Aesthetic Cognition

When an avowed metalhead scoffs, "ugh, poser" at a woman wearing an ICP shirt in the record shop, there's a good chance they're a snob. But, existing philosophical accounts of snobbery don't say so, and there are two central reasons. First, philosophers have largely focused on aesthetic judgments. But, this scoff isn’t about the aesthetic quality of ICP, Slayer, or anything else. It is about the social group metalheads and what they ought to be like. Second, relatedly, philosophers have not (...) focused on the social function of snobbery. Accusations of poserhood, however, put this function right out front: Gatekeeping. -/- In this chapter, I argue that snobbery—at least in cases where it seems morally objectionable—is best understood through its motivational profile: snobs are those who empower themselves to engage in unwarranted, identity-protective gatekeeping and thereby discourage or block individuals from exploring the lives they reasonably wish to explore. This perspective provides grounds for expanding the extension of snobbery beyond the bounds of aesthetic judgment and plucks at a thread that unifies several existing accounts of snobbery. Notably, I show that many cases of transphobic “feminism” turn out to be instances of gender snobbery. (shrink)

This article rethinks the concept of beauty through the lens of cognition and meaning, examining art and aesthetics in comparison with science, and enumerates the factors that, under the name of deconstruction or structure‑breaking, shape a creative process. By classifying errors, hallucinations, dreams, humour, metaphor, and imagination into the groups of conscious and unconscious deviations, as the essential requirements of an intelligent and creative process, we explore their function through the lens of the structure of language, conceptual proportions, and consciousness, (...) and extend their assessment into the domain of language models and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

An object or surface exhibits iridescence when it changes in color as its viewing or lighting angle changes. In this article, I explore the relations between enacted perception, color experience, and visual art through a recent case of iridescent painting. That is, by bringing painter Tiina Pyykkinen’s work with iridescent materials into dialogue with philosopher Alva Noë’s sensorimotor contingency theory of perception (SMC), I investigate the following questions: (a) How can SMC be employed to achieve a better understanding of both (...) creating and viewing iridescent paintings? and (b) What kinds of philosophical implications does the examination of these two issues have for SMC itself, and especially for its account of color perception? I argue that the allure and value of iridescent art consists not only in its ability to disrupt habitual sensorimotor know-how about color behavior but also in its capacity to foster deliberate examination of this experience in carefully curated settings. Indeed, as an exemplar of what Noë calls experientialist art, Pyykkinen’s paintings make us aware of ourselves as the kinds of perceivers we fundamentally are: embodied, enactive, skillful, and situated. At the same time, they urge us to reconsider some of SMC’s assumptions about color perception, particularly as these pertain to determinate colors and color-constancy, the learning of new sensorimotor color know-how, and the terminology used to conceptualize iridescence. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the consequences of interpreting phenomena from their form, in the vacuum of their relational nature, and show how understanding the original content of any phenomenon, including a language model, can only be achieved through observing its external interactions with its surrounding environment, i.e. humans, over time.

Cet article a pour but de rendre compte de l’objectivité des catégories esthétiques paradigmatiques que sont le joli, le beau ou le sublime. Nous nous proposons de rendre compte de l’objectivité de ces catégories esthétiques en termes de différents modes de contemplation d’un objet donné. Cette contemplation consiste dans la perception et la réponse à une affordance de « contemplabilité » de l’objet régie, dans les différentes expériences, par des dynamiques différentes de fluence et disfluence de traitement de l’objet. Ces (...) différents modes de contemplation déterminent différentes catégories esthétiques. L’objectivité que nous défendons n’est donc pas ontologique (du moins, il ne s’agit pas de propriétés indépendantes de l’esprit humain), mais (a minima) psychologique (c’est-à-dire dépendantes de capacités mentales typiquement esthétiques). (shrink)

Cet article a pour but de rendre compte de l’objectivité des catégories esthétiques paradigmatiques que sont le joli, le beau ou le sublime. Nous nous proposons de rendre compte de l’objectivité de ces catégories esthétiques en termes de différents modes de contemplation d’un objet donné. Cette contemplation consiste dans la perception et la réponse à une affordance de « contemplabilité » de l’objet régie, dans les différentes expériences, par des dynamiques différentes de fluence et disfluence de traitement de l’objet. Ces (...) différents modes de contemplation déterminent différentes catégories esthétiques. L’objectivité que nous défendons n’est donc pas ontologique (du moins, il ne s’agit pas de propriétés indépendantes de l’esprit humain), mais (a minima) psychologique (c’est-à-dire dépendantes de capacités mentales typiquement esthétiques). (shrink)

[This chapter has no original abstract. The focus of this chapter is on the essential reference points of Chinese philosophy with regard to humor.].

