What I call the ‘Ethical Question’ asks whether an artwork’s moral (dis)value ever makes a difference to its aesthetic value. The question, I argue, is ambiguous between an uninteresting, trivial version and an interesting but very hard version. Devastatingly, the literature on the Ethical Question has, I argue, almost exclusively addressed the easy question. In this talk, I’ll explain this ambiguity and then try to see if there is some subset of ways to, as it were, address the trivial question while avoiding triviality. In addition to value theorists, the talk might be of particular interest to those working on such issues as mental causation, metaphysical dependence, explanation, properties, and related issues.

How well do aesthetic concepts like beauty, elegance, harmony, the sublime, and art hold up under critical scrutiny? Do these concepts have any defects that philosophy might be able to diagnose? I'll argue that under natural assumptions, some of these concepts are defective. Moreover we can explore some of the options for replacing the problematic aesthetic concepts with ones that are free of the defects.

What is it to say that something is beautiful? I attempt an answer by arguing against two rival answers. One is aesthetic hedonism, which answers that to say that something is beautiful is to say that it is valuable because pleasurable. I argue against aesthetic hedonism on the grounds that it is incompatible with the care we take to make accurate judgments of beauty. The other rival is aesthetic subjectivism, which answers that to say that something is beautiful is to do something other than ascribe to it an objective property. I argue against aesthetic subjectivism on the grounds that it is incompatible with our willingness to act on reliable testimony that something is beautiful. The answer I then propose holds that to say that something is beautiful is to ascribe to it an objective property, whose presence we have reason to judge accurately, since we otherwise risk failing to act as we aesthetically ought.

I offer a set of sufficient conditions for beauty, drawing on Parsons and Carlson’s account of ‘functional beauty’. First, I argue that Parsons and Carlson’s account falls short of adequately delivering on its promise of bringing comprehensiveness and unity to aesthetics, whilst facing a range of counterexamples. Instead, I propose, the account should be modified so as to state that if an object is well-formed for its function(s) and pleases competent judges insofar as it is thus experienced, then it is beautiful. I argue that this version of functional beauty offers greater informativeness, comprehensiveness and unity––accounting for, inter alia, talk of mathematical, literary, and moral beauty. Before concluding, I address a number of objections by way of demonstrating that my proposal survives reflective scrutiny.

Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that an artwork’s ethical defects have an impact on its aesthetic value. The ethical critic is interested in the ethical evaluation of a work’s intrinsic features, to see how its ethical value interacts with its aesthetic value. This paper examines the legitimacy of an intrinsic ethical assessment of works of fiction by questioning what should be regarded as a work’s intrinsic ethical defects. I propose a distinction between fictional and actual immorality in fiction that has important consequences for whether the counter-moral content of fictional narratives can be regarded as an intrinsic moral flaw. I argue that we cannot properly speak of a work’s intrinsic ethical demerits, and that thus we can only aspire to an extrinsic ethical assessment of a narrative that depends entirely on contextual considerations: some features of works of fiction can be regarded as ethically significant in certain contexts. Because the ethical assessment can only be extrinsic and context dependent, I conclude that we should defend Contextual Autonomism.

Along with the rich history of adaptation of novels into films, there are numerous examples of films that adapt works of prose non-fiction: Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table, based on Janet Frame’s autobiographies; Alan Parker’s adaptation of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything from Jane Hawking’s Travelling to Infinity; Walter Salles’ film of Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries, and Bennett Miller’s and Adam McKay’s films, respectively, of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball and The Big Short. I will discuss some linked questions about such adaptive relationships. First, it seems obvious, or pretty obvious, that the films are all works of fiction. They are not, for instance, documentary films. So, the first question concerns why that is and whether there is a conception of fiction that makes this clear. Second, is there something we might call ‘the experience of fiction’ that can float free of the actual requirements for fiction? In general I will reflect on what seems to be a process of fictionalisation manifest within these adaptations.

TBC

In the eighteenth century, there was an upsurge in philosophical interest in the arts and aesthetic values such as beauty. Indeed with this upsurge of interest came a redefinition of art: by contrast to the prior European tradition, which had defined art as imitation, for eighteenth-century thinkers beauty (not imitation) is the primary, defining purpose of art. In this paper, I discuss a marvellous, but little-known, posthumously published essay by Adam Smith, “Of the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called The Imitative Arts.” I argue that Smith in this essay explicitly contributes to this conceptual transformation in a way tacitly called for, but not elsewhere accomplished by his colleagues: Smith reinterprets artistic imitation itself as a form of “beauty.”

