According to tradition, aesthetic value is non-contingently connected to a certain feeling of liking or pleasure. Is that true? Two answers are on offer in the field of aesthetics today: 1. The Hedonist answers: Yes, aesthetic value is non-contingently connected to pleasure insofar as this value is constituted and explained by the power of its possessors to please (under standard conditions). 2. The Non-Affectivist answers: No. At best, pleasure is contingently related to aesthetic value. The aim of this paper is (...) to point to a blind spot in the dialectic between these two standard positions by defending a third neglected answer to the question above, the answer of the Value-Meriting-Pleasure [VMP] advocate. According to this answer, a certain kind of (cognitive and responsive) pleasure is connected to aesthetic value non-contingently, but also non-hedonically. VMP is the view that objects of aesthetic value are non-contingently related to pleasure insofar as they merit a certain kind of pleasure. But, pace the hedonist, those objects are valuable (those that are to be engaged with etc.) neither on account of their capacity to give pleasure nor on account of the hedonic value of the attitude they merit. (shrink)

One of the oldest platitudes about beauty is that it is pleasant to perceive or experience. In this article, I take this platitude at face value and try to explain why experiences of beauty are seemingly always accompanied by pleasure. Unlike explanations that have been offered in the past, the explanation proposed is designed to suit a “realist” view on which beauty is an irreducibly evaluative property, that is, a value. In a nutshell, the explanation is that experiences of beauty (...) are experiences in which it appears that something is beautiful, and that such experiences are identical to experiences of aesthetic pleasure. (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)

We argue that the aesthetic domain falls inside the scope of rationality, but does so in its own way. Aesthetic judgment is a stance neither on whether a proposition is to be believed nor on whether an action is to be done, but on whether an object is to be appreciated. Aesthetic judgment is simply appreciation. Correlatively, reasons supporting theoretical, practical and aesthetic judgments operate in fundamentally different ways. The irreducibility of the aesthetic domain is due to the fact that (...) aesthetic judgment is a sensory-affective disclosure of, and responsiveness to, merit: it is a feeling that presents an object, and is responsive to it, as worthy of being liked. Aesthetic judgment is thus shown to be, on the hand, first personal and non-transferable; and, on the other hand, a presentation of reality. We thereby capture what is right in both subjectivist and objectivist conceptions of aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

An argument against the bias towards the near; how a defence of temporal neutrality is not a defence of S; an appeal to inconsistency; why we should reject S and accept CP.

This paper presents a new account of aesthetic pleasure, according to which it is a distinct psychological structure marked by a characteristic self-reinforcing motivation. Pleasure figures in the appreciation of an object in two ways: In the short run, when we are in contact with particular artefacts on particular occasions, aesthetic pleasure motivates engagement and keeps it running smoothly—it may do this despite the fact that the object we engagement is aversive in some ways. Over longer periods, it plays a (...) critical role in shaping how we engage with objects to get this kind of pleasure from them. This account is yoked to a broadly functional understanding of art: it is not the nature of the object that makes it art, but the nature of the response that it is designed to elicit. The view does not, however, rest on individual psychology alone, as some other functional accounts do. Crucially, it is argued that shared cultural context is a key determinant of the pleasure we derive from aesthetic artefacts. The pleasure of art is always communal and communicative. (shrink)

Many academic works as well as many works of art are such that if they had never been produced, no one would be worse off. Yet it is hard to resist the judgment that some such works are good nonetheless. We are rightly grateful that these works were created; we rightly admire them, appreciate them, and take pains to preserve them. And the authors and artists who produced them have reason to be proud. This should lead us to question the (...) view that in order for a thing to be good, in a sense which implies that the thing merits our attention and positive concern, it needs to be good for someone or something whose welfare is enhanced by it. (shrink)

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 (...) about aesthetic value alone accommodates the widely acknowledged anthropocentricity of aesthetic value. 4 The belief that response-dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates aesthetic normativity. We argue that each of these beliefs is false, and that the dominance of response-dependent accounts of aesthetic value is therefore largely without foundation. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a descriptive definition of art that is able to accommodate the existence of bad art, while illuminating the value of good art. This, I argue, is something that existing definitions of art fail to do. I approach this task by providing an account according to which what makes something an artwork is the institutional process by which it is made. I argue that Searle’s account of institutions and institutional facts shows that the existence of all (...) institutions is due to their being perceived by their participants to perform some humanly valuable function. I then identify the functions to which the existence of art institutions is due. I then use these functions to provide a reductive institutional definition of art. Finally, in section seven, I examine the account’s consequences for the value of good art. (shrink)

Art and the aesthetic -- Traditional aestheticism -- A new aestheticism -- Aesthetic communication -- The artworld and the practice of art -- The artifactual concept of function -- Art as an aesthetic practice -- Artistic value as aesthetic.

