Sondra Bacharach

Arthur Danto's style matrix brings together many facets of his thinking about philosophy and about art, particularly his intentionalism, art criticism, and historicism. This chapter presents the mechanics of the style matrix and offers modifications of the view in the light of certain criticisms. The style matrix has an interesting consequence for the range of artistic properties that can apply to artworks. In describing the style matrix, Danto relies on causal relations among artworks as a way of identifying stylistic properties. The chapter considers some of the most influential Danto scholars and their interpretations of Danto's style matrix in relation to the debate about epistemic and metaphysical nature of the properties of artworks. Adopting a metaphysical interpretation of the style matrix also allows us to understand another, more general claim that Danto defends about the evolution of art. The correct interpretation of the style matrix hangs on adequate defenses of epistemic and metaphysical historicism.

Playing with LEGO is naturally educational—it supports free play, imagination, and creativity. LEGO is forward‐thinking—it was one of the first toys to promote gender equality. LEGO advertises itself as a lifestyle choice whose values include being part of a team that educates people, that does the right thing, and that prides itself on its wholesomeness. This image is rather different from the reality of LEGO as a for‐profit company. The Greenpeace video undermines the entire ideology behind the LEGO brand and everything it stands for. This chapter examines the relation between one's ideology and politics, on the one hand, and one's status as a consumer of LEGO toys, on the other. It also considers LEGO's long‐standing and problematic partnership with Shell. Shell, of course, is one of the world's largest and most profitable oil companies. The Greenpeace video hints at many possible criticisms of LEGO's relationship with Shell.

In this article, I explore the relationship between witness-bearing arts as a form of creative activism designed to respond to social injustices. In the first section, I present some common features of bearing witness, as conceptualized within media studies and journalism. Then I explain how artworks placed in the streets can bear witness in a similar way. I argue that witness-bearing art transmits knowledge about certain unjust and harmful events, which then places a moral burden or responsibility on the viewer. To defend this view, I offer some examples of activist art that bears witness to certain events. I suggest that witness-bearing art is placed in the streets in order to make certain truths publicly available, by offering evidence of them embedded in the artwork. The final section considers why the bearing witness is especially effective for activist art. Witness-bearing art plays a crucial knowledge-transmitting function, one which enables art to engage in creative activism. I conclude by considering how witness-bearing art offers a powerful and persuasive voice for the oppressed.

In countries like the United States, White people benefit from appropriating Black hair culture, even while Black men and women experience race-based hair discrimination and oppression. One goal of this paper is to raise awareness of hair discrimination and oppression within the philosophical community. Another is to consider whether current theories of appropriation can account for the wrongness of this widespread phenomenon and, if so, how. We are particularly interested in the special case where one minority group appropriates from another minority group—viz. the appropriation of Black hairstyles by Non-Black Persons of Colour. Our paper highlights the complexity of appropriation claims between competing minority groups—both of which have been oppressed, albeit differently, by White people— due to their multi-ethnic, multicultural and, therefore, intersectional, status.

Advances in molecular technologies have the potential to help remedy health inequities through earlier detection and prevention; if, however, their delivery and uptake are not more carefully considered, there is a very real risk that existing inequities in access and use will be further exacerbated. We argue this risk relates to the way that information and knowledge about the technology is both acquired and shared, or not, between health practitioners and their patients.A healthcare system can be viewed as a complex social network comprising individuals with different worldviews, hierarchies, professional cultures and subcultures and personal beliefs, both for those giving and receiving care. When healthcare practitioners are not perceived as knowledge equals, they would experience informational prejudices, and the result is that knowledge dissemination across and between them would be impeded. The uptake and delivery of a new technology may be inequitable as a result. Patients would also experience informational prejudice when they are viewed as not being able to understand the information that is presented to them, and information may be withheld.Informational prejudices driven by social relations and structures have thus far been underexplored in considering equitable implementation and uptake of new molecular technologies. Every healthcare interaction represents an opportunity for experiencing informational prejudice, and with it the risk of being inappropriately informed for undertaking such screening or testing. Making knowledge acquisition and information dissemination, and experiences of informational prejudice, explicit through sociologically framed investigations would extend our understandings of equity, and offer ways to affect network relationships and structures that support equity in delivery and uptake.

This paper explores how engaging in and with philosophy in the streets has unique and special potential for children doing philosophy both inside and outside the classroom. We highlight techniques drawn from research into the political, social and activist potential of street art, and we illustrate how to apply these techniques in a P4C context in what we call guerrilla philosophy. We argue that guerrilla philosophy is a pedagogically powerful method to philosophically engage students whose ages range from 11-13. In calling attention to the power of guerrilla philosophy to engage students philosophically, we are tacitly assuming a Deweyan philosophical approach, which emphasises the importance of promoting civic-mindedness as a social value; the reliance on imaginative, creative and experiential forms of learning as essential to education ; and a vision of the classroom as an embodiment of the larger civic community to which we all belong and in which we all must cooperate and engage. This paper traces these three themes in Dewey’s philosophical views of education and democracy, and considers how they are given a twenty-first century interpretation through street art, guerrilla philosophy and children’s activism.

Can the meaning of an artwork change over time? ;A standard account suggests that an artwork's meaning remains constant over time. If anything has changed, we have. We have simply made new discoveries about what it meant all along. Our epistemic access to the work's meaning expands, but the work itself does not. ;Against the standard view, my dissertation advances a strong historicist account according to which the meaning of artworks is determined in part by its art-historical context. Strong historicism allows for an artwork's meaning to change as art history evolves. An artwork itself can acquire new meanings in virtue of entering into new causal relations with works that appear later in art history. ;I make my case for the foregoing in the context of defending Arthur Danto from several well-known misinterpretations of his influential philosophy of art history. On some major issues, however, I take issue with him---his well-known thesis that art history has ended, for instance. ;Strong historicism provides a novel way of explaining how an artwork's stylistic predicates emerge and evolve over time. Because an artwork's features evolve as new artworks emerge, our conception of art will evolve as well. Arthur Danto had originally proposed what he called a "Style Matrix" to explain this phenomenon, but later rejected it as simultaneously both overly historicist and overly ahistoricist. But, I argue that the problem with the Style Matrix lies with Danto's account of art, rather than with his conception of a Style Matrix. So, strong historicism can save the Style Matrix from these criticisms. This reveals an important sense in which the philosophy of art is intimately tied to the history of art. ;Strong historicism also explains how our conception of art seems to expand with each new movement in art. It grants that the features of art may change and evolve, and thereby allows for an explanation of the natural intuition that we now see artworks differently than before: new artworks bring with them a new vocabulary with which to understand art, and allow us to appreciate previous art in ways we could not have before

I argue that activists have co-opted street art as a tool for addressing epistemic injustices, injustices that result from negative identity prejudices that silence certain groups of people unfairly. To defend this claim, I explore the special nature of street art that makes it an especially appropriate tool for activists to enlist in the fight against epistemic injustices. From there, I will examine in detail two case studies which illustrate how street art is used to respond to and correct for these injustices: first, the street art series, “Stop Telling Women to Smile” by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, and then Chris Metzger’s Inside Out Project in Baltimore. Drawing on these examples, I highlight the features in virtue of which street art constitutes a particularly effective tool for correcting epistemic injustices.

Street art has exploded: it pervades our back alleys, surrounds us at bus-stops, covers billboards, competes with advertising and generally serves as urban wallpaper in most cities. But what is street art? A far cry from mere graffiti, street art has gained some social acceptance, but it remains neither officially sanctioned like public art, nor institutionally condoned, like its more traditional artistic cousins in museums. Somewhere in between these two extremes, street art has emerged, occupying a metaphysically suspect grey area between illegal activity and bona fide art. This paper explores the nature of this emerging art form and draws out some of the differences between street art, public art and ‘mere’ graffiti.

Collaboration in the arts is no longer a conscious choice to make a deliberate artistic statement, but instead a necessity of artistic survival. In today’s hybrid world of virtual mobility, collaboration decentralizes creative strategies, enabling artists to carve new territories and maintain practice-based autonomy in an increasingly commercial and saturated art world. Collaboration now transforms not only artistic practices but also the development of cultural institutions, communities and personal lifestyles. This book explores why collaboration has become so integrated into a greater understanding of creative artistic practice. It draws on an emerging generation of contributors—from the arts, art history, sociology, political science, and philosophy—to engage directly with the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of collaborative practice of the future