Si Bourdieu «viviría», o cómo evitar el «enclasamiento» Por Ramsés Radi Hernández ¿Quién decide qué es el buen gusto? ¿Es una cuestión de sensibilidad personal o un arma de distinción social? Este ensayo propone una crítica inspirada en Bourdieu: el gusto, lejos de ser neutral, puede convertirse en violencia simbólica, marcando fronteras entre clases y legitimando desigualdades. La cultura, cuando es libre, debería abrir caminos hacia lo común, no reforzar escalafones sociales.

This dataset presents a quantitative diagnostic analysis of critical posture in contemporary art writing across a forty-five-year span (1980–2025). Using the Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC) diagnostic framework, twenty influential texts drawn from journals, newspapers, magazines, institutional press releases, and exhibition discourse were coded sentence-by-sentence to examine how critical language positions itself in relation to artworks, viewers, and institutional authority. Five indices were applied: Rhetorical Density (RD), Interpretive Load Index (ILI), Viewer Displacement Ratio (VDR), Ethical Proximity Score (EPS), and Institutional Alignment Indicator (...) (IAI). -/- Rather than evaluating interpretive correctness or aesthetic value, the framework isolates how critical claims are produced—measuring the balance between descriptive encounter and explanatory force, the degree of viewer displacement, the presence or absence of linguistic restraint, and the extent of institutional mediation. The dataset demonstrates that high rhetorical intensity does not necessarily correlate with high interpretive extraction, and that ostensibly “plain” theoretical language frequently produces maximal displacement. Across historical periods, the results reveal recurring postures—verdict-driven criticism, theory-dominated explanation, affective populism, and market-aligned promotion—each identifiable through distinct metric profiles. -/- The findings provide quantitative support for a central claim of Post-Interpretive Criticism: that the ethical stakes of art writing reside not in what criticism concludes, but in how closely it remains to the conditions of encounter. This dataset is offered as a reflective and exploratory diagnostic resource, not a prescriptive model, contributing a formal complement to phenomenological and post-hermeneutic approaches in contemporary aesthetics. -/- -/- This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and _Art as Truth: A Treatise_ (Q136329071), _Aesthetic Recursion Theory_ (Q136339843), The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136530009), Canon of Witnesses (Q136565881),Interpretive Load Index (ILI) (Q137709526), Viewer Displacement Ratio (VDR) (Q137709583) , Ethical Proximity Score (EPS) (Q137709600) , Institutional Alignment Indicator (IAI) (Q137709608), Post-Hermeneutic Phenomenology (Q137711946) -/- ISSN 2819-7232 -/- Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN. -/- ORCID: 0009-0004-7737-5094. (shrink)

This article examines the canonical edition of the Manifesto of Philosophical Reviewing of Poems Based on the Philosophy of Reality as an original normative and methodological project aimed at establishing a distinct discipline of reading poetic texts. The article argues that the Manifesto offers not merely an interpretive practice, but a coherent model of philosophical reviewing centered on the reconstruction of the loop DP -> ETP -> DP1 -> ETP1. Within this framework, the philosophical component of a poem is defined (...) as the mutual transition of the objective and subjective sides of reality in poetic form, leading to a substantial and qualitatively new transformation of meaning and experience. The article analyzes the Manifesto's object, method, criteria of quality, statuses of conclusions, intersubjective verification, and theoretical location in relation to hermeneutics, phenomenology of reading, reception-oriented approaches, and the philosophy of literature. It concludes that the Manifesto constitutes an original contribution to philosophical poetics and to the methodology of literary interpretation. (shrink)

-/- A companion paper (Carboni 2026) proposed that sex-biased admixture between anatomically modern humans (AMH) and archaic hominins may partly reflect interactions among neoteny recognition, sexually differentiated morphology, and inter-group raiding. The present paper develops a distinct but related hypothesis. It proposes that the increasingly elaborated representational capacities visible in Homo sapiens during the later Pleistocene allowed a pre-existing sensitivity to neotenous cues to operate on internally generated, exaggerated representations rather than only on encountered biological variation. This capacity is termed (...) supernormal neoteny ideation. The proposal adapts Tinbergen’s supernormal-stimulus framework and Ramachandran and Hirstein’s peak-shift account of aesthetic response to a problem in cognitive evolution: what changes when a preference system can construct its own targets beyond the natural range that originally calibrated it? Three consequences are explored. First, internally amplified ideals may have sharpened pre-existing preference asymmetries in mixed AMH–archaic contexts, though this demographic consequence remains the most speculative component of the model. Second, supernormal ideation may have contributed to idealising aesthetic production by allowing selected dimensions—neoteny, fertility, symmetry, gracility, or other salient features—to be exaggerated independently and recombined. Third, once such valuation became a generalised aesthetic response rather than a narrowly reproductive heuristic, neotenous morphology could acquire erotic salience across sex categories; historical cases are treated as hypothesis-generating evidence rather than transparent readouts of evolved preference. The paper does not assume a settled, instantaneous “cognitive revolution.” It treats the archaeological record as a set of material echoes compatible with several pathways: neural threshold effects, ecological release of latent capacities, cumulative cultural feedback, and the disproportionate contribution of exploratory cognitive outliers. The framework yields archaeological, cross-cultural, and neuroimaging predictions while explicitly distinguishing observation, inference, and speculation. (shrink)

