In his article “The Ontology of Musical Versions: Introducing the Hypothesis of Nested Types,” Nemesio Puy raises a hypothesis that continuity of the purpose is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for musical work’s identity. Puy’s hypothesis is relevant to two topics in cognitive psychology and experimental philosophy. The first topic is the prevalence of teleological reasoning about various objects and its influence on persistence and categorization judgments. The second one is the importance of an artist’s intention in the (...) categorization of artworks. We tested the teleological hypothesis across three studies. Vignettes in these three studies describe a musical work being changed in some of these aspects: purpose either changed or retained; score either changed or retained; change is made either by the same or a different composer. The results suggest that teleological considerations impact judgments on the persistence of musical works, but this impact appears to be relatively weak. The results also suggest that persistence judgments strongly depend on whether acoustical properties were changed, while whether the change was made by the original composer seems to be relatively unimportant. (shrink)

The following paper draws upon a formerly published paper of mine (Krátky, 2021) where text perception was analysed from the perspective of the recipient. As its logical continuation and completion, this paper deals with the author’s viewpoint in the process. Various related aspects are identified, observed and studied, such as the ‘author’s strategy’, the evaluation of the recipient, the intended goals, as well as other important factors that influence the final text. Special attention is paid to all such aspects of (...) communication pragmatism that are reflected by the author’s (more or less controlled) deviations from the norm, aptly made to achieve communication goals. Within this framework, the study strives to show the different roles that the factor termed ‘expectation violation’ takes on when strategically applied by the author in the process of text creation. To support this description, numerous observations by authors such as Grice, Burgoon, Gombrich, Iser etc. are employed. By tackling the author’s viewpoint on text creation, a claim is advanced concerning the plausibility of certain conclusions, theories and, possibly, laws, by virtue of the identification and observation of selected multi-domain principles, phenomena and tendencies. (shrink)

I argue that the main existing accounts of the relationship between the beauty of environmental entities and their moral standing are mistaken in important ways. Beauty does not, as has been suggested by optimists, confer intrinsic moral standing. Nor is it the case, as has been suggested by pessimists, that beauty at best provides an anthropocentric source of moral standing that is commensurate with other sources of pleasure. I present arguments and evidence that show that the appreciation of beauty tends (...) to cause a transformational state of mind that is more valuable than mere pleasure, but that leads us to falsely represent beautiful entities as being sentient and, in turn, as having intrinsic moral standing. To this extent, beauty is not, then, a source of intrinsic moral standing; it’s a source of a more important anthropocentric value than has hitherto been acknowledged. (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)

In this paper I address some ways of making sense of, and so of understanding, recipes. I first make clear the plausibility of a recipe having aesthetic significance, thus situating recipes as continuous with other aspects of our lives and experiences, both artistic and non-artistic. My notion of “aesthetic” here derives from Ludwig Wittgenstein. Second, I also highlight how some recipes and cookbooks may actually serve another aesthetic goal: they facilitate attunement to aesthetic features of cooking and food, and to (...) things more generally. I show how this kind of preparation is consistent with Wittgenstein’s aims in his “Lectures on Aesthetics”, where he encourages a particular aesthetic attitude or predisposition. (shrink)