The British Journal of Aesthetics - current issue

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

2009-04-08

Dodd on the 'Audibility' of Musical Works

Davies, D. — 2009-04-08

Julian Dodd has argued that the type–token theory in musical ontology has a ‘default’ status because it can explain the repeatability and audibility of musical works without the need for philosophical reinterpretation. I present two challenges to Dodd's claims about audibility. First, I argue (a) that a type–token theorist who, like Dodd, adheres to Wolterstorff's doctrine of analogical predication must grant that musical works themselves are hearable only in an ‘analogical’ sense; and (b) that alternative musical ontologies are able to explain the latter just as well as the type–token theory. Second, I argue that Dodd cannot evade this objection by claiming that what matters in musical ontology is accounting for audibility ‘in a derivative sense’, since the latter also allows of explanation by a range of musical ontologies.

The Role of Empathy in Gregory Currie's Philosophy of Film

Vaage, M. B. — 2009-04-08

Although Gregory Currie is often presented as a strong defender of empathic simulation as part of spectator engagement, this paper questions the importance of empathy in Currie's philosophy of film. Currie's account of the imagination is too propositional, and his account of a more sensuous and experiential kind of imagining is found wanting. While giving a convincing account of impersonal imagining in relation to fiction film, Currie does not sufficiently explain what empathy is, and what relation it has to other forms of imagining. Simulation is primarily defined as impersonal, and perhaps more importantly, as conceptual and propositional in Currie's writings. This is perhaps most evident in his critique of personal imagining, where imagining seeing or imagining being becomes a self-reflexive form of imagining where the spectator also conceptualizes ‘I’ and ‘see’. This paper discusses the relation between personal imagining and empathy in Currie's account, and argues that he fails to show how empathy is of secondary importance for engagement in fiction film.

Pictorial Experience and Seeing

Newall, M. — 2009-04-08

This paper proposes that pictorial experience, the experience that pictures give rise to when we understand them, involves the non-veridical experience of seeing the picture's subject matter. Using phenomenological analysis and material from philosophy of mind and perceptual psychology, it argues that both pictorial experience lacking awareness of the picture surface, such as illusion, and pictorial experience that includes this awareness, i.e. seeing-in, should be understood in this way.

Defining Depiction

Blumson, B. — 2009-04-08

It is a platitude that whereas language is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. But this platitude may be attacked on the grounds that resemblance is either insufficient for or incidental to depictive representation. I defend common sense from this attack by using Grice's analysis of meaning to specify the non-incidental role of resemblance in depictive representation.

Continuity and Discontiuity in the Concept of Art

Shiner, L. — 2009-04-08

In ‘Is Art Modern? Kristeller’s "Modern System of the Arts" Reconsidered’ (BJA, 49.1 (2009), pp. 1-24), James I. Porter sets out to discredit Kristeller’s ‘modern system of the arts’ on the curious assumption that if Kristeller is right, one is somehow prohibited from investigating the ancients’ understanding of aesthetics. Unfortunately, Porter's paper misrepresents Kristeller's central aim, misses the real shortcomings of Kristeller's essay, and often obscures substantive issues behind simplistic dichotomies. Because the unwary reader might be taken in by some of Porter's exaggerations and omissions, I will identify a few of these before addressing the issue of continuity and discontinuity in the concept of art, particularly with respect to the ancient world.

Reply to Shiner

Porter, J. I. — 2009-04-08

Larry Shiner has risen to an impassioned defence against my criticisms of an iconic figure, claiming that I have ‘misrepresent[ed] Kristeller's central aim’ and therefore missed ‘the real shortcomings of Kristeller's essay’ and ‘obscure[d] substantive issues behind simplistic dichotomies’. These, and a series of disagreements over countless small details, take up the first part of his reply. He then proceeds to summarize his own book's achievements in correcting Kristeller's shortcomings. Shiner acknowledges difficulties in Kristeller's formulations, but accepts their purport and actually expands the reach of Kristeller's thesis. Whatever else one might wish to say about these charges (which are quite impressive as a list but each disputable taken in turn), Shiner remains an unrepentant exponent of Kristeller's views. I realize that dogmas die hard, and it is only to be expected that if one challenges the central tenets of a legacy one will meet with entrenched reactions. Given the word-limit I have been allotted for my counter-reply, I will confine myself to the more substantive issues as these concern Kristeller's arguments, reserving for a possible future occasion any difficulties I may have with Shiner's own theses. My response will take the form of a series of questions followed by my own proposed answers.

Ontologese and Musical Nihilism: A Reply to Cameron

Predelli, S. — 2009-04-08

In a recent essay in this journal, Ross Cameron presents a novel solution to the problem of musical creation.1 The solution is of the ‘using a sledgehammer to crack a nut’ variety, since side by side with a dissolution of the problem of musical creation, his approach, if successful, would yield a swift answer to pretty much every central question in the ontology of art, and, for that matter, to a wide variety of perennial metaphysical difficulties. Nothing of this magnitude should be nonchalantly swept aside. Unfortunately, Cameron's approach does not survive close scrutiny.

Art, Emotion and Ethics

John, E. — 2009-04-08

Humans in the Land: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the Cultural Landscape

Cooper, D. E. — 2009-04-08

Everyday Aesthetics

Wilkinson, R. — 2009-04-08

Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno's 'Notes to Literature'

Robinson, J. — 2009-04-08

Books Received

2009-04-08

Journals Received

2009-04-08