In 1991, Jones developed an issue-contingent model of ethical decision making in which moral intensity is posited to affect the four stages of Rest's 1986 model. Jones claimed that moral intensity, which is "the extent of issue-related moral imperative in a situation", consists of six characteristics: magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and concentration of effect. This article reports the findings of two studies that analyzed the factor structure of moral intensity, operationalized by a 12-item (...) Perceived Moral Intensity Scale adapted from the work of Sing-hapakdi et al. [1996, Journal of Business Research, 36, 245-255] and Frey [2000, Journal of Business Ethics, 26, 181-195]. The two items that were purported to measure CE were dropped due to their inability to effectively tap into the characteristic proposed by Jones. Factor analyses of the remaining 10 items supported a 3-factor structure, with the MC, PE, and TI items loading on the first factor, the PX items loading on the second factor, and the SC items loading on the third factor. These factors were labeled: Probable Magnitude of Consequences, Proximity, and Social Consensus. The authors conclude that moral intensity consists of three characteristics, rather than the six posited by Jones. (shrink)

Following an extensive review of the moral intensity literature, this article reports the findings of two studies (one between-subjects, the other within-subject) that examined the effect of manipulated and perceived moral intensity on ethical judgment. In the between-subjects study participants judged actions taken in manipulated high moral intensity scenarios to be more unethical than the same actions taken in manipulated low moral intensity scenarios. Findings were mixed for the effect of perceived moral intensity. Both probable magnitude of consequences (a factor (...) consisting of magnitude of consequences, probability of effect, and temporal immediacy) and social consensus had a significant effect; proximity did not. In the within-subject study manipulated moral intensity had a significant effect on ethical judgment, but perceived moral intensity did not. Regression of ethical judgment on age, gender, major, and the three perceived moral intensity factors was significant between-subjects, but not within-subject. Ethical judgment was found to be a more robust predictor of intention than perceived moral intensity using a within-subject design. (shrink)

Literary beauty was once understood as intertwining sensations and ideas, and thus as providing subjective and objective reasons for literary appreciation. However, as theory and philosophy developed, the inevitable claims and counterclaims led to the view that subjective experience was not a reliable guide to literary merit. Literary theory then replaced aesthetics as did philosophy’s focus on literary truth. Along with the demise of the relevance of sensations, literary form also took a back seat. This suggested to some that either (...) literature communicated truth like any other literal form of communication or it was a mere diversion: a springboard to harmless reverie or daydreaming. Neither response satisfactorily captured what was distinctive about literature: the love readers can have for literary texts and the edification or insight claimed of works within each culture’s respective catalogue of classics. However, a concept of literary beauty has again become viable due to developments in theories of pleasure and imagination. If the defining aspect of literature is the imaginative engagement it occasions, and if this imagining is constrained by plausibility and endorsed as effective relative to our goals, ideals, and interests, then literature is not reduced to either mere fact or wish fulfillment. An account of literary beauty is available which defines literature accordingly and explains how subjective and objective reasons for appreciation intertwine to evoke pleasure and insight. (shrink)

This is an 18,500 word bibliography of philosophical scholarship on Beauty which was published online in the Oxford Bibliographies Online. The entry includes an Introduction of 800 words, 21 x 400-word sub-themes and 168 annotated references. INTRODUCTION Philosophical interest in beauty began with the earliest recorded philosophers. Beauty was deemed to be an essential ingredient in a good life and so what it was, where it was to be found and how it was to be included in a life were (...) prime considerations. The way beauty has been conceived has been influenced by an author’s other philosophical commitments, metaphysical, epistemological and ethical and such commitments reflect the historical and cultural position of the author. For example, beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth to which we respond with love and adoration; beauty is a harmony of the soul which we achieve through cultivating feeling in a rational and tempered way; beauty is an idea raised in us by certain objective features of the world; beauty is a sentiment which can nonetheless be cultivated to be appropriate to its object; beauty is the object of a judgment by which we exercise the social, comparative and inter-subjective elements of cognition and so on. Such views on beauty not only reveal underlying philosophical commitments but also reflect positive contributions to understanding the nature of value and the relation of mind and world. One way to distinguish between beauty theories is according to the conception of the human being that they assume or imply, for example, where they fall on the continuum from determinism to free will, ungrounded notions of compatibilism notwithstanding. For example, theories at the latter end might carve out a sense of genuine innovation and creativity in human endeavours while at the other end of the spectrum authors may conceive of beauty as an environmental trigger for consumption, procreation or preservation in the interests of the individual. Treating beauty experiences as in some respect intentional, characterises beauty theory prior to the twentieth century and since, mainly in historically inspired writing on beauty. On the other hand, treating beauty as affect or sensation has always had its representatives and is most visible today in evolutionary inspired accounts of beauty (though not all evolutionary accounts fit this classification). Beauty theory falls under some combination of metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, aesthetics and psychology. While in the twentieth century beauty was more likely to be conceived as an evaluative concept for art, recent philosophical interest in beauty can again be seen to exercise arguments pertaining to metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, philosophy of meaning and language in addition to philosophy of art and environmental aesthetics. (shrink)

