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 (...) artworks carries over to at least some aesthetic properties that depend on facts of their broader historical context just as works do. One issue is whether aesthetic properties can be demarcated solely in terms of non-aesthetic properties. If not, explanations of aesthetic properties need to draw on other aesthetic notions such as aesthetic experience, attention, judgement or value. The paper examines several accounts of aesthetic value to show how they extend to aesthetic properties. The paper concludes with an overview of the current metaphysical debate between realists and non-realists about aesthetic properties. (shrink)

What kinds of issues does the global crisis of climate change present to aesthetics, and how will they challenge the field to respond? This paper argues that a new research agenda is needed for aesthetics with respect to global climate change (GCC) and outlines a set of foundational issues which are especially pressing: (1) attention to environments that have been neglected by philosophers, for example, the cryosphere and aerosphere; (2) negative aesthetics of environment, in order to grasp aesthetic experiences, meanings, (...) and dis/values in light of the catastrophic effects of GCC; (3) bringing intergenerational thinking into aesthetics through concepts of temporality and 'future aesthetics' (4) understanding the relationship between aesthetic and ethical values as they arise in regard to GCC. (shrink)

Aesthetic internalism claims a link between judgement and motivation: aesthetic judgements bring with them motivations to act in characteristic ways. Critics object that there is a difference between merely liking something and judging it to be aesthetically good, and that it is our likings, not our aesthetic judgements, that motivate us. This paper develops a version of aesthetic internalism that can respond to this criticism. Wholehearted aesthetic judgements are characterized by stability, attention, and motivation. Making such judgements is an important (...) part of a good life, and so at least some aesthetic judgements are motivating. So we have reason to think that this version of aesthetic internalism is true. This paper defends wholehearted aesthetic internalism against objections, and assesses an argument from aesthetic internalism to aesthetic non-cognitivism. While wholehearted aesthetic internalism can only offer qualified support to non-cognitivism, it nonetheless offers a number of fruitful avenues for further work. (shrink)

Aesthetics in philosophy of mathematics is too narrowly construed. Beauty is not the only feature in mathematics that is arguably aesthetic. While not the highest aesthetic value, being interesting is a sine qua non for publishability. Of the many ways to be interesting, being explanatory has recently been discussed. The motivational power of what is interesting is important for both directing research and stimulating education. The scientific satisfaction of curiosity and the artistic desire for beautiful results are complementary but both (...) aesthetic. (shrink)

<P>While there are many books on the romantics, and many books on Heidegger, there has been no book exploring the connection between the two. Pol Vandevelde’s new study forges this important link. </P> <P>Vandevelde begins by analyzing two models that have addressed the interaction between literature and philosophy: early German romanticism (especially Schlegel and Novalis), and Heidegger’s work with poetry in the 1930s. Both models offer an alternative to the paradigm of mimesis, as exemplified by Aristotle’s and Plato’s discussion of (...) poetry, and both German romanticism and Heidegger owe a deep debt to Plato. The study goes on to defend the view that Heidegger was influenced by romanticism. The author’s project is thus both historical, showing the specificity of the romantic and Heideggerean works, and systematic, defending aspects of their alternative mode of thinking while also pointing to their weaknesses. </P>. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relationship between the epistemic and aesthetic criteria employed in such judgements, and on the nature of the psychological experiences underpinning them. I claim that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are plausibly understood as expressions of what I will call ‘aesthetic-epistemic feelings’ that serve a genuine cognitive and epistemic function. I will then propose a naturalistic account of these feelings in terms of sub-personal processes of representing and (...) assessing the relation between cognitive processes and certain properties of the stimuli at which they are directed. (shrink)

A philosophical exploration of aesthetic experience during bereavement. In Aesthetics of Grief and Mourning, philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins reflects on the ways that aesthetics aids people experiencing loss. Some practices related to bereavement, such as funerals, are scripted, but many others are recursive, improvisational, mundane—telling stories, listening to music, and reflecting on art or literature. Higgins shows how these grounding, aesthetic practices can ease the disorienting effects of loss, shedding new light on the importance of aesthetics for personal and communal (...) flourishing. (shrink)

