Aesthetic Judgment

This paper presents a Kantian aesthetic argument in defense of weak transhumanism, contending that human fragility, finitude, and imperfection are not shortcomings to be transcended but essential conditions of beauty and meaning. Against the backdrop of accelerating technological advancement—particularly developments in artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, and radical enhancement—the paper challenges the assumptions of strong transhumanism, which seeks to overcome the limits of the human condition. Drawing on Immanuel Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment and the sublime, it argues that the value (...) of human life is not merely instrumental or functional, but aesthetic and intrinsic. Through a series of distinctions between moderate and radical enhancement, the paper defines weak transhumanism as an ethically cautious path that permits technological improvement of the human condition without severing humanity from its essential nature. By contrast, strong transhumanism risks collapsing the tension between aspiration and limitation, flattening the richness of lived experience into a sterile pursuit of digital perfection. If meaning arises from finitude—if the sublime is felt in the confrontation with mortality and uncertainty—then efforts to erase these conditions may undermine the very sources of value we seek to preserve. The Promethean gift of imperfection, far from a curse, is reimagined as a foundation for beauty and purpose. The paper concludes by calling for epistemic humility and restraint in guiding future technological development—urging us to enhance human life not by erasing its limits, but by honoring them. (shrink)

I introduce a hypothesis: that at present some anthologies of best short stories feature a short story by an author which is not their best, to any reader or almost any reader, but if you investigate the author’s short fiction further, you find a story which merits inclusion. I developed this hypothesis after observing inclusion in an anthology, edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. If it is true, titles such as The Best Short Stories 2021 are misleading. "Clues as to who (...) wrote the best short stories of 2021" is perhaps a more accurate title! And does not social justice require accuracy? (There is a paradox in here that refers to THE PHILOSOPHER'S ANNUAL.). (shrink)

This paper proposes a unified account of aesthetic and ethical evaluation based on the notion of cognitive resonance. Building on a previously developed model of aesthetics as a relational phenomenon, aesthetic judgment is described as an emergent alignment between configurations of the world and the cognitive structure of the observer, rather than as a property of objects or a projection of subjective preference. The central claim of the paper is that the same functional structure applies to ethical evaluation. Through a (...) controlled conceptual translation, aesthetic terms such as beauty and taste are replaced with ethical counterparts such as goodness and moral approval, without altering the underlying resonance-based model. The result is a coherent account of ethics as a diagnostic, relational, and situated process, rather than a normative system grounded in universal principles or objective moral facts. Under this perspective, ethical judgments reflect degrees of coherence between possible actions and the cognitive–affective organization of agents embedded in specific contexts. Ethical pluralism and moral disagreement emerge as structural features of divergent patterns of resonance, rather than as failures of rationality or access to moral truth. By reframing ethics as cognitive resonance, the paper shows how several traditional problems in moral philosophy—such as the opposition between objectivism and subjectivism, the fact–value distinction, and the tension between relativism and normativity—are dissolved rather than solved. The proposed framework preserves the experiential force of ethical evaluation while relinquishing the demand for foundational guarantees, offering a descriptive and conceptually economical account of ethical life. (shrink)

This paper starts from the debates on whether the seemingly effortless creation of AI artworks, and by extension some Avant-Garde pieces, diminishes their artistic value. This leads to a broader inquiry into how effort, or the lack thereof, influences our perception of an artwork’s quality and significance. Traditionally, effort in art has been seen in two ways. On the one hand, a skilled artist’s work, which may appear effortless, is often valued for its apparent ease, reflecting genius or inspiration. On (...) the other hand, the Romantic era highlighted the artist’s internal struggle, shifting emphasis from technical proficiency to emotional and intellectual effort. Contemporary empirical research seems to confirm the existence of an “effort heuristic”, suggesting that artworks perceived as requiring more effort are generally valued higher. Finally, this paper suggests defining a notion of “distributed effort” as a category for the appreciation of content and artworks that are the product of complex influences, tradition, technological advancements. As a conclusion it is suggested to investigate the possibility of “artificial effort” in AI-generated art. (shrink)

Darwin hypothesized that some animals, when selecting sexual partners, possess a genuine “sense of beauty” that cannot be accounted for by the logic of natural selection. This hypothesis has been notoriously controversial. In this chapter I propose that the concept of agency can be useful to operationalize the “sense of beauty”, and can help identify the conditions under which one can infer that animals are acting as (aesthetic) agents. Focusing on a case study of the behavior of the Pavo cristatus, (...) I identify the types of evidence that would allow for the inference of agency through aesthetic choice. (shrink)

