This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

Dominic McIver Lopes and Yuriko Saito claim that the Japanese tea ceremony, or chadō, is a non‐Western art form. Stephen Davies also defends that claim. In this article, I utilize the tea ceremony as a test case for pancultural definitions of art that claim to be inclusive of non‐Western cultures without relying on Western ethnocentrism to justify their status as artworks. I argue that Davies's (2015) hybrid definition is not justified in assuming a homogenous art tradition and/or a unified conception (...) of artistic practices in a non‐Western culture. Moreover, the cladistic structure of his definition fails to accommodate the spontaneous instantiation of new art traditions. Additionally, Jerrold Levinson's Intentional‐Historical definition cannot satisfactorily accommodate chadō. First, the nonart origins that were formative for the regard that is required for appreciation of the tea ceremony mean that the relational interpretation of the definition fails. Second, Rikyū’s tea ceremony does not count as art incidentally, as it is not a form of mimesis nor does the Japanese wabi aesthetic that is central to chadō have a precursor in known Western art. Third, if chadō does satisfy Levinson's extended theory, it comes at the cost of embracing Western ethnocentrism. (shrink)

This is an essay in appreciation of The Abundant Herds, a study of the ama-Zulu's naming practices for their Nguni cattle. The book reveals an aesthetic vision in which contemplative and practical attention are intertwined and a complex classificatory system does not undermine an appreciation of the individuality of the cattle. The book and the practices it celebrates permit a richer account of the beauty of farm animals to the standard functionalist approach.

Many artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that realize its purpose. (...) Attention to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a process-based ontology of art following John Dewey’s concepts of experience and rhythm. I will adopt a pragmatist and embodied point of view within an adverbialist framework. I will defend the idea of an artistic way of experiencing – a subtype of aesthetic experience – as something which allows us to assign the ontological category of art to an object or event. The adverbial features of this artistic way of experiencing will be (...) characterized as being rhythmic in nature. This goal will be achieved in three steps. First, I will explain and elaborate on the concept of adverbialism. Second, the importance of rhythm in experience will be taken into account through a close reading of Dewey’s philosophy and by incorporating the nuances of the Pre-Socratic idea of rhuthmos, as well as some recent findings about brain and bodily oscillations from cognitive science. Third, to conclude I will propose four necessary but not sufficient features of the rhythmic engagement enacted while an artistic way of experiencing takes place: a necessary degree of object or event awareness, a positive feedback dynamic, a loosening of the sense of agency, and being attentionally demanding. (shrink)

In this paper I make the case that at least some tattoos are artworks. I go on to propose a definition of tattoo art that distinguishes it from other uses of tattooing, and from other forms of visual art. I argue that tattoo art is an art form that creates artworks in living skin, and that the living body is an essential component of and contributor to the artwork. This gives rise to several other distinctive features of tattoo art, in (...) particular that it reconfigures in interesting ways the relationships between artist, artworks, and viewers. Like street art, tattoo art by its nature resists inclusion in and valuation through art institutions such as galleries and museums. (shrink)

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)

Moving from a critical assessment of some recent attempts to define the arts in terms of adaptations, spandrels, by-products and, moreover, calling into question the continued development of the concept of the "aesthetic" in the frame of contemporary interdisciplinary research projects, the main aim of this paper is to highlight some of the ways in which archaeological objects can, at least in some respects, testify to the manifestation of the modern aesthetic mind.