Within the mind dwells a societal spectacle that accounts for every conceivable facet of experience down to its minutest details. It functions as a kind of ghost-light—an illuminating yet spectral mechanism capable of rendering any action possible by invoking the “numbers” embedded in thought. These numbers are not metaphysical abstractions; they are ontological, even within the subjective noumena of higher-order cognition. Numbers function as an ontology for becoming an arbitrary level of being by sensory raw data. The emergence of a (...) modern world around such a mind gives rise to an ideal subjectivity, understood as the cumulative outcome of axial brain features. When we probe the core problems at stake, the embodiment function emerges as central, while any neat resolution to the duel between the embodied mind and the rational, objective mind appears the least likely outcome. The reason lies in sensory data dealing with the numbers that is brought forth by the data. That is why an organism’s wanting lies low in perception and high in cognition. (shrink)

This essay proposes a visualist ontological framework for understanding design, rooted fundamentally in the theories of emergent properties and affordances. Opposing functionalist and intentionalist paradigms, the framework underscores design’s visuality and relational engagement as its core ontological elements. The concepts of emergent properties and affordances are presented as deeply interconnected, reflecting their philosophical and practical relationship within the ontology of design. Emergent properties are conceptualized as qualities that do not reside intrinsically within individual components but instead arise through the dynamic (...) relational interactions among parts within a system, often exemplified in complex, non-linear systems. I demonstrate, however, that even singular, discrete design objects encapsulate complexity and exhibit emergent qualities. Design’s ontological structure extends beyond its planned form to include these emergent qualities and open affordances rooted in visual surface configurations and relational engagement, because design inherently exists in relations – not only with users but also with other objects and environments. Relatedly, affordances elucidate how visual and material configurations invite specific actions, enabling meanings and functions to be continually redefined through ongoing interactions. The integration of these theories offers a comprehensive, non-reductionist account of design’s ontology, emphasizing its inherently relational, dynamic, and open-ended nature as central to its identity and operative capacity. (shrink)

Dominic McIver Lopes’s Aesthetic Injustice (OUP, 2024) makes an ambitious and important contribution to discussions of the relationship between aesthetics and justice. After briefly summarizing the distinction between aesthetic injustice and weaponized aesthetics which motivates much of the book, we turn our attention to three issues. First, we put critical pressure on Lopes’s claim of originality by showing that many earlier scholars and artists had already explored the unjust restriction of aesthetic capacities. Second, we argue that Lopes’s cosmopolitanism is a (...) universalizing framework that risks erasing asymmetries between victims and perpetrators and leaves the theory ill-equipped to address oppressive aesthetic cultures. Third, we apply critical scrutiny to Lopes's assumption that aesthetic cultures are “conflict-free zones,” drawing on everyday and artistic practices to argue that conflict is a pervasive and sometimes desirable feature of aesthetic life. This, we argue, casts doubt on cosmopolitanism as the foundation for a theory of aesthetic injustice. We conclude by questioning the desirability of a cosmopolitan theory based on the preservation of the value diversity and social autonomy of aesthetic cultures. Please note that in sections III and IV, we discuss gendered and racialized violence. (shrink)

The goal of this chapter is to reconcile two competing camps of thinking regarding Dickinson’s poetry. According to the first camp, the form and content of her poems cannot be pulled apart. What she says is tightly bound up with how she says it. According to the second camp, her poems can be paraphrased; what they say can be said in other words. To resolve the tension between these views, the chapter defends the following two claims. First, poets and critics (...) tend to ask too much of paraphrases, wrongly demanding they reproduce everything contained in the original poem. Second, poets and critics are engaged in different kinds of activities. These activities are governed by different norms. In particular, form and content must be tied together for a poet such as Dickinson but not for a critic intent on a paraphrase. (shrink)

