Aesthetics

Virtual fictionalism is the view that virtual reality is a kind of fiction. We imagine that what we see and hear in virtual reality is real, although it is not. The problem with this view is that there are real moral concerns with our use of virtual reality, from violent video games to cases of virtual groping on social platforms. If what we do in virtual reality is just make-believe, the fictionalist cannot explain the real moral harms of our virtual (...) actions. Call this the moral objection to virtual fictionalism. I address the objection in this paper by arguing for a new fictional account of virtual actions. Virtual fictionalists can take virtual actions to be happening within the fiction and consider users to act as characters or actors within the fictional world depicted in the virtual environment. Instead, I argue that virtual actions create fictional representations from outside the fiction; users act in virtual reality as an author might in their work. The alternative I present better addresses the moral objection to virtual fictionalism—it does not conflate the user with a fictional character. Our virtual actions create fictional representations, and we can morally evaluate them as such. (shrink)

Engels explained his admiration for Balzac by pointing to an apparent discrepancy between Balzac’s literature and his politics. Despite his sympathies for the French nobility, Balzac’s realism “compelled” him to portray this class in unflattering terms. In this article, I challenge Engels’s reading, arguing that Marx’s scattered remarks on Balzac take us in a different direction. Specifically, I argue that in his remark on Balzac’s The Peasants Marx pinpointed the author’s preoccupation with the spread of bourgeois ideology into the nobility. (...) Building on this remark, I analyze several of Balzac’s works showing that insofar as Balzac lambasted the nobles, his critique was primarily directed towards nobles who had adopted bourgeois ways. In this light, and against Engels’s observation, Balzac’s critique of the nobles appears to stem from his sympathy to aristocratic values rather than conflicting with them. In showing that affinities between Balzac, Marx and Engels did not depend on Balzac expressing anti-noble sentiment, I argue that the admiration the fathers of communism had for the monarchist’s prose exemplifies a partial, yet typical convergence between socialists and conservatives in their critique of modern bourgeois society. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that Lessing develops in his aesthetics a pre-Kantian philosophy of consciousness. The concept of virtuality that the german writer puts forward in his essay Laocoon implies an interweaving of temporal dimensions similar to the threefold temporal synthesis described by Kant in the transcendental deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason. But whereas Kant thematizes an a priori of consciousness, Lessing is in search of an a priori of plastic art. It will be seen that perfect (...) sculpture presupposes the choice of that moment in time which can open the imagination to the past and the future in a way that enriches the present by transforming it into a "pregnant moment". The final aim of the article is to trace the genesis of the concept of simultaneity of temporal dimensions presupposed by the idea of the pregnant moment, and its implications for the idea of the temporality of consciousness. (shrink)

Music is a deeply entrenched human phenomenon. In this article, I argue that its evolutionary origins are intrinsically intertwined with the incremental anatomical, cognitive, social, and technological evolution of the hominin lineage. I propose an account of the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene hominins, focusing on traits that would be later implicated in music making. Such traits can be conceived as comprising the musicality mosaic or the multifaceted foundations of musicality. I then articulate and defend an account of protomusical behaviour, drawing theoretical (...) licence from the social brain framework of Robin Dunbar and colleagues, as well as the evolutionary framework for human culture and cooperation developed by Kim Sterelny. The role of gene-culture co-evolution and niche construction is brought to the fore in articulating the evolutionary account. Finally, I defend the view that music subsequently developed via processes of social learning and cumulative culture. (shrink)

Everett (2005) has argued that fictional realism runs into insuperable difficulties when faced with fictional stories in which there are indeterminate identities. By appeal to a principle linking the individuation of characters within stories and without, Everett argues that such stories entail that there are indeterminate identities outside of fiction on the fictional realist picture. And although indeterminate identities are perfectly acceptable within fiction, they are intolerable in the (nonfictional) world itself. In this paper, I develop the “extended-game” model of (...) fiction according to which fictional characters are props—and, hence, potential objects of reference—in authorized games of make-believe for fictional works in which they appear but do not originate but are neither props nor potential objects of reference in authorized games for works in which they do originate. And I argue that this entails that Everett’s linking principle, on which his argument depends, simply fails to apply. (shrink)

