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131Shikinen Sengu and the Ontology of Architecture in JapanJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (1). 2007.Japan's Ise Jingu shrine has been taken down and rebuilt every twenty years for more than a millenium - a practice called "shikinen sengu." A standard ontology of architecture, according to which buildings are material particulars, implies that Ise Jingu is no more than twenty years old. However, a correct ontology of architecture is implicit in practices of architecture appreciation. The Japanese appreciation of Ise Jingu and other buildings in its architectural tradition implies both that it i…Read more
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246The Myth of (Non-aesthetic) Artistic ValuePhilosophical Quarterly 61 (244): 518-536. 2011.Art works realize many values. According to tradition, not all of these values are characteristic of art: art works characteristically bear aesthetic value. Breaking with tradition, some now say that art works bear artistic value, as distinct from aesthetic value. I argue that there is no characteristic artistic value distinct from aesthetic value. The argument for this thesis suggests a new way to think about aesthetic value as it is characteristically realized by works of art
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Richard Woodfield, ed., Gombrich on Art and Psychology (review)Philosophy in Review 17 380-382. 1997.
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120The Aesthetic Function of Art (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2): 484-487. 2007.
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105Pictorial RealismJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (3): 277-285. 1995.This paper examines a form of pictorial realism that has epistemic import. Gombrich and Schier claim that some pictures are realistic because they convey accurate information. The difficulty is that judgments of realism vary across cultural and historical contexts. Goodman counters that pictures belong to different systems and realistic pictures belong to familiar systems. However, this does not explain the revelatory realism' of pictures in novel systems. I propose that two views can be combine…Read more
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The ‘air’ of picturesIn Dominic Lopes (ed.), Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures, Oxford University Press. 2005.Pictures enable us to see emotions expressed in them. However, these pictorial expressions need not resemble real-world expressions. A picture expresses the emotion that it has a specifically pictorial function of indicating.
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58Reference, Ontology, and Architecture: Response to Rafael de clercqJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66 (2). 2008.
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327The Aesthetics of Photographic TransparencyMind 112 (447): 434--48. 2003.When we look at photographs we literally see the objects that they are of. But seeing photographs as photographs engages aesthetic interests that are not engaged by seeing the objects that they are of. These claims appear incompatible. Sceptics about photography as an art form have endorsed the first claim in order to show that there is no photographic aesthetic. Proponents of photography as an art form have insisted that seeing things in photographs is quite unlike seeing things face-to-face. T…Read more
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32Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art Rethought: The Social Practices of Art. Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 36 (5): 232-234. 2016.
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6The Special and General Theory of Realism: Reply to Abell, Armstrong, and McMahonContemporary Aesthetics 4 40. 2006.
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Samuel Scheffler, "Human Morality" (review)International Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (1): 166. 1994.
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3The Domain of DepictionIn Matthew Kieran (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, Blackwell. 2005.
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142Pictures, Styles and PurposesBritish Journal of Aesthetics 32 (4): 330-341. 1992.Pictures belong to stylistic systems that vary historically and culturally. This variation suggests that styles are conventional. However, styles are not conventional. Styles have perceptual functions that make them apt for use in some contexts and not others.
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Moral visionIn Dominic Lopes (ed.), Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures, Oxford University Press. 2005.Scepticism about the power of pictures to convey moral messages and to improve the quality of moral reflection is unfounded, as is scepticism about links between moral and aesthetic evaluation. Pictures can afford moral insights, especially as vehicles for seeing- in. However, this amplifies—it does not diminish—the force of critiques of some pictures, including the feminist critique of the male gaze.
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1Out of Sight, Out of MindIn Matthew Kieran & Dominic McIver Lopes (eds.), Imagination, Philosophy, and the Arts, . 2003.
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IntroductionIn Dominic Lopes (ed.), Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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PaintingIn Berys Nigel Gaut & Dominic Lopes (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Routledge. 2000.
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Drawing lessonsIn Dominic Lopes (ed.), Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures, Oxford University Press. 2005.Cognitive evaluations of pictures imply aesthetic evaluations of pictures given the right conception of cognitive evaluation. Knowledge has cognitive value, but so do some personal character traits—intellectual virtues. Pictures foster virtues of perception, and that is part of their aesthetic value.
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Good lookingIn Dominic Lopes (ed.), Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures, Oxford University Press. 2005.To evaluate a picture as a picture is to evaluate it with respect to a feature essential to pictures. An aesthetic evaluation of a picture is one which is bound up with perceptual experience. On this account, aesthetic evaluations imply or are implied by cognitive or moral evaluations. The account is anti-formalist.
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232Directive PicturesJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2). 2004.Pictures are principally descriptive. Advertising images highlight features of potential purchases; cartoons open portals to scenes in fictional worlds; snapshots in the family photo album remind us of our past selves and landmark events in our personal histories; works of pictorial art express thoughts or feelings about depicted scenes. In addition, pictures serve a directive or action-guiding function that, though not taken into account by theorists, deserves no less attention than their descr…Read more
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121Pictures and the Representational MindThe Monist 86 (4): 632-652. 2003.Several recent books indicate that the philosophy of art has embarked upon a new alliance with cognitive science. One impetus for this is the move, beginning in the 70s and 80s, away from general aesthetics to a greater concern with the philosophies of the individual arts. Questions about the nature of art, expression, aesthetic experience and aesthetic properties as generic phenomena are still with us but many philosophers now approach them by means of specialized studies of music, literature, …Read more
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477Nobody Needs a Theory of ArtJournal of Philosophy 105 (3): 109-127. 2008.The question "what is art?" is often said to be venerable and vexing. In fact, the following answer to the question should be obvious: (R) item x is a work of art if and only if x is a work in practice P and P is one of the arts. Yet (R) has appeared so far from obvious that nobody has given it a moment's thought. The trouble is not that anyone might seriously deny the truth of (R), but rather that they will find it uninformative. After all, the vexing question is pressed upon us by radical chan…Read more
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172Virtues of Art: Good TasteAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 82 (1): 197-211. 2008.If good taste is a virtue, then an account of good taste might be modelled on existing accounts of moral or epistemic virtue. One good reason to develop such an account is that it helps solve otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics. This paper proposes an alternative to neo-Aristotelian models of good taste. It then contrasts the neo-Aristotelian models with the proposed model, assessing them for their potential to contend with otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics.
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9Conceptual Art Is Not What It SeemsIn Peter Goldie & Elisabeth Schellekens (eds.), Philosophy and conceptual art, Oxford University Press. 2007.Hypotheses in aesthetics should explain appreciative failure as well as appreciative success. They should state the general conditions under which people fail to understand and value works as works of art. This stricture is all the more important when the typical response to conceptual art is one of resistance. Some philosophers explain this by claiming that conceptual art violates traditional theories of art. Others say that it violates folk ontologies of art. In fact, the appreciative failure …Read more
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274Art Media and the Sense Modalities: Tactile PicturesPhilosophical Quarterly 47 (189): 425-440. 1997.It is widely assumed that the art media can be individuated with reference to the sense modalities. Different art media are perceived by means of different sense modalities, and this tells us what properties of each medium are aesthetically relevant. The case of pictures appears to fit this principle well, for pictures are deemed purely and paradigmatically visual representations. However, recent psychological studies show that congenitally and early blind people have the ability to interpret an…Read more
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58From Languages of Art to Art in MindJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58 (3): 227-231. 2000.
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