This essay surveys the main objections to aesthetic hedonism, the view that aesthetic value is reducible to the value of aesthetic pleasure or experience. Hedonism is the dominant view of aesthetic value, but a spate of recent criticisms has drawn its accuracy into question. I introduce some distinctions crucial to the criticisms, before using the bulk of the essay to identify and review six major lines of argument that hedonism's critics have employed against it. Whether or not these arguments suffice (...) to refute hedonism decisively, I argue that its privileged status, as the sole contender in aesthetic value theory, is detrimental to downstream research on aesthetic phenomena. The essay concludes with an overview of current work and promising avenues of inquiry into non-hedonic alternatives. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that machines can create works of art. My argument is based on an analysis of the so-called creative machines and focuses on technical functions and intentions. If my proposal is correct, then creative machines are technical artifacts with the proper function to bring about works of art. My account is based on sensible conceptual connections between makers, technical artifacts, intentions, and the creation of art. One upshot of the account presented here is that we do (...) not need a new conceptual framework or dubious assumptions about artistic agency on part of machines in order to arrive at the conclusion that creative machines make art. I will conclude the paper with some remarks regarding the artistic value of items produced by creative machines. (shrink)

Two varieties of aesthetic virtue are distinguished. Trait virtues are features of the agent’s character, and reflect an overarching concern for aesthetic goods such as beauty and novelty, while faculty virtues are excellences of artistic execution that permit the agent to succeed in her chosen domain. The distinction makes possible a fuller account of why art matters to us—it matters not only insofar as it is aesthetically good, but also in its capacity as an achievement that is creditable to an (...) individual, and as a reflection or embodiment of virtuous motives. (shrink)

There is broad agreement in aesthetics that some artworks are greater than others despite bearing equivalent (or lesser) aesthetic value. One explanation of this difference in artistic value is that creation of the greater artwork represents a greater achievement. The aim of this article is to refine this explanation and to defend it against recent criticisms. First, I present a prima facie case in favor of the achievement explanation. Second, I draw on the history of photography to motivate three objections (...) to it: namely, that it wrongly excludes (1) lucky, (2) easy, and (3) failed creations from being artistically great. Third, I present my refined version of the achievement explanation and show how it avoids these objections. On my view, an artistic achievement consists in creating a work it would have been especially hard for comparable artists to create. Finally, I raise and address several additional objections. In responding to these objections, I argue, among other things, that my explanation of artistic value enhances our understanding of good-bad art: specifically, it allows us to see how good-bad art is artistically great despite being aesthetically flawed. (shrink)

Can artworks be morally good or bad? Many philosophers have thought so. Does this moral goodness or badness bear on how good or bad a work isas art?This is very much a live debate.Autonomistsargue that moral value is not relevant to artistic value;interactionistsargue that it is. In this paper, I argue that the debate between interactionists and autonomists has been conducted unfairly: all parties to the debate have tacitly accepted a set of constraints which prejudices the issue against the interactionist. (...) I identify two demands which are routinely placed on arguments seeking to establish interaction and argue that they are, in fact, mutually conflicting.There are two upshots. First, in light of this, it is unsurprising that arguments for interaction have failed to meet with everybody’s satisfaction. The constraints are such that no argument can meet them. Second, recognizing this helps us uncover a new, promising, but hitherto overlooked strategy for establishing artistic-ethical interaction. (shrink)

It is common to distinguish between attributive and predicative goodness. There are good reasons to think that artistic value is a kind of attributive goodness. Surprisingly, however, much debate in philosophical aesthetics has proceeded as though artistic value is a kind of predicative goodness. As I shall argue, recognising that artistic value is attributive goodness has important consequences for a number of debates in aesthetics.

An increasingly popular view in the philosophy of art is that some artworks are good artworks at least partly because they are achievements. This view was introduced to explain why two works that look the same, such as an original painting and a perfect copy, can differ in artistic merit. An achievement theory can say that the original is better because it is a greater achievement. Achievement theories have since been used to answer other questions, and they are now a (...) serious alternative to traditional theories of artistic merit. This paper has three aims. The first is to articulate the achievement theory more fully and explicitly than its advocates have. The second is to show that the achievement theory should be rejected, by raising five problems for it. The third is to show that appealing solely to the excellence, aptitude, and ineptitude a work manifests yields a better theory of artistic merit. (shrink)

A great achievement makes one’s life go better independently of its results, but what makes an achievement great? A simple answer is—its difficulty. I defend this view against recent, pressing objections by interpreting difficulty in terms of competitiveness. Difficulty is determined not by how hard the agent worked for the end but by how hard others would need to do in order to compete. Successfully reaching a goal is a valuable achievement because it is difficult, and it is difficult because (...) it is competitive. Hence, both virtuosic performances and lucky successes can be valuable achievements. (shrink)

Theorists of aesthetic value since Hume have traditionally aimed to justify at least some comparative judgments of aesthetic value and to explain why we thereby have more reason to appreciate some aesthetic objects than others. I argue that three recent theories of aesthetic value—Thi Nguyen’s and Matthew Strohl’s engagement theories, Nick Riggle’s communitarian theory, and Dominic McIver Lopes’ network theory—face a challenge to carry out this explanatory task in a satisfactory way. I defend a monotonicity principle according to which the (...) strength of our aesthetic reasons to appreciate varies monotonically with aesthetic value and claim that these theories, because they do not respect the principle, are non-monotonic. If they cannot find a plausible way to preserve the link between the aesthetic goodness of an object and our aesthetic reasons to appreciate it, these non-monotonic theories should be rejected. (shrink)