Aesthetic preferences and practices vary widely between individuals and between cultures. How should aesthetics proceed if we take this fact of aesthetic diversity, rather than the presumption of aesthetic universality, as our starting point? How should we theorize the cultural origins and cultural basis of aesthetic diversity? How should we think about the value and normativity of aesthetic diversity? In an effort to model what the turn toward diversity might look like in aesthetic inquiry, each author defends a different account (...) of aesthetic diversity, and they engage in a collective dialogue about these issues. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain why creativity is an artistic merit. Artworks and non-artworks can both be creative. But creativity does not help make many other creative things good of their kind. A creative explanation is not a better explanation in virtue of being creative. Why, then, is a creative artwork a better artwork in virtue of being creative? Understanding this will give us a better understanding of the nature of artistic merit. The approach adopted in this (...) paper is as follows. First, I say what creativity is and what an artistic merit is. Second, I identify reasons to doubt that creativity is an artistic merit. A good explanation of the merit of creativity should address these doubts. Third, I develop a theory of artistic merit that appeals to the final value of acting excellently – for example, virtuously or skilfully. Finally, I argue that this enables us to explain why creativity is an artistic merit. This account also enables us to argue that artistic merits give some things final value, and not merely instrumental value. It also provides reason to believe that ethical qualities of artworks enhance their artistic merit for the same reason creativity does. (shrink)

The conception of disinterested pleasure is not only central to Kant’s theory of beauty but also highly influential in contemporary philosophical discourse about beauty. However, it remains unclear, what exactly disinterested pleasure is and what role it plays in experiences of beauty. This volume sheds new light on the conception of disinterested pleasure from the perspectives of both Kant scholarship and contemporary aesthetics. In the first part, the focus is on Kant’s theory of beauty as grounded on the conception of (...) disinterested pleasure. In the second part, disinterested pleasure is investigated in the light of contemporary debates on beauty. The third part is dedicated to the relation of theories of disinterested pleasure to the meta-aesthetical debate between realism and anti-realism. The volume clarifies the meaning, role, and implications of one of the most influential conceptions in traditional as well as contemporary approaches to beauty. (shrink)

This volume announces a new era in the philosophy of God. Many of its contributions work to create stronger links between the philosophy of God, on the one hand, and mathematics or metamathematics, on the other hand. It is about not only the possibilities of applying mathematics or metamathematics to questions about God, but also the reverse question: Does the philosophy of God have anything to offer mathematics or metamathematics? The remaining contributions tackle stereotypes in the philosophy of religion. The (...) volume includes 35 contributions. It is divided into nine parts: 1. Who Created the Concept of God; 2. Omniscience, Omnipotence, Timelessness and Spacelessness of God; 3. God and Perfect Goodness, Perfect Beauty, Perfect Freedom; 4. God, Fundamentality and Creation of All Else; 5. Simplicity and Ineffability of God; 6. God, Necessity and Abstract Objects; 7. God, Infinity, and Pascal's Wager; 8. God and (Meta-)Mathematics; and 9. God and Mind. (shrink)

Philosophy and Literature is an internationally renowned refereed journal founded by Denis Dutton at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. It is now published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Since its inception in 1976, Philosophy and Literature has been concerned with the relation between literary and philosophical studies, publishing articles on the philosophical interpretation of literature as well as the literary treatment of philosophy. Philosophy and Literature has sometimes been regarded as iconoclastic, in the sense that it repudiates academic pretensions, (...) insidious jargon and institutional vogue. Dutton, who remains the editor, still writes a regular column. A distinctive feature of Philosophy and Literature was the annual Bad Writing Contest, held from 1995–98, which sought to identify (and publish) the ‘most stylistically lamentable passages’ of academic prose, often to great amusement. (shrink)

Disagreement is common: even informed, intelligent, and generally reasonable people often come to different conclusions when confronted with what seems to be the same evidence. Can the competing conclusions be reasonable? If not, what can we reasonably think about the situation? This volume examines the epistemology of disagreement. Philosophical questions about disagreement arise in various areas, notably politics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion: but this will be the first book focusing on the general epistemic issues arising from informed (...) disagreement. Ten leading philosophers offer specially written essays which together will offer a starting-point for future work on this topic. (shrink)

Abstract Disagreement persists concerning whether aesthetic properties supervene on non-aesthetic properties. This issue is complicated by the fact that the notion of an aesthetic property is itself contentious. In this paper, I begin by identifying three conditions that arguably characterize a large number of aesthetic properties. After defending aesthetic supervenience against a number of objections, I argue that a strong version of the supervenience thesis applies to those properties that satisfy my initial conditions.