Discussions of the cognitive value of fictional literature usually take for granted that we can learn ordinary facts from fiction, and focus instead on other forms of knowledge or cognitive improvement. I argue that at least some of these other kinds of cognitive value — such as learning ‘what it’s like’ to have different experiences, or acquiring psychological insight into other human beings — presuppose a basis in fact. I outline an account of the conditions under which we learn facts from fiction, and deploy it to better understand how fictions may be sources of other forms of cognitive value.

Impossible colours are mixtures of hues that do not appear on the colour wheel. They are widely taken to be impossible to mix, experience or even imagine. This paper draws on art and science to explore the idea that in fact painters can and do ‘paint’ with impossible colours.

There are a number of ongoing debates in aesthetics concerning the nature and scope of aesthetic properties. In this talk, I consider how these debates might intersect with an important (but philosophically neglected) claim within various religious traditions; that God is perfectly beautiful. In particular, I ask whether we can reconcile this claim with the influential view that aesthetic properties (and their bearers) must be perceptible.

It’s increasingly popular in metaethics to accept a thesis known as Robust Moral Realism (RMR), where RMR is committed, among other things, to a particularly strong form of mind-independence for moral properties, that requires them to be (relevantly) independent of the attitudes of not only actual observers, but ideal observers too. According to RMR, slavery’s wrongness, for example, is not a matter of what anyone, real or ideal, would think about it, or how anyone, real or ideal, would feel about it. RMR can say, then, that slavery would be wrong even if everybody thought it was right, and even if ideal observers (specified in non-moral terms) would think it was right.

Consider an aesthetic counterpart of RMR – what I shall call Robust Aesthetic Realism (RAR). RAR would be committed, analogously, to a particularly strong form of mind-independence for beauty, that requires beauty to be (relevantly) independent of the attitudes of not only actual observers, but ideal observers too. RAR can say that Venice would be beautiful even if everyone thought it was ugly, and even if ideal observers (specified in non-aesthetic terms) would think it was ugly.

It’s striking that while RMR is popular, RAR is not at all popular. Further, most philosophers take robust realism to be more plausible in the moral case than in the aesthetic case. There are two ways that this widespread view about the relative tenability of the two theses could be correct. The first way is what I call Obstacle Asymmetry: RAR faces obstacles that RMR doesn’t face. The second I call Motivation Asymmetry: RMR is better motivated than RAR – there are compelling arguments for RMR that lack counterparts in the aesthetic case.

This paper considers whether Motivation Asymmetry holds. I argue that there is no good reason to think it does. I consider the three main kinds of argument that are commonly taken to supply a motivation for RMR, and I argue that each is no less compelling in the aesthetic case. If I am right, then in the absence of further arguments for RMR, we should take robust realism to be no less motivated in the aesthetic case than in the moral case.

This is a surprising result. Metaethicists often talk as though the considerations that motivate RMR are specifically ethical ones, and as though RAR is not correspondingly well-motivated.

The paper explores how the idea of experience, with primary focus on aesthetic experience, might apply to literature in general and poetry in particular. Any kind of sensory experience seems at best marginal, for example, to the novel. To speak of the experience of a novel seems not to be speaking of sensory experience. Yet the aesthetic—certainly aesthetic experience—seems closely tied to the sensory. Do we then mean something different when talking of experience in the literary realm? Maybe. But poetry lends itself more readily to talk of experience, aesthetic experience in particular and even sensory experience. Is not much of the pleasure of poetry bound up with the sounds, rhythms and textures of poetic language? And is that not both sensory and aesthetic? Although this might seem incontestable it also hints at a kind of formalism in the aesthetic appraisal of poetry. If our focus is on sounds and rhythms what becomes of poetic subject matter? Is that excluded from aesthetic appraisal? That seems undesirable in itself, especially so for those who promote the indivisibility of form and content in poetry. Can form-content unity in a poem afford aesthetic experience? If so, how is that explained? If not, then are we back to a different kind of experience (more like the novel?) in associating poetry with aesthetic experience?

