What is art? What counts as an aesthetic experience? Does art have to beautiful? Can one reasonably dispute about taste? What is the relation between aesthetic and moral evaluations? How to interpret a work of art? Can we learn anything from literature, film or opera? What is sentimentality? What is irony? How to think philosophically about architecture, dance, or sculpture? What makes something a great portrait? Is music representational or abstract? Why do we feel terrified when we watch a horror (...) movie even though we know it to be fictional? -/- In Conversations on Art and Aesthetics, Hans Maes discusses these and other key questions in aesthetics with ten world-leading philosophers of art: Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton. -/- The exchanges are direct, open, and sharp, and give a clear account of these thinkers' core ideas and intellectual development. They also offer new insights into, and a deeper understanding of, contemporary issues in the philosophy of art. (shrink)

Hans Maes has collected a number of conversations he has had with major figures in philosophical aesthetics over the last ten years in Conversations on Art and Aesthetics. These include, in order of appearance, Jerrold Levin-son, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, Gregory Currie, Paul Guyer, Noël Carroll, and Kendall Walton. This book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to see some important living figures in this essential subdiscipline of philosophy in action. (...) As with all efforts of this sort, however, certain choices had to be made. The book is explicitly limited to philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition, largely American (including eight past... (shrink)

Defences of inference to the best explanation (IBE) frequently associate IBE with scientific realism, the idea that it is reasonable to believe our best scientific theories. I argue that this linkage is unfortunate. IBE does not warrant belief, since the fact that a theory is the best available explanation does not show it to be (even probably) true. What IBE does warrant is acceptance: taking a proposition as a premise in theoretical and/or practical reasoning. We ought to accept our best (...) scientific theories since they are the theories that are most likely to lead to the goal of science, which is that of knowledge. In support of this claim I invoke Bill Lycan's Panglossian reflections regarding Mother Nature.1. (shrink)

In May 2017, my book ‘Conversations on Art and Aesthetics’ appeared. It contains conversations with, and photographic portraits of, ten prominent philosophers of art. They are Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton. The book has two main aims. One is to provide a broad and accessible overview of what aesthetics as a subfield of philosophy has to offer. The other is to stimulate new (...) work in this area of research. In this brief paper I’d like to say a bit more about this second objective. Current research is rarely conducted or communicated in the form of conversations, so the question arises: how can a book like mine fit with and feed into a research culture which is very much dominated by the format of the journal article? (shrink)

Much liberal-democratic thought has concerned itself primarily – even exclusively – with coercive interference in citizens’ lives. But political actors do things – they engage in influential speech, they offer incentives, they mislead other actors, they disrupt the expected functioning of decision-making mechanisms etc. – that fall short of coercion, yet may nonetheless call for normative evaluation and public justification, precisely because they serve to purposively alter citizens’ beliefs, intentions and behaviour. With this article, I explicate a conception of political (...) manipulation to capture this sort of interference, and to distinguish individual manipulation from the manipulation of nonindividual agents like committees, institutions and states. The account, beyond being necessary for further work on the ethics of political manipulation, should prove useful to both normative thinkers interested in power, justice and the ethics of democratic decision-making, and empirical scholars in search of a conceptual apparatus to sharpen their investigations into the exercise of subtle forms of political power. (shrink)

Emphasizing the human body in all of its forms, Beauty Unlimited expands the boundaries of what is meant by beauty both geographically and aesthetically. Peg Zeglin Brand and an international group of contributors interrogate the body and the meaning of physical beauty in this multidisciplinary volume. This striking and provocative book explores the history of bodily beautification; the physicality of socially or culturally determined choices of beautification; the interplay of gender, race, class, age, sexuality, and ethnicity within and on the (...) body; and the aesthetic meaning of the concept of beauty in an increasingly globalized world. Foreward by Carolyn Korsmeyer. Authors include Noel Carroll, Gregory Velazco Y Trianosky, Monique Roelofs, Whitney Davis, Eleanor Heartney, Diana Tietjens Meyers, Phoebe M. Farris, Mary Devereaux, Jo Ellen Jacobs, Karina L. Cespedes-Cortes and Paul C. Taylor, Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Stephen Davies, Jane Duran, Valerie Sullivan Fuchs, Keith Lehrer, Allen Douglas, Cynthia Freeland, Eva Kit Wah Man, Mary Bittner Wiseman, and Peg Brand's essay, "ORLAN Revisited: Disembodied Virtual Hybrid Beauty.". (shrink)