What is the nature of the concept BEAUTY? Does it differ fundamentally from nearby concepts such as PRETTINESS? It is argued that BEAUTY, but not PRETTINESS, is a dual-character concept. Across a number of contexts, it is proposed that BEAUTY has a descriptive sense that is characterised by, inter alia, having intrinsically pleasing appearances; and a normative sense associated with deeply-held values. This account is supported across two, pre-registered, studies (N=500), and by drawing on analysis of corpus data. It is (...) suggested that this can help to explain why beauty, unlike prettiness, is thought to be deep in both the sense of being important, and in the sense of being less closely tied to sensory surfaces. (shrink)

On several current views, including those of Matthew Kieran, Gary Iseminger, Jerrold Levinson, and Noël Carroll, aesthetic appreciation or experience involves second-order awareness of one’s own mental processes. But what if it turns out that we don’t have introspective access to the processes by which our aesthetic responses are produced? I summarize several problems for introspective accounts that emerge from the psychological literature: aesthetic responses are affected by irrelevant conditions; they fail to be affected by relevant conditions; we are ignorant (...) of their causes and thus confabulate in explaining them; our attempts to offer explanations change our preferences; and the preferences we form after explanation are lower in quality. I suggest that by distinguishing introspective awareness of mental processes from introspective awareness of mental states, we can safeguard a worthwhile concept of aesthetic experience. In addition, we should recognize that theoretical, rather than introspective, understanding of our mental processes may play a valuable role in aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

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 (...) has rarely examined in depth the ontological structure of art categories, how they are generated and maintained, and how they function. This dissertation fills this gap. The proposal of this dissertation can be summarized as follows. Categories (especially genres) should be analyzed as clusters of rules that regulate the responses and behaviors of agents in the artworld. The visual mundaneness is a critical reason to consider Duchamp's "Comb" (1916) provocative, given the existence of the readymade as a set of rules that justifies such reasoning. The critical and appreciative practice of which categorization is a part is a social practice of making, declaring, proposing, reforming, and developing rules of appreciation. How we appreciate artworks, and how criticism guides our appreciation, is sensitive to how we categorize artworks. How we categorize artworks is sensitive to what categories have been set up in our community and which categories are active regarding each artwork. (shrink)

This paper applies the account developed by Susanna Siegel in The Rationality of Perception to aesthetic cases and explores the implications of such an account for aesthetic engagement as well as curatorial and exhibitionary practices. It argues that one’s prior outlook – expertise, beliefs, desires, fears, preferences, attitudes – can have both aesthetically good and bad influences on perceptual experiences, just as it can have both epistemically good and bad influences. Analysing these bad influences in cases of ‘hijacked’ aesthetic perception (...) will reveal that, unless we recognize that our perception of high-level and low-level aesthetically relevant properties is norm-governed, we will be at a loss to explain what goes wrong in these cases. Just as perception can be rational or irrational, so too can it be apt or inapt. (shrink)

This book develops a naturalistic aesthetic theory that accounts for aesthetic phenomena in mathematics in the same terms as it accounts for more traditional aesthetic phenomena. Building upon a view advanced by James McAllister, the assertion is that beauty in science does not confine itself to anecdotes or personal idiosyncrasies, but rather that it had played a role in shaping the development of science. Mathematicians often evaluate certain pieces of mathematics using words like beautiful, elegant, or even ugly. Such evaluations (...) are prevalent, however, rigorous investigation of them, of mathematical beauty, is much less common. The volume integrates the basic elements of aesthetics, as it has been developed over the last 200 years, with recent findings in neuropsychology as well as a good knowledge of mathematics. The volume begins with a discussion of the reasons to interpret mathematical beauty in a literal or non-literal fashion, which also serves to survey historical and contemporary approaches to mathematical beauty. The author concludes that literal approaches are much more coherent and fruitful, however, much is yet to be done. In this respect two chapters are devoted to the revision and improvement of McAllister’s theory of the role of beauty in science. These antecedents are used as a foundation to formulate a naturalistic aesthetic theory. The central idea of the theory is that aesthetic phenomena should be seen as constituting a complex dynamical system which the author calls the aesthetic as process theory. The theory comprises explications of three central topics: aesthetic experience, aesthetic value and aesthetic judgment. The theory is applied in the final part of the volume and is used to account for the three most salient and often used aesthetic terms often used in mathematics: beautiful, elegant and ugly. This application of the theory serves to illustrate the theory in action, but also to further discuss and develop some details and to showcase the theory’s explanatory capabilities. (shrink)