Η αφήγηση του Οδυσσέα είναι μια σειρά από τυχαίες συναντήσεις. Η ζωή των ηρώων και η συμπεριφορά του έχει σχεδόν ενδεχομενικό χαρακτήρα και λέμε «Σχεδόν» — γιατί το κείμενο πρέπει να γραφτεί. Η ασήμαντη απρόβλεπτη λεπτομέρεια πρέπει να μετατραπεί σε σημάδι, ώστε στη συνέχεια να εγκαταλείψει ένα μέρος της εφήμερης ιδιότητάς της και να κοινοποιηθεί, που γίνεται μέρος του ίδιου του μυθιστορήματος του Joyce. Για να αποφευχθεί ο χαρακτηρισμός σε αποσπάσματα όπως αυτό που αναφέρθηκε παραπάνω από το να παραμείνει καθαρός (...) κατάλογος, προκύπτουν δύο στρατηγικές: (1) η ανάπτυξη μιας ελάχιστης αφηγηματικής δομής. και (2) η ανάπτυξη ενός συγκεκριμένου στυλ. Για τον Joyce, το στυλ κάνει τις λέξεις — ή συγκεκριμένες μονάδες γραφής, όπως φράσεις — να μετρούν από μόνες τους στη σχέση τους με άλλες λέξεις. Η ποίηση είναι η απόλυτη παρουσίαση ενός ύφους με αυτή την έννοια. Εάν ο Όμηρος σχηματίζει ένα δομικό ή αφηγηματικό σκηνικό στον Οδυσσέα, αυτό πρέπει να γίνει κατανοητό ως μια ανοιχτή δομή που μπορεί να φιλοξενήσει μια σχεδόν άπειρη σειρά περιεχομένων. Και λίγοι σχολιαστές απέτυχαν να παρατηρήσουν την ποιητική ποιότητα της γραφής του Joyce — ο μονόλογος της Μόλι Μπλουμ στο τελευταίο κεφάλαιο αναφέρεται ως χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα. Λιγότεροι, ωστόσο, μπόρεσαν να συνδέσουν το στυλ του Joyce με το πρόβλημα της γραφής που αντιμετώπιζε. Το στυλ είναι η απάντηση του Joyce στο πρόβλημα του πώς μπορεί να εμφανιστεί το ενδεχόμενο στο μυθιστόρημα. Έτσι, ενώ οι ρεαλιστές συγγραφείς του δέκατου ένατου αιώνα εργάζονταν για να κάνουν τις ενδεχόμενες λεπτομέρειες να φαίνονται απαραίτητες για το σύνολο του αφηγηματικού ιστού του μυθιστορήματος, η στρατηγική του Joyce, αντίθετα, είναι να θέσει σε κίνδυνο την ίδια την πιθανότητα της αφήγησης κάνοντας την ενδεχόμενη λεπτομέρεια σχετικά αυτόνομη, υποταγμένη στο τίποτα. εκτός από τη δική της (ποιητική) ύπαρξη. (shrink)

When does eating become art? Can a cook be an artist? This book answers these questions by exploring the position of taste in contemporary culture and the manners in which taste meanders its way into the realm of art.

