• Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics (edited book)
    with Stephen Davies, Kathleen J. Higgins, Robert Stecker, and David Cooper
    Blackwell. 2009.
  •  28
    Design and syntax in pictures
    Mind and Language. forthcoming.
    Many attempts to define depiction appeal to viewers' perceptual responses. Such accounts are liable to give a central role in determining depictive content to picture features responsible for the response,design. A different project is to give a compositional semantics for depictive content. Such attempts identifysyntax: picture features systematically responsible for the content of the whole. Design and syntax are competitors. But syntax requires system, in how picture features contribute to co…Read more
  • Depiction
    In Paisley Livingston & Carl Plantinga (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, Routledge. 2008.
  •  37
    European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 1187-1191, December 2021.
  •  38
    A Companion to Aesthetics (edited book)
    with Stephen Davies, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Robert Stecker, and David E. Cooper
    Wiley. 2009.
    A COMPANION TO AESTHETICS This second edition of A Companion to Aesthetics examines questions that were among the earliest discussed by ancient philosophers, such as the nature of beauty and the relation between morality and art, while also addressing a host of new issues prompted by recent developments in the arts and in philosophy, including coverage of non-Western art traditions and of everyday and environmental aesthetics. The volume also canvases debates regarding the nature of representati…Read more
  •  2198
    Christopher Nolan’s Memento illustrates and explores two roles that memory plays in human life. The film’s protagonist, Leonard Shelby, cannot ‘make new memories’. He copes by using a ‘system’ of polaroids, tatoos, charts and notes that substitutes for memory in its first role, the retention of information. In particular, the system is supposed to help Leonard carry out his sole goal: to find and kill his wife’s murderer. In this it proves a disastrous failure. But are we so very much better off…Read more
  •  164
    The Sculpted Image?
    In Fred Rush, Ingvild Torsen & Kristin Gjesdal (eds.), Philosophy of Sculpture: Historical Problems, Contemporary Approaches, Routledge. pp. 187-205. 2020.
    Representational pictures and sculptures both present their objects visually: to grasp what they represent is in some sense to see, not only the representation before one, but the object represented. But is the form of visual presentation the same? Or does a deep difference lie at the heart of our experience of these representations, a difference in how each presents us with its object? Almost all philosophical discussion of pictures and 3D representations has assumed or implied a negative answ…Read more
  •  257
    We engage with all representational pictures by seeing things in them. Seeing-in is a distinctive form of visual experience, one in which we are aware of both the marks, projected lights, or whatever that make up the picture (its Design) and what the picture represents (Scene). Some seeing-in is inflected: what we then see in the picture is a scene the properties of which make essential reference to Design. Since cinema involves moving pictures, it too supports seeing-in. But can that seeing-in …Read more
  •  557
    Artistic Style as the Expression of Ideals
    Philosophers' Imprint 21 (NO. 8): 1-18. 2021.
    What is artistic style? In the literature one answer to this question has proved influential: the view that artistic style is the expression of personality. In what follows we elaborate upon and evaluatively compare the two most plausible versions of this view with a new proposal—that style is the expression of the artist’s ideals for her art. We proceed by comparing the views’ answers to certain questions we think a theory of individual artistic style should address: Are there limits on what ra…Read more
  •  51
    Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World
    Mind 112 (447): 558-563. 2003.
  •  515
    How To Form Aesthetic Belief: Interpreting The Acquaintance Principle
    Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 3 (3): 85-99. 2006.
    What are the legitimate sources of aesthetic belief? Which methods for forming aesthetic belief are acceptable? Although the question is rarely framed explicitly, it is a familiar idea that there is something distinctive about aesthetic matters in this respect. Crudely, the thought is that the legitimate routes to belief are rather more limited in the aesthetic case than elsewhere. If so, this might tell us something about the sorts of facts that aesthetic beliefs describe, about the nature of o…Read more
  •  301
    What is Wrong With Moral Testimony?
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (3): 611-634. 2007.
    Is it legitimate to acquire one’s moral beliefs on the testimony of others? The pessimist about moral testimony says not. But what is the source of the difficulty? Here pessimists have a choice. On the Unavailability view, moral testimony never makes knowledge available to the recipient. On Unusability accounts, although moral testimony can make knowledge available, some further norm renders it illegitimate to make use of the knowledge thus offered. I suggest that Unusability accounts provide th…Read more
  •  229
    Beauty and testimony
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 47 209-236. 2000.
    Kant claims that the judgement of taste, the judgement that some particular is beautiful, exhibits two ‘peculiarities’. First: [t]he judgement of taste determines its object in respect of delight with a claim to the agreement of every one , just as if it were objective
  •  5
    Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics (edited book)
    with Stephen Davies, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Robert Stecker, and David Cooper
    Wiley. 2009.
    A COMPANION TO AESTHETICS This second edition of A Companion to Aesthetics examines questions that were among the earliest discussed by ancient philosophers, such as the nature of beauty and the relation between morality and art, while also addressing a host of new issues prompted by recent developments in the arts and in philosophy, including coverage of non-Western art traditions and of everyday and environmental aesthetics. The volume also canvases debates regarding the nature of representati…Read more
  •  135
    Imaginative Understanding, Affective Profiles, and the Expression of Emotion in Art
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (4): 363-374. 2017.
    R. G. Collingwood thought that to express emotion is to come to understand it and that this is something art can enable us to do. The understanding in question is distinct from that offered by emotion concepts. I attempt to defend a broadly similar position by drawing, as Collingwood does, on a broader philosophy of mind. Emotions and other affective states have a profile analogous to the sensory profiles exhibited by the things we perceive. Grasping that one's feeling exhibits such a profile is…Read more
  •  51
    Kant, Quasi‐Realism, and the Autonomy of Aesthetic Judgement
    European Journal of Philosophy 9 (2): 166-189. 2001.
    Aesthetic judgements are autonomous, as many other judgements are not: for the latter, but not the former, it is sometimes justifiable to change one’s mind simply because several others share a different opinion. Why is this? One answer is that claims about beauty are not assertions at all, but expressions of aesthetic response. However, to cover more than just some of the explananda, this expressivism needs combining with some analogue of cognitive command, i.e. the idea that disagreements over…Read more
  •  1134
    How to Be a Pessimist about Aesthetic Testimony
    Journal of Philosophy 108 (3): 138-157. 2011.
    Is testimony a legitimate source of aesthetic belief? Can I, for instance, learn that a film is excellent on your say-so? Optimists say yes, pessimists no. But pessimism comes in two forms. One claims that testimony is not a legitimate source of aesthetic belief because it cannot yield aesthetic knowledge. The other accepts that testimony can be a source of aesthetic knowledge, yet insists that some further norm prohibits us from exploiting that resource. I argue that this second form of pessimi…Read more
  •  299
    Critical Reasoning and Critical Perception
    In Matthew Kieran & Dominic Lopes (eds.), Knowing Art, Springer. pp. 137-153. 2006.
    The outcome of criticism is a perception. Does this mean that criticism cannot count as a rational process? For it to do so, it seems it would have to be possible for there to be an argument for a perception. Yet perceptions do not seem to be the right sort of item to serve as the conclusions of arguments. Is this appearance borne out? I examine why perceptions might not be able to play that role, and explore what would have to be true of critical discourse for those obstacles to be circumvented…Read more
  •  294
    Kant, quasi-realism, and the autonomy of aesthetic judgement
    European Journal of Philosophy 9 (2). 2001.
    Aesthetic judgements are autonomous, as many other judgements are not: for the latter, but not the former, it is sometimes justifiable to change one's mind simply because several others share a different opinion. Why is this? One answer is that claims about beauty are not assertions at all, but expressions of aesthetic response. However, to cover more than just some of the explananda, this expressivism needs combining with some analogue of cognitive command, i.e. the idea that disagreements over…Read more
  •  66
    Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 57 (3): 340-344. 2017.
  •  59
    Sculpture and Perspective
    British Journal of Aesthetics 50 (4): 357-373. 2010.
    In every picture there is a perspective: the picture represents its object from a point (or points) of view. Is the same true of sculpture, and in particular is it true of the purest form of sculpture, sculpture in the round? I address this issue in two ways. First, I explore the prospects for reasoning that perspective forms part of the content of some sculptures by adapting an argument from M. G. F. Martin for the parallel claim in the case of visualizing. I conclude that the argument does not…Read more
  •  67
    Pictures, Phenomenology and Cognitive Science
    The Monist 86 (4): 653-675. 2003.
    This paper argues that an account of picturing in terms of the experience it sustains, in particular an experience of resemblance in outline shape, is superior to Dominic Lopes’, view, on which pictures engage our recognitional capacities for the objects they depict. Lopes’ position fails to do the work proper to a philosophical theory of picturing. Lopes argues that the experienced resemblance view pays insufficient attention to empirical work, and that it incurs unwelcome empirical commitments…Read more
  •  171
    Molyneux’s Question
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (3): 441-464. 2005.
    What philosophical issue or issues does Molyneux’s question raise? I concentrate on two. First, are there any properties represented in both touch and vision? Second, for any such common perceptible, is it represented in the same way in each, so that the two senses support a single concept of that property? I show that there is space for a second issue here, describe its precise relations to Molyneux’s question, and argue for its philosophical significance. I close by arguing that Gareth Evans …Read more
  •  362
    What is special about photographs? Traditional photography is, I argue, a system that sustains factive pictorial experience. Photographs sustain pictorial experience: we see things in them. Further, that experience is factive: if suchandsuch is seen in a photograph, then suchandsuch obtained when the photo was taken. More precisely, photographs are designed to sustain factive pictorial experience, and that experience is what we have when, in the photographic system as a whole, everything works a…Read more
  •  48
    With sight too much in mind, mind too little in sight?
    Philosophical Books 47 (4): 293-305. 2006.
    This is a critical notice of Colin McGinn's 'Mindsight'.
  •  3449
    What is it for a film to be realistic? Of the many answers that have been proposed, I review five: that it is accurate and precise; that is has relatively few prominent formal features; that it is illusionistic; that it is transparent; and that, while plainly a moving picture, it looks to be a photographic recording, not of the actors and sets in fact filmed, but of the events narrated. The number and variety of these options raise a deeper question: what is realism, if these are all to count as…Read more
  •  134
    Touching pictures
    British Journal of Aesthetics 40 (1): 149-167. 2000.
    Congenitally blind people can make and understand ‘tactile pictures’ – representations form of raised ridges on flat surfaces. If made visible, these representations can serve as pictures for the sighted. Does it follow that we should take at face value the idea that they are pictures made for touch? I explore this question, and the related issue of the aesthetics of ‘tactile pictures’ by considering the role in both depiction and pictorial aesthetics of experience, and by asking how far the exp…Read more
  •  45
    Reproductive Prints as Aesthetic Surrogates
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73 (1): 11-21. 2015.
    Reproductive prints allow us to engage with the aesthetic/artistic character of the pictures that are their sources. But prints clearly differ from their sources in various striking ways. How, then, are they able to make engagement possible? I consider various answers. Most treat prints as acting as surrogates for the source: in sharing its aesthetic properties, in resembling it in overall aesthetic character, in being aesthetically transparent to it, or in allowing us to imagine its aesthetic c…Read more