Matthew Kieran

_Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art_ features pairs of newly commissioned essays by some of the leading theorists working in the field today. Brings together fresh debates on eleven of the most controversial issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art Topics addressed include the nature of beauty, aesthetic experience, artistic value, and the nature of our emotional responses to art. Each question is treated by a pair of opposing essays written by eminent scholars, and especially commissioned for the volume. Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, and paves the way for further discussion. Will serve as an accessible introduction to the major topics in aesthetics, while also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers

Musical listening, looking at paintings and literary creation are activities that involve perceptual and cognitive activity and so are of interest to psychologists and other scientists of the mind. What sorts of interest should philosophers of the arts take in scientific approaches to such issues? Opinion currently ranges across a spectrum, with 'take no notice' at one end and 'abandon traditional philosophical methods' at the other. This collection of essays, originating in a Royal Institute of Philosophy conference at the Leeds Art Gallery in 2012, represents many of the most interesting positions along that spectrum. Contributions address issues concerning aesthetic testimony, the processing and appreciation of poetry, the aesthetics of disgust, imagination, genre, evolutionary constraints on art appreciation, creativity, musical cognition and the limitations or productiveness of empirical enquiry for philosophical aesthetics.

_Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art _features pairs of newly commissioned essays by some of the leading theorists working in the field today. Brings together fresh debates on eleven of the most controversial issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art Topics addressed include the nature of beauty, aesthetic experience, artistic value, and the nature of our emotional responses to art. Each question is treated by a pair of opposing essays written by eminent scholars, and especially commissioned for the volume. Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, and paves the way for further discussion. Will serve as an accessible introduction to the major topics in aesthetics, while also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers

Musical listening, looking at paintings and literary creation are activities that involve perceptual and cognitive activity and so are of interest to psychologists and other scientists of the mind. What sorts of interest should philosophers of the arts take in scientific approaches to such issues? Opinion currently ranges across a spectrum, with 'take no notice' at one end and 'abandon traditional philosophical methods' at the other. This collection of essays, originating in a Royal Institute of Philosophy conference at the Leeds Art Gallery in 2012, represents many of the most interesting positions along that spectrum. Contributions address issues concerning aesthetic testimony, the processing and appreciation of poetry, the aesthetics of disgust, imagination, genre, evolutionary constraints on art appreciation, creativity, musical cognition and the limitations or productiveness of empirical enquiry for philosophical aesthetics.

Examining the complex role that motivation plays in creativity foregrounds the role of intrinsic motivation in paradigmatic cases of creative achievement. This is significant given the neglect of the role of motivation in the philosophical literature. Furthermore, given the way in which intrinsic motivation typically grounds and enables the cultivation of creativity for creatures like us, it pays to think of creativity in virtue-theoretic terms. As suggested by both empirical and conceptual considerations, intrinsic motivation insulates agents from pressures against or inhibitors of creativity. It helps to explain robustness across different situations and influences. Conceiving of creativity as a virtue of character also makes best sense of how and why we praise or criticize as we do and shows us how to cultivate creativity.

_Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts_ is the first comprehensive collection of papers by philosophers examining the nature of imagination and its role in understanding and making art. Imagination is a central concept in aesthetics with close ties to issues in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language, yet it has not received the kind of sustained, critical attention it deserves. This collection of seventeen brand new essays critically examines just how and in what form the notion of imagination illuminates fundamental problems in the philosophy of art

This thesis examines the nature and value of art. It is primarily concerned to advance an argument which makes sense of the significance we ordinarily afford art, rather than rendering it merely aesthetic and thus cognitively trivial. Contrary to philosophical orthodoxy, it is argued that 'art' does not have two distinct senses. Rather, we should understand art as an inherently evaluative, evolving cultural practice. Thus, I argue, 'art' is essentially a cluster concept. I consider an account of art according to which it is in the pleasure art affords, that its value lies. However, though we derive pleasure even from apparently unpleasant artworks, the mark of art's value lies elsewhere. That is, the pleasure we derive from art is the result of an artwork's being of value in some other way. Through critically assessing the standard accounts of art's value, I argue that art's pleasures are primarily cognitive. Furthermore, I argue, the cognitive value of art arises primarily from the engagement of our imagination and interpretation of artworks. That is, we enjoy the imaginative activity of engaging with artworks and the promotion of particular imaginative understandings. Furthermore, as imaginative understanding is of fundamental importance in grasping the nature of our world and others, art may have a distinctive significance. That is, art may afford insights into and thus promote our imaginative understandings of our world and others. Thus, through the promotion of imaginative understanding, art may cultivate our moral understanding. Therefore, art is of profound significance and import.

Tragedy is superior to comedy. This is the received view in much philosophical aesthetics, literary criticism and amongst many ordinary literary appreciators. The paper outlines three standard types of reasons given to underwrite the conceptual nature of the superiority claim, focusing on narrative structure, audience response and moral or human significance respectively. It sketches some possible inter-relations amongst the types of reasons given and raises various methodological worries about how the argument for tragedy’s superiority typically proceeds. The paper then outlines a new normative account of a type of literary or dramatic comedy – ‘high comedy’ – which proves to be tragedy’s equal. High comedies, it will be argued, have complex narrative structures shaping audience responses underwriting the moral significance of the comic mode. The received view is unjustified and appreciating why this is so casts light on the nature and value of comedy

It is argued that instrumentalizing the value of art does an injustice to artistic appreciation and provides a hostage to fortune. Whilst aestheticism offers an intellectual bulwark against such an approach, it focuses on what is distinctive of art at the expense of broader artistic values. It is argued that artistic appreciation and creativity involve not just skills but excellences of character. The nature of particular artistic or appreciative virtues and vices are briefly explored, such as snobbery, aestheticism and creativity, in order to motivate a virtue theoretic approach. Artistic virtues are intrinsically valuable excellences of character that enable us to create or appreciate all sorts of things from everyday recipes to the finest achievements of humankind. Such an approach offers a new way to resist the age old temptation to instrumentalize the values of art.

On a contemporary Humean-influenced view, the responses of suitably idealized appreciators are presented as tracking, or even determining, facts about artistic value. Focusing on the intra-personal case, this paper argues that (i) facts about the refinement and reconfiguration of aesthetic character together with (ii) the manner in which autobiography and character are implicated in artistic appreciation make it de facto unlikely that we can reliably come to know how our ideal counterpart would respond to a given artwork. Attribution of superhuman abilities to our ideal counterpart partially addresses this worry, but undermines a central feature of the theoretical motivation for the idealizing model. Insofar as response-dependent accounts of artistic value are inextricably tied to an idealizing view of critics, we have reason to reject them.

The (im)moral character of art works often affects how we respond to them. But should it affect our evaluation of them as art? The article surveys the contemporary debate whilst outlining further lines of argument and enquiry. The main arguments in favour of aestheticism, the claim that there is no internal relation between artistic value and moral character, are considered. Nonetheless the connection between art's instructional aspirations and artistic value, as well as the ways in which works solicit responses from us, underwrite the claim that a work's moral character can be directly relevant to a work's value as art. Various competing accounts of how the relationship goes, ethicism, moderate moralism and immoralism, are considered. The article goes on to elaborate novel considerations in favour of a suitably qualified cognitive immoralism and suggests avenues of further enquiry with respect to the moral character of art works.