In the course of arguing for her wider and well-known view that pornography literally silences women, Rae Langton suggests that a piece of pornography is, inevitably, a speech act: an act of speaking. In this view, she is accompanied by Ronald Dworkin and by Caroline West (with whom she is a sometime co-author); she also, at least on the face of it, shares the assumption with a dominant interpretation of the US constitution, according to which the First Amendment should protect pornography under the aegis of free speech. On the other side of the debate are those who argue that a piece of pornography is not and cannot be a speech act. These include philosophers such as Jennifer Hornsby, Jennifer Saul and Louise Anthony.  One striking thing about this debate that it apparently operates at a level of complete generality: either pornography always is a speech act, or it never is. I will argue that neither of these conclusions is acceptable. In particular, I will draw an instructive comparison with non-pornographic fiction, which in some cases can correctly be said to deliberately convey a message, as speech does, but in other cases clearly does not.

Scientists routinely speak of the aesthetic merit of theories, proofs and explanations, often regarding the experience of beauty and elegance in science as a motivation for their work and an indication of its truth. But aesthetic judgments in science are as controversial as they are widespread. On one side, aestheticians have worried that statements about the beauty of a theory or the elegance of a proof are merely metaphorical and lack genuine aesthetic status. On the other side, philosophers of science have wondered why aesthetic concerns should play any role in the search for scientific knowledge. I address this two-fold challenge by asking how judgments of beauty could be both aesthetic and relevant for scientific enquiry. I propose an answer inspired by the Kantian idea that aesthetic experience is grounded, at least in part, in the subject’s spontaneous intellectual activities. I argue that relevant aesthetic judgments are grounded in the subject’s awareness of her creative intellectual activities in devising and grasping a theory. And I suggest that judgments of this kind may offer a heuristic tool for scientific enquiry by indicating achievements of understanding.

“All epistemology begins in fear”, claim Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison (2007: 372) in the final chapter of their history of objectivity. Their account shows that our relationship with objectivity coincides with the story of the scientific self, and of the epistemic virtues that communities cultivate explicitly to “discipline” their practitioners.  In this talk I aim to show that the notion of representation in philosophy of science, and in particular that of mimesis, followed a fate very similar to that of objectivity. Specifically, I claim that the somewhat tormented relationship philosophers of science have developed with mimetic accounts of representation marks just another chapter in the history of epistemic fear.

A widespread criticism of mimetic accounts of representation is that they are merely a “common sense” view, built on the assumption that representation can be exhausted simply by postulating a mirror-like, dyadic relation between a representational source and its target. But as Stephen Halliwell (2002) argued in The Aesthetics of Mimesis, this kind of criticism was far more nuanced even in Plato, credited as one of the earliest and most adamant critics of mimetic accounts of art (and knowledge more broadly). I propose a revival of mimesis in philosophy of science that looks explicitly at texts in aesthetics such as Halliwell’s, to show the unique potentialities this historical concept still holds when it comes to our understanding of scientific representation. Drawing on concrete case-studies, I will propose a positive account of mimesis as historically-located, enactive and iconic. Construed as a form of iconicity, I claim, mimesis can be understood as a fertile representative device to discover, articulate and present new epistemic possibilities.

This paper will consider whether works in genres such as biopics, docudramas, and Shakespeare’s History Plays are fiction or non-fiction. It will argue that (a) some of them are non-fictions and (b) that, for others, it is a mistake to classify them under either heading. This will lead to a consideration of what motivates authors of non-fiction, and argues that a commitment to truth has both an epistemological and a non-epistemological function. Along the way it will conclude (as does Kendall Walton) that it is misguided to think that fiction is more of a philosophical puzzle than non-fiction.

Ordinary testimony transmits knowledge. But aestheticians have been sceptical of whether aethetic testimony  transmits aesthetic knowledge. Although the debate in the philosophical  literature focuses largely on normative and conceptual questions,  empirical claims about folk resistance to aesthetic testimony play a significant role in that debate. Our studies explore folk attitudes towards aesthetic testimony. We argue that experimental results do not support pessimism about the epistemic value of aesthetic testimony.