Edith Landmann-Kalischer defends two claims about aesthetic judgment: it is a species of cognitive judgment in the Kantian sense, and it is based on feeling. I question whether she can hold these two theses together: the way she makes her case for the first claim undermines her ability to maintain the second. I first discuss the notion of a cognitive judgment in Kant and in Landmann-Kalischer. Then I argue that Landmann-Kalischer fails to establish that feeling plays any role in warranting (...) aesthetic judgment. Finally, I suggest that even if aesthetic judgments just are cognitive judgments, beauty makes a claim on us of a different kind. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that aesthetic judgments of works of art are (often, if not always) category-dependent. In this paper, I argue that the categories in which a work is correctly perceived, judged and appreciated are not necessarily the categories to which it actually belongs. The principle that the adequate appreciation of a work must be made in a category to which it belongs should be rejected because it cannot accommodate the strangeness of some innovative works of art. An innovative (...) work might be correctly judged in an old category to which it does not belong, which supports my conclusion that classification may not really matter in category-dependent aesthetic judgments. (shrink)

What is unique about art genres? In this paper, I will show that genres are best understood as clusters of regulative rules for appreciation. Evaluation, interpretation, and other appreciative responses to a work of art are sensitive to how the work is categorised, and genres are the categories that play a normative role in this context. Genres as rules have social foundations and arise from a speech act that I distinguish from classification and call framing. Based on this account, I (...) will illustrate genre practices as social practices in which we declare and propose rules of appreciation to each other. (shrink)

What norms govern aesthetic conversations? In Hansen and Adams (2024), we argue for a norm we call, following Stanley Cavell, “the hope of agreement”, along with a requirement of “seriousness”, the “discipline of accounting for one’s judgments”. Nick Riggle criticizes the hope of agreement and the requirement of seriousness and defends a norm of “community” in which aesthetic conversations involve “discretionary valuing” in a “mutually supportive way”. In this essay, we elaborate on the importance of seriousness as a constitutive norm (...) for aesthetic conversations. We argue that conversations can satisfy Riggle’s community norm without being aesthetic conversations, and that his rejection of seriousness leads him to miss what is distinctive about aesthetic conversation. A fundamental problem with Riggle’s “communitarian” theory of aesthetic value and norms governing aesthetic conversations is that it is in fact much more individualistic than conversations governed by the hope of agreement and seriousness. We propose that the kind of community involved in aesthetic conversations is better understood as a democratic experiment. (shrink)

In recent aesthetics, the historic focus on beauty has given way to a focus on aesthetic properties more generally. Nick Zangwill’s theory of aesthetic judgements aims to ‘stick up for beauty’ (2001, p. 9) by restoring its exceptional status in aesthetics. Zangwill argues that beauty and ugliness are exceptional among aesthetic properties in being verdictive, with the former consisting in overall aesthetic merit and the latter overall aesthetic demerit. These supervene upon substantive aesthetic properties that attribute or deduct instances of (...) aesthetic value which, in turn, supervene upon an artwork’s non-aesthetic properties. In this dissertation, I explore and defend Zangwill’s theory of aesthetic judgements from various objections. Having defended Zangwill’s theory, I explore the concept of the sublime and a novel objection, concerning how accurately it is able to capture the nature and role of another aesthetic property that was historically regarded as distinctive: the sublime. I argue that Zangwill’s theory fails to give the sublime an adequately distinctive role and conclude that there must be an alteration made to do so. Finally, I propose an expansion to Zangwill’s theory in order to accurately organise our experience of beauty and the sublime in art and defend the expanded version of Zangwill’s theory from proposed objections. (shrink)

This paper argues that people commonly make moral and aesthetic errors regarding personal beauty. One moral error involves treating people as if their superficial physical beauty is a key source of their value. This practice immorally objectifies people by treating them as aesthetic objects, such as paintings or sunsets, rather than persons. Physical personal beauty is overrated. And even to the extent to which it may be appropriate to appreciate personal beauty, people still commonly make an aesthetic error by treating (...) people as if their aesthetic value derives primarily from how their faces and bodies look. We thereby overlook much of their aesthetic value, including their aesthetic agency—which involves the aesthetic choices that shape people’s appearance and conduct, as well as their inner selves and character. Moreover, tending to a person’s fuller aesthetic value may mitigate harmful consequences of lookism. (shrink)

