•  3142
    Why Pornography Can't Be Art
    Philosophy and Literature 33 (1): 193-203. 2009.
    Claims that pornography cannot be art typically depend on controversial claims about essential value differences (moral, aesthetic) between pornography and art. In this paper, I offer a value-neutral exclusionary claim, showing pornography to be descriptively at odds with art. I then show how my view is an improvement on similar claims made by Jerrold Levinson. Finally I draw parallels between art and pornography and art and advertising as well as show that my view is consistent with our typical…Read more
  •  1980
    What's So Bad about Blackface?
    In Dan Flory & Mary Bloodsworth-Lugo (eds.), Race, Philosophy, and Film, Routledge. pp. 51-68. 2013.
    I argue that what’s so bad (qua film fiction) about the cinematic practice of actor-character race-mismatching—be it the historically infamous and intuitively repugnant practice of blackface or one of its more contemporary kin—is that the extent to which film-fictions employ such practices is typically the extent to which such film-fictions unrealistically depict facts about race. More precisely, I claim that race-mismatching film fictions—understood as a species of unrealistic fiction—are prima…Read more
  •  1464
    Comics & Collective Authorship
    In Aaron Meskin & Roy T. Cook (eds.), The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 47-67. 2012.
    Most mass-art comics (e.g., “superhero” comics) are collectively produced, that is, different people are responsible for different production elements. As such, the more disparate comic production roles we begin to regard as significantly or uniquely contributory, the more difficult questions of comic authorship become, and the more we view various distinct production roles as potentially constitutive is the more we must view comic authorship as potentially collective authorship. Given the gener…Read more
  •  1425
    A Portrait of the Artist as an Aesthetic Expert
    In Gregory Currie, Matthew Kieran & Aaron Meskin (eds.), Aesthetics and the Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    For the most part, the Aesthetic Theory of Art—any theory of art claiming that the aesthetic is a descriptively necessary feature of art—has been repudiated, especially in light of what are now considered traditional counterexamples. We argue that the Aesthetic Theory of Art can instead be far more plausibly recast by abandoning aesthetic-feature possession by the artwork for a claim about aesthetic-concept possession by the artist. This move productively re-frames and re-energizes the debate su…Read more
  •  958
    The Epistemic Misuse & Abuse of Pictorial Caricature
    American Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2): 137-152. 2013.
    I claim that caricature is an epistemically defective depiction. More precisely, when employed in service to some epistemic uptake, I claim that caricature can have a non-negligible epistemic effect only for a less than ideally rational audience with certain cognitive biases. An ideally rational audience, however, would take all caricature to be what I refer to as fairground caricature, i.e., an interesting or entertaining form of depiction that is at best only trivially revelatory. I then argue…Read more
  •  792
    Photographic Art: An Ontology Fit to Print
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (1): 31-42. 2012.
    A standard art-ontological position is to construe repeatable artworks as abstract objects that admit multiple concrete instances. Since photographic artworks are putatively repeatable, the ontology of photographic art is by default modelled after standard repeatable-work ontology. I argue, however, that the construal of photographic artworks as abstracta mistakenly ignores photography’s printmaking genealogy, specifically its ontological inheritance. More precisely, I claim that the products of…Read more
  •  726
    Failed-Art and Failed Art-Theory
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (3): 381-400. 2010.
    An object being non-art appears only trivially informative. Some non-art objects, however, could be saliently 'almost' art, and therefore objects for which being non-art is non-trivially informative. I call these kinds of non-art objects 'failed-art' objects—non-art objects aetiologically similar to art-objects, diverging only in virtue of some relevant failure. I take failed-art to be the right sort of thing, to result from the right sort of action, and to have the right sort of history require…Read more
  •  691
    Minimal authorship (of sorts)
    Philosophical Studies 154 (3). 2011.
    I propose a minimal account of authorship that specifies the fundamental nature of the author-relation and its minimal domain composition in terms of a three-place causal-intentional relation holding between agents and sort-relative works. I contrast my account with the minimal account tacitly held by most authorship theories, which is a two-place relation holding between agents and works simpliciter. I claim that only my view can ground productive and informative principled distincitons between…Read more
  •  643
    The Paradox of Suspense Realism
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69 (2): 161-171. 2011.
