This paper takes up a series of basic philosophical questions about the nature and existence of fictional characters. We begin with realist approaches that hinge on the thesis that at least some claims about fictional characters can be right or wrong because they refer to something that exists, such as abstract objects. Irrealist approaches deny such realist postulations and hold instead that fictional characters are a figment of the human imagination. A third family of approaches, based on work by Alexius (...) Meinong, seeks an alternative to the realist/irrealist dilemma. Neo-Meinongian theories rely upon a distinction between being and existence, the key contention being that unlike human beings, fictional characters have only the former. Having surveyed relevant work by contemporary metaphysicians and philosophers of language, this paper discusses issues related to the distinction between characters and other aspects of the content of fictions, including the relation between personality theory and literary conceptions of character. (shrink)

Book review of The Philosophy of Art. By STEPHEN DAVIES.. Blackwell. 2006.

Defense of a psychological account of what it is for an artwork to be complete.

Response to Gover (2015) on Trogdon and Livingston (2015) on artwork completion.

It has often been claimed that adequate aesthetic judgements must be grounded in the appreciator's first-hand experience of the item judged. Yet this apparent truism is misleading if adequate aesthetic judgements can instead be based on descriptions of the item or on acquaintance with some surrogate for it. In a survey of responses to such challenges to the apparent truism, I identify several contentions presented in its favour, including stipulative definitions of ‘aesthetic judgement’, assertions about conceptual gaps between determinate aesthetic (...) properties and even the most perfect descriptions, and claims about the holistic and sensibility-relative character of aesthetic qualities and values. With reference to considerations advanced by Frank Sibley, Alan H. Goldman, and particularists and anti-particularists in meta-ethics, I contend that strong versions of the apparent truism lack sufficient warrant. Two successors are proposed, however. One reframes the thesis in terms of our contingently limited descriptive and theoretical capacities with regard to a subset of the aesthetic qualities of extraordinary works; the second involves a shift from epistemic to axiological matters: what even the most perfect descriptions cannot provide, and in some cases spoil, is our gauging of an item's inherent, experiential value. (shrink)

In aesthetics, the topic of intentions comes up most often in the perennial debate between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists over standards of interpretation. The underlying assumptions about the nature and functions of intentions are, however, rarely explicitly developed, even though divergent and at times tendentious premises are often relied upon in this controversy. Livingston provides a survey of contentions about the nature and status of intentions and intentionalist psychology more generally, arguing for an account that recognizes the multiple functions fulfilled (...) by intentions in the lives of temporally situated agents who deliberate over what to do, settle on ends and means, and try to realize some of their plans. Artists’ intentions are the same sorts of attitudes that we attribute to ourselves and to others as we attempt to describe, explain, and predict our actions. As such, intentions are relevant not only to debates over the interpretation of works of art but also to a range of other basic topics in the philosophy of art, including artistic creation and authorship, the ontology of art, the nature of texts, works, versions, and life-works, and the status and nature of fiction and fictional truth. With regard to the controversy over the interpretation of art, Livingston advocates a ‘partial’ intentionalism. Intentions are never infallible, so there is a conceptual gap between the completed work and the intentions that initiated and guided its making. Yet in spite of the fallibility of intentions and of our beliefs and claims about them, intentions regularly contribute to the determination of a work’s features, including implicit meanings, the recognition of which requires the uptake of the artist’s intentional design. Partial intentionalism also finds support in the idea that at least one sort of artistic value depends on the artist’s skilful accomplishment of intentions. (shrink)

In aesthetics, the topic of intentions comes up most often in the perennial debate between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists over standards of interpretation. The underlying assumptions about the nature and functions of intentions are, however, rarely explicitly developed, even though divergent and at times tendentious premises are often relied upon in this controversy. Livingston provides a survey of contentions about the nature and status of intentions and intentionalist psychology more generally, arguing for an account that recognizes the multiple functions fulfilled (...) by intentions in the lives of temporally situated agents who deliberate over what to do, settle on ends and means, and try to realize some of their plans. Artists’ intentions are the same sorts of attitudes that we attribute to ourselves and to others as we attempt to describe, explain, and predict our actions. As such, intentions are relevant not only to debates over the interpretation of works of art but also to a range of other basic topics in the philosophy of art, including artistic creation and authorship, the ontology of art, the nature of texts, works, versions, and life-works, and the status and nature of fiction and fictional truth. With regard to the controversy over the interpretation of art, Livingston advocates a ‘partial’ intentionalism. Intentions are never infallible, so there is a conceptual gap between the completed work and the intentions that initiated and guided its making. Yet in spite of the fallibility of intentions and of our beliefs and claims about them, intentions regularly contribute to the determination of a work’s features, including implicit meanings, the recognition of which requires the uptake of the artist’s intentional design. Partial intentionalism also finds support in the idea that at least one sort of artistic value depends on the artist’s skilful accomplishment of intentions. (shrink)