Aesthetic internalism claims a link between judgement and motivation: aesthetic judgements bring with them motivations to act in characteristic ways. Critics object that there is a difference between merely liking something and judging it to be aesthetically good, and that it is our likings, not our aesthetic judgements, that motivate us. This paper develops a version of aesthetic internalism that can respond to this criticism. Wholehearted aesthetic judgements are characterized by stability, attention, and motivation. Making such judgements is an important (...) part of a good life, and so at least some aesthetic judgements are motivating. So we have reason to think that this version of aesthetic internalism is true. This paper defends wholehearted aesthetic internalism against objections, and assesses an argument from aesthetic internalism to aesthetic non-cognitivism. While wholehearted aesthetic internalism can only offer qualified support to non-cognitivism, it nonetheless offers a number of fruitful avenues for further work. (shrink)

Suppose I hear from a trusted friend that The Shining is scary. Believing them, I decide not to watch the film. Later, we're talking about the movie and I say, “The Shining is scary!” My assertion here is misleading and inappropriate—I misrepresent myself as having seen the film and judged whether it is scary. But why is this? In this paper, I clarify the scope of the observation, discuss existing explanations of it, and argue that they are all lacking. I (...) argue that the observation is best explained as a particular instance of a general norm which holds that authorities should make assertions about matters in their authority only if they have judged those matters for themselves. Along the way, I offer a theory of judgment which distinguishes it from mere belief. (shrink)

This paper extends the reach of the concept of aesthetic personality, as utilized by Uku Tooming in a recent article, ‘Aesthetic Disagreement with Oneself as Another’, published in Estetika (2023). Tooming invokes this concept as part of his solution to a philosophical puzzle concerning aesthetic disagreement with one’s past self. I argue that equivalence (or approximate equivalence) of aesthetic personality in cases in which one disagrees with an aesthetic peer or peers on an aesthetic judgement licenses the revision of one’s (...) aesthetic judgement. This relates to both intra- and interindividual aesthetic peer disagreements. Interestingly, equivalence of aesthetic personality can, at least in certain cases, undermine the appeal of the autonomy principle, which holds that one must exercise one’s own evaluative capacities in producing a legitimate aesthetic judgement, and which Tooming considers a promising ground for not budging in cases of interindividual aesthetic disagreement. (shrink)

Internal coherence is of great importance for how we think about appreciating objects of aesthetic worth. A disagreement between what we judge to be worthy and what we affectively favor can prevent us from properly grasping its value. However, it is also assumed in the aesthetic domain that our taste changes over time, jeopardising such coherence constraint. These changes can lead to a mismatch between new aesthetic judgments and old aesthetic preferences. This chapter explores a number of issues that emerge (...) from this tension. Using Taylor Swift’s re-recording as a case study, I will explore the relation between fan loyalty and personal authenticity, as well as the role of biographical taste in the reception of these newly recorded albums among Swift’s long-time fanbase. (shrink)

