In this paper, I defend the claim that a philosophical anthropology inspired by the Classical Pragmatists, while being explicitly naturalistic, can avoid biological reductionism and environmental determinism, as well as dogmatic forms of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism, insofar as it offers a picture of human nature as historical and contingent, dynamically constituted through interactions with a natural, naturally social, and enculturated environment. Cultural naturalism, I suggest, provides the theoretical framework for a pragmatist anthropology that includes at least two pivotal claims. (...) The first is the idea that continuity is not linear but circular: it implies a kind of feedback action of new organizations of resources and energies on pre-existing forms of organic-environmental interaction. A second claim regards an anti-transcendental stance, emphasizing that the transformation of animal environments into a highly social, habitualized, and enlanguaged environment is entirely contingent, albeit irreversible, and makes a capital difference within the continuity of animal life. (shrink)

Especialmente ante la consideración de las obras de arte como objetos Intencionales, radicalmente distintos de los objetos meramente físicos, surge la pregunta acerca de la posibilidad de objetividad en los juicios críticos sobre arte. Con esta interrogante como hilo conductor, en el siguiente trabajo se intentará sostener que, sobre todo en el marco de la tradición analítica de este problema, la propuesta de Margolis parece ser la apuesta más sólida, ya que logra responder a los desafíos que sugiere el peculiar (...) carácter de las obras de arte. Además, propondré que el concepto de intersubjetividad histórica permite hacerse cargo adecuadamente de los retos y dificultades que suponen las obras de arte y enunciaré las ventajas de este término en relación con el de “objetividad”. (shrink)

Joseph Margolis holds that both artworks and selves are ”culturally emergent entities." Culturally emergent entities are distinct from and not reducible to natural or physical entities. Artworks are thus not reducible to their physical media; a painting is thus not paint on canvas and music is not sound. In a similar vein, selves or persons are not reducible to biology, and thought is not reducible to the physical brain. Both artworks and selves thus have two ongoing and inseparable ”evolutions”—one cultural (...) and one physical. Rather than having fixed ”natures” that remain stable for any purpose other than numerical identity, artworks and selves have ”careers” due to their cultural evolution that change with the course and flux of history, interpretation and reinterpretation. The question for this essay is how a Margolisian encultured artist, who is also an individual ”self," can construct an identifiable ”career” that is both from culture and develops culture constructively in a way that involves an individual, as well as collective, contribution. In answering this question I will provide a theory that shows how Margolis’ work on the artist as cultural agent leaves room for creative innovators within a cultural context. In short, I claim that Margolis’ idea that a person is a thinking-and-doing practitioner that emerges from and works within a cultural context does allow for the agent to use that same context to acquire the tools and skills necessary to make something new. I will then consider how this innovation might be possible by making recourse to some theories of creativity from neuroscience and psychology. This essay will focus on Margolis’ theory of the creative artist as cultural agent as supplemented with an account of the nature of the human being as a raw set of genetic materials and capacity for acquiring cultural competence. My claim is that this is the site for an adequate account of how some encultured persons are able to create exceptional innovations in artistic domains and others are not. I agree with Margolis that it is true that innovation is not possible by any pre- or non-encultured self but I also think that extremes of cultural mastery and innovation, as in the case of highly creative and innovative artists, are not possible without an inborn potentiality to develop to a high level of cultural ability under the right conditions. This is not to deny Margolis’ theory of artists as cultural agents. Indeed, I accept Margolis’ view of the deep importance of culture to the development of the self and to the creative artist wholeheartedly. I also agree that this is a crucial aspect of artistic agency and creativity that has been given short shrift in analytic aesthetics. My intention here is only to answer one question that is still left unanswered after understanding and acknowledging the importance of culture: How do we account for the disparity in ability in cultural agents and artists that cannot be attributed to cultural training and socio-historical factors? How do we account for the existence of the exceptionally creative artist in a situation where the cultural and socio-historical factors are roughly equivalent for others who demonstrate lesser amounts of creativity? (shrink)

