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  1. The concept of the aesthetic.James Shelley - 2017 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Introduced into the philosophical lexicon during the Eighteenth Century, the term ‘aesthetic’ has come to be used to designate, among other things, a kind of object, a kind of judgment, a kind of attitude, a kind of experience, and a kind of value. For the most part, aesthetic theories have divided over questions particular to one or another of these designations: whether artworks are necessarily aesthetic objects; how to square the allegedly perceptual basis of aesthetic judgments with the fact that (...)
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  • Against the Fundamentality of GOOD.Nandi Theunissen - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    The argument that is in question in this article concerns the would-be dependence of one form of value on another. When something is intrinsically good for someone, which is to say, directly beneficial for them, it is so because it is good simpliciter. Proponents of the argument have so-called ‘perfectionist’ values chiefly in mind: worthwhile artworks, striking natural formations, intellectual and scientific achievements. They contend that the fact that engaging with perfectionist goods is non-instrumentally good for people depends on the (...)
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  • Aesthetic properties.Sonia Sedivy - 2024 - In A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Properties. London: Routledge.
    Aesthetic properties figure prominently in our daily lives, our conversations and many actions we take. Yet theoretical disagreement prevails over their nature, their variety, their epistemic and metaphysical status. This overview highlights the heterogeneity of aesthetic properties and examines repercussions for explanation. Aesthetic properties belong to natural objects or scenes, to artworks in any medium, to artefacts and built environments across historical eras; and they draw a wide variety of responses such as our perceptions, emotions or imaginative thought. Historicism about (...)
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  • Categorizing Art.Kiyohiro Sen - 2024 - Dissertation, University of Tokyo
    This dissertation examines the practice of categorizing works of art and its relationship to art criticism. How a work of art is categorized influences how it is appreciated and criticized. Being frightening is a merit for horror, but a demerit for lullabies. The brushstrokes in Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" (1874) look crude when seen as a Neoclassical painting, but graceful when seen as an Impressionist painting. Many of the judgments we make about artworks are category-dependent in this way, but previous research (...)
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  • Response-Dependence and Aesthetic Theory.Alex King - 2023 - In Chris Howard & Rach Cosker-Rowland (eds.), Fittingness. OUP. pp. 309-326.
    Response-dependence theories have historically been very popular in aesthetics, and aesthetic response-dependence has motivated response-dependence in ethics. This chapter closely examines the prospects for such theories. It breaks this category down into dispositional and fittingness strands of response-dependence, corresponding to descriptive and normative ideal observer theories. It argues that the latter have advantages over the former but are not themselves without issue. Special attention is paid to the relationship between hedonism and response-dependence. The chapter also introduces two aesthetic properties that (...)
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  • Aesthetic Values Are Distal Versions of Practical Values.Tom Cochrane - 2022 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81 (1):83-84.
    I believe the first thing to say about value is that it is something that we do. We value things. There is no value out there independent of valuing beings. Thi.
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  • The Aesthetics of Crossword Puzzles.Robbie Kubala - 2023 - British Journal of Aesthetics 63 (3):381-394.
    This paper develops an aesthetics of crossword puzzles. I present a taxonomy of crosswords in the Anglophone world and argue that there are three distinct sources of aesthetic value in crosswords. First, and in common with other puzzles, crosswords merit aesthetic experiences of our own agency: paradigmatically, the aesthetic experience of struggling for and hitting upon the right solution. In addition to instantiating the aesthetic value of puzzles in general, crosswords in particular can have two other sources of aesthetic value: (...)
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  • What Makes Value Aesthetic?Antonia Peacocke - 2023 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81 (1):94-95.
    The aesthetic value of an object is fully grounded in the distinctive value of the proper experience of that object.
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  • Notes on Aesthetic Value.Robert Stecker - 2023 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81 (1):103-104.
    Aesthetic experience and aesthetic value are intimately connected. There are some who think the connection has been overblown and has misled philosophers to mis.
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  • A Sensible Experientialism?James Grant - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1):53–79.
    Experientialism in aesthetics is the view that the artistic merit or the aesthetic value of something is determined by the final value of certain experiences of it. These are usually specified as experiences of it with understanding and appreciation. Until recently, experientialism was the dominant view. Not anymore. Experientialists are now subject to a barrage of objections, many of which they have not answered. Here I argue that all of these objections fail. I develop a new form of experientialism that (...)
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  • Reasons, normativity, and value in aesthetics.Alex King - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 17 (1):1-17.
    Discussions of aesthetic reasons and normativity are becoming increasingly popular. This piece outlines six basic questions about aesthetic reasons, normativity, and value and discusses the space of possible answers to these questions. I divide the terrain into two groups of three questions each. First are questions about the shape of aesthetic reasons: what they favour, how strong they are, and where they come from. Second are relational questions about how aesthetic reasons fit into the wider normative landscape: whether they are (...)
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  • Aesthetic Agency.Keren Gorodeisky - 2022 - In Luca Ferrero (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Agency. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 456-466.
    Until very recently, there has been no discussion of aesthetic agency. This is likely because aesthetics has traditionally focused not on action, but on appreciation, while the standard approach identifies ‘agency’ with the will, and, more specifically, with the capacity for intentional action. In this paper, I argue, first, that this identification is unfortunate since it fails to do justice to the fact that we standardly attribute beliefs, emotions, desires, and other conative and affective attitudes that aren’t formed ‘at will,’ (...)
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  • Admiration, Appreciation, and Aesthetic Worth.Daniel Whiting - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (2):375-389.
