Discussion file participation PHIL 431 Spring 2007

The discussion file, which is found on the course website listed above, is intended as an extension of the collective discussion component of the course. There is never enough time in the class for everyone to say everything worth saying, and not all thoughts occur to one immediately or are most easily expressed in speech. The discussion file lets us deal with all these limitations. To contribute a comment to it, send an email to the instructor, who will then post your comment along with his response. Any relevant new information or new thoughts or arguments about issues in the course are relevant. This includes comments relating to previously posted comments. Each student is expected to contribute at least five comments over the course of the semester. The content of the file is included in the required reading material for the course.

1. From Rajna Sekhri, 2/3/07, re. aesthetic experience of the Venus de Milo. Toward the end of class on Thursday, we focused on the missing arms of the Venus de Milo. We talked about the positions the arms could have originally been in - reaching for her garments, for example. Until it was suggested in class, I did not think to wonder about the arms and what they originally would have looked like. I suppose this mindset could fit in with ignoring aspects of the real statute to develop the aesthetic experience to the full (grounds given to support Ingarden's argument 5). When I envisioned the statue in my head, it was the way I saw it in the images presented to us, and I did not bother to mentally fill in any missing parts. (Of course, it was also mentioned in class that the more you develop an appreciate for art, these tendencies will come about naturally.) Then, I started thinking about what it *would* take for me to fill in parts of the Venus de Milo. If, for example, a large chunk of the breast were missing, it would be more jarring to me. I think it would occur to me to compensate for this. I am not exactly sure why I feel this way, but maybe because Venus is a goddess (woman), and part of her chest missing would take away from the superficial physicality of being a female. I could search even deeper and say that a woman's chest could symbolize the more traditional notion of a woman, motherhood, because of breastfeeding, etc. On the other hand, both genders have arms. Alternatively, maybe I feel this way because arms are just appendages that hang at the sides, while the chest is in the front. In any case, I paid scant attention the missing arms at first. I will continue to mull this over.

JB's response. Ingarden thinks that if we imagine one or other restoration of the statue's arms, our experience of the statue is going to be less than "aesthetic," or or not so fully aesthetic as it could be if we concentrated on what is there. As you suggest, if the Venus were a lot more fragmentary one wonders whether Ingarden would continue to insist that imagining a restoration of missing parts is necessarily anti-aesthetic (is merely investigative, or whatever). Perhaps he would justify "staying the course" by saying that we can never image the completion vividly enough to have a rich aesthetic experience of it.

Regardless of that, it is clear that when art historians imagine the arms they are asking which arm positions would be aesthetically good. And this means they are trying out various possibilities, testing the sort of aesthetic experience they have of the imagined completions. Further, if the statue had arms, you can be sure that they, and Ingarden too, would include them in their aesthetic experience of the work. The relation of the arms to the rest would be a vital part of what they appreciate. They certainly wouldn't ignore them or any other part of the complete statue.

What is correct about Ingarden's view, then, seems to be only that we can concentrate on one part of the figure and aesthetically experience that pretty much independently of the rest. We don't have to appreciate it in relation to the other parts. The head + torso + legs is a rewarding object of aesthetic appreciation. Even the fragmentary torso you imagine might be a richly rewarding object of appreciation.

Obviously there is more to be said on this topic.

2. From Courtney Lanier, 2/7/07, re. Ingarden

Ingarden repeatedly separates the material from the form, i.e. "the block of marble" from the "Venus De Milo" (p9). I would argue that the two are inseparable or, at least, that this instance of the image of Venus De Milo cannot be separated from this particular block of marble... For example, we could imagine the Mona Lisa painted with water color on newsprint. Wouldn't the aesthetic of the resulting work differ from the aesthetic of the traditional Mona Lisa? Separating the Venus De Milo from her marble gives us an aesthetic experience of what we can conceive the original model was like but it gives us no true experience of the statue itself. Maybe an easier example is a painting of the Grand Canyon. I would think the two instances of the Grand Canyon (the real one and the painting) would result in two different aesthetic experiences. In viewing the statue of the Venus De Milo, our experience would be similar to viewing a painting of the Grand Canyon; not a very fulfilling one if your desire was to experience the actual person of Venus De Milo. But, if you wanted to experience the painting of the Grand Canyon, seeing the real Grand Canyon would not help you with that experience much the same way the 'person' of Venus De Milo would not help you experience the statue.

JB's response. I am sympathetic with your skepticism about Ingarden's idea that we should disregard the materiality of the statue (or for that matter the flatness of a painting). But there is something true about what he says. We limit the attention we give to the relevant properties of the statue and we do, certainly, see it as having more than merely material properties, wouldn't you agree? We see it as animated, as incipiently mobile, as (humanly) strong yet tender and calm, as if self-confident, and so forth. To that extent we do "fictionalize" it. Both its marble and its "human" qualities figure in our experience . Of course it isn't just like encountering a goddess. We can't tell what that would be like from viewing the statue. Maybe that's a good thing!

Much the same can be said for a (big) painting of the Grand Canyon. We can certainly get something of the experience of the Grand Canyon from that, but not the whole, of course, of course. We supplement our experience of the surface design of the painting with imagined distance, scale, atmosphere and so forth. But we never cease to be aware of the physical reality of the painting.

3. From Courtney Lanier, 2/7/07, re. Ingarden

Ingarden also seems to say that aesthetic experience, being removed from the object itself, is also removed from the environment in which the experience might happen (an experience of the Venus De Milo does not require the actual Venus De Milo statue; since the statue is not required I would conclude that its surroundings are also not required). And yet, on page 9, notation 5. he discusses the aesthetics of the room the statue of Venus De Milo was housed in and states, "But these circumstances I have just considered are significant only for an aesthetic consideration of the Venus, which cannot be identified with the block of marble." I'm confused by his reasoning. The marble itself is not necessary but the room is significant?

JB's response. I take Ingarden to mean that the way the statue is presented contributes (or detracts, depending) to the experience. Up on a pedestal, with plenty of space around it, the viewer can more easily supplement it and to see it as a powerful presence than would be the case if she saw it down on her level close up. A more striking example of this, perhaps, would be the Winged Victory in the Louvre, since the goddess is seen as alighting on the prow of a ship. Ingarden can consistently maintain that one ignores, or imagines away, whatever is irrelevant in the setting.

4. From Sydney Pickett, 2/13/07, re. processes of decay as aesthetic. This might not be a big deal, but I did not agree with Stecker's quick dismissal of "encountering a state of decay" as something that could potentially be aesthetic. Now, I am not going to suggest that coming across a dead body is always pleasant. But isn't there something naturally, environmentally beautiful in the process of decay?

JB's response. Stecker might well agree that there can be something aesthetically valuable (which is what I think you mean by "aesthetic") about decay. The question is, what is aesthetically valuable about it? So let me turn the question back to you: what do you find is aesthetically valuable about it? Is it that elements are recycled? That bacteria thrive upon it? Does the value you find in it depend on the facts of ageing and death -- that is, we wouldn't want dead bodies to lie about w/o decaying, since we need room in the world for new life? But also, given that some sort of clearing up is needed, is decay the best imaginable way for it to happen? Perhaps to be beautiful the process would have to be swifter and cleaner.

I await your further thoughts. Every claim that something is beautiful is vague until one says what it is beautiful about it (i.e., what beautiful properties it has). So try to make your claim more specific.

5. From Rajna Sakhri, 2/13/07, re. emotional value of art. I have a comment regarding emotional value as applied to artistic value. We talked about false/flattery emotion, such as going to an art gallery and feeling like an elitist about it instead of genuine feelings for the artwork, etc. But isn't that feeling of eliteness an emotion in its own right? Or doesn't it at least give way to emotions such as pride? I do realize that the emotion is not directed toward the contents of the art gallery, but I still wonder if it is really "false" emotion.

JB's response. Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had spoken of a wrongly based emotion, an emotion based on a mistaken belief, an illusion or delusion, or an unworthy emotion, an emotion one shouldn't have. I didn't mean that the emotion wasn't real. If someone hangs around art galleries because she likes to imagine being an artworld insider -- or fool others into thinking she understands and likes the art -- then the emotional satisfaction gained is not well based. Similarly the pleasure of flattery can be perfectly real, but it's based on the belief that you are all those wonderful things the flatterer says you are. That's a kind of fraud, isn't it? What I meant about the emotional value was simply that wrongly based (or unworthy) emotional responses don't seem something we'd say is one of the values of art. To be a value of x, the effect has itself to be good, and wrongly based (or unworthy) emotion doesn't seem good enough to qualify. But I admit that there are many complications. The subject is a big one.

6. From Sabrina Berns, 2/15/07, re. the impressionistic model of environmental appreciation. Today we discussed for a bit during our lecture on environmental aesthetics the idea of viewing not the objects per se but the properties and appearances of those objects in a sort of impressionistic way. Automatically, I thought of Claude Monet's cathedral paintings and the way in which he tried to capture how the environment reacted with an object (the Rouen Cathedral). Monet was clearly intrigued by the way in which the appearance-properties of the cathedral differed according to the environmental changes, e.g., the time of day -- early morning, late afternoon -- or weather -- a foggy sky. I think that Monet's recognition in his paintings of how much the surrounding environment changes our perception and aesthetic experience of an object definitely supports our discussion of environmental aesthetics. On a more random note, I think it is interesting that Monet was an impressionist painter and that he found such a means of painting to be the most expressive of the fleeting properties and relations between environment and object.

