The main aim of this paper is to examine the practice of describing intellectual pursuits in aesthetic terms, and to investigate whether this practice can be accounted for in the framework of a standard conception of aesthetic experience. Following a discussion of some historical approaches, the paper proposes a way of conceiving of aesthetic experience as both epistemically motivating and epistemically inventive. It is argued that the aesthetics of intellectual pursuits should be considered as central rather than marginal to our (...) philosophical accounts of aesthetic experience, and that our views about the relation between the aesthetic and cognitive domains should be reconfigured accordingly. (shrink)

This paper has two main aims. The first is to examine our normative relations to artworks and cultural artefacts threatened by damage or destruction. The second aim is to develop an argument for the notion of aesthetic obligation, offering an alternative model of explanation of our normative relations to artworks and cultural artefacts which relies neither exclusively on the object of appreciation (‘object-oriented approach’) nor on the appreciating subject (‘subject-oriented approach’). Instead, an aesthetic obligation is held to be directed primarily (...) towards the community which appreciates the object on the grounds of its aesthetic value. That which unites an aesthetic community is the practice of valuing an object for its aesthetic character. The notion of aesthetic obligation thus relies both on the community of subjects which holds an object in high aesthetic regard and that same object’s aesthetic value. (shrink)

What is conceptual art? Is it really a kind of art in its own right? Is it clever – or too clever? Of all the different art forms it is perhaps conceptual art which at once fascinates and infuriates the most. In this much-needed book Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens demystify conceptual art using the sharp tools of philosophy. They explain how conceptual art is driven by ideas rather than the manipulation of paint and physical materials; how it challenges the (...) very basis of what we can know about art, as well as our received ideas of beauty; and why conceptual art requires us to rethink concepts fundamental to art and aesthetics, such as artistic interpretation and appreciation. Including helpful illustrations of the work of celebrated conceptual artists from Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Kosuth and Piero Manzoni to Dan Perjovschi and Martin Creed, Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art? is a superb starting point for anyone intrigued but perplexed by conceptual art - and by art in general. It will be particularly helpful to students of philosophy, art and visual studies seeking an introduction not only to conceptual art but fundamental topics in art and aesthetics. (shrink)

Recently, cognitivist accounts about art have come under pressure to provide stronger arguments for the view that artworks can yield genuine insight and understanding. In Gregory Currie’s Imagining and Knowing: Learning from Fiction, for example, a convincing case is laid out to the effect that any knowledge gained from engaging with art must “be judged by the very standards that are used in assessing the claim of science to do the same” (Currie 2020: 8) if indeed it is to count (...) as knowledge. Cognitivists must thus rally to provide sturdier grounds for their view. The revived interest in this philosophical discussion targets not only the concept of knowledge at the heart of cognitivist and anti-cognitivist debate, but also highlights a more specific question about how, exactly, some artworks can (arguably) afford cognitive import and change how we think about the world, ourselves and the many events, persons and situations we encounter. This paper seeks to explore some of the ways in which art is capable of altering our epistemic perspectives in ways that might count as knowledge despite circumventing some standards of evidential requirement. In so doing we will contrast two alternative conceptions of how we stand to learn from art. Whereas the former is modelled on the idea that knowledge is something that can be “extracted” from our experience of particular works of art, the latter relies on a notion of such understanding as primarily borne out of a different kind of engagement with art. We shall call this the subtractive conception and cumulative conception respectively. The cumulative conception, we shall argue, better explains why at least some insights and instances of knowledge gained from art seem to elude the evidential standards called for by sceptics of cognitivism. (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)

This volume is most probably the first collection of papers by analytic Anglo-American philosophers tackling these concerns head-on.

This paper defends a ‘noetic’ conception of aesthetic experience whereby such experience is best conceived as a kind of explorative thought process. Although not directly aimed at acquiring knowledge, this process often leads to an enhanced understanding or improved epistemic grasp of the object of appreciation itself and the world. On this conception, aesthetic value acts as an invitation to engage in a series of contemplative and reflective processes during which we rely not only on the perceptual, imaginative, and affective (...) abilities which have occupied such a central role in aesthetic theory, but also on our capacities for sense-making, problem-solving and theory-building. Cases of intelligible beauty or aesthetic value should thus lie at the heart of accounts of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

A symposium on Bence Nanay, Aesthetics as Philosophy of Art (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Murray Smith, Film, Art, and the Third Culture (Oxford University Press, 2017). Commentaries on the two books by two critics, followed by responses by the two book authors.

Two common strategies have dominated attempts to account for the nature of taste. On the one side, we have an affectivist understanding of taste where aesthetic attribution has to do with the expression of a subjective response. On the other side, we find a non-affectivist approach according to which to judge something aesthetically is to epistemically track its main aesthetic properties. Our main argument will show that neither emotion nor perception can explain the nature of aesthetic taste single-handedly. In this (...) paper, our principal aim is to examine the relationship between perceptual discernment and emotional sensibility as we find it in the process of ascribing aesthetic qualities. Is it the nature of the specific aesthetic property in question which determines the way in which perception and emotion are balanced in aesthetic attribution, or is it, rather, something about how our sensory skills operate? One of the notions we would like to explore in greater detail in this context is the idea of attunement, or the way in which aesthetic agents can align themselves to the content of an artwork o in order to better grasp its content and significance. According to our proposed picture, the exercise of taste involves an adjustment of one’s emotional sensibility to the aesthetic character of o. From here, we will posit both emotional and perceptual training as part of an agent’s aesthetic education in her use of aesthetic terms. (shrink)

