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761Fitting Feelings and Elegant Proofs: On the Psychology of Aesthetic Evaluation in MathematicsPhilosophia Mathematica. 2017.ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relationship between the epistemic and aesthetic criteria employed in such judgements, and on the nature of the psychological experiences underpinning them. I claim that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are plausibly understood as expressions of what I will call ‘aesthetic-epistemic feelings’ that serve a genuine cognitive and epistemic function. I will then propose a naturalistic account of these…Read more
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383Attending Emotionally to FictionJournal of Value Inquiry 46 (4): 449-465. 2012.This paper addresses the so-called paradox of fiction, the problem of explaining how we can have emotional responses towards fiction. I claim that no account has yet provided an adequate explanation of how we can respond with genuine emotions when we know that the objects of our responses are fictional. I argue that we should understand the role played by the imagination in our engagement with fiction as functionally equivalent to that which it plays under the guise of acceptance in practical re…Read more
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331Imaginability, morality, and fictional truth: Dissolving the puzzle of 'imaginative resistance'Philosophical Studies 143 (2): 187-211. 2009.This paper argues that there is no genuine puzzle of ‘imaginative resistance’. In part 1 of the paper I argue that the imaginability of fictional propositions is relative to a range of different factors including the ‘thickness’ of certain concepts, and certain pre-theoretical and theoretical commitments. I suggest that those holding realist moral commitments may be more susceptible to resistance and inability than those holding non-realist commitments, and that it is such realist commitments th…Read more
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309Imagination, Attitude, And Experience Inaesthetic JudgmentPostgraduate Journal of Aesthetics (1). 2004.In this paper I wish to defend a particular form of the traditional, and now almost wholly unfashionable, notion of an aesthetic attitude.
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229Imagination, Fantasy, and Sexual DesireIn Hans Maes & Jerrold Levinson (eds.), Art and Pornography, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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193Aesthetic, ethical, and cognitive valueSouth African Journal of Philosophy 26 (2): 216-227. 2007.This paper addresses two recent debates in aesthetics: the ‘moralist debate’, concerning the relationship between the ethical and aesthetic evaluations of artworks, and the ‘cognitivist debate’, concerning the relationship between the cognitive and aesthetic evaluations of artworks. Although the two debates appear to concern quite different issues, I argue that the various positions in each are marked by the same types of confusions and ambiguities. In particular, they demonstrate a persistent a…Read more
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170Quasi-realism, acquaintance, and the normative claims of aesthetic judgementBritish Journal of Aesthetics 44 (3): 277-296. 2004.My primary aim in this paper is to outline a quasi-realist theory of aesthetic judgement. Robert Hopkins has recently argued against the plausibility of this project because he claims that quasi-realism cannot explain a central component of any expressivist understanding of aesthetic judgements, namely their supposed ‘autonomy’. I argue against Hopkins’s claims by contending that Roger Scruton’s aesthetic attitude theory, centred on his account of the imagination, provides us with the means to d…Read more
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160Imagination, Aesthetic Feelings, and Scientific ReasoningIn Milena Ivanova & Stephen French (eds.), Aesthetics and Science, Routledge. 2020.
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153Unmasking the truth beneath the beauty: Why the supposed aesthetic judgements made in science may not be aesthetic at allInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (1). 2008.In this article I examine the status of putative aesthetic judgements in science and mathematics. I argue that if the judgements at issue are taken to be genuinely aesthetic they can be divided into two types, positing either a disjunction or connection between aesthetic and epistemic criteria in theory/proof assessment. I show that both types of claim face serious difficulties in explaining the purported role of aesthetic judgements in these areas. I claim that the best current explanation of t…Read more
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132Recreative minds: Imagination in philosophy and psychologyBritish Journal of Aesthetics 43 (4): 419-422. 2003.
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118Emotion and ValuePhilosophy Compass 9 (10): 702-712. 2014.The nature of the general connection between emotion and value, and of the various connections between specific emotions and values, lies at the heart of philosophical discussion of the emotions. It is also central to some accounts of the nature of value itself, of value in general but also of the specific values studied within particular philosophical domains. These issues all form the subject matter of this article, and they in turn are all connected by two main questions: (i) How do emotions …Read more
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117Representation and ephemerality in olfactionIn Thomas Crowther & Clare Mac Cumhaill (eds.), Perceptual Ephemera, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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90Imagination, Expressiveness, and Expression in the Case of WineIn Andrew Hamilton & Nick Zangwill (eds.), Scruton's Aesthetics, Palgrave Macmillan. 2012.
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82Why we do not perceive aesthetic propertiesIn Anne Reboul (ed.), Mind, Value and Metaphysics: philosophical papers dedicated to Kevin Mulligan, Springer. 2014.
