Plausibility and Aesthetic Interpretation

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (2):327 - 340 (1977)
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Abstract

If a catalogue were made of terms commonly used to affirm the adequacy of critical interpretations of works of art, one word certain to be included would be “plausible.” Yet this term is one which has received precious little attention in the literature of aesthetics. This is odd, inasmuch as I find the notion of plausibility central to an understanding of the nature of criticism. “Plausible” is a perplexing term because it can have radically different meanings depending on the circumstances of its employment. In the following discussion, I will make some observations about the logic of this concept in connection with its uses in two rather different contexts: the context of scientific inquiry on the one hand, and that of aesthetic interpretation on the other. In distinguishing separate senses of “plausible,” I shall provide reasons to resist the temptation to imagine that because logical aspects of two different types of inquiry, science and criticism, happen to be designated by the same term, they may to that extent be considered to have similar logical structures.

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Citations of this work

Der 'intentionale fehlschluß' — ein dogma?Lutz Danneberg & Hans-Harald Müller - 1983 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 14 (1):103-137.
Der ‚intentionale Fehlschluß‘ — ein Dogma?Lutz Danneberg & Hans-Harald Müller - 1983 - Zeitschrift Für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 14 (2):376-411.

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References found in this work

Half an hour before breakfast.Annette Barnes - 1976 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 34 (3):261-271.
Criticism and method.Denis Dutton - 1973 - British Journal of Aesthetics 13 (3):232-242.
Fact, Theory, and Literary Explanation.Ralph W. Rader - 1974 - Critical Inquiry 1 (2):245-272.

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