The paper argued for the obligation of architects to make buildings buildings that people will find 'beautiful'. Whilst an obligation to accessible beauty is universal to humanity, its satsfaction can be local for a ny culture. Four objections to the thesis are discussed, but the conclusion is that, amongst the several moral obligations architects are faced with, that to provide accessible beauty is a fundamental obligation.

Aesthetic perception is one of the most interesting topics for philosophers and scientists who investigate how it influences our interactions with objects and states of affairs. Over the last few years, several studies have attempted to determine “how aesthetics is represented in an object,” and how a specific feature of an object could evoke the respective feelings during perception. Despite the vast number of approaches and models, we believe that these explanations do not resolve the problem concerning the conditions under (...) which aesthetic perception occurs, and what constitutes the content of these perceptions. Adopting a naturalistic perspective, we here view aesthetic perception as a normative process that enables agents to enhance their interactions with physical and socio-cultural environments. Considering perception as an anticipatory and preparatory process of detection and evaluation of indications of potential interactions, we argue that the minimal content of aesthetic perception is an emotionally valued indication of interaction potentiality. Aesthetic perception allows an agent to normatively anticipate interaction potentialities, thus increasing sense making and reducing the uncertainty of interaction. This conception of aesthetic perception is compatible with contemporary evidence from neuroscience, experimental aesthetics, and interaction design. The proposed model overcomes several problems of transcendental, art-centered, and objective aesthetics as it offers an alternative to the idea of aesthetic objects that carry inherent values by explaining “the aesthetic” as emergent in perception within a context of uncertain interaction. (shrink)

Aesthetic attitude theories suggest we must attend disinterestedly to the properties of objects to experience aesthetic delight in them: we view them without regard to their use for us. Bence Nanay’s recent revival of the concept explains it through the distribution of our attention over the many properties of individual objects. While agreeing with Nanay’s approach, I argue such perception presupposes certain intentionality towards the object in the Fregean-Husserlian sense. Whether we see the same object as informative or aesthetically gratifying (...) depends on whether we understand it as, say, a map or as a work of design or art. Furthermore, intending an object as aesthetic means we treat it as internally coherent: its properties are defined in relation to one another, rather than the purposes of a subject. This, I conclude, even affects the presentation of historical or moral values that obviously originate outside the object of aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

Aestheticians generally agree that the aesthetic features of an object depend upon the non-aesthetic features of an object, and that this dependence can be captured by some formulation of the supervenience relation. I argue that the aesthetic depends upon the non-aesthetic in various and importantly different ways; that these dependence relations cannot be explained by supervenience; that appeals to supervenience create puzzles that aestheticians have neither fully appreciated nor resolved; and that appealing to various realization relations avoids these puzzles and (...) allows for a richer description of how the aesthetic depends upon the non-aesthetic. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to claim that, in conformity with overall intuitions, there are some aesthetic properties that are perceivable. For they are high-level properties that are not only grasped immediately, but also attended to holistically—just like the grouping properties they depend on and that are responsible for the Gestalt effects or switches through which they are grasped. Yet, unlike such grouping properties, they are holistically attended to in a disinterested modality, where objects and their properties are regarded for (...) their own sake. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a new conception of religious justifications which takes the performance of miracles as the paradigm of reasoning in religion. The paper has two parts: In the first part, I argue against Swinburne’s parity argument for the existence of God by showing that religious perceptions fit more comfortably among aspect perceptions, e.g., the perceptions of beauty and courage, than among our perceptions of objects and colors. In the second part of the paper I employ the (...) analogy between seeing God and seeing beauty and the moral features of an act to propose a performative and transformative conception of religious reasoning. I argue that an argument in religion is a performance which brings various facts or events into life in a particular manner, so that God may be seen in or through them. Any such performance through which God is seen may be properly called a "miracle". Thus, the performance of miracles, i.e., of acts that are directed at becoming the vehicles throu. (shrink)

