•  50
    This chapter contains sections titled: “Solid Objects” and Its Interpretations Towards an Alternative Interpretation “Solid Objects” as a reductio ad absurdum of One Kind of Aesthetic Theory Rapture does not Suffice.
  •  48
    The Philosophy of Art
    British Journal of Aesthetics 46 (4): 431-433. 2006.
    Book review of The Philosophy of Art. By STEPHEN DAVIES.. Blackwell. 2006
  •  43
    Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy
    with Michel Serres, Josue V. Harari, and David F. Bell
    Substance 12 (2): 123. 1983.
  •  37
    What's the Story?
    Substance 22 (2/3): 98. 1993.
    People often ask each other “what happens” in a novel or film, and they are inclined to think that some answers are better than others. Some claims about what happens in a story are deemed inaccurate or false, while others are the object of a fairly widespread consensus. The fact that a statement about a narrative discourse is deemed accurate does not mean that it will or should be accepted as an adequate statement about the story told in the discourse. If someone asks me what just happened in a…Read more
  •  37
    This article explores basic constraints on the nature and appreciation of cinematic adaptations. An adaptation, it is argued, is a work that has been intentionally based on a source work and that faithfully and overtly imitates many of this source's characteristic features, while diverging from it in other respects. Comparisons between an adaptation and its source are essential to the appreciation of adaptations as such. In spite of many adaptation theorists' claims to the contrary, some of the …Read more
  •  36
    Bernard Bolzano: On the Concept of the Beautiful - A Philosophical Essay
    Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 52 (2): 203-266. 2015.
    An intorduction to an English translation of Bernad Bolzano´s On the Concept of the Beautiful. A neglected gem in the history of aesthetics, Bolzano’s essay on beauty is best understood when read alongside his other writings and philosophical sources. This introduction is designed to contribute to such a reading. In Part I, I identify and discuss three salient ways in which Bolzano’s account can be misunderstood. As a lack of familiarity with Bolzano’s background assumptions is one source of the…Read more
  •  35
    Evaluating Emotional Responses to Fiction
    In Mette Hjort & Sue Laver (eds.), Emotion and the Arts, Oup Usa. 1997.
    Philosophical discussion of emotional responses to fiction has been dominated by work on the paradox of fiction, which is often construed as asking whether and how we can experience genuine emotions in reaction to fiction. One may also ask more generally how we ought to respond to fictional works, a question that has to do both with what we should do when reacting to fiction and with what we should and should not let happen to us. It is possible to delineate any principles regarding the rational…Read more
  •  33
    Bolzano on Art
    British Journal of Aesthetics 56 (4): 333-345. 2016.
    In his little-known essay published posthumously in 1849, Über die Eintheilung der schönen Künste, Bernard Bolzano proposes an explication of the concept of beautiful art as well as a classification of these arts. Bolzano’s divisions allowed him not only to provide a principled and comprehensive classification of actual, well-established arts, but also to anticipate kinds of beautiful art that would not exist or be widely recognized until decades after his death, such as moving pictures, abstrac…Read more
  •  33
    Paisley Livingston here addresses contemporary controversies over the role of "theory" within the humanistic disciplines. In the process, he suggests ways in which significant modern texts in the philosophy of science relate to the study of literature. Livingston first surveys prevalent views of theory, and then proposes an alternative: theory, an indispensable element in the study of literature, should be understood as a Cogently argued and informed in its judgments, this book points the way to…Read more
  •  30
    Bolzano on Beauty
    British Journal of Aesthetics 54 (3): 269-284. 2014.
    This paper sets forth Bolzano’s little-known 1843 account of beauty. Bolzano accepted the thesis that beauty is what rewards contemplation with pleasure. The originality of his proposal lies in his claim that the source of this pleasure is a special kind of cognitive process, namely, the formation of an adequate concept of the object’s attributes through the successful exercise of the observer’s proficiency at obscure and confused cognition. To appreciate this proposal we must understand how Bol…Read more
  •  30
    Thought experiments in aesthetics
    with Carl Mikael Pettersson
    In Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy, John Wiley & Sons. 2016.
    In the burgeoning literature on thought experiments, examples are drawn from almost all areas of philosophy, one exception, however, being aesthetics. There are good reasons why this is so: there are very few interesting theory-oriented thought experiments in aesthetics, which is unsurprising since there are few well-developed theories to test in this field. After evaluating some aesthetic thought experiments in light of some general epistemic questions regarding thought experiments, we argue th…Read more
  •  28
    Paisley Livingston on Stanislaw Lem and the history and philosophy of Virtual Reality. The technologies and speculations associated with “virtual reality” and cognate terms have recently made it possible for scores of journalists and academics to develop variations on a favorite theme - the newness of the new, and more specifically, the newness of that new and wildly different world-historical epoch, era, or Zeitgeist into which we are supposedly entering with the creation of powerful new machin…Read more
  •  28
    What is authorship? How are answers to that question related to ideas aboutthe understanding, interpretation, or appreciation of literary works? In what follows I provide a selective survey of the voluminous literature on thesedivisive questions, offer criticisms of some influential theories, and present an alternative.