JB's response. Certainly the analogy is there, most strongly when one considers the whole series of Monet's work. On the other hand there's no attempt on the artist's part to show ecological systems, so it's a limited sort of environmental art. The impressionists were not at all that big on geological or botanical or zoological features, were they? It's interesting to compare John Constable's treatment of landscapes, cloudscapes, and rural life with those of Monet. Constable shows a lot more of the specimens (trees, plants, animals), landforms, clouds and meteorological conditions in the scenes he depicts. But Monet certainly immerses himself in the visual impressions gained from nature.

7. From Sydney Pickett, 2/20/07, re. aesthetics of death. I find that decay is aesthetically pleasing as it is something otherworldly. Death and the decay that follows is something different, entirely opposite, from ourselves, yet it will one day be ourselves. The way dead bodies respond and react to their environment is similar to the slow process in which living bodies respond and react to their environment. We are thus attracted to death. ... there is something admirable in the way the body decomposes. It is lovely to think of how cyclical death is: there is life on earth; and in many years, death wherein you are no longer "of the earth"; and then via decay, the dead is able to return back to the earth... it is difficult for me to name why I am attracted to death. Maybe, more than anything, it is because of the sorrow I feel for the dead.

JB's response. You say there is something otherworldly about decay. But you go on to cite only processes that are definitely worldly. I wonder how specific your thought about them is. Do you know much about the processes of decay? They are at least vast accelerations and extrapolations of the processes of ageing in a living being. It seems to me you are looking at decay from a very long way off, not really dealing with the reality.

The other theme in your comment is that of the "return" -- is this a religious idea? Resurrection or reincarnation are of course positive ideas. For that reason they are not strictly relevant to the decay issue. In order to deal fairly with the aesthetics of decay you need to maintain that decay is beautiful even if there is no return. Would you go as far as this?

8. From Courtenay Lanier, 2/22/07, re. aesthetic experiences of things (Mars, e.g.) from photos. Today in class we discussed aesthetically appreciating Mars by viewing photos of Mars.  I have a few problems/questions I would like to approach.  Going back to my Grand Canyon example previously (it's a place I can actually go), I would still assert that you cannot have the aesthetic experience of a place unless you've been there and that any aesthetic experience obtained by viewing an image is vastly different from that of being there.

When one is at the grand canyon, one is immersed in the actual environment.  Sight, smell, touch, sound, and even taste are used to create the aesthetic experience.

When one views a photograph of the grand canyon, one can have a partial visual experience of the place (not total due to the fact that you cannot change your point of view) but one cannot experience the sounds, tastes, smells, and touch of the grand canyon. Also, you may imagine, while looking at the picture of the grand canyon, what the breeze feels like in your hair, what the rock feels like under your feet. But you aren't actually experiencing it, you are thinking about what the experience might be like.

In addition, your aesthetic experience might be influenced by your viewing environment  - strong smells, dim light, blaring sirens, etc that causes additional experiences outside any experience related to the grand canyon itself.

For me at least, there is a sort of Plato's Cave effect going on here.  The closer you get to the 'real' thing, the more 'real' the aesthetic experience of the thing is (real is not the term I want here, as all aesthetic experiences are 'real' but it is the closest I can come.  Maybe true is a better word. Or accurate.)  When you look at a picture or look at a painting or imagine what it is like, there are still only partial truths.  I can see where, in some sense, Stecker's knowledge makes perfect sense; that knowledge of a particular place or thing, first hand knowledge particularly, aids in the aesthetic experience.

JB's response. If we distinguish, as we must, aspects from the objects that have them, there seems no difficulty in the idea of experiencing some aspects of things without experiencing others. Then there's no reason to say we can't experience some aspects of the Grand Canyon aesthetically without experiencing others. That's what you were doing since you couldn't have been experiencing all the aspects of anything as big and complex as the Grand Canyon (or actually of anything at all!). If aesthetic experience required experiencing all the aspects of a thing, one could never aesthetically experience anything. So that can't be a valid criterion of aesthetically experiencing (or appreciating) a thing.

Of course there is a difference between experiencing a thing first-hand and experiencing it indirectly, by photographs or paintings. Your position seems to be that we can't experience a thing aesthetically unless we experience it (some aspects of it) first-hand. This raises lots of problems. For instance where does face-to-face experience stop? If I see a thing in my binoculars or in a telescope, is that still first-hand? Or via TV? Note that sound can be a feature of the latter. But if one decides to say we have to be in direct, unmediated contact with the object of aesthetic experience, mustn't one still allow for the possibility that one can appreciate it aesthetically without having an aesthetic experience of it? Clearly I can get quite a good idea of how beautiful a place (or a person) is from photographs. So why not a pretty good idea of the comparative beauty of Mars and the Earth from photos (plus knowledge of the two planets)? No doubt I won't have comprehensive or precise knowledge of the aesthetic merits and demerits of the two, but why can't I have enough to know that one is more beautiful than the other? After all, you could surely make that sort of judgment about the Grand Canyon as opposed to a canyon of less than stellar aesthetic interest, from photos.

All this shows how essential it is to make key distinctions in subjects like this one. We'll talk more about this case, and the distinctions relevant to handling it, in class. The issues are absolutely fundamental in aesthetic theory, and your remarks create an excellent occasion for working out the best solutions.

9. From Ed Liu, 2/28/07, re. direct/indirect aesthetic experience.

We brought up an example today in class that suggested that the experience of many aspects of the Grand Canyon could be duplicated remotely via some interface with a robot actually located at the canyon.  As we noted in class, there are some limitations to this--the lack of complete freedom of movement and vision, for example--that make the conduit suppress the full experience.
These limitations, however, seem merely to be imposed by the current state of technology.  It is far from inconceivable that technology can eventually provide cameras with sufficiently high definition that our eyes could not tell the difference and motion sensors that could translate the movements of our eyes and heads into corresponding movements of the robot's cameras with near-instantaneous speeds.  Even now there exist video screens that wrap around the viewer, covering their entire field of view.  Further, advances in neuroscience show promise in allowing us to directly interface with the sensory apparatuses of the brain.
Imagine that such advances ultimately culminate in some device or apparatus that can feed our brains with sensory data with as much granularity and precision as our own bodies.  With such a device, the indirect-ness of apprehending the Grand Canyon remotely through a robot does not seem so clear.
Consider a less extreme example--a blind man.  We already have the ability to give the blind rudimentary sight using small camera and computer implants.  Currently, the images produced have very low resolution, but increasing this resolution is a function of improved and cheaper manufacturing/fabrication processes than of any serious technological hurdle.  Imagine, then, that these 'artificial eyes' increase in detail and vividness to the point where the images produced are indistinguishable from 'real' human eyes (particularly compelling is the fact that human eyes are far less capable visual tools than our brains lead us to believe).  When the formerly blind man looks out at the Grand Canyon, it seems (at least intuitively) that he is directly experiencing its visual aspects.

If one grants that a blind man with such an artificial eye (indistinguishable in image from a natural eye) is directly experiencing the sights around him, then it seems that one must grant the direct-ness of experiencing the sights via that artificial eye if it were to be pulled from its socket.  What, then, if the eye were connected by cable such that the man could hold it out at arms length? What if some instantaneous wireless communication system allowed him to fly his eye out to the Grand Canyon?  If we commit to the direct-ness of his visual experience with the eye in its right place, his visual experience seems to be direct regardless of the physical location of the eye.
The fullness or completeness of an aesthetic experience, then, seems to have more to do with the totality of sensory experience than with the notion of apprehending the subject directly.  The notion of direct-ness seems almost nonsensical--or at least irrelevant if a sensory experience in all its completeness can be reproduced.

JB's response. I entirely agree that what counts most is the "totality of sensory experience," not how the experience is obtained. Also, even if the indirectness of the experience is sensibly apparent to the viewer, the viewer can still have an aesthetic experience, perhaps even a paradigmatic one, of the virtual reality sensory input. Why not? If it produces a well-unified totality eliciting fault-free aesthetic pleasure, it satisfies a stringent criterion of aesthetic goodness, so far as I can see. And I think we can also say the experience is of the Grand Canyon if the causal story makes the sensory input a reliable indicator of the real properties of the view(s) of the Grand Canyon at the time in question.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for the unaided experience of things where all our sensory modalities, including those registering our total bodily awareness, are functioning naturally. We have a sense of connection with the world more solid and reliable than we could possibly have when depending on instruments, even if their inputs are wired into our brains and we don't have to handle them. After all, we've been living unwired all our lives and the experience so gleaned is the foundation of our sense of the reality of ourselves and the world. So I think we have a vital interest in unmediated experience of things. Wouldn't you agree?

10. From Ed Liu, 2/28/07 continuing the subject of 9. (selective, summarized). Re. JB's claim that unmediated sensation gives a solider sense of reality. (1) It is at least conceivable that my senses could be completely and indistinguishably emulated by artificial means.  In such a case, why would I feel any less connected with reality than I do now? Presumably I would not notice anything amiss or different from my previous experiences of reality. (2) What is this "sense" of reality? Is it a normal physical sense? If so, why couldn't it be emulated perfectly?

JB's response. I doubt that the idea of a "perfect emulator" is coherent. Sounds simple enough until one tries to say how it could be contrived so that the experiencer, though well-versed in perceptual cognition of the ordinary sort, couldn't find out about it -- couldn't feel the wires or other apparatus, couldn't catch it presenting material suspiciously out of sync with normal expectations or failing to provide exactly the same total response to, say, our touching our eyes or to tears blurring our vision and at the same time being felt on our cheeks. We are stupendously complex and subtle percipients in many modalities, some "transparent" (sight, sound) and some bodily. The sense of reality I'm referring to is the impression of everything, really everything, being normal, solid, available to test, etc. That's not a separate sense but a cognitive impression derived from the totality of the sensory input against the background of systematic knowledge of how things are.