The experience of beauty is often described as if it reveals an objective value in the world, yet aesthetic judgments vary across individuals and cultures. This paper develops a “realistic constructivist” framework to reconcile this puzzle. Drawing on predictive processing models in cognitive science and philosophical insights from ecological and enactive approaches, it argues that beauty is not a mystical direct access to an abstract value. Instead, beauty emerges as a stability-achievement in an organism’s perception – a state of fluent, (...) confidence-rich prediction shaped by evolutionary biases and refined by cultural learning. Such an account maintains that aesthetic values are constructed by minds, but in a way that remains world-tracking: our constructive processes are constrained by the structure of the environment and calibrated socially, yielding relational invariants that multiple observers can share. The paper explicates aesthetic properties as patterns that reliably stabilize attention, affect, and action for humans under shared embodied and cultural conditions. This approach illuminates why beauty feels “real” despite its subjective elements, and how it can be both biologically grounded and culturally diversified. The account is applied to examples in art and design, and it addresses major objections from evolutionary debunking (the idea that evolved tastes are not truth-tracking), cultural relativism, and robust aesthetic realism. In sum, beauty is reinterpreted as a collaboratively constructed yet real feature of our experience – a meaningful pattern that arises through adaptive perception and becomes public through communal training and agreement. (shrink)

This paper examines a pre-linguistic state of experience as a legitimate phenomenological condition, focusing on the stillness and density that precede conscious formation. The visual image discussed in the paper functions as a phenomenological field of encounter and is currently exhibited at the Saatchi Art Gallery.

This essay applies the ontological framework of the Deep Chained Nexus (DCN) to a phenomenological critique of social and linguistic constructs. Through grounded observation and philosophical analysis, it argues that human "imposed meanings" create an epistemic gap between the participatory, processual reality of the DCN and our everyday lived reality. This gap alienates us from what might be called the "forgotten land"—the unmediated ground of being that precedes and sustains all human categorization. Drawing on Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy and distinguishing between (...) mind-dependent and mind-independent patterns, the essay explores how we might navigate human constructions while remaining grounded in the cosmological substrate from which all meaning emerges. Keywords: social constructs, ontology, phenomenology, alienation, process philosophy, meaning, Deep Chained Nexus, myth, narrative . (shrink)

George Kubler introduced a significant line of inquiry in aesthetic and artistic thinking when he raised the question of what it is to appreciate art in sequences and series, two notions that are tied to the very structure of art-historical time. In this article I unpack the concept of “serial appreciation” and outline elements of anthropological and naturalistic aesthetics in Kubler’s work on pre-Columbian art.

The paper examines Stanisław Lem’s speculative fiction as a form of meta-epistemological inquiry. Through close analysis of A Perfect Vacuum, Imaginary Magnitude, His Master’s Voice, Solaris, and The Invincible, the essay argues that Lem constructs “anti-models” that reveal the structural limits of representation, intelligibility, and epistemic closure. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of scientific modeling (Frigg & Nguyen, Godfrey-Smith, Weisberg, Elgin, Currie), the article develops a unified account of imagination as a generative but constrained epistemic practice.

Philosophy has traditionally separated ontology (what exists) from aesthetics (how existence appears or feels). This paper argues that for a specific class of profound conscious experiences, this separation is unstable. While much of conscious qualia consists of basic, embodied sensations (e.g., the taste of coffee), a distinct category arises when consciousness recognizes reality’s fundamental pattern—the fractal structure of emergence-transience-dissolution—in a self-referential way. This meta-cognitive recognition is immediately aesthetic before it is conceptual. As the pattern emerges from Bede through Jaspers to (...) this arc found here and elsewhere in my texts. This aesthetic character is not added by consciousness but arises as a structural response: pattern-structure appearing to consciousness that is itself pattern-structure. I identify two polarities of this pre-cognitive aesthetic encounter: sacred qualia (when consciousness identifies with the eternal process, producing expansion, bliss, illumination) and dark qualia (when consciousness identifies with the mortal form, producing contraction, wounding, recognition of finitude). A third mode emerges when both polarities are held simultaneously: the sublime, where consciousness maintains dual-recognition, producing often as history has shown, profound empathy and ethical awakening. All three demonstrate that ontology and aesthetics are bound in the pre-cognitive event of pattern recognizing itself. We do not merely observe reality from outside and then aesthetically evaluate it; in these moments, we are reality experiencing the significance of its own structure from the inside, where the experiencing is already aesthetic. Keywords: qualia, consciousness, ontology, aesthetics, pattern recognition, pre-cognitive, ineffable, mortality, mysticism, sublime . (shrink)

