The practice of attributing aesthetic properties to scientific and philosophical theories is commonplace. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of such an aesthetic judgement about a theory is Quine's in 'On what there is': "Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes". Many other philosophers and scientists, before and after Quine, have attributed aesthetic properties to particular theories they are defending or rejecting. One often hears (...) that a view is "elegant", "attractive", "beautiful", or even "sexy". [...] The general claim that aesthetic properties supervene on non-aesthetic properties is a largely debated one. In this paper, I wish to address this issue from an angle which has not been really explored so far: I shall neither concentrate on cases of artefacts nor of natural objects, like the beauty of a painting or the beauty of a sunrise, rather, my main centre of attention will be the somewhat more special, theoretical case of the beauty of philosophical theories (with a focus on metaphysical theories). As we will see, there are some interesting issues concerning claims that attribute aesthetic properties to theories, in part because, even if such claims are commonplace in philosophy and in science, little has been said about the nature of the relevant supervenience basis – that is, about what it is exactly that the beauty of a theory is supposed to supervene on. Moreover, we shall see that aesthetic properties of theories play a crucial role in theory choice and evaluation. Indeed, it seems that the aesthetic properties of a theory can be appealed to in theory evaluation and when it comes to preferring one theory over another. But before we ask ourselves what role the attribution of aesthetic properties to theories can play, I will adress the question how theories come to have their aesthetic properties in the first place. (shrink)

Roger Scruton’s account of the nature of music and our experience of it foregrounds the imagination. It is a particularly interesting and promising ‘non-realist’ view in the aesthetics of music, in the sense that it does not postulate aesthetic properties of music that we represent in musical experience. In this paper I critically examine both Scruton’s view and his main argument for it.

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 article, I defend Lewisian modal realism against objections arising from the possibility of ‘Island Universes’ and other similar cases. The problem comes from Lewis’ claim that possible worlds are spatio-temporally isolated. I suggest a modification of Lewisian modal realism in order to avoid this family of objections. This modification may sound quite radical since it amounts to abandoning the very notion of a possible world, but as radical as it may sound it in fact remains well in the (...) spirit of Lewis’ original view. (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)