11. From Brendan Finegan, 3/2/07, re. pictorial and face-to-face experience. There is no way that a picture can give you anywhere close to the same aesthetic experience that the real thing can. I don't even think that a comparison is justified. How could you possibly think about comparing a picture of Normandy on D-Day to actually being there? There are so many things that go into a full aesthetic experience (sight, sound, smell, nerves etc); a picture only captures the vision. What's more, a picture can be enhanced, morphed and adjusted to create the most "optimal" quality. However, once these changes are made, I find it hard to accept that it would still be a true representation of the subject. Comparing one photo to another or one area of the Grand Canyon to another is fine. But somehow, comparing a photo to the Grand Canyon falls short.

JB's response. You raise several issues. (1) Experiencing a still picture is, as you say, very different from experiencing the subject face to face. I wouldn't dream of denying this. (2) Experiencing the best IMAX film of the Grand Canyon, however, will give you a fuller experience of the Grand Canyon than any single face-to-face viewing of it. Do you really mean to deny that? Of course, the film won't give you the other sense modalities. But on balance it gives you more. (3) Re. enhancements, you don't say what sort of pictorial enhancements you have in mind, so your comment about that needs to be filled out. Adding sound? Smell? Wind? If the added elements are accurate, in what way do they falsify the subject? That would mean giving false information, which those elements wouldn't be doing. Note that some things we do face to face alter the experience. Sunglasses give different colors, cut down glare, etc., but we don't think there's any particular virtue in viewing things without them. (4) Comparisons within categories are easier than ones across categories, but we need both -- esp. in the sense of "comparisons and contrasts," which is one meaning of "comparisons." The essential thing is to make them specific, to catch both the specific likenesses and differences. Otherwise we over-simplify the facts.

12. From Brendan Finegan, 3/2/07, re. robotic full-experience simulation and experience of replicas . I have no doubt that if someone were to be in a simulator without knowing it, that their aesthetic experience would be in accordance with what they'd experience if they were in reality. However, I feel that once one is aware that they are not in reality, no matter how sophisticated the simulator may be, the experience cannot be the same. Using another example brought up in class about the statue of Marcus Aurelius, the student said that he was enthralled by what he saw and felt that he got everything he could have out of seeing the statue. However, once he was informed that the statue was a replica, something was lacking. The difference is not necessarily physical. I feel that once we know that what we are experiencing is a recreation of reality/an original, it is psychologically impossible to not feel unfulfilled.

JB's response. I am skeptical about the simulator's efficacy, as I explained in class. Your new point is about the effect of knowledge on aesthetic experience. Some philosophers (Ingarden, for example) would say that you should learn to "bracket" that knowledge in order to optimize the aesthetic experience. Others would say that you ought to keep the knowledge in full view and experience the conflict between it and the appearance of reality provided by your visual experience. My view is that you may freely choose which experience to cultivate. "Bracketing" the knowledge is a special use of the imagination that modifies our experience in many situations. Literary theorists speak of a "willing suspension of disbelief" when people are swept up into a fictional world. Similarly we constantly disregard knowledge when we fall under the spell of a magnetic personality or when we wish to believe that the alluring object of our desire really loves us. I don't think it's as impossible as you think to imagine a known reproduction is an original and enjoy it as if it were fully authentic. But it's also often the case that our knowledge of its inauthenticity ruins the enjoyment that we would have if we could forget that knowledge.

13. From Josh Samuel, 3/8/07, re. critics as reliable judges. So, assuming critics are generally people who can fulfill the optimal conditions for observation of works of art what happens when they are totally fooled? This link takes you to a webpage with a work of art I find unconvincing.
http://josh.samuel.googlepages.com/stupidhelicopter
The page name of course shows no bias on my part.
Perhaps this is a case of terrible tourist trash but I don't want to discount it that way immediately. I'm curious if this indicates a problem with relying on critics or any group of people to decide what art is? Is this just a case of the critic not exercising disciplined imagination? Am I just being cynical and calling this nonsense without reason?

JB's response. Art nowadays often makes a point of being cryptic and critics often haven't a clue as to what it means, whether its really worth serious attention and if it is, what sort of attention is appropriate. In this context there are bound to be works that look stupid and quite a few that really are stupid, or at least not very bright. We'll discuss this a lot in the next part of the course. As to critics, they are by no means always reliable. To be fair, they have a tough job contending with all this radical art. So does the viewer, even one who is sympathetic with the idea of pushing the envelope in art. There's no easy way to tell right off if a new work, or a critical comment like the one in this case, has much merit. Only a lot of experience will help. For my money, the helicopter piece is pretty poor stuff, and the comment isn't much better -- the thing about the latter is that it's only a fragment, not a developed interpretation or assessment. We can't tell what the critic would have gone on to say if given the chance, or if pressed. One learns much more from more extended commentary, when one can find it. Interviews with the artist also can help, when the interviewer knows what questions to ask.

We can't assume critics fulfill optimal conditions. Some come a lot closer than others, obviously, at least for the kind of art in which the critic is best versed. There's no one who is optimal for all kinds of art or anything else. Most are better equipped than the average museum goer. Beyond that it's hard to find any reliable generalizations. One thing is clear: anyone who wants seriously to judge a critic's insightfulness regarding a work of art has to become a critic of sorts himself or herself.

14. From Phil Torres, 3/12/07, re. bracketing one's knowledge. Professor Brown notes in his rejoinder to Brendan Finegan (above) that Ingarden suggests that the observer “bracket” his/her knowledge, while other philosophers “say that you ought to keep the knowledge in full view and experience the conflict between it and the appearance of reality provided by your visual experience.” First of all, I would agree with the student in class who stated that once he was apprised of the fact that the statue was not ‘authentic', the experience of the statue was no longer the same (and maybe the thought of past experiences — especially good experiences! — would evoke a sense of disappointment). This seems to gesture at what the textbook called ‘contextualism', viz., that the context of the work of art (i.e., knowledge of who sculpted the figure) is relevant to the aesthetic experience of that work. With respect to Prof. Brown's response, it seems to me that both arguments (i.e., Ingarden's and “others”) tacitly accept the possibility of “theory-neutral” perception, as it were.—That is, a dichotomy between knowledge and perception. But what if all of our perceptions are laden with our knowledge or beliefs? Then, of course, “bracketing” (at least some of) our knowledge would be impossible, right? Thus, after discovering that the statue is not the original, the experience of that statue can never be the same again. (1) What exactly is the relation between (say, modest) constuctivism and the thesis that all perception is laden by our knowledge and beliefs (one is a metaphysical thesis and the other epistemological?); and (2) I wonder what other students think about this issue. Can one, for instance, really “bracket” one's knowledge?

JB's response. I certainly think that we can bracket some of our knowledge some of the time. In fact I think we do it very frequently. At least we are able to overlook or forget what we know. Of course if we are keen on a given property being there, it's not going to be easy to bracket the revelation that it's not, as in the case of the statue that's revealed to be a forgery. But suppose your job is to determine how good a forgery is, and suppose it is a very good one. Then in carefully surveying its style you can fairly easily bracket your knowledge. You can imagine it's by a pupil of the master and ask, does it measure up? Is there any reason to think that a serious connoisseur can't make a fair assessment of its quality -- and get a lot of aesthetic enjoyment from it? Of course one's total experience of it won't be the same because one will want to retain the knowledge that it's not authentic (suppose that's made certain by physical analysis of the material, which contains elements not available to the original sculptor.) But one can still honestly say, it's perfectly consistent with X's style, and very, very beautiful. How powerful a person's capacity to bracket is depends on various things, I suppose, among which is practice. Another factor is probably some important good to achieve by the bracketing.

On the issue of theory-neutral perception, I wouldn't dream of claiming we can bracket everything we know. But that is definitely not at issue here, so far as I can see. I don't even know what benefit we would get from having moments of pure, knowledge-free "perception." The moment we interpret it knowledge (belief, anyway) would enter the picture, and if there was a before what good would it be? We want to know about the world, not about raw sensory data. The idea that somehow we would be on a sounder footing so far as knowledge of the world goes if we could isolate raw sensory data is very far from being self-evident!

If I have missed your point, let me know.

15. From Sydney Pickett, 3/14/07. Are aesthetic "qualities" and aesthetic "properties" the same thing?

JB's response. Yes, these are commonly used as alternative terms for the same thing. However, the term "quality" does have a helpful connotation, namely that an aesthetic property must be a property of qualitative degree. Quantitative properties can't be aesthetic ones.

16. From Rajna Sekhri, 3/28/07, re. formal excellence and major/minor art. I presume that "art as formal excellence" falls under theories like that of Bell - form, etc. I am wondering about the relationship between formal excellence and the "major v. minor" distinction in art. By just examining the form of something, I feel that it would be hard to determine if it is major or minor art. I wonder how major v. minor ever plays a role when art is being narrowly defined, such as by form, because both categories are multi-dimensional ("major" being fine, ambitious, high, etc., for example).

JB's response. Normally the major/minor distinction has to do with the medium, in that minor arts are in media that don't allow of the full range of aesthetic properties belonging to the major arts. For instance, there is an art of intarsia, in which wooden inlay is used to make pictures. Designs in intarsia can be wonderfully decorative and charming, but can't come close to matching the subtlety and complexity of pictorial effects that are achieved in art-grade painting or sculpture. I think a formalist would agree with this general judgment. As Bell would put it, intarsia designs don't have form that is as significant as the best examples of representational painting or sculpture.

That's the short answer. But I don't mean to belittle the difficulties in working out a satisfactory theory of major/minor art. The distinction is used, but has never, in my judgment, been adequately analyzed. One point to keep in mind about the distinction is that some works in a minor art may rise above the level normal for their category, just as some (many, in fact) works in a major art are of little value.

