My aim in this article is to defend the view that art is a relevant source of knowledge, including moral knowledge, in the absence of empirical evidence corroborating this view. In the first part, I discuss what is known as the causal question, that is, the question regarding art's impact on spectators. I argue that the alleged failure of art to impact us may be a matter of moral motivation and the particular circumstances of moral reasoning more than the cognitive (...) and ethical character of a work. To support my claim, I rely on contemporary research on moral reasoning. I conclude by sketching a wider context within which we should consider art's impact, stressing the relevance of cognitive sciences and moral psychology. (shrink)

In this article, I defend the cognitive value of certain generic television series. Unlike media and television scholars, who have been appreciative of the informative capacity of television fiction, philosophers have been less willing to acknowledge the way in which these works contribute to our understanding of our social reality. My aim here is to provide one such account, grounded in aesthetic cognitivism, that is, the view that fiction is a source of knowledge. Focusing on crime and courtroom dramas, I (...) start by offering some examples of the cognitive benefits available in some of these series and I argue that the more beneficial cases establish superior mimetic relations with reality, enhancing their capacity to present ethically challenging issues. I then examine whether the fictional dimension of these works presents an obstacle to their informative potential and I conclude that it does not. A central aspect of my account is the claim that the degree of cognitive benefit depends on the underlying narrative strategy of the series. Specifically, there are clues in any given show, including the treatment of ongoing characters, which signal the extent to which it can be taken as mimetically reliable and thus, cognitively valuable. I complete my account by addressing anti-cognitivists’ arguments which call to doubt the informative aspect of television series and their capacity to address ethical concerns. (shrink)

This article lies at the intersection of two problems: the one concerning the potential of fictional works to inform us about our social reality and foster our understanding of its various aspects, and the one concerning their potential to engage with philosophical issues. I bring these two together by analyzing the hit television series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. According to my interpretation, the series is informative about our social world, and it raises philosophical concerns about it. This makes (...) it well-equipped to fulfill the educative function attributed to mass art by Noël Carroll, and to stand out as an example of what he calls popular philosophy. To support this interpretation, I rely on contemporary views regarding the nature of our engagements with fictional narratives. I then explore how philosophical concerns are generated and I elaborate on the role they have in deepening one’s understanding of one’s social circumstances. I further show how the series provides innovative and independent philosophical knowledge by means specific to the medium of generic serialized fiction. The central part of my argument is an analysis of the narrative strategies which enable the informative and philosophical aspects of the series to generate the series’ educative function. (shrink)

Our engagements with poetry often leave us with a sense of having been not only aesthetically pleased and emotionally aroused but intellectually stimulated and cognitively rewarded.1 However, explicating the nature of such intellectual stimulus and accounting for poetry’s cognitive values are not easy tasks, given that poetry does not stand in the same relation to truth and knowledge as do science and philosophy. How then to account for the undeniable experience of having undergone a profound cognitive change after engaging with (...) poetry?Turning to the work of Immanuel Kant, who praised poetry above all other forms of art,2 I explore how his account of poetry might help us understand poetry’s cognitive influence on... (shrink)

This article is an introduction to the special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy dedicated to aesthetic education and philosophy of screen stories.

In this article, I defend moral aesthetic cognitivism, the view that literature is a valuable source of insights related to morally relevant aspects of our world and that it can significantly contribute to our moral education. I am in particular concerned with counterarguments to this view voiced by Greg Currie, who trashes epistemological foundations of literature and emphasizes the lack of empirical corroboration of cognitivism, and by Peter Lamarque, who dismisses educative potential of literature on the account of readers' incapacity (...) to extract morally relevant judgements about the world from literary works. I rely on examples from literary tradition to rebuild the epistemological framework underlying cognitivism and on contemporary insights from moral psychology to show that our engagements with literature are permeated with moral reflections that are valuable for our moral education. (shrink)