In _Aesthetics and Material Beauty_, Jennifer A. McMahon develops a new aesthetic theory she terms Critical Aesthetic Realism - taking Kantian aesthetics as a starting point and drawing upon contemporary theories of mind from philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. The creative process does not proceed by a set of rules. Yet the fact that its objects can be understood or appreciated by others suggests that the creative process is constrained by principles to which others have access. According to her update (...) of Kantian aesthetics, beauty is grounded in indeterminate yet systematic principles of perception and cognition. However, Kant’s aesthetic theory rested on a notion of indeterminacy whose consequences for understanding the nature of art were implausible. McMahon conceptualizes "indeterminacy" in terms of contemporary philosophical, psychological, and computational theories of mind. In doing so, she develops an aesthetic theory that reconciles the apparent dichotomies which stem from the tension between the determinacy of communication and the indeterminacy of creativity. Dichotomies such as universality and subjectivity, objectivity and autonomy, cognitivism and non-cognitivism, and truth and beauty are revealed as complementary features of an aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

The factor structure of the Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES; Reidenbach and Robin: 1988, Journal of Business Ethics 7, 871–879; 1990, Journal of Business Ethics 9, 639–653) was examined for the 8-item short form (N = 328) and the original 30-item pool (N = 260). The objectives of the study were: to verify the dimensionality of the MES; to increase the amount of true cross-scenario variance through the use of 18 scenarios varying in moral intensity (Jones: 1991, Academy of Management Review (...) 16, 366–395); and, to examine the items for measurement precision using item-response theory (IRT) methods. Results of confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis failed to conclusively support the hypothesized 3- (short form) or 5-factor (long form) structure; both instruments were instead dominated by a general factor. Item response theory analyses using Samejima’s (1969, Psychometrika Monograph Supplement 34, (4, Pt. 2)) graded response model revealed that many items in the 30-item pool performed very well, and suggested that a different collection of items be used to form a short-form version of the MES. Our proposed 10-item instrument includes more discriminating items than the 8-item version, and has the added advantage of including two items from each of the five ethical philosophies represented in the original 30-item pool. (shrink)

In this book, McMahon argues that a reading of Kant’s body of work in the light of a pragmatist theory of meaning and language leads one to put community reception ahead of individual reception in the order of aesthetic relations. A core premise of the book is that neo-pragmatism draws attention to an otherwise overlooked aspect of Kant’s "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," and this is the conception of community which it sets forth. While offering an interpretation of Kant’s aesthetic theory, (...) the book focuses on the implications of Kant’s third critique for contemporary art. McMahon draws upon Kant and his legacy in pragmatist theories of meaning and language to argue that aesthetic judgment is a version of moral judgment: a way to cultivate attitudes conducive to community, which plays a pivotal role in the evolution of language, meaning, and knowledge. (shrink)

The standard cognitive theory of art claims that art can be insightful while maintaining that imagining is motivationally inert [Walton 1990] even when some epistemic advantage is claimed for it [Currie 1995]. However, if we assume art as art can be insightful, we also assume that the imagining it occasions has a lasting impact on belief. In this chapter, I argue that imagining of the kind occasioned by art can be held non-occurrently [Schellenberg 2013] without delusion and can motivate behaviour (...) [Gendler 2000, 2003, 2006a/b; Langland-Hassan 2016]. As such, certain features of imagination can be appreciated in a new light. (shrink)

The Pythagorean tradition dominates the understanding of beauty up until the end of the 18th Century. According to this tradition, the experience of beauty is stimulated by certain relations perceived to be between an object/construct's elements. As such, the object of the experience of beauty is indeterminate: it has neither a determinate perceptual analogue (one cannot simply identify beauty as you can a straight line or a particular shape) nor a determinate concept (there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for (...) beauty at the semantic level). By the 13th Century in the West, the pleasure experienced in beauty is characterized as disinterested. Yet, on the basis that all cultural manifestations of the pythagorean theory of beauty recognize that judgments of beauty are genuine judgments, we would want to say that judgments of beauty are lawful. In addition, from ancient times, up until after Kant, philosophers of beauty within this tradition recognize two kinds of beauty: a universal, unchanging beauty coexisting with a relative, dynamic beauty. These two kinds of beauty and the tensions discussed above, are reconciled and dissolved respectively, according to the metaphysical/religious commitments of the particular author. As yet, however, these features of beauty have not been reconciled within a physicalist worldview. This is what I set out to do. (shrink)