According to prominent philosophical views, appreciating beauty involves psychological distancing, where one does not consider the beautiful object in light of practical interests, and beauty leads to transformative and self-transcendent affective experiences. In this study (N = 187), conducted in the naturalistic environment of a museum, we explored these ideas. Half the participants were instructed to rate the beauty of pottery objects created by a renowned artist, while the other half engaged in a control task that did not involve evaluating (...) beauty. Based on Construal Level Theory, we used the Behavior Identification Form to explore whether aesthetic experiences encourage abstract thinking, and in turn, psychological distance. We also predicted that beauty appreciation would lead to greater transformative and self-transcendent emotions. Indeed, appreciating the beauty of artworks led participants to think in a more abstract way, especially those who practice an art hobby themselves, as well as to transformative, and self-transcendent emotions. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to confront the crisis in art and argument over whether it has lost its way. According to Friedrich Schelling, the ‘modern mythology’, bolstered by the onset of Christianity, is responsible for generating ‘aesthetic privation’ producing a joint crisis of meaning for humanity and art. Their artificial historicising, at the root of this, began with overturning the ‘ancient mythology’ in which art was a unified principle integrally linked to both Nature and History via the Person. (...) Extending this argument, drawing on other Radical Enlightenment thinkers, I show why this corrupted the essential link between aesthetics, ethics, and logic (exacerbated by Kant’s re-definition of aesthetics). And subsequently how the human habitus and telos globally transformed under an evolving modern ‘positivistic materialism’, characterised by an ideological, reflective standpoint, ‘worlding’ humanity toward posthumanism and possible extinction. Addressing the underlying problem of modern ‘mythologising’ and ‘aesthetic privation’ is proposed as essential to mending the associated historicised disjunctures between Art and Society, Nature, and the Person connecting both meaning crises. Early chapters examine why reassociating art ontologically with the normative discipline of aesthetics rather than theoretical ‘aesthetics’ is necessary for this. Reconceiving art as complexity science (Wissenschaft), as Schelling’s ‘process metaphysics’; ‘naturalising’ it to restore habitual primary attendance to bearers of higher meaning (‘internal’ goods) is proposed. This requires understanding ‘ethical value’ in the phenomenology of this ‘science of admiring’. A method for which, and for returning virtue ethics (firstly to the arts ecology), is suggested as a meaningful, practical way to reunite ethics with morals in modern society. Naturalising Art is thus argued as necessary for developing a new mythology and genuine political community needed to reorient humanity. The procedure followed is to firstly examine the posited underlying problem’s significance and causes. Deterioration of the Principle of Art (and essential link between Art and the Person, via corruption of the normative disciplines) emerges as a key reason for why art and humanity’s meaning crises developed together, peaking in contemporary ‘modernity’. This central claim and corresponding remedial propositions (reconnecting Art with normative aesthetics) centre on four main arguments for addressing five suggested historical ‘modifications’ (identified by Raymond Williams, and others) producing the above disjunctures. Re-establishing an ontological conception of Art, restoring dialectical normativity to our modes of admiring (‘idealising’), is thus proposed as essential for confronting deep assumptions inherent in modern mythologising. A methodology for assessing ‘ethical’ meaning-value directionality in any artwork, by combining Peircian semiotics with Max Scheler’s hierarchy of values to revive Schelling’s principle of Art, is then developed to suggest a practical approach for restoring virtue ethics to the human telos. (shrink)

This article examines Bolzano’s aesthetic cognitivism. It argues that, while reminiscent of German rationalist aesthetics and hence potentially appearing rigid and outdated, Bolzano’s version of cognitivism is, in fact, highly innovative and more flexible than the cognitivism championed by the rationalists. He imports from the rationalists the idea that aesthetic appreciation and creation are rule-governed, yet does not construe rule-following and engaging in free aesthetic activities as mutually exclusive. Furthermore, thanks to his nuanced treatment of the interaction between aesthetic values (...) and other types of values, Bolzano’s aesthetic cognitivism presents a fresh alternative to contemporary versions of aesthetic cognitivism. (shrink)

This article examines Bolzano’s aesthetic cognitivism. It argues that, while reminiscent of German rationalist aesthetics and hence potentially appearing rigid and outdated, Bolzano’s version of cognitivism is, in fact, highly innovative and more flexible than the cognitivism championed by the rationalists. He imports from the rationalists the idea that aesthetic appreciation and creation are rule-governed, yet does not construe rule-following and engaging in free aesthetic activities as mutually exclusive. Furthermore, thanks to his nuanced treatment of the interaction between aesthetic values (...) and other types of values, Bolzano’s aesthetic cognitivism presents a fresh alternative to contemporary versions of aesthetic cognitivism. (shrink)

This paper develops a non-reductive theory of beauty by defining it as the perception of irreproducible value — the singular intersection of object, time, and experience that cannot be repeated without loss. Against traditional accounts that reduce beauty to pleasure, utility, or objective property, this framework explains why beauty differs from appetite or function, why it resists commodification, and why it remains central to ethical and cultural life. Beauty is located not in subjective whim nor in objective law, but in (...) an intersubjective domain where singular experiences can be shared without becoming universal. This account clarifies the relation between beauty and transformation, its susceptibility to distortion by ideology or commerce, and its potential to illuminate moral and existential questions. By situating beauty within broader discourses on truth, meaning, and social life, the paper argues that beauty is not merely an aesthetic category but a way of perceiving and inhabiting the world — one that resists reduction, affirms the dignity of the unrepeatable, and cultivates attentiveness to what is singular, fragile, and precious. (shrink)

