•  2750
    Aesthetic Autonomy and Praxis: Art and Language in Adorno and Habermas
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (2): 155-175. 2011.
    Aesthetic autonomy has been given a variety of interpretations, which in many cases involve a number of claims. Key among them are: (i) art eludes conventional conceptual frameworks and their inherent incompatibility with invention and creativity; and (ii) art can communicate aspects of experience too fine‐grained for discursive language. To accommodate such claims one can adopt either a convention‐based account or a natural‐kind account. A natural‐kind theory can explain the first but requires …Read more
  •  1296
    Perceptual constraints and perceptual schemata: The possibility of perceptual style
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61 (3). 2003.
    <The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com > -- In this paper I carve out a space between the concept of "the object" and the seemingly endless ways in which "the object" can be represented pictorially. I will call the aspect of the pictorial representation which is made possible by this space, the pictorial representation's "style". I will explore this space by drawing upon theories of pictorial representation, leaving out, for the sake of my purposes here, a considerat…Read more
  •  1286
    Beauty as harmony of the soul: the aesthetic of the Stoics
    In Marietta Rosetto, Michael Tsianikas, George Couvalis & Maria Palaktsoglou (eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Greek Studies 2009, Flinders University. pp. 33-42. 2012.
    Aesthetics is not an area to which the Stoics are normally understood to have contributed. I adopt a broad description of the purview of Aesthetics according to which Aesthetics pertains to the study of those preferences and values that ground what is considered worthy of attention. According to this approach, we find that the Stoics exhibit an Aesthetic that reveals a direct line of development between Plato, the Stoics, Thomas Aquinas and the eighteenth century, specifically Kant’s aesthetics.…Read more
  •  1159
    The aim of this paper is to draw the attention of those conducting research on imagery to the different kinds of visual information deployed by expert drawers compared to non-expert drawers. To demonstrate this difference I draw upon the cognitive science literature on vision and imagery to distinguish between three different ways that visual phenomena can be represented in memory: structural descriptions, denotative descriptions, and configural descriptions. Research suggests that perception an…Read more
  •  1154
    Towards a Unified Theory of Beauty
    Literature & Aesthetics 9 7-27. 1999.
    The Pythagorean tradition dominates the understanding of beauty up until the end of the 18th Century. According to this tradition, the experience of beauty is stimulated by certain relations perceived to be between an object/construct's elements. As such, the object of the experience of beauty is indeterminate: it has neither a determinate perceptual analogue (one cannot simply identify beauty as you can a straight line or a particular shape) nor a determinate concept (there are no necessary and…Read more
  •  1091
    Beauty
    Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy. 2019.
    This is an 18,500 word bibliography of philosophical scholarship on Beauty which was published online in the Oxford Bibliographies Online. The entry includes an Introduction of 800 words, 21 x 400-word sub-themes and 168 annotated references. INTRODUCTION Philosophical interest in beauty began with the earliest recorded philosophers. Beauty was deemed to be an essential ingredient in a good life and so what it was, where it was to be found and how it was to be included in a life were prime cons…Read more
  •  1056
    Between Philosophy and Art
    with Elizabeth B. Coleman, David Macarthur, James Phillips, and Daniel von Sturmer
    Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 5 (2/3): 135-150. 2016.
    Similarity and difference, patterns of variation, consistency and coherence: these are the reference points of the philosopher. Understanding experience, exploring ideas through particular instantiations, novel and innovative thinking: these are the reference points of the artist. However, at certain points in the proceedings of our Symposium titled, Next to Nothing: Art as Performance, this characterisation of philosopher and artist respectively might have been construed the other way around. …Read more
  •  916
    Perceptual principles as the basis for genuine judgments of beauty
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (8-9): 8-9. 2000.
    This paper comments on an article by V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein (JCS,1999) in which they purport to be identifying the neurological principles of beauty. I draw attention to the way the problem of beauty is construed in the philosophical literature by Mary Mothersill (1984) and Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment). I argue that Ramachandran and Hirsteins' principles do not address the problem of beauty because they do not differentiate between the experience of beauty and other close…Read more
  •  850
    The Classical Trinity and Kant's Aesthetic Formalism
    Critical Horizons 11 (3): 419-441. 2010.
    I identify two mutually exclusive notions of formalism in Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: a thin concept of aesthetic formalism and a thick concept of aesthetic formalism. Arguably there is textual support for both concepts in Kant’s third critique. I offer interpretations of three key elements in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement which support a thick formalism. The three key elements are: Harmony of the Faculties, Aesthetic Ideas and Sensus Communis. I interpret these concepts in rel…Read more
  •  839
    At a time when professional art criticism is on the wane, the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy demands fresh answers. Professional art criticism provided a basis upon which to distinguish apt experiences of art from the idiosyncratic. However, currently the kind of narratives from which critics once drew are underplayed or discarded in contemporary exhibition design where the visual arts are concerned. This leaves open the possibility that art operates either as mere stimulant to priva…Read more
  •  826
    On Jane Forsey’s Critique of the Sublime
    In Lars Aagaard-Mogensen (ed.), The Possibility of the Sublime: Aesthetic Exchanges, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 81-91. 2017.
