Papers

Antony Aumann (Northern Michigan University, USA)

On the Cognitive Value of Literature: The Case of Nietzsche’s Genealogy
One striking feature of On the Genealogy of Morals concerns how it is written. Nietzsche utilizes a literary style that provokes his readers' emotions. Recently, Christopher Janaway has argued that this approach is integral to Nietzsche's philosophical goals: feeling the emotions Nietzsche's style arouses is necessary for understanding the views he defends. This paper shows that Janaway's position is tempting but mistaken. The temptation exists because our emotions often function as "tools of discovery." They bring things into focus we otherwise could not see. However, once we grasp what they reveal, we can communicate it to others without first having to arouse their emotions. Thus there may be truths none of us would know unless one of us consulted his or her emotions. But it is not the case that each of us must consult his or her emotions in order to understand these truths.

Amy Coplan (California State University, Fullerton, USA)

What Can Empirically Driven Philosophy of Film Tell Us about Film and Feeling?
In this paper, I employ an empirically driven approach to philosophy of film in order to examine the relationship between film and feeling. My examination has three interrelated goals. First, I aim to show that many of our affective responses to film are "low-level" or "non-cognitive," occurring as a result of film's direct engagement of the senses. My second goal is to identify some of the implications of this feature of film, both for how we should define film and for what it reveals about some of the ways that low-level affect and higher-order thought interact during the film viewing experience. My third and final goal is to explain how the case of film feeling (or affective responses to film) is instructive for philosophy of emotion and philosophy of mind.

Anne Eaton (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)

"A Lady on the Street But a Freak in the Bed": On the Social Function of Erotic Art
When philosophers worry about the purported difference between "erotic art" and "pornography," they tend to focus on 20th century works. This leads to a distorted understanding of the two categories. By taking early-modern works as primary examples, I make the case that that the distinction between "erotic art" and "pornography" is not any of the things that philosophers have supposed. Rather, I argue that it is ultimately a social distinction rooted in class hierarchy. I conclude with some thoughts about how this ought to affect feminist thinking about pornography.

Andrew Kania (Trinity University, USA)

Concepts of Pornography: Feminist Insights for Philosophers of Art
There are two broadly philosophical literatures on pornography. By far the largest is concerned with moral issues raised by pornography. This literature falls into two phases. The first phase comprises the debate between moral conservatives, who objected to pornography on the grounds of its explicit sexual nature, and liberals, who defended pornography on grounds of something like freedom of speech or expression. Though this debate is not stone cold, the liberals seem to have won it. However, it has been largely replaced by a different one between feminists who object to pornography on the basis that it contributes to the oppression of women and those who reject these feminist arguments. There is also a much smaller literature concerned with aesthetic or artistic issues concerning pornography. For the most part, this literature has been concerned with examining the distinction commonly made between pornography and art (particularly 'erotic art').

Sam Liao (University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, USA)

Empirically Investigating Imaginative Resistance
Imaginative resistance refers to a collection of phenomena in which certain propositions, such as morally-disagreeable claims, are presented in fictions, and people resist imagining and accepting as fictional these propositions. Philosophers have primarily theorized about imaginative resistance from the armchair. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of empirical methods for uncovering explanatory factors of imaginative resistance that are high in philosophical relevance but low in psychological salience. Our studies show that genre is one such factor: readers' genre competence strongly influences their experiences of imaginative resistance. Without the aid of empirical methods, it is natural—as philosophers have mostly done—to under-emphasize the explanatory significance of genre due to its low psychological salience. Thus, empirical investigations are valuable complements to the predominant armchair methodology in theorizing about imaginative resistance. (NOTE: This paper was co-authored by Nina Strohminger and Chandra Sekhar Sripada.)