Even if everything is up for grabs in philosophy, some things are very difficult to doubt. It is hard to believe, for example, that no one ever acts intentionally. Even the most powerful arguments for the unreality of intentional action could do no more, we believe, than place one in roughly the position in which pre-Aristotelian Greeks found themselves when presented with one of Zeno's arguments that nothing can move from any given point A to any other point B. One (...) argument has it, for example, that in order to move from one point to another, a thing must first move to the half-way point; to do that, it must move half way to that point; and so on forever: so nothing ever moves at all. The argument undoubtedly stopped some auditors in their tracks; but eventually they moved on, most of them fully confident that they were doing precisely that. (shrink)

We present an analysis of work completion couched in terms of an effective completion decision identified by its characteristic contents and functions. In our proposal, the artist's completion decision can take a number of distinct forms, including a procedural variety referred to as an ‘extended completion decision’. In the second part of this essay, we address ourselves to the question of whether collaborative art-making projects stand as counterexamples to the proposed analysis of work completion.

It is quite common to draw a distinction between complete and unfinished works of art. For example, it is uncontroversial to think that Vermeer had actually completed View of Delft before inept restorers added layers of coloured varnish to give the picture an antique quality, and there is very good evidence to support the related claim that the artist had not finished the work before he effected several pentimenti, including the painting over of a figure in the foreground on the (...) right. Such beliefs oriented a costly and elaborate restoration that was begun in 1994 and terminated two years later. (shrink)

Intentionalism in aesthetics is, quite generally, the thesis that the artist's or artists' intentions have a decisive role in the creation of a work of art, and that knowledge of such intentions is a necessary component of at least some adequate interpretive and evaluative claims. In this paper I develop and defend this thesis. I begin with a discussion of some anti-intentionalist arguments. Surveying a range of intentionalist responses to them, I briefly introduce and criticize a fictionalist version of intentionalism (...) before moving on to an approach I call moderate intentionalism. I consider a salient alternative known as hypothetical intentionalism and try to show why moderate intentionalism should be preferred to it. (shrink)

It is quite common to draw a distinction between complete and unfinished works of art. For example, it is uncontroversial to think that Vermeer had actually completed View of Delft before inept restorers added layers of coloured varnish to give the picture an antique quality, and there is very good evidence to support the related claim that the artist had not finished the work before he effected several pentimenti, including the painting over of a figure in the foreground on the (...) right. Such beliefs oriented a costly and elaborate restoration that was begun in 1994 and terminated two years later. (shrink)

The ever-expanding literature on narrative reveals a striking divergence of claims about the epistemic valence of narrative. One such claim is the oftstated idea that narratives or stories generate both “hot” and “cold” epistemic irrationality. A familiar, rival claim is that narrative has an exclusive capacity to embody or convey important types of knowledge. Such contrasting contentions are not typically presented as statements about the accidents or effects of particular narratives; the ambition, rather, has been to identify a strong link (...) between a single, positive or negative epistemic valence and narrativity, or the traits in virtue of which some discourse, utterance, or series of thoughts is aptly classified as a narrative or story. In this essay I contend that arguments in this vein are dubious.Not only are contentions about the specificity of narrative tenuous and controversial, but even if they were not, there are serious problems with the postulated connections between narrativity and the epistemic merits or demerits of narratives. These difficulties are identified in a critical discussion of prominent examples from the literature. My conclusion is not that there is nothing worth saying about relations between narratives and various epistemic desiderata, but that one prevalent theoretical ambition in this area ought to be renounced in favor of more viable avenues of inquiry. (shrink)