This paper explores illuminated-ness as a phenomenological and ethical category within Excessivism: the claim that reality perpetually exceeds our capacity to metabolize it. Where anti-bliss names meaning-surplus encountered as catastrophe, illuminated-ness names the same surplus encountered as grace. Both are moments in which ordinary cognitive filters loosen and reality appears with unusual force; the difference lies not simply in what is perceived, but in the perceiver's capacity to integrate the meaning-spurt. By meaning-spurt I mean a sudden intensification of perceived significance: (...) a moment in which reality appears to release more meaning than ordinary cognition can metabolize. Through readings of mystical traditions, philosophy, cognitive filtering, and visual art, I argue that anti-bliss and illuminated-ness are elite threshold experiences: not signs of personal superiority, but rare modes of perception shaped by neural architecture, perceptual thresholds, temperament, trauma, loss, attention, and biographical position. The ethical task is therefore not to demand that everyone see in the same way, but to recognize high perceptual sensitivity where it occurs, protect those vulnerable to both poles, and honor diverse modes of being. Keywords: phenomenology, excess, attention, mysticism, aesthetic experience, ethics, Excessivism, perception . (shrink)

Aesthetic experiences play an important role in human culture and spiritual life and are closely related to aesthetic perception and appreciation of art, music, literature and natural landscapes. With the development of neuroscience and cognitive psychology, our understanding of aesthetic experiences continues to deepen; in this context, the study of neuroplasticity has attracted widespread attention. This study explores in detail how this process affects the perception of aesthetic cognition, thereby enhancing the aesthetic experience in several key ways. The study finds (...) that neuroplasticity plays a role in the evolution of an individual’s perception and appreciation of beauty, as it facilitates adjustments in perception, attention, emotion, and cross-perceptual integration based on individual experiences. These findings provide a theoretical basis for deepening the perception and appreciation of beauty and insights to better understand and advance the aesthetic experience provided by art, music and literature. Future research will explore how to maximise the use of neuroplasticity to enhance the quality and depth of the aesthetic experience, advance the field of aesthetic psychology and art research and further enrich and satisfy individuals’ perception and experience of beauty. (shrink)

A work in this genre inevitably invites comparison with the 1953 anthology of Vivas and Krieger. Though containing some duplication of the contents of the earlier volume, Weitz's collection makes many additional, fine selections available--e. g., three examples of Erwin Panofsky's techniques; Hospers' "The Concept of Artistic Expression"; Malraux on style; Chapter IX of Cassirer's Essay on Man; and a direct encounter in which Erich Kahler has prepared a traditional, humanistic rebuttal to Weitz's own contention that 'art' cannot be defined. (...) A good anthology.--D. W. S. (shrink)

This essay explores Plato’s rudimentary epistemology of non-discursive thought. I will proceed in three steps, beginning with a general view of Plato’s philosophy, subsequently focusing on the Meno, and ending with a close reading of the passages on music in Republic. In the first section, I will outline a general framework to examine the relation between truth (alētheia) and discourse (logos) in Plato’s philosophy. My central argument is that, for Plato, discourse is a necessary yet not sufficient condition for truth. (...) Accordingly, I identify two sides of Plato’s philosophy: his “logocentric” project, which aims to demonstrate the necessity of discourse in truth-finding, and his “logoskeptic” project, which underscores the insufficiency of discourse in truth-finding. This double philosophical undertaking, then, raises the question of how both aspects—discourse’s necessity and its insufficiency—relate to each other in a combined extra-discursive pursuit of truth. In the subsequent two sections, I will focus on two Platonic dialogues to characterize the relation between logoskepticism and logocentrism as a dialectical circle. First, I will analyze this relation through a reading of the Meno, in particular the aporia of the ‘‘paradox of inquiry”. This interpretation aims both to solidify the general framework presented in the previous section and to introduce the notion of “dialectics” to conceptualize the relation between one’s discourse and that which transcends one’s discursive abilities. In the Meno, I argue, this dialectic unfolds as a circular mode of thinking in which a form of passivity ultimately proves decisive. However, in the Meno, the dialectical mode of thought remains largely confined to the realm of discursivity, leaving unresolved the question of how discourse and the non-discursive might collaborate in a similarly dialectical yet extra-discursive mode of reason. Finally, in the third section, I argue that a close reading of the passages on music in Book III of the Republic (398b–403c) reveals an insight into the dialectical relation between discursive and non-discursive reason. Throughout these passages, Plato launches a paradoxical theory of musical pedagogy. In short, Plato makes a case for the cognitive value of music’s non-discursive nature, while simultaneously explaining this non-discursive quality in a thoroughly logocentric manner. Much of the scholarship on Plato’s philosophy of music tends to emphasize only one side of this paradox. However, I contend that by recognizing both contrasting aspects of Plato’s musical pedagogy, by preserving rather than resolving their circular relation to each other, we can see how discourse and non-discursive material interact dialectically in music. In doing so, I aim to show how Plato’s paradoxical theory of music bridges two key aspects of his overall philosophy, namely discourse’s necessity and its insufficiency in the pursuit of truth. (shrink)

