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86Thoughtwriting—in Poetry and MusicIn Kendall L. Walton (ed.), In Other Shoes: Music, Metaphor, Empathy, Existence, Oxford University Press. pp. 54-74. 2015.Poetry is a literary art, and is often examined alongside the novel, stories, and theater. But poetry, much of it, has more in common with music, in important respects, than with other forms of literature. The emphasis on sound and rhythm in both poetry and music is obvious, but I will explore a very different similarity between them. All or almost all works of literary fiction have narrators—so it is said anyway—characters who, in the world of the fiction, utter or write the words of the text t…Read more
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3Style and the Processes of ArtIn Leonard B. Meyer & Berel Lang (eds.), The Concept of style, University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 220--248. 1979.
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31On Kendall Walton's Mimesis as Make-BelievePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (2): 383-387. 1991.
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94Marvelous images: on values and the artsOxford University Press. 2008.The twelve essays by Kendall Walton in this volume address a broad range of issues concerning the arts. Walton introduces an innovative account of aesthetic value, and explores relations between aesthetic value and values of other kinds. His classic 'Categories of Art' is included, as is 'Transparent Pictures', his controversial account of what is special about photographs. A new essay investigates the fact that still pictures are still, although some of them depict motion. New postscripts have …Read more
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242Listening with imagination: Is music representational?Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1): 47-61. 1994.
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446How marvelous! Toward a theory of aesthetic valueJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (3): 499-510. 1993.
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304Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic RealismCritical Inquiry 11 (2): 246-277. 1984.That photography is a supremely realistic medium may be the commonsense view, but—as Edward Steichen reminds us—it is by no means universal. Dissenters note how unlike reality a photograph is and how unlikely we are to confuse the one with the other. They point to “distortions” engendered by the photographic process and to the control which the photographer exercises over the finished product, the opportunities he enjoys for interpretation and falsification. Many emphasize the expressive nature …Read more
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86Meiosis, hyperbole, ironyPhilosophical Studies (1): 00-00. 2015.It is tempting to assume that understatement and overstatement, meiosis and hyperbole, are analogous figures of speech, differing only in whether the speaker represents a quantity as larger, or as smaller, than she means to claim that it is. But these tropes have hugely different roles in conversation. Understatement is akin to irony, perhaps a species of it. Overstatement is an entirely different kettle of fish. Things get interestingly messy when we notice that to overstate how large or expen…Read more
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61Looking Again through Photographs: A Response to Edwin MartinCritical Inquiry 12 (4): 801-808. 1986.My great-grandfather died before I was born. He never saw me. But I see him occasionally—when I look at photographs of him. They are not great photographs, by any means, but like most photographs they are transparent. We see things through them.Edwin Martin objects. His response consists largely of citing examples of things which, he thinks, are obviously not transparent, and declaring that he finds no relevant difference between them and photographs: once we slide down the slippery slope as far…Read more
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11Style and the Products and Processes of ArtIn Leonard B. Meyer & Berel Lang (eds.), The Concept of style, University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 45--66. 1979.
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156Are Representations Symbols?The Monist 58 (2): 236-254. 1974.The representational arts seem friendly territory for “symbol” theories of aesthetics. Much of the initial resistance one may feel to the idea that a Mondrian composition or a Scarlatti sonata is a symbol evaporates when we switch to a portrait of Mozart, Michelangelo’s Pietá, or Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. These representational works have reference to things outside themselves. The portrait is a picture of Mozart; the Pietá is a sculpture of Christ and his Mother; A Tale of Two Cities is a…Read more
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125Points of view in narrative and depictive representationNoûs 10 (1): 49-61. 1976.The reader's access to the fictional world of a novel is mediated by the narrator, when there is one; the fictional world is presented from the narrator's perspective. do depictions ever have anything comparable to narrators? apparent artists sometimes have a certain perspective on the fictional world. but they don't mediate our access to it; the fictional world is presented independently of their perspective on it. depictions do present fictional worlds from certain perspectives, but not usuall…Read more
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1129Mimesis as make-believe: on the foundations of the representational artsHarvard University Press. 1990.Mimesis as Make-Believe is important reading for everyone interested in the workings of representational art.
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254How remote are fictional worlds from the real world?Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37 (1): 11-23. 1978.
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34Review of Works and Worlds of Arts by Nicholas Wolterstorff (review)Journal of Philosophy 80 (3): 179-193. 1983.
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139Depiction, perception, and imagination: Responses to Richard WollheimJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (1). 2002.
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174"It's Only a Game!" Sports As FictionIn In Other Shoes: Music, Metaphor, Empathy, Existence, Oxford University Press. pp. 75-83. 2015.Sports and competitive games of many kinds—from tag to chess to baseball—are often occasions for make-believe. To participate either as a competitor or as a spectator is frequently to engage in pretense. The activities of playing and watching games have this in common with appreciating works of fiction and participating in children’s make-believe activities, although the make-believe in sports, masked by real interests and concerns, is less obvious than it is in the other cases. What is most int…Read more
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48Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational ArtsPhilosophical Review 102 (3): 440. 1993.
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344Précis of mimesis as make-believe: On the foundations of the representational artsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (2): 379-382. 1991.
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162Morals in Fiction and Fictional MoralityAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 68 (1): 27-66. 1994.
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134Languages of art: An emendationPhilosophical Studies 22 (5-6). 1971.In nelson goodman's "languages of art" a symbol system must be 'finitely differentiated', both syntactically and semantically, to count as a 'notation'. goodman's formulations of these differentiation requirements are seriously defective. it is shown that most of the examples of systems which he claims fail these requirements, do not fail them as they are stated. reformulations of the two requirements are offered, which accord with the examples and seem otherwise acceptable
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97Fearing fictionallyIn Alex Neill & Aaron Ridley (eds.), Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates, Routledge. pp. 257. 2001.
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1The presentation and portrayal of sound patternsIn J. Dancy, J. M. E. Moravcsik & C. C. W. Taylor (eds.), Human Agency: Language, Duty, and Value : Philosophical Essays in Honor of J.O. Urmson, Stanford University Press. pp. 230-257. 1988.
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