Questions central to the ontology of art include the following: what sort of things are works of art? Do all works of art belong to any one basic ontological category? Do all or only some works have multiple instances? Do works have parts or constituents, and if so, what is their relation to the work as a whole? How are particular works of art individuated? Are they created or discovered? Can they be destroyed? Explicit and extensive treatments of these topics (...) written prior to the 19th century have yet to be found. This does not mean, however, that there is nothing relevant to these ontological questions in early writings on beauty, the arts, and related matters. For example, Aristotle's claims about the functions and elements of tragedy can be mined for ideas about the nature of literary works more generally. And what can be made of the hint, in Metaphysics Eta, 6, that the unity of The Iliad is a matter of a set of words made “one” by being connected together? Rather than attempting to make conjectures about such difficult exegetical topics, this entry focuses primarily on contributions made by authors who explicitly address themselves at length to some of the aforementioned questions pertaining to the ontology of works of art, either in general or with reference to such major art forms as music, literature, painting, architecture, and sculpture. One further note about the scope of this entry is in order. Instructive surveys of the subfield of aesthetics known as the ontology of art are fairly plentiful; see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Gregory Currie, Joseph Margolis, Stephen Davies, Amie Thomasson, Guy Rohrbaugh, Theodore Gracyk, Robert Stecker, and Carl Matheson and Ben Caplan. Surveys of the history of the field have not, however, been forthcoming, and the comments on this topic that crop up in the literature are sketchy and sometimes quite misleading. One shortcoming has been a marked tendency to focus on contributions from the last two decades of the 20th century, the one salient exception being due attention paid to works by Roman Ingarden. The present entry has been designed with this shortcoming in mind. A schematic mapping of questions and positions is provided and reference is made to neglected, earlier contributions to the ontology of art. (shrink)

[Discussion article, no abstract is available].

First critical survey devoted to the history of philosophical contributions to this topic. Brings to light neglected contributions prior to the second half of the 20th century including works in Danish, German, and French. Provides a division of issues and clarifies key ambiguities related to modality.

This paper sets forth Bolzano’s little-known 1843 account of beauty. Bolzano accepted the thesis that beauty is what rewards contemplation with pleasure. The originality of his proposal lies in his claim that the source of this pleasure is a special kind of cognitive process, namely, the formation of an adequate concept of the object’s attributes through the successful exercise of the observer’s proficiency at obscure and confused cognition. To appreciate this proposal we must understand how Bolzano explicated a number of (...) concepts in his Wissenschaftslehre. I argue that Bolzano was ahead of his time and anticipated some of the results of recent empirical psychological research on the relations between beauty, affect, and processing fluency. Bolzano’s remarks on ugliness and on relations between pure and mixed beauty are also of contemporary interest. The upshot is that Bolzano’s account of beauty is neither as derivative nor ‘dark’ as some of his commentators have claimed. (shrink)

In his little-known essay published posthumously in 1849, Über die Eintheilung der schönen Künste, Bernard Bolzano proposes an explication of the concept of beautiful art as well as a classification of these arts. Bolzano’s divisions allowed him not only to provide a principled and comprehensive classification of actual, well-established arts, but also to anticipate kinds of beautiful art that would not exist or be widely recognized until decades after his death, such as moving pictures, abstract paintings, and what he called (...) ‘the arts of pure thought’. (shrink)

Explores the artistic metarepresentation of nested art. Nested artistic structure; Contrast between artistic nesting and metafiction; Definition of nested art.

The current essay describes aspects of C. I. Lewis’s rarely cited contributions to aesthetics, focusing primarily on the conception of aesthetic experience developed in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Lewis characterized aesthetic value as a proper subset of inherent value, which he understood as the power to occasion intrinsically valued experiences. He distinguished aesthetic experiences from experiences more generally in terms of eight conditions. Roughly, he proposed that aesthetic experiences have a highly positive, preponderantly intrinsic value realized through contemplation, (...) where the experience is indicative of the object’s reliable and characteristic inherent value. Objections to this account motivate a revised, neo-Lewisian proposal. (shrink)

The current essay describes aspects of C. I. Lewis’s rarely cited contributions to aesthetics, focusing primarily on the conception of aesthetic experience developed in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Lewis characterized aesthetic value as a proper subset of inherent value, which he understood as the power to occasion intrinsically valued experiences. He distinguished aesthetic experiences from experiences more generally in terms of eight conditions. Roughly, he proposed that aesthetic experiences have a highly positive, preponderantly intrinsic value realized through contemplation, (...) where the experience is indicative of the object’s reliable and characteristic inherent value. Objections to this account motivate a revised, neo-Lewisian proposal. (shrink)

What is now generally known as the paradox of art and negative affect was identified as a paradox by the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos in 1719. In his attempt to explain how people can admire and enjoy representational works that ‘afflict’ them, Du Bos claims that such representations give rise to ‘artificial’ emotions, provide a pleasurable relief from boredom, and offer us epistemic, artistic, and moral rewards. The paper delineates Du Bos’ proposal, considers the question of Du Bos’ originality, and (...) discusses Hume’s brief comments on Du Bos and Fontenelle. (shrink)

