Abstract
Why disdain (perfectly) replicated art? If art is valuable because it evokes experiences of beauty, they should be comparable. In chapter 11 of the Elephant in the Brain, Simler and Hanson (S&H) argue we actually care about the extrinsic properties of art—e.g. who made it—to signal our intelligence and taste. Here I defend a different explanation for the evidence cited by S&H: the extrinsic properties of art are central to what constitutes art, play a bigger role fixing the value of art than S&H allow, and the potential for diminishing marginal utility on the value of the intrinsic properties of art—seeing the original Mona Lisa is rare; seeing a copy isn’t—explains why we assign such value to the extrinsic properties of art. And thus we have a non-signaling explanation of art consumption, which may or may not complement signaling theory.
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Licon, J.A. Why Disdain Replicated Art? Metaphysics and Art in ‘The Elephant in the Brain’. Philosophia 50, 605–617 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00420-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00420-9