    What is aesthetic appreciation? In this paper, I approach this question in an indirection fashion. First, I introduce the Kantian notion of moral worthy action and an influential analysis of it. Next, I generalise that analysis from the moral to the aesthetic domain, and from actions to affects. Aesthetic appreciation, I suggest, consists in an aesthetically worthy affective response. After unpacking the proposal, I show that it has non-trivial implications while cohering with a number of existing insights concerning the nature (...)
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  • Toward a Communitarian Theory of Aesthetic Value.Nick Riggle - 2022 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80 (1):16-30.
    Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories of aesthetic value are typically individualistic, in the sense that the paradigms they are designed to capture, and the questions to which they are offered as answers, center the individual’s engagement with aesthetic value. Here I offer some considerations that suggest that such individualism is a mistake and sketch a communitarian way of posing and answering questions about the nature of aesthetic value.
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  • The authority of pleasure.Keren Gorodeisky - 2021 - Noûs 55 (1):199-220.
    The aim of the paper is to reassess the prospects of a widely neglected affective conception of the aesthetic evaluation and appreciation of art. On the proposed picture, the aesthetic evaluation and appreciation of art are non-contingently constituted by a particular kind of pleasure. Artworks that are valuable qua artworks merit, deserve, and call for a certain pleasure, the same pleasure that reveals (or at least purports to reveal) them to be valuable in the way that they are, and constitutes (...)
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  • Normativity, Agency, and Value: A View from Aesthetics.Dominic McIver Lopes - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (1):232-242.
    Being for Beauty has two ambitions. It makes a case that the network theory of aesthetic value has enough going for it to be taken seriously in philosophical aesthetics, and in work on practical values and reasons more generally. In addition, by illustrating how much room we have to maneuver outside the bounds of aesthetic hedonism, the book invites work on alternative approaches. James Shelley, Julia Driver, and Samantha Matherne take up the invitation with such aplomb that one might declare (...)
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  • Let’s be Liberal: An Alternative to Aesthetic Hedonism.Antonia Peacocke - 2021 - British Journal of Aesthetics 61 (2):163-183.
    Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is (...)
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  • Aesthetic practices and normativity.Robbie Kubala - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2):408–425.
    What should we do, aesthetically speaking, and why? Any adequate theory of aesthetic normativity must distinguish reasons internal and external to aesthetic practices. This structural distinction is necessary in order to reconcile our interest in aesthetic correctness with our interest in aesthetic value. I consider three case studies—score compliance in musical performance, the look of a mowed lawn, and literary interpretation—to show that facts about the correct actions to perform and the correct attitudes to have are explained by norms internal (...)
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  • Cultural appropriation and aesthetic normativity.Phyllis Pearson - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1285-1299.
    Is it ever aesthetically permissible to engage in acts of cultural appropriation? This paper shows how recent work on aesthetic normativity can help answer this question. Drawing on the work of Lopes and McGonigal, I argue that in many cases those who engage in cultural appropriation act against their aesthetic reasons. Lopes and McGonigal advocate for externalist accounts of aesthetic reasons according to which whether or not an agent has an aesthetic reason to act depends on whether or not their (...)
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  • The arts of action.C. Thi Nguyen - 2020 - Philosophers' Imprint 20 (14):1-27.
    The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the (...)
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  • Aesthetic Hedonism and Its Critics.Servaas Van der Berg - 2020 - Philosophy Compass 15 (1):e12645.
    This essay surveys the main objections to aesthetic hedonism, the view that aesthetic value is reducible to the value of aesthetic pleasure or experience. Hedonism is the dominant view of aesthetic value, but a spate of recent criticisms has drawn its accuracy into question. I introduce some distinctions crucial to the criticisms, before using the bulk of the essay to identify and review six major lines of argument that hedonism's critics have employed against it. Whether or not these arguments suffice (...)
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  • Artistic Value is Attributive Goodness.Louise Hanson - 2017 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (4):415-427.
    It is common to distinguish between attributive and predicative goodness. There are good reasons to think that artistic value is a kind of attributive goodness. Surprisingly, however, much debate in philosophical aesthetics has proceeded as though artistic value is a kind of predicative goodness. As I shall argue, recognising that artistic value is attributive goodness has important consequences for a number of debates in aesthetics.
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  • Beauty, The Social Network.Dominic McIver Lopes - 2017 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (4):437-453.
    Aesthetic values give agents reasons to perform not only acts of contemplation, but also acts like editing, collecting, and conserving. Moreover, aesthetic agents rarely operate solo: they conduct their business as integral members of networks of other aesthetic agents. The consensus theory of aesthetic value, namely that an item’s aesthetic value is its power to evoke a finally valuable experience in a suitable spectator, can explain neither the range of acts performed by aesthetic agents nor the social contexts in which (...)
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  • Art Forms Emerging: An Approach to Evaluative Diversity in Art.Mohan Matthen - 2020 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78 (3):303-318.
    An artwork in one culture and form, say European classical music, cannot be evaluated in the context of another, say Hindustani music. While a person educated in the traditions of European music can rationally evaluate and discuss her response to a string quartet by Beethoven, her response to music in a foreign culture is merely subjective. She might "like" the latter, but her response is merely subjective. In this paper, I discuss the role of artforms: why response can be "objectively" (...)
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  • Response-dependence about aesthetic value.Michael Watkins & James Shelley - 2012 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3):338-352.
    The dominant view about the nature of aesthetic value holds it to be response-dependent. We believe that the dominance of this view owes largely to some combination of the following prevalent beliefs: 1 The belief that challenges brought against response-dependent accounts in other areas of philosophy are less challenging when applied to response-dependent accounts of aesthetic value. 2 The belief that aesthetic value is instrumental and that response-dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates this purported fact. 3 The belief that response-dependence (...)
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