This paper discusses the viability of claims of mathematical beauty, asking whether mathematical beauty, if indeed there is such a thing, should be conceived of as a sub-variety of the more commonplace kinds of beauty: natural, artistic and human beauty; or, rather, as a substantive variety in its own right. If the latter, then, per the argument, it does not show itself in perceptual awareness – because perceptual presence is what characterises the commonplace kinds of beauty, and mathematical beauty is (...) not among these. I conclude that the reference to mathematical beauty merely expresses the awe in the mathematician about the intricate complexities and simplicity of certain proofs, theorems or mathematical “objects.”. (shrink)

Noël Carroll proposes a generalist theory of art criticism, which essentially involves evaluations of artworks on the basis of their success value, at the cost of rendering evaluations of reception value irrelevant to criticism. In this article, I argue for a hybrid account of art criticism, which incorporates Carroll's objective model but puts Carroll-type evaluations in the service of evaluations of reception value. I argue that this hybrid model is supported by Kant's theory of taste. Hence, I not only present (...) an alternative theory of metacriticism, which has the merit of reinstating the centrality of reception value in art critics’ evaluations, but also show that, contrary to a common conception, Kant's aesthetic theory can house a fruitful account of art criticism. The benefit of this hybrid account is that, despite being essentially particularist, it should be appealing even to generalists, including Carroll. (shrink)

Contemporary analytic aesthetics has seen a heated debate about whether there are general critical principles that determine the merits/demerits of an artwork. The so-called generalists say ‘yes’, whereas the so-called particularists say ‘no’. On the particularists’ view, a feature that is a merit in one artwork might well turn out to be a defect in another, so critical principles purporting to define merits and defects are pretty much in vain. Against this, the generalists argue that while some features change their (...) status in the way suggested by the particularists not all features do; there are still some features that remain merits or defects across different contexts; these are what the generalists call ‘primary features’. If so, the generalists maintain that there are still general critical principles generated by these primary features. In this article, I provide a limited defence of particularism by critically assessing three arguments for the existence of such primary features. I first argue that Beardsley’s invariable and explanatory conception of primary features is too strong, such that there is no compelling reason for us to believe in their existence. I then argue that Sibley’s prima facie conception and Dickie’s isolation conception of primary features are both too weak—in other words, even if primary features of these kinds exist, they do not generate the sort of critical principles that the particularists reject. Finally, I argue that Connolly and Haydar’s recent attempt to revive the Beardsleyan conception fails. As a result, I contend that there is reason to believe that particularism remains as a live option. (shrink)

This paper develops a form of realism about aesthetics that is stronger than typical versions of aesthetic realism. As I conceive of it, aesthetic realism is the view that there are some response-independent aesthetic facts. This kind of realism is unpopular in aesthetics and is often viewed as a non-starter. Against this pessimism, I argue that the prospects for this realist approach are more favorable than commonly supposed. I offer some reasons to prefer my brand of aesthetic realism to competing (...) realist and anti-realist positions. I also defend this aesthetic realism against what I call the ‘overly objective worry’ and correct misconceptions about what realism’s commitment to response-independence involves. (shrink)

In this article I examine the status of putative aesthetic judgements in science and mathematics. I argue that if the judgements at issue are taken to be genuinely aesthetic they can be divided into two types, positing either a disjunction or connection between aesthetic and epistemic criteria in theory/proof assessment. I show that both types of claim face serious difficulties in explaining the purported role of aesthetic judgements in these areas. I claim that the best current explanation of this role, (...) McAllister's 'aesthetic induction' model, fails to demonstrate that the judgements at issue are genuinely aesthetic. I argue that, in light of these considerations, there are strong reasons for suspecting that many, and perhaps all, of the supposedly aesthetic claims are not genuinely aesthetic but are in fact 'masked' epistemic assessments. (shrink)

The intellectualization of wine has given importance to what would ordinarily be seen as a self- indulgent recreation. Charters found that knowledge facilitates the ability for consumers to understand the nuances of and distinctions of different types of wine and that the extreme diversity of wines creates an intellectual challenge for consumers that can fuel a desire to investigate more about wine.1The exploration of knowledge about wine, in support of enjoyment through a broader understanding of the product, is not dissimilar (...) to the exploration required of other leisure activities, such as the appreciation of works of art.2 In fact, wine has been described as a work of art in and of itself.3 Further, wine can be... (shrink)