  •  28
    Cinema and the Artificial Passions: a Conversation with the Abbé Du Bos
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 69 (3-4): 419-430. 2013.
    Resumo Na entrevista ficcional que se segue, as ideias de Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos sobre as artes de representação serão aplicadas a aspectos relevantes do cinema. Du Bos argumenta que, normalmente, as obras de ficção cinematográfica são projectadas para dar origem a “paixões artificiais”, que têm a função de fornecer alívio ao tédio, sem as consequências negativas que muitas actividades alternativas têm. Também será considerada a questão, se os filmes têm um significado filosófico. O resultado…Read more
  •  28
    This book explores concepts of rationality drawn from philosophy and the social sciences, in relation to traditions of literary enquiry. The author surveys basic assumptions and questions in philosophical accounts of action, in decision theory, and in the theory of rational choice. He gives examples ranging from Icelandic sagas to Poe and Beckett, and examines some situations and actions drawn from American and European fiction in order to analyze issues raised by contemporary models of agency. …Read more
  •  27
    Questions central to the ontology of art include the following: what sort of things are works of art? Do all works of art belong to any one basic ontological category? Do all or only some works have multiple instances? Do works have parts or constituents, and if so, what is their relation to the work as a whole? How are particular works of art individuated? Are they created or discovered? Can they be destroyed? Explicit and extensive treatments of these topics written prior to the 19th century h…Read more
  •  27
    [Book review article for Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise by Boden, Margaret A, no abstract is available.]
  •  26
    Introduced by the British philosopher Herbert Paul Grice, the cooperative principle and related maxims are part of his theory of CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE.
  •  24
    It is quite common to draw a distinction between complete and unfinished works of art. For example, it is uncontroversial to think that Vermeer had actually completed View of Delft before inept restorers added layers of coloured varnish to give the picture an antique quality, and there is very good evidence to support the related claim that the artist had not finished the work before he effected several pentimenti, including the painting over of a figure in the foreground on the right. Such beli…Read more
  •  24
    “Solid Objects,” Solid Objections: On Virginia Woolf and Philosophy
    In Dominic McIver Lopes, Berys Gaut & Garry L. Hagberg (eds.), Art and Ethical Criticism, Blackwell. 2008.
    This chapter contains sections titled: “Solid Objects” and Its Interpretations Towards an Alternative Interpretation “Solid Objects” as a reductio ad absurdum of One Kind of Aesthetic Theory Rapture does not Suffice.
  •  22
    Rationality and emotion
    SATS 3 (2): 7-24. 2002.
  •  21
    In response to Noël Carroll's criticisms of my essay on C. I. Lewis's conception of aesthetic experience, I discuss reasons given in support of axiological accounts of aesthetic experience, including Lewis's contentions about the intrinsic valence of all experiences and his emphasis on the interests motivating philosophical classifications of experience. I also respond to Carroll's remarks about a possible explanatory requirement on a conception of aesthetic experience and the idea that artists …Read more
  •  21
    Cet article propose une reconstruction de la théorie de la rationalité dynamique esquissée par Michael Bratman dans Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason. Evaluer la rationalité de l'agent, dit Bratman, ce n'est pas simplement évaluer les raisons d'agir qu'avait l'agent au moment de sa décision. Il faut se demander non seulement si l'agent était rationnel lorsqu'il a formé son intention d'agir, mais aussi s'il l'était encore en gardant ou en abandonnant cette même intention. Il s'agit d'une per…Read more
  •  20
    Arguing over intentions
    Revue Internationale de Philosophie 50 (198): 615-633. 1996.
  •  20
    Teaching & Learning Guide for: Cinema as Philosophy (review)
    Philosophy Compass 5 (4): 359-362. 2010.
    This guide accompanies the following article(s): Paisley Livingston, ‘Recent Work on Cinema as Philosophy’, Philosophy Compass 3/4 (2008): 509–603, doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2008.00158.x Author’s Introduction The idea that films can be philosophical, or in some sense ‘do’ philosophy, has recently found a number of prominent proponents. What is at stake here is generally more than the tepid claim that some documentaries about philosophy and related topics convey philosophically relevant content. I…Read more
  •  19
    Authorial intention and the varieties of intentionalism
    In Garry L. Hagberg & Walter Jost (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Intention Authorial Intention Varieties of Intentionalism The Utterance Model Hypothetical Intentionalism Hypothetical Intentionalism and Actualist Intentionalism Compared Success Conditions and the Dilemma Argument.