17. From James Hudgins, 3/28/07, re. art and truth. In class it was mentioned that truthfulness can affect what people consider art. It seems like a singer/song writer of music is a good example of this. If a person writes a song or poem from a truthful perspective more people are going to see this as artistic. If a person writes a song or poem for money or fame and is not truthful then it seems that that what is composed will be not art or lesser art. However, the problem seems to be, how can one distinguish truthfulness? It seems like one could easily deceive someone into thinking that what they produce is truthful. So, it would seem like there is untruthful art that is regarded as truthful art. I don't know if this is a dilemma that can be solved or if it is just a byproduct of the fact that if you have good art or serious/fine art you can possibly become rich and famous. So, the question I will pose to close this response is how do we definitively know what art is truthful and is it serious/fine art because people think it is truthful or does it definitively have to be truthful?

JB's response. Truth is no different from any other artistic merit in being subject to mistaken perceptions. So the mere fact that an artist convinces viewers of the truth of a deliberately inaccurate portrait (say) wouldn't mean that the portrait was (in that respect) meritorious. What follows is that where truth is artistically important the work can only be reliably judged if its truth can be ascertained.

That being said, I hasten to add that truth is only one artistic merit and a work may be great art even if it isn't entirely true. What's more important is for its cognitive content to be reasonable to believe, or at least worthy of being taken seriously. I should also add that the way of its being "true" varies a lot. Art and truth is a big subject about which I'll say more later.

18. From Phil Torres, 4/9/07, re. creation vs. discovery of musical works. ...When listening to, for example, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, I sometimes imagine that instead of writing a quarter-note (at just one point, somewhere in the composition), Beethoven wrote two eighth-notes—one small change that affects just a single quarter-note. I then wonder what difference it would make, if any, to the final product. Of course, one encounters something like the sorites paradox here, since at some point, that is, after many small changes, the composition really does become something quite noticeably different than the original. Nevertheless, I want to say that most musical compositions could be changed in minor ways without at all detracting from the experience (etc.) of them. Thus, my question is: Are there many aestheticians today who champion a sort of Platonic view of musical compositions? That, e.g., Beethoven's ninth symphony is perfect just the way it is, and thus if one were to change, for example, a single quarter-note to two eighth-notes it would corrupt the composition(!)? What do you think?

JB's response. Unquestionably some philosophers of art maintain that musical works are musical structures that exist as eternal objects. However this doesn't imply anything about how good a structure is aesthetically. If one musical structure is an eternal object (like a number or geometrical form) so is every other, regardless of how good this or that one is aesthetically. So if you change a note in Beethoven's Ninth you arrive at a slightly different musical structure that might be (slightly) better or worse than Beethoven's, or equally good. The last possibility can hold if aesthetic goodness is not a perfectly continuous magnitude, i.e., not every difference of musical property makes a difference in value. As you say, it seems highly likely that some differences don't make a value-difference. So the defender of the discovery line can dismiss your worry without a guilty conscience. Another defence such a one might make is that a musical composition is to be conceived as a fairly narrow class of musical structures rather than one perfectly determinate structure. This would have the advantage that slight variations in performance would still count as performings of the work.

I don't mean to endorse the discovery line, of course. Stecker's structure-in-use is much more sensible position to adopt. Also I stand by my comments about discoveries and creations because I think they help explain more precisely what is going on in the music-making process than does any identification of the work as a creation (simply) or a discovery (simply).

19. From Sabrina Berns, 4/9/07, re. truth in art. I think the last comment posted by James (#17 above) can also be related back to our discussion about the Venus de Milo earlier this semester. Is it or is it not the case that knowing the "truth" of Venus de Milo and where her arms once fell determines whether or not it is good art? If we attached arms that happened to fall in a "false" place, then would the Venus de Milo mean less as a piece of art? Clearly, there are critics who fall on both sides of the argument. Maybe the Venus de Milo gains a truth that is relevant to us because of our addition to a historical masterpiece that is different, but just as true, as the Venus de Milo was at its conception.

JB's response. I take it that you refer to the position of Venus' arms and to the attempts to reconsititute the statue as it originally was. Commonsense tells us that some arm positions are bound to be better aesthetically than other ones. But also there is no reason to suppose that some variations can't be equally good. Then there is the question of which position is the original one, which might have been aesthetically the best, but equally might have been less good than that. If the original (the "true") position can't be ascertained, we just aren't in a position to say with certainty precisely how good the original statue was. But we can make a less fully grounded judgment of it by assuming that the arrangement of the arms was as good as the rest of the statue. I think that is what Ingarden and art historians generally do. And it seems a reasonable compromise.

As to the meaning of the statue, clearly the statue's recoverable meaning is reduced by the absence of certainty about the arms. The position of the arms certainly contributed to its meaning. If we can't know exactly what their position was, we can't know exactly what their position meant. We mustn't deny that the statue had, and therefore still has, that meaning. Rather we must admit our ignorance of which of several possible meanings it has -- unbeknownst to us, of course. The meaning it has is roughly the meaning it conveyed to its original public. Actual meaning in such cases differs from recoverable meaning.

20. From Courtenay Lanier, 4/9/07, re. art/beauty-recognition. Courtenay cites an article in the Washington Post that describes, and reflects upon, a fascinating experiment of a brief violin concert in the L'Enfant Metro plaza by Joshua Bell impersonating a street musician. The article can be accessed at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

The article contains many interesting remarks, including ones by Paul Guyer, a specialist in Kant, and interviews with various of the passers-by in the Metro station.

JB's response. I'll comment now on the article, and if Courtenay submits her thoughts I'll comment on them too. The experiment is fairly well commented upon by the writers of the article. The several passers-by who recognized the quality of the music and the performance were people more attuned to music -- the best was a trained violinist. The mass of people passing by were simply too focused on other things to pay attention. All this bears out the absolute necessity to tie the concepts of beauty and art to responses by optimal discriminators operating under optimal conditions. Concert settings help a lot to select the audience and focus their attention. Settings like the experimental one here throw up barriers to optimal reception. That was its point. It was designed to test how much bad conditions depress the quality of reception. In my view the experiment confirms the views taken in this course. It doesn't have any tendency to show that beauty is not intersubjectively knowable. Rather, it shows how much we can gain if we keep an eye open for real beauty and develop a wide repertory of sensitivities.

21. From Hunter Pavela, 4/9/07, re. the Joshua Bell Metro case. ... As Professor Brown mentions, [this case] ... reinforces the need for optimal conditions and optimal observers. However, I think one can extrapolate a little more from the article. I'll use myself as an example. I listen to classical music fairly frequently, and consider myself familiar with many modern performers as well as the composers themselves. Despite my appreciation for the art, I admit that my own musical ear isn't very finely tuned. In fact, I would be hard pressed to say whether a violinist was merely a middling performer, or a virtuoso like Joshua Bell. In order to determine such aesthetic qualifications, I often rely on context to determine such qualifications. If an an art piece holds the center display of an exhibit, I might take such positioning to be indicative of it's aesthetic quality and regard it as such, especially if I didn't consider to my own aesthetic judgement about that particular art form to be optimal. In the case of this experiment, I would like to think I might have stopped and listened, but my reliance on context might of informed that decision so much that I would have walked on instead. In summary, I think that the article may also illustrate the degree to which many aesthetes who don't have optimal appreciation faculties rely on things like context. As the article says, "He was, in short, art without a frame."

JB's response. Sure, but my comment was meant to cover this point. I said that the people who failed to appreciate the music did so because they were focused on other things, unlike people in a concert. Reliance on context is understandable for beginners, or people under stress. Context can also be misleading, as when we assume that a painting is good just because it's in a museum. The best context is the one created for oneself, when one clears away all the artificial contextual clues and attends with a free mind to the piece.

22. From Kyle Phillips, 4/10/07, re. intentions and meaning. In chapter 7, Stecker rejects the argument that "discovering intentions is finding something out about the artist, not artworks." (130) He insists that the argument does not follow because "although people have intentions and things don't, people's intentions transmit properties to the things those people do and make that are ontologically dependent on those intentions." My question is this: If an object is ontologically dependent on the intentions of the artist (that transfer to the object), does the work cease to exist (truly be a realized work) without the known intentions of its existence?

JB's response. Actually Stecker adds another sufficient condition to his "moderate intentionalist" definition to cover special cases of unintended meanings, namely that the meaning is able to be grasped from the conventional meanings plus extensions (due to context). Note: this is not the norm for him. The standard case is one where the author intends the meanings and the work wouldn't have them unless the author had intended them. Check the lecture outline on this point. But regardless of that, your question should concern what meaning a work has rather than whether the work exists-- assuming that you intended to address the problem of Ch. 7. The reference to ontology here concerns the dependence of the meaning on the maker's intentions, not the work. Also it isn't whether the intentions are known that matters, but whether they exist. However, all that said, if we can see that the conventions and context suggest that the work has meaning M, then if there's nothing to suggest otherwise we are warranted in concluding that in all probability it has that meaning. I'll say more about problem cases next time, but for now we can leave the subject with that almost decisive judgment.

23. From Phil Torres, 4/11/07, re. history of environmental aesthetics. A quick historical question: I recently read in the SEP article entitled “Environmental Aesthetics” that while this subdomain of philosophical inquiry proper emerged in the last 35 years or so, it has its real provenance in eighteenth century aesthetics. I am curious what role the Industrial Revolution played in catalyzing the emergence of this field—i.e., just as Silent Spring , Walden , the picture of the “earth rise” (taken by Apollo 8 astronauts), and so on, brought about the environmental movement (and environmental ethics, I think), I wonder if industrialization didn't cause philosophers/aestheticians to look at nature differently. (Of course, Kant discusses natural beauty; but he was, I believe, one of the few philosophers to give nature much attention.) Was this the case?