"TAKE A LINE cut in two unequal sections, one for the kind that is seen, the other for the kind that is thought, and go on and cut each section in the same ratio". In order to follow this request, not only must one know geometry, which treats linear magnitudes; one must also know the relations between geometry and the art which treats kinds. The problem of the first cut in the line is the problem of determining what ratio of (...) two parts of a line is the same as the ratio of the two kinds: visible and thinkable. In order to solve this problem, a procedure seems to be needed for deciding when a ratio of magnitudes, a geometric ratio, is the same as a ratio of kinds, or at least what ratio of magnitudes is the same as the ratio of visible to thinkable. (shrink)

One goal of normative multi-agent system theory is to formulate principles for normative system change that maintain the rule-like structure of norms and preserve links between norms and individual agent obligations. A central question raised by this problem is whether there is a framework for norm change that is at once specific enough to capture this rule-like behavior of norms, yet general enough to support a full battery of norm and obligation change operators. In this paper we propose an answer (...) to this question by developing a bimodal logic for norms and obligations called NO. A key to our approach is that norms are treated as propositional formulas, and we provide some independent reasons for adopting this stance. Then we define norm change operations for a wide class of modal systems, including the class of NO systems, by constructing a class of modal revision operators that satisfy all the AGM postulates for revision, and constructing a class of modal contraction operators that satisfy all the AGM postulates for contraction. More generally, our approach yields an easily extendable framework within which to work out principles for a theory of normative system change. (shrink)

Ecologists typically invoke "law-like" generalizations, ranging over "structural" and/or "functional" kinds, in order to explain generalizations about "historical" kinds (such as biological taxa)rather than vice versa. This practice is justified, since structural and functional kinds tend to correlate better with important ecological phenomena than do historical kinds. I support these contentions with three recent case studies. In one sense, therefore, ecology is, and should be, more nomothetic, or law-oriented, than idiographic, or historically oriented. This conclusion challenges several recent philosophical claims (...) about the nature of ecological science. (shrink)

A bounded formula is a pair consisting of a propositional formula φ in the first coordinate and a real number within the unit interval in the second coordinate, interpreted to express the lower-bound probability of φ. Converting conjunctive/disjunctive combinations of bounded formulas to a single bounded formula consisting of the conjunction/disjunction of the propositions occurring in the collection along with a newly calculated lower probability is called absorption. This paper introduces two inference rules for effecting conjunctive and disjunctive absorption and (...) compares the resulting logical system, called System Y, to axiom System P. Finally, we demonstrate how absorption resolves the lottery paradox and the paradox of the preference. (shrink)

Logic is a celebrated representation language because of its formal generality. But there are two senses in which a logic may be considered general, one that concerns a technical ability to discriminate between different types of individuals, and another that concerns constitutive norms for reasoning as such. This essay embraces the former, permutation-invariance conception of logic and rejects the latter, Fregean conception of logic. The question of how to apply logic under this pure invariantist view is addressed, and a methodology (...) is given. The pure invariantist view is contrasted with logical pluralism, and a methodology for applied logic is demonstrated in remarks on a variety of issues concerning non-monotonic logic and non-monotonic inference, including Charles Morgan’s impossibility results for non-monotonic logic, David Makinson’s normative constraints for non-monotonic inference, and Igor Douven and Timothy Williamson’s proposed formal constraints on rational acceptance. (shrink)

* This update features fifty fast and impressive digital photo techniques-eighty percent of which are new since the previous edition * The CD-ROM includes a bonus e-book of the entire first edition-giving readers two books for the price of one * Developed by professional photographer and eDigital Photo contributing writer Gregory Georges, the techniques are valuable to both pros and hobbyists alike * Uses the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Elements in the examples, but the techniques are readily adaptable (...) to most image-editing programs * Includes techniques for traditional photo effects, combining photos, artistic effects, animations, digital photo blends, and much more * Step-by-step details, in-depth instructions, and plenty of illustrations-including a full color insert-make it easy for people to apply the techniques to their own photos. (shrink)