No matter how unintuitive it might seem that aesthetic pleasure should be the point where art and morality meet, this is a noteworthy possibility that has been overshadowed by aestheticians’ more visible concerns. Here I briefly survey relevant strands in the literature over the past century, before introducing themes covered in this inaugural issue of Australasian Philosophical Review.

Scholars have advocated for the inclusion of metacognition in our understanding of the ethical decision making process and in support of moral learning. An instrument to measure metacognition as a domain-specific capacity related to ethical decision making is not found in the current literature. This research describes the development and validation of the 20-item Moral Metacognition Scale. Psychometric properties of the scale were assessed by exploration and confirmation of the factor structure, and the demonstration of convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. (...) Moral metacognition, as measured by the MMS, was significantly correlated with ethical awareness and ethical judgment. Limitations of our research, suggestions for future exploration, and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This essay presents the nature of aesthetic judgment, the significance of aesthetic judgment and finally, the relevance of art to understanding aesthetic judgment.

What would it mean to take antiblackness seriously in theories of biopolitics? How would our understanding of biopolitics change if antiblack racialization and slavery were understood as the paradigmatic expression of biopolitical violence? This essay thinks through the significance of black studies scholarship for disentangling biopolitics’ paradoxes and dilemmas. I argue that only by situating antiblackness as constitutive of modernity and of modern biopolitics can we begin to meet the theoretical and political challenges posed by biopolitics. While Roberto Esposito formulates (...) some of the most important questions about biopolitics, his responses will always be insufficient insofar as he engages in no discussion of blackness, antiblackness, slavery, white supremacy, or the role of sociopolitical processes of racialization, violence, and domination. I move from a critique of Esposito to explore the modernity-making processes of the imbrication of antiblackness and biopolitics. To do so, I analyze the biopolitics of birth and of flesh, and interrogate the possibility of an affirmative biopolitics. Ultimately, the essay argues that theories of biopolitics can be genuinely critical only to the extent that they center antiblackness. (shrink)

Beauty is evil, a surreptitious diversion of earthly delights planted by the devil, according to the third century theologian-philosopher Tertullian. Beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth, according to another third century philosopher, Plotinus. Could these two really be talking about the same thing? That beauty evokes an experience of pleasure is probably the only point on which all participants in the continuing debate on beauty agree. But what kinds of pleasure one considers relevant to an experience of (...) beauty, is the crux of the problem of beauty. In ancient, medieval and eighteenth century philosophy, the problem of beauty was framed by the larger concern of what constituted a good life. The question regarding the nature of beauty was answered with a view to its role in achieving the good life for those who cultivated its apprehension. In the twentieth century, philosophers framed the problem of beauty as a problem for conceptual analysis. The questions asked were: Is beauty subjective or objective? Are there properties in the object that count towards beauty in all cases; that are sufficient or necessary for an object to be judged beautiful? What kind of pleasure is the pleasure we experience of beauty? I will examine how these questions can be seen to have been answered by earlier philosophical traditions and then I will use these questions as a guide to developing an explanatory theory of beauty based on contemporary theories of perception. (shrink)

