Jennifer McErlean

In this brief piece, Jennifer McErlean comments on Kevin Elliott’s thesis that we should decrease or even cease philosophical efforts to build more inclusive biocentric ethical accounts and instead increase efforts to build indirect anthropocentric arguments. While McErlean agrees that it is sensible to marshal a multiplicity of standpoints to strengthen policies that protect the natural world, she disagrees that philosophers no longer need to consider whether nature has intrinsic value. Two specific criticisms are offered. One is that indirect arguments are utilitarian and ethicists ought not to limit themselves a morality of consequences. The second is that underlying principles will make a difference, so that even if anthropocentric arguments currently converge with biocentric ones, we should not anticipate this will continue in future instances.

This dissertation deals with three related problems in the field of aesthetics and how they are treated in the work of Monroe C. Beardsley. The first problem is that of relevance; which considerations are relevant to determining the aesthetic value of a work? Beardsley uses his Instrumental Theory of Value to draw the boundaries of aesthetic relevance. The value of a work lies in its capacity to cause aesthetic experience. Thus any feature of the work which can increase or decrease this capacity is aesthetically relevant. While maintaining this basic insight, I argue against Beardsley that unity, complexity and intensity are not the only features which cause aesthetic experience. And the class of properties that contribute to the emergence of these positive aesthetic properties is broader than Beardsley claims. ;A second problem concerns the application of aesthetic terms; what is the relation between nonaesthetic and aesthetic properties and can we give general reasons to support descriptive aesthetic attributions? Beardsley's view is that aesthetic properties emerge from nonaesthetic properties. I argue, however, that his specific account of emergence cannot be sustained , and as a result Beardsley may be espousing a theory of aesthetic naturalism. ;A third problem also concerns generality, but with respect to aesthetic evaluation: what is the relation between justification of an ascription of aesthetic value and general aesthetic principles? In connection to this I discuss the views of William Dray and Mary Mothersill, who claim that historic or aesthetic principles are unnecessary for explanation. Unfortunately, both Dray and Mothersill postulate a disanalogy between historical explanation and aesthetic justification on the one hand, and scientific explanation on the other, a disanalogy which is illfounded. Their singularist models of explanation are unsuccessful and cannot be extended to the field of aesthetics. ;Finally, I suggest a direction one might pursue to construct a coherent singularist theory of aesthetics. This view relies on Donald Davidson's model of anomalous monism and attempts to extend his analysis of the relation between the physical and the psychological to the relation between the nonaesthetic and the aesthetic