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75Expression and Objectivity in the Case of Wine: Defending the Aesthetic Terroir of Tastes and SmellsRivista di Estetica 51 95-115. 2012.This paper provides an account of the nature of our appreciation of wine, and a defence of the aesthetic value of tastes and smells. Focusing primarily on Roger Scruton’s recent claims, I argue against him that our appreciation of wine meets his own constraints on aesthetic interest and, moreover, that the cultural significance he grants to wine is in large part grounded in its aesthetic value. I show that Scruton’s claims are thus in tension with each other, not because he has misunderstood the…Read more
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72Review: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (2): 192-193. 2005.
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68Percevoir l’expression émotionnelle dans les objets inanimés : l’exemple du vinDialogue 51 (1): 129-139. 2012.ABSTRACT: Amongst inanimate objects, it is generally accepted that at least some art forms, such as music and painting, are capable of being genuinely expressive of emotion, even though it is difficult to understand exactly how. In contrast, although expressive properties can be attributed to non-artworks, such as natural objects or wine, it has often been claimed that such objects cannot be genuinely expressive. Focussing on wine, I argue that once we understand properly the nature of expressiv…Read more
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63Knowing What To Do By Timothy ChappellAnalysis 77 (3): 673-675. 2017.© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] largely upon a series of previously published papers, this book tackles a diverse range of topics – including the nature of practical reasons, impartiality, personhood, the phenomenal content of moral experience, and the notions of glory and beauty in ethics – that are unified by an overarching commitment to an anti-syste…Read more
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55Tasting in Time: The Affective and Temporal Dimensions of Flavour PerceptionThe Monist 101 (3): 277-293. 2018.This paper explores some connections between flavour perception, emotion, and temporal experience. Focussing on the question, If you like that taste of X and I do not, are we tasting the same thing X?, I will approach it by looking at some differences between how experts and nonexperts ‘taste’. I will eventually answer that if by ‘the same thing’ we mean the overall flavour profile of a complex sensory object, then the answer must be negative. I will argue that there is indeed a relatively trivi…Read more
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55Fiction and the weave of life * by John GibsonAnalysis 69 (3): 594-596. 2009.The cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate about the nature and value of literary fiction has witnessed a lot of spilled ink amongst philosophers over the past decade. Gibson characterizes this debate as a conflict between two apparently incompatible intuitions: the ‘humanist’ intuition that works of literary fiction have some sort of cognitive value in telling us about the world, and the ‘sceptical’ anti-humanist intuition that such works, and their proper appreciation, are not essentially concerne…Read more
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52Quasi-realism, acquaintance, and the normative claims of aesthetic judgementBritish Journal of Aesthetics 44 (3): 277-296. 2004.
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46Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in AestheticsPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (227): 313-316. 2007.
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39Art and intention: A philosophical study – Paisley LivingstonPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (226). 2007.Do the artists intentions have anything to do with the making and appreciation of works of art? In Art and Intention, Paisley Livingston develops a broad and balanced perspective on perennial disputes between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists in philosophical aesthetics and critical theory. He surveys and assesses a wide range of rival assumptions about the nature of intentions and the status of intentionalist psychology. With detailed reference to examples from diverse media, art forms, …Read more
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37Quasi−Realism, Acquaintance, and The Normative Claims of Aesthetic JudgementBritish Journal of Aesthetics 44 (3): 277-296. 2004.
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34Fitting Feelings and Elegant Proofs: On the Psychology of Aesthetic Evaluation in Mathematics†Philosophia Mathematica 26 (2): 211-233. 2018.
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34Emotion and Value (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2014.This volume brings together new work by leading philosophers on the topics of emotion and value, and explores issues at their intersection. Recent work in philosophy and psychology has had important implications for topics such as the role that emotions play in practical rationality and moral psychology, the connection between imagination and emotion in the appreciation of fiction, and more generally with the ability of emotions to discern axiological saliences and to ground the objectivity of e…Read more
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22Immaginazione, attenzione e raffigurazioneRivista di Estetica 53 89-108. 2013.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, …Read more
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18Literatur, Aufmerksamkeit und epistemische EmotionenIn Ingrid Vendrell Ferran & Christoph Demmerling (eds.), Wahrheit, Wissen Und Erkenntnis in der Literatur: Philosophische Beiträge, De Gruyter. pp. 285-302. 2014.
Areas of Specialization
4 more
Aesthetic Realism and Anti-Realism |
Aesthetic Value |
Aesthetic Cognition |
Aesthetics |
Perception |
Attention |
Emotions |
Imagination |
Temporal Experience |
PhilPapers Editorships
Taste Experience |
Food and Drink Aesthetics |
Wine |