•  38
    Ontology and Transmedial Games
    In Jon Robson & Grant Tavinor (eds.), The Aesthetics of Videogames, . pp. 9-23. 2018.
    Some theorists claim that games are “transmedial”, meaning that the same game can be played in different media. It is unclear, however, what are the limits of transmedial games. Are all games in-principle transmedial, or only some? One suggestion offered by Jesper Juul is that, if games are understood as sets of rules, then a game is transmedial if its rules can be either implemented or adapted into some new media. I argue against this view on the grounds that the rules of many games are depende…Read more
  •  60
    Computer Art, Technology, and the Medium
    Being and Value in Technology. 2022.
    Technological advancements often lead to revolutions in the creation of art; but, what is unclear is whether such advancements always correspond to revolutions regarding the artistic medium. The notion of an artistic medium is central to our thinking about, engagement with, and appreciation of art. Accounts of the interpretation, understanding, and experience of art must at some point grapple with the role of the artistic medium against such endeavors. Moreover, artists do not choose their mediu…Read more
  •  52
    Pluralism, Eliminativism, and the Definition of Art
    Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 58 (2): 100-113. 2021.
    Traditional monist theories of art fail to account for the diversity of objects that intuitively strike many as belonging to the category art. Some today argue that the solution to this problem requires the adoption of some version of pluralism to account for the diversity of art. We examine one recent attempt, which holds that the correct account of art must recognize the plurality of concepts of art. However, we criticize this account of concept pluralism as being unable to offer an explanatio…Read more
  •  346
    Art, aesthetics, and the medium: comments for Nguyen on the art-status of games
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 48 (3): 321-331. 2021.
    Nguyen offers a number of profound insights about the nature and value of games. Games are works of art, according to Nguyen, because they offer players aesthetic experiences. Game designers aim to...
  •  30
    Ethics and Video Games
    In James Edward Harold (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art, Oxford University Press. 2023.
    Ethics in video gaming is broad topic that extends beyond the familiar instances of “moral panics”. This chapter will first divide ethical issues into internal and external moral questions. Roughly, this equates to a distinction between the ethics in games and the ethics of games. The ethical issues internal to video games arise due to both their status as fictions and their status as games. Many games afford players the opportunity to perform violent and vicious acts; however, these are of cour…Read more
  •  243
    Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But, should players worry about the morality of their virtual actions? A common argument is that games offer merely the virtual representation of violence. No one is actually harmed by committing a violent act in a game. So, it cannot be morally wrong to perform such acts. While this is an intuitive argument, it does not resolve the issue. Focusing on wh…Read more
  •  124
    Should we take into account an artist's personal moral failings when appreciating or evaluating the work? In this essay, I seek to expand Berys Gaut's account of ethicism by showing how moral judgment of an artist's private moral actions can figure in one's overall evaluation of their work. To expand Gaut's view, I argue that the artist's personal morality is relevant to our evaluation of their work because we may only come to understand the point of view of the work, and therefore the work's pr…Read more
  •  250
    Musical Thought And Compositionality
    Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 3 (1). 2006.
    Many philosophers and music theorists have claimed that music is a language, though whether this is meant metaphorically or literally is often unclear. If the claim is meant literally, then it faces serious difficulty—many find it compelling to think that music cannot be a language because it lacks any semantic value. On the other hand, if it is meant metaphorically, then it is not clear what is gained by the metaphor—it is not clear what the metaphor is meant to illuminate. Considering the clai…Read more
  •  753
    Hypocrisy as Either Deception or Akrasia
    Philosophical Forum 50 (2): 269-281. 2019.
    The intuitive, folk concept of hypocrisy is not a unified moral category. While many theorists hold that all cases of hypocrisy involve some form of deception, I argue that this is not the case. Instead, I argue for a disjunctive account of hypocrisy whereby all cases of “hypocrisy” involve either the deceiving of others about the sincerity of an agent's beliefs or the lack of will to carry through with the demands of an agent's sincere beliefs. Thus, all cases of hypocrisy can be described eith…Read more
  •  186
    Is it ever morally wrong for a consumer to imagine something immoral in a work of fiction, or for an author to prompt such imagining? Brandon Cooke has recently argued that it cannot be. On Cooke’s account, fictive imagining is immune to moral criticism because such cases of imagining do not amount to the endorsement of the immoral content, nor do they imply that the authors of such fictions necessarily endorse their contents. We argue against Cooke that in fact fictively imagining something imm…Read more
  •  316
    Rock as a Three-Value Tradition
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (2): 143-154. 2017.