I call into question a pair of closely related assumptions that are almost universally shared in the literature on predicates of taste. The assumptions are, first, that predicates of taste – words like ‘tasty’ – are semantically evaluative. In other words, that it is part of the meaning of a word like ‘tasty’ to describe an object as in some sense good, or to say that it is pleasing. And second, that the meaning of predicates of taste is in some (...) way relativized to an experiencer or standard – the person that the object is pleasing to or the standard according to which the object is good. Parties to the literature on these terms tend to disagree about the role of context in determining the truth of claims involving predicates of taste, or in determining which proposition is expressed. But they agree that to call some dish ‘tasty’ is to say something positive about that dish, to suggest that someone or other finds, or is disposed to find, the dish pleasing. I suggest instead that ‘tasty’, and indeed... (shrink)

When we evaluate artworks, we often point to what an artist could have done or what a work could have been in order to say something about the work as it actually is. Call this counterfactual reasoning in art criticism. On my account, counterfactual claims about artworks involve comparative aesthetic judgments between actual artworks and hypothetical variations of those works. The practice of imagining what an artwork could have been is critically useful because it can help us understand how artworks (...) achieve specific aesthetic effects. I conclude by responding to an objection to my account on the basis that it violates the widely accepted acquaintance principle in aesthetics, on which aesthetic judgments must be based on firsthand perceptual encounters with their objects. (shrink)

The problem of aesthetic principles and that of the nature of aesthetic reasons get confronted. If aesthetic reasons play an important role in our aesthetic evaluations and judgments, then both some general aesthetic principles and rules could support them (aesthetic generalism) or again their nature may be particularistic (aesthetic particularism). A recent argument in support of aesthetic generalism as proposed by Oliver Conolly and Bashshar Haydar is presented and criticized for its misapprehension of particularism. Their position of irreversible aesthetic generalism (...) is questioned. Aesthetic particularism is restated by the help of proposals by Jonathan Dancy’s version of moral particularism. (shrink)

Aesthetic judgments are often expressed by means of predicates that, unlike ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’, are not primarily aesthetic, or even evaluative, such as ‘intense’ and ‘harrowing’. This paper aims to explain how such adjectives can convey a value-judgment, and one, moreover, whose positive or negative valence depends on the context.

There are good, even if inconclusive, reasons to think that cognitive penetration of perception occurs: that cognitive states like belief causally affect, in a relatively direct way, the contents of perceptual experience. The supposed importance of – indeed as it is suggested here, what is definitive of – this possible phenomenon is that it would result in important epistemic and scientific consequences. One interesting and intuitive consequence entirely unremarked in the extant literature concerns the perception of art. Intuition has it (...) that knowledge about art changes how one aesthetically evaluates artworks. A profound explanation of this intuitive fact is that perceptual experiences vary with artistic expertise. Cognitive penetration provides an explanatory mechanism for this latter effect. What one knows or otherwise thinks about art may affect, in one of two ways sketched below, how one perceives art. Differences in aesthetic evaluation may follow, either because high-level aesthetic properties can be perceptually represented or because they causally depend on low-level perceptible properties. All of this lends credence to the hypothesis that the expert better judges art because she better perceives art. And she better perceives art because she better knows art. (shrink)

The Ethical Question asks whether ethical values in artworks determine their aesthetic value and, if so, how. I argue that the question is ambiguous between a direct and an indirect reading. I show how the indirect reading is philosophically uninteresting because it has an obvious answer: a view called ‘immoralism’. I also show how most of the significant figures in the relevant literature address the indirect form of the question anyway—needlessly, if I am right. Finally, I consider whether some version (...) of the indirect question is more philosophically interesting, connecting it to the so-called ‘qua problem’. I attempt to give clarity to the discussion by applying work on the virtues and vices of explanations. (shrink)

I offer an analysis of the role played by consideration of an item's functions when it is judged aesthetically. The account applies also to artworks, of which some serve extrinsic functions (such as the glorification of God and the communication of religious lore) and others have the function of being contemplated for their own sake alone. Along the way, I deny that aesthetic judgements fit the model of judgements either of free beauty or of dependent beauty, given how these two (...) came to be described in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

