Art world talk of “blurred boundaries” and “hybrids” between art and craft, suggests that the philosophy of art needs to rethink the concept of craft. This can best be done by adopting four strategies: first, distinguish between craft as a set of disciplines, and craft as a process and practice; second, keep in mind the differences among craft practices such as studio, trade, ethnic, amateur, and DIY; third, recognize that craft’s relationship with design is as important as its relationship to (...) art; fourth, attend to the role digital design and fabrication are playing in craft and art today. At the core of the craft process are three contested characteristics found in most craft practices: hand, material, and skill, although these are better understood as body, medium, and mastery. After discussing a fourth contested characteristic of many craft and design practices, function, I show that none of the four characteristics is a requisite condition for artistic practice today, yet none are excluded from contemporary art, despite its current “post‐studio” or “post‐disciplinary” tendencies. I conclude that the boundary between art and craft conceived as a set of disciplines defined by materials and techniques has not become blurred, it has all but disappeared. On the other hand, I show through an analysis of some references to “mere craft” by Stephen Davies and Arthur Danto, that craft conceived as a process and practice can be understood as distinct from art, but in a non‐invidious sense. (shrink)

Accounts of modality in terms of fictional possible worlds face an objection based on the idea that when modal claims are analysed in terms of fictions, the connection between analysans and analysandum seems artificial. Strong modal fictionalism, the theory according to which modal claims are analysed in terms of a fiction, has been defended by, among others, Seahwa Kim, who has recently claimed that the philosophical objection that the connection between modality and fictions is artificial can be met. I propose (...) a new way of spelling out the intuition of artificiality and show that strong modal fictionalism should be rejected. (shrink)

Making an adequate aesthetic judgment about an object or an aesthetic property requires first-hand experience of that object or property. Many have suggested that this principle is a valid epistemic norm in the epistemology of the aesthetic. However, some recent philosophers have argued that certain works of conceptual art and other counterexamples disprove the principle in question, even suitably modified. In this paper, I argue that these philosophers are mistaken and that, when properly qualified, the acquaintance principle (in some of (...) its versions) is not threatened by their examples and arguments. (shrink)

This article outlines a realist theory of aesthetic properties as higher-order manifest properties and defends it from several objections, including a possible conflict with contextualist approaches to the aesthetic properties of works of art.

Fakes fall into two categories: copies and pastiches. The first is exemplified when someone paints a reproduction of Manet's The Fifer with the intention of selling it to you as the original. The second is exemplified when someone paints a picture in the style of Manet – although not a reproduction of one of his actual works – with the intention of selling it to you as a picture by Manet.

Danto's Gallery of Indiscernibles thought experiment only works if we make assumptions about the cognitive impenetrability of perception, which we have strong empirical reasons to reject.

According to the dominant theory of intentionalism, fiction and non-fiction are in a “mix-and-match” relationship with truth and falsity: both fiction and nonfiction can be either true or false. Intentionalists hold that fiction is a property of a narrative that is intended to elicit not belief but imagination or make-belief in virtue of the audience’s recognizing that such is the intention of the fiction-maker. They claim that in unlikely circumstances these fictions can turn out to be accidentally true. On the (...) contrary, I argue in this paper that fictionality and truth are incompatible. I distinguish narratives based on whether they contain invented characters or not, and offer respective sets of arguments to the effect that there is no case when a fiction is accidentally true. A narrative is either fiction or accidentally true but not both. (shrink)

I develop and defend the following functional view of art: a work of art typically possesses as an essential feature one or more points, purposes, or ends with reference to the satisfaction of which that work can be appropriately evaluated. This way of seeing a work’s artistic value as dependent on its particular artistic ends (whatever they may be) suggests an answer to a longstanding question of what sort of internal relation, if any, exists between the wide variety of values (...) (moral, cognitive, aesthetic, etc.) that may be possessed by works of art and their value qua works of art. (shrink)

This paper explores some issues concerning the ontology of photography. It would appear that photography’s ontology bears some significant specificities comparing with other art forms. First, the study of negative film and printed photograph relations shows us that photography has a multi-layered ontology, since although the latter is ontologically dependent upon the former, it stands autonomously as work of art. Second, I will consider the problem of forgery in photography. It seems that photographs are autographic and allographic, fakeable and unfakeable. (...) Third, ontological status of negative film will be explored. Apparently, current ontological categories aren’t pertinent as far as negative-photograph’s ontology is concerned. That’s why, relying on Gérard Genette ontological notions, I propose to consider the negative film as «immanence» and the printed photograph as work’s «transcendence». In this regard, printed photograph functions as a manifestation of the negative film. (shrink)

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.

Time passes, and the inexorability of its passing has deep emotional significance. One of the main themes of this thesis involves an investigation into the metaphysical nature of the passage of time. What sort of metaphysical account of passage should be given? And do our emotional responses to temporal passage have metaphysical implications? The other main theme of the thesis is the issue of the metaphysics of persistence. When a thing is present at more than one time, what is the (...) metaphysical underpinning of its persistence? Some subsidiary issues, which are nevertheless important in their own right, are also discussed. There are interesting connections between the issues of persistence and these further issues, which include the nature of vagueness, and the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. (shrink)