We suggest that performing arts help us to understand how to use embodied experience and agency to resist and transform oppressive social practices and environments. We draw from dance studies, 4E (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive) cognition, and feminist epistemology to reveal connections between performing arts, embodied knowing, and epistemic and social justice. Epistemic injustice consists in being unduly undermined in one’s capacity as an epistemic agent, including because of inadequate understandings of the social experiences and capacities of marginalized groups. (...) Following a pluralist account of epistemic agency, we argue that oppressive social environments yield differential distributions of affordances to members of oppressed groups, resulting in a differential understanding of what they can do (permission and capacity). Performing arts provide an opportunity to produce new understandings of one’s capacity which empower epistemic agents not to conform to oppressive social norms, thereby producing new understandings of what is allowed and fostering greater epistemic and social justice. (shrink)

One of the more pressing questions regarding phenomenal consciousness concerns its teleological function. For example, is there a purpose for having qualitative experiences when it seems at least conceivable to live as a zombie void of rich sensory experiences? In this paper, I will discuss recent findings in the emerging field of neuroaesthetics, which could form a novel framework for addressing what I will refer to as the teleological problem of phenomenal consciousness. While still in developmental stages, neuroaesthetics is moving (...) beyond its early incarnations as a science that exclusively studies how the human brain responds to artworks, and into a science that studies how and, importantly, why we have sensory and qualitative experiences. I will ultimately argue that neuroaesthetics, when scaffolded by evolutionary principles, is poised to contribute empirically grounded responses to the teleological problem of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Here I respond to the commentaries in the present book symposium on Relgion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity.

On the basis of Kant’s reflections on aesthetic judgement, we show why literature can be a special source of knowledge: Literature does not mediate discursively, but exemplarily. Because of its sensible-intellectual character, it encourages taking other standpoints and can initiate action. This not only harbours potential, but also perils. Yet, according to our exegetical thesis, Kant only recognises some of these, especially because he fails to consider the socio-political context of writing and reading. At the same time, Kant’s position on (...) exemplarity offers resources for further systematic thinking. Using these resources, we will argue that narrative literature bears the force to empower its recipients: it makes the invisible visible by disclosing new perspectives on what is and what could be. With regard to the former, it can evoke in its readers a deeper understanding of their own identity, their social location and its limitations, and act as a hermeneutic model. With regard to the latter, literary works are examples of imagination. They can provoke reflection on the possibility of shifting these boundaries towards other concepts of life and society. This is particularly true of works that express experiences, which are marginalised or considered taboo. However, literary works can also normalize existing social conditions by depicting them, as these very conditions define what is considered imaginable and what remains unspoken within the dominant interpretive framework. Literature can thus also contribute to the concealment of existing power relations and block the reader’s sense of what is possible by encouraging him or her to internalise prevailing social norms. Consequently, narrative literature must not only be diverse in order to be empowering, it must also be received in a certain way: not passively consumed and mentally reproduced, but in the mode of critical self-reflection and emulation. (shrink)

In this article, I use current theorisation in philosophy of mind to reappraise art historian Michael Baxandall’s account of the ‘period eye’. Baxandall coined this term to capture the culturally distinctive ways in which paintings were produced and perceived in fifteenth-century Renaissance Italy. Based on a critical reading of his cognitive-perceptual account of pictorial apprehension, I argue that the period eye is essentially relational and therefore irreducible to the exercise of any capacity bound solely to the mind of an individual (...) beholder. More specifically, I re-conceptualize the period eye as a set of affordances, or a niche, which comprises the possibilities for skilled action in the beholder’s material and socio-cultural environment. I also suggest that the term ‘niche eye’ better captures the phenomenon at stake and accommodates the possible co-existence of various equally appropriate ways of apprehending pictures during any given historical period. (shrink)

In this monograph Paul Crowther seeks to overcome some of the antagonistic positions taken in recent debates about postmodernism. He addresses such issues as the relation between art and politics, artistic creativity, and sublimity and the postmodern sensibility. His analysis of these themes centres on the interplay between what is constant and what is historically variable in human experience.

