What Can Be Learned from the Arts About Aging?

This brief article examines some of the theoretical questions raised by aesthetics. Paintings have not only form and content, but are underpinned by philosophical principles that connect art to gerontology. We examine specific theoretical messages of a trend in art that have important implications for conceptualizing humans, including their interactions and surroundings. Three artists are used to illustrate this trend: Cezanne, Picasso, and Pollock. These and other artists of this century foster a heightened awareness of humanistic concerns. Caught between abstract reason and expert systems on the one hand, and the life worlds of older people on the other, gerontology finds itself in a place where art can speak to its deeper concerns in unique ways.     

The shield of pallas: The virtual contemplation of the human soul: The aesthetic of Fr. Arthur Little S.J. (1887–1949)

This paper explores the extreme but well-argued-for thesis that the indirect object of an aesthetic experience of serious art is the human soul of the person having the experience. The author of the thesis was Fr. Arthur Little S.J. a mid twentieth-century Irishman, professional philosopher and philosophical popularizer. The paper treats Little’s thesis seriously: comparisons are drawn with Kant, which may be of interest even to those hostile to Little’s central assertion. Little makes a brilliant analysis of a ‘free-beauty’, making the sharpest contrast between this and the most serious art, tragedy. Tragedy, Little holds Kant not able to cope with. One agrees. The people who cry before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. Mark Rothko This book is a development of a series of lectures given to the Study Club of the Central Catholic Library in Dublin. The view of art that it proposes is, for reasons explained in the book, more exactly called Aristotelean than Thomistic. But where it has been necessary to base conclusions in aesthetics on philosophical presuppositions outside of that science the philosophy presupposed will be Thomism. Even so, however, the Thomistic doctrine, that must be accepted by anyone who will assent to the book’s thesis, is consistent with most philosophical positions that are not openly or latently materialistic. Anyone who believein the spirituality of the soul can accept that thesis… Arthur Little S.J.     

Imaging,imagining and representation: Muslim visual artists in NYC

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted with Muslim visual artists in New York City. It assumes that art is a particular medium or media form that not only gives us insight into the processes of creative expression, but helps us understand the relationship between global media events and their localized practices. For Muslim visual artists, and Muslims in general, “9/11” has become a significant marker of time in thinking about issues of identity, belonging and representation. Even in the art worlds, the larger tropes of Islam/Muslims—terrorism, violence, veiling, patriarchy, the Middle East—become the normative frames and images within and against which Muslim artists do their work. I outline the ways Muslim artists as cultural producers are not only contesting art world boundaries in terms of new and emerging forms of identification, but also the various sites where they are being forged. Muslim artists explore new ways of thinking about being Muslim, not necessarily as a theological or aesthetic unity, but as a minority identification in the West/America. I focus on the work of two artists, Nigerian-born Fatimah Tuggar and Pakistani-born Shahzia Sikander.     

Beyond Art and Beauty: In Search of the Object of Philosophical Aesthetics

This article deals with the ambigous situation of philosophical aesthetics, which now seems to have lost its proper object. Moreover, Arthur C. Danto has popularized talk of an end of art, in which he ties that end to the end of any aesthetic master narrative. Comparing modern and medieval approaches to art, this paper tries to reformulate the question of philosophical aesthetics, which has to be understood in a hermeneutical way. Taken in a heuristic manner 'art' and 'beauty' remain the principal aesthetic categories able to keep the understanding of what belongs to aesthetics open to different historical approaches.     

Conceptual Art and the Acquaintance Principle

The Acquaintance Principle has been the subject of extensive debate in philosophical aesthetics. In one of the most recent developments, it has become popular to claim that some works of conceptual art are counterexamples to it. It is further claimed that this is a genuinely new problem in the sense that it is a problem even for versions of the Acquaintance Principle modified to deal with previous objections. I argue that this is essentially correct; however, the claim as it stands needs some work. I draw attention to, and defend, two assumptions on which the claim rests but which have so far gone unrecognized. I also address an objection that has recently been made to the claim and threatens to raise further complications for it. In doing this, we arrive at a fuller, more robust version of the initial claim.     