This is an 18,500 word bibliography of philosophical scholarship on Beauty which was published online in the Oxford Bibliographies Online. The entry includes an Introduction of 800 words, 21 x 400-word sub-themes and 168 annotated references. INTRODUCTION Philosophical interest in beauty began with the earliest recorded philosophers. Beauty was deemed to be an essential ingredient in a good life and so what it was, where it was to be found and how it was to be included in a life were (...) prime considerations. The way beauty has been conceived has been influenced by an author’s other philosophical commitments, metaphysical, epistemological and ethical and such commitments reflect the historical and cultural position of the author. For example, beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth to which we respond with love and adoration; beauty is a harmony of the soul which we achieve through cultivating feeling in a rational and tempered way; beauty is an idea raised in us by certain objective features of the world; beauty is a sentiment which can nonetheless be cultivated to be appropriate to its object; beauty is the object of a judgment by which we exercise the social, comparative and inter-subjective elements of cognition and so on. Such views on beauty not only reveal underlying philosophical commitments but also reflect positive contributions to understanding the nature of value and the relation of mind and world. One way to distinguish between beauty theories is according to the conception of the human being that they assume or imply, for example, where they fall on the continuum from determinism to free will, ungrounded notions of compatibilism notwithstanding. For example, theories at the latter end might carve out a sense of genuine innovation and creativity in human endeavours while at the other end of the spectrum authors may conceive of beauty as an environmental trigger for consumption, procreation or preservation in the interests of the individual. Treating beauty experiences as in some respect intentional, characterises beauty theory prior to the twentieth century and since, mainly in historically inspired writing on beauty. On the other hand, treating beauty as affect or sensation has always had its representatives and is most visible today in evolutionary inspired accounts of beauty (though not all evolutionary accounts fit this classification). Beauty theory falls under some combination of metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, aesthetics and psychology. While in the twentieth century beauty was more likely to be conceived as an evaluative concept for art, recent philosophical interest in beauty can again be seen to exercise arguments pertaining to metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, philosophy of meaning and language in addition to philosophy of art and environmental aesthetics. (shrink)

Roberta Dreon - Richard Shusterman is one of the leading figures in the current field of pragmatist aesthetics and he has undoubtedly played a pivotal role in recovering a pragmatist approach to aesthetics. His book Pragmatist Aesthetics was simultaneously published in France under the title L’Art à l’état vif. La pensée pragmatiste et l’esthétique populaire in 1992, paving the way for a long awaited French translation of Dewey’s Art as Experience (Dewey 1989) in 2010 (Dewey 2005/2010), beaut...

This paper aims to map and highlight the diverse heritage of Pragmatism in aesthetics. It argues that pragmatist aesthetics represents an interesting third way of doing aesthetics beyond the analytic philosophy of art and continental aesthetics. It offers a first, provisional sketch of existing research trends in pragmatist aesthetics, such as somaesthetics, environmental aesthetics, everyday aesthetics, and social aesthetics. Furthermore, it identifies some “family resemblances” connecting most pragmatist “relatives” in the field of aesthetics: the idea that (1) aesthetics is broader (...) than the traditional philosophy of art, (2) the criticism of the view of art as constituting an independent realm or an autonomous system, (3) the thesis of a basic continuity between artistic practices and experience “in the raw,” (4) the adoption of a naturalistic yet non-reductive stance, and (5) a broadly socio-political inspiration. (shrink)

I. Introduction A perennial concern among Peirce commentators has been the articulation of Peirce’s model of individual selfhood which underwrites his notion of self-control. A sticking point for most accounts is that Peirce seems to characterize the self along two different lines, at times describing it as a sign and produced by a community while at others characterizing it primarily in terms of embodiment and continuity with the rest of nature. However, if we adopt a view of Peirce’s evolut...