Aesthetic statements of the form ‘X is beautiful’ are evaluative; they indicate the speaker’s positive affective attitude regarding X. Why is this so? Is the evaluative content part of the truth conditions, or is it a pragmatic phenomenon (i.e. presupposition, implicature)? First, I argue that semantic approaches as well as these pragmatic ones cannot satisfactorily explain the evaluativity of aesthetic statements. Second, I offer a positive proposal based on a speech-act theoretical version of hybrid expressivism, which states that, with the (...) literal utterance of ‘X is beautiful’, we perform two illocutionary acts simultaneously, an assertive and an expressive one. I will specify this theory in detail and argue that it can satisfactorily account for the evaluative content of aesthetic statements. I will also discuss the advantages of the theory over other variants of expressivism in meta-aesthetics. (shrink)

A series of recent experimental studies have cast doubt on the existence of a traditional tension that aestheticians have noted in our aesthetic judgments and practices, viz. the problem of taste. The existence of the problem has been acknowledged since Hume and Kant, though not enough has been done to analyse it in depth. In this paper, we remedy this by proposing six possible conceptualizations of it. Drawing on our analysis of the problem of taste, we argue that the experimental (...) results in question are not a real challenge to its existence. By contrast, they provide empirical evidence in its support. (shrink)

Artists rarely shy away from a drink and other psychoactive substances, yet it seems that there has never been much discussion on what aesthetic or artistic relevance this has to their works and their reception. I outline the scale of the phenomenon focusing on some prominent examples and distinguish a subset of what I call ‘high artworks’. In such artworks, I argue, drug experiences are encoded: their drug-related contextual and intrinsic properties or content are aesthetically or artistically relevant and should (...) be mentioned in any in-depth analysis. I then further argue that it is impossible or at least very difficult to fully appreciate or produce optimal evaluations of a high artwork, unless one has oneself had drug-induced experiences of the kind encoded in the work. This is because such experiences afford one the relevant phenomenal knowledge that is otherwise inaccessible, yet required to gain an adequate level of competence allowing one to fully grasp the work. (shrink)

In the last few years, a remarkable convergence of interests and results has emerged between scholars interested in the arts and aesthetics from a variety of perspectives and cognitive scientists studying the mind and brain within the predictive processing (PP) framework. This convergence has so far proven fruitful for both sides: while PP is increasingly adopted as a framework for understanding aesthetic phenomena, the arts and aesthetics, examined under the lens of PP, are starting to be seen as important windows (...) into our mental functioning. The result is a vast and fast-growing research programme that promises to deliver important insights into our aesthetic encounters as well as a wide range of psychological phenomena of general interest. Here, we present this developing research programme, describing its grounds and highlighting its prospects. We start by clarifying how the study of the arts and aesthetics encounters the PP picture of mental functioning (§1). We then go on to outline the prospects of this encounter for the fields involved: philosophy and history of art (§2), psychology of aesthetics and neuroaesthetics (§3) and psychology and neuroscience more generally (§4). The upshot is an ambitious but well-defined framework within which aesthetics and cognitive science can partner up to illuminate crucial aspects of the human mind. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. -/- . (shrink)

Descartes’ first book, 1618’s Compendium of Music, focuses on biomechanical reactions in the human body but also claims that the purpose of art is to arouse emotions. By the end of the 1630s, however, he had given up on precisely predicting how that arousal may occur. This article contends, though, that Descartes’ abandonment of that project is a result of using an inappropriate psychological model for such predictions. An appropriate model is developed in his last book, 1649’s The Passions of (...) the Soul. Especially by attending to generosity and desire, the probability of predicting aesthetic judgments is at least increased. In increasing it, Descartes’ abandonment need not be total. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell’s account of aesthetic judgment has two components. The first is a feeling: the judge has to see, hear, ‘dig’ something in the object being judged, there has to be an ‘emotion’ that the judge feels and expresses. The second is the ‘discipline of accounting for [the judgment]’, a readiness to argue for one’s aesthetic judgment in the face of disagreement. The discipline of accounting for one’s aesthetic judgments involves what Nick Riggle has called a norm of convergence: the (...) judge aims to get one’s audience to taste see or hear what the judge tastes or sees or hears in the object being judged. Because of the unmistakable difficulty in reaching agreement in aesthetic judgment, Riggle has denied that aesthetic judgment requires a convergence norm and has proposed instead that it requires ‘a kind of harmony of individuality’ (which Riggle calls ‘vibing’). We argue that Cavell offers a version of the convergence norm that is distinct from those that Riggle criticizes, namely Kant’s demand for agreement and Andy Egan’s presupposition of similarity in dispositions in ‘non-defective’ aesthetic conversations. Cavell’s version of the convergence norm is ‘the hope of agreement’. One can hope that one’s audience will agree with one’s aesthetic judgments even when one isn’t in a position to demand agreement or to presuppose similarity in the dispositions that would make agreement more likely. Cavell’s distinct convergence norm avoids Riggle’s criticisms and contributes to a richer account of what’s going on when we disagree about aesthetic matters. (shrink)

