It is widely assumed that the art media can be individuated with reference to the sense modalities. Different art media are perceived by means of different sense modalities, and this tells us what properties of each medium are aesthetically relevant. The case of pictures appears to fit this principle well, for pictures are deemed purely and paradigmatically visual representations. However, recent psychological studies show that congenitally and early blind people have the ability to interpret and make raised‐line drawings through touch. (...) This shows that pictures are not essentially visual representations. The view that pictures are essentially visual follows from influential views of the nature of depiction and of the nature of vision that are mistaken. By rooting out the mistake, we learn something about pictures, something about vision, and something about the doctrine that art media are individuated by the sense modalities. (shrink)

Representational theories of mind cannot individuate the sense modalities in a principled manner. According to representationalism, the phenomenal character of experiences is determined by their contents. The usual objection is that inverted qualia are possible, so the phenomenal character of experiences may vary independently of their contents. But the objection is inconclusive. It raises difficult questions about the metaphysics of secondary qualities and it is difficult to see whether or not inverted qualia are possible. This paper proposes an alternative test (...) of representationalism. Do experiences in different sense modalities have the same phenomenal character when they share content? Psychological work on the perception of shape through vision and spatial hearing is discussed. This work shows that visual and auditory experiences differ in phenomenal character even in so far as they represent similar properties. This objection to representationalism does not invite questions about secondary qualities or depend on establishing metaphysical possibilities. (shrink)

The chief sources of aesthetic experience for most people around the world are now the mass broadcasting and recording technologies. Yet analytic aesthetics has had little to say about mass art. Recent accounts of art and the aesthetic, while accommodating the consensus concerning central cases, are largely propelled by problem cases drawn from the avant-garde, and one wonders what the effect will be of adding works of mass art to the equation. One also wonders whether making room for mass art (...) will put pressure on standard views about art and emotion, or the moral or political content of art. It’s time for a comprehensive and sensible philosophical examination of mass art, and this is what we have in Noël Carroll’s latest book. (shrink)

The chief sources of aesthetic experience for most people around the world are now the mass broadcasting and recording technologies. Yet analytic aesthetics has had little to say about mass art. Recent accounts of art and the aesthetic, while accommodating the consensus concerning central cases, are largely propelled by problem cases drawn from the avant-garde, and one wonders what the effect will be of adding works of mass art to the equation. One also wonders whether making room for mass art (...) will put pressure on standard views about art and emotion, or the moral or political content of art. It’s time for a comprehensive and sensible philosophical examination of mass art, and this is what we have in Noël Carroll’s latest book. (shrink)

True to his plan to take photographs to find out what things look like photographed, Garry Winogrand liked to delay processing his exposed rolls in order to scrub the memory of what he had in mind when he tripped the shutter. In a rich and astute essay, Walter Benn Michaels puts Winogrand in company with G. E. M. Anscombe. One through photography, the other through philosophy, each explores, articulates, even plays up, the “difficulties” of making sense of what it is (...) for an act to be structured by intentions. Thus Benn Michaels enlists Anscombe and Winogrand in a protest against a recent maneuver of mine that would dflate the difficulties that seem to come with the exercise of photographic agency.2 The reply is that Benn Michaels’s insights are spot on, but they do not block the deflationary maneuver. What happens in Benn Michaels’s reasoning is that new and interesting difficulties get raised about photographic meaning; I propose to deflate them too. (shrink)

Several prominent philosophers of science, most notably Ron Giere, propose that scientific theories are collections of models and that models represent the objects of scientific study. Some, including Giere, argue that models represent in the same way that pictures represent. Aestheticians have brought the picturing relation under intense scrutiny and presented important arguments against the tenability of particular accounts of picturing. Many of these arguments from aesthetics can be used against accounts of representation in philosophy of science. I rely on (...) Dominic Lopes' recent summary of arguments against various views of picturing and reformulate some of them to fit the philosophy of science context. My specific targets here are Giere and Steven French. I go on to argue that assuming all scientific models and images represent in the same way is not the best guide to understanding scientific practice. (shrink)

An extract from this unpublished article is published in Neill & Ridley (eds.) Arguing about Art (2007).