Christy Mag Uidhir (City College of New York, USA)

PHILOSOPHY OF ART & CONTEMPORARY METAPHYSICS: Deference, Independence, & Responsibility
I consider the field of aesthetics to be at its most productive and engaging when adopting a broadly philosophically informative approach to its core issues (e.g., shaping and testing putative art theoretic commitments against the relevant standard models employed in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind) and to be at its most impotent and bewildering when cultivating a philosophically insular character (e.g., selecting interpretative, ontological, or conceptual models solely for fit with pre-fixed art theoretic commitments). For example, when philosophical aesthetics tends toward insularity, we shouldn't be surprised to find standard art-ontological categories incongruous with those standardly employed in contemporary metaphysics. Of course, when contemporary metaphysics tends to ignore aesthetic and art theoretic concerns, perhaps we likewise shouldn't be surprised to find the climate of contemporary metaphysics inhospitable for a theory of art. While this may seem to suggest at least a prima facie tension between our basic art theoretic commitments considered from within philosophical aesthetics and our standard ontological commitments considered from without, I think any perceived tension or antagonism largely due to metaphysicians and aestheticians (at least implicitly) assuming there to be but two available methodological positions with respect to the relationship between contemporary metaphysics and philosophical aesthetics (in the relevant overlap areas). I call these two opposing views the DEFERENCE VIEW and the INDEPENDENCE VIEW. I argue neither view is adequate. I then advance a third option that I take to be a far more productive and eminently more reasonable view about the relationship between metaphysics and aesthetics. I call this the RESPONSIBLE VIEW.

Aaron Meskin (Leeds University, UK)

The Trouble with Aesthetics: The Unreliability of Aesthetic Judgment and Aesthetic Testimony
Is it possible to gain aesthetic knowledge by means of others' testimony? In earlier articles I argued that we can gain aesthetic knowledge by such means, but also that testimony frequently fails to provide us with warrant since testifiers' judgments are often unreliable. (So I am a pessimistic optimist about the issue.) In that earlier work I appealed to arguments from within philosophical aesthetics which support the unreliability claim. This paper argues that support for this general approach to aesthetic testimony can also be found outside of philosophical aesthetics. In the first part of the paper I discuss empirical evidence (of various exposure effects as well as the effects of evaluative conditioning) that appears to support the unreliability hypothesis. A standard objection to the unreliability explanation of the epistemic weakness of aesthetic testimony is that it fails to make sense of a first-person/third-person asymmetry with respect to aesthetic knowledge; i.e., that there is a distinctive epistemic problem with aesthetic testimony that does not infect first-person aesthetic judgment. In the second part of the paper, I explore both empirical and philosophical reasons to think that there is a distinct problem with testimony about aesthetic matters. I argue that we have some reason to think that testifiers about such matters often do not deserve our trust (people may often lie about aesthetic matters), and I show that some of the most plausible semantic theories of aesthetic discourse imply that there are serious impediments to gaining aesthetic knowledge from others' testimony.

Margaret Moore (Leeds University, UK)

Metacriticism and Metaphysical Fetishism
This paper revives a conception of aesthetics popular in the early days of analytic aesthetics, that of metacriticism. Metacriticism, according to Monroe Beardsley, is the philosophy of criticism, which investigates "those principles that are required for clarifying and confirming critical statements." (Beardsley, Aesthetics, p.4) While metacriticism is certainly not the only task that aesthetics rightfully takes on--for instance, a philosophy of criticism necessarily leaves out the analysis of our responses to the beautiful in nature--to think of aesthetics as a kind of second order criticism puts aesthetics in a similar relation to the study of art as the philosophy of science stands in relation to the study of nature, or as meta-ethics stands to normative ethics. Aesthetics as metacriticism, then, has direct if not immediate consequences for our understanding of artworks and the responses they elicit from us. First, I offer some possible reasons why metacriticism has fallen out of fashion in philosophy, and introduce the conception of aesthetics as philosophy--be it metaphysics, philosophy of language, or epistemology--that merely happens to be of art as an instructive contrast to aesthetics as metacriticism. I then go on to discuss two debates in aesthetics that purport to be in the service of critical discourse--appear to be matters of metacriticism--but instead provide solutions that only a metaphysician could love. My contention is that what appears to be one and the same issue will have different solutions, and indeed turn out to address different questions, when seen as metacriticism as opposed to applied metaphysics.

