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167Relativism, standards and aesthetic judgementsInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 17 (2). 2009.This paper explores the various available forms of relativism concerning aesthetic judgement and contrasts them with aesthetic absolutism. Two important distinctions are drawn. The first is between subjectivism (which relativizes judgements to an individual's sentiments or feelings) and the relativization of aesthetic judgements to intersubjective standards. The other is between relativism about aesthetic properties and relativism about the truth-values of aesthetic judgements. Several plausible…Read more
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188Art, authenticity and appropriationFrontiers of Philosophy in China 1 (3): 455-476. 2006.It is often suggested that artists from one culture (outsiders) cannot successfully employ styles, stories, motifs and other artistic content developed in the context of another culture. I call this suggestion the aesthetic handicap thesis and argue against it. Cultural appropriation can result in works of high aesthetic value
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14Mag Uidhir, Christy, ed. Art and Abstract Objects. Oxford University Press, viii + 310 pp., $75.00 cloth (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (2): 218-220. 2014.
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9Jeanette Bicknell, Why Music Moves Us Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 29 (5): 316-317. 2009.Review of Why Music Moves Us by Jeanette Bicknell.
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20Batteux: The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single PrincipleOxford University Press UK. 2015.The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle by Charles Batteux was arguably the most influential work on aesthetics published in the eighteenth century. It influenced every major aesthetician in the second half of the century, and is the work generally credited with establishing the modern system of the arts: poetry, painting, music, sculpture and dance. Batteux's book is also an invaluable aid to the interpretation of the arts of eighteenth century. And yet there has never been a complete or re…Read more
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34Still more in defense of colorizationJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50 (3): 245-248. 1992.
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13Art and the Educated AudienceJournal of Aesthetic Education 44 (3): 29. 2010.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art and the Educated AudienceJames O. Young (bio)1. IntroductionWhen writing about art, aestheticians tend to focus on the work of art and on the artist who produces it. When they refer to audiences, they typically speak only of the effect that the artwork has on its audience. Aestheticians pay little, if any, attention to the important active role that an audience plays in the workings of a healthy art world. My goal in this essay i…Read more
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134Resemblance, Convention, and Musical ExpressivenessThe Monist 95 (4): 587-605. 2012.Peter Kivy and Stephen Davies developed an influential and convincing account of what features of music cause listeners to hear it as expressive of emotion. Their view (the resemblance theory) holds that music is expressive of some emotion when it resembles human expressive behaviour. Some features of music, they believe, are expressive of emotion because of conventional associations. In recent years, Kivy has rejected the resemblance theory without adopting an alternative. This essay argues tha…Read more
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65Key, temperament and musical expressionJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (3): 235-242. 1991.
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17The World We Found: The Limits of Ontological Talk Mark Sacks La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989, x + 198 pDialogue 31 (1): 124-. 1992.
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46Critique of Pure MusicOxford University Press. 2014.James O. Young seeks to explain why we value music so highly. He draws on the latest psychological research to argue that music is expressive of emotion by resembling human expressive behaviour. The representation of emotion in music gives it the capacity to provide psychological insight--and it is this which explains a good deal of its value
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1Berys Gaut and Paisley Livingston, eds., The Creation of Art: New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 24 (2): 107-109. 2004.
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24Relatively Speaking: The Coherence of Anti-Realist RelativismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (3). 1986.The current debate between realists and anti-realists has brought to the fore some ancient questions about the coherence of relativism. Realism is the doctrine according to which the truth of sentences is determined by the way things really are. Truth is thus the result of a relation between sentences and reality. One species of anti-realism holds, on the contrary, the truth results from a relation between sentences within a theory: a sentence is true if warranted by a correct theory.
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105Art and KnowledgeRoutledge. 2001.Almost all of us would agree that the experience of art is deeply rewarding. Why this is the case remains a puzzle; nor does it explain why many of us find works of art much more important than other sources of pleasure. Art and Knowledge argues that the experience of art is so rewarding because it can be an important source of knowledge about ourselves and our relation to each other and to the world. The view that art is a source of knowledge can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Horace. A…Read more
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243Profound offense and cultural appropriationJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (2). 2005.
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18Inquiry in the Arts and SciencesPhilosophy 71 (276). 1996.In his 1836 lectures to the Royal Institute, the great landscape painter John Constable stated that ‘Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.’ Landscape, he went on to say, should ‘be considered a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments.’1Constable makes two claims in this striking passage. The first is that painting is a form of inquiry. This is, by itself, a bold claim, but Constable goes on to state that painters and s…Read more
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23E. Lepore : "Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson" (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 66 (n/a): 249. 1988.
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442The Poverty of Musical OntologyJournal of Music and Meaning 13 1-19. 2014.Aaron Ridley posed the question of whether results in the ontology of musical works would have implications for judgements about the interpretation, meaning or aesthetic value of musical works and performances. His arguments for the conclusion that the ontology of musical works have no aesthetic consequences are unsuccessful, but he is right in thinking (in opposition to Andrew Kania and others) that ontological judgements have no aesthetic consequences. The key to demonstrating this concl…Read more
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75Coherence, anti-realism and the vienna circleSynthese 86 (3). 1991.Some members of the Vienna Circle argued for a coherence theory of truth. Their coherentism is immune to standard objections. Most versions of coherentism are unable to show why a sentence cannot be true even though it fails to cohere with a system of beliefs. That is, it seems that truth may transcend what we can be warranted in believing. If so, truth cannot consist in coherence with a system of beliefs. The Vienna Circle's coherentists held, first, that sentences are warranted by coherence wi…Read more
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47The Ancient and Modern System of the ArtsBritish Journal of Aesthetics 55 (1): 1-17. 2015.Paul Oskar Kristeller famously argued that the modern ‘ system of the arts ’ did not emerge until the mid-eighteenth century, in the work of Charles Batteux. On this view, the modern conception of the fine arts had no parallel in the ancient world, the middle-ages or the modern period prior to Batteux. This paper argues that Kristeller was wrong. The ancient conception of the imitative arts completely overlaps with Batteux’s fine arts : poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and dance. Writers from…Read more
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Aesthetics |