This paper contains a reconstruction and discussion of some central subjects in Nelson Goodman's philosophical work. Goodman's creative symbol-constructional philosophy concerns fundamental aspects of human cognition and practice. It is argued that this provides us with the intellectual tools for constructing a genuine relationship between logic, knowledge, art, and understanding. This is shown by focusing on subjects ranging from the projectibility of predicates and nominalistic mereology to constructive relativity, ways of worldmaking and a general theory of symbols.

One striking feature of On the Genealogy of Morals concerns how it is written. Nietzsche utilizes a literary style that provokes his readers’ emotions. Recently, Christopher Janaway has argued that this approach is integral to Nietzsche’s philosophical goals: feeling the emotions Nietzsche’s style arouses is necessary for understanding the views he defends. This paper shows that Janaway’s position is tempting but mistaken. The temptation exists because our emotions often function as “tools of discovery.” They bring things into focus we otherwise (...) could not see. However, once we grasp what they reveal, we can communicate it to others without first having to arouse their emotions. Thus there may be truths none of us would know unless one of us consulted his or her emotions. But it is not the case that each of us must consult his or her emotions in order to understand these truths. (shrink)

The Acquaintance Principle maintains that aesthetic knowledge must be acquired through first-hand experience of the object of knowledge and cannot be transmitted from person to person. This implies that aesthetic knowledge of an object cannot be acquired either from an accurate description of the non-aesthetic features of the object or from reliable testimony of its aesthetic character. The question I address is whether there is any sound argument in support of the Principle. I give scant consideration to the possibility of (...) deriving knowledge from a non-aesthetic description. If this were to be a real possibility, it would certainly disprove the Acquaintance Principle, but its impossibility would not establish it. Furthermore, if the way knowledge were to be derived from a non-aesthetic description were through its enabling a person to imagine the object (as one might imagine music from a score), a defender of the Acquaintance Principle might simply deem imagining to be a form of first-hand experience. I focus on the possibility of acquiring aesthetic knowledge through reliable testimony because here there is a style of argument that, if correct, would rule out the possibility of knowledge of an item's aesthetic properties being transmitted to someone who lacks the requisite first-hand experience, and the manoeuvre of including imagining under the head of first-hand experience is not available. An argument of this kind is, I believe, the only possible way of establishing the Acquaintance Principle. I try to show that this style of argument fails and that the Acquaintance Principle should be rejected. (shrink)

Aesthetics and the Environment presents fresh and fascinating insights into our interpretation of the environment. Traditional aesthetics is often associated with the appreciation of art, but Allen Carlson shows how much of our aesthetic experience does not encompass art but nature--in our response to sunsets, mountains or horizons or more mundane surroundings, like gardens or the view from our window. Carlson argues that knowledge of what it is we are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and that (...) a scientific understanding of nature can enhance our appreciation of it, rather than denigrate it. (shrink)

Paintings are usually paintings of things: a room in a palace, a princess, a dog. But what would it be to paint not those things, but the experience of seeing those things? Las Meninas is sufficiently sophisticated and masterfully executed to help us explore this question. Of course, there are many kinds of paintings: some abstract, some conceptual, some with more traditional subjects. Let us start with a focus on naturalistically depictive paintings: paintings that aim to cause an experience in (...) the viewer that is similar to the experience the viewer (or someone else) might have were they to see, in a way not mediated by paint, the subject of the painting. Of course, many or even most paintings do not strictly adhere to this aim; indeed, their artistry and expressiveness often consist in the ways in which this aim is subverted. For example, no viewer of the scene that Las Meninas depicts -- not even King Philip IV and Queen Mariana themselves -- would see what Velasquez paints in the mirror on the back wall. Other artists, such as Escher and Magritte, are even more blatant in their transgression of naturalism. But even in such cases, the aim of naturalistic depiction is the departure point for the aesthetic journey of perception and meaning. Asking our question is a natural consequence of rejecting dualism: if experiences are as much a part of the natural world as canvases, courtiers and Chamberlains, then they, too, should be capable of being painted. On the other hand, only the visible can be depicted in the sense described above, and rejecting dualism does not bring with it the implication that everything that is, is visible. One answer to our question, then, is pessimistic: there can be no painting of an experience, because experiences cannot be seen. Unlike the Infanta Margarita, and like justice, the number two, or feudal obligation, experiences, on this view, are not visible. But is this pessimism tenable? Wittgenstein writes: 'The timidity does not seem to be merely associated, outwardly connected, with the face; but fear is alive there, alive, in the features' (Wittgenstein, 1953, §537). Similarly, McDowell (1978) maintains that we see another's pain in their expression, and their behaviour. To think otherwise invites solipsism. (shrink)

