cues can influence one’s evaluation, and evaluation thus depends counterfactually on those taking those cues into account. If something might influence one’s evaluation one should consider it. The exploration has provided important cues for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes. The findings are the base of an evaluative framework that takes into account the ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in order to evaluate designed landscapes according the AAP-DL. A discussion is provided on the importance of such an appropriate appreciation for different audiences. (shrink)