Luke Phillips (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA)

Interestingness and Inspiration
In this talk I seek to combat the idea that aesthetic appreciation is merely spectatorial and not practical. To do so, I focus on Kant's distinction between the disinterestedness and the non-interestingness of aesthetic experience. The latter important concept has been almost totally neglected by aesthetic theorists, who tend overwhelmingly to focus on the former. I proceed to argue against Kant that aesthetic experience is interesting and in so doing I outline some reasons in favor of the Kantian position. The reasons relate to aesthetic experience and its completeness as an end in itself, its psychological austerity, and its inability to yield determinate ends. As a response to these claims, I suggest a theory of aesthetic inspiration in which inspiration is construed as the production of an indeterminate wish through the stimulating effect of aesthetic experience.

Michael Rings (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA)

Coming Close and Keeping One's Distance: The Aesthetic Cosmopolitan and Transcultural Conversation

Jenefer Robinson (University of Cincinnati, USA)

Psychological and Philosophical Approaches to the Musical Emotions
Psychologists of music who are interested in emotions are typically primarily interested in which emotions can be aroused in listeners by music and in the mechanisms whereby this can happen. In other words they are primarily interested in the topic for the light it can shed on emotions themselves. By contrast, philosophers of music who pay attention to the emotions are typically interested in whether music arouses emotions at all and, if it does, how this is possible. And they are primarily interested in whether and/or how the arousal of emotions in listeners contributes to musical appreciation. In this paper I will develop a model of musical understanding which relies on co-operation between psychologists and philosophers of music, and which I think gives each their due.

Tiger Roholt (Montclair State University, USA)

A Methodological Distinction between Analytic and Continental Philosophy of Music
On offer here is a tradition-neutral way of understanding the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy of music, in terms of methodology rather than content. I claim that each tradition has characteristic methodological tendencies; I reduce these tendencies to a handful of initial, framing maneuvers (that is, early choices that frame an investigation). These maneuvers are related to one another insofar as they involve, or do not involve, one or two sorts of methodological detachment. In the body of paper, each maneuver is drawn out by contrasting a continental to an analytic perspective on three core issues in the philosophy of music: (1) the relationship between music and the emotions, (2) the nature of musical experience, and (3) musical ontology. ¶ I am interested—not in demonstrating the superiority of one tradition over the other—but in finding a way for philosophers on both sides of the divide to conceive of more methodological options as live options (in the spirit of fostering the dissolution of the divide). Although I focus on the philosophy of music, I believe that this way of distinguishing between traditions has traction well beyond it.

Elisabeth Schellekens (Durham University, UK)

Explanatory Dualism in Empirical Aesthetics: A New Reading
The last decade has seen a significant increase in empirical research into the nature of art and aesthetic experience. It now seems timely to consider the extent to which these approaches have filtered through into philosophical understanding. Can we now speak of progress on the subject of art and the brain from a philosophical perspective? This paper suggests a new reading of the explanatory power of empirical accounts. It begins by separating data provided into three categories. Having isolated two philosophical problems, it argues that empirical approaches fail to distinguish sufficiently between the aesthetic and the artistic. It proposes that the doctrine should be divided into two branches, namely empirical aesthetics and empirical theories of art. Finally, it holds that the explanatory force of the latter is more likely to connect successfully with philosophical accounts.

William Seeley (Bates College, USA)

ξΦαμ, ARMUI, or towards an old fashioned methodology for a cognitive neuroscience of art
Neuroscience of art might give us traction with aesthetic issues. However it can be seen to have trouble modeling the artistically salient semantic properties of artworks. This is a particularly trenchant problem for perceptual media, e.g. dance, music, and painting. So if meaning really matters...and it does...even in aesthetic contexts...the prospects for this nascent field are dim. The issue boils down to a question of whether or not we can get a grip on the kinds of constraints present and available to guide interpretive behavior in our engagement with artworks. I argue that biased competition models of selective attention can be used to solve this problem, generalize to the affective content of our responses to artworks, and so show that research in cognitive neuroscience is germane to the types of problems of interest within the philosophy of art. Along the way I will use this case study to discuss a range of more general methodological issues that confront any attempt for a rapprochement between neuroscience and philosophy of art.