The sublime is an aspect of experience that has attracted a great deal of scholarship, not only for scholarly reasons but because it connotes aspects of experience not exhausted by what Descartes once called clear distinct perception. That is, the sublime is an experience of the world which involves us in orientating ourselves within it, and this orientation, our human orientation, elevates us in comparison to the non-human world according to traditional accounts of the sublime. The sublime tells us something (...) about our relation to the world rather than anything about the world per se. Nonetheless there is an objective sense of the sublime in that the narratives involved are culturally endorsed rather than invented by an individual. This means that objects can be judged worthy or not of evoking experiences of the sublime. In other words, it is not an idiosyncratic matter. Immanuel Kant’s formulation of this involved explaining how such an experience is possible in terms of his system of the mind. Jane Forsey notes that Kant takes the features of the sublime as given and extrapolates from them certain features of the mind as if any concept of the sublime must implicate the mental architecture of his account (2007). Further to this she argues that in fact the concept of the sublime does implicate a particular system of the mind but neither Kant nor anyone else can successfully formulate it because the concept itself frames certain contradictions. According to Forsey, two consequences follow. First she argues that Kant’s system of the mind does not support the features of the sublime; and secondly that no system could as the very concept is incoherent. If Forsey can show that Kant was mistaken in presenting his account as coherent given his commitments, this would be of interest in its own right. However, her stronger claim is that we cannot separate any concept of the sublime out from Kant’s theoretical underpinnings. That the way the features of the mind are meant to operate in experiences of the sublime are contradictory simply points to the fatal flaws in the whole concept. Her conclusion is that there is no coherent account of the sublime available to us. I will argue that Forsey bases her reasoning on the assumption that a foundational empiricist or direct perception holds; and she interprets Kant’s notions of imagination, understanding and reason as though they are grounded in just such an account of perception. This is revealed in her interpretation of Kant’s phrase “beyond cognition”. Once this foundationalism is replaced with an account of perception more aligned with current research on perception, both philosophical and empirical, then an account of the sublime is available. Further to this however, I argue that what constitutes the narrative of the sublime is historically contingent. Before setting out my arguments, I consider Forsey’s argument in more detail. (shrink)

Philosophical Books 46, no. 1 (2005): 1-3.

A clear-cut concept of the aesthetic is elusive. Kant’s Critique of Judgment presents one of the more comprehensive aesthetic theories from which we can extract a set of features, some of which pertain to aesthetic experience and others to the logical structure of aesthetic judgment. When considered together, however, these features present a number of tensions and apparent contradictions. Kant’s own attempt to dissolve these apparent contradictions or dichotomies was not entirely satisfactory as it rested on a vague notion of (...) indeterminacy. He addressed the emerging tensions with his distinction between pure and dependent beauty, which is a distinction I believe a satisfactory theory of aesthetic judgment would reveal as unfounded. In addition, Kant left a crucial connection unaccounted for. This was the connection between the two aspects that he envisaged characterized an aesthetic judgment. The two aspects to which I refer are the “purposiveness of form” provided by the Imagination and the associated mental content,which Kant called “aesthetic ideas.” More recent aesthetic theories treat only a subset of the features addressed in Kant’s aesthetic theory. Even so, the standard aesthetic theories, such as expressivism, cognitivism, and formalism, entrench the kind of thinking that grounds these dichotomies. In contrast, I will demonstrate that a naturalized aesthetic theory can accommodate all the features suggested by the Kantian analysis in such a way that they are shown to be complementary rather than contradictory. (shrink)

The key concept in Kant’s aesthetics is “aesthetic reflective judgment,” a critique of which is found in Part 1 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). It is a critique inasmuch as Kant unravels previous assumptions regarding aesthetic perception. For Kant, the comparative edge of a “judgment” implicates communicability, which in turn gives it a public face; yet “reflection” points to autonomy, and the “aesthetic” shifts the emphasis away from objective properties to the subjective response evoked by the (...) object. Contrary to the view he had inherited, Kant did not treat aesthetic judgments as confused perceptions or inferior cognitions, but rather put them in a category of their own. For Kant, aesthetic reflective judgments implicated not only the processes involved in understanding the empirical world but also the processes involved in ascribing ideas or meaning to experience (which go beyond what is given in perception/cognition). This “going beyond cognition” may have been referred to by Kant as non-cognitive, but it is conditioned on a way of cognizing the object. Kant describes the features of such judgments in the Analytic of the Beautiful before addressing their possibility in subtle ways throughout the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments. Kant’s critique gives rise to three apparent dichotomies: immediate intuition and prior learning; autonomy and communicability; and non-cognitive response and aesthetic ideas. An interpretation of Kant’s theory can be deemed correct to the degree that it succeeds in showing that the contradictions are only apparent. I will argue that the resulting positive account of Kant’s aesthetic theory offers an understanding of aesthetic reflective judgment that is quite different from the standard formalism that the critics of formalism usually target and by which they misrepresent Kant’s aesthetic theory. When I refer to Kant’s formalism, then, I mean something quite different by this than what is meant by “standard formalism.” The latter is the representation given Kant’s formalism by its contemporary critics and is the typical account of formalism found in the art theory and philosophy of art literature, as will be demonstrated. (shrink)