JB's response. As you indicated in your cover paragraph, this is a big topic. I'll limit myself to a few remarks. First, one chief source of interest in nature was what was called natural theology, which is the attempt to show that the order in the world suffices to prove the existence and nature of God (a line close to that of the recent "intelligent design" advocates). This approach was widespread in the 18th century, prior to the industrial revolution (but not prior to the squalor of cities). Obviously it fits in with the order conception of environmental beauty. Second, a philosopher such as Francis Hutcheson, a prominent "sense of beauty" theorist, goes pretty comprehensively through the categories of natural phenomena finding good blends of uniformity and variety on all hands, which he says makes things in nature beautiful.

Third, just prior to the beginning of the 17th century landscape subjects began to be cultivated in painting without need of religious or genre motifs (genre = scenes of ordinary human life) to elevate paintings to the level of fine art. Adventurous spirits and then ordinary travelers began to relish wild ("sublime") natural scenes, not just trim ornamental ones, and this came increasingly into landscape painting.

Fourth, once the industrial revolution produced its dark satanic mills (in the non-Blakean sense) with horrific environmental and human degradation, sensitive souls sought refuge from it in nature. But the flight from industry led more to appreciation of beautiful or romantic/sublime landscapes and scenery than toward appreciation of order in nature. Thoreau's "Walden" (mid-19th century) is something of an exception -- a fine example of a non-scientific escapee from the industrial world appreciating ecological order-- though I recall that he also admired the regularity of the railroad. The dark side of industry was amply recognized by critics but that did not by itself produce systematic study of environmental aesthetics.

I think the rise of environmental aesthetics in the wake of the flower-child 1960's comes from two things: heightened awareness of the threats to the environment and the development of philosophical aesthetics into a recognized discipline. When only a few scattered philosophers were specializing in aesthetics/philosophy of art, other topics had higher priority. By the 1970's people were looking for new sub-fields to explore and the time was ripe for environmental aesthetics because of widespread fear of irreversible environmental losses.

24. From Sabrina Berns, 4/11/07, re. Masson's automatic drawing and intention. After our Tuesday class in which I posed a concern for how to explain and identify the meaning in Surrealist works, I looked up more on Andre Masson. While I had trouble finding sources that went into depth about his automatic drawing, I did find a jstore document at the following site: http://www.jstor.org/view/00043249/ap030104/03a00080/0 In the first couple of pages, it mentions Masson's "Birth of Birds" automatic drawing. There is some discussion of how Masson's continuous line was essential to his discovering of the subconcious and the way in which it violates traditional composition. Masson also is quoted as believing "that he was guided by an unknown internal urge..." I wonder how much we can attribute the meaning of the artwork to Masson himself or to some other force beyond him? Clearly, in a surrealist artwork the conscious is left out as much as possible. If Masson is not conscious of the meaning he puts into his artwork, even if it is evoked from his subconscious, can we still argue for an artist's intent?

JB's response. As I said in class if anyone spells out the meaning Masson gets into his work we will be in a better position to raise the question of its source. So far no one has. Rather the works are described in formal terms (a loose intermingling of vague ("flickering") images created by a continuous line) and said to have equally vague expressive suggestions ("furious suns"). The claims that they reveal inner thoughts or other aspects of the self are never made specific. Note that Janet, the French psychiatrist who influenced the early surrealists, said that only patients' words that are clear and intelligible are of any help. Masson's images doubtfully come up to this standard (clear and intelligible images). Rather it seems that their appeal depends on their being opaquely cryptic, which feeds the fantasy that they would be revealing if only we could interpret them.

But suppose an artist produces intelligible images automatically (as far as she can tell). What place does intention have in giving them that meaning? Either we can say that there is an unconscious intention, or that in this rather special case their meaning arises from our recognitional abilities + artistic conventions + permitted extensions without there being any intention. The first idea is problematic even as a concept (can intentions be unconscious?). The second accords with Stecker's moderate intentionalism (satisfies what I called condition D) and seems to me by far the most plausible view to take. Incidentally, on that second understanding, the artist might consider what she has produced and try to find some link between it and something in her psyche -- a feeling of its resonating with something within her, an anxiety or desire, say. Perhaps that factor could play a causal role below the level of an intention. But that intuition would be helpful only if one could say what it was in the psyche that had that role -- anxiety, fear, belief or whatever. And that would require some sort of diagnostic procedure, wouldn't it?

25. Tanya Schmoeger, 4/12/07, re. fiction vs. nonfiction. In class we discussed two cases: 1. One where a sane person is doing a novelistic treatment of a documentary. This person includes information in this project believing it to be false. 2. In the second case, there is an insane person who includes information believing it to be true. In both cases the information which was included in the story actually turns out to be true. In the case with the sane person, the added text should not be counted as a documentary since the author had no way of knowing the events actually occurred; so there is a case for calling the added text fiction. However, in the case of the insane person, you said that the inserted portion is not considered to be fiction. I wanted to make sure I understood you correctly, in that the reason the information in the second case is not considered to be fiction is because of the author's intention when he created the work. Additionally, you went into a little detail about how in both of these cases Stecker would reply, and come back with examples. Could you please explain Stecker's reply to both situations in greater detail, and what examples he would give.

JB's response. First let me explain that the work of the insane author (understand that he needn't be generally insane, just convinced that he is gifted with prophecy) should be counted as non-fiction because non-fictional works typically have some factual errors and his is just an aggravated case of that. Stecker's "primary purpose" criterion explained below would make case 2 nonfictional and decide case 1 on the basis of how heavily "novelized" the account was.

Stecker's views on problematic cases of fiction-nonfiction are expressed on pp. 148-9. He distances himself from the view that a work ceases to be non-fictional (as a whole) just because some parts serve as props for novelistic imaginings. His position is that what determines the category (fiction vs. nonfiction) is the primary purpose. Thus if it is the primary intention of the author that the work as a whole convey truths, it is nonfiction even if certain parts are fictional, as in the case of interpolated thoughts or invented dialogue -- I suppose the idea is that no one would take these to be accurate, since they couldn't be known. In a work of fiction the primary intention is for the work to serve as a prop authorizing imaginings that do not presume historical truth one way or the other. Given that primary function, a fictional work may also contain parts where the intention is to convey truths.

The last case, of fiction containing parts intended to convey truths, seems uncontroversial to me. John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, for instance, contains chapters about social conditions in England at the time of the story. We are clearly meant to take these as factual, but the work as a whole goes into the fictional category. The other case, of a historical work containing invented parts, to me is suspect. The work as a whole cannot rightly be classed as nonfiction (history). I think it would be regarded as a hybrid of some sort -- somewhere between history and a historical novel. After all, if a historian wanted to speculate he could always do it within the limits of history by saying, "We cannot tell what X said to his advisers. Perhaps he said "..." That way of presenting the speech allows one to imagine the situation more concretely without presenting the speech as fact. But if he weaves such dialogue into the historical account the pretension of the work to be nonfiction is compromised. On this point I disagree with what I take to be Stecker's position.

In this context it is interesting to consider such classical historical works as Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War, which contains whole pages of speeches that cannot possibly have been transcripts of the actual speeches. Shall we classify these as fictions? Did the author believe he had gotten the words exactly right? Did his readers receive them as fact or as props for novelistic imaginings? Perhaps author and readers took them as inspired guesses close enough to the historical facts for practical purposes, hence as history by the standards then prevailing. Our standards are higher.

26. From Rajni Sekhri, 4/12/07, re. autobiography and fiction. Stecker says that a reader is not intended to concern himself with the reality of some imagined states of affairs in a fictional work. This would apply to works with autobiographical sections. I feel that his statement should be qualified by making it apply to cases where the reality of those autobiographical sections is indeed reality; that is, the sections are actually true, not just presented as such. A particular case that springs to mind was the controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces when it came to light that Frey fabricated substantial "autobiographical" sections of the book. An issue does not arise when an author gives his work novelistic treatment, but to have made up so many crucial parts severely undermines the "reality" of the work. A reader should be concerned here, I feel. Also, I am wondering what the level of concern for reality should be in works like a memoir, which is personal, as compared to an account of an event like 9/11, which was far-reaching, to say the least. Is there a difference? ---

JB's response. I'm not acquainted with the particulars of the Frey case. Speaking on general principles, I can say that fabricated (deliberately untruthful) sections of a work presented as an autobiography make the whole a fraudulent autobiography. It is still nonfiction, just lying nonfiction. When the lies becomes known for what they are, the work loses all credibility. But it doesn't thereby become fiction. One can, of course, read it as if it were fiction if one wishes. But that's not what it is.

True, we are generally somewhat relaxed about memoirs in the sense that we find them interesting even though we know they contain all sorts of distortions. I suggest we do this because we are interested in how the author now views his or her past life. But we depend on a memoir's accuracy only at our peril. This doesn't make it a work of fiction, but rather a work based on the writer's fallible memory and self-conception. This is close to the point you make about their being personal (self-expressive).

27. From Joey Tercero, 4/15/07, re. partly fictional nonfiction. If deliberately untruthful sections in an autobiography make the entire autobiography fraudulent, then would this "semi-untruthful" autobiography be equal to that of a fully untruthful autobiography: one in which no sections are truthful, but the work was still intended to be taken as truth by the author? Does the fraudulent autobiography remain a nonfiction work because its primary intent was to be a nonfictional autobiography, or merely because the audience received it as nonfictional before learning its fraudulence? It seems to me that if an author deliberately intends to put untruthful sections into his work of nonfiction, then this author can no longer claim to intend to be writing a work of nonfiction and therefore the work would never be nonfiction in the first place. I can imagine an author creating a fictional person and then writing a fictional biography of this person. The author could then publish this work as a nonfictional biography or autobiography. His intent would be to create a nonfictional work, but with a work of fiction. I suppose a real world example of my question would be how do we classify historical forgeries? Are they fiction or nonfiction?