Philosophical questions about the arts go naturally with other kinds of questions about them. Art is sometimes said to be an historical concept. But where in our cultural and biological history did art begin? If art is related to play and imagination, do we find any signs of these things in our nonhuman relatives? Sometimes the other questions look like ones the philosopher of art has to answer. Anyone who thinks that interpretation in the arts is an activity that leaves (...) the intentions of the author behind needs to explain how and why this differs so fundamentally from ordinary conversational interpretation, where the only decent models we have are ones that depend crucially on the recovery of intention. Anyone who thinks that imaginative literature has anything to tell us about time had better have a position on how earlier and later relate to past and future. Anyone who thinks that empathy plays a role in literary engagement had better have a psychologically plausible account of what empathy is. Philosophical questions about the arts also go naturally with other kinds of philosophical questions: we can't think constructively about representation in art without thinking about representation; text, meaning, reference and existence get similarly drawn into the conversation. Some ideas that philosophers of art deal with emerge from other disciplines. In literary theory an enormous amount of attention has been lavished on tracing the sources of unreliability in narrative. Is the result adequate to the details of the particular works we call unreliable? Contemporary film theory is generally hostile to the fiction/documentary distinction. Are there in fact any grounds for this? This book of thirteen connected essays examines questions of all these kinds. It ranges from the semantics of proper names, through the pragmatics of literary and filmic interpretation, to the aesthetic function of stone age implements. Some of the essays have not been published before; some that have are here substantially revised. (shrink)

In Beauty and Revolution in Science, James McAllister argues that a sophisticated rationalist image of science can accommodate two prominent features of actual scientific practice, namely, appeals to “aesthetic” criteria in theory choice, and the occurrence of scientific “revolutions”. The aesthetic criteria to which scientists appeal are, he maintains, inductively grounded in the empirical record of competing theories, and scientific revolutions involve changes in aestheic criteria bu continuity in empirical criteria of theory choice. I raise difficulties for McAllister's account concerning: (...) (a) the nature and scope of “aesthetic” criteria in science; (b) the rationality of appeals to aestheic criteria in science; (c) the rationality of scientific revolutions. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss the kinds of understanding expected of and evinced by skilled listeners, performers, analysts, and composers. I confine the discussion to Western, purely instrumental music, mainly with the classical tradition in mind.[1] And I refer primarily to the Anglophone literature of "analytic" philosophy of music. As will become apparent, my concern is with an analysis that maps what are meant to be familiar aspects of musical experience. I investigate the various understandings expected of an accomplished listener, (...) the performer, the music analyst, and the composer. (shrink)

The Education of the Eye examines the origins of visual culture in eighteenth-century Britain. It claims that at the moment when works of visual art were first displayed and contemplated as aesthetic objects two competing descriptions of the viewer or spectator promoted two very different accounts of culture. The first was constructed on knowledge, on what one already knew, while the second was grounded in the eye itself. Though the first was most likely to lead to a socially and politically (...) elite form for visual culture, the second, it was held, would almost certainly end up in the chaos of the mob. But there was another route through these conflicting accounts of the visual that preserved the education of the eye while at the same time allowing the eye freedom to enter into the realm of culture. This third route, that of the sentimental look, is explored in a series of contexts: the gallery, the pleasure garden, the landscape park, and the country house. The Education of the Eye sets out to reclaim visual culture for the democracy of the eye and to explain how aesthetic contemplation may, once more, be open to all who have eyes to look. The book will interest historians of eighteenth-century British culture and historians of architecture, art, and landscape, as well as readers generally curious about the origins of our current visual culture. (shrink)

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

Understanding Music summarizes Eggebrecht's thoughts on the relationship between music and cognition.