Literary beauty was once understood as intertwining sensations and ideas, and thus as providing subjective and objective reasons for literary appreciation. However, as theory and philosophy developed, the inevitable claims and counterclaims led to the view that subjective experience was not a reliable guide to literary merit. Literary theory then replaced aesthetics as did philosophy’s focus on literary truth. Along with the demise of the relevance of sensations, literary form also took a back seat. This suggested to some that either (...) literature communicated truth like any other literal form of communication or it was a mere diversion: a springboard to harmless reverie or daydreaming. Neither response satisfactorily captured what was distinctive about literature: the love readers can have for literary texts and the edification or insight claimed of works within each culture’s respective catalogue of classics. However, a concept of literary beauty has again become viable due to developments in theories of pleasure and imagination. If the defining aspect of literature is the imaginative engagement it occasions, and if this imagining is constrained by plausibility and endorsed as effective relative to our goals, ideals, and interests, then literature is not reduced to either mere fact or wish fulfillment. An account of literary beauty is available which defines literature accordingly and explains how subjective and objective reasons for appreciation intertwine to evoke pleasure and insight. (shrink)

This paper comments on an article by V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein (JCS,1999) in which they purport to be identifying the neurological principles of beauty. I draw attention to the way the problem of beauty is construed in the philosophical literature by Mary Mothersill (1984) and Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment). I argue that Ramachandran and Hirsteins' principles do not address the problem of beauty because they do not differentiate between the experience of beauty and other closely related phenomena. I (...) then show how one might address the problem of beauty within the framework that they have adopted. (shrink)

Aesthetic autonomy has been given a variety of interpretations, which in many cases involve a number of claims. Key among them are: (i) art eludes conventional conceptual frameworks and their inherent incompatibility with invention and creativity; and (ii) art can communicate aspects of experience too fine‐grained for discursive language. To accommodate such claims one can adopt either a convention‐based account or a natural‐kind account. A natural‐kind theory can explain the first but requires some special scaffolding in order to support the (...) second, while a convention‐based account accommodates the second but is incompatible with the first. Theodor W. Adorno attempts to incorporate both claims within his aesthetic theory, but arguably in his aesthetic theory each is cancelled out by the other. Art’s independence of entrenched conceptual frameworks needs to be made compatible with its communicative role. Jürgen Habermas, in contrast, provides a solution by way of his theory of language. I draw upon the art practice of the contemporary Icelandic‐Danish artist Olafur Eliasson in order to demonstrate this. (shrink)

Similarity and difference, patterns of variation, consistency and coherence: these are the reference points of the philosopher. Understanding experience, exploring ideas through particular instantiations, novel and innovative thinking: these are the reference points of the artist. However, at certain points in the proceedings of our Symposium titled, Next to Nothing: Art as Performance, this characterisation of philosopher and artist respectively might have been construed the other way around. The commentator/philosophers referenced their philosophical interests through the particular examples/instantiations created by the (...) artist and in virtue of which they were then able to engage with novel and innovative thinking. From the artists’ presentations, on the other hand, emerged a series of contrasts within which philosophical and artistic ideas resonated. This interface of philosopher-artist bore witness to the fact that just as art approaches philosophy in providing its own analysis, philosophy approaches art in being a co-creator of art’s meaning. In what follows, we discuss the conception of philosophy-art that emerged from the Symposium, and the methodological minimalism which we employed in order to achieve it. We conclude by drawing out an implication of the Symposium’s achievement which is that a counterpoint to Institutional theories of art may well be the point from which future directions will take hold, if philosophy-art gains traction. (shrink)

At a time when professional art criticism is on the wane, the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy demands fresh answers. Professional art criticism provided a basis upon which to distinguish apt experiences of art from the idiosyncratic. However, currently the kind of narratives from which critics once drew are underplayed or discarded in contemporary exhibition design where the visual arts are concerned. This leaves open the possibility that art operates either as mere stimulant to private reverie or, in the (...) more contentful cases, as propaganda. The ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is that art influences surreptitiously while philosophy presents reasons that invite rational scrutiny. As such, in contrast to philosophy, art would undermine our agency. In July 2017, a group of philosophers gathered at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), in Sydney, Australia, in the presence of two AGNSW curators to explore the basis of their own experiences of selected artworks. Here, those commentaries are reproduced. Each reveal that objective grounds for an experience of art can be based in the community from which one draws one’s terms of reference. In our commentaries we see the expertise of the respective philosophical communities but other communities of culture or expertise might serve the same purpose and hence resolve the ancient quarrel. Before hearing these commentaries, I explain what is at stake when the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is understood in contemporary terms. This Issue of the Curator also includes an article on the community-based art criticism that emerges from these commentaries followed by an exhibition review which reveals the incorrigible impulse (also demonstrated in the commentaries) to find the basis for the most apt experience of an artwork. A response by the AGNSW curators completes this issue. (shrink)

