Aesthetic preferences and practices vary widely between individuals and between cultures. How should aesthetics proceed if we take this fact of aesthetic diversity, rather than the presumption of aesthetic universality, as our starting point? How should we theorize the cultural origins and cultural basis of aesthetic diversity? How should we think about the value and normativity of aesthetic diversity? In an effort to model what the turn toward diversity might look like in aesthetic inquiry, each author defends a different account (...) of aesthetic diversity, and they engage in a collective dialogue about these issues. (shrink)

As aesthetic beings, we are receptive to and engaged with the sensuous phenomena of life while also knowing that we are targets of others’ awareness: we are both aesthetic agents and aesthetic objects. Our psychological health, our standing within our communities, and our overall wellbeing can be profoundly affected by our aesthetic surroundings and by whether and how we receive aesthetic recognition from others. When our embodied selves and our cultural products are valued, and when we have rich opportunities for (...) aesthetic experience and for the exercise of aesthetic agency, the aesthetic can foster and sustain wellbeing and help to make our lives worthwhile. But when we are subjected to aesthetic blight, restriction of our aesthetic agency, and aesthetic devaluing of our embodied selves and our communities’ cultural products, the aesthetic can do great harm: such aesthetic maneuvers play a significant role in oppression and social hierarchy related to race, gender, fatness, and disability. This essay explores the notions of aesthetic objects and aesthetic agents, their relations with each other, and the unique affordances of persons’ status as simultaneously aesthetic objects and aesthetic agents. It examines the prospects for bodily aesthetic experience to promote wellbeing and, at the end, considers how the aesthetic might play a role in establishing forms of mutual vulnerability and recognition to combat oppressive social hierarchies. (shrink)

When bringing philosophical attention to bear on social movement slogans in general, philosophers have often focused on their communicative nature—particularly the hermeneutical failures that arise in discourse. Some of the most popular of these failures are illustrated in ‘all lives matter’ retorts to ‘black lives matter’ pronouncements. Although highlighting and criticizing these failures provides much needed insight into social movement slogans as a communicative practice, I claim that in doing so, philosophers and slogans’ users risk placing too much importance on (...) outgroup understandings. This emphasis is misguided because gaining such uptake is not required of particular slogans to perform their functions; indeed it is an inherent risk of them. I show how such an emphasis can also be distracting to users. Since social movement slogans that express values are first and foremost for users, I argue for a shift in focus in what these slogans (such as ‘Black Is Beautiful’ and the more recent ‘Black Lives Matter’) do for users, as well as what they demand from users and enable them to express. When slogans have done these things, regardless of uptake, we can say they have performed one of their key functions. (shrink)

When fat people are depicted in popular media, we often take their behavior to be representative of all fat people. How one fat person acts becomes representative of a broader pattern of behavior that all fat people are presumed to share, shaping the way we understand fatness. This way of generalizing presents fatness as a singular experience, reducing fat people to a monolithic narrative that often reinforces anti-fat bias. How do we avoid this reduction? How can we responsibly depict fat (...) characters without perpetuating negative stereotypes about real fat people? Using the case of “Fat Thor” from Avengers: Endgame, I propose the beginnings of an account of responsible artistic agency which can be used to improve the ways that marginalized communities are depicted in art, with a particular focus on fat communities. Central to this account are two features: inclusion of and deference to members of the communities depicted from a variety of backgrounds throughout the production process, and mindfulness of the preexisting narrative web built around the communities depicted. I will use this discussion to highlight the need for a drastic shift in how we consider marginalized populations in art—in reimagining both who tells their stories, and what stories are told on their behalf. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn ‘The Principles of Art’, R. G. Collingwood argues that art is the imaginative expression of emotion. So much the worse, then, for Collingwood. The theory seems hopelessly inadequate to the task of capturing art’s extension: of encompassing all the works we generally suppose should be rounded up under the concept. A great number of artworks, and several art forms, have nothing to do with emotion. But it would be surprising were Collingwood philistine enough to think that art is only (...) ever concerned with communicating quotidian affective states, like anger, fear or love. Surely he has some more sophisticated notion of emotion in mind, and quite probably of expression too. And it turns out that those sophisticated notions can be pushed towards a version of the expression theory that meets the extensional challenge. If we interpret Collingwood as saying that expression is a particular application of imagination, and that imagination is the faculty that refines ideas of emotions, and that ‘emotions’... (shrink)