The arts and the sciences perform many of the same cognitive functions, both serving to advance understanding. This paper explores some of the ways exemplification operates in the two fields. Both scientific experiments and works of art highlight, underscore, display, or convey some of their own features. They thereby focus attention on them, and make them available for examination and projection. Thus, the Michelson-Morley experiment exemplifies the constancy of the speed of light. Jackson Pollock'sNumber One exemplifies the viscosity of paint. (...) Despite their similarities, science and art might seem to differ in their attitude toward facts. Science is said to adhere to facts; art, to be indifferent to them. Such, I urge, is not the case. Science, like art, often scorns fact to advance understanding through fiction. Thought experiments, I contend, are scientific fictions; literary and pictorial fictions, aesthetic thought experiments. (shrink)

This article deals with the question whether aesthetic considerations affected Einstein in formulating both his theories of relativity. The opinions of philosophers and historians alike are divided on this matter. Thus, Gerald Holton supports the view that Einstein employed aesthetic considerations in formulating his theory of special relativity whereas Jim Shelton opposes it, one of his reasons being that Einstein did not mention such considerations. The other theory, namely, that of general relativity, is discussed by John D. Norton. He asserts (...) that the successful completion of this theory was due to Einstein's adherence to mathematical simplicity resulting from experience, as Einstein himself stated, and not from an aesthetic drive, to which he did not refer. The present work attempts to overcome this deficiency indirectly by investigating Einstein's aesthetic awareness and its consequences for his work. It is found that this awareness was imbedded in his perception of nature and is linked to the criteria (such as simplicity) that guided him in formulating his theories. The conclusion thus reached is that aesthetic considerations did play a role in Einstein's endeavour, contrary to the assertions of Shelton and Norton. (shrink)

Cognitivism in respect to the arts refers to a constellation of positions that share in common the idea that artworks often bear, in addition to aesthetic value, a significant kind of cognitive value. In this paper I concentrate on three things: (i) the challenge of understanding exactly what one must do if one wishes to defend a cognitivist view of the arts; (ii) common anti-cognitivist arguments; and (iii) promising recent attempts to defend cognitivism.

Aesthetics is today widely seen as the philosophy of art and/or beauty, limited to artworks and their perception. In this paper, I will argue that today's aesthetics and the original programme developed by the German Enlightenment thinker Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in the first half of the eighteenth century have only the name in common. Baumgarten did not primarily develop his aesthetics as a philosophy of art. The making and understanding of artworks had served in his original programme only as an (...) example for the application of his philosophy. What he really attempts to present is an alternative philosophy of knowledge that goes beyond the purely rationalist, empiricist, and sensualist approaches. In short, Baumgarten transcends the old opposition between rationalism and sensualism. His core theme is the improvement (perfectio) of human knowledge and cognition and the ways to reach this goal. The study of Baumgarten's foundational works on aesthetics should not be undertaken merely out of antiquarian interest. I will argue, instead, that Baumgarten's importance and contemporary relevance lies in this: that his Aesthetica may serve as a profound contribution to the philosophy of the cultural sciences and humanities. Revisiting Baumgarten's original idea of aesthetics will lead us to a more inclusive concept of that philosophical discipline. (shrink)

One of the many virtues of Martin Seel’s Aesthetics of Appearing is that it lays its cards on the table at the very outset. The final three chapters consist in a series of complex digressions from the main discussion: one on the aesthetic significance of ‘resonating’(p. 139), one organized around the metaphysics of pictures, and one charged with defending the implausible claim that the artistic representation of violence is uniquely capable of revealing ‘what is violent about violence’ (p. 191). But (...) the thesis of the book and its main arguments are stated in the preface, preceding even the acknowledgements. Seel writes, ‘[t]his book makes the proposal of having aesthetics begin not with concepts of being‐so or semblance but with a concept of appearing’ (p. xi). This might initially seem opaque, as though reducing aesthetics to a subtlety involving the meaning of the Greek word phainomai, but Seel immediately clarifies the stance that he wishes to advance. Seel’s position is that aesthetics is distinguished by attention to the indeterminable particularity of sensory experience; aesthetics so considered comprises the philosophy of art as well as non‐art experience; aesthetic experience is a legitimate mode of world‐encounter by virtue of its immediacy or ‘presence’ (p. xi)(Gegenwart – i.e., a contrary of ‘past’, rather than of ‘absence’); and because the presence of our experience reveals the presence of our lives, aesthetic experience constitutes an important form of self‐knowledge. The subsequent chapters are devoted to explicating this position in extraordinary detail. Seel’s position depends on a somewhat implicit account of subjectivity. In this account, what we fundamentally perceive, conditioned by conceptual activity but transcending any possible determinate content, is a ‘play’ of sensuous qualities (p. 47). Since it is ‘unfettered’ (p. 51) by theoretical interest, this form of perception is far qualitatively richer than our more structured experiences: here one is ‘able to perceive.... (shrink)