    The sublime is an aspect of experience that has attracted a great deal of scholarship, not only for scholarly reasons but because it connotes aspects of experience not exhausted by what Descartes once called clear distinct perception. That is, the sublime is an experience of the world which involves us in orientating ourselves within it, and this orientation, our human orientation, elevates us in comparison to the non-human world according to traditional accounts of the sublime. The sublime tell…Read more
  •  630
    Beauty
    In Berys Nigel Gaut & Dominic Lopes (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Routledge. pp. 307-319. 2000.
    Beauty is evil, a surreptitious diversion of earthly delights planted by the devil, according to the third century theologian-philosopher Tertullian. Beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth, according to another third century philosopher, Plotinus. Could these two really be talking about the same thing? That beauty evokes an experience of pleasure is probably the only point on which all participants in the continuing debate on beauty agree. But what kinds of pleasure one considers …Read more
  •  617
    In _Aesthetics and Material Beauty_, Jennifer A. McMahon develops a new aesthetic theory she terms Critical Aesthetic Realism - taking Kantian aesthetics as a starting point and drawing upon contemporary theories of mind from philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. The creative process does not proceed by a set of rules. Yet the fact that its objects can be understood or appreciated by others suggests that the creative process is constrained by principles to which others have access. Acco…Read more
  •  592
    Review of Aesthetics and Rock Art (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 46 (2): 208-210. 2006.
    The essays collected in this volume are written by scholars from a wide range of disciplines (anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy and psychology). The papers ostensibly address how to evaluate rock art, but can also be read in the context of offering support for the affirmative in the debate regarding whether aesthetics is a cross-cultural discipline. Two alternative conceptions of the aesthetic provide the underlying antithesis and thesis respectively to all papers. The antit…Read more
  •  575
    Aesthetics is the grammar of desire
    Aesthetic Investigations 1 (1): 156-164. 2015.
    This essay presents the nature of aesthetic judgment, the significance of aesthetic judgment and finally, the relevance of art to understanding aesthetic judgment.
  •  549
    Review of The metaphysics of beauty (review)
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (4): 358-60. 2002.
    This book is a compilation of papers that Zangwill has had published previously in a number of journals; this journal among them. The topics of these papers centre on the nature of aesthetic properties. Read as such, the papers are, for the most part, erudite and illuminating, presenting as they do a very clear synthesis of various well known positions on the relation of aesthetic properties to non-aesthetic properties; the relation of beauty to other aesthetic concepts; and the nature of the …Read more
  •  536
    Imagination
    In Jennifer A. Mcmahon (ed.), Social Aesthetics and Moral Judgment: Pleasure, Reflection and Accountability, Routledge. pp. 66-87. 2018.
    The standard cognitive theory of art claims that art can be insightful while maintaining that imagining is motivationally inert [Walton 1990] even when some epistemic advantage is claimed for it [Currie 1995]. However, if we assume art as art can be insightful, we also assume that the imagining it occasions has a lasting impact on belief. In this chapter, I argue that imagining of the kind occasioned by art can be held non-occurrently [Schellenberg 2013] without delusion and can motivate behavio…Read more
  •  512
    Aesthetic perception
    Communication and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Journal 29 (1): 37-64. 1996.
    In this paper I suggest ways in which vision theory and psychology of perception may illuminate our understanding of beauty. I identify beauty as a phenomenon which is (i) ineffable, (ii) subjectively universal (intersubjective), and (iii) manifested in objects as formal structure. I present a model of perception by which I can identify a representation whose underlying principles would explain these features of beauty. The fact that these principles underlie the representation rather than const…Read more
  •  510
    In this book, McMahon argues that a reading of Kant’s body of work in the light of a pragmatist theory of meaning and language leads one to put community reception ahead of individual reception in the order of aesthetic relations. A core premise of the book is that neo-pragmatism draws attention to an otherwise overlooked aspect of Kant’s "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," and this is the conception of community which it sets forth. While offering an interpretation of Kant’s aesthetic theory, the…Read more
  •  508
    Critical Aesthetic Realism
    Journal of Aesthetic Education 45 (2): 49-69. 2011.
    A clear-cut concept of the aesthetic is elusive. Kant’s Critique of Judgment presents one of the more comprehensive aesthetic theories from which we can extract a set of features, some of which pertain to aesthetic experience and others to the logical structure of aesthetic judgment. When considered together, however, these features present a number of tensions and apparent contradictions. Kant’s own attempt to dissolve these apparent contradictions or dichotomies was not entirely satisfactory a…Read more
  •  492
    Review of Paul Crowther The Kantian Aesthetic (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 51 (2): 229-231. 2011.
    Paul Crowther provides interpretations of key concepts in Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, indicating (particularly in very informative footnotes) how his views compare with those of other Kant commentators such as Paul Guyer, Rachel Zuckert, Béatrice Longuenesse, Henry Allison, Donald Crawford, Robert Wicks and others. One might be inclined to ask whether yet another interpretation of Kant’s third critique was needed, yet compared to his other two critiques, Kant’s Critique of Judgment c…Read more
  •  462
    The significance of Plato's notions of beauty and pleasure in the philosophy of Kant
    Greek Research in Australia: Proceedings of the Biennial Conference of Greek Studies 2005 6 27-34. 2007.