This article contains a survey of recent debates in the philosophy of photography, focusing on aesthetic and epistemic issues in particular. Starting from widespread notions about automatism, causality and realism in the theory of photography, the authors ask whether the prima facie tension between the epistemic and aesthetic embodied in oppositions such as automaticism and agency, causality and intentionality, realism and fictional competence is more than apparent. In this context, the article discusses recent work by Roger Scruton, Dominic (...) class='Hi'>Lopes, Kendall Walton, Gregory Currie, Jonathan Cohen and Aaron Meskin, Noël Carroll, and Patrick Maynard in some detail. Specific topics addressed include: aesthetic scepticism, transparency, imagination, perception, information, representation and depiction. (shrink)

In ‘Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures’ Dominic Lopes attempts two things. First, he attempts to solve the ‘Puzzle of Mimesis’: why do we value looking at pictures over looking at the things they depict? Second, he defends ‘interactionism’: the view that some aesthetic evaluations of pictures imply evaluations in moral and cognitive terms. I argue that the attempt to solve the Puzzle turns on the notion of ‘inflection’, and that that notion is more problematic than Lopes admits. (...) I further argue that Lopes’s defence of interactionism in fact establishes a thesis weaker than desired. (shrink)

Background. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated drastic changes to undergraduate medical training at the University of Botswana (UB). To save the academic year when campus was locked down, the Department of Medical Education conducted a needs assessment to determine the readiness for emergency remote teaching (ERT) of the Faculty of Medicine, UB. Objectives. To report on the findings of needs assessment surveys to assess learner and teaching staff preparedness for fair and just ERT, as defined by philosopher John Rawls. Methods. Needs (...) assessment surveys were conducted using Office 365 Forms distributed via WhatsApp, targeting medical students and teaching staff during the 5 undergraduate years. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results. Ninety-two percent (266/289) of students and 73.5% (62/84) of teaching staff responded. Surveys revealed a high penetration of smartphones among students, but poor internet accessibility and affordability in homes. Some teaching staff also reported internet and device insufficiencies. Only WhatsApp was accessible to students and teaching staff. Conclusions. For equitable access to ERT in the future, the surveys revealed infrastructural improvement needs, including wider, stronger, affordable WiFi coverage within Botswana and enhanced digital infrastructures in educational institutions, with increased support for students. (shrink)

Grossmann's impressive article indicates that – along with attentional biases, expansion of domain-general processes of learning and memory, and other temperamental tweaks – heightened fearfulness is part of the genetic starter kit for distinctively human minds. The learned matching account of emotional contagion explains how heightened fearfulness could have promoted the development of caring and cooperation in our species.

Mitchell et al. contend that there is no need to posit a contribution based on the formation of associative links to human learning. In order to sustain this argument, they have ignored evidence which is difficult to explain with propositional accounts; and they have mischaracterised the evidence they do cite by neglecting features of these experiments that contradict a propositional account.

This article is the lead piece in a special report that presents the results of a bioethical investigation into chimeric research, which involves the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals and nonhuman animal embryos, including into their brains. Rapid scientific developments in this field may advance knowledge and could lead to new therapies for humans. They also reveal the conceptual, ethical, and procedural limitations of existing ethics guidance for human‐nonhuman chimeric research. Led by bioethics researchers working closely with an (...) interdisciplinary work group, the investigation focused on generating conceptual clarity and identifying improvements to governance approaches, with the goal of helping scholars, funders, scientists, institutional leaders, and oversight bodies (embryonic stem cell research oversight [ESCRO] committees and institutional animal care and use committees [IACUCs]) deliver principled and trustworthy oversight of this area of science. The article, which focuses on human‐nonhuman animal chimeric research that is stem cell based, identifies key ethical issues in and offers ten recommendations regarding the ethics and oversight of this research. Turning from bioethics’ previous focus on human‐centered questions about the ethics of “humanization” and this research's potential impact on concepts like human dignity, this article emphasizes the importance of nonhuman animal welfare concerns in chimeric research and argues for less‐siloed governance and oversight and more‐comprehensive public communication. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is evidence that direct journal endorsement of reporting guidelines can lead to important improvements in the quality and reliability of the published research. However, over the last 20 years, there has been a proliferation of reporting guidelines for different study designs, making it impractical for a journal to explicitly endorse them all. The objective of this study was to investigate whether a decision tree tool made available during the submission process facilitates author identification of the relevant reporting guideline.MethodsThis was (...) a prospective 14-week before–after study across four speciality medical research journals. During the submission process, authors were prompted to follow the relevant reporting guideline from the EQUATOR Network and asked to confirm that they followed the guideline (‘before’). After 7 weeks, this prompt was updated to include a direct link to the decision-tree tool and an additional prompt for those authors who stated that ‘no guidelines were applicable’ (‘after’). For each article submitted, the authors’ response, what guideline they followed (if any) and what reporting guideline they should have followed (including none relevant) were recorded.ResultsOverall, 590 manuscripts were included in this analysis—300 in the before cohort and 290 in the after. There were relevant reporting guidelines for 75% of manuscripts in each group; STROBE was the most commonly applicable reporting guideline, relevant for 35% (n = 106) and 37% (n = 106) of manuscripts, respectively. Use of the tool was associated with an 8.4% improvement in the number of authors correctly identifying the relevant reporting guideline for their study (p < 0.0001), a 14% reduction in the number of authors incorrectly stating that there were no relevant reporting guidelines (p < 0.0001), and a 1.7% reduction in authors choosing a guideline (p = 0.10). However, the ‘after’ cohort also saw a significant increase in the number of authors stating that there were relevant reporting guidelines for their study, but not specifying which (34 vs 29%; p = 0.04).ConclusionThis study suggests that use of a decision-tree tool during submission of a manuscript is associated with improved author identification of the relevant reporting guidelines for their study type; however, the majority of authors still failed to correctly identify the relevant guidelines. (shrink)

Les Arts et les Images se veut une introduction aux principaux terrains d’investigation de Dominic McIver Lopes, philosophe canadien contemporain, figure incontournable de l’esthétique et de la philosophie de l’art en langue anglaise au cours des vingt dernières années. Il ouvre une réflexion sur les méthodes employées en esthétique et philosophie de l’art aujourd’hui, qu’on soit un philosophe dit « analytique » ou bien « continental », Lopes cherchant à penser le lien entre les deux traditions. -/- (...) À travers leur textes respectifs, Laure Blanc-Benon, Jacques Morizot et Frédéric Pouillaude instaurent un dialogue avec Dominic McIver Lopes, sur plusieurs de ses livres : Understanding Pictures (1996), ouvrage de référence sur la question philosophique des images et de la représentation, Beyond Art (2014), livre qui traite de la question classique au XXe siècle de la définition de l’œuvre d’art, et Four Arts of Photography (2016) dans lequel Dominic Lopes met en avant une nouvelle philosophie de la photographie. À ce dialogue s’ajoutent trois textes de Lopes inédits en français, portant sur la méthode de l’esthétique et de la philosophie de l’art et également sur la question de la beauté et de la valeur esthétique. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Dominic McIver Lopes challenges this interpretation by offering an entirely new theory of beauty - that beauty engages us in action, in concert with others, in the context of social networks - and sheds light on why aesthetic engagement is crucial for quality of life.

This book offers a bold new approach to the philosophy of art. General theories of art don't work: they can't deal with problem cases. Instead of trying to define art, we should accept that a work of art is nothing but a work in one of the arts. Lopes's buck passing theory works well for the avant garde, illuminating its radical provocations.

You have a complex and detailed aesthetic life. You make aesthetic decisions every day. You wake up, shower, and dress. When you decide what to wear, you think about how it feels and fits. You have aesthetic feelings and reactions every day. The sunset swings into view as you turn a corner and you think, “That’s beautiful.” A wave of calm and pleasure wash over you. You take a bite of cake and you think, “Wow, that’s sweet.” Maybe too sweet. (...) Almost everything you do has an aesthetic dimension—from the way you make your bed, prepare your coffee, and tie your shoes, to the way you speak to others and edit photos to post on social media. You have a complex and detailed aesthetic life that you orchestrate every day through your aesthetic decisions, reactions, feelings, and actions. But why live this way? What exactly is aesthetic life and why, if at all, does it matter? In Aesthetic Life and Why It Matters, three philosophers present their different answers to this question and discuss the many challenging and fascinating philosophical issues that arise in our aesthetic lives. (shrink)

What is computer art? Do the concepts we usually employ to talk about art, such as ‘meaning’, ‘form’ or ‘expression’ apply to computer art? _A Philosophy of Computer Art_ is the first book to explore these questions. Dominic Lopes argues that computer art challenges some of the basic tenets of traditional ways of thinking about and making art and that to understand computer art we need to place particular emphasis on terms such as ‘interactivity’ and ‘user’. Drawing on (...) a wealth of examples he also explains how the roles of the computer artist and computer art user distinguishes them from makers and spectators of traditional art forms and argues that computer art allows us to understand better the role of technology as an art medium. (shrink)

Images have power - for good or ill. They may challenge us to see things anew and, in widening our experience, profoundly change who we are. The change can be ugly, as with propaganda, or enriching, as with many works of art. Sight and Sensibility explores the impact of images on what we know, how we see, and the moral assessments we make. Dominic Lopes shows how these are part of, not separate from, the aesthetic appeal of images. (...) His book will be essential reading for anyone working in aesthetics and art theory, and for all those intrigued by the power of images to affect our lives. '...tightly focused and carefully argued... an exceptionally interesting contribution to the philosophy of art: it contains subtle, concise, and convincing discussions of a number of difficult concepts and contentious doctrines... lucid and meticulous'. (shrink)

There is not one but many ways to picture the world--Australian "x-ray" pictures, cubish collages, Amerindian split-style figures, and pictures in two-point perspective each draw attention to different features of what they represent. Understanding Pictures argues that this diversity is the central fact with which a theory of figurative pictures must reckon. Lopes advances the theory that identifying pictures' subjects is akin to recognizing objects whose appearances have changed over time. He develops a schema for categorizing the different ways (...) pictures represent--the different kinds of meaning they have--and argues that that depiction's epistemic value lies in its representational diversity. He also offers a novel account of the phenomenology of pictorial experience, comparing pictures to visual prostheses like mirrors and binoculars. (shrink)

Art works realize many values. According to tradition, not all of these values are characteristic of art: art works characteristically bear aesthetic value. Breaking with tradition, some now say that art works bear artistic value, as distinct from aesthetic value. I argue that there is no characteristic artistic value distinct from aesthetic value. The argument for this thesis suggests a new way to think about aesthetic value as it is characteristically realized by works of art.

A theory of aesthetic value should explain the performance of aesthetic experts, for aesthetic experts are agents who track aesthetic value. Aesthetic empiricism, the theory that an item's aesthetic value is its power to yield aesthetic pleasure, suggests that aesthetic experts are best at locating aesthetic pleasure, especially given aesthetic internalism, the view that aesthetic reasons always have motivating force. Problems with empiricism and internalism open the door to an alternative. Aesthetic experts perform a range of actions not aimed at (...) pleasure. Yet their reasons for acting are aesthetic. Since aesthetic values figure in aesthetic reasons, we can read a nonempiricist theory of aesthetic value off aesthetic experts’ reasons for acting. (shrink)

Four Arts of Photography explores the history of photography through the lens of philosophy and proposes a new understanding of the art form for the 21st century.

Empirical research on aesthetic response poses two challenges to philosophy. The more familiar challenge is that scientific explanations of aesthetic responses debunk what we take to be our reasons for those responses. One reaction to this challenge is an accommodation strategy that seeks to reconcile the scientific findings with an improved understanding of our normative reasons. This paper presents a more fundamental challenge: a well-established body of research in social psychology indicates that we routinely confabulate the reasons we give for (...) our aesthetic response. This challenges the accommodation strategy and suggests that philosophy should adopt a more radical naturalism about aesthetic response. (shrink)

Aesthetic hedonism is the view that to be aesthetically good is to please. For most aesthetic hedonists, aesthetic normativity is hedonic normativity. This paper argues that Kant's third critique contains resources for a non-hedonic account of aesthetic normativity as sourced in autonomy as self-legislation. A case is made that the account is also Kant's because it ties his aesthetics into a key theme of his larger philosophy.

If good taste is a virtue, then an account of good taste might be modelled on existing accounts of moral or epistemic virtue. One good reason to develop such an account is that it helps solve otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics. This paper proposes an alternative to neo-Aristotelian models of good taste. It then contrasts the neo-Aristotelian models with the proposed model, assessing them for their potential to contend with otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics.

Bernard Bolzano’s (1781–1848) writings in aesthetics are clear, concise, and explicit about method. Provocative and revisionary, they champion broad views of beauty, the arts, and their social function. Dominic McIver Lopes's introductory materials place Bolzano's essays in context, give them a new interpretation, and map out how to teach them, in full or in part, in a variety of courses.

Some argue that there is no art in some non-Western cultures because members of those cultures have no concept of art. Others argue that members of some non-Western cultures have concepts of art because they have art. Both arguments assume that if there is art in a given culture, then some members of the culture have a concept of art. There are reasons to think that this assumption is false; and if it is false, there are lessons to learn for (...) cross-cultural studies of art both in anthropology and philosophy. (shrink)

The question "what is art?" is often said to be venerable and vexing. In fact, the following answer to the question should be obvious: (R) item x is a work of art if and only if x is a work in practice P and P is one of the arts. Yet (R) has appeared so far from obvious that nobody has given it a moment's thought. The trouble is not that anyone might seriously deny the truth of (R), but rather (...) that they will find it uninformative. After all, the vexing question is pressed upon us by radical changes in art of the avant-garde, and (R) offers no resources to address these changes. With that in mind, here is the case for (R). The challenges posed by the avant-garde are real enough and they need to be addressed, but the vexing question is the wrong question to ask to address them. It does not follow that the question has no good answer. On the contrary, (R) is all the answer we need, if we do not need an answer that addresses the challenges posed by the avant-garde. Moreover, (R) points to a question that we do need answered. So, not only is it true but, in addition, (R) is as informative as we need. (shrink)

Aesthetic hedonists agree that an aesthetic value is a property of an item that stands in some constitutive relation to pleasure. Surprisingly, however, aesthetic hedonists need not reduce aesthetic normativity to hedonic normativity. They might demarcate aesthetic value as a species of hedonic value, but deny that the reason we have to appreciate an item is simply that it pleases. Such is the approach taken by an important strand of South Asian rasa theory that is represented with great clarity and (...) ingenuity in the work of K. C. Bhattacharyya. Bhattacharyya is an aesthetic hedonist who grounds aesthetic normativity in freedom. (shrink)