And in general it is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know that the former can teach, and therefore we think art more truly knowledge than experience is; for the artist can teach, and men of experience cannot. When pragmatism first gained favor in the early twentieth century, some British philosophers like Russell regarded it as evidencing their perception of America’s crude and enterprising spirit.1 The Imperial jab lay in this: that just (...) as business indicates the exchange of products and services to meet basic needs as well as others, for the pragmatist, knowledge is tied to social practices and instrumentality (that is, being able to effect changes in the world). The slight lies .. (shrink)

IT IS DIFFICULT for me to read Pride and Prejudice without empathizing either with Elizabeth Bennet, or sometimes with her father, Mr Bennet. Not only do my own responses to and opinions of the events and characters of the book at times resemble theirs, but even when they do not, I find myself seeing the event from Elizabeth’s or Mr Bennet’s point of view. For example, at the close of the book, Elizabeth’s former dislike of Mr Darcy has completely vanished, (...) in part because of learning of a number of good deeds that Mr Darcy has done very quietly for their family. When Mr Darcy proposes to Elizabeth (for the second time) she is delighted to accept him. However, everyone else in Elizabeth’s family despises Mr Darcy, and they also believe that Elizabeth still hates him. So it is easy to understand Mr Bennet’s surprise and distaste when Mr Darcy asks Mr Bennet for Elizabeth’s hand; after all, Mr Bennet still believes Mr Darcy to be prideful and haughty. While I am not myself surprised to hear Elizabeth’s response—the reader learns much more of Mr Darcy’s character than Mr Bennet does—I do have the experience of imagining being surprised. I am also capable of empathizing with Elizabeth, who is excited, flustered, and a bit ashamed at having so misjudged Mr Darcy early on, and I can imagine having these feelings for people I have misjudged. I can (to some degree) understand why she finds explaining all this to Mr Bennet so difficult. I go back and forth, as I read, between the perspectives of Mr Bennet and Elizabeth. These experiences of mine are experiences of the sort that I call ‘empathizing with fictions’, although we sometimes might describe such experiences by saying that we ‘identified’ with a particular character or characters in a story. (shrink)

"The eye that gathers impressions is no longer the eye that sees a depiction on a surface it becomes a hand, the ray of light becomes a finger, and the imagination becomes a form of immediate touching."-Johann Gottfried Herder Long recognized as one of the most important eighteenth-century works on aesthetics and the visual arts, Johann Gottfried Herder's Plastik (Sculpture, 1778) has never before appeared in a complete English translation. In this landmark essay, Herder combines rationalist and empiricist thought with (...) a wide range of sources-from the classics to Norse legend, Shakespeare to the Bible-to illuminate the ways we experience sculpture. Standing on the fault line between classicism and romanticism, Herder draws most of his examples from classical sculpture, while nevertheless insisting on the historicity of art and of the senses themselves. Through a detailed analysis of the differences between painting and sculpture, he develops a powerful critique of the dominance of vision both in the appreciation of art and in our everyday apprehension of the world around us. One of the key articulations of the aesthetics of Sturm und Drang, Sculpture is also important as an anticipation of subsequent developments in art theory. Jason Gaiger's translation of Sculpture includes an extensive introduction to Herder's thought, explanatory notes, and illustrations of all the sculptures discussed in the text. (shrink)

This article examines an account of the listener's musical understanding put forward by Stephen Davies. I begin by discussing Davies's "expressibility requirement", according to which a musical listener should be able to express his understanding in sentences that are truth-apt. This is followed by a reconstruction of Davies's argument for the idea that high levels of musical understanding can be attained without possessing music-theoretical concepts. Such a conclusion is seen to follow from his belief that although musical understandings may be (...) evaluatively compared in terms of the concepts of music theory, the listeners themselves can always fulfil the expressibility requirement by employing simple "folk-musicological" terminology. I will attempt to show that this premise is questionable in the light of some central cases of music-structural understanding. I conclude by examining the relationship between Davies's expressibility requirement and the claim that musical understandings are evaluatively commensurable. (shrink)

Trying to make sense of abstract painting has resulted in interesting but often inexact and inadequately motivated efforts to characterize what is distinctive about modern art. The present account begins with Gertrude Stein's description of the fascination she experiences in viewing painted surfaces and proceeds through a number of efforts to justify or severely criticize abstract painting in relation to more traditional representational works. The basis for a phenomenology of abstract painting is suggested by James Elkins's first-person analysis of the (...) reasons why painters paint, focusing on the production rather than exclusively on the appreciation of paintings. Elkins's proposal that painters paint as an exploration of the possibilities of working with the material substance of paint is advanced as the basis for a new approach to the problems of understanding the nature of abstract art as the most pure and concentrated form of this remarkable aesthetic preoccupation that is to be found in all paintings and by extension in all art. (shrink)