The concept of autonomy is central to many debates in aesthetics. However, exactly what it means to be autonomous in our aesthetic engagements is somewhat unclear in the philosophical literature. The normative significance of autonomy is also unclear and hotly debated. In this essay, I propose a method for clarifying this elusive concept by distinguishing three distinct senses or varieties of aesthetic autonomy: experiential autonomy, competence-based autonomy, and personal autonomy. On this taxonomy autonomy is a context-sensitive concept and autonomy applies (...) to several different moments or stages of aesthetic appreciation. Throughout this critical discussion, important issues concerning the nature of aesthetic appreciation are also explored. (shrink)

The aesthetics of tea, in some practices, seems to focus on appreciating the mental effects of tea — the altered states of mind. Wine aesthetics, on the other hand, seems to actively exclude any inebriative effects. Wine experts are supposed to spit, in order to avoid inebriation when they judge wine. Why? The answer, I suggest, lies deep in several key suppositions in the traditional model of aesthetic experience: that aesthetic experience needs to be accurate of its object, and that (...) it needs to be inseparable from the particular details of its object. But, I argue, that model is not really incompatible with an aesthetics of drugs. The problematic presupposition is that the aesthetics of drugs is either an aesthetics of the world, as experienced while drugged, or an aesthetics of the physical substance itself. The aesthetics of some drugs, such as LSD, will turn out, instead, to be a self-reflective aesthetics — one in which the primary object of appreciation is the alteration of one’s own cognitive faculties. This can be valuable as a humbling aesthetic vision, of one’s own cognitive fragility. But the aesthetics of gastronomical drugs, such as wine and tea, will turn out to be even more complicated. Gastronomical drugs demand that we bridge the inwardly-focused aesthetics of inebriation and an outwardly focused gastronomical aesthetics. They open the door to the possibility of an aesthetic reconciliation between our capacity to get onto the world, and our fears about the fragility of that capacity. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the practice of categorizing works of art and its relationship to art criticism. How a work of art is categorized influences how it is appreciated and criticized. Being frightening is a merit for horror, but a demerit for lullabies. The brushstrokes in Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" (1874) look crude when seen as a Neoclassical painting, but graceful when seen as an Impressionist painting. Many of the judgments we make about artworks are category-dependent in this way, but previous research (...) has rarely examined in depth the ontological structure of art categories, how they are generated and maintained, and how they function. This dissertation fills this gap. The proposal of this dissertation can be summarized as follows. Categories (especially genres) should be analyzed as clusters of rules that regulate the responses and behaviors of agents in the artworld. The visual mundaneness is a critical reason to consider Duchamp's "Comb" (1916) provocative, given the existence of the readymade as a set of rules that justifies such reasoning. The critical and appreciative practice of which categorization is a part is a social practice of making, declaring, proposing, reforming, and developing rules of appreciation. How we appreciate artworks, and how criticism guides our appreciation, is sensitive to how we categorize artworks. How we categorize artworks is sensitive to what categories have been set up in our community and which categories are active regarding each artwork. (shrink)

The TikTok experience refers to a user’s interaction with the platform while scrolling through various videos. The user can change what they are viewing instantly on one screen much like a TV viewer, the only difference being that whatever is being watched is in the form of short videos made specifically for the platform. These videos vary in style and form and are made to be viewed within the platform itself. All the content that a user watches within the mobile (...) application, in the end, forms a longer, theoretically never-ending, video that is sometimes completely unrelated but more often similar through shared jokes, memes, and visual filters. This way of producing and viewing short-form videos as a whole is reminiscent of the way Everything Everywhere All At Once feels to the audience which is no surprise as many other forms of media and artworks are inspired by internet short-form video platforms such as TikTok. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of aesthetics is the attempt of using empirical methods to make progress in traditional questions in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of art. While psychology of aesthetics and neuroaesthetics have mainly focused on aesthetic experiences and aesthetic appreciation, experimental philosophy of aesthetics explores people’s conceptions of the aesthetic and artistic realms. Thus, one of its main topics of investigation has been “folk meta-aesthetics”, i. e., whether people consider aesthetic properties to be objective rather than subjective. In this chapter, I (...) begin by presenting a comprehensive survey of this debate and how it engages a wide variety of topics in philosophical aesthetics: the nature of guilty pleasures and aesthetic taste, the possibility of aesthetic disagreement, and the value of aesthetic testimony. I then illustrate the breadth and variety of empirical research in the field of experimental philosophy of aesthetics by summarizing past and present research on topics as diversified as the definition of art, the ontology of musical works of arts, the nature of aesthetic adjectives, the interaction between aesthetic and non-aesthetic evaluations, the paradox of fiction, and the puzzle of imaginative resistance. (shrink)