JB's response. Your case you describe concerning the author's intention needs to be rephrased with a distinction. The deliberately untruthful author intends to deceive, not to tell the truth. But she also intends to be believed. That is, she intends the work to be received as nonfiction. Two intentions, not just one. You could properly say the work ought to have been presented as fiction. But that wouldn't imply it is fiction. It's false nonfiction.

More generally, a work presented as history but which is full of falsehoods is still nonfiction. I don't think this is simply and solely a matter of intention. To be received as history it has to have enough truths to be recognizably as a work of history as opposed to a novel. Given that it has at least that much credibility, the falsehoods make it fraudulent history. Being a forgery would add another dimension of falsehood, but wouldn't alter the category. Curious cases are imaginable. If an author published a work as her autobigraphy that described her life in terms that had almost no real connection with what actually happened, (imagine that it fitted her sister's life instead of hers), when we found out how false it was we might not refer to it any longer as an autobiography. But we wouldn't class it as fiction. If it accurately described her sister's life we'd think of it as a biography of her sister set in a false frame. If it was a sheer invention and if it had enough novelistic features (vivid and minutely detailed descriptions of happenings, thoughts, feelings, sensations, for instance) -- I guess it could be repackaged as a novel. Why not? That would be a different, undeceptive intention.

28. From Ry D'Antonio, 4/16/07, re. historical hypothesizing. In class on Thursday I posed this question: Aren't there instances where unknown details are added to a portion of history in order to make it more understandable/complete/cohesive? If there are, where does this fit in with our definition of fiction? Is this novelistic treatment? Or is it a different qualification?

A good example of this treatment of history can be found in the book Lincoln's Melancholy . This book attempts to offer a cohesive account of Lincoln's psychological state throughout his political career. In short, the book asserts that Lincoln was depressed for much of his career, but that this depression allowed Lincoln to cope with the trials of the Civil War with emotional maturity.

However, the method of the book, not the content, is what is relevant in this case. The book employs an analysis of various documents—letters to and from Lincoln, written interviews about Lincoln, speeches by Lincoln—to give a complex account of Lincoln's psyche. The book draws psychological conclusions from documents. The conclusions in the book are not hard and fast facts. Rather they are abstract and subtle observations of what Lincoln's emotional state might have been.

Where does this fit in?

JB's response. What you describe is a historical hypothesis about Lincoln drawn from evidence plus psychological generalizations. This is a model case of somewhat speculative historical explanation. Why did Lincoln do what he did? Part of the answer is his psychological condition. Clearly this is presented as a hypothesis about facts, including the state of Lincoln's mind, his intentions and causal relations between these and his actions. None of this is intended as fiction. Whatever parts are false will falsify the explanation -- not necessarily the standing of the explanation, which is a matter of what is reasonably believed rather than what is true. Prudent historians will be more or less skeptical depending on the sum total of evidence. This doesn't pose a problem for the account of fiction/nonfiction because the historians pushing this explanation clearly present it as nonfiction and their colleagues take it to be so presented.

A historical novelist could adopt this hypothesis and write a novel elaborating it with the standard novelistic additions. That would be a work of (historical) fiction. Generally historical novel writers do adopt standard historical explanations, but sometimes take up highly speculative ones.

Normon Mailer's new book on Hitler freely invents all sorts of things about Hitler's early life, and seems to imply Mailer thinks being a novelist gives him special insight. As history these speculations are of little if any value. In my view this reduces the value of Mailer's work, which one might doubt falls cleanly into either of the two categories. I just looked again at The New York Review of Books article about it, where it is referred to as a historical novel but which also describes it as trying to elucidate the character of human evil in Hitler, which suggests a historical aspiration. In contrast to Mailer's imaginings, the hypothesis put forward by John Lukacs in The Hitler of History about why Hitler rushed into war in 1939 is clearly reputable history. Evidence is presented that in 1938 Hitler formed the belief that his life was to be cut short by a fatal disease. He was desperate to fulfill his master plan before then, roughly by 1944.

29. From James Hudgins, 4/16/07, re. art and intentional flaws. In the last lecture we discussed the correlation between art and intention. It was said that some works are considered art that have intentional flaws. First, how many intentional flaws are acceptable when considering a work an piece of art? Second, if an artist has unintentional flaws in their work can that work be considered art? If so, how many unintentional flaws are acceptable before the work becomes bad art or non-art? Third, if works can have flaws that are both intentional or unintentional are all works with flaws considered art? When and where do you draw the line between flaws as artistic and flaws as unartistic or impeding upon art? It seems that one must either accept flaws as artistic or not, with no in between considered. Is this right? What would you say to this?

JB's response. The flaws in question were cases of falsity, weren't they? Misrepresentations of reality (not just fantasy), erroneous moral judgments, and the like. First, let me say that there's no numerical standard for any of the categories you mention. All that would be relevant here would be what takes the work below the minimum level, what I called the entry level. So forget about counting. But one could ask about literature, for instance, would a text be disqualified by any amount of falsity? To answer the question one would need to look into specific examples of extravagantly or pervasively untruthful works to ask if any get into literature on the strength of other merits: style, humor, narrative ingenuity, and so forth. One would also need to rummage around in sub-literary writing to find cases where falsity caused the works to fall below the minimum level. So far as I know, no one has embarked on such an investigation. So no one knows the answer. I doubt that it much matters whether the falseness is intended or unintended. I suspect that what counts more than falseness is whether the work as a whole manifests low as opposed to high intelligence. Art is judged in significant degree on the degree to which the work shows the intelligence of the creator -- intelligence in the respects relevant to the art form in question, cleverness, discretion, insight, etc.

As to the artistic/nonartistic flaw question, there can certainly be features that are both artistic and nonartistic flaws, and these matters of falseness are examples. In general failings (and successes) can be demerits (or merits) in more than one category (or from more than one point of view). A failure to take action may be both fatal to one's business and be an act of moral cowardice. But many failings are exclusively nonartistic, or exclusively artistic. A novel may fail to be easy to read and in consequence may be a commercial (nonartistic) failure. But its difficulty may be essential to its artistic greatness.

30. From Dane Plude, 4/17/07, re. contextualism vs. constructivism. The "Colossus of Rhodes" was one of the so-called "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World." There are several uncontested ‘truths' about the Colossus: It was over 100 feet tall, its construction was headed by Charles of Lindos, it served as inspiration for Auguste Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty, it was mentioned in a poem by Sylvia Plath, etc. However, much controversy surrounds the statue's location. Certain historical accounts have the Colossus' legs straddling the entrance to one of Rhodes' many harbors. Modern reflection regarding the constraints of materials/procedures on construction in the ancient world, physics, and other factors has suggested that such positioning/location was an impossibility; that the Colossus couldn't have been what historical accounts present it as. Such reflection has prompted scholars and historians to suggest that the Colossus was located somewhat more inland, though the accounts vary. Admittedly, the situation is not ideal. Ideally, we would have an objective account of the work of art and/or a photograph of it and/or it would still be standing today. In actuality, the statue has long since been demolished. There is no photograph of the Colossus. The aforementioned considerations suggest that there is no non-romanticized, objective account of the Colossus. Rather, it appears that the ‘truths' about the Colossus need to be abductively inferred from various competing accounts. To me, this seems to be the sort of interpretive construction of the work and its properties that is endorsed by the constructivist. We can't know, definitively, where the Colossus' was located and how it was positioned. We need to consider all of the various accounts of the work, accounts that span centuries, and perform an inference to the best explanation. Would the thoroughgoing contextualist suggest, in the case of the Colossus, that such an abductive process amounts to a mere crap-shoot? Would he suggest that the truth regarding where the Colossus was located and how it was positioned is unknowable/unattainable and that our knowledge of ‘the work' is therefore insufficient? Would he suggest that the Colossus of Rhodes is not an appropriate object for study because of this lack of knowledge? Though I am admittedly sympathetic to the views of the contextualist, these responses seem absurd. Clearly, the Colossus of Rhodes was a work of art and, notwithstanding inconsistencies in the accounts of the work through the ages, it seems to be an appropriate object for artistic study. I am not sure how to handle/defend against this example. Any help here would be appreciated.

JB's response. I think this is an easy case. Plainly we do not have enough information to carry on a profitable art-historical "study." It's perfectly OK to ask what the possibilities are and to hope that some breakthrough may occur by way of an archaeological or documentary find that sheds new light. And granted, it's not as bad a case as the Trojan Horse or Noah's Ark. But no elaborate "construction" of its whole character can be justified. Doubtless there was a huge bronze statue of Helios at Rhodes, financed from the sale of equipment abandoned by the forces when they gave up the seige in 305 BC. Being 100 ft. high isn't impossible. The great statues of Athena and Zeus at Athens and Olympia respectively were 40 ft. The Colossus was presumably built over a framework, as the great chryselephantine mainland statues were. The Oxford Classical Dictionary entry says (I presume on the basis of the most credible documents) that it stood on a hill overlooking the harbor and fell in an earthquake around 226 BC. There is good contextual reason to suppose it was Hellenistic in style and celebratory in inspiration. Any inference to its more specific properties is doubtful, given the absence of reliable evidence. And so far as I can see a contextualist understanding of its meaning would be perfectly able to accept whatever partial findings may emerge on the basis of new evidence.

