It has become increasingly common for philosophers to make use of the concept of artistic value, and, further, to distinguish artistic value from aesthetic value. In a recent paper, ‘The Myth of (Non-Aesthetic) Artistic Value’, Dominic Lopes takes issue with this, presenting a kind of corrective to current philosophical practice regarding the use of the concept of artistic value. Here I am concerned to defend current practice against Lopes's attack. I argue that there is some unclarity as to what aspect (...) of this practice Lopes is objecting to, and I distinguish three kinds of objection that he could be read as making. I argue that none of these is adequately supported by Lopes's arguments, and that the corresponding three aspects of current philosophical practice are on firmer footing than Lopes's paper suggests. A new, plausible characterisation of artistic value will emerge from this discussion. (shrink)

Is there a distinctively artistic value that works of art have over and above their aesthetic value? No, Dominic McIver Lopes claims in a recent paper. He canvases various non-aesthetic options for underwriting artistic value. Yet he dispenses too quickly with a promising account of artistic value that would look to the artwork's status as an achievement as the basis of its value: On this achievement-based view, the value of the work of art as art (that is, its distinctively artistic (...) value) consists in the artistically-relevant achievement that it itself constitutes. While I will not seek to vindicate the achievement view itself, I do want to show that Lopes's arguments against it are unsound. Moreover, I argue that Lopes's claim that artistic value might be nothing over and above aesthetic value is untenable, unless it is supplemented by the more basic claim that the aesthetic value in question is something achieved by an artist. Lopes's argument thus only works if he makes recourse to the achievement conception of artistic value that he is keen to reject. (shrink)

Supposing that talk of a distinctively artistic type of value is warranted, what separates it from other sorts of value? Any plausible answer must explain both what is of value and what is artistic about artistically valuable properties. Flaws with extant accounts stem from neglect of one component or the other; the account offered here, based on careful attention to actual art-critical practices, brings both together. The “value” component depends on the capacity of artworks to provide subjectively valuable experiences, while (...) the “artistic” component relies on the specific norms constitutive of artworld institutions. Understanding artistic value in this way allows for progress on several persistent problems, including the ethical value of art, relativism in artistic value, and the proper boundaries of philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Value empiricists in aesthetics claim that we can explain the value of artworks by appeal to the value of the experiences they afford. I raise the question of the value of those experiences. I argue that while there are many values that such experiences might have, none is adequate to explaining the value of the works that afford the experiences. I then turn to defending the alternative to value empiricism, which I dub the object theory . I argue that if (...) there is some problem attending the object theory, commensurate with the problems attending empiricism, no one seems to have any idea what it is. I close by urging that the object theory be granted a fresh hearing. (shrink)

According to the error theory, normative judgements are beliefs that ascribe normative properties, even though such properties do not exist. In this paper, I argue that we cannot believe the error theory, and that this means that there is no reason for us to believe this theory. It may be thought that this is a problem for the error theory, but I argue that it is not. Instead, I argue, our inability to believe the error theory undermines many objections that (...) have been made to this theory. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Robert Stecker proposes the following test for whether a value possessed by an artwork is artistic or not: ‘Does one need to understand the work to appreciate its being valuable in that way? If so, it is an artistic value. If not, it is not.’ An important question here is what Stecker means by ‘appreciation’ in this context. Stecker himself says little about this, but I offer him two accounts of the nature of appreciation, both of (...) which are suggested by remarks of his own. It turns out that Stecker’s proposed test is flawed on either understanding of ‘appreciation’. (shrink)

In its narrative, dramatic, and representational genres, art regularly depicts contexts for human emotions and their expressions. It is not surprising, then, that these artforms are often about emotional experiences and displays, and that they are also concerned with the expression of emotion. What is more interesting is that abstract art genres may also include examples that are highly expressive of human emotion. Pure music – that is, stand-alone music played on musical instruments excluding the human voice, and without words, (...) literary titles, or associated texts connected to it by its composer – is often characterized as the expressive art par excellence. Yet how could that be possible, given that such music lacks semantic or representational content? Pure music presents the hardest and most vivid philosophical challenge to any account of expressiveness in the arts, which is why it is crucial to consider the musical case for the light it sheds on the underlying principles and issues. In this chapter I consider two accounts of expressiveness in pure music. Both regard expressiveness as an objective property of such music. I argue for the position I call appearance emotionalism and against the alternative, which I label hypothetical emo- tionalism. But before I get to that, there is a different mode of musical expression to be acknowledged. Even instrumental music comes charged with associations. Some of these are private to the listener, but many are widely shared. The latter may be included in a piece by accident but are, more often, deliberately placed for their effects. For instance, when a song is quoted in an instrumental work, its title or words may be brought to mind. Certain melodies (e.g., “Ode to Joy”), styles (e.g., tarantella), idioms (e.g., fanfares), forms (e.g., minuet), modalities (e.g., church modes), and instruments (e.g., fifes and snare drums) recall particular social events, geocultural regions, historical periods, ideas, and sensibilities, and in this way can hook up with affective life-experiences. Though it is music’s associative ties that are likely to be referred to when most people are asked about music’s significance, philosophers say little about them.. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Aesthetic Properties and Principles Ideal Critics Engagement Objections and Questions References Further reading.

The purpose of this article is to show that the value interaction debate is deeply flawed and constitutes a superficial analysis of the relationship between morality and art. I introduce the debate, which concerns whether a moral defect in a work of art is an aesthetic defect, in Section 1. Section 2 establishes the vagueness of two key terms in the discussion, _moral defects_ and _aesthetic defects_. In Section 3, I introduce the naive assumption-uninteresting claim disjunction, identifying five of the (...) six approaches as demonstrating a fundamental naivety about the relationship between morality and narrative art. I show, in Section 4, that four of the six are philosophically uninteresting as they offer an incomplete—and ultimately unsatisfactory—explanation of this relationship. In Section 5, I discuss the quantity and quality of examples employed in the debate, many of which are non-canonical, and some of which are entirely inappropriate. I conclude by recommending a reorientation of the debate to focus on the underlying question of whether the characteristically artistic value is finally or instrumentally valuable. (shrink)

It is not uncommon these days to claim that we should distinguish between artistic value and other types of value, including aesthetic value. A problem for this proposal is posed by the fact that artworks have valuable properties that are no part of its artistic value. Unless there is a way to distinguish artistically valuable properties from other valuable properties, some will be unconvinced that the distinction is viable.1 For this reason, I have proposed a test for artistic value to (...) underwrite support for the distinction.2 The main idea of the test is that we gain access to artistic values of artworks by means of understanding or appreciating those works, and this is not necessary to identify a work’s non-artistic values. Julian Dodd has argued the test is flawed and his criticism is based on a phenomenon I will call value entanglement.3 In this paper, I will identify the interesting phenomena of value entanglement, argue that it does not threaten the current version of the test I endorse, and explore whether there are other problems for that test. (shrink)

Art works realize many values. According to tradition, not all of these values are characteristic of art: art works characteristically bear aesthetic value. Breaking with tradition, some now say that art works bear artistic value, as distinct from aesthetic value. I argue that there is no characteristic artistic value distinct from aesthetic value. The argument for this thesis suggests a new way to think about aesthetic value as it is characteristically realized by works of art.