Images of nature abound in the practice of international environmental law but their significance in law is unclear. Drawing on visual jurisprudence, and interpretative methods for visual art, this book analyses photographs for their representations of nature's aesthetic value in treaty processes that concern world heritage, whales and biodiversity. It argues that visual images should be embraced in the prosaic practice of international law, particularly for treaties that demand judgements of nature's aesthetic value. This environmental value is in practice conflated (...) with natural beauty, ethical and cultural values, and displaced by economic and scientific values. Interpretations of visual images can serve instead to critique and conceive sensory, imaginative and emotional appreciations of nature from different cultural perspectives as proposed by philosophers of environmental aesthetics. Addressing questions of value and the visual, this landmark book shows how images can be engaged by nations to better protect the environment under international law. (shrink)

The paradoxical logic of transparency and mediation Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health or the media – it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? Can knowledge from the arts, and its play of visibility and invisibility, tell us something about the paradoxical (...) logics of transparency and mediation? This Obscure Thing Called Transparency gathers contributions by international experts who critically assess the promises and perils of transparency today. (shrink)

The Tanglewood Trilogy (2002) Book One: Relative Realities, Book Two: Opposite Approach, Book Three: Partial Truth. Conservation of the Circle explains General Relativity, Complementary Opposition, and 50-50 Reality (50-50 as the constant and the norm). This gives humans the basis for everything in mathematics, science, art, and athletics (symbolic systems universally). Conservation of the Circle solves the grounding problem (where the absolute is relative because the relative is absolute) because an uber-universal circular-linear relationship (technically, pi in mathematics) is the only (...) 'actor' in Nature. Meaning there is a mandatory circular-linear 'relationship' between any X and-or Y (where it is impossible to have 'or' without 'and') (forcing humans to examine their existential relationship with 'technology'). The Tanglewood Trilogy: Relative Realities: Circle, triangle, square, one, three, two, any shape, articulates a circle, because the line is always diameter and circumference of a circle. If a line is real it must articulate a circle. Thus, all movement articulates a line, diameter of a circle. The line is all around us as (the most basic element in) nature. Opposite Approach: Complementarity is the basis for identity, all disciplines. Partial Truth: Duplication and negation form the basis for unification, all disciplines. Most recent technical explanation see 2024 paper 'Conservation of a Circle' also on Phil Papers. (shrink)

This paper raises puzzles concerning our grasp of others’ aesthetic selves. I first articulate a conception of an aesthetic self, understood as an autonomously adopted orientation to objects of aesthetic value, encompassing the embrace of aesthetic reasons and the qualitative appreciative states that follow. This articulation is motivated by the commonplace observation that people’s aesthetic identities are important to them. Given this importance, we might think it salutary to grasp other people’s aesthetic selves, under the general auspices of ‘interpersonal understanding’. (...) Given the conception of aesthetic selves, we might think that empathy is an appropriate way to do so. But, second, I argue that you can’t find out about another’s aesthetic self via empathy. We might instead think that aesthetic conversation is the way to grasp aesthetic selves. However, third, I argue that the aim of finding out about others’ aesthetic selves is at odds with the ostensible aims of aesthetic conversation, which are to do with effacing individuality and creating commonality. So aesthetic selves seem hard to grasp. I finally briefly canvass some ways of solving this problem, without settling on a firm answer, and consider how the thoughts might extend to practical identities more generally. (shrink)

"Timed to publish in advance of the Joker sequel Joker: Folie a Deux, the volume will have at least two sections will be dedicated to chapters that take up questions raised by 2019's Joker and the Todd Phillips depiction in general. Chapters will also be sought on the many other iterations of the Joker. A number of high-profile philosophers have already written insightful pieces on Joker and the volume editors hope to solicit new essays from some of them. Joker is (...) a symbolically rich and philosophically fascinating character. With his enigmatic motivations, infectious irreverence, and almost selfless devotion to evil, Joker's psychology is a puzzle that provokes a host of philosophical questions, ranging across issues of morality, human nature, the metaphysics of freedom, the nature of evil, political and social philosophy, aesthetics, and more"--. (shrink)