First published in 1990. How we perceive and respond to the visual image has been traditional concern of psychologists, philosophers and art historians. Today, where the visual image increasingly permeates our everyday life and consciousness, the question becomes ever more relevant. How do we, for instance, instinctively ‘know’ what it is that a picture represents without having to be taught? How it is that we experience (aesthetic) pleasure in looking at certain pictures? How is it that we often want to (...) talk about the pictures we look at? Such questions are currently asked by a wide range of disciplines, including: semiotics, psychoanalysis, anthropology, neuropsychology, and in general, contemporary critical analysis of the visual arts. In _A Transformational Theory of Aesthetics_, Michael Stephan links the findings of these areas. Drawing on their common area of knowledge, he has developed a theory of picture perception and aesthetic response, arguing that images can generate in us a complex pattern of mental changes, or transformations. A Transformation Theory of Aesthetics is essential reading to those seriously involved in linking the arts and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

I argue that there are at least three response-types that are capable of being responsive to the beautiful, and that these response-types are inequivalent. There can be aesthetic judgment without aesthetic appreciation, aesthetic appreciation without aesthetic judgment, and aesthetic appreciation without aesthetic understanding. On analogy with what persons call for, only rational judgment is required, even though the most excellent cases of responsiveness to beauty will encompass all three response-types.

This much acclaimed book has emerged as neo-pragmatism's most significant contribution to contemporary aesthetics. By articulating a deeply embodied notion of aesthetic experience and the art of living, and by providing a compellingly rigorous defense of popular art—crowned by a pioneer study of hip hop—Richard Shusterman reorients aesthetics towards a fresher, more relevant, and socially progressive agenda. The second edition contains an introduction where Shusterman responds to his critics, and it concludes with an added chapter that formulates his novel notion (...) of somaesthetics. (shrink)

Aesthetics has typically been regarded as an arena where claims about truth cannot be made as questions about art seem to involve more matters of taste than knowledge. In _Real Beauty_, however, Eddy Zemach maintains that beauty, ugliness, gracefulness, gaudiness, and similar aesthetic properties are real features of public things and argues that whether these features are present is a matter of fact that can be empirically investigated. By examining the opposing nonrealistic views of Subjectivism, Noncognitivism, and Relativism, Zemach attempts (...) to show how antirealistic interpretations of art generate absurd results and leave the realistic reading as the only cogent semantic interpretation of aesthetic statements. By discussing what inclines most people to hold nonrealistic views in aesthetics, such as the fluctuations of taste in fashion, Zemach argues that Realism can account for these fluctuations. He proposes that the aesthetic value of some things is due to their relations to other things and that relation may be temporal, resulting in the need for a temporal point for the correct temporal angle from which to view things. Zemach concludes that great art reveals significant truths about reality and that significantly true statements are aesthetically valuable, hence truth is an aesthetic merit. (shrink)

In the presentation of his project about ‘somaesthetics’, Richard Shusterman claimed that the recurring neglect of the body in aesthetics was disastrously introduced by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762) in his first formulation of aesthetics as a discipline in the mid-eighteenth century. In the present essay I aim to call this thesis into question, investigating for the first time the role of the body in Baumgarten’s thought and focusing on its significance for the founding of aesthetics. First, I consider Baumgarten’s doctrine (...) of the body in general and of the human body in particular, in its relationship with the soul. I then turn to discuss Baumgarten’s resumption of the scholastic discipline of ‘somatology’ as a philosophical investigation of the body in both its theoretical and practical – namely, dietetical, side. On these bases, I deal with two examples of dietetic embellishment of the body, one presented by Baumgarten himself (cosmetics) and the other put forward by his pupil and co-founder of disciplinary aesthetics Georg Friedrich Meier (physical exercise and somatic fine arts). Subsequently, I explore the ways in which Meier and Baumgarten use dietetics to foster beautiful thinking. Finally, I conclude that nascent aesthetics is concerned with the aesthetic care of the body both insofar as the body can be a stage of aesthetic value and insofar as the body is a necessary presupposition for beautiful thinking. (shrink)

Winner of the Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize.For cognitivist accounts of aesthetic appreciation, appreciation requires an agent (1) to perceptually respond to the relevant aesthetic features of an object o on good evidential grounds, (2) to have an autonomous grasp of the reasons that make the claim about the aesthetic features of o true by pointing out the connection between non-aesthetic features and the aesthetic features of o, (3) to be able to provide an explanation of why those features contribute (...) to the overall aesthetic value of o. In this framework, aesthetic emotions have traditionally been confined to the level of aesthetic perception (1) and dismissed from the process of reason-giving (2, 3). I argue that this dismissal is due, firstly, to a questionable perceptual reading of the connection between emotional experience and value, and, secondly, to a narrow focus on the basic emotions. My argument will reveal that the non-standard or ‘intellectual’ emotions, the emotions which are in fact most important to appreciation, can play a significant epistemic role in our appreciative practices. They can do this because they (a) help us to deliberately focus our attention and (b) place the appreciator in a state of second-order awareness of their mental states. I conclude the paper by showing how these two epistemic tools (a, b) can help the appreciator to meet the explanatory/justificatory conditions (2) and (3). (shrink)