In this paper I follow Ted Nannicelli in the project of establishing boundaries of television works. I focus on serialized television works pertaining to a particular genre and I set out to provide an account of their identity. My claim is that external identity of such works is determined by their specific genre-affiliation, given the way in which generic norms determine the content of the series, namely, its characteristic storylines and regular set of characters. From the internal perspective, a series’ (...) identity is determined by the particular way in which it implements abstract generic norms. I describe the process of such implementation as creation of series-specific formulaic patterns, and I analyze different layers of works where such patterns are evident. My central claim is that series-specific formulaic patterns create a coherent set of norms which, through repeated instantiation in the series’ episodes, become associated with that particular series. The function of this set is to establish the series’ boundaries, and to maintain its identity when different modifications to the patterns are made. (shrink)

With his thesis on the genius who does not know from where their ideas come from and how they create, Kant left an indelible mark on thought concerning art and artistic creation. He insisted that it represents a unique act by natural gift, and thus specific for the domain of art, and specifically not belonging to the domain of science. Although today we know that such a disposition is wrong, many of Kant’s claims are supported in contemporary theories in cognitive (...) science, but also by the artistic practice. In this paper, I will analyse Kant’s theory of beautiful art and artistic creation in the context of contemporary research on creativity and talent and show how much is Kant’s theory on beautiful art and artistic creation rich explanatory, especially for understanding and thinking the artistic creation, artistic reception and artistic practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading as a Philosophical Practice by Robert PierceyIris Vidmar JovanovićReading as a Philosophical Practice, by Robert Piercey, 130 pp. London: Anthem Press, 2021.Robert Piercey's Reading as a Philosophical Practice is dedicated to exploring the passion of reading, and to explaining ways in which common readers, as Virginia Woolf calls them, rather than professionals, engage with reading. Piercey's answer to this question, which is also the central claim (...) of the book, is that reading—independently of the subject or a genre—is a philosophical activity, that is, "a kind of reflection on experiences and capacities that are distinctive to human beings" (p. 3). As Piercey argues, reading inevitably invites one to consider issues that fall within three main philosophical domains: those related to selfhood; those related to ethical questions, primarily the ones asking about a valuable life; and those concerning ontological questions regarding the true nature of things. Inspiration for this account comes from the writings of Henry James, Stanley Cavell, and Marcel Proust, each of whom describes reading as an experience in which one's self enlarges and new dimensions of subjectivity are revealed. Piercey's ambition is to understand precisely what happens in such moments of discovery, and he sets out to offer an account of the essence of the experience of reading that explains why reading matters so profoundly to so many people.Piercey finds a philosophical grounding for his main claim in Wolfgang Iser's phenomenological account of reading and Alasdair MacIntyre's account of practice. Piercey praises Iser's account of reading as an activity prolonged in time, during which a reader is situated within the text, and tries to rebuild that text by constantly going through interpretative stages. Such a "wandering viewpoint" (p. 20) generates in one a sense of living through an altered subjectivity. As Piercey argues, the greatest value of this explanation is its capacity to account for how a text is given to one's consciousness.Insightful as it is, however, Iser's account has limits, given his focus on fictional classics and his belief that the aim of reading is to arrive at the correct interpretation of a text. To overcome these shortcomings, Piercey adopts MacIntyre's account of practice and argues that understanding reading as a [End Page 468] type of social practice means recognizing it as "embedded in, and expressive of, a full range of human activities and a full picture of the human person." Moreover, thinking of reading as a practice encourages us to see it "as a space where one reflects on what kind of a person one should become, and tries earnestly to make oneself into that kind of a person" (p. 25).What such a project looks like is examined in the third chapter, where Piercey analyzes writings on reading by novelist Nick Hornby. This chapter is particularly interesting in tackling questions that pop up when one pursues reading as important for one's well-being: questions concerning which books to read and which to skip, issues regarding rereading, and the like. The rhetorical power of this chapter is immense, in raising one's awareness of the many nuances that a reflective approach to reading invites. This awareness is further advanced in the sixth chapter, in which Piercey presents "descriptive hermeneutical ontology" (p. 71) to explain how readers discover what is valuable and meaningful about the nature of things and attachments in the process of reading. Interesting here is the dual nature of books that Piercey describes, namely their material copies and their content, or virtual reality, and the instrumental and intrinsic ways in which each of the two can acquire meaning for individual readers. He concludes that reading matters to so many people because it lets them experience and reflect on the fragmentation built into their encounters with things.In chapter 4, Piercey discusses one of the cornerstones of literary aesthetics: the view—as developed by, among others, Martha Nussbaum—that reading makes us morally better. Piercey acknowledges the relevance of empirical challenge to this view, particularly as advanced by Gregory Currie. Piercey claims that the Nussbaum-like approach to getting ethical lessons from reading is an... (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to explore the appeal of contemporary television serial drama. I argue that there are four main aspects of serials that inspire viewers’ interest and long-term commitment: serials’ overall aesthetics, its narrative complexity, strong emotional pull and serious mimetic aspect. I analyse each of these and I show how each stimulates our more general interests and emotional dispositions, primarily those related to aesthetic reward, intellectual challenge, moral clarity and entertainment. My analysis shows how these four (...) elements unite and how their union inspires and maintains viewers’ long-term commitment to the show. In the process, I explore viewers’ emotional engagement with the characters, suggesting it is of secondary importance for their long-term commitment to the show. This commitment, I argue, is motivated by viewers’ sense of care for the work developed in response to its repeated providing of pleasurable stimuli. (shrink)

