Abstract
This three-part dissertation is on the double role of experience in art: as a subject matter, and as the vehicle for our evaluations. It argues (Part three, Chs. 7, 8) for the inclusion within contemporary analytical ‘cognitivism’ (Part one, Chs. 1-3) of certain arguments from the founding fathers of aesthetics,
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Baumgarten and Kant (Part two, Chs. 4-6). I argue...
1. that depiction ought to be understood in terms of anticipated resemblances (resemblance-a, for short). (Against Goodman's semi-logical deflation of resemblance, I argue that representation is not a species of denotation, nor even a species of reference, because it lacks the ability to situate its subject matter, to indexically point us to its spatio-temporal context of production.);
2. that evocation or expression hold no answer to the problem of how to conceive of the idea of a ‘representation of an experience’. ‘Intimation’, which makes use of depicted unimodal phenomenal qualities, leaving holes to be filled in by the beholder’s imagination, does. (Intimatory devices include: framing, editing, ellipsis, metaphor);
3. that a realist definition of art should distinguish four orders of artistically relevant choices. I propose that a thing or event is art if and only if it is built from phenomenally accessible material-picked on the basis of first order decisions-exhibiting second order stylistic choices made on behalf of third order, aesthetic, evaluative choices. Procedures of museums-fourth order choices-do nothing to change this--pace Dickie.
4. that-pace Sibley-an account of the nature of aesthetic properties can be derived from the discussion of John Locke’s distinction between primary and secundary qualities, as elaborated by Ian Hacking (Representing and Intervening): we can only prove a property’s existence if we have access to it through more than one modality, but what we can say about their nature depends on the stories we want to tell.
5. that aesthetic properties are secundary qualities (those which we anticipate to resemble) which play an intimating role: tertiary qualities, for short. An account of aesthetic properties should incorporate the role played in their recognition by the imagination. Because they are perceived only through our imagination, their existence remains unproven, and therefore,
6. the account of artistic evaluation should be subjectivist. It also incorporates the imagination’s constitution of the experiential dimension of the represented, hence: imaginativist subjectivism.
7. The middle-historical-part elaborates Kant’s and Baumgarten’s philosophy of art, concentrating first on the role of the sensus communis in Kant’s subjectivist conception of the judgment of taste, arguing that this conception points us towards an ideal aesthetic experience, instead of a real one;
7. Secondly, Kant’s moral analysis of art is expounded as suggested in his Critique of Judgment, sections 17 (on the ideal of beauty), 42, 49 and 59. It is argued that Kant thought that the artistic value of works of art ought to understood as analogous to how we describe a person’s expressing his inner moral nature though his facial traits and gestures.
8. Baumgarten’s philosophy of art is defended as one which stresses exactly the indexicality of person’s experiences as an analogy to how works represent experiences.
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