My goal in this article is to provide support for the claim that moral flaws can be detrimental to an artwork's aesthetic value. I argue that moral flaws can become aesthetic flaws when they defeat the operation of good-making aesthetic properties. I do not defend a new theory of aesthetic properties or aesthetic value; instead, I attempt to show that on both the response-dependence and the supervenience account of aesthetic properties, moral flaws with an artwork are relevant to what aesthetic (...) properties obtain. I provide a description of the main features of both theories of aesthetic properties, and then explain how moral flaws can become aesthetic flaws on either account. I address several objections to moralism about art including the "moralistic fallacy.". (shrink)

This paper argues for a realist position in the metaphysics of aesthetic properties. Realist positions about aesthetic properties are few and far between, though sometimes developed by analogy to realism about colours. By contrast, my position is based on a disanalogy between aesthetic properties and colours. Unlike colours, aesthetic properties are perceived as relatively unsteady properties: as powers that objects have to cause a certain experience in the observer. Following on from this observation, I develop a realist account of aesthetic (...) properties as causally efficient powers, analogous to properties like fragility or poisonousness. To show how such a view can be made ontologically respectable, I draw on recent ‘dispositionalist’ accounts of powers in philosophical metaphysics. I then offer two arguments in favour of this view. First, the view matches the phenomenology of aesthetic judgement. Second, the view offers an explanation of how it is that critics can demand agreement with their aesthetic judgements. (shrink)

The question regarding how to characterize aesthetics has been revived with the publication of Bence Nanay’s _Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception_. This paper takes seriously Dustin Stokes’ criticisms of Nanay’s book regarding Nanay’s inability to distinguish between ordinary expert visual tasks (e.g., sorting for sock color or ornithology) and aesthetic experience. Using empirical research on gist perception and its reliance on low-level features in visual experience, I develop a theory that distinguishes expert visual tasks and aesthetic experiences by differentiating two (...) different kinds of distributed attention over properties. I argue that expert visual tasks are instances of property attribution in a mode of conscious attention, while aesthetics is a kind of distributed attention that significantly relies on the reiteration of gist-like lowlevel features. Gist, often referred to in visual science as “preattentive” mode, gives us a model to understand the perceptual processes that are specific to aesthetics. This comports with our common-sense definition of aesthetics as both distinguishable from ordinary expert visual tasks and an experience that makes prominent sensory aspects of visual experience. (shrink)

The default theory of aesthetic value combines hedonism about aesthetic value with strict perceptual formalism about aesthetic value, holding the aesthetic value of an object to be the value it has in virtue of the pleasure it gives strictly in virtue of its perceptual properties. A standard theory of aesthetic value is any theory of aesthetic value that takes the default theory as its theoretical point of departure. This paper argues that standard theories fail because they theorize from the default (...) theory. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the possibility of an objectivism for aesthetic judgements capable of incorporating certain ‘subjectivist’ elements of aesthetic experience. The discussion focuses primarily on a desired cognitivism for aesthetic judgements, rather than on any putative realism of aesthetic properties. Two cognitivist theories of aesthetic judgements are discussed, one subjectivist, the other objectivist. It is argued that whilst the subjectivist theory relies too heavily upon analogies with secondary qualities, the objectivist account, which allows for some such analogies at (...) the epistemological level, is too quick to ground aesthetic judgements in perceptual experiences alone. Further, it is held that aesthetic justification can, contra the objectivist theory under scrutiny, be based on an appeal to generally available justifying reasons without overthrowing the non-inferential character of aesthetic judgements. This possibility relies on a clearly established delineation between (i) aesthetic perception and aesthetic judgement, (ii) justifying reasons and explaining reasons, and (iii) judgement-making and judgement-justification. (shrink)

Can there be a philosophy of taste? This paper opens by raising some metaphilosophical questions about the study of taste – what it consists of and what method we should adopt in pursuing it. It is suggested that the best starting point for philosophising about taste is against the background of 18th-century epistemology and philosophy of mind, and the conceptual tools this new philosophical paradigm entails. The notion of aesthetic taste in particular, which emerges from a growing sense of dissatisfaction (...) with an undifferentiated category of taste, comes to be set apart from gustatory taste on account of its normativity and aspirations to objectivity. The paradox of taste, as found in Hume and Kant, is examined, and shown to be highly relevant to contemporary metaphysical debate within aesthetics. Specifically, this paper argues that both Realists and Anti-Realists rely more heavily than assumed on the idea of taste. (shrink)