Cain Todd

Does this Bonnes-Mares really have notes of chocolate, truffle, violets, and merde de cheval? Can wines really be feminine, profound, pretentious, or cheeky? Can they express emotion or terroir? Do the judgements of 'experts' have any objective validity? Is a great wine a work of art? Questions like these will have been entertained by anyone who has ever puzzled over the tasting notes of a wine writer, or been baffled by the response of a sommelier to an innocent question. Only recently, however, have they received the serious philosophical attention they deserve. Touching on issues in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and aesthetics, this book provides a clear and engaging discussion of the philosophical significance of wine that will be accessible to all wine lovers, specialists and non-specialists alike. The author offers throughout a sustained defence of the objectivity of wine judgements, a demystification of the nature of expertise, and a theory of the aesthetic value of wine and its appreciation.

Philosophers have long been interested in the various similarities and differences between perception and imagination. One of the most interesting purported differences is the relationship that attention bears to each. Colin McGinn (2004), especially, has provided a comprehensive discussion of these relations, pointing out that imagery, unlike perceptual experiences (percepts), essentially requires attention, presents no equivalent of the visual field for attention to explore, lacks saturation, and cannot provide new information about what is imagined. Moreover, McGinn and others have also maintained that images, like percepts, are transparent. In this paper I will examine all of these claims, arguing first that there are few good reasons to accept the differences between imagery and perceptual experiences in respect of the role that attention is supposed to play in each, and secondly, that in any case the transparency claim is in tension with the other claims made about imagery. I conclude that the most salient difference between imagination and perception consists in the non-attributive phenomenology of the former. Finally, I turn briefly to some implications of this characteristic of imagining for the nature of pictorial depiction, arguing against the plausibility of accounts that attempt to explain it by appealing to the imagination.

This paper examines two phenomena that are usually treated separately but which resemble each other insofar as they both raise questions concerning the difference, if there is one, between so-called ‘real’ and ‘as if’ emotions: affective memory and imagined emotion. The existence of both states has been explicitly denied, and there are very few positive accounts of either. I will argue that there are no good grounds for scepticism about the existence of ‘as if’ emotions, but also that the existing positive accounts of them are all explanatorily inadequate. Comparing the two phenomena directly, I contend, allows us to defend the existence of both by showing how they essentially involve the same ‘affective bodily imagery’. The final part of the paper offers an original, empirically informed account of the nature of this imagery, the role it plays in ‘as if’ emotions, and how it may help illuminate some important connections between memory, imagination, and emotion.