We demonstrate that many philosophers accept the following claim: When an aesthetic object is apprehended correctly, taking pleasure in said object is a reliable sign that the object is aesthetically successful. We undermine this position by showing that what grounds our pleasurable experience is opaque: In many cases, the experienced pleasure is attributable to factors that have little to do with the aesthetic object. The evidence appealed to is a form of Higher-Order Evidence (HOE) and we consider attempts to overcome (...) said evidence. We argue they are unsuccessful. We conclude by considering what this means for our practice of making aesthetic judgements. (shrink)

Contemporary art is a global success story. It is regularly lauded for its formal experimentation, its diversity, and its interrogation of pressing issues. However, it is also a category of art that creates deep confusion, seemingly floating free of any attempts to clarify its historical determination, conceptual definition, or criteria for critical judgement. The aim of this thesis is to move against this confusion by attempting to answer a central question: what makes art contemporary? In response, I develop three main (...) lines of argument. -/- I begin by arguing that contemporary art has two key features. First, it is made in contexts of absolute heterogeneity, in which artists are free to use any material, art form, genre, or style they please. Second, it attempts to engage with the crises of contemporaneity. This thesis focuses on understanding the second feature which has not been subject to extended philosophical reflection. -/- Next, I argue that one of the main ways contemporary art attempts to grapple with contemporaneity is by getting its audience to improve their cognitive standing on crises. I argue that contemporary art aims not just to provide its audiences with knowledge, but also to make them active co-producers of understanding. In doing so, contemporary artists attempt to help their audiences become participants in shaping the present. -/- Finally, I explore the ways in which the preceding arguments can help us to understand what it means to appreciate an artwork as contemporary art. I endorse a functionalist approach to artistic value. But I also argue that realising the artistic value of contemporary art is often a risky endeavour. I claim that, when dealing with experimental and challenging art, we have to be closely attentive to the way artists exempt themselves from various norms and the impact this has on the activity of audiences and mediators. (shrink)

A notorious concept in the history of aesthetics, “disinterest,” has begotten a host of myths. This paper explores and challenges “The Myth of the Absent Self ” [MAS], according to which in disinterested experience, “the subject need not do anything other than dispassionately stare at the object, bringing nothing of herself to the table other than awareness” (Riggle 2016, p. 4). I argue that the criticism of disinterest experience grounded in MAS is skewed by two false assumptions: about the nature (...) of the clarifying, evaluative, and transformative self-consciousness (which the disinterest critic takes to be at the heart of the profundity of beauty) and about the nature of the self. By bringing out the falsehood of these two assumptions, and by clarifying the core commitments of disinterest, the paper proves that the disinterest critic is in no superior position to the disinterest advocate regarding the explanation of the profound role of beauty in human life. (shrink)

Experientialism in aesthetics is the view that the artistic merit or the aesthetic value of something is determined by the final value of certain experiences of it. These are usually specified as experiences of it with understanding and appreciation. Until recently, experientialism was the dominant view. Not anymore. Experientialists are now subject to a barrage of objections, many of which they have not answered. Here I argue that all of these objections fail. I develop a new form of experientialism that (...) is immune to them. It also has an independent rationale. It incorporates an account of the value of art appreciation that is plausible in its own right. And it endorses many of the core insights of anti-experientialists, especially concerning the final value of good art. Those of us unconvinced by experientialism need to take this form of it seriously. I conclude by identifying some genuine problems it faces. Even these aren’t clearly insoluble. (shrink)