According to the scientific image, aesthetic experience is constituted by private reverie or mindless gratification of some kind. This image fails to fully acknowledge the theoretical and hence cultural aspect of perception, which includes aesthetic experience. This chapter reframes aesthetic reflective judgment in terms of perceptual processes (section 2); intentional pleasure (section 3); non-perceptually represented perceptual properties (section 4); and intersubjectivity (section 5). By clarifying the relevant terms, the liberal naturalist account of the sublime provides the link between the sublime (...) and moral motivation (section 6). (shrink)

Aesthetics is not an area to which the Stoics are normally understood to have contributed. I adopt a broad description of the purview of Aesthetics according to which Aesthetics pertains to the study of those preferences and values that ground what is considered worthy of attention. According to this approach, we find that the Stoics exhibit an Aesthetic that reveals a direct line of development between Plato, the Stoics, Thomas Aquinas and the eighteenth century, specifically Kant’s aesthetics. I will reveal (...) an interpretation of the aesthetic of the Stoics which has more explanatory power for the history of aesthetic theory than a history of aesthetic theory which leaves out the Stoics. (shrink)

Schiller’s interests in theology, poetry, and literature influenced the way he responded to the ethics and aesthetics of the British philosopher the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper), and the German philosophers Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant. Often Schiller’s most significant philosophical contributions are those which represent alternatives to more influential views, such as his rejection of Kant’s understanding of the relation between the sensuous and rationality in the moral person. In what follows, Schiller’s key concepts within their eighteenth-century context (...) are presented, and their significance within this context is discussed by showing how he relates the sensuous to the rational through the following: “pleasure and morality” (Sects. “Introduction”, “Locating Schiller in His Intellectual Milieu” and “Pleasure and Morality”), “form and beauty” (Sect. “Form and Beauty”), and “freedom or nature” (Sects. “Freedom or Nature” and “Concluding Remarks”). (shrink)

We might wonder whether there is a difference between experiencing an artwork and simply daydreaming. If the latter, would it be a matter of art communicating something or simply providing a backdrop for personal reverie? According to some influential key texts in philosophy, there is a difference. And it matters because our capacity for communicating the kind of thing art communicates, is a capacity linked to the possibility of not feeling alienated from the world and each other. In this chapter (...) we focus on The weather project, which was a site specific installation Olafur Eliasson created at the Tate Modern in 2003. And to consider how this artwork communicates, we adopt a key concept from Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic theory: “aesthetic ideas”. (shrink)

The Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs of the American Medical Association examines physicians’ professional ethical responsibility in the event that the security of patients’ electronic records is breached.

In this paper we analyse the ideas implicit in the style of exhibition favoured by contemporary galleries and museums, and argue that unless the audience is empowered to ascribe meaning and significance to artwork through critical dialogue, the power not only of the audience is undermined but also of art. We argue that galleries and museums preside over an experience economy devoid of art, unless (i) indeterminacy is understood, (ii) the critical rather than coercive nature of art is facilitated, and (...) (iii) the conditions for inter-subjectivity are met. (shrink)

<The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com > -- In this paper I carve out a space between the concept of "the object" and the seemingly endless ways in which "the object" can be represented pictorially. I will call the aspect of the pictorial representation which is made possible by this space, the pictorial representation's "style". I will explore this space by drawing upon theories of pictorial representation, leaving out, for the sake of my purposes here, a consideration of the (...) artist's intention. That an attribution of "style" can be comprehensive while leaving out a consideration of artists' intentions, I will argue by adopting the conceptual framework of Paul Thom's theory of interpretation. Before embarking on my project, I begin with a brief overview of the rather slippery notion of "style". (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to draw the attention of those conducting research on imagery to the different kinds of visual information deployed by expert drawers compared to non-expert drawers. To demonstrate this difference I draw upon the cognitive science literature on vision and imagery to distinguish between three different ways that visual phenomena can be represented in memory: structural descriptions, denotative descriptions, and configural descriptions. Research suggests that perception and imagery deploy the same mental processes and that the (...) drawing of one's imagery would require the simultaneous deployment of these very processes. I reason that drawing a picture of one's imagery is not possible. I hypothesize that when required to draw a picture from memory, both expert and non-expert drawers access their denotative description of the object rather than their imagery. I then suggest how my hypothesis could be tested and if accurate, how this finding would impact upon the design and interpretation of experiments on imagery when drawing is involved. I also suggest why the constraints that perception places upon the simultaneous deployment of imagery appear not to cause the same constraints in autistic savant drawers and visual agnosia patients. (shrink)