As I understand constructivism, it applies in a substantive way when the work itself is available and the question is, what meaning properties does the work have. I don't see what there is for a constructivist to do with mere references to a work. The facts reported about the Colossus don't provide enough for a constructivistically minded interpreter to do much with. But when a monument is available, with lots of manifest properties intact, then such a one can propose readings that reflect present interests -- one can "construct" the meaning without being shackled to the meaning given by the culture of origin. Has anyone proposed a constructivist intepretation of the Colossus? I'd be curious to know what specific claims have been made.

31. From Brendan Finegan, 4/19/07, re. musical expressiveness. In class today you mentioned how it's been said that music can evoke an emotion from its listener, however could not depict a specific scene attached to that emotion (ie: one may not be able to tell if a sad melody was about death or divorce). My question is this: Would putting a title on the song compromise this claim? For example, if I were to listen to a song entitled "9/11" that musically described the different happenings of September 11th, I am quite confident that I could visualize the pictures that the music was representing and the emotions would follow as such. In this case the music would have the capability to put a picture to the emotion without using lyrics to describe. But would the knowledge of the song's title discount this? If not, would it be said that what's evoking the emotion are my memories of the event and not the music? What do you think?

JB's response. Perhaps I should have stressed more forcefully that by musical expressiveness is meant the power of the music itself, absent words (or for that matter a dramatic context, as in a movie). So the question of whether music can convey propositional content concerns music independently of those additional elements. Titles fall into the category of nonmusical supplements. Thus when a piece of music that absent any such verbal or contextual setting does not express a specific attitude, mood or emotion, is heard as expressing something specific, it is not being heard simply as music. The specific emotion we then hear in it is not expressed by the music. Of course, the presenter of the titled or contextualized music will intend that listeners hear it as expressing the specific emotion. It will also be artistically appropriate for listeners to hear it that way. But the really insightful listener will recognize that this is not a case of strictly musical expressiveness but the expressiveness of music + supplements.

32. From Tanya Schmoeger, 4/20/07, re. the persona theory of musical expressiveness. During lecture we discussed the persona view, and Levinson's notion that the work is perceived as expressive of emotions of the fictional persona. We also discussed the truth conditions which go with this view- that a musical passage expresses an emotional state if it is readily/spontaneously heard as someone's expression of that state by a properly backgrounded listener in the context of the whole work and its historical setting. Within Levinson's version, what exactly is meant by readily and spontaneously heard? Does it therefore follow that if a work- say Beethoven's Moonnight Sonata- is not readily and spontaneously heard by a well backgrounded listener as expressing a given state, then the passage itself is not expressive of that emotional state; or does that imply that the person does not perceive its expressiveness?

JB's response. Levinson's criterion of musical expressiveness is satisfied if a well-backgrounded listener has the "hearing-in" experience when operating in the way stated in the outline of Lecture 22. Stecker objects that different perfectly qualified listeners in good listening conditions may have different experiences. Levinson might respond that if that happens, the musical expressiveness is vague or ambiguous. Stecker would presumably rejoin that this defense amounts to a change in the criterion, and further, that the musical expressiveness might not be vague or ambiguous just because such listeners disagree. One hearing-in may be better supported by the totality of evidence than the others.

Ultimately, in my view, the question what a work expresses has to be decided by the community of well-qualified listeners deeply versed in the musical tradition. I support the 'convergence of optimal listerners' criterion. When and if there is disagreement among optimal listeners operating under optimal conditions, the expressiveness of the music is vague or ambiguous. If the listeners are philosophically enlightened, they themselves will agree on that. More specific ways of hearing the expressiveness will be judged subjective, not representative of what is there in the music. Supporting this condition doesn't require one to take a position the persona theory but, as Stecker correctly points out, imagining the emotion to be a fictional persona's is at least one way of conceptualizing one's hearing the emotion in the music.

32. From Phil Torres, 4/21/07, re. environmental aesthetics. Allen Carlson, whom Stecker mentions a number of times in the second chapter of his book, champions a “cognitivist” view of the aesthetic appreciation of nature. The gist of Carlson's position is that scientific knowledge is necessary for proper aesthetic appreciation of nature. Patricia Matthews (Matthews 2002, 46) challenges this. Unlike categories of art, empirical-scientific categories do not, she says, “provide aesthetic goals or purposes.” This is to say that science does not tell one what the purpose of a thing is, “if ‘purpose' implies that things are intentionally created” (Matthews 2002, 46).

Matthews' statement here does not seem correct, at least with respect to the biological sciences: while the moon does not exist to make, for example, walks on the beach romantic, there are many (adaptational) features of organisms that do exist for certain reasons. Indeed, evolutionary biologists use the term ‘teleonomy' to refer to the purpose of a trait, where this purpose pertains to the reason(s) why the trait was “picked” by the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection. Thus, contra Matthews, science does tell us (to use Matthew's wording) that the purpose of the giraffe's long neck is to reach higher branches.

Would it be at all reasonable for one to argue that teleonomy in biology gives rise to aesthetic standards? Or, at the very least, to claim that certain organismic traits arise in a quasi-intentional way (that is, by being selected by nature)? Certainly, knowing why an organism is the way it is (anatomically and physiologically speaking) can help guide our judgment of its aesthetic value. And furthermore—and, maybe, most importantly—there is the mechanism of sexual selection , with respect to which the aesthetic value of a trait is the primary—if not sole—goal or purpose. What do you think?

JB's response. I think one has to be cautious in using purpose. Is there purpose behind the giraffe's neck? Certainly there is successful adaptation, not because of the ingenuity of a planner but because a random mutation gave better access to a food supply without undermining other functional capacities. The success stories in evolution are aesthetically good since the adaptation makes for more flourishing, a better harmony between the needs and capacities of the organism and the satisfaction of those needs or the exercise of those capacities. The failures are examples of dysfunctionality and therefore disharmony. Whether there are subtler or more complex stories analogous to human or animal stories with higher values, e.g., ones involving intelligence or moral virtues, is an open question, so as I can tell. It may be that evolutionary biology only gives fairly basic aesthetic values. And of course it tells of failures as well as successes, where a change of environment or an adaptation by rivals leads to extinction.

Matthews is right, I think, to be skeptical of purpose, but she is not right to suppose that scientific knowledge cannot lead to appreciation of aesthetic values. They do not define aesthetic goals, exactly, since goals like purposes imply goal-setters. But they can certainly reveal patterns of functionality that are aesthetically formful, worthy of appreciation.

33. From Kyle Phillips, 4/23/07, re. expressiveness in literature. Stecker says that "in literary forms, it suffices that we can infer the emotional state from the expressive phenomena. Music is expressive only if we can perceive (that is, hear) emotion in the music." (165) I would argue that we must be able to perceive emotion in literature because we must have the knowledge of learned technique that provides us with an ability to infer an expressed emotion. This is a type of "sense" that not many have whereas anyone that is able to hear can become filled with emotion upon listening to it as little as one time.

JB's response. I'm not clear about exactly what you are saying. Are you saying that in literature too we can sense the emotion, not just infer it? That is, that the grasp of the emotion is equally a matter of sensing, only that in literature it is much harder, or requires more learning, to sense? The alternative, as I understand Stecker, is that in literature, besides recognizing the emotion (inferring it) we can only imagine the emotion, not sense it One reason for taking this position is that there doesn't seem to be a mode of sensing that fits the case. It can't be hearing or seeing. Of course we might feel the emotion in ourselves, empathically. We certainly are often filled with emotion (some say with imagined emotion) when reading a story or poem. But that's not exactly sensing it in the story or poem.

Note that we are dealing not with the emotional expressiveness of characters but of the work as a whole, just as in music it is the music that is expressive. A view that allows for something like person-expressiveness in the case of the literary work is the persona theory, where we can imagine hearing the persona speaking the poem or telling the story. That's a case of imagining sensing the emotion. Perhaps that's what you have in mind.

34. From Danny McCormack, 4/23.07, re. live vs. recorded performances. I was at a chorale concert here on campus this weekend and I was reflecting on how different it is to hear these pieces performed live as opposed to recorded and I was considering if there could be a similar relationship between live performances and recorded ones which could be cashed out in terms of depiction.  Where we discussed depiction as seeming to see subjects in pictures, could the same ideas also be used to talk about performances such as a music concert or live play?  In these cases as well you are not actually interacting with the subject directly, but indirectly through some intermediary, which limits your point of view and alters your perception in some noticeable fashion, even if in most situations it does not severely impinge on your ability to recognize the subject to a reasonable degree (although as with some sorts of depictions that we discussed that could be the intent)?  It seems that many of the same questions and objections that we discussed in class could be applied to this class of potential depictions as well, or is there something about "depiction" which limits it to cases of pictures?

JB's response. Recordings of musical performances are reproductions that represent the live performance. In this way they are indeed like depictions. And in principle they could be "stylized" in various ways that would increase the likeness. But normally they are intended to be as faithful as the recording technology (and technique) allows. In this way they are more like photographs than drawings or paintings. Walton would say that they present the life performance for one's indirect perception. Others would say they can only present a simulacrum. Yet clearly they do allow us easily to imagine that our hearing of them is the hearing of the live performance, so in that respect they conform to the make-believe theory of depiction.

More widely, depiction applies to sculptures and all sorts of enactments: dance, drama, pantomime, etc. Fictional cinema/TV combines enactment and depiction (and indirect perception of the actors and set, if Walton is right). Many sorts of non-pictorial depiction exist -- or at least they do if one uses the term in its ordinary sense.

The difference between live performances and (good) recordings is much debated. Some musicians claim the difference is always significant, especially when the recording involves retakes, splicing, etc. (loss of 'freshness'). So far as I know these claims have never been impartially tested, as they would be if 'live recordings' were matched up with 'engineered' ones -- another test might be to match the musicians lip-syncing along with a recording of themselves singing the same piece, with them really singing it.