It is a curious fact about the philosophical literatures on both propaganda and pornography that they tend to talk about these phenomena as if they were primarily linguistic. Yet by far most pornography today is pictorial and most propaganda has a significant pictorial component. This paper aims to shift the focus in the conversations to pictures and begins to think through some of the implications of this shift. In particular, I’ll be developing a peculiarly pictorial model of persuasion that better suits the work that pornography and propaganda can do. Along the way, I’ll use some examples of highly persuasive pictures from the Italian Renaissance.

Julian Dodd has recently argued against what he terms ‘local descriptivism’ as a meta-ontological principle in the philosophy of art. Dodd distinguishes local descriptivism from another meta-ontological view, ‘folk-theoretic modesty.’ The two views differ as to the relationship between the folk-theoretic beliefs about artworks implicit in our practices and the correct ontology of art for particular art forms. The local descriptivist thinks that the folk-theoretic beliefs in some way determine the ontological characters of artworks, whereas proponents of folk-theoretic modesty think that properly rigorous philosophical inquiry in accordance with the demands of “mainstream metaphysics” can lead us to rightly conclude that our folk ontology of art is seriously in error. Dodd takes his objections to descriptivism as counting equally against the idea that the ontology of art is by its very nature constrained by artistic practice. I argue, against Dodd, that according a grounding role to artistic practice in the ontology of art need not conflict with the demands of meta-ontological realism and can allow for both practices and folk beliefs about those practices to be revised. Practice, I argue, must ground our ontological inquiries into the nature of artworks of various kinds because the ontologist’s task is to make sense of the practices into which such artworks enter. But neither the practices themselves nor our folk beliefs about those practices are sacrosanct. In taking ontology of art to be reflectively accountable to artistic practice, I also reject Thomasson’s global descriptivism in the ontology of art. My objection, however, is independent of the merits of Thomasson’s ‘easy view’ in metaphysics more generally. Rather, I argue, she misunderstands the nature of the questions that ontologists of art are asking. Ontology of art is by its very nature reflective and potentially revisionary of certain aspects of our practice. It involves not conceptual analysis but the codification of a practice in a way that clarifies the role played by certain things in that practice.

There are two views of the nature of fictive utterances in the existing literature. According to Searle and others, fictive utterances involve the overt pretense of performing ordinary illocutionary acts, such as assertions. According to Currie, Stock and Davies, they consist in a distinctive kind of illocutionary act, characterised by a communicative intention to elicit imaginings in an audience. I argue against both these views on epistemological grounds. Neither, I argue, is able to explain the fact that readers are, by and large, able to identify the contents of authors’ fictive utterances because both views are unable to accommodate the role of context in interpretation. I defend an alternative view according to which fictive utterances are declarations, illocutionary acts which are distinctive in effecting changes to the status of their objects simply in virtue of their successful performance. I argue that it follows from this view that we should be anti-intentionalists about the contents of fictive utterances. Although authors may competently and intentionally exploit them, conventions, rather than authors’ intentions, determine the contents of the utterances by which works of fiction are produced.

Pictures are surfaces with marks on them. Different kinds of pictures have different kinds of marks, produced in different ways. The marks themselves have an interest in painting and drawing which they do not have in photography and cinema. This difference enables us to identify and explain a feature of some pictures which I call “apparent transparency”. This is not the same as Walton-style transparency and pictures which have apparent transparency need not be (and in my view are not) transparent. The interest that marks have in painting are of different kinds depending on whether those marks are co-incident. I explain the notion of co-incidence and use it to highlight some of the aesthetic differences between different kinds of paintings and to extend Wollheim’s notion of twofoldness.

The arts have an ambivalent status in the history of the sublime. Some philosophers have taken poetry, painting, and music to be sublime, while others have clearly designated the arts as capable only of representing, conveying, or expressing it, that is, somehow derivative of sublimity in nature, whether that be through visual depictions of sublime phenomena, through the language of poetry and literature, or through music. Here, I take as a starting point the eighteenth-century view that the arts, on the whole, are not sublime as such and consider it with reference to recent debates in aesthetics. I argue that (1) paradigm cases of the sublime involve qualities related to overwhelming vastness or power coupled with a strong emotional reaction of excitement and delight tinged with anxiety, and (2) because most works of art lack the combination of these qualities and accompanying responses, they cannot be sublime in the paradigmatic sense. Along the way, I discuss differences between sublimity and profundity in art, as well as considering the inclusion of works of architecture and some forms of land art in the category of the sublime.