It is generally agreed that the prime mover of contemporary consumerism is aesthetics. However, today's consumer aesthetics often leads to decisions and actions that have negative environmental consequences. By taking apparel industry, represented by fast fashion, as a quintessential example of this problem, I argue that aesthetics can no longer claim immunity from environmental considerations—there needs to be a paradigm shift for consumer aesthetics. A proposed new environmentally minded consumer aesthetics promotes a paradoxical role for material ephemerality in enhancing an (...) object's longevity, and it places importance on the personal connection with an object's story, as well as our engagement with the material world more generally. (shrink)

This essay argues that idleness as play and leisure would be recognised as an ideal over game playing in Bernard Suits’ Utopia. Idleness is unaccountably overlooked as an ideal by Suits, as is the problem that his description of game playing is an anachronism, pushing his Utopians into a pre-Utopian condition. There is room for playing games in an idle Utopia but in a less prominent and more restricted role. Idleness as play and leisure is not defended as the sole (...) ideal of Utopian existence though it is possibly that. Rather, it is presented as a compelling and preferable ideal for Suits’ Utopians, thus refuting his claim that game playing is ‘the only possible’ ideal of human existence in Utopia. (shrink)

Traditionally, the sense of touch—alongside the senses of taste and smell—has been excluded from the aesthetic domain. These proximal modalities are thought to deliver only sensory pleasures, not the complex, world-directed perceptual states that characterize aesthetic experience. In this paper, I argue that this tradition fails to recognize the perceptual possibilities of haptic touch, which allows us to experience properties of the objects with which we make bodily contact, including their weight, shape, solidity, elasticity, and smoothness. These features, moreover, may (...) be indicative of how well-suited an object is for its function, and in feeling them we can thus feel the positive aesthetic quality of functional beauty. (shrink)

While the view that we perceive aesthetic properties may seem intuitive, it has received little in the way of explicit defence. It also gives rise to a puzzle. The first strand of this puzzle is that we often cannot perceive aesthetic properties of artworks without training, yet much aesthetic training involves the acquisition of knowledge, such as when an artwork was made, and by whom. How, if at all, can this knowledge affect our perception of an artwork’s aesthetic properties? The (...) second strand of the puzzle arises when we widen the scope of aesthetic experience. The very same aesthetic properties that seem to require training for their perception in artworks do not appear to require training to perceive in objects of everyday aesthetic appreciation and natural phenomena. In this paper I argue that a prominent extant attempt to explain how training is compatible with aesthetic perception—cognitive permeation—is an inadequate solution. I also develop a positive view of aesthetic perception that provides a unified solution to both strands of the puzzle. (shrink)

Current debates in food aesthetics are moving away from a focus on whether food is art, and worries about the subjectivity and objectivity of taste, and towards questions about food's aesthetic properties, the cultural and social significance of food, our modes of aesthetic engagement with food, and issues involving cultural appropriation and the authenticity of dishes.

This article explores how the notion ofordinary aestheticscan stem, as well as the one ofordinary ethics, from thatrevolution of the ordinarystarted by Wittgenstein and further developed by philosophers like Cavell and Diamond. The idea ofordinary ethicsemphasizes the importance of everyday life and the particular details of our experiences. This concept can be extended to aesthetics, forming the basis of a modality of aesthetic appreciation that recognize values and importance in the details and nuances of everyday experience. One example of suchordinary (...) aestheticscan be found in thehaikupoetry of Bashō. Bashō’s poetry often focuses on the ordinary and mundane aspects of life, such as the changing of seasons, the sound of rain, or the sight of a bird in flight, but also on that lower world made of insects, rotten foliage, and excrements. Bashō conveys in poetry the core ofZenphilosophy, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things and the value of living in the present moment. This approach to aesthetics offers an alternative to more traditional modes of aesthetic appreciation, which tend to prioritize grandeur, spectacle, and formal perfection. Ultimately, the concept of ordinary aesthetics invites us to find the intrinsic importance in the simple things that surround us and to cultivate a deeper appreciation for the richness of our everyday lives. (shrink)

There is a tendency in contemporary (analytic) aesthetics to consider- ably restrict the scope of things that can be beautiful or ugly. This peculiarly modern tendency is holding back progress in aesthetics and robbing it of its potential contribution to other domains of inquiry. One view that has suffered neglect as a result of this tendency is the moral beauty view, whereby the moral virtues are beautiful and the moral vices are ugly. This neglect stems from an assumption to the (...) effect that virtues and vices simply cannot be beautiful or ugly. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it develops an account of form, under which, it argues, possession of form suffices for an object’s candidature for beauty and ugliness. Second, it argues that, under the foregoing proposal, the moral beauty view turns out to be a coherent position, and so should be taken seriously in both aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