The belief that the mind and the body are separate and that the mind is the source of all meaning has been a part of Western culture for centuries. Both philosophers and scientists have questioned this dualism, but their efforts have rarely converged. Many philosophers continue to rely on disembodied models of human thought, while scientists tend to reduce the complex process of thinking to a merely physical phenomenon. In The Meaning of the Body , Mark Johnson continues his pioneering (...) work on the exciting connections between cognitive science, language, and meaning first begun in the classic Metaphors We Live By . Johnson uses recent research into infant psychology to show how the body generates meaning even before self-consciousness has fully developed. From there he turns to cognitive neuroscience to further explore the bodily origins of meaning, thought, and language and examines the many dimensions of meaning—including images, qualities, emotions, and metaphors—that are all rooted in the body’s physical encounters with the world. Drawing on the psychology of art and pragmatist philosophy, Johnson argues that all of these aspects of meaning-making are fundamentally aesthetic. Thus the arts are the culmination of human attempts to find meaning and studying the aesthetic dimensions of our experience is crucial to unlocking the bodily sources of meaning. Brilliantly synthesizing a broad range of scientific research and philosophical inquiry in clear and original writing, Mark Johnson’s The Meaning of the Body puts forth a bold new conception of the mind rooted in the understanding that philosophy will matter to nonphilosophers only if it is built on a visceral connection to the world. (shrink)

Peter Kivy presents a selection of his new and recent writings on the philosophy of music--an area to which he has been one of the most eminent contributors. In his distinctively elegant and informal style, Kivy explores such topics as musicology and its history, the nature of musical works, and the role of emotion in music, and does so in a way that will attract the interest of philosophical and musical readers alike. Most works are published here for the first (...) time, each one unique and accessible, making this collection a delight both to followers of Kivy's work and to first-time readers. (shrink)

Physicists often appeal to the beauty of a theory as a way to judge its credibility, and the most prevalent component of this beauty is symmetry. This paper describes the role and structure of symmetry arguments in physics. It demonstrates that the epistemic authority of an appeal to symmetry is based on empirical evidence and is independent of any aesthetic judgment. Furthermore, symmetry in nature is not evidence of design. Just the opposite, symmetry indicates a lack of planning. It is (...) about nature's disregard for details. (shrink)

Science has more to offer than just knowledge of nature; it can give us understanding of nature as well. Epistemology of science is usually focused on knowledge and the criteria of justification, while paying little attention to understanding. In a reversal of this emphasis, this article is more about scientific understanding. I argue that the hallmarks of understanding are similar to an aesthetic feature associated with literature, music, and the visual arts. It is the feature described as coherence, harmony, and (...) inevitability of fit. Aesthetics thus plays an epistemic role in science as an indication of understanding. (shrink)

Most "art and science" books focus on the science of perspective or the psychology of perception. Hidden Harmony does not. Instead, the book addresses the surprising common ground between physics and art from a novel and personal perspective. Viewing the two disciplines as creative processes, J. R. Leibowitz supplements existing and original research with illustrations to demonstrate that physics and art share guiding aesthetics and compositional demands and to show how each speaks meaningfully to the other. Leibowitz widens our experience (...) and understanding of both domains by exploring how concepts such as balance and re-balance, coherence and unity, and symmetry and "broken" symmetry affect and are affected by artistic vision and scientific principle. He reveals shared themes and understandings in each field and adroitly illustrates the parallels between the dabs of color and layers of images in a work of art and the particles of matter and packets of energy that compose the observable, physical world. Featuring examples of art images and complementary examples of physics concepts, this contemplative work helps us see art and physics as artists and physicists do. (shrink)