Abstract:My aim in this article is to explore the role of perspectivism—roughly, the view that works of art prescribe a certain perspective—in aesthetic cognitivism and in the ethical evaluation of art, particularly as it features in the value-interaction debate. Although I am critical of perspectivism’s capacity to shoulder an artwork’s cognitive and ethical value, I find some of the arguments mounted against it, most notably those by Ted Nannicelli, misdirected, and I present several arguments against them. However, because my aim (...) is to show that both aesthetic cognitivism and ethical criticism should move beyond a concern for the perspective, I offer a different criticism of perspectivism to demonstrate how it should be modified if it is to make a more substantial contribution to the ethical evaluation of art. I conclude by providing a sketch of what I call ethically minded criticism of art, that is, one that is concerned not with a perspective that a work advances but with revealing work’s cognitive and ethical insights, that is thus better suited to promoting art’s educational and cultural value. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to provide clarification of my view on ethical criticism of narrative art in order to respond to some of the concerns issued at it by Rafe McGregor. While McGregor and I share numerous assumptions regarding the cognitive and ethical value of art, we disagree with respect to certain practical concerns. To address his challenge, I argue for the necessity of joining philosophical research with research in other domains, primarily in cognitive sciences, in order to (...) determine the extent to which engagements with art can have positive or negative cognitive and moral impact on the spectators. I am particularly concerned with showing that philosophy needs support from other disciplines in order to ground its claims in scientifically supported theories and to avoid self-generating theoretical disagreements that are populating its debates. However, I also offer an array of reasons for the inclusion of philosophy into other disciplines, and I urge for the recognition of philosophy’s potential to respond to publically relevant issues. (shrink)

Detailed, precise and ridden with excellent examples, Jon Phelan’s Literature and Understanding: The Value of a Close Reading of Literary Texts is an inviting a.

In this paper, I address the question of engaged philosophy with an emphasis on aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Referring to some specific problems discussed in these areas – in particular climate change, ecological crisis and immoral art – I demonstrate that philosophy can be engaged in two ways: (i) in its aspiration to question social reality, culture, human experience and the strategies for making sense of and finding value in that experience; (ii) in the aspiration to contribute to (...) the well-being of individuals and society through its contribution to understanding that reality and experience. First, I point to the connection between the philosophical questions and the fundamental intellectual aspirations of human beings as social and cultural beings, but also as autonomous knowers and valuers. Second, I respond to two objections that can be directed against engaged philosophy: (i) one that points to a lack of consensus among philosophical responses (the problem of disagreement), and (ii) one that highlights the irrelevance of philosophical debates to our social practice. (shrink)

As numerous scholars pointed out, Kant’s account of genius suffers from internal inconsistency, primarily due to the contradictory way in which Kant talks about the relation between imagination and taste in artistic production. What remains unclear is whether taste and genius work in concord in order to produce beautiful art, or whether one or the other takes charge. In this paper I look at this challenge, and I offer an interpretation of how Kant conceives of genius. I argue that the (...) gift of genius is multi-componential, including the capacity to maximize imagination’s productivity as well as the capacity to develop taste to the point where one can extract the rules for art production, internalize them and implement them in one’s own original and exemplary artistic production. By analyzing specific claims Kant makes in relation to beautiful art, primarily his account of poetry, I extrapolate further aspects of artistic genius, which relate to his capacity to create artworks imbued with moral and cognitive significance, and which enable the awakening of genius in other artists. (shrink)