35. From Kyle Phillips, 4/23/07, re. emotional expressiveness. Is Stecker ultimately saying that an emotion can only be evoked by a piece of music if that emotion was "readily availible" to the person listening before they heard the piece? It seems that this is his claim (167) and it is this with which I completely disagree. Though an emotion must be availible somewhere in the psyche of the listener, music can evoke emotion about a thing buried deep within layers of other, more readily availible emotions. (I.e. listening to a sad song can bring up memories of a past sadness about which you have since forgotten) How does Stecker explain this?

JB's response. I don't find the claim you attribute to Stecker on that page. Maybe it's somewhere else. Please let me know exactly where you find it. Levinson speaks of the emotion being readily and spontaneously heard (or seen or whatever) in the work, but there's nothing about prior experience. I would suppose we can hear not only buried emotions but emotions that we have never felt, especially ones more extreme than any we have felt, such as states of extreme frenzy or depression, e.g., ones regarded as insane, or states of the highest exaltation, as in religious or mystical experience. The basic point, I think, is that the hearing has to be as-if sensory, as opposed to inferred. That's consistent with the fact that sometimes we may fail to hear an emotion because we haven't ever experienced anything like it and can't imagine it.

36. From Hunter Pavela, 4/25/07, re. unitary value. As Bell/Budd's theory is characterized in the lecture notes, economic value is "never relevant" to the "interest intrinsic to the artistic point of view." I think part of what's hanging me up about this is the word 'never.' I'm sure Karl Popper would be happy to see a theory stated in such a definitive (or should I say falsifiable) way, but part of me feels like that, on occasion, the economic value an artwork can be relevant to its artistic value.

Take the sculpture of Athena that once stood in the Parthenon. According the description by Pausanius: "The statue itself is made of ivory and gold. On the middle of her helmet is placed a likeness of the Sphinx ... and on either side of the helmet are griffins in relief. ... The statue of Athena is upright, with a tunic reaching to the feet, and on her breast the head of Medusa is worked in ivory. She holds a statue of Victory about four cubits high, and in the other hand a spear; at her feet lies a shield and near the spear is a serpent. This serpent would be Erichthonius. On the pedestal is the birth of Pandora in relief" (translation from wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt).

Here is an artwork that was made of materials highly valuable in the ancient world. I think an argument be made that part of the artistic purpose behind the sculpting of the Athena was not solely piety for the gods, but rather to show other Greek and foreign states the grandeur, the power, and the splendor of Athens itself. If such a purpose is plausible, then wouldn't the economic value of the materials used for the Athena, namely ivory and gold, be intrinsic to the artistic point of view? What if the Athena were sculpted out of a cheap wood rather than ivory and gold? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the relationship.

JB's response. You have a point. The great cult statue of Athena is an excellent example. Use of materials that are physically fine (fine-grained, glossy, durable, etc.) is certainly an artistic feature. No cheaper materials with equal qualities exist. So it would have been understandable if Phidias had insisted on using ivory and gold to get the appearance (and durability) that best fulfilled the aims of the project. The expense of the materials would have operated as an additional and independent factor if there had been a cheaper way to get the same aesthetic effect. Then, if the more expensive materials had been chosen you would have a very strong (but not absolutely decisive) case. As it is, the case is less convincing than that.

A major question is how clear the Greeks were about art as a distinctive enterprise. Would they have given equal value to a work of lesser salvage value than to one of greater if the two were observationally indistinguishable? This principle was slow to develop, just as was appreciation of the positive value of the inherent limitations of the different media -- the value of depiction, for instance, was said by everyone to be lifelikeness, as if a perfect imitation of reality were the highest possible artistic achievement. It can be argued that these things show that the ancient Greeks did not have a well-developed conception of intrinsic artistic value -- that they mixed up artistic and certain extrinsic values, such as costliness. Yours is an alternative point of view, which enlarges the category of intrinsic artistic value to include both costliness and political grandeur. Your adversary will admit, of course, that the patrons and perhaps the artist too customarily sought to achieve those extrinsic values, but claim that such motives were extra-artistic ones. A reason in favor of this position is that costliness is not something that can show a creator's artistry. Yet it is plausible that only what can show the creator's artistry (both skill and taste) is of intrinsic artistic value. How would you respond to that?

37. From Tanya Schmoeger, 4/28/07, re. Stecker vs. Budd on aesthetic and artistic value . When we were talking about whether all artworks possess aesthetic value you said that while Budd believes they do, Stecker does not. One of the examples which was given was Levine's photographs. Stecker believes Levine's work lacks experiential value, and only has cognitive value. So, even though other critics believe that Levine's work seriously intended to have aesthetic value and accomplished it, Stecker believes it lacks this aesthetic value. With this example it is not specifically clear whether Levine's work actually has aesthetic value. We know Stecker's view, but what is the general consensus among philosophers, and what is your opinion? Stecker goes on to describe both the modest strategy and the ambitious strategy which are used to defend the claim that aesthetic value is a common value shared by all artworks. He later gives reasons discrediting both models, and says that neither is successful. Do you agree with Stecker reasoning?

JB's response. Remember that in class I read Levine's statements about the "aura" and the "visceral feeling" her works had for (or gave to) her, expressions accepted by the interviewer. I can't claim to be well versed in Levine's work, but I think these expressions have prima facie credibility. This supports the position Budd takes and challenges Stecker's view regarding her work. It doesn't of course prove that all art works have aesthetic value. There is no way of establishing that short of examining all the art works that are candidates for zero (or negligible) aesthetic value. My view is that one should search diligently for aesthetic value in art works, consider seriously what artists say about their work and what other well-qualified artworld figures say about what they appreciate in the works. I would like to think that all art works of any substantial value will turn out to have non-negligible aesthetic value, but it is unreasonable to be dogmatic about it.

I suggest once more that you look up Levine's website, given on the lecture outline, and see what you think of her comments.

38. From Sabrina Berns, 4/29/07, re. Sherrie Levine. I read the last discussion entry and response about Sherrie Levine and I wanted to pick up on this idea of 'aura.' The remark made by Levine in the Journal of Contemporary Art online dialogue that I felt really captured in sum what Levine was going for in her art is: "I am interested in making a work that has as much aura as its reference. For me the tension between the reference and the new work doesn't really exist unless the new work has an auratic presence of its own. Otherwise, it just becomes a copy, which is not that interesting." Clearly, she believes that her works stand as separate entities from the already established artworks that she photographs.  It seems that Levine is arguing for her work as having an aesthetic value that is above and beyond what Stecker claims.

JB's response. I agree. Of course the problem of whether an individual viewer can see what Levine sees in the works is something the individual has to solve. Yet it seems clear that a lot of art-culture persons can -- or think they can. The best opportunity for testing one's capacity is a retrospective show where Levine's work is spread out before one. It's not so easy to be sure of oneself when one simply views detached images on the web or in a book.

39. From Dane Plude, 4/30/07, re. costliness as an artistic value. This comment pertains to your response to Hunter Pavela's posting, number 36, particularly your claim that "costliness is not something that can show a creator's artistry." I find that statement somewhat problematic. I think the problem lies in vagaries involving ‘costliness' and ‘show'.  If, by costliness, you mean the costliness of a work of art, then I disagree. Original works by Michelangelo, Picasso, Pollock, Cezanne, and so on, are extremely costly, if not priceless. I take it as uncontested that those same works demonstrate their creator's respective artistry. It seems that costliness in this sense (i.e. costliness of a work of art) is, at least, an indirect measure of the creator's artistry: A relationship which an ordinary understanding of ‘show' seems to encapsulate. Perhaps you are using ‘show' in a different sense than the folk, but I couldn't recover that sense from the whole of your response. If not, then I disagree with the claim that costliness is not something that can show a creator's artistry.
     If, by costliness, you mean the costliness of materials, then my disagreement is that which you and Hunter flesh-out in your interchange. For me, the difficulty with ‘show' remains. Certainly, the marble Venus de Milo shows its creator's artistry in some way that a sandstone or a cement Venus could not. Why? Because they are cheaper mediums less conducive to the portrayal of the female figure.
     In short, I ask, what do you mean by ‘costliness' and ‘show'?

JB's response. "Costliness" in the context of #36 means the costliness of materials. It certainly doesn't mean the costliness of the work of art. Of course that can be a rough measure of artistic value -- rough because market forces often distort real values. For instance rarity has a huge effect that has nothing to do with artistic value.

An artist shows (demonstrates) artistry by shaping material to achieve formal values, expressive values, and the like. Skill, insight, taste, intelligence can all be exerted on the physical properties of a sculpture or the semantic properties of texts, etc. Can economic properties be handled in a comparably artistic way? How could they? To be sure, the costliness of materials if detectable by the viewer may have associations with royalty or other high status social values -- and in some cases divine beings. But it isn't the costliness per se that is functioning here. It is those associated values, which can also be captured without costly materials. And imagine that gold and lapis lazuli, the most prominent luxury materials in medieval and early renaissance painting, lost their costliness. Would that deprive the works that used them of any of their artistic value? Not at all. Michelangelo's frescoes have negligible salvage value but their artistic value doesn't suffer in the slightest and wouldn't be increased had he used expensive pigments. Your example of marble vs. concrete doesn't prove otherwise since of course the two have very different physical properties.

40. From Josh Samuel, 5/1/07, re. moral values in art. In lecture you suggested that the moral values presented as Homeric heroes were flawed since the heroes were so flawed, thereby lowering the ethical value of the work. Perhaps I am incorrect but I always thought there was an element of Greek tragedy, where an overriding negative trait lead a character to ruin. It seems to me an alternate interpretation of this would be that although these heroes were displaying great arete, even they too could fall. Would this mollify ethical objections?

JB's response. You are referring to the idