•  1741
    Authors, Intentions and Literary Meaning
    Philosophy Compass 1 (2). 2006.
    This article discusses the relationship (or lack thereof) between authors’ intentions and the meaning of literary works. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of Extreme and Modest Actual Intentionalism, Conventionalism, and two versions of Hypothetical Intentionalism, and discusses the role that one’s theoretical commitments about the robustness of linguistic conventions and the publicity of literary works should play in determining which view one accepts.
  •  1484
    Appropriation and Authorship in Contemporary Art
    British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (2): 123-137. 2005.
    Appropriation art has often been thought to support the view that authorship in art is an outmoded or misguided notion. Through a thought experiment comparing appropriation art to a unique case of artistic forgery, I examine and reject a number of candidates for the distinction that makes artists the authors of their work while forgers are not. The crucial difference is seen to lie in the fact that artists bear ultimate responsibility for whatever objectives they choose to pursue through their w…Read more
  •  914
    Forgery and the Corruption of Aesthetic Understanding
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2): 283-304. 2007.
    Prominent philosophical accounts of artistic forgery have neglected a central aspect of the aesthetic harm it perpetrates. To be properly understood, forgery must be seen in the context of our ongoing attempts to augment our aesthetic understanding in conditions of uncertainty. The bootstrapping necessary under these conditions requires a highly refined comprehension of historical context. By creating artificial associations among aesthetically relevant qualities and misrepresenting historical r…Read more
  •  783
    Materials and Meaning in Contemporary Sculpture
    In Kristin Gjesdal, Fred Rush & Ingvild Torsen (eds.), Philosophy of Sculpture: Historical Problems, Contemporary Approaches, Routledge. pp. 165-186. 2020.
    An extensive literature about pictorial representation discusses what is involved when a two-dimensional image represents some specific object or type of object. A smaller literature addresses parallel issues in sculptural representation. But little has been said about the role played by the sculptural material itself in determining the meanings of the sculptural work. Appealing to Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin’s discussions of literal and metaphorical exemplification, I argue that the mate…Read more
  •  720
    The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience
    British Journal of Aesthetics 48 (1): 29-44. 2008.
    I argue that the experiences of everyday life are replete with aesthetic character, though this fact has been largely neglected within contemporary aesthetics. As against Dewey's account of aesthetic experience, I suggest that the fact that many everyday experiences are simple, lacking in unity or closure, and characterized by limited or fragmented awareness does not disqualify them from aesthetic consideration. Aesthetic attention to the domain of everyday experience may provide for lives of gr…Read more
  •  619
    Motherhood and the Workings of Disgust
    In Sheila Lintott & Maureen Sander-Staudt (eds.), Philosophical Inquiries into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering: Maternal Subjects, Routledge. pp. 79-90. 2011.
    I discuss two interrelated ways in which disgust functions in motherhood. First, relaxation of the mother’s sense of disgust allows her to nurture her child more effectively. Second, others’ responses of disgust are used to enforce social norms regarding the “good” mother. If the mother acquiesces, she must continually monitor and tidy her child, which may interfere with the child’s exploration of the world. If she does not, she is subject to ongoing signs that she is flawed or failing as a moth…Read more
  •  464
    In Advance of the Broken Theory: Philosophy and Contemporary Art
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (4): 375-386. 2017.
    We discuss how analysis of contemporary artworks has shaped philosophical theories about the concept of art, the ontology of art, and artistic media. The rapid expansion, during the contemporary period, of the kinds of things that can count as artworks has prompted a shift toward procedural definitions, which focus on how artworks are selected, and away from definitions that focus exclusively on artworks’ features or effects. Some contemporary artworks challenge the traditional art–ontological d…Read more
  •  455
    On the Well-being of Aesthetic Beings
    In Helena Fox, Kathleen Galvin, Michael Musalek, Martin Poltrum & Yuriko Saito (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Mental Health and Contemporary Western Aesthetics, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    As aesthetic beings, we are receptive to and engaged with the sensuous phenomena of life while also knowing that we are targets of others’ awareness: we are both aesthetic agents and aesthetic objects. Our psychological health, our standing within our communities, and our overall wellbeing can be profoundly affected by our aesthetic surroundings and by whether and how we receive aesthetic recognition from others. When our embodied selves and our cultural products are valued, and when we have ric…Read more
  •  433
    The Artist's Sanction in Contemporary Art
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (4): 315-326. 2005.
    I argue that contemporary artists fix the features of their works not only through their actions of making and presenting objects, but also through auxiliary activities such as corresponding with curators and institutions. I refer to such fixing of features as the artist’s sanction: artists sanction features of their work through publicly accessible actions and communications, such as making a physical object with particular features, corresponding with curators and producing artist statements. …Read more
  •  423
    The Expressive Import of Degradation and Decay in Contemporary Art
    In Peter Miller & Soon Kai Poh (eds.), Conserving Active Matter, Bard Graduate Center - Cultura. pp. 65-79. 2022.
    Many contemporary artworks include active matter along with rules for conservation that are designed to either facilitate or prevent that matter’s degradation or decay. I discuss the mechanisms through which actual or potential states of material decay contribute to the work’s expressive import. Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin introduce the concepts of literal and metaphorical exemplification, which are critical to expression: a work literally exemplifies a property when it both possesses and…Read more
  •  389
    The relationship of the author’s intention to the meaning of a literary work has been a persistently controversial topic in aesthetics. Anti-intentionalists Wimsatt and Beardsley, in the 1946 paper that launched the debate, accused critics who fueled their interpretative activity by poring over the author’s private diaries and life story of committing the ‘fallacy’ of equating the work’s meaning, properly determined by context and linguistic convention, with the meaning intended by the author. H…Read more
  •  334
    Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness
    In Sherri Irvin (ed.), Body Aesthetics, Oxford University Press. pp. 299-317. 2016.
    Though feminists are correct to note that conventional standards of sexiness are oppressive, we argue that feminism should reclaim sexiness rather than reject it. We argue for an aesthetic and ethical practice of working to shift from conventional attributions of sexiness to respectful attributions, in which embodied sexual subjects are appreciated in their full individual magnificence. We argue that undertaking this practice is an ethical obligation, since it contributes to the full recognition…Read more
  •  321
    Museums and the Shaping of Contemporary Artworks
    Museum Management and Curatorship 21 143-156. 2006.
    In the museum context, curators and conservators often play a role in shaping the nature of contemporary artworks. Before, during and after the acquisition of an art object, curators and conservators engage in dialogue with the artist about how the object should be exhibited and conserved. As a part of this dialogue, the artist may express specifications for the display and conservation of the object, thereby fixing characteristics of the artwork that were previously left open. This process can …Read more
  •  317
    Installation Art and Performance: A Shared Ontology
    In Christy Mag Uidhir (ed.), Art and Abstract Objects, Oxford University Press. pp. 242-262. 2013.
    This paper has three objectives. First, I argue that apprehending an installation artwork is similar to apprehending an artwork for performance: in each case, audiences must recognize a relationship between the performance or display one encounters and the parameters expressed in the underlying work. Second, I consider whether realizations are also artworks in their own right. I argue that, in both installation art and performance, a particular realization is sometimes an artwork in its own righ…Read more
  •  315
    Aesthetics and the Private Realm
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67 (2): 226-230. 2009.
    I clarify the arguments of my paper “Scratching an Itch” in response to a discussion piece by Brian Soucek. I also offer a new argument that objectivity is possible for aesthetic judgments about private phenomena such as somatic experiences.
  •  310
    Is Aesthetic Experience Possible?
    In Gregory Currie, Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin & Jon Robson (eds.), Aesthetics and the Sciences of Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 37-56. 2014.
    On several current views, including those of Matthew Kieran, Gary Iseminger, Jerrold Levinson, and Noël Carroll, aesthetic appreciation or experience involves second-order awareness of one’s own mental processes. But what if it turns out that we don’t have introspective access to the processes by which our aesthetic responses are produced? I summarize several problems for introspective accounts that emerge from the psychological literature: aesthetic responses are affected by irrelevant conditio…Read more
  •  307
    The Ontological Diversity of Visual Artworks
    In Kathleen Stock & Katherine Thomson-Jones (eds.), New Waves in Aesthetics, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-19. 2008.
    Virtually everyone who has advanced an ontology of art has accepted a constraint to the effect that claims about ontology should cohere with the sort of appreciative claims made about artworks within a mature and reflective version of critical practice. I argue that such a constraint, which I agree is appropriate, rules out a one-size-fits-all ontology of contemporary visual art (and thus of visual art in general). Mature critical practice with respect to contemporary art accords artists a signi…Read more
  •  305
    Artworks and Representational Properties
    Dialogue 43 (4): 627-644. 2004.
    A sustained challenge to the view that artworks are physical objects relates to the alleged inability of physical objects to possess representational properties, which some artworks clearly do possess. I argue that the challenge is subject to confusions about representational properties and aesthetic experience. I show that a challenge to artwork-object identity put forward by Danto is vulnerable to a similar criticism. I conclude by noting that the identity of artworks and physical objects is c…Read more
  •  301
    The culturally pervasive tendency to identify aspects of the body as aesthetically imperfect harms individuals and scaffolds injustice related to disability, race, gender, LGBTQ+ identities, and fatness. But abandoning the notion of imperfection may not respect people’s reasonable understandings of their own bodies. I examine the prospects for a practice of aesthetic assessment grounded in a notion of the body’s function. I argue that functional aesthetic assessment, to be respectful, requires u…Read more
  •  298
    Artwork and Document in the Photography of Louise Lawler
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (1): 79-90. 2012.
    What makes a photograph an artwork, as opposed to a mere document? I defend a cluster account such that aesthetic value, aptness to interpretation, the artist’s intention and institutional uptake may contribute to the arthood of a body of photographs, with no single condition being necessary. With regard to Lawler’s works, I suggest that Lawler’s intention that they be art plays a definitive role because of the works’ resemblance to non-art photography. For some of her photographs, however, it a…Read more
  •  279
    Aesthetics of the Everyday
    In Stephen Davies, Kathleen J. Higgins, Robert Hopkins, Robert Stecker & David Cooper (eds.), A Companion to Aesthetics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 136-139. 2009.
    This reference essay surveys recent work in the emerging sub-discipline of everyday aesthetics, which builds on the work of John Dewey to resist sharp distinctions between art and non-art domains and argue that aesthetic concepts are properly applied to ordinary domains of experience.
  •  269
    Capacities, Context and the Moral Status of Animals
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 21 (1). 2004.
    According to a widely shared intuition, normal adult humans require greater moral concern than normal, adult animals in at least some circumstances. Even the most steadfast defenders of animals' moral status attempt to accommodate this intuition, often by holding that humans' higher-level capacities (intellect, linguistic ability, and so on) give rise to a greater number of interests, and thus the likelihood of greater satisfaction, thereby making their lives more valuable. However, the moves fr…Read more
  •  252
    Repeatable Artworks and the Relevant Similarity Relation
    Journal of Aesthetic Education 52 (2): 30. 2018.
    Repeatable artworks, such as novels and musical works, have often been construed as universals whose instances are particular printings or performances. In Art and Art-Attempts, Christy Mag Uidhir offers a nominalist account of repeatable artworks, eschewing talk of universals. Mag Uidhir argues that all artworks are concrete, and artworks that we regard as repeatable are simply unified by a relevant similarity relation: we use the name Beloved to refer to two concrete printed novels because the…Read more
  •  252
    Unreadable Poems and How They Mean
    In John Gibson (ed.), The Philosophy of Poetry, Oxford University Press. pp. 88-110. 2015.
    Several years ago, the poet & critic Joan Houlihan offered a scathing and hilarious indictment of a lot of postmodern poetry for using words in a way that treats them as meaningless (or, perhaps, renders them meaningless). She suggested that word choice in such poems doesn’t really matter, and that the poet could just as well have substituted in other words without any change in meaning or aesthetic qualities. I argue that she’s wrong about this. I offer an account of how interpretation and mean…Read more
  •  239
    Authenticity, Misunderstanding, and Institutional Responsibility in Contemporary Art
    British Journal of Aesthetics 59 (3): 273-288. 2019.
    This paper addresses two questions about audience misunderstandings of contemporary art. First, what is the institution’s responsibility to prevent predictable misunderstandings about the nature of a contemporary artwork, and how should this responsibility be balanced against other considerations? Second, can an institution ever be justified in intentionally mounting an inauthentic display of an artwork, given that such displays are likely to mislead? I will argue that while the institution has …Read more
  •  235
    Scratching an Itch
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66 (1): 25-35. 2008.
    I argue that there can be appropriate aesthetic experiences even of basic somatic experiences like itches and scratches. I show, in relation to accounts of aesthetic experience offered by Carroll and Stecker, that experiences of itches and scratches can be aesthetic; I show that itches can be objects of attention in the way that normative accounts of the aesthetic often require; and I show, in relation to accounts of the aesthetic appreciation of nature offered by Carlson and Carroll, that aest…Read more
  •  233
    Videos, Police Violence, and Scrutiny of the Black Body
    Social Research: An International Quarterly 89 (4): 997-1023. 2022.
    The ability of videos to serve as evidence of racial injustice is complex and contested. This essay argues that scrutiny of the Black body has come to play a key role in how videos of police violence are mined for evidence, following a long history of racialized surveillance and attributions of threat and superhuman powers to Black bodies. Using videos to combat injustice requires incorporating humanizing narratives and cultivating resistant modes of looking.
  •  231
    Introduction to the Symposium on Christy Mag Uidhir's Art and Art-Attempts
    Journal of Aesthetic Education 52 (2): 1. 2018.
    Christy Mag Uidhir’s Art and Art-Attempts begins from two deceptively simple observations: artworks are the product of intentions, and intentions are the kinds of things that can fail to be realized successfully. Drawing on these observations, he argues that most contemporary theories of art must be rejected because they are not substantively intention-dependent: that is, they do not account for the fact that an attempt to make an artwork can fail. From his view that artworks must be the product…Read more
  •  225
    Theatrical Performances and the Works Performed
    Journal of Aesthetic Education 43 (3). 2009.
    I consider James Hamilton’s discussion of what I term the complete autonomy thesis, according to which no theatrical performance is a performance of some other work. While agreeing with Hamilton that theatrical performances are often artworks in their own right and that theatrical performance is not a derivative or subsidiary art form, I argue that the complete autonomy thesis overshoots the evidence. Some theatrical performances are autonomous, but many belong to an established tradition of clo…Read more
  •  222
    Interprétation et description d’une oeuvre d’art
    Philosophiques 32 (1): 135-148. 2005.
    According to Arthur Danto, it is illegitimate to seek a neutral, or pre-interpretative, description of an artwork, since such descriptions necessarily fail to respect the artwork as such. Instead, we must begin by interpreting, so as to constitute the work : interpretation is what distinguishes artworks from mere physical objects. In this paper, I argue that, while Danto is right to distance artworks from mere things, this can be done without suggesting that artworks are constituted by interpret…Read more