According to what I call the Merit Principle, roughly, works of art that attempt to elicit unmerited responses fail on their own terms and are thereby aesthetically flawed. A horror film, for instance, that attempts to elicit fear towards something that is not scary is to that extent aesthetically flawed. The Merit Principle is not only intuitive, it is also endorsed in some form by Aristotle, David Hume, and numerous contemporary figures. In this paper, I show how the principle leads (...) to a novel paradox when applied to an undertheorized class of artworks I call ‘seductive works’. These artworks necessarily invite an unmerited response in order to invite a (merited) repudiation of that response. Thus, according to the Merit Principle, they are necessarily aesthetically flawed, which is counter-intuitive. I consider a number of unsuccessful solutions to the paradox that aim to preserve the Merit Principle, before rejecting that principle as it stands. I discuss what is challenging about seductive artworks, before briefly defending a new principle that appeals to a general way that a work’s aesthetic value is conditioned by the constraints under which it operates. This principle not only resolves the paradox, but explains the competing intuitions that give rise to it. (shrink)

Much art is committed to political causes. However, does art contribute something unique to political discourse, or does it merely reflect the insights of political science and political philosophy? Here I argue for indispensability of art to political discourse by building on the debate about artistic cognitivism, the view that art is a source of knowledge. Different artforms, I suggest, make available specific epistemic resources, which allow audiences to overcome epistemic obstacles that obtain in a given ideological situation. My goal (...) is to offer a general model for identifying cognitive advantages for artworks belonging to distinct artforms and genres, in a way that can account for each artwork’s historical and cultural specificity. More speculatively, however, my account also comments on the ancient struggle between philosophy and the arts as competing modes of persuasion, and expands our notion of legitimate political discourse to include a greater plurality of discursive genres. (shrink)

What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation which are not grounded by independent considerations such as property rights or harm? We propose that such restrictions can be grounded by considerations of intimacy. Consider the familiar phenomenon of interpersonal intimacy. Certain aspects of personal life and interpersonal relationships are afforded various protections in virtue of being intimate. We argue that an analogous phenomenon exists at the level of large groups. In many cases, members of a group engage in shared practices (...) that contribute to a sense of common identity, such as wearing certain hair or clothing styles or performing a certain style of music. Participation in such practices can generate relations of group intimacy, which can ground certain prerogatives in much the same way that interpersonal intimacy can. One such prerogative is making what we call an appropriation claim. An appropriation claim is a request from a group member that non-members refrain from appropriating a given element of the group’s culture. Ignoring appropriation claims can constitute a breach of intimacy. But, we argue, just as for the prerogatives of interpersonal intimacy, in many cases there is no prior fact of the matter about whether the appropriation of a given cultural practice constitutes a breach of intimacy. It depends on what the group decides together. (shrink)

Here are two widely held positions on the ethics of dating: First, people are generally morally justified in excluding people they don’t find attractive from their dating pool. Second, people are not justified in maintaining a dating pool that is racially exclusive, even on grounds like attraction. In this paper, we demonstrate how these positions are consistent. To do so we differentiate our attitudes in dating and our dating behavior. Then we show how existing criticisms of racialized attitudes in dating (...) are incomplete as practical criticisms of our behavior. Finally, we give our account of the moral reasons whites have to change their dating preferences when they exclude people of color. In doing so, we supplement existing discussions of race-based discrimination in dating. (shrink)

We make choices about our own appearance and evaluate others' choices – every day. These choices are meaningful for us as individuals and as members of communities. But many features of personal appearance are due to luck, and many cultural beauty standards make some groups and individuals worse off (this is called “lookism”). So, how are we to square these two facets of personal appearance? And how are we to evaluate agency in the context of personal beauty? I identify three (...) ways of responding to these questions: beauty advo- cacy, beauty skepticism, and beauty revisionism. Advocates connect an honorific sense of beauty with personal charac- ter. Skeptics focus on beauty standards, and primarily offer a social critique of beauty standards. Some skeptics suggest embracing other aesthetic ideals – even ugliness. Revision- ists critique beauty standards, but retain an honorific sense of beauty. Each position offers tools to evaluate personal agency as aesthetic agency, whether first-personally or through our appreciation of others' appearance. (shrink)

