Ideal Observer Theories in Aesthetics

Philosophy Compass 6 (8):513-522 (2011)
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Abstract

I examine the prospects for an ideal observer theory in aesthetics modelled on Roderick Firth’s 1952 paper ‘Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer’. The first generation of philosophers to consider an Ideal Aesthetic Observer found fault with Firth’s omniscience condition; more recent writers have criticized the affective component of an IAO’s response. In the end, most discussants reject the possibility of an IAO theory. Though the IAO theory gets the model wrong for answering meta‐aesthetic questions, revisiting the debate prompts useful reconsideration of the role of the critic and the nature of aesthetic appreciation

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Stephanie Ross
University of Missouri, St. Louis

Citations of this work

A contextualist semantics for aesthetic judgments.Lance Aschliman & Jordan Schummer - 2016 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (6):632-662.

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References found in this work

Moral realism.Peter Railton - 1986 - Philosophical Review 95 (2):163-207.
Categories of Art.Kendall L. Walton - 1970 - Philosophical Review 79 (3):334-367.
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary.David Hume - 1875 - Indianapolis: Liberty Press. Edited by Eugene F. Miller.
Aesthetic Concepts.Frank Sibley - 1959 - Philosophical Review 68 (4):421-450.
Ethical absolutism and the ideal observer.Roderick Firth - 1951 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (3):317-345.

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