    Plato conceived of the Form of Beauty as quite distinct from the Form of the Good. Beauty was a means to the Good. The ascent theory of the Symposium has suggested to some commentators that Plato envisaged two kinds of beauty, the sensuous and the intellectual, and that to reach the Good we must transcend our sensuous desires and cultivate an appreciation of intellectual beauty. However, in the Laws Plato presents us with a third notion of beauty, which is neither sensuous nor intellectual. To e…Read more
  •  431
    Aesthetic reflection and the very possibility of art
    In Ian North (ed.), Visual Animals: Cross Overs, Evolution and New Aesthetics, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia. pp. 73-83. 2007.
    If we conceive of ourselves as animals, it might be accurate to call us visual animals. The visual cortex is much larger in us relative to the size of our brains than in other animals, and large relative to the parts of the cortex responsible for the transmission of signals emanating from the other perceptual transducers. Our ability to recall visual images, recombine them in imagination and enter imaginatively into narratives is linked to this evolved piece of brain architecture. However, wha…Read more
  •  431
    Aesthetics and Film. By Katherine Thomson‐Jones (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 62 (249): 865-867. 2012.
    Each chapter covers one topic and largely consists of brief summaries of arguments for and against various themes. The topic of the first chapter is whether and on what basis a film can be considered art. Photography is used as an analogy. The arguments range from considering the mechanical form of cinema as an obstacle to arthood to arguments considering cinema’s mechanical nature as essential to its arthood; the former by those who ground art in human agency, the latter by those who ground …Read more
  •  428
    The Space of Reception: Framing Autonomy and Collaboration
    with Carol A. Gilchrist
    In Brad Buckley & John Conomos (eds.), Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics, Libri Publishing. pp. 201-212. 2017.
    In this paper we analyse the ideas implicit in the style of exhibition favoured by contemporary galleries and museums, and argue that unless the audience is empowered to ascribe meaning and significance to artwork through critical dialogue, the power not only of the audience is undermined but also of art. We argue that galleries and museums preside over an experience economy devoid of art, unless (i) indeterminacy is understood, (ii) the critical rather than coercive nature of art is facilitat…Read more
  •  422
    This edited collection sets forth a new understanding of aesthetic-moral judgment organised around three key concepts: pleasure, reflection, and accountability. The overarching theme is that art is not merely a representation or expression like any other, but that it promotes shared moral understanding and helps us engage in meaning-making. This volume offers an alternative to brain-centric and realist approaches to aesthetics. It features original essays from a number of leading philosophers of…Read more
  •  358
    Review of The Significance of Beauty: Kant on Feeling and the System of the Mind (review)
    Philosophy in Review 19 (2): 122-124. 1999.
    Matthews discusses the role of our ability to make a judgment of taste (judgment of beauty) within Kant's notion of the structure of the mind. In doing this she does not simply rely upon what we can learn from the first part of the third critique, the 'Critique of Aesthetic Judgment', but draws upon Kant's philosophy as a whole, including the first two critiques and the second part of The Critique of Judgment, the 'Critique of Teleological Judgment'. She looks at how the ability to judge beaut…Read more
  •  356
    Review of Making sense. A theory of interpretation (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (1). 2002.
    The distinctive feature of Thom’s theory of interpretation is that it takes the classicist view regarding the stability of the object of interpretation, and the post-structuralist view regarding what counts as interpretation. Accordingly, he must admit the possibility that any one object of interpretation, stable though it be, can have multiple (yet possibly incommensurable) successful interpretations.
  •  325
    Liberal Naturalism , Aesthetic Reflection, and the Sublime.
    In Mario De Caro & David Macarthur (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Liberal Naturalism, Routledge. pp. 281-298. 2022.
    According to the scientific image, aesthetic experience is constituted by private reverie or mindless gratification of some kind. This image fails to fully acknowledge the theoretical and hence cultural aspect of perception, which includes aesthetic experience. This chapter reframes aesthetic reflective judgment in terms of perceptual processes (section 2); intentional pleasure (section 3); non-perceptually represented perceptual properties (section 4); and intersubjectivity (section 5). By…Read more
  •  293
    Deflating metaphors and emerging contexts: Messing with your mind in a material world
    In Natasha Bullock & Alexie Glass-Kantor (eds.), Adelaide Biennial 2012 Catalogue, Parallel Collisions, Art Gallery of South Australia. pp. 194-98. 2013.
    A discussion of the way the visual artists represented in Adelaide’s 2012 Biennale draw attention to new conceptions of place, time and self which highlight the contingent nature of the narratives that underlie our day to day existence. Disenchantment or re-enchantment are increasingly redundant conceptions. Such narratives are always fluid. Among the ebbs and flows, new conceptions emerge, providing in effect new ways of being in the world, and in turn prompting a reshuffling of what we thou…Read more