How do we achieve social justice? How do we change society for the better? Some would argue that we must do it by changing the laws or state institutions. Others that we must do it by changing individual attitudes. I argue that although both of these factors are important and relevant, we must also change culture. What does this mean? Culture, I argue, is a set of social meanings that shapes and filters how we think and act. Problematic networks of (...) social meanings constitute an ideology. Entrenched ideologies are resilient and are barriers to social change, even in the face of legal interventions. I argue that an effective way to change culture is through social movements and contentious politics, and that philosophy has a role to play in promoting such change. (shrink)

I submit that the critical epistemology of race and standpoint literature has not explicitly focused on the properties of information about, say, racial or gender injustice in a way similar to how epistemologists have focused on propositions and information when they describe propositional justification. I describe information in the racial-injustice-information domain in a way similar to how epistemologists describe propositional justification. To this end, I argue (C1) that if subjects in racially unjust societies tend to violate norms that promote a (...) community’s reliable information flow because racial prejudice is widely held in racially unjust societies, then racial injustice can make information flow less reliably in a community. I also argue (C2) that if racial prejudice can make information flow less reliably in a community, then information that non-dominant subjects are more likely to have will less reliably flow to community members who lack it. (shrink)

Some, if not most, philosophy program admissions committee members assume that they can determine that one applicant will likely manifest a higher degree of philosophical skill than another applicant on the basis of differences between their materials. I challenge this assumption by explaining how applicants’ materials in significant measure reflect the racially unjust environment in which they manifest their philosophical skill. I explain how applicants’ racial-group membership in similar measure determines what these materials consist in.

This article uses Carl Plantinga’s and Noël Carroll’s theorizations regarding cinematic disgust to analyze Carl Franklin’s 1995 film noir, Devil in a Blue Dress. Plantinga argues for a link between disgust and ideology that helps to reveal deeper cultural significance in film, which Carroll’s work likewise supports. Plantinga further argues that disgust in art may be strangely attractive as well as repulsive, thereby eliciting reflection. I argue that combining these elements with philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah’s explanation of how moral revolutions (...) happen by means of honor codes helps to clarify not only viewer sympathy and solidarity for this film’s African-American protagonist, but also viewer moral disgust at another important white character’s racism. In particular, the film encourages its more thoughtful white viewers to reconsider as well as potentially change their affective responses, ideological predispositions, and habits of perception and attention regarding race, thereby facilitating fundamental moral change and even the possibility of moral revolution. (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)

In countries like the United States, White people benefit from appropriating Black hair culture, even while Black men and women experience race-based hair discrimination and oppression. One goal of this paper is to raise awareness of hair discrimination and oppression within the philosophical community. Another is to consider whether current theories of appropriation can account for the wrongness of this widespread phenomenon and, if so, how. We are particularly interested in the special case where one minority group appropriates from another (...) minority group—viz. the appropriation of Black hairstyles by Non-Black Persons of Colour. Our paper highlights the complexity of appropriation claims between competing minority groups—both of which have been oppressed, albeit differently, by White people— due to their multi-ethnic, multicultural and, therefore, intersectional, status. (shrink)

Modern technologies sanction a new plasticity of physical form. However, the increasing global popularity of aesthetic procedures produces normative beauty ideals in terms of perfection and symmetry. These conditions limit the semblance of freedom by people to control their own bodies. Cultural emancipation may come from principles in Eastern philosophy. These reveal beauty in authenticity, including imperfection. Wabi-sabi acclaims beauty in common irregularity, while kintsugi celebrates beauty in visible signs of repair, like scars. These principles resist pressure to medicalize dissatisfaction (...) with healthy bodies and invite multi-sited interventions to educate taste and aesthetic choices. (shrink)

I argue racial injustice undermines the reliability of news source reports in the information domain of racial injustice. I argue that this in turn undermines subjects’ doxastic justification in inferences they base on these news sources in the racial injustice information domain. I explain that racial injustice does this undermining through the effect of racial prejudice on news organizations’ members and the effect of society's racially unjust structure on non-dominant racial group-controlled news sources.