In Art and intention Paisley Livingston develops a broad and balanced perspective on perennial disputes between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists in philosophical aesthetics and critical theory. He surveys and assesses a wide range of rival assumptions about the nature of intentions and the status of intentionalist psychology. With detailed reference to examples from diverse media, art forms, and traditions, he demonstrates that insights into the multiple functions of intentions have important implications for our understanding of artistic creation and authorship, the ontology (...) of art, conceptions of texts, works, and versions, basic issues pertaining to the nature of fiction and fictional truth, and the theory of art interpretation and appreciation. Livingston argues that neither the inspirationist nor rationalistic conceptions can capture the blending of deliberate and intentional, spontaneous and unintentional processes in the creation of art. Texts, works, and artistic structures and performances cannot be adequately individuated in the absence of a recognition of the relevant makers4intentions. The distinction between complete and incomplete works receives an action-theoretic analysis that makes possible an elucidation of several different senses of "fragment" in critical discourse. Livingston develops an account of authorship, contending that the recognition of intentions is in fact crucial to our understanding of diverse forms of collective art-making. An artist's short-term intentions and long-term plans and policies interact in complex ways in the emergence of an artistic oeuvre, and our uptake of such attitudes makes an important difference to our appreciation of the relations between items belonging to a single life-work. The intentionalism Livingston advocates is, however, a partial one, and accommodates a number of important anti-intentionalist contentions. Intentions are fallible, and works of art, like other artefacts, can be put to a bewildering diversity of uses. Yet some important aspects of art's meaning and value are linked to the artist's aims and activities. (shrink)

The role of the artist's intention in the interpretation of art has been the topic of a lively and ongoing discussion in analytic aesthetics. First, I sketch the current state of this debate, focusing especially on two competing views: actual and hypothetical intentionalism. Secondly, I discuss the search for a suitable test case, that is, a work of art that is interpreted differently by actual and hypothetical intentionalists, with only one of these interpretations being plausible. Many examples from many different (...) art forms have been considered in this respect, but none of these test cases has proved convincing. Thirdly, I introduce two new test cases taken from contemporary visual art. I explain why these examples are better suited as test cases and how they lend support to the actual intentionalist position. (shrink)

This article criticises existing solutions to the 'puzzle of imaginative resistance', reconstrues it, and offers a solution of its own. About the Book : Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts is the first comprehensive collection of papers by philosophers examining the nature of imagination and its role in understanding and making art. Imagination is a central concept in aesthetics with close ties to issues in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language, yet it has not received the kind of (...) sustained, critical attention it deserves. This collection of seventeen brand new essays critically examines just how and in what form the notion of imagination illuminates fundamental problems in the philosophy of art. (shrink)

Most scientists and philosophers of science recognize that, when it comes to accepting and rejecting theories in science, considerations that have to do with simplicity, unity, symmetry, elegance, beauty or explanatory power have an important role to play, in addition to empirical considerations. Until recently, however, no one has been able to give a satisfactory account of what simplicity (etc.) is, or how giving preference to simple theories is to be justified. But in the last few years, two different but (...) related accounts have appeared, both of which address the above issues. On the one hand, James McAllister has argued that aesthetic criteria in science reflect scientists' judgements about what kind of theory is most likely to be empirically successful, based on the relative empirical success and failure of different kinds of theories in the past. Scientists employ what McAllister dubs "the aesthetic induction". On the other hand, I have argued that we need to see science as making a hierarchy of metaphysical assumptions about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, these assumptions asserting less and less as one ascends the hierarchy. One of the more substantial of these assumptions is that the universe is physically comprehensible. The key non-empirical feature a body of fundamental theories in physics must possess to be acceptable is unity. The better such a body of theory exemplifies the metaphysical thesis that the universe is physically comprehensible, in the sense that it has a unified dynamic structure, so the more acceptable such a body of theory is, from this standpoint. This affects not just theoretical physics, but the whole of natural science. In this paper I compare and contrast, and try to assess impartially the relative merits of, these two views. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue on "Aesthetics of Science" reviews recent philosophical research on aesthetic aspects of science. Topics represented in this research include the aesthetic properties of scientific images, theories, and experiments; the relation of science and art; the role of aesthetic criteria in scientific practice and their effect on the development of science; aesthetic aspects of mathematics; the contrast between a classic and a Romantic aesthetic; and the relation between emotion, cognition, and rationality.