In this chapter I invite the reader to consider the philosophical assumptions which underpin the early career aims and objectives of Barrie Kosky. A focus will be his “language” of opera, and the processes by which the audience is prompted to interpret it. The result will be to see how Kosky creates mystery and meaning while avoiding fantasy and escapism; and can express psychological truth while stimulating subjective interpretations. The point will be to show that Kosky’s oeuvre demonstrates a central (...) concept in the Kantian tradition of aesthetic theory regarding the key process in creative expression, and that is the evocation/communication of “aesthetic ideas”. (shrink)

I identify two mutually exclusive notions of formalism in Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: a thin concept of aesthetic formalism and a thick concept of aesthetic formalism. Arguably there is textual support for both concepts in Kant’s third critique. I offer interpretations of three key elements in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement which support a thick formalism. The three key elements are: Harmony of the Faculties, Aesthetic Ideas and Sensus Communis. I interpret these concepts in relation to the conditions for (...) theoretical Reason, the conditions for moral motivation and the conditions for intersubjectivity, respectively. I conclude that there is no support for a thin concept of aesthetic formalism when the key elements of Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement are understood in the context of his broader critical aims. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest ways in which vision theory and psychology of perception may illuminate our understanding of beauty. I identify beauty as a phenomenon which is (i) ineffable, (ii) subjectively universal (intersubjective), and (iii) manifested in objects as formal structure. I present a model of perception by which I can identify a representation whose underlying principles would explain these features of beauty. The fact that these principles underlie the representation rather than constitute the content of representation, provides an (...) explanation for the ineffability and subjective universality of the perception of beauty in the form of objects. In part one, I set out two models of perception conducive to this approach. In part two, I suggest how such theories can offer a way of explaining and understanding the experience of beauty. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that our concept of pictorial realism should include a reference to perceptual proficiency relative to a cultural context. I argue this by demonstrating the greater explanatory power of such a concept for understanding pictorial realism. The central idea is that gestalt-like mechanisms that are normally involved in object recognition can be deployed at a second order level in picture perception. Styles of picturing that exploit this second order gestalt-like mechanism are learnable and transferable. The hypothesis (...) is that once a style of picturing is internalised, a picture that exploits this style will be experienced as true and fitting. (shrink)

The arguments of each chapter demonstrate that there is no neutral perspective from which to analyse aesthetic qualities. Such qualities cannot be described as their very perception involves evaluation. In short, the chapters focus on those aspects of a first person perspective that can be considered inter-personal in the sense that they are susceptible of intentional calibration and enculturation. That said, not all chapters approach the theme from the same perspective nor with the same targets in mind. For example, approaching (...) the notion of inter-subjectivity with the intention of defending this possibility against the objection of relativism will yield a different treatment than championing inter-subjectivity in order to reject cultural arrogance, or overly reductive analyses of aesthetic qualities. Yet all chapters converge on the possibility of objectivity grounded in inter-subjectivity. (shrink)

Plato conceived of the Form of Beauty as quite distinct from the Form of the Good. Beauty was a means to the Good. The ascent theory of the Symposium has suggested to some commentators that Plato envisaged two kinds of beauty, the sensuous and the intellectual, and that to reach the Good we must transcend our sensuous desires and cultivate an appreciation of intellectual beauty. However, in the Laws Plato presents us with a third notion of beauty, which is neither (...) sensuous nor intellectual. To experience beauty we need to cultivate our pleasure in harmonious forms. This is where we find a theory of beauty that resonates in Kant’s aesthetic theory. According to the latter, the feeling for beauty is a feeling for harmony that takes us beyond the confines of a world marked out by self-interest. I conclude that Plato’s aesthetic theory anticipates the role that aesthetic judgment would play in Immanuel Kant’s system of the mind. (shrink)

A discussion of the way the visual artists represented in Adelaide’s 2012 Biennale draw attention to new conceptions of place, time and self which highlight the contingent nature of the narratives that underlie our day to day existence. Disenchantment or re-enchantment are increasingly redundant conceptions. Such narratives are always fluid. Among the ebbs and flows, new conceptions emerge, providing in effect new ways of being in the world, and in turn prompting a reshuffling of what we thought we knew.