Overview essay of the field of feminist aesthetics updated Winter, 2021.

There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan value of communal relationship and demonstrate that it entails a substantial (...) allowance for difference. I aim to show that African thinkers need not appeal to, say, characteristically Euro-American values of authenticity or autonomy to make sense of why individuals should not be pressured to conform to a group’s norms regarding sex and gender. A key illustration involves homosexuality. (shrink)

The aim of what I propose to call “existential aesthetics” is to investigate the various ways in which art and certain kinds of aesthetic practice or aesthetic experience can be of existential importance to people. Section I provides a definition of existential aesthetics, while Section II delineates this emerging field from cognate areas of research. Sections III and IV explore various subcategories and examples of existential aesthetics. Section V seeks to identify important avenues for future research and Section VI presents (...) some concluding thoughts about the potential of existential aesthetics and why philosophers should be encouraged to fulfill this potential. (shrink)

Does a white philosopher have anything of value to offer to the philosophy of race and racism? If this philosophical subfield must embrace subjective experience, why should we value the perspective of white philosophers whose racial identity is often occluded by racial normativity and who lack substantive experiences of being on the receiving end of racism? Further, if we should be committed to experience, in what sense can the philosophy of race and racism be “objective”? What should that word mean?Tackling (...) this question first, “objective” should at least mean general, that the ideas of the literature can be coherently integrated. An objective take on racism brings together a plurality of perspectives. What’s wrong with just a plurality of satellite ideas? It implies a fragmented approach to ameliorating racism, where different specialists have different recommendations. How can racism, generally, be lessened? If major views of racism are unifiable, then we have a general method to ameliorate racism. This project might appear tone-deaf: a white philosopher unifying things by reducing ideas to some central notion. But this unity isn’t about reducing things but rather integrating them in a way that respects difference. Yet, there’s a reason we should be interested in the white perspective. Whites can speak about racism from a participatory perspective. If whites are knowledgeable, and believe themselves to have no implicit bias, they may suppose they’re “beyond” racism or no longer at risk for perpetuating it. I explore this idea in a psychologically realistic way via my notion of overlooking, where ameliorating racism from the white perspective is an ongoing project. I end by considering how racism is applicable to other philosophical ideas beyond its typical or circumscribed purview. Here, I re-frame responsibility, arguing that we needn’t be forced to choose between responsibility models divided into individual versus social camps. We ought to instead think of responsibility in terms of power, which provides a realistic lens by which persons and groups are held to account. In being more generally convincing, it might actually get folks to take responsibility where they might not otherwise—theory in service of praxis. (shrink)

Leslie Houts Picca and Joe Feagin argue that whites strive to isolate racial discourse to all-white social spaces. We can explain this practice by assuming that many whites—including “non-racist” whites—think of racism as shameful. Shame essentially concerns not what we do but how we are perceived. Maintaining their identities as “not racist,” then, seems to these whites primarily to involve the management of non-white people's perceptions of them. By isolating much of white racial discourse to all-white spaces, the white construal (...) of racism as shameful denies non-whites’ standing to participate in the construction of the social norms governing whites’ relationships with them. We should instead treat racism as disrespectful, and so requiring public correction because of its role in sustaining racist social norms. (shrink)

In “Stereotyping as Discrimination: Why Thoughts Can Be Discriminatory,” I propose that stereotyping someone—even if you manage to keep your thoughts hidden and don’t act on them—can constitute a form of discrimination (2021b). What, Alex Madva asks, are the practical implications of this claim? Even if I am correct that stereotyping constitutes a form of discriminatory treatment, it’s still possible that people should keep on speaking and acting as if “discrimination” refers exclusively to behaviors and policies. He invites me to (...) explore the “potential payoffs and perils” of referring to thoughts and perceptions as discriminatory, especially as they relate to legal practice and social-scientific inquiry (2021, 46). (shrink)