Sandra Shapshay (Indiana University - Bloomington, USA)

Methods in Aesthetics: The Case of Schopenhauer
As of late, contemporary Anglo-American aesthetics and philosophy of art has become more self-conscious about its methods. The
aim of this paper is to see what might be gleaned for contemporary purposes from the history of aesthetics, by investigating the
proto-phenomenological method of an astute and insightful aesthetician of the 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer. His is an interesting case because first, Schopenhauer constrasted his method in aesthetics explicitly with that of Kant, suggesting that one focus on one's own immediate aesthetic experiences rather than on the logic and transcendental conditions for aesthetic judgments, and thereby ushered in a phenomenological turn in aesthetics, avant la lettre. Second, Schopenhauer also argued for the recognition of significant limits to aesthetic theorizing. After reconstructing his methodology in aesthetics, I shall suggest that this case presents us with some good reasons to understand the proper role of contemporary philosophical aesthetics as largely normative rather than as descriptive or even explanatory.

Aaron Smuts (Rhode Island College, USA)

On Asking: 'Is it Better to Like Better Things?'
Is it better to like better things? Rather than answer the question, I'm going to use this opportunity to think a bit about how to go about
looking for an answer. Since the manner in which we pursue answers isn't the entire methodological story, I'm also going to explain why I'm asking this question in this particular form and why I'm asking such a question at all. I suspect that this might be the more methodologically illuminating question, since a variety of issues in value theory intersect here: What's the nature of welfare? Can we normatively assess someone's preferences? Are there some people or things that we should care about more than others? What good is art? The difficulty is that most of these kinds of questions cannot be answered in isolation. The plausibility of an answer to any one of these questions depends on the implications for the related issues. The methodologically important aspect of the high degree of interconnectedness among these issues is that if you know how someone gets to my framing question, you will have a good sense of how they might answer the question. Is this cause for concern?

Bart Vandenabeele (Ghent University, Belgium)

The Sublime in Art: A Neo-Kantian Account
A considerably modified version of Kant's theory of the mathematical sublime in the Critique of Judgment can shed new light on the value of art – including contemporary, 'conceptual' art since Marcel Duchamp. In this contribution, I connect Kant's notion of the aesthetic idea, which he himself links with the beautiful, with the mathematical sublime, and argue that aesthetic ideas are the products of sublime reflection and expression. Contra Makkreel (1998) and Pillow (2000), I argue that the sublime does not merely concern the semantic richness of a work of art but can also pertain to the relation between the semantic content and the formal aspects of a work. I develop a contemporary view of the artistic sublime that goes against the widely accepted conception that the sublime concerns only formless objects. I criticize Paul Crowther's reconstruction of Kant's theory of the sublime in The Kantian Sublime (1989) and offer two new variants of the sublime, which arguably form the core of the sublime in art, viz. the mannerist sublime and the matterist sublime. These two variants enable us, or so I argue, better to assess both the significance of the sublime and the (aesthetic) value of certain works of art.

Jonathan Weinberg (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA)

All Your Desires In One Box: Conative States and Fiction
In the extant literature on the cognitive architecture of fiction, there is something of a consensus that a system that engaging with fictions typically involves a cognitive system that is similar to, parallel with, but nonetheless distinct from our belief system. There is an ongoing debate, however, as to whether there is an analogous system with desire. Do we make-desire as well as make-believe? This paper defends the "no make-desire" thesis from some recent arguments due to Gregory Currie, Andy Egan, and Tyler Doggett. I will contend that the sorts of phenomena appealed to by those authors should not be taken as providing a reason to posit a whole separate system of make-desires. The causal profile of the postulated make-desires are so similar to the profile of ordinary desires, that cognitive architecture turns out not to be the right place to address those phenomena. Other ways of accounting for them are discussed, with a particular eye towards questions about the methodology of this sort of naturalistic aesthetics.