    Most theories of suspense implicitly or explicitly have as a background assumption what I call suspense realism, i.e., that suspense is itself a genuine, distinct emotion. I claim that for a theory of suspense to entail suspense realism is for that theory to entail a contradiction, and so, we ought instead assume a background of suspense eliminativism, i.e., that there is no such genuine, distinct emotion that is the emotion of suspense. More precisely, I argue that i) any suspense realist (...)…Read more
  •  542
    How to Frame Serial Art
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71 (3): 261-265. 2013.
    Most artworks—or at least most among those standardly subject to philosophical scrutiny—appear to be singular, stand-alone works. However, some artworks (indeed, perhaps a good many) are by contrast best viewed in terms of some larger grouping or ordering of artworks. i.e., as a series. The operative art-theoretic notion of series in which I am interested here is that of an individual and distinct artwork that is itself non-trivially composed of a non-trivial sequence of artworks (e.g., Walter d…Read more
  •  530
    Getting Emotional Over Contours: Response to Seeley
    Essays in Philosophy 13 (2): 518-521. 2012.
    Bill Seeley suggests that what follows from research into crossmodal perception for expression and emotion in the arts is that there is an emotional contour (i.e., a contour constitutive of the content of an emotion and potentially realizable across a range of media). As a response of sorts, I speculate as to what this might hold for philosophical and empirical enquiry into expression and emotion across the arts as well as into the nature of the emotions themselves.
  •  503
    I consider the field of aesthetics to be at its most productive and engaging when adopting a broadly philosophically informative approach to its core issues (e.g., shaping and testing putative art theoretic commitments against the relevant standard models employed in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind) and to be at its most impotent and bewildering when cultivating a philosophically insular character (e.g., selecting interpretative, ontological, or conceptual models sole…Read more
  •  462
    Unrealistic Fictions
    American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1): 33--46. 2011.
    In this paper, we develop an analysis of unrealistic fiction that captures the everyday sense of ‘unrealistic’. On our view, unrealistic fictions are a species of inconsistent fictions, but fictions for which such inconsistency, given the supporting role we claim played by genre, needn’t be a critical defect. We first consider and reject an analysis of unrealistic fiction as fiction that depicts or describes unlikely events; we then develop our own account and make an initial statement of it: un…Read more
  •  449
    Aesthetic Higher-Order Evidence for Subjectivists
    British Journal of Aesthetics 63 (2): 235-249. 2023.
    Aesthetic subjectivism takes the truth of aesthetic judgments to be relative to the individual making that judgment. Despite widespread suspicion, however, this does not mean that one cannot be wrong about such judgments. Accordingly, this does not mean that one cannot gain higher-order evidence of error and fallibility that bears on the rationality of the aesthetic judgment in question. In this paper, we explain and explore these issues in some detail.
  •  446
    Art Concept Pluralism
    Metaphilosophy 42 (1-2): 83-97. 2011.
    Abstract: There is a long tradition of trying to analyze art either by providing a definition (essentialism) or by tracing its contours as an indefinable, open concept (anti-essentialism). Both art essentialists and art anti-essentialists share an implicit assumption of art concept monism. This article argues that this assumption is a mistake. Species concept pluralism—a well-explored position in philosophy of biology—provides a model for art concept pluralism. The article explores the condition…Read more
  •  410
    Recordings as Performances
    British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (3): 298-314. 2007.
    This article claims that there is no in principle aesthetic difference between a live performance and a recording of that performance, and as such, performance individuation ought to be revised to reflect this. We ought to regard performances as types able to be instantiated both by live performances and by recordings of those performances, or we ought to abandon performances qua aesthetic objects
  •  396
    An eliminativist theory of suspense
    Philosophy and Literature 35 (1): 121-133. 2011.
    Motivating philosophical interest in the notion of suspense requires comparatively little appeal to what goes on in our ordinary work-a-day lives. After all, with respect to our everyday engagements with the actual world suspense appears to be largely absent—most of us seem to lead lives relatively suspense-free. The notion of suspense strikes us as interesting largely because of its significance with respect to our engagements with (largely fictional) narratives. So, when I indicate a preferenc…Read more
  •  374
    Judging Covers
    with Cristyn Magnus and P. D. Magnus
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71 (4): 361-370. 2013.