If we conceive of ourselves as animals, it might be accurate to call us visual animals. The visual cortex is much larger in us relative to the size of our brains than in other animals, and large relative to the parts of the cortex responsible for the transmission of signals emanating from the other perceptual transducers. Our ability to recall visual images, recombine them in imagination and enter imaginatively into narratives is linked to this evolved piece of brain architecture. However, (...) what this means within the context of human culture is not so clear. A large visual cortex might not necessarily translate into a heightened susceptibility for fine visual distinctions over auditory or kinetic distinctions, at least not in all cultural contexts. (shrink)

What does the open-carried gun tell us about the contemporary political structure of whiteness, and how do such objects operate to reinforce this structure? To work through these questions, this article brings together political theories of racialized democracy and political theoretical analyses of gun-rights debates with insights from interdisciplinary scholarship on guns to generate a political theoretical account of the relationship between guns and white democracy. To do so, we analyze two open-carry spectacles: recurring Second Amendment protests featuring the prominent (...) display of open-carried weapons, and open-carrying protestors in Michigan demonstrating against stay-at-home orders in response to COVID-19 in 2020. Our analysis of these two cases illuminates our central arguments about guns and white democracy. We argue that guns operate to politically align white bodies amid the ongoing constitution of political whiteness: open-carried firearms work to reinforce and reproduce white democracy. We further claim that the force of open-carried guns in sustaining white democracy works through two linked dynamics: first, guns extend, generate, and secure the wages of whiteness; second, they protect and assert white dominion. Taken together, these dynamics explain how guns uphold white democracy, but also illuminate, we argue, the contingency of that political power. It is that contingency which suggests that the open-carried firearm might also help contest it in turn, a point illustrated by turning to scholarship on the relation of firearms to the civil rights movement. (shrink)

Ormerod and Chronicle reported that optimal solutions to traveling salesperson problems were judged to be aesthetically more pleasing than poorer solutions and that solutions with more convex hull nodes were rated as better figures. To test these conclusions, solution regularity and the number of potential intersections were held constant, whereas solution optimality, the number of internal nodes, and the number of nearest neighbors in each solution were varied factorially. The results did not support the view that the convex hull is (...) an important determinant of figural attractiveness. Also, in contrast to the findings of Ormerod and Chronicle, there were consistent individual differences. Participants appeared to be divided as to whether the most attractive figure enclosed a given area within a perimeter of minimum or maximum length. It is concluded that future research in this area cannot afford to focus exclusively on group performance measures. (shrink)

Aesthetic autonomy is sometimes equated with an art for art’s sake approach to art. On the contrary, the philosophers whose work is often cited as backup to this concept of aesthetic autonomy held a very different conception of it. I will trace an alternative notion of aesthetic autonomy in the work of Adorno and Habermas, the origins of which can be found in Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic theory, the popular notion of his formalism, notwithstanding. I draw upon the art practice of (...) the contemporary Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson in order to demonstrate this alternative notion of aesthetic autonomy. (shrink)

Plato’s distinction between appearance and reality which he attempts to demonstrate in his allegory of the cave established the conceptual framework for theories of knowledge for many centuries. The quest for certainty set us on the path to believing that reality is there to be discovered. We only have to open our eyes and minds. Yet a recurring question about the interface between culturally acquired concepts and objective sense perception remains a point of contention. Mischa Kuball’s Platon’s Mirror addresses this (...) question. Kuball’s Platon’s Mirror exhibited at Artspace Sydney during September 2011 is an intriguing exploration of the various layers involved in the process of meaning. Light is the metaphor. Light is filtered through a variety of devices to reveal disparate aspects of the one apparent object. The easy distinction between appearance and reality is deliberately thrown into disarray. Kuball provides a meditation on the blurring of reality and meaning which suggests a recurrent philosophical theme in Kuball’s oeuvre, the nature of meaning and value. (shrink)

Aesthetic judgment has often been characterized as a sensuous cognitively unmediated engagement in sensory items whether visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory or gustatory. However, new art forms challenge this assumption. At the very least, new art forms provide evidence of intention which triggers a search for meaning in the perceiver. Perceived order excites the ascription of intention. The ascription of intention employs background knowledge and experience, or in other words, implicates the perceiver’s conceptual framework. In our response to art of every (...) description we witness the incorrigible tendency in humans to construct meaningful narratives to account for events. Such meaningful narratives always implicitly involve the ascription of intention, even when the agent of the intention is not explicitly acknowledged or even clearly conceived. This principle of intention-in-order may seem incompatible with another truism which is that art is a source of novel ideas and essentially a critique of prevailing values and norms including conceptual schemes. I argue on the contrary that the human impulse to read intention in order is a precondition of art’s critical edge. Creativity is possible even though there is no raw perceptual data to which we have conscious access. That is, there are no sensory items, unmediated by the concepts we have internalized through our interaction with our communities, to which we have conscious access. (shrink)