    Gracyk, Kania, and Davies all agree that the rock tradition is distinctive for the central place that it gives to the appreciation of recorded tracks. But we should not be led by those arguments to conclude that the central position of the recorded track makes such appreciation the exclusive interest in rock. I argue that both songwriting and live performance are also central to the rock tradition by showing that the practice of recording tracks admits of a diversity of goals and aims that is no…Read more
  •  116
    The Ontology of Musical Works and the Role of Intuitions: An Experimental Study
    European Journal of Philosophy 26 (1): 348-367. 2018.
    Philosophers of music often appeal to intuition to defend ontological theories of musical works. This practice is worrisome as it is rather unclear just how widely shared are the intuitions that philosophers appeal to. In this paper, I will first offer a brief overview of the debate over the ontology of musical works. I will argue that this debate is driven by a conflict between two seemingly plausible intuitions—the repeatability intuition and the creatability intuition—both of which may be def…Read more
  •  52
    The Performance of Reading (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 60 (238): 220-222. 2010.
    No Abstract
  •  13
    Musical Understandings, by Stephen Davies (review)
    Mind 123 (492): 1184-1187. 2014.
  •  52
    Why Music Moves Us - Jeanette Bicknell (review)
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68 (3): 317-319. 2010.
  •  473
    Resolving the gamer’s dilemma
    Ethics and Information Technology 14 (1): 11-16. 2012.
    Morgan Luck raises a potentially troubling problem for gamers who enjoy video games that allow the player to commit acts of virtual murder. The problem simply is that the arguments typically advanced to defend virtual murder in video games would appear to also support video games that allowed gamers to commit acts of virtual paedophilia. Luck’s arguments are persuasive, however, there is one line of argument that he does not consider, which may provide the relevant distinction: as virtual paedop…Read more
  •  257
    Free will and moral responsibility in video games
    Ethics and Information Technology 17 (4): 285-293. 2015.
    Can a player be held morally responsible for the choices that she makes within a videogame? Do the moral choices that the player makes reflect in any way on the player’s actual moral sensibilities? Many videogames offer players the options to make numerous choices within the game, including moral choices. But the scope of these choices is quite limited. I attempt to analyze these issues by drawing on philosophical debates about the nature of free will. Many philosophers worry that, if our action…Read more
  •  585
    The Puzzle of Historical Criticism
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (2): 213-222. 2012.
    Works of fiction are often criticized for their historical inaccuracies. But this practice poses a problem: why would we criticize a work of fiction for its historical inaccuracy given that it is a work of fiction? There is an intuition that historical inaccuracies in works of fiction diminish their value as works of fiction; and yet, given that they are works of fiction, there is also an intuition that such works should be free from the constraints of historical truth. The puzzle of histori…Read more
  •  134
    Music Without Metaphysics?
    British Journal of Aesthetics 51 (4): 383-398. 2011.
    In a recent pair of articles, Aaron Ridley and Andrew Kania have debated the merits of the study of musical ontology. Ridley contends that the study of musical ontology is orthogonal to more pressing concerns over the value of music. Kania rejects this, arguing that a theory of the value of music must begin with an understanding of the ontology of music. In this essay, I will argue that, despite Kania's rejections, Ridley's criticism exposes a false methodological assumption that needs to be add…Read more
  •  1571
    The 'Fine Art' of Pornography?
    In Dave Monroe (ed.), Porn: Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 153--65. 2010.
    Can pornographic depictions have artistic value? Much pornography closely resembles art, at least in many superficial respects. Films, photographs, paintings—all of these can have artistic value. Of course, films, photographs and paintings can also be pornographic. If some photographs have artistic value, and some photographs are pornographic, can pornographic photographs have artistic value too? I argue that pornography may only possess artistic value despite, not by virtue of, its pornographic…Read more
  •  158
  •  62
    Works of music – Julian Dodd (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 59 (237): 760-762. 2009.
    No Abstract
  •  98
    Originality and Value
    Hermeneia 66-77. 2010.
    What does it mean to describe a work of art as being ‘original’? Frank Sibley believed that works of art are not valued for their originality independently of their aesthetic value. He argued that a work may be described as being ‘original’ if it is innovative and also exhibits some further aesthetic value. In this essay, I argue against this conjunctive account of originality as some kind of innovation-plus-value. I claim that a work may be valued for and described as being ‘original’ if the wo…Read more
  •  88
  •  215
    The Metaphysics of Mash‐Ups
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73 (3): 297-308. 2015.
    Accounts of the ontology of musical works seek to uncover what metaphysically speaking a musical work is and how we should identify instances of musical works. In this article, I examine the curious case of the mash-up and seek to address two questions: are mash-ups musical works in their own right and what is the relationship between the mash-up and its source materials? As mash-ups are part of the broader tradition of rock, I situate this discussion within an ontology of rock as defended by Th…Read more
  •  60
    Listening to Popular Music (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 48 (3): 357-359. 2008.
  •  72
    Art and Value (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (1): 94-96. 2005.
  •  5
    Review: Art and Value (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (1): 94-96. 2005.