This article aims to connect issues in the epistemology of modality with issues in the philosophy of music, exploring how modalizing takes place in the context of musical performance. On the basis of studies of jazz improvisation and of classical music, it is shown that considerations about what is sonically, musically, and agentively possible play an important role for performers in the Western tonal tradition. We give a more systematic sketch of how a modal epistemology for musical performance could be (...) constructed. We argue that it is necessary to adopt a pluralist approach toward the modal epistemology of music. (shrink)

The term ‘kitsch’, widely laden with negative connotations, has often been used to designate worthless art, synonymous with artistic failure. However, there is something in kitsch that, beyond its apparent poor quality, distinguishes it from other art forms as something novel, peculiar, and even profoundly interesting. Kitsch art generates an irresistible force of attraction towards its spectators that greatly captures attention. This allure belongs to a rarefied nature that brings to light the pleasures and delight of purely aesthetic appeal. Its (...) apparent lack of value is thus mitigated by its promotion of a radically relativistic attitude that establishes a conciliatory balance between attractiveness and horridness. It is here that all its power to shape our experience of the world resides. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of perceiving Kitsch art and elaborates on the philosophical approaches taken to better understand all intellectual contexts surrounding the term, aiming to endorse its aesthetic aspect and assert its rightness to be subsumed under the notion of high art, the researchers sought to argue that besides the claim that the main issue of reading Kitsch was laid on miss-perceiving it, by means it was a problem of perception, we add to this assertion that it was (...) also a problem of _misinterpretation_, that critics have constrained their judgments on Kitsch art by narrowed and prejudiced contentions while many aesthetic theories can ascertain its aesthetic existence at the time, and the most crucial one is the theories on aesthetic emotions, for it was the emotional charge of Kitsch paintings which the critics used to reject and vastly criticize to deny its ability to conceive any aesthetic features. (shrink)

A book review of Sallis, John (2024) Premeny. O pravom zmysle umenia. Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo Minor, Kapucíni na Slovensku. ISBN 978-80-89888-38-2.

In this article I reply to commentary on Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art (Oxford, 2022) by Shelby Moser, Darren Hudson Hick, and Guy Rohrbaugh.

This is a précis of Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art (Oxford, 2022). Contemporary art can seem like a wilderness of unwieldy installations, decaying materials, immersive environments, and audience participation. It can be hard to know what to focus on and how to assess the value or meaning of what we encounter, since so many artworks use non-art materials and techniques and defy familiar conventions. In Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art, I argue that these developments, disparate as they may seem, can (...) be understood by shifting our focus to the rules that artists articulate in creating and deploying their works. Rules have become an artistic medium that artists customize to achieve specific artistic statements and aesthetic effects. Rules are partly, and sometimes wholly, constitutive of the very structure of the artwork; grasping the rules associated with a work is thus crucial to understanding its nature. Articulating these rules, which may be quite specific and fine-grained, is part of the act of artmaking, and the rules bear meaning just as essential physical objects do. (shrink)

This paper argues for a distinction between pretending and imagining. Pretending has a public and observable aspect, which imagining does not. The paper then uses this distinction to argue that various forms of fiction, including literature and the theater, do not essentially involve pretence.

According to the most important objection to the existence of moral beauty, true judgements of moral beauty are not possible as moral judgements require being motivated to act in line with the moral judgement made, and judgements of beauty require not being motivated to act in any way. Here, I clarify the argument underlying the objection and demonstrate that it does not show that moral beauty does not exist. I present two responses: namely, that the beauty of moral beauty does (...) not lie in the moral goodness per se (the ‘adjacent properties’ response), and that only a dispositional motivation to act is required for the moral judgements that are typically made as part of judgements of moral beauty, whereas aesthetic judgements only rule out state motivations to act (the ‘equivocation of motivation required’ response). In addressing the objection, I show how moral beauty is consistent with disinterestedness, and so should be accepted more widely; also clarifying where the beauty in moral beauty resides, and how the moral–aesthetic distinction should be drawn. (shrink)

Why should musical compositions and artistic images be included among the types of expression covered by free speech principles? One way to answer this question is to show how expression in nonverbal media can be functionally similar to other types of verbal expression. But this leaves us with an intuitively unsatisfying explanation of why free speech principles cover nonverbal creative expression that does not functionally emulate literal speech. In this article, as an alternative justification, we develop and defend the idea (...) that musical and pictorial expression‚ much like literal speech, can be media through which people think aloud, as opposed to mere tools for the transmission of thought. We use this proposal to provide a more robust justification for including nonverbal creative expression in the scope of free speech coverage, and we outline some of the practical policy implications that come with adopting this justificatory strategy. (shrink)