There is much to admire in Rafe McGregor's new book: its analytical clarity and precision, depth and systematicity in argumentation, width of the material covered, sharpness of his vision, illuminative power of his examples. I share his concern for the future of aesthetic education within the dominant context of neoliberal imperative, and I am inspired by his dedication to invigorate humanists' battle for preservation of the practices we so deeply believe in. I agree with his overall intuition regarding the ethical (...) dimension of narratives, and I am equally convinced of their capacity to provide understanding, though less optimistic regarding their capacity to decrease our inhumanity. I take his dedication to... (shrink)

Review of the book Rafe McGregor, A CRIMINOLOGY OF NARRATIVE FICTION, Bristol University Press, 2021, pp. 176, ISBN: 978-1529208054, Hardback, €74.70 / $66.09.

This edited volume features discussions by leading scholars on the topic of trust and its place in moral psychology. The contributors cover theoretical and applied issues relating to trust, including trust and distrust in conditions of oppression, trust and technology, and trust in medical ethics.

Is philosophy of film without theory an oxymoron or a family of non-, anti-, and a-theoretical approaches with which to engage in film-involving philosophical scholarship and understanding? The goal of this collection is to argue for the latter and to do so by example. By demonstrating a mere handful of the many ways in which philosophy of film without theory might be pursued, in tandem with the insights born of these methods, the volume’s contributors both implicitly and explicitly challenge the (...) academic assumption that engaging philosophically with film must be a theoretical activity. Indeed, they indicate the potential for championing without theory scholarship across the humanities for anyone whose projects and practices seek and celebrate humanistic understanding. -/- Contributors include Lucy Bolton, Carla Carmona, James Conant, Katheryn Doran. Maximilian De Gaynesford, Rob van Gerwen, John Gibson, Eran Guter & Inbal Guter, Colin Heber-Percy, Iris Vidmar Jovanović, Andrew Klevan, David Macarthur, Rupert Read, William Rothman, Constantine Sandis, and Sebastian Sunday. Films and television programmed discussed include Gravity, Le notti di Cabiria, Dunkirk, The Handmaid's Tale, Three Colours: Red and many more. -/- In addition there is an interview with Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey. (shrink)

In this paper we want to explore different epistemological benefits that we gain by dealing with some artworks, and our focus is on narrative arts. We claim that there is a sense in which narrative arts can be similar to testimony, in that they provide information which can be epistemologically valuable for cognitive agents such as we are. We identify at least two broad categories of these epistemological benefits, the first one includes ‘facts stating’ and in that sense is parallel (...) to the paradigmatic case of testimony in which what the testifier says can be a source of knowledge as mere acquisition of facts for his audience . This, however, is not the most peculiar and distinctive kind of epistemological benefits we can gain from art. The other one has to do with raising awareness, of deepening our understanding about some issues either by a specific, powerful and involving way of providing us facts , or by presenting us the stance, the attitude, the opinion of the artist that can be enlightening, or challenging for us. (shrink)

Big philosophical questions—about the mind, the idea of the good, justice, beauty, knowledge—have been the prime interest of philosophers ever since Plato first raised them in his dialogues. However, regardless of how hard philosophers have been trying to find answers to them, it seems that all they have ever managed to do was to find reasons for disagreements, and, on the whole, to have failed to reach a consensus on pretty much anything. Some philosophers now claim that there hasn’t been (...) much progress in philosophy, especially when compared to the sciences. I take up this verdict and try to refute it, first by offering an alternative view on what counts as progress, and then by analyzing big philosophical questions and their relevance for our intellectual and practical pursuits. I argue that, due to the distinctive nature of philosophical curiosity, coming up with answers to the big philosophical questions is an ideal that can hardly be met, but that philosophy nevertheless delivers various benefits, intellectual and practical, which the proponents of the No-Progress View tend to ignore. (shrink)

A review of Alan H. Goldman´s Philosophy and the Novel.