There is a previously unrecognized coupling which underlies the Western evaluation of aesthetic experiences. By and large, we are taught that for our aesthetic pleasures to have any “value” (i.e. to be good) they must do more than merely entertain, distract, or delight. Instead, they should confront us with some “truth” about the nature of our existence and/or guide us to some “reality” concerning the state of our world. This paper asks: 1) whence this prejudice concerning the value of our (...) aesthetic experiences? 2) What metaphysical and ethical assumptions underlie this epistemological standard? And, finally, 3) how might our expectations concerning the nature and value of aesthetic experiences alter if these assumptions are called into question, as they are, for example, by contemporary metaphysical pessimism? This paper uses the concept of “guilty pleasures” as a site to expose the history of our Western assumptions concerning the evaluation of aesthetic experiences and to explore how a pessimistic revaluation of reality might change our analysis of what comprises “good” art. To this end, this paper traces the origins of our aesthetic assumptions in the West, shows how these assumptions continue to influence our aesthetic expectations today, exposes the hidden metaphysical premises, which underly those expectations, and explores why and how we might call these premises into question through a pessimistic revaluation of existence. All of these supports, in the end, a critical reassessment of the status and value our so-called “guilty pleasures.”. (shrink)

Summary A pupil of Köhler and von Hornbostel in Berlin, Arnheim published an article in the Musical Quarterly in 1984, where he applied the principles of visual composition to the musical form. In a painting, for example, the forces of visual composition are essential for aesthetic enjoyment; in music, sounds are essential as they are always occurring in time, and this constitutes the main dynamic vector of music. Starting with the tetrachord of ancient Greek music and analysing the relationships between (...) notes in the major and minor scales, Arnheim identifies what in the Western musical tradition represents the basis on which each note must relate: the tonal centre, the attractive motor that determines the perceptual dynamics of musical expression. Two examples, taken from Schubert and Béla Bartók, show us how the structure of the melodic construction is essential in generating different states of mind; Arnheim, however, does not stop at the simple eliciting of an emotion, but situates the musical structure in a more general framework, which refers to perceptual patterns belonging to any sphere, mental or physical, thanks to which we experience our reality. (shrink)

Seit ungefähr Mitte der 90er-Jahre und bis heute wird der Frage nach dem Zusammenhang zwischen Ästhetik und Ethik hauptsächlich in der angloamerikanischen und der angelsächsischen analytischen Ästhetik besondere Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. In der Einleitung des Bandes Aesthetics and Ethics. Essays at the Intersection (1998), der eine der ersten Publikationen über das Thema ist, macht Levinson deutlich, dass das Buch das Ziel hat, Debatten der Ästhetik und Ethik zu verbinden, die während der vergangenen 30 Jahre isoliert behandelt worden sind (Levinson 1998, 1). (...) Er bezieht sich dabei auf die angloamerikanische Ästhetik. Seit der Veröffentlichung dieses Bandes ist eine beachtliche Zahl von Beiträgen entstanden, die explizit Themen an der Schnittstelle beider Disziplinen behandeln. Vor diesem Hintergrund soll in diesem Beitrag die Beziehung zwischen Ästhetik und Ethik unter dem Gesichtspunkt der zeitgenössischen philosophischen Ästhetik behandelt werden. Dabei sollen die Anknüpfungspunkte zwischen der neuen englischsprachigen Literatur und den Beiträgen in der deutschen ästhetischen Tradition sichtbar gemacht werden. (shrink)

Our interpretive resources enable us to make sense of, navigate, and communicate about our shared world. These resources not only carve the world up into categories, but also guide how we, individually and collectively, are oriented towards it. In this thesis, I examine how these resources, and the dispositions they guide, may be harmful. A vital kind of interpretive resources are frames, which equip us with unified perspectives on the world. Perspectives are suites of open-ended interpretive (inquisitive, attentional, inferential, evaluative, (...) and affective) dispositions. Frames thereby guide how we interpret, respond to, and navigate the world. I show that these perspectives are epistemically powerful and indispensable. I argue that flawed perspectives, and the distorting frames that produce them, are deeply pernicious and I examine their relationship to oppression. (shrink)

This article argues that the paradox of James Bond’s character (that he accords with the idea he represents precisely by deviating from it) is central to a Lacanian understanding of the unconscious (which is considered as a form of disjunctive synthesis – a logical operation that allows conflicting realities to coexist). The Lacanian unconscious is the site on which the possibility for a paradoxical character like James Bond can be framed. This requires a review of both various Bond moments and (...) the role of the Real and Symbolic in the Lacanian unconscious. (shrink)