What is the value of art? Standard responses draw on the different kinds of value that we tend to ascribe to individual artworks. In that context, none have been more significant than aesthetic value and moral value. To understand what makes an artwork valuable we then need to examine the interaction between these two kinds of value and how this contributes to the artwork's final value. The main aim of this article is to highlight two areas of concern for interaction (...) theories, in order to improve our understanding of the dynamic relations between kinds of value in art. In the first instance, I shall outline the main tenets of the three leading interaction theories. Next, I shall discuss what it might mean to say that an artwork has moral value, in an attempt to establish on what grounds interaction theories base their central claims. Subsequently, I will look at how our conception of art's moral value affects the possibility of a bona fide form of value interaction, or one capable of shaping a work's final value in conjunction with its aesthetic value. Finally, I shall turn to a discussion of the notion of aesthetic value. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish between different kinds of failures of aesthetic judgements with a view to exploring a form of failure that involves the outright omission of aesthetic judgement. Such omissions come to pass when an object of attention could or ought to have been experienced and judged aesthetically but where such an experience or judgement simply failed to arise, and can be traced back to at least three kinds of reason: (1) lack of aesthetic quality; (2) lack of (...) appropriate ontological status; and (3) lack of aesthetic prominence. I shall examine some aspects of this kind of failure and argue that a missed opportunity to experience an object of attention’s aesthetic character is a missed opportunity to engage with that object’s aesthetic potential where such potential, although not always accessible to us, can nonetheless retroactively be said to pertain to the object in a meaningful sense also under experientially unfavourable conditions. This warrants talk of rehabilitation to some degree. (shrink)

In the context of a broad welcome to Bullot & Reber's (B&R's) proposals concerning the incorporation of contextual awareness into the study of the psychology of art appreciation, I raise two concerns. First, the proposal makes no allowance for degrees of relevance of contextual awareness to appreciation. Second, the authors assume that and can be maintained as separate phases or modes, but this may be more problematic than anticipated.

This doctoral thesis is an examination of the possibility of ascribing objectivity to aesthetic judgements. The aesthetic is viewed in terms of its being a certain kind of relation between the mind and the world; a clear understanding of aesthetic judgements will therefore be capable of telling us something important about both subjects and objects, and the ties between them. In view of this, one of the over-riding aims of this thesis is the promotion of an ‘aesthetic psychology’, a philosophical (...) approach, that is to say, which emphasises the importance of the psychological processes involved in the making of aesthetic judgements. One of the aims of this thesis is to develop a revisionary account of the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity in the domain of value. This revision will undertake to dismantle some of the assumptions implicit in a metaphysical framework which traditionally ascribes objectivity only to judgements about facts, and not to judgements about values and other concerns such as norms and emotions. Further, the thesis examines the intricate ways in which aesthetic properties, the focus of aesthetic judgements, depend on the (emotional and other) responses of the subjects of experience. The particular role played by first-hand experience in the making of aesthetic judgements is among the things critically investigated in the interests of reaching a clearer understanding of the manner in which aesthetic judgements may be objective in the sense of being justifiable. Eventually, a defence is outlined of the view that aesthetic judgements can be supported by good reasons, but not in the same way as ordinary cognitive judgements. Finally, I outline the main tenets of a proposed ‘reasonable objectivism’ for aesthetic judgements, an objectivism grounded on justifying reasons. (shrink)

The last decade has seen a significant increase in empirical research into the nature of art and aesthetic experience in the Anglo- American scientific community. Much of the impetus for this came from the publication of three special issues of the present journal on the theme of 'Art and the Brain' . A decade or so later, it seems timely to consider the extent to which these new approaches have filtered through into wider philosophical understanding. Many philosophers express scepticism towards (...) empirical aesthetics. This paper seeks to re-examine the grounds for any such scepticism and proposes a new reading of the explanatory power of scientific approaches. It begins by separating the data provided by such theories into three categories. Having identified a particular conceptual problem, it argues that many empirical accounts fail to distinguish sufficiently between the aesthetic and the artistic, and that this is a source of considerable philosophical concern. It then suggests that empirical aesthetics should be divided into two branches, namely empirical aesthetics and empirical art theory. Although such a division may seem to restrict the explanatory reach of scientific accounts somewhat in philosophy, it highlights the numerous ways in which empirical investigations can nonetheless strengthen and benefit philosophical analyses. (shrink)

Moving from a critical assessment of some recent attempts to define the arts in terms of adaptations, spandrels, by-products and, moreover, calling into question the continued development of the concept of the "aesthetic" in the frame of contemporary interdisciplinary research projects, the main aim of this paper is to highlight some of the ways in which archaeological objects can, at least in some respects, testify to the manifestation of the modern aesthetic mind.

The principal concern of my paper is a distinction between two ways of appreciating works of art, characterised here in terms of the phrases ‘seeing is believing’ and ‘believing is seeing’. I examine this distinction in the light of an epistemological requirement at times at least grounded in what David Davies, in his Art as Performance , refers to as the ‘common sense theory of art appreciation’ in order to assess exactly what aspect of the philosophical approach generally known as (...) aesthetic empiricism his account commits him to reject. I argue that the ‘experiential requirement’, if only conceived in a slightly broader way than is usual, might very well have an important role to play not only in the appropriate appreciation of works that do not demonstrate the need for such a requirement (primarily works of late modern and conceptual art), but also in the ontological account Davies himself favours. (shrink)