A poignant and uplifting memoir of a woman who struggled with disfigurement and learned to embrace her own beauty. Hubbard's story is one of courage and determination in the face of adversity, and offers inspiration and hope to anyone who has faced similar challenges. A must-read for anyone who believes in the power of love and self-acceptance. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. (...) This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This volume brings together essential essays by an important but neglected thinker in early twentieth-century German philosophy, Edith Landmann-Kalischer. As the first English translation of her writings, this volume represents a landmark step in the effort to restore to its rightful place her philosophy and, in particular, its methodologically unified approach to aesthetic, moral, and epistemic value. The three essays translated - “On the Cognitive Value of Aesthetic Judgments: A Comparison of Sensory Judgments and Value Judgments” (1905), “On Artistic Truth” (...) (1906), and “Philosophy of Values” (1910) - demonstrate a philosophical mind at home with the then emerging disciplines of phenomenology and psychology during one of the most fecund eras of philosophy in German-speaking lands. -/- Drawing on the ferment of this period and engaging with its leading thinkers (e.g., Brentano, Husserl), Landmann-Kalischer crafts a unique and powerful contribution to aesthetics, the philosophy of art, and value theory. And far from speaking simply to the concerns of her day, in these essays she tackles questions that remain as pressing for us today as they were in her time. Are beauty, goodness, and truth real or merely subjective? How do we experience these values? Does our experience of value lead to judgments that can be true or false? Can those experiences lead to knowledge? Is a science of value possible at all? In Landmann-Kalischer's essays, we find rigorously argued and compelling answers to these questions. (shrink)

There is a dimension of rationality, known as structural rationality, according to which a paradigmatic example of what it means to be rational is not to be akratic. Although some philosophers claim that aesthetics falls within the scope of rationality, a non-akrasia constraint prohibiting certain combinations of attitudes is yet to be developed in this domain. This essay is concerned with the question of whether such a requirement is plausible and, if so, whether it is an actual requirement of aesthetic (...) rationality. Ultimately, this paper defends the view that aesthetics is no different from other domains in that it requires coherence between a subject’s mental states (in the aesthetic case, between what is judged and what is aesthetically liked). (shrink)

Aesthetic subjectivism takes the truth of aesthetic judgments to be relative to the individual making that judgment. Despite widespread suspicion, however, this does not mean that one cannot be wrong about such judgments. Accordingly, this does not mean that one cannot gain higher-order evidence of error and fallibility that bears on the rationality of the aesthetic judgment in question. In this paper, we explain and explore these issues in some detail.

This work offers the first comprehensive comparison between the philosophy of Adam Smith and that of his successor, Thomas Reid. It looks at Reid’s and Smith’s remarkably similar accounts of human perception and judgement, and at their different moral and economic theories. In this way, this paper offers not only a new perspective on Reid’s critique of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, but also new insights into the intellectual roots of the genuinely Scottish debates about sense perception and the (...) task of scientific philosophy. “Reiding” Smith can thus offer a unique vantage point from which to understand the connections between epistemological and economic issues in Smith’s work. With a focus that is at once historical and philosophical, this undertaking serves three purposes: a) to familiarise economists with the philosophical and economic works of Thomas Reid, b) to sharpen our understanding of Adam Smith’s intellectual context in the Scottish Enlightenment, and c) to better understand the paradoxical role that individual human judgement plays in Adam Smith’s analysis of the economy. (shrink)

Jochen BRIESEN verteidigt in diesem Buch einen Dispositionalismus in Bezug auf ästhetische Eigenschaften und eine „hybride“ Auffassung in Bezug auf ästhetische Urteile: Er vertritt die Ansicht, dass mit jedem ästhetischen Urteil zwei Sprechakte vollzogen werden, nämlich ein expressiver und ein assertiver Sprechakt. Mit dem assertiven Sprechakt wird dem Gegenstand eine ästhetische Eigenschaft zugeschrieben. Die ästhetische Eigenschaft ist eine dispositionelle Eigenschaft, nämlich die Disposition, unter bestimmten (idealen) Bedingungen in einem Rezipienten einen bestimmten mentalen Zustand zu verursachen. Dieser mentale Zustand ist die (...) Manifestation der ästhetischen Eigenschaft. Der expressive Sprechakt soll genau jenen mentalen Zustand ausdrücken, in dem sich die dispositionelle Eigenschaft manifestiert. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of and introduction to the philosophical anthropology of Roger Scruton through an examination of the aesthetic dimension of human rationality. We argue that attending to our aesthetic experience as individuated subjects capable of intersubjective communion offers a helpful corrective to the deracinated and disembodied view of human rationality prevalent in much of our contemporary ethical and scientific discourse. Through a consideration of how embodied rationality is at work in four different forms of art – painting, (...) music, dance, and architecture – our paper develops the rudiments of a more concrete philosophical anthropology, and on the basis of first principles advances a normative claim about the importance of art and beauty to human life. (shrink)