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32Scruton's Aesthetics (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2012.Scruton's Aesthetics is a comprehensive critical evaluation of one of the major aestheticians of our age. The lead essay by Scruton is followed by fourteen essays by international commentators plus Scruton's reply. All discuss matters of enduring importance.
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31Doughnuts and DickieRatio 7 (1): 63-79. 1994.In this paper, I assess Dickie's institutional theory of art. I compare the earlier and later forms of the theory, and I point to various problems of detail with these accounts. I then proceed by arguing that Dickie's definition excludes Krispy Kreme doughnut boxes from possessing the status of being works of art, and it excludes those who made them from possessing the status of being artists. The intention is not to offer a counter example to Dickie's account. Rather, the complaint is that ther…Read more
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29Art IdentityDialogue 38 (2): 335-. 1999.RÉSUMÉ: J’étudie la conception selon laquelle l’identité d’une œuvre d’art est déterminée par ses propriétés esthétiques; et je la compare avec la conception selon laquelle l’identité de l’œuvre d’art est déterminée par les origines de sa composition. Je soutiens que les deux théories présentent des qualités et des défauts, et que les qualités de l’une sont les défauts de l’autre. Cela nous révèle le genre de théorie dont nous avons besoin.
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28Skin Deep or in the Eye of the Beholder?: The Metaphysics of Aesthetic and Sensory PropertiesPhilosophical and Phenomenological Research 61 (3): 595-618. 2000.I begin this paper by describing and making attractive a physicalist aesthetic realist view of aesthetic properties. I then argue against this view on the basis of two premises. The first premise is thesis of aesthetic/sensory dependence that I have defended elsewhere. The second premise is the denial of a mind-independence thesis about sensory properties. I give an argument for that denial. Lastly, I put these two premises together and conclude that physicalist aesthetic realism is false. I art…Read more
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27Disinterestedness: Analysis and Partial DefenseIn Larissa Berger (ed.), Disinterested Pleasure and Beauty: Perspectives from Kantian and Contemporary Aesthetics, De Gruyter. pp. 59-86. 2023.
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26Hanslick’s Deleted EndingBritish Journal of Aesthetics 57 (1): 85-95. 2017.We question Mark Evan Bonds’ interpretation of the deleted ending of Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beautiful. We argue that there is no evidence that it reveals a commitment to Pythagoreanism or Idealism. We supply an alternative explanation of the deletion.
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25Metaphor as ApropriationPhilosophy and Literature 38 (1): 142-152. 2014.In metaphor we appropriate the literal meanings of words, and use them in ways that do not correspond to their functions. I develop this way of understanding metaphor and situate it within a general functional account of literal word meaning. I show how metaphor can be understood within this framework. I address disagreement with metaphors and the role of logically embedded metaphors, and I show how an appropriation understanding of metaphor yields an explanation of these phenomena.Many artifact…Read more
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25How do aesthetic judgements differ from ordinary empirical judgements? It is widely accepted that one important respect in which judgements of taste differ from empirical judgements is that they are based on some kind of felt reaction or response — typically a pleasure or displeasure. This doctrine gained its classic statement in Kant’s Critique of Judgement.[1] And it is the basis for the prevalent view that in aesthetics, we must ’judge for ourselves’. The doctrine is generally taken to imply …Read more
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24Music, Metaphor, and Aesthetic ConceptsJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (1): 1-11. 2014.The aesthetic realist interprets many descriptions of music as metaphorical descriptions of aesthetic properties of music. I argue that aesthetic realism requires that nonaesthetic words are used to express both aesthetic and nonaesthetic concepts. But having distinguished the concepts, some plausible account must be given of their relation. A causal account of the relation between the possession of aesthetic and nonaesthetic concepts provides this, since the concepts are distinct but connected.…Read more
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21Moral RealismPhilosophical Quarterly 42 (169): 514. 1992.'...the book is very dense with ideas...arguments concerning innumerable interesting points are always worth pondering.'-THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW
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21Re-Centring Musicology and the Philosophy of MusicJournal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology 1 (2): 231-240. 2014.ABSTRACTI defend a non-reductionist view of music, according to which music should be understood in terms of musical beauty. I suggest that general theories of music are legitimate, and I discuss sublimity and argue that it is a species of beauty. Musical experience is the experience of aesthetic properties of that are realized in sounds. Sometimes, when we are fortunate, this experience generates pleasure in musical beauty. As Hanslick rightly insisted, there is no way to begin to understand wh…Read more
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20Concepts: What Moral Philosophy Can Learn from AestheticsIn Simon Kirchin (ed.), Thick Concepts, Oxford University Press. pp. 197. 2013.
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20onald Dworkin says he does not believe in the metaphysics of morality. He is a 'quietist' about this issue. He thinks that there are no coherent 'external' or 'archimedian' questions that we can raise about the whole discipline of moral thought and talk, and that the only questions we can raise are 'internal' ones about what moral thoughts we should think. Dworkin thinks that some metaphysical debates can go ahead, it is just the metaphysics of morality that is ill-gotten. This is because those …Read more
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20entry in Oxford Companion to Consciousness (ed.) Tim Bayne, Patrick Wilken and Axel Cleeremans, forthcoming.
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18Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Critical Essays (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2003.Includes twelve of the most important modern critical discussions of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, written by the leading Kant scholars and aestheticians of the twentieth century.
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17Yuval Harari on Human Rights and BiologyThink 23 (67): 59-63. 2024.Yuval Harari believes that humans make myths, and that these can be powerful engines for social change. One of these myths, claims Harari, is the existence of ‘liberal rights’. This article challenges that claim and defends the idea of grounding rights in human nature.
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16Against Analytic Moral FunctionalismRatio 13 (3): 275-286. 2000.I argue against the analytic moral functionalist view propounded by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit. I focus on the ‘input’ clauses of our alleged ‘folk moral theory’. I argue that the examples they give of such input clauses cannot plausibly be interpreted as analytic truths. They are in fact substantive moral claims about the moral ‘domain’. It is a substantive claim that all human beings have equal moral standing. There are those who have rejected this, such as Herman Göring. He was loyal to …Read more
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14Replies To Farrell And ComptonAmerican Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal 1 (1): 14-20. 2008.
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14Kant on Pleasure in the GoodDisputatio 13 (62): 181-188. 2021.I analyze and defend Kant’s claim in the Critique of the Power of Judgement that pleasure in the good is interested.
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13Science and Ethics: Demarcation, Holism and Logical ConsequencesEuropean Journal of Philosophy 18 (1): 126-138. 2010.I argue that attempts to demarcation ethics from science are not jeopardized by the fact that conjunctions of moral claims may have empirically verifiable logical consequences.
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13Music and Aesthetic Reality: Formalism and the Limits of DescriptionRoutledge. 2014.In this volume, Zangwill develops a view of the nature of music and our experience of music that foregrounds the aesthetic properties of music. He focuses on metaphysical issues about aesthetic properties of music, psychological issues about the nature of musical experience, and philosophy of language issues about the metaphorical nature of aesthetic descriptions of music. Among the innovations of this book, Zangwill addresses the limits of literal description, generally, and in the aesthetic ca…Read more
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12Fact, Science and Morality: Essays on A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and LogicPhilosophical Books 29 (3): 145-148. 1988.
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10I ask four questions. Why should we think that our hominid ancestor’s predation is not just a causal influence but the main causal factor responsible for human cruelty? Why not think of human cruelty as a necessary part of a syndrome in which other phenomena are necessarily involved? What definitions of cruelty does he propose that we operate with? And what about the meaning of cruelty for human beings?
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