Alexithymia and Affect Intensity of Fine Artists

Research on creative artists has examined mainly their personality traits or cognitive abilities. However, it seems important to explore also their emotional traits to complete the profile. This study examines two emotional characteristics: alexithymia and affect intensity. Even if most research suggests that artists are less alexithymic and experience more intensively their emotions, Botella, M., Zenasni, F., and Lubart, T. (Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5 , 251, 2011) observed that art students were as alexithymic as psychology students and more alexithymic than a normative population. The aim of this study was to examine these issues with artists and non‐artists and to compare artists to art students. Results indicate that artists are less alexithymic and present higher affect intensity than non‐artists. Moreover, results show that art students present more difficulties processing their emotions than artists.     

Beauty and Aesthetic Experience in Theravāda Buddhism

The following essay deals with the specificity of aesthetic experience and apprehension of beauty in the frame of Theravāda Buddhism. This essay is aimed, above all, to Western readers, since aesthetics and beauty, as an inherent quality of nature and works of art, are constitutive parts of the Western philosophical and cultural tradition. I consider texts written in Western languages and available in the Western debate. On the one hand, so far as aesthetics is concerned, as a philosophical reflection on beauty and art, Theravāda Buddhism may seem to be critical towards any kind of aesthetical experience. On the other hand, Theravāda Buddhism can offer a different and peculiar perspective on art and beauty. The aim is to demonstrate that there is a specific aesthetic experience in Theravāda Buddhism and this experience allows a different perception and use of the work of art and a different experience of beauty.     

DOUGHNUTS AND DICKIE

In this paper, I assess Dickie's institutional theory of art. I compare the earlier and later forms of the theory, and I point to various problems of detail with these accounts. I then proceed by arguing that Dickie's definition excludes Krispy Kreme doughnut boxes from possessing the status of being works of art, and it excludes those who made them from possessing the status of being artists. The intention is not to offer a counter example to Dickie's account. Rather, the complaint is that there could be no philosophical point or interest in a concept of art which excludes these doughnut boxes. The best way to see this is by contrast with a concept of art that includes them. Thus I outline what I call a ‘creative’ account. What we want is a concept of art which helps us understand a certain phenomenon in the world – the phenomenon that we call ‘art’. In this light, I argue that Dickie's institutional theory tells us nothing about why people want to make art and nothing about why they want to experience it. By contrast, the creative theory, which embraces both doughnut boxes and things in galleries, is more explanatory.     

Triviality Pursuit

The thesis that probabilities of conditionals are conditional probabilities has putatively been refuted many times by so-called ‘triviality results’, although it has also enjoyed a number of resurrections. In this paper I assault it yet again with a new such result. I begin by motivating the thesis and discussing some of the philosophical ramifications of its fluctuating fortunes. I will canvas various reasons, old and new, why the thesis seems plausible, and why we should care about its fate. I will look at some objections to Lewis’s famous triviality results, and thus some reasons for the pursuit of further triviality results. I will generalize Lewis’s results in ways that meet the objections. I will conclude with some reflections on the demise of the thesis—or otherwise.     

Intrinsic motivation and sustained art activity among male fine and applied artists

Studies of fine artists (e.g., painters, sculptors, photographers) indicate that many experience intrinsic motivation. However, questions can be raised about whether intrinsic motivation can be sustained over time. Because economic support for art is sporadic, meager, or nonexistent, many fine artists shift from one unrelated job to another—exhibiting a fluid career pattern. Such a career pattern would be difficult to withstand for any prolonged period of time because of economic uncertainties, familial pressures, and social status. The present study compared the responses of fine artists in fluid careers (n = 6) with those of applied artists in stable careers (n = 6) regarding whether and why they produce art (at the start of mid‐life). Both groups were queried 18–20 years after attending art school together. A content analysis and chi‐square test revealed that the fine artists were significantly more likely than the applied artists to offer intrinsic motives as an explanation for why they produced art. Theories of intrinsic motivation were utilized to account for the sustained activity. The results suggest fruitful directions for future research.     

The puzzle of philosophical testimony

An epistemologist tells you that knowledge is more than justified true belief. You trust them and thus come to believe this on the basis of their testimony. Did you thereby come to know that this view is correct? Intuitively, there is something intellectually wrong with forming philosophical beliefs on the basis of testimony, and yet it's hard to see why philosophy should be significantly epistemically different from other areas of inquiry in a way that would fully prohibit belief by testimony. This, I argue, is the puzzle of philosophical testimony. In this paper, I explore the puzzle of philosophical testimony and its ramifications. In particular, I examine the case for pessimism about philosophical testimony—the thesis that philosophical belief on the basis of testimony is impossible or is in some way illegitimate—and I argue that it lacks adequate support. I then consider whether the source of the apparent intellectual wrongness of testimonial‐based philosophical belief is grounded in non‐epistemic norms and goals of philosophical practice itself and argue that such norms are implausible, don't conflict with testimonial‐based philosophical belief, or else are mere disciplinary norms, lacking substantial normative force that would make it wrong to form testimonial‐based philosophical belief.     

The Experience of Magic

Despite its enduring popularity, theatrical magic remains all but ignored by art critics, art historians, and philosophers. This is unfortunate, since magic offers a unique and distinctively intellectual aesthetic experience and raises a host of interesting philosophical questions. Thus, this article initiates a philosophical investigation of the experience of magic. Section I dispels two widespread misconceptions about the nature of magic and discusses the sort of depiction it requires. Section II asks, “What cognitive attitude is involved in the experience of magic?” and criticizes three candidate replies; Section III then argues that Tamar Szabó Gendler's notion of “belief‐discordant alief” holds the key to a correct answer. Finally, Section IV develops an account of the experience of magic and explores some of its consequences. The result is a philosophically rich view of the experience of magic that opens new avenues for inquiry and is relevant to core issues in contemporary aesthetics.     

The Modernist Fallacy: philosophy as art's undoing [1]

ABSTRACT The essay is concerned with the widely held view that contemporary fine art is obscurantist, shallow and unrewarding of attention. It is argued that the opposition between common opinion and the advocates of modernism rests upon a philosophical disagreement about the nature and value of art. An account of aesthetic experience is then presented and illustrated by reference to Raphael's The School of Athens. This account shows the reasoning implicit in modernism to rest upon a fallacy relating to the possible forms of explanation. The essay concludes by endorsing Augustine's claim that culcural intelligibility rests not on abstract reasoning but on shared affections. This sets a requirement for artists to return to making work that engages the interests of their fellow citizens.     

No reason for identity: on the relation between motivating and normative reasons

This essay is concerned with the relation between motivating and normative reasons. According to a common and influential thesis, a normative reason is identical with a motivating reason when an agent acts for that normative reason. I will call this thesis the ‘Identity Thesis’. Many philosophers treat the Identity Thesis as a commonplace or a truism. Accordingly, the Identity Thesis has been used to rule out certain ontological views about reasons. I distinguish a deliberative and an explanatory version of the Identity Thesis and argue that there are no convincing arguments to accept either version. Furthermore, I point out an alternative to the Identity Thesis. The relation between motivating and normative reasons can be thought of as one of representation, not identity.     

Photography as unconcealment: revisiting the idea of photographic transparency

What distinguishes photography from other visual mediums? This deceptively simple but fundamental question has been at the centre of both past and current debates on the aesthetics of photography for quite some time. In this article, I will first address the premise that this question is intrinsically ontological and unfolded in pioneering debates as a sequence of implications about photographic indexicality. I will then argue that the ontological implications of photographic indexicality have been largely overlooked in subsequent research due to scholars’ concerns with how photography appears to us rather than what photography is in itself. To this end, I will specifically examine Kendall Walton's highly contested transparency thesis and some of its rebuttals, which have exerted a sprawling influence on debates on the aesthetics of photography. I will also argue that, having been exceedingly implicit in his account, what appears as indexicality to Walton and the implications thereof with respect to the transparency argument has operated on a phenomenological level; thus, the thesis itself has failed in instances in which the problem of representation and the very existence of the medium come into play. Finally, I will suggest that indexicality can be regarded as a distinctive feature of photography only when it is considered a predicate of transparency as an interstice of ‘unconcealment’ in the Heideggerian sense that would call into question the very existence of the representation and the photographic medium.     

Motivational Approaches to Intellectual Vice

Despite the now considerable literature on intellectual virtue, there remains relatively little philosophical discussion of intellectual vice. What discussion there is has been shaped by a powerful assumption—that, just as intellectual virtue requires that we are motivated by epistemic goods, intellectual vice requires that we aren't. In this paper, I demonstrate that this assumption is false: motivational approaches cannot explain a range of intuitive cases of intellectual vice. The popularity of the assumption is accounted for by its being a manifestation of a more general understanding of vice as an inversion or mirror image of virtue. I call this the inversion thesis, and argue that the failure of the motivational approach to vice exposes its limitations. I conclude by suggesting that recognizing these limitations can help to encourage philosophical interest in intellectual vice.