People often ask each other “what happens” in a novel or film, and they are inclined to think that some answers are better than others. Some claims about what happens in a story are deemed inaccurate or false, while others are the object of a fairly widespread consensus. The fact that a statement about a narrative discourse is deemed accurate does not mean that it will or should be accepted as an adequate statement about the story told in the discourse. (...) If someone asks me what just happened in a movie, even the most prefect description of the cuts and camera angles will be deemed irrelevant. (shrink)

This article explores basic constraints on the nature and appreciation of cinematic adaptations. An adaptation, it is argued, is a work that has been intentionally based on a source work and that faithfully and overtly imitates many of this source's characteristic features, while diverging from it in other respects. Comparisons between an adaptation and its source are essential to the appreciation of adaptations as such. In spite of many adaptation theorists' claims to the contrary, some of the comparisons essential to (...) the appreciation of adaptations as such pertain to various kinds of fidelity and to the ways in which similar types of artistic goals and problems are taken up in an adaptation and its source. (shrink)

To some, Rene Girard is best known for his views on sacred myth and ritual. To others, he is the eminent structuralist critic who offers challenging readings of major literary works. Still others know him for his analyses of the Bible. Central to all aspects of Girard's work is his theory of mimesis, a basic hypothesis about the structures of human motivation, Yet nowhere in his writings does Girard offer a systematic presentation of the mimetic theory. In fact, key terminology (...) shifts from work to work, resulting in considerable ambiguity in both basic concepts and explanatory claims,In Models of Desire Paisley Livingston provides the first rigorous critical reconstruction of Girard's theory of mimesis. Drawing a careful distinction between the theory itself and Girard's often ambitious claims about it, Livingston provides a systematic presentation of Girard's ideas about the role of imitation in human motivation. He surveys responses to Girard's work and compares his theory of mimetic desire with recent work in cognitive psychology and philosophy. The result is a salient theoretical alternative to the false choice--between psychoanalysis and anti-psychological doctrines--that currently dominates literary theory. (shrink)

Paisley Livingston on Stanislaw Lem and the history and philosophy of Virtual Reality. The technologies and speculations associated with “virtual reality” and cognate terms have recently made it possible for scores of journalists and academics to develop variations on a favorite theme - the newness of the new, and more specifically, the newness of that new and wildly different world-historical epoch, era, or Zeitgeist into which we are supposedly entering with the creation of powerful new machines of simulation. (...) The innovative powers of the machines of virtual reality are so extensive, it would seem, that they are even supposed to be able to achieve the extraordinary feat of revitalizing that tired journalist genre, “gee-whiz” scientific reporting. “Gee whiz,” one can now read, “you just put on a data glove and don the head-mounted display helmet, and step right into a whole new world where the old reality - and even the tired, old-fashioned notion of reality as such - gets replaced by the non-existent reality simulated by the machine. You can fight battles and have sex with people who aren’t anywhere near you, or who never even existed. Why you can actually, I mean really, interact with an illusion!”. (shrink)

Paisley Livingston asks questions about the arguments Philosopher George M. Wilson offers in order to establish that the Mediated Version of his Imagined Seeing Thesis is superior to other options.

In an essay first published in 1959, Roland Barthes declared that modern literature had become “a mask pointing to itself ”.1 Barthes described this self-reflexivity as an anxious, even tragic condition, a tortured process in which literature divides itself into the two logically distinct, yet inter-related levels of object-language and meta-language. Asking itself continually the single, self-absorbing question of its own identity, literature becomes a meta-language and thereby ceases to be an object-language capable of depicting or describing anything other than (...) itself. “It follows”, Barthes proclaims, that “for over one hundred years our literature has played a dangerous game with its own death, or in other words, with a manner of living through its own death”. Barthes conjectures in passing that this perpetual self-questioning began with the bourgeoisie’s loss of its bonne conscience. Literature’s self-reflexive turn has resulted in a variety of fascinating writerly strategies, but has also had the global effect of precluding the emergence of a literature of action and engagement. Ceasing to ask: ‘What is to be done?’, the artist can only utter the words: ‘Who am I?’. (shrink)

An intorduction to an English translation of Bernad Bolzano´s On the Concept of the Beautiful. A neglected gem in the history of aesthetics, Bolzano’s essay on beauty is best understood when read alongside his other writings and philosophical sources. This introduction is designed to contribute to such a reading. In Part I, I identify and discuss three salient ways in which Bolzano’s account can be misunderstood. As a lack of familiarity with Bolzano’s background assumptions is one source of these misunderstandings, (...) in Part II, I elucidate some of his ideas about the psychological processes involved in the contemplation and enjoyment of beauty. In Part III, I situate Bolzano’s discussion of beauty within the more general framework of his ideas about the nature of philosophy, the relation between philosophy and aesthetics, and the place of the concept of beauty within the latter. Part IV is devoted to Bolzano’s discussion of some of his philosophical antecedents, including Kant. In Part V, I raise some objections to Bolzano’s account and indicate how his advocates might respond to them. (shrink)

[Book review article for Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise by Boden, Margaret A, no abstract is available.].

[Book review article for Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise by Boden, Margaret A, no abstract is available.].

Resumo Na entrevista ficcional que se segue, as ideias de Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos sobre as artes de representação serão aplicadas a aspectos relevantes do cinema. Du Bos argumenta que, normalmente, as obras de ficção cinematográfica são projectadas para dar origem a “paixões artificiais”, que têm a função de fornecer alívio ao tédio, sem as consequências negativas que muitas actividades alternativas têm. Também será considerada a questão, se os filmes têm um significado filosófico. O resultado é uma perspectiva desconhecida, do (...) princípio do século XVIII, em algumas temáticas contemporâneas. Palavras-chave : catarse, cinema apocalíptico, Du Bos, emoção, paixões artificiais, paradoxo do afecto negativoIn the following fictional interview, the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ ideas about the representational arts are applied to relevant aspects of the cinema. Du Bos argues that normally works of cinematic fiction are designed to give rise to ‘artificial passions’ that have the function of providing relief from boredom without the negative consequences that many alternative pursuits would have. Du Bos’ solution to the paradox of negative affect and his position on Aristotle’s doctrine of catharsis are also set forth in the interview. The question of whether films have philosophical significance is also taken up. The upshot is a somewhat unfamiliar early 18th-century perspective on some contemporary issues. Keywords: apocalyptic cinema, artificial passions, catharsis, Du Bos, emotion, paradox of negative affect. (shrink)

In the following fictional interview, the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ ideas about the representational arts are applied to relevant aspects of the cinema. Du Bos argues that normally works of cinematic fiction are designed to give rise to ‘artificial passions’ that have the function of providing relief from boredom without the negative consequences that many alternative pursuits would have. Du Bos’ solution to the paradox of negative affect and his position on Aristotle’s doctrine of catharsis are also set forth in (...) the interview. The question of whether films have philosophical significance is also taken up. The upshot is a somewhat unfamiliar early 18th-century perspective on some contemporary issues. (shrink)

What is a discourse? What makes a discourse coherent or incoherent? Investigation into these difficult questions has yielded so many sophisticated proposals that a short, comprehensive survey is well out of reach.

The British philosopher Herbert Paul Grice observed that the total significance of an utterance embraces not only “what is said” but what is implied. His term of art for the latter was “implicature，” and he identified conversational implicature as an important type of implicit meaning or signification.

Late twentieth-century discussion of the nature of communicative intention was dominated by the theories of British philosopher Herbert Paul Grice. Grice initially argued that the primary intended effect of an indicative utterance was to get the hearer to believe the proposition expressed; an essential component of this communicative intention was the intention to have this effect be achieved through the hearer's recognition of that intention. He eventually acknowledged that there were counterexamples to this analysis and subsequently proposed that the primary (...) communicative intention must be that the hearer should at least come to believe that the utterer has some particular thought or belief. Grice also allowed that speakers need not intend to change the attitudes of some specific, actual audience; instead, this part of the communicative intention concerns what is meant to happen should there be an audience having such-and-such characteristics. (shrink)

Logicians generally employ coherence and consistency as synonyms naming the absence of contradictions in a group of SENTENCES, propositions, or beliefs, where a contradiction is the conjunction of a proposition and its negation. In metaphysical terms, logical incoherence or contradiction is the impossible instantiation of a property and some other, incompatible property, as in "the circle was square." Epistemically, a contradiction is an irrational belief in both a proposition and its denial.

Introduced by the British philosopher Herbert Paul Grice, the cooperative principle and related maxims are part of his theory of CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE.

When Comedy, Music and Ballet step forward at the end of L'Amour medecin, the audience learns that in Moliere's theater the farcical passage from sickness to health is much more than a theme. Claiming to have a real therapeutic value, the three arts ask to be recognized as the grands medecins, and present themselves as an alternative to a dubious and rather mercenary medical profession.