This paper provides an analysis of the concept of an aesthetic property in non-aesthetic terms.

Whether or not one endorses realism about colour, it is very tempting to regard realism about determinable colours such as green and yellow as standing or falling together with realism about determinate colours such as unique green or green31. Indeed some of the most prominent representatives of both sides of the colour realism debate explicitly endorse the idea that these two kinds of realism are so linked. Against such theorists, the present paper argues that one can be a realist about (...) the determinable colours of objects, and thus hold that most of the colour ascriptions made by competent speakers are literally true, while denying that there are any positive facts of the matter as to the determinate colours of objects. The result is a realistic colour realism that can certify most of our everyday colour ascriptions as literally correct, while acknowledging the data regarding individual variation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is commonplace amongst philosophers of art to make claims that postulate important links between aesthetics and perception. In this paper, I focus on one such claim—that perception is the canonical route to aesthetic judgment. I consider a range of prima facie plausible interpretations of this claim, and argue that each fails to identify any important link between aesthetic judgment and perception. Given this, I conclude that we have good reason to be sceptical of the claim that perception is in (...) any way privileged as a source of aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

It is commonplace amongst philosophers of art to make claims which postulate important links between aesthetics and perception. In this paper, I focus on one such claim: that perception is the canonical route to aesthetic judgement. I consider a range of prima facie plausible interpretations of this claim and argue that they each fail to identify any important link between aesthetic judgement and perception. Given this, I conclude that we have good reason to be sceptical of the claim that perception (...) is in any way privileged as a source of aesthetic judgement. (shrink)

If good taste is a virtue, then an account of good taste might be modelled on existing accounts of moral or epistemic virtue. One good reason to develop such an account is that it helps solve otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics. This paper proposes an alternative to neo-Aristotelian models of good taste. It then contrasts the neo-Aristotelian models with the proposed model, assessing them for their potential to contend with otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics.

Hume is plausibly interpreted as asserting that an artwork is beautiful if and only if it pleases ideal critics. Jerrold Levinson maintains that Hume's commitment to this biconditional gives rise to a problem that occurs neither to Hume nor to his any of his interpreters—the problem of explaining why you should care what pleases ideal critics if you are not one yourself. I argue that this problem arises only if you hold an empiricist theory of aesthetic value—that is, a theory (...) that reduces the aesthetic value of a work to the value of the experience it affords—as Levinson does. I argue that Levinson's own attempted solution to the problem cannot succeed. And I argue that the problem never arises for Hume because his commitment to the biconditional is not a commitment to an empiricist theory of aesthetic value, but to an empiricist theory of aesthetic evaluation. (shrink)

A while ago I pulled the short straw, and became chair of my department. One nice part of the job is to praise people I work with, which I can do sincerely because they are very praiseworthy. I also have to read a lot of praise by others; the familiar things—project evaluations, letters of recommendation, promotion dossiers, and so on and so forth. As a result, I have learnt to attend to praise a little more closely.

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 (...) success on the second ambition and merely comment on how their proposals might be further developed. Nevertheless, since its explanatory power is precisely what gives us room to maneuver, what follows also sticks up for the network theory. (shrink)

By treating colours as sui generis intrinsic properties of objects we can maintain that (1) colours are causally responsible for colour experiences (and so agree with the physicalist) and (2) colours, along with the similarity and difference relations that colours bear to one another, are presented to us by casual observation (and so agree with the dispositionalist). The major obstacle for such a view is the causal overdetermination of colour experience. Borrowing and expanding on the works of Sydney Shoemaker and (...) Stephen Yablo, the paper offers a solution. (shrink)