One of the most contentious question in today’s discussions on the educational policies concerns the role and values of the humanities in contemporary society and education. Many see the humanities as empty, unnecessary, inefficient, phony and worthless. This paper offers a rundown of arguments adduced to support this view, followed by an overview of Helen Small’s The Value of the Humanities, which offers an exceptionally critical and insightful analysis into the current debate over the value of the humanities. The paper (...) ends by emphasizing further the need to recognize the contribution that the humanities make to the production of knowledge and enhancement of the quality of life, as well as to the much needed sense of purpose and meaning. (shrink)

In this paper I address Jerome Stolnitz’s famous article “On the cognitive triviality of art,” with the aim of defending aesthetic and literary cognitivism against the charges Stolnitz issues at it therein. My defence of literary cognitivism is grounded in contemporary epistemology, which, I argue, is more embracive of cognitive values of literature traditionally invoked by literary cognitivists. My discussion is structured against Stolnitz’s individual arguments, dedicated in particular to the problem of literary truth. After exploring what such notion might (...) amount to, I move on to address the problems of applicability and triviality of literary truths, and I end by defending literature as a cognitively valuable social practice. (shrink)

This edited volume examines the topic of trust and its place in the thought of several key figures from the history of philosophy. Drawing on thinkers and philosophical traditions from across the globe, the chapters focus especially on trust's moral and social dimensions.

From philosophy of science, epistemology, and ethics to political philosophy and philosophy of mathematics, Philip Kitcher has made outstanding contributions to every philosophical discipline. With Deaths in Venice: The Cases of Gustav von Aschenbach, he continues his journey into philosophy of literature he undertook back in 2007 with his book Joyce’s Kaleidoscope. Written in his clear, precise, and occasionally almost poetic style, Deaths in Venice is not only an inspiring new interpretation of Thomas Mann’s famous novel Death in Venice but (...) also a rich insight into the connection between philosophy and art, that is, literature and music. Original and thought provoking in his treatment of this much discussed... (shrink)

Contemporary debates within analytic philosophy regarding the relation between literature and philosophy focus on the capacity of some literary works to engage with philosophical problems. While some philosophers see literature as a welcome contribution to philosophy, or as an alternative to pursuing philosophical questions, some are more sceptical with respect to its capacity to tackle philosophical concerns. As a contribution to this debate, in this paper I look at similarities and dissimilarities between the two practices, with the aim of mitigating (...) some views which see them as too diverse to allow for literary treatment of philosophical issues. As points of contact, I focus on the shared thematic concerns of the two practices, i.e. on the fact that literature and philosophy both deal with issues that humans generally care for. I argue that both practices, despite the stylistic, linguistic and methodological differences in their approach, manage to fulfil ‘the recognition requirement’, namely, recognize and engage with those issues, situations and context of human predicament in the world which are in need of intellectual refinement. I then move on to dismiss arguments which purport to discredit literary treatments of philosophy on the basis of literature’s alleged subjectivity and emotional dimension, which are contrasted with philosophical objectivity and rationality. I end by emphasizing the impact of academic constraints on professional philosophy, in order to suggest that pursuing philosophical concerns is not an invention of the practice, but a natural inclination of reflective, inquisitive human mind. (shrink)

Poetry and philosophy have had a long and convoluted relation, characterized often by mutual antipathy and rarely by mutual acknowledgment and respect. Plato was one influential philosopher who trashed poetry’s capacities to trade in the domain of truth and knowledge, but it was J. L. Austin who blew the final whistle by dismissing it as non-serious. And while for many poets that was an invitation to dismiss Austin, for many philosophers that was a confirmation of the overall discomfort they had (...) already felt with respect to poetry. Just how wrong both parties were in this standoff is revealed in the latest book by Maximilian De Gaynesford, The Rift in the Lute: Attuning Poetry and Philosophy, which calls for a dismissal of the separation of the two and for their mutual cooperation. In this paper, we look at De Gaynesford’s proposal, mostly praising its strong points and occasionally raising doubts regarding its success. (shrink)