Anthony Bourdain committed suicide in 2018 and is now more popular than ever. He is famous for being brave enough to eat things most Americans would not regard as food, including a whole cobra, raw seal's eyeballs, and unwashed warthog rectum. His book Kitchen Confidential (2000) was his first best-seller but not his last. Though best known as an authority on food and international travel, Bourdain also wrote popular crime novels and books on history and other topics. He was a (...) fan and friend of The Ramones, and dedicated his hilarious book The Nasty Bits (2007) to the members of the band. Bourdain was a heavy user of multiple drugs, a practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and an exposer of sexual harassment both in the restaurant business and the movies. All his writings and recorded conversations are witty and penetrating, and express his strong personal opinions on many subjects, from vegetarianism to religion. Anthony Bourdain and Philosophy is a collection of chapters by a diverse group of philosophers on many aspects of Bourdain's life and work. Among the topics discussed: What counts as food, and what counts as good food? What can we learn from travel that we could not glean from books and movies? Do eating habits bring people together or drive them apart? Is suicide a moral issue or just a matter of personal preference? Is it okay for an addictive personality to indulge his many indications, including addictions to work and sports? Are vegetarianism and other progressive lifestyle features "first world luxuries"? Scott Calef is professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ohio Wesleyan University. He edited Led Zeppelin and Philosophy: All Will Be Revealed (2009), and has written many scholarly articles on philosophy. (shrink)

Anglophone philosophers have shown a surprising interest in Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s aesthetics in recent years. At the same time, new approaches to aesthetics have been proposed that come very close to the original conception of aesthetics that Baumgarten introduced in the middle of the eighteenth century. In light of these developments, this article undertakes a critical examination of a central concept in Baumgarten’s poetics and aesthetics—extensive clarity. It argues that historians of philosophy and contemporary aestheticians should be wary of this (...) concept for two reasons. First, in Baumgarten’s poetics, the extensive clarity of sensible representations constitutes a dubious standard with which to determine whether those representations are “poetic.” Second, in aesthetics, using extensive clarity as an alternative standard with which to determine the perfection of sensible cognition undermines the “marriage of reason and experience” that characterized the Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy and raises the specter of dualism that Kant tried, with questionable success, to address in the ‘Schematism’ chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason. The article concludes that historians of philosophy should acknowledge the philosophical shortcomings of Baumgarten’s conception of extensive clarity and contemporary aesthetics should not reproduce them. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to provide clarification of my view on ethical criticism of narrative art in order to respond to some of the concerns issued at it by Rafe McGregor. While McGregor and I share numerous assumptions regarding the cognitive and ethical value of art, we disagree with respect to certain practical concerns. To address his challenge, I argue for the necessity of joining philosophical research with research in other domains, primarily in cognitive sciences, in order to (...) determine the extent to which engagements with art can have positive or negative cognitive and moral impact on the spectators. I am particularly concerned with showing that philosophy needs support from other disciplines in order to ground its claims in scientifically supported theories and to avoid self-generating theoretical disagreements that are populating its debates. However, I also offer an array of reasons for the inclusion of philosophy into other disciplines, and I urge for the recognition of philosophy’s potential to respond to publically relevant issues. (shrink)

