Boston University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1985
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
  •  117
    Destroying works of art
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47 (4): 367-373. 1989.
  •  187
    The metaphysics of jazz
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58 (2): 125-133. 2000.
  •  76
    Between rock and a Harp place
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1): 78-81. 1995.
  •  47
    Still more in defense of colorization
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50 (3): 245-248. 1992.
  •  48
    Art and Knowledge
    Routledge. 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
  •  152
    Resemblance, Convention, and Musical Expressiveness
    The 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
  •  26
    Inquiry in the Arts and Sciences
    Philosophy 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
  •  74
    Key, temperament and musical expression
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (3): 235-242. 1991.
  •  8
    Global Anti-Realism (review)
    Dialogue 40 (4): 814-815. 2001.
    Full disclosure: I am the author of a book with a title only typographically different from that of the one under review. The present book is avowedly hostile to global anti-realism while mine is a sustained defence of the position. My route to global anti-realism is discounted by page 4 of Cortens’s book. If my remarks sometimes have a critical tenor, no one should be surprised. Still, I found much to admire in this book. It contributes significantly to our understanding of global anti-realism.
  •  13
    Critical Notice
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (2): 491-500. 1987.
  •  162
    The coherence theory of truth
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
  •  114
    Art, knowledge, and exemplification
    British Journal of Aesthetics 39 (2): 126-137. 1999.
  •  33
    Relatively Speaking: The Coherence of Anti-Realist Relativism
    Canadian 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.
  •  9
    Aesthetics (edited book)
    Routledge. 2005.
    This four volume set brings together both classic and contemporary writings to provide a comprehensive collection of the most important essays on the subject. All of the various artistic genres are addressed, with sections on film, dance and architecture as well as music, literature and the visual arts. With a new introduction by the editor to guide the reader through the volumes, this major new work will provide student and researcher alike with key writings on aesthetics in one convenient, uni…Read more
  •  268
    Profound offense and cultural appropriation
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (2). 2005.
  • Jeanette Bicknell, Why Music Moves Us
    Philosophy in Review 29 (5): 316. 2009.
  •  11
    Evaluation and the Cognitive Function of Art
    The Journal of Aesthetic Education 29 (4): 65. 1995.
  •  569
    The Poverty of Musical Ontology
    Journal 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
  •  21
    Batteux: The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle
    Oxford 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
  •  54
    The Ancient and Modern System of the Arts
    British 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
  •  1
    Art and Knowledge
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (2): 198-200. 2005.
  •  24
    Review of noël Carroll, Art in Three Dimensions (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (12). 2010.
  •  22
  •  15
    Music and the Representation of Emotion
    Frontiers of Philosophy in China 8 (2): 332-348. 2013.
  •  54
    Critique of Pure Music
    Oxford 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
  •  161
    The cognitive value of music
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 (1): 41-54. 1999.
  •  16
    Semantic Challenges to Realism (review)
    Dialogue 41 (2): 405-406. 2002.
    Semantic realism is the view that sentences can be true even if speakers cannot know that they are. Anti-realists believe that sentences cannot be true unless speakers can know that they are. The difference between the two positions can be characterized as a dispute about truth conditions. Realists believe that they are objective, that is, they can obtain even though speakers cannot know that they do. Anti-realists believe that truth conditions are always recognizable. Two major lines of argumen…Read more