In recent debates about how we ought to aesthetically appreciate nature, one important argument (the Respect Argument) claims that appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature involves taking nature “on its own terms.” Some object that, while respect morally constrains the actions we take toward certain people or things, aesthetically appreciating nature does not involve action, but only mere contemplation. The Respect Argument therefore fails. In this article, I reply to this objection, arguing that the concept of respect can yield a kind (...) of moral constraint even upon contemplative activities such as aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

Los criterios de excelencia e innovación a la hora de valorar las tecnologías de la comunicación se ven afectados por un gran número de factores, pero al final hay uno que prima sobre todos los demás: la calidad de la imágenes utilizadas, como sucede con National Geographic y Walt Disney, dos empresas de comunicación que han sido determinantes a la hora de fijar los criterios estándar de excelencia e innovación. En este contexto se reconstruye el debate contemporáneo entre Wiesing, Levinson, (...) Crowther y Seel acerca de los criterios de excelencia e innovación usados a la hora de valorar la calidad de las imágenes virtuales mediáticas por parte de las tecnologías de la comunicación, teniendo en cuenta su cuádruple dimensión genético-retroductiva, simbólica, contextual y estrictamente escénica. (shrink)

Thi Nguyen develops the view that games are, at least potentially, works of art that afford players the opportunity to experiment with agency and have aesthetically significant experiences. In this paper, I critically discuss this proposal. You can make art out of games, I argue, but only at the price of making bad games. I explore the significance of this rivalry between games and art.

For better or worse, places matter to us. Especially the familiar places we call home—the ones that embody our personal and cultural histories, give our lives a sense of stability, and support the routines of everyday life. Global Climate Change (GCC) poses an existential threat to these places, engendering nonmaterial losses that threaten subjective well-being and overall mental health. Unfortunately, these nonmaterial losses are often overlooked or underappreciated. My aim in this article is to counter this tendency and explore the (...) relationship between people and place in a way that sheds light on the nonmaterial threat of GCC. I approach this task from the lens of everyday aesthetics. While finding adequate compensation for these nonmaterial losses is unlikely, I suggest that sensitivity to the aesthetic texture of everyday life can provide a source of aesthetic consolation that can make the challenges of GCC easier to manage. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to deepen the concept of emerging urban mobility technology. Drawing on philosophical everyday and urban aesthetics, as well as the postphenomenological strand in the philosophy of technology, we explicate the relation between everyday aesthetic experience and urban mobility commoning. Thus, we shed light on the central role of aesthetics for providing depth to the important experiential and value-driven meaning of contemporary urban mobility. We use the example of self-driving vehicle (SDV), as potentially mundane, public, (...) dynamic, and social urban robots, for expanding the range of perspectives relevant for our relations to urban mobility technology. We present the range of existing SDV conceptualizations and contrast them with experiential and aesthetic understanding of urban mobility. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential undesired consequences from the depolitization of technological development, and potential new pathways for speculative thinking concerning urban mobility futures in responsible innovation processes. (shrink)

In response to Stefano Predelli's article finding in David Kaplan's “Demonstratives” a distinction between “context shifting” monsters and “operators on character,” I argue that context shifters are operators on character. That conclusion conflicts with the claim that operators on character must be covertly quotational. But that claim is itself unmotivated.

In this paper, I argue that norms of artistic and aesthetic authenticity that prioritize material origins foreclose on broader opportunities for aesthetic experience: particularly, for the aesthetic experience of history. I focus on Carolyn Korsmeyer’s recent articles in defense of the aesthetic value of genuineness and argue that her rejection of the aesthetic significance of historical value is mistaken. Rather, I argue that recognizing the aesthetic significance of historical value points the way towards rethinking the dominance of the very norms (...) of authenticity that Korsmeyer endeavors to defend and explain. (shrink)

There is a popular theory in the metaphysics of time according to which time is one of four similar dimensions that make up a single manifold that is appropriately called spacetime. One consequence of this thesis is that changing an object’s orientation in the manifold does not change its intrinsic features. In this paper I offer a new argument against this popular theory. I claim that an especially good performance of a particularly beautiful piece of music, when oriented within the (...) manifold in the normal way, adds to the intrinsic value of the world, but that if the same performance is turned sideways within the manifold, so that it involves a number of different notes spread out in space and all occurring at the same time, then it does not add the same intrinsic value to the world. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce everyday aesthetics in education. First, it presents everyday aesthetics as a subdiscipline within philosophical aesthetics, that revisits sensory perception as the backdrop of all experience, claims ordinary life is a proper venue for aesthetic inquiry, and problematizes the impact aesthetic preferences have on habitual decisions. Second, the paper argues that among the diverse matters students learn in school, they learn—explicitly or implicitly—what and how to perceive, as well as the pedagogical purposes of (...) daily perception. School models the relationships that students will develop between what they perceive, what they think about it, and how they act accordingly. Next, the paper elaborates on the notions of “school aesthetic matrixes” and “space and place in school”. School aesthetic matrixes refer to perceptual patterns that allow characterizing relationships between daily perception and the pedagogical project of a school. They manifest through expressions such as prison school, home school, mall school, etc. Space and place in school allude to concomitant experiences, of corporeal basis, that allow describing how we inhabit the world. What distinguishes them is the approach each one gives to the senses and the body. The paper concludes by calling attention to the comprehension and role of perception in education, urging to mind the aesthetic-pedagogical character that students develop throughout 12 years of schooling. Ultimately, the key relationships we develop with ourselves, others, and the world, entail a basic perceptual dimension that can be educated to become more purposefully and integrally present in life. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to show how flavors – specifically food flavors – and the atmospheres they help create have a strong sociopolitical value. Smells are here dealt with as vector elements inscribed in the collective space; they, on the one hand, affect the way in which refusal or acceptance occur and, on the other, mold perceptual and fruition model. By «aromatic aesthetics», we refer to the dimension in which smells are related to peculiar atmospheric policies. Stemming from this (...) framework, we present the notions of sterilization, deodorization, and flavoring anew in the light of bodily, sensory and cognitive effects on the individual and on the relations with the surrounding world, particularly with food. The concoction of synthetic flavor mixtures and its subsequent perception cause atmospheric manipulations able to affect both collectively and individually the sense of smell. In contrast to this aggressive and standardizing practice, we try to outline an alternative approach based on the idea of engagement aiming to contribute to a complete ecological aesthetics. (shrink)

Resumen: En nuestros días el término arte ha ampliado su horizonte hasta incluir prácticas y objetos que tradicionalmente habían sido negados. Este cambio de perspectiva se introduce a partir del siglo XX cuando la noción de arte comienza a ser cuestionada desde diferentes vertientes teóricas y prácticas. En este artículo se analiza la definición que el filósofo estadounidense John Dewey propuso en los años treinta, la cual trataba de devolver el arte al contexto cultural en el que se originó. Para (...) ello, en primer lugar se examinará la dimensión cultural del arte: tanto el contexto sociocultural de la obra, como el propio papel del arte para transmitir los significados de una cultura. En segundo lugar, serán consideradas las posibilidades que ofrece esta noción de arte como vía para establecer un diálogo intercultural entre iguales. A través de un estudio sobre su fundamentación teórica, así como su alcance y limitaciones, el objetivo de este artículo es mostrar, pese a sus dificultades, que la definición deweyana de arte alberga un gran potencial para la estética contemporánea.: In present days, the term art has broadened its horizon to include practices and objects that traditionally had been rejected. This change of view was introduced in the twentieth century when this notion begins to be questioned from different theoretical and practical approaches. This article analyzes the definition proposed in the thirties by the American philosopher John Dewey, which tried to return art to the cultural context in which it was created. For this purpose, first, the text examines the cultural dimension of art: the sociocultural context of the work of art; and the role of art in transmitting the meanings of a culture. Second, the text considers the possibilities offered by this notion of art to establish an intercultural dialogue between equals. Through a study of its theoretical fundamentals, its scope and limitations, the aim of this article is to show that, despite its difficulties, the Deweyan definition of art harbors great potential for contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