'In simple prose Merleau-Ponty touches on his principle themes. He speaks about the body and the world, the coexistence of space and things, the unfortunate optimism of science – and also the insidious stickiness of honey, and the mystery of anger.' - James Elkins Maurice Merleau-Ponty was one of the most important thinkers of the post-war era. Central to his thought was the idea that human understanding comes from our bodily experience of the world that we perceive: a deceptively simple (...) argument, perhaps, but one that he felt had to be made in the wake of attacks from contemporary science and the philosophy of Descartes on the reliability of human perception. From this starting point, Merleau-Ponty presented these seven lectures on The World of Perception to French radio listeners in1948. Available in a paperback English translation for the first time in the Routledge Classics series to mark the centenary of Merleau-Ponty’s birth, this is a dazzling and accessible guide to a whole universe of experience, from the pursuit of scientific knowledge, through the psychic life of animals to the glories of the art of Paul Cézanne. (shrink)

This is a paperback edition of what has become an important contribution to aesthetics and the theory of literature. The author analyses in detail how the reader responds to literature and how he begins to evaluate it. Mr Olsen characterizes literature as an institution and thus forges links with contemporary philosophy which sees all human action as ordered and defined by social institutions.

The purpose of this article is to integrate two outstanding problems within the philosophy of science. The first concerns what role aesthetics plays in scientific thinking. The second is the problem of how logically testable ideas are generated (the so-called "psychology of research" versus "logic of (dis)proof" problem). I argue that aesthetic sensibility is the basis for what scientists often call intuition, and that intuition in turn embodies (in a literal physiological sense) ways of thinking that have their own meta-logic. (...) Thus, aesthetics is a form of cognition. Scientists think not in equations or words or other logical abstractions, but emotionally and sensually, using visual and aural images, kinesthetic and other proprioceptive feelings, sensations, patterns, and analogies. These aesthetic forms of thinking have their own logics that I call "synosia", from the root words synaesthesia (a combining of senses) and gnosis, "to know". Synosia denotes understanding that integrates feeling that one knows with feeling what one knows. Eminent scientists universally describe an explicitly secondary process in which such personal knowledge must be "translated" into a formal language, such as words or equations, in order to be communicated to other people. Many of the unsolved problems that philosophers of science (as well as psychologists and artificial intelligence researchers) have had in making sense of scientific thinking have arisen from confusing the form and content of the final translations with the hidden means by which scientific insights are actually achieved. (shrink)

What is art really about? What is its true sense? For John Sallis, we cannot gain a genuine understanding of art by merely translating its effects into conceptual language. Rather, works of art must be approached in a way that does justice to their sensuous and enigmatic character—that illuminates their capacity to present truth without pretending to dispel the real mystery at art’s core. Transfigurements develops a framework for thinking about art through innovative readings of some of the most important (...) philosophical writing on the subject by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. Sallis exposes new layers in these texts and theories while also marking their limits. By doing so, his aim is to show that philosophy needs to attend to art directly. Consequently, Sallis also addresses a wide range of works of art, including paintings by Raphael, Monet, and Klee; Shakespeare’s comedies; and the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, and Tan Dun. Through these interpretations of classic works from both fields, Sallis puts forth a compelling new elaboration of the philosophy of art. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's contribution to musical aesthetics is not often discussed, which is surprising, given his rare musicality and musical connections. His distinctive achievement is to have focused on the question of musical understanding, and to have connected this with two other philosophical problems: the nature of the first-person case, and the understanding of facial expressions. Wittgenstein's third-person approach to philosophical psychology leads him to emphasize the role of performance in the understanding of music, and also to introduce an ‘intransitive’ concept of (...) expression. At times Wittgenstein seems to be arguing for an entirely non-relational account of musical meaning; however, a proper analysis of the first-person case shows that his theory of musical understanding might allow that, at some level, you understand a piece of music only if you imaginatively grasp the state of mind expressed by it. (shrink)

This book proposes that aesthetics begin not with concepts of being or semblance, but with a concept of appearing. Appearing bespeaks of the reality that all aesthetic objects share, however different they may otherwise be. For Martin Seel, appearing plays its part everywhere in the aesthetic realm, in all aesthetic activity. In his book, Seel examines the existential and cultural meaning of aesthetic experience. In doing so, he brings aesthetics and philosophy of art together again, which in continental as well (...) as analytical thinking have been more and more separated in the recent decades. Within Seel’s framework, to apprehend things and events with respect to how they appear momentarily and simultaneously to our senses represents a genuine way for human beings to encounter the world. The consciousness that emerges here is an anthropologically central faculty. In perceiving the unfathomable particularity of a sensuously given we gain insight into the indeterminable of our lives. Attentiveness to what is appearing is therefore at the same time attentiveness to ourselves. This is also the case when works of art imagine past or future, probable or improbable presences. Artworks develop their transgressive energy from their presence as sense-catching forms. They bring about a special presence in which a presentation of close or distant presences comes about. (shrink)

Introduction: Play, Power, and the Western Mentality Whereas play has always had an important, if sometimes unthemat- ized, role in Western literary ...