This article interrogates how both visual culture and queer futurity can be made visible in and through the Philippine archive as a case in point. It begins by problematizing a paradoxical specter of futurity that seems to haunt more the Global North. But despite such haunting, the Philippines in the Global South continues to have thin to nil (i.e., nearly absent) envisioning toward a queer futurity, for most Filipino LGBTQIA + scholars seem to still be engaged in recovering “lost histories” (...) from the archives and “thick descriptions” of the present, while focusing more on the textual than the visual. The article then proceeds to discuss mobilizing ekphrasis and representation as main conceptual tools in bridging the temporally opposite projects of queer archiving and queer futurity. It analyzes through ekphrastic re-reading the various LGBTQIA + representations from the Philippine archive – that is, a “palimpsestic site” of colonial confrontations, national (re)construction, and potentially global queer critique. These re-readings along the archival grain juxtapose the archival representations as historically authentic vis-à-vis their more present-day representations as visual proxies. Yet more crucially, the potency of these ekphrastic re-readings – in lieu of visually actual – lies in their capacity to reverberate queer possibilities, re-awakening them from their sleep within the archives, and thus re-mobilizing them toward becoming a useful part of academics, activists, and artists’ “shared arsenal” in re-envisioning and, hopefully in time, reifying such past possibilities into future queer actualities anew. (shrink)

This chapter introduces and defends a pragmatist model of aesthetic disagreement that avoids many of the philosophical puzzles generated by the traditional, semantic, approach. Mainstream philosophical inquiry into aesthetic disagreement begins with a rather innocuous assumption: to understand what’s going on we must first explain what disputants are saying, which involves identifying the meaning of the relevant expressions or determining how aesthetic claims could be true. However, this task brings with it a new host of semantic and epistemic puzzles and (...) fails to vindicate the central role aesthetic disagreements occupy in our aesthetic lives more generally. Further, it isn’t clear how settling the meaning of aesthetic expressions bears on everyday aesthetic disagreements. Paying attention to what we do in an aesthetic disagreement will give us a better chance at identifying what matters for determining what we say. (shrink)

Leddington (2016) remains the leading contemporary philosophical account of magic, one that has been relatively unchallenged. In this discussion piece, I have three aims; namely, to (i) criticise Leddington’s attempt to explain the experience of magic in terms of belief-discordant alief; (ii) explore the possibility that much, if not all, of the experience of magic can be explained by mundane belief-discordant perception; and (iii) argue that make-believe is crucial to successful performances of magic in ways Leddington at best overlooks and (...) at worst denies. (shrink)

A Review of Heter & Greene's Punk Rock and Philosophy: Research and Destroy (Carus Books).

As a member of the so-demarcated 'Generation Z,' I have been blessed/damned with a front-row seat to the technological evolution kicked off by the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020, and have succeeded to varying degrees in recognizing its effects and responding to them with the efficiency and care that my neurological soul deserves. Jean-Paul Sartre's conception of bad faith provides an excellent scalpel for the dissection of such a quasi-biological progression, and in this paper, I analyze the third dimension of bad (...) faith that has become possible in the 21st century, that of the digital realm. I wish whoever has read this far immense luck in their personal voyage across the 70,000 fathoms of the internet, an electrical space organized for the mechanized transfusion of suffering into profit. Delete Instagram if you are not using it to proliferate wealth yourself. Go outside and lay in the grass. -/- "Remember being happy in our silence." -Warning, Bridges. (shrink)

The question of aesthetics in film-theoretical discourse today is split between, on the one hand, a film-phenomenological or “filmosophical” approach that values the putatively immanent relation between film and the mind and, on the other, the naturalizing epistemology of post-theory, which reduces the question of film aesthetics to one of poetics. What unites these otherwise disparate projects is the consideration of aesthetics divorced from the question of politics; in both cases, the social or political significance of the film–spectator relationship has (...) been summarily purged. In this article, I will offer an alternative account of film aesthetics that draws on Jacques Rancière’s theory concerning the mutually determining relationship between aesthetics and politics. In particular, I will consider the relevance of Rancière’s thesis concerning what he calls the distribution of sensible to current accounts, as well as taking up his novel consideration of aesthetic distance and the “emancipated” spectator. With respect to film phenomenology, I will examine how its film-theoretical program rests on the flawed concept of a de-politicized spectator enchained by the film image. With respect to post-theory, I will examine how its appropriation from cognitive science of the rational agent model of meaning making inappropriately limits the political potential of film aesthetics. (shrink)