Defended by scholars such as John McDowell and Julia Annas, the naturalism of second nature (NSN) claims that the virtues are part of a rational second nature in- stilled through moral education. While NSN emphasizes that rationality, fully devel- oped, results in autonomy from nature, it is considered a sort of naturalism because the development of rational second nature unfolds through entirely natural processes. Critics object that NSN does not utilize human nature as a standard of evaluation, which is a (...) problem for a view that claims to be a sort of naturalism. This paper at- tempts to meet this charge by introducing a novel way to understand the normative significance of human nature. It argues that NSN supports an analysis of human nature as the raw material of the virtues and, as such, the basis of a kind of aesthetic evaluation. Specifically, human nature is the basis of humaneness, a kind of beauty that belongs to what elevates or refines human nature. Thus, according to the fortified naturalism of second nature the ethical significance of human nature is explained by recognizing how the virtues exemplify a kind of beauty that only humans can have. (shrink)

The role and function of public art is currently undergoing some large-scale changes. Many new artworks which are situated within the already existing urban sphere, seem to be changing the definition of public art, each in their own way. Simultaneously, there exists a trend that endorses more traditional forms of public art. Juxtaposing and comparing the aesthetic implications of different types of artworks, it is possible to see how they contribute to the contemporary understanding of the urban sphere. In this (...) paper, I take a look at the explicit and implicit aesthetic values that these simultaneously existing contemporary forms of public art are based on. The cases selected for closer look are examples of prominent and recent works of public art from downtown Helsinki: He who Brings the Light by Pekka Kauhanen and Running Man by Nestori Syrjala. What space and what kind of position is subscribed to the perceiver by these very different types of yet equally established artworks? What kind of experiences and possibilities of participation do these works entail? The focus is on the undergoing redefinition of public art that revolves around these questions. (shrink)

How does Richard Shusterman’s Thinking Through the Body apply to the issues of everyday aesthetics? As it turns out, many chapters contribute significantly to everyday aesthetics, in particular the work on architecture, self-styling, the body as background, lovemaking, and the process of making a photographic portrait. Shusterman’s concentration on the art of living has special importance to everyday aesthetics. Current debates within the field of everyday aesthetics also raise problems for somaesthetics. I also question the limits of somaesthetics and Shusterman’s (...) rejection of defamiliarization in making the ordinary extraordinary. (shrink)

Everyday aesthetics is a new sub-discipline of aesthetic theory that has only been actively discussed since the 1980s. This paper addresses what many consider the central issue of the field, called “the dilemma of everyday aesthetics.” I discuss three authors who address this issue: Yuriko Saito, Allen Carlson, and Paisley Livingston. Drawing on Dewey’s anti-dualist stance, I argued for a continuity between the aesthetics of everyday life and the aesthetics of art. In course of my discussion, I question such dichotomies (...) as that between the practical and the aesthetic, the ordinary and the extraordinary, and disinterestedness vs. engagement. In my view, the dilemma is only real for those who wish to maintain relatively rigid distinctions within these dichotomies. The dilemma is only a dilemma if you think there is something disturbing about the thought that low-level aesthetic experiences are enhanced when attended to and when understood or appreciated differently by way of the arts. (shrink)

Argument of this text is that: to develop aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with aesthetics as philosophy of art but with aesthetics of everyday life; to start with aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with beautiful of ‘pure aesthetics’ but with the dramatic; to analyze the dramatic in sport, we should not open the analysis with analogy between theater and sport, but with sport as a sort of performance; to get at the meaning of sport as a (...) drama, we have to discuss different meanings ‘drama’ has in theory and everyday communication; to map the dramatic in sport as performance, we have to discuss some features of sport which determine its dramatics first, and its potential as spectacle later. To proceed with the argument, we have to take into account contemporary state of aesthetics, recent development of aesthetics of everyday life, and theory of performance, together with Bernard Suits’ definition of game, Gadamer’s idea of play, and Lévy-Strauss’ account on conjunctive and disjunctive ritual. (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of the ways in which contemporary philosophers have tried to make sense of ineffability as encountered in aesthetic contexts. Section 1 sets up the problem of aesthetic ineffability by putting it into historical perspective. Section 2 specifies the kinds of questions that may be raised with regard to aesthetic ineffability, as well as the kinds of answer each one of those questions would require. Section 3 investigates arguments that seek to locate aesthetic ineffability within the (...) object of aesthetic experiences, i.e. within aesthetic content. Section 4 discusses arguments that seek to locate aesthetic ineffability within the subject of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

How should we characterize the interaction between moral and aesthetic values in the context of environmental aesthetics? This question is important given the urgency of many environmental problems and the particular role played by aesthetic value in our experience of environment. To address this question, we develop a model of Environmental Virtue Aesthetics (EVA) that, we argue, offers a promising alternative to current theories in environmental aesthetics with respect to the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. EVA counters environmental aesthetic theories (...) that focus more narrowly on scientific knowledge and ground aesthetic value in ways that obfuscate pluralistic modes of appreciation of and relationships with natural and semi-natural environments. To develop EVA, we work with a revised notion of respect and engage with ideas concerning the development of aesthetic sensibilities, care, and virtuous aesthetic appreciation. EVA has the potential to support forms of human-nature co-flourishing, as well as constituting an aesthetic grounding for ecological citizenship. (shrink)

We present the structure and guiding principles of this Special Issue, with a brief description of the participants’ contributions and the relations holding between them. The intersection between aesthetics and ethics as a field of philosophical enquiry is presented under the guise of a ‘layer cake’: at the top layer we find the most general metaphysical and epistemological issues concerning the nature of value, aesthetic and ethical; the middle layer encompasses several normative issues about the interactions of aesthetic, moral and (...) cognitive values in art; finally at the bottom layer we introduce issues of a more restricted focus, like the aesthetic peculiarity of political songs and the ethics of artistic appropriation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTheories of aesthetics have traditionally represented the aesthetic object as a framed, distanced and contemplated individual piece to be appreciated. As such the aesthetic object has mainly been a work of art. This view has been challenged especially by environmental and everyday aesthetics, approaches which bring everyday environments and matters into consideration as possible objects of aesthetic appreciation. In this article I explore recent theories of everyday aesthetics focusing on how they treat the questions concerning ordinarity and attachment with regard (...) to aesthetic experience. In addition, I participate in the ongoing discussion of the nature of everyday aesthetic experience but I do so from a new point of view by introducing a notion of dwelling as a key concept to understanding aesthetic dimensions of our everyday life. The concept of dwelling indicates two different semantic elements of the aesthetic in our everyday existence: that of sensing and perceiving on one hand, and creating on the other. As such it offers a versatile point of departure in viewing our everyday aesthetic life. (shrink)

In this article, I enter into a discussion of how aesthetics can be conceptualized in the context of design and related to the field of human–computer interaction (HCI). I contest the current trend in design aesthetics that primarily focuses on beauty, pleasure, and the creation of emotional appeal by means of the sensual and visual elements of the design. Conversely, I advocate for a series of concepts related to aesthetics, such as reflectivity, representation, and epistemology, as these point aesthetics beyond (...) the immediate sensual and visual. Through these concepts, a deeper understanding of the character of the relationship between humans and design can be obtained: Design objects and HCI solutions can be more accurately described in their roles as interfaces for how humans approach the world. This broader perspective on aesthetics has implication for practice when designers set the task of creating new experiences for the users. (shrink)

In this thesis the appropriate aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes is explored. The overarching research question for this thesis is: What is an appropriate appreciation of a designed landscape as a designed landscape? This overarching research question is split into sub-questions. The first sub-question is: What is the current theoretical basis for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes and does it provide appropriate arguments for aesthetic evaluations? Two important points about the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes were found in the (...) existing literature on environmental aesthetics and in critical evaluations of designed landscapes. Modern environmental aesthetics is focussed on natural environments as it has been shaped in response to early 20th century aesthetics, which was dominated by questions on art. The designed landscape phenomenologically related more to environments, but is ontologically closely related to artworks. Designed landscapes thus fall between two fields. The designed landscape has gone largely unacknowledged by philosophers and geographers. The lack of a specific theory for the appropriate appreciation of designed landscapes has made it easier for landscape architects and critics to miss out on the current insights of environmental aesthetics, leading to the inconsistent belief among landscape architects and landscape architecture critics that landscapes are scenic entities. Actual design criticism as offered in the Landscape Architecture Europe books is shown to be based on the inconsistent belief that aesthetic experiences of works of landscape architecture are mostly visual. To explore what an appropriate appreciation should be based in, first the ontology and phenomenology of one example, the post-war design for the landscape of Walcheren, is described and discussed. To explore its ontology, a literature research has revealed the design process and decisions. To explore the phenomenology, the descriptions of two walks on the island made by the author were analysed. The descriptions of ontology and phenomenology of Walcheren offer insights into the relevance for the aesthetic evaluation of this landscape of being designed and of the sensorial richness of this designed landscape. In both fields of ontology and phenomenology insights into aesthetic value go beyond the visible. The second and third part of the research answers the sub-questions about appropriate appreciation regarding respectively ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in general. The literature on topics adjacent to the field of landscape architecture, such as design and architecture aesthetics, was surveyed for aspects that might also be relevant for the aesthetic evaluation of landscape architecture. These aspects were then weighed according to a philosophical method of reasoning from first principles. Starting from a principle of appropriate appreciation, different cues were tested to see whether or not they have to be considered in such an appropriate appreciation. Following descriptions of the True Appreciation Principle (TAP) as provided by Lopes, cues were tested against the Appropriate Appreciation Principle for Designed Landscapes (AAP-DL): An appreciation of landscape L as a designed landscape is appropriate only as far as it does not depend counterfactually on any belief that is inconsistent with the truth about the nature of designed landscapes. Examples are provided where cues can influence one’s evaluation, and evaluation thus depends counterfactually on those taking those cues into account. If something might influence one’s evaluation one should consider it. The exploration has provided important cues for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes. The findings are the base of an evaluative framework that takes into account the ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in order to evaluate designed landscapes according the AAP-DL. A discussion is provided on the importance of such an appropriate appreciation for different audiences. (shrink)

This article is a criticism of the narrative self-understanding offered by advocates of Ordinary Aesthetics. Even though the frustration with the philosophy of art (in contrast with philosophical aesthetics) is, in many ways, an overdetermined result, the sense of the ordinary as available through the withdrawal of this art-centred concern is misguided. This article argues that the reported death of art and the seemingly consistent suggestion that “anything goes” do not relieve contemporary philosophy from its being situated precisely in the (...) wake of these practices of sense-making. I claim that Ordinary Aesthetics is dealing in an illusory conceit to the extent that defences of Ordinary Aesthetics are indebted to a demand that aesthetics may be a living field of philosophical inquiry today only if the fate of artworks is deleted from that narrative. Arguing this point requires an account of the idea of the death of art, associated with Hegel but perhaps more recently with Danto, and I sketch how Danto’s account does not cohere with the account provided in Ordinary Aesthetics. But because the claim of Ordinary Aesthetics amounts to a claim about the capacities of human sense-making independent of historical trajectories and a sense of the ordinary as that which is just available to a timeless abstraction of the human sensorium, my criticism of Ordinary Aesthetics requires a deeper defence of the relation of the faltering of narratives of art with the philosophical effort to make sense of ordinary experiences. Doing so requires that I provide alternatives: what I regard as two related though quite different philosophical approaches, namely, Cavell’s Ordinary Language Philosophy (which is startlingly absent from defences of Ordinary Aesthetics) and the program of a philosophical aesthetics elaborated in Adorno. (shrink)

Country music has not gotten much attention in philosophy. I introduce two philosophical issues that country music raises. First, country music is simple. Some people might think that its simplicity makes country music worse; I argue that simplicity is aesthetically valuable. The second issue is country music’s ideal of authenticity; fans and performers think that country should be real or genuine in a particular way. But country music scholars have debunked the idea that country authenticity gets at anything real; widespread (...) ideas about country authenticity are rooted in a racist and fabricated picture of country music. In discussing these two issues, I highlight the importance of community in country music. (shrink)

This essay deals with the terms “form” and “function” as well as their relationship insofar as they are still used in philosophical and design-theory discourse to determine the aesthetic dimension of designed artefacts, especially of everyday objects, and often also to distinguish them from objects of art. I discuss whether our common understanding of these terms and their relationship is an appropriate instrument for such determinations. What is up for discussion here are not only conceptions of functional beauty with regard (...) to design methodology and the philosophical discourse on aesthetics, in which form and function become thematic, but also basic concepts of philosophical aesthetics itself. It is shown that the philosophical understanding of design aesthetics and the concepts of form and function are determined by profound preliminary decisions that restrict our access to the aesthetic dimension of designed artefacts, and a conceptualisation of an initial change in thinking is proposed. (shrink)

Oggi il mondo dell’arte si apre a un’ibridizzazione di forme e generi. La bellezza e la creatività, categorie fondamentali dell’arte secondo la tradizione idealistica e romantica, trovano nella vita quotidiana nuovi territori da colonizzare. In questo panorama di esteticità diffusa un fenomeno acquista particolare interesse: la DesignArt. La DesignArt costituisce un’intersezione tra due ambiti della creatività storicamente volti l’uno a progettare per l’industria oggetti seriali, utili ed esteticamente gradevoli, l’altro a ideare opere uniche e belle, ma senza scopo. Il luogo (...) precipuo della DesignArt è l’ambiente vissuto, dove contemplazione e consumo si intrecciano in un’esperienza sinestetica in cui l’arte può offrire dei servizi ai fruitori. Pertanto la contemplazione disinteressata, tradizionalmente connotativa dell’opera d’arte, viene ora sostituita da un’esperienza a più livelli, una sorta di “consumo contemplativo”, poiché la bellezza si può fruire simultaneamente alla soddisfazione di altri scopi. Attraverso l’esame di opere convergenti in quest’ambito sia dalla sfera dell’arte sia da quello della produzione industriale, questo saggio cercherà di mettere a fuoco le categorie estetiche della DesignArt. Particolare attenzione sarà rivolta al concetto di atmosfera introdotto nel dibattito sull’estetica contemporanea da Gernot Boheme. Il concetto di atmosfera può fornire una chiave di lettura per i nuovi territori dell’estetizzazione quotidiana, in cui il valore di “messa in scena” prevale sul valore d’uso degli oggetti, e di conseguenza può costituire una categoria ermeneutica per questa intersezione creativa tra bellezza e funzionalità. (shrink)

This essay offers an overview of the reasons why tattoos are philosophically interesting. Considered here will be a partial survey of potential areas of philosophical interest with respect to tattoos, fortified by a little historical context. Claims about the ethical significance of tattoos and about the significance of tattoos for self-expression and as expressions of identity will be canvassed in the first two sections, as will questions about what they express or signify, how they might do so, and whose expression (...) we might take it to be. The final sections will address the contention that at least some tattoos are art and will raise various considerations about their closest analogs as well as their authorship. Although it will be argued that analogs can be found between tattoos and works recognized as art, it will also be maintained that tattoos raise unique aesthetic issues for consideration. (shrink)