“What is appreciation?” is a basic question in the philosophy of art, and the analogy between appreciating a work of art and getting a joke can help us answer it. We first propose a subjective account of aesthetic appreciation (I). Then we consider jokes (II). The difference between getting a joke and not, or what it is to get it right, can often be objectively articulated. Such explanations cannot substitute for the joke itself, and indeed may undermine the very power (...) of the joke to evoke an appropriate response. Sometimes the discourse of art critics can have a similar effect. We therefore explore the analogy between getting jokes and appreciating works of art (III), and find it unexpectedly strong. Finally (IV), we consider Wittgensteinian grounds for thinking as we do, considering the language game of joke-telling, the relevance of seeing aspects, and giving reasons. (shrink)

Already known for his penetrating, and sometimes idiosyncratic, interpretations of the later Wittgenstein, John Hunter, of University College, Toronto, now offers eight essays on independent topics. Each of the essays stands on its own, but they are clearly the work of a single mind and together constitute a sustained contribution to current discussion of that area of metaphysics sometimes called philosophy of mind. Although the debts to, and the insight into, Wittgenstein are substantial, I do not wish to document them.

A brief review of Peter Kivy's collection of eleven essays on Philosophy of Music.

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Yes, this is the book that those who know Ronald de Sousa have been waiting for. Since long before his 1979 Dialogue article, there has been much interest in what de Sousa thinks about the rationality of emotions. Many promises are here fulfilled.In our traditional patriarchal philosophy, the standard view is that reason ought to be the controlling element in human nature. Commonly in this tradition, emotion is considered an opposing force—a female power allied with the irrational, and devoted to (...) dragging men from attending to the clarity and truth which are the proper objects of their devotion. In contemporary anglophone philosophy, the distinction between reason and emotion reached a certain pitch in emotivist accounts of ethics. Recently, beginning with the critique of emotivism, there have been gestures of revision to these views of how emotions are related to reason. Bernard Williams hinted at rethinking the traditional relationship when he remarked that, “the capacity for creative emotional response has the advantage of being, if not equally, at least broadly, distributed”. (shrink)

Hume, despite his disapproval of societies which enslave women, admits females to 'the rights and privileges of society' only from 'humanity' and on the strength of their 'charms'. It is argued that hume's understanding of this inequality is based on the doctrine that different virtues–physical, moral and intellectual–are appropriate to the different sexes, and that in general it is males who are and deserve to be the proprietors of families.