    Cover versions form a loose but identifiable category of tracks and performances. We distinguish four kinds of covers and argue that they mark important differences in the modes of evaluation that are possible or appropriate for each: mimic covers, which aim merely to echo the canonical track; rendition covers, which change the sound of the canonical track; transformative covers, which diverge so much as to instantiate a distinct, albeit derivative song; and referential covers, which not only in…Read more
  •  261
    Introduction to Special Issue on Printmaking
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73 (1): 1-8. 2015.
  •  225
    Art Concept Pluralism Undermines the Definitional Project
    British Journal of Aesthetics 62 (1): 81-84. 2022.
    This discussion note addresses Caleb Hazelwood’s ‘Practice-Centered Pluralism and a Disjunctive Theory of Art’. Hazelwood advances a disjunctive definition of art on the basis of an analogy with species concept pluralism in the philosophy of biology. We recognize the analogy between species and art, we applaud attention to practice, and we are bullish on pluralism—but it is a mistake to take these as the basis for a disjunctive definition.
  •  141
    Appreciating covers
    with Cristyn Magnus, P. D. Magnus, and Ron Mcclamrock
    Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 31 (63). 2022.
    A recording or performance of a song is a cover if there is an earlier, canonical recording of the song. It can seem intuitive to think that properly appreciating a cover requires considering it in relation to the original, or at least that doing so will yield a deeper appreciation. This intuition is supported by some philosophical accounts of covers. And it is complicated by the possibility of hearing in, whereby one hears elements of the original version in the cover. We argue that it can neve…Read more
  •  120
    Marguerite Clark as Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1918). Charlton Heston as Ramon Miguel Vargas in Touch of Evil (1958). Mizuo Peck as Sacagawea in Night at the Museum (2006). From the early days of cinema to its classic-era through to the contemporary Hollywood age, the history of cinema is replete with films in which the racial (or ethnic) background of a principal character does not match the background of the actor or actress portraying that character. I call this actor-character race-mismatch…Read more
  •  106
    Art & Abstract Objects (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2013.
    Art and Abstract Objects presents a lively philosophical exchange between the philosophy of art and the core areas of philosophy. The standard way of thinking about non-repeatable (single-instance) artworks such as paintings, drawings, and non-cast sculpture is that they are concrete (i.e., material, causally efficacious, located in space and time). Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is currently located in Paris. Richard Serra's Tilted Arc is 73 tonnes of solid steel. Johannes Vermeer's The Concert was stole…Read more
  •  47
    Does Art Pluralism Lead to Eliminativism?
    Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 61 (1): 73-80. 2024.
    A critical note on Christopher Bartel and Jack M. C. Kwong, ‘Pluralism, Eliminativism, and the Definition of Art’, Estetika 58 (2021): 100–113. Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word ‘art’ in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate plural…Read more
  •  28
    Unlimited Additions to Limited Editions
    Contemporary Aesthetics 7. 2009.
    In this paper I target the relationship between two prints that are roughly qualitatively identical and share a causal history. Is one an artwork if and only if the other is an artwork? To answer this, I propose two competing principles. The first claims that certain intentional relations must be shared by the prints (e.g., editioned prints vs. non-editioned prints). The second, which I endorse, appeals only to minimal print ontology, claiming that the two prints need only be what I call 'releva…Read more
  •  27
    Replies to Critics
    Journal of Aesthetic Education 52 (2): 40. 2018.
    I am grateful to my critics for their careful attention to Art and Art-Attempts. Here I’ll respond to their central challenges.1As David Davies notes, I argue that Jerrold Levinson’s historical-intentional definition of art, despite the emphasis it places on intentions, does not pass my test of taking intention-dependence seriously. This is because it construes art-making as an activity that cannot fail: if we accept Levinson’s picture, every art-attempt is guaranteed to be a success. Davies sug…Read more
  •  26
    Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art
    Philosophical Review 118 (4): 540-542. 2009.
  •  7
    Art & Art-Attempts
    Oxford University Press. 2013.
    Although few philosophers agree about what it is for something to be art, most, if not all, agree on one thing: art must be in some sense intention dependent. Art and Art-Attempts is about what follows from taking intention dependence seriously as a substantive necessary condition for something's being art. Christy Mag Uidhir argues that from the assumption that art must be the product of intentional action, along with basic action-theoretic account of attempts (goal-oriented intention-directed …Read more
  •  5
    Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art (review)
    Philosophical Review 118 (4): 540-542. 2009.
  •  5
    Introduction
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73 (1): 1-8. 2015.