There are situations in human life where the failure to perform a certain act can be morally blameworthy and at the same time not constitute the failure of moral duty or obligation. While traditional approaches to ethics have not acknowledged the possibility of these acts, recent contributions to the literature have made a strong and convincing case for their existence. Here I explain the nature of these acts, present some examples of these acts as they might arise in one''s business (...) or professional life, and point out the importance of recognizing and performing these acts for those who wish to practice good ethics in their business or professional lives. (shrink)

Justin Stover has recently edited a collection of Platonic placita, organized by individual dialogue, which he identifies as the lost third book of Apuleius’ De Platone. The work is preserved only in a thirteenth-century manuscript, Vatican BAV Reg. lat. 1572. The manuscript is filled with trivial errors, including a large number of one-word or two-word lacunae. Stover has worked ably to clean up the text and many of his emendations are uncontroversial. But any editio princeps is likely to be susceptible (...) of improvement. I offer here some notes on a few points where I think either the text or Stover's translation and commentary can be bettered. I am not primarily concerned here with the ascription to Apuleius, although one or two points may have some relevance to this question. (shrink)

This essay explores the central place of Aristotle’s views of the sense of touch within his empiricist epistemology and general physical theory. It argues that Aristotle was not committed to a ‘literalist’ view of the nature of sensory representation, according to which an organ literally becomes ‘like’ the said object. It suggests an interpretation of Aristotle’s defence of the objectivity of tactile representation, which shows a deep and complex link between his theory of sense-knowledge and his project of scientific explanation.

ABSTRACTThis paper examines Mohan Matthen's account of aesthetic pleasure. The first part explores implications of Matthen's notion of ‘fit’ between features of art objects and our pleasurable contemplation of them. Through historical comparisons with Plato and Dewey, I challenge his claim not to be offering a theory of aesthetic norms. The second part of my paper sketches how Matthen might address two important problems of contemporary aesthetics: the first concerning interpretation, and the second concerning genres of art that evoke negative (...) or painful emotions such as tragedy, melodrama, and horror. (shrink)

This article addresses the portrait as a philosophical form of art. Portraits seek to render the subjective objectively visible. In portraiture two fundamental aims come into conflict: the revelatory aim of faithfulness to the subject, and the creative aim of artistic expression. In the first part of my paper, studying works by Rembrandt, I develop a typology of four different things that can be meant when speaking of an image’s power to show a person: accuracy, testimony of presence, emotional characterization, (...) or revelation of the essential “air” (to use Roland Barthes’ term). In the second half of my paper this typology is applied to examples from painting and photography to explore how the two media might differ. I argue that, despite photography’s alleged ‘realism’ and ‘transparency,’ it allows for artistic portraiture and presents the same basic conflict between portraiture’s two aims, the revelatory and the expressive. (shrink)

This substantial book presents essays by nineteen authors exploring intersections between film theory and philosophy on topics of representation, authorship, ideology, aesthetics, and emotion. The editors explain that film studies has reached a crisis of method after a growth period founded on structural linguistics, psychoanalysis, and Continental philosophy. They wish to alter this foundation and “give momentum to work in an analytic vein”, which requires them to correct the misconception of analytic philosophy in film studies as narrow and conservative, a (...) “toxic waste dump.”. (shrink)

Six experiments investigated variables predicted to influence subjects’ tendency to classify items by a single property instead of overall similarity, following the paradigm of Norenzayan et al., who found that European Americans tended to give more “logical” rule-based responses. However, in five experiments with Mechanical Turk subjects and undergraduates at an American university, we found a consistent preference for similarity-based responding. A sixth experiment with Korean undergraduates revealed an effect of instructions, also reported by Norenzayan et al., in which classification (...) instructions led to majority rule-based responding but similarity instructions led to overall similarity grouping. Our American subjects showed no such difference and used similarity more overall. We conclude that Americans do not have a preference for rule responding in classification and discuss the differences between tasks that reliably show strong rule or unidimensional preferences in contrast to this classification paradigm. (shrink)