'ith the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain, justify, and shape its new aims. In this book, David Summers provides an original investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism. From a thorough examination of the sources, he shows how the medieval language of mental discourse derived from an understanding of classical thought. 'Some (...) of the most striking observations in this impressive book involve stepping outside the history of ideas to ground these theories in a more general social history.' -- British Journal of Aesthetics 'This brilliant, stimulating study in the history of ideas should become indispensible for renaissance art historians, and for philosophers interested in the history of the philosophy of mind and in what might be called thepre-history' of aesthetics.' -- ChoiceWith the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain. (shrink)

This paper discusses Theo Kuipers' account of beauty and truth. It challenges Kuipers' psychological account of how scientists come to appreciate beautiful theories, as well as his attempt to justify the use of aesthetic criteria on the basis of a "meta-induction." I propose an alternative psychological/philosophical account based on emotional coherence.

Philosophers seldom ask questions regarding how certain phenomena occur, because such questions tend to be the province of the sciences or of technology. However, the question how pictures have depth requires philosophical reflection because it takes place on the surface of pictorial objects and involves both physical and phenomenal, i.e. aesthetic, features of those surfaces. This essay examines how pictures have depth by first separating the aesthetic question from interpretive considerations, and thereby refining the question how pictures have depth. Next (...) it explicates two sorts of conceptual tools required to understand the question: several complex concepts needed to understand surfaces, and the concept of intensity. These are then used to understand how pictures can have depth by showing how intensities produce both an aesthetic surface and depth within it. (shrink)

Paul Klee's art found broad impact upon philosophers of varying commitments, including Hans-Georg Gadamer. Moreover, Klee himself was not only one of the most important artists of aesthetic modernism but one of its leading theoreticians, and much in his work, as in Gadamer's, originated in post-Kantian literary theory's explications of symbol and allegory. Indeed at one point in Truth and Method, Gadamer associates his project for a general "theory of hermeneutic experience" not only with Goethe's metaphysical account of the symbolic (...) but equally with a "rehabilitation" of allegory. In this paper, I examine this position and Gadamer's own use of it in his analysis of Klee's work, contrasting it with that of Walter Benjamin's account of allegory, equally indebted to Goethe and this archive. Finally, I contrast the resulting interpretations of Klee, discussing the implications that evolve for understanding both Gadamer and Benjamin— but equally for understanding Klee's work and, provisionally, the work of art, thus construed, for philosophy. (shrink)

Das Aussprechen eines Wortes ist gleichsam ein Anschlagen einer Taste auf dem Vorstellungsklavier. (Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.) (PU §6)Polonius: What do you read, my lord?Hamlet: Words, words, words!(Hamlet, act 2, scene 2)Wittgenstein in his later years thought about experiences of meaning and aspect change. Do such experiences matter? Or would a meaning- or aspect-blind person not lose much? Moreover, is this a matter of aesthetics or epistemology? To get a better (...) perspective on these matters, I will introduce distinctions between certain subjective and objective aspects, namely feelings of our inner psychological states versus fine-tuned objective experiences of the outer world. It seems to me that in his discussion of meaning-blindness, Wittgenstein unhappily floats between these two extremes, the subjective and the objective. I will also introduce some notions from Kant's aesthetics, to get a better understanding of the interplay between feeling and meaning. This will shed some new light on Wittgenstein's enquiry into meaning- and aspect-blindness. (shrink)

Art and Knowledge argues that the experience of art is so rewarding because it can be an important source of knowledge about ourselves and our relation to each other and to the world. He argues that all the arts, including music, are importantly representational. This kind of representation is fundamentally different from that found in the sciences, but it can provide insights as important and profound as that available from the sciences. Art and Knowledge is an exceptionally clear and interesting, (...) as well as controversial, exploration of what art is and why it is valuable. It will be of interest to all philosophers of art, artists and art critics. (shrink)

Lambert Zuidervaart challenges current intellectual trends by proposing a new hermeneutic theory of artistic truth, engaging with both analytic and continental philosophies and clarifying the contemporary cultural scene. Although it is unfashionable to talk about artistic truth, its issues have not disappeared. Indeed, questions concerning the role of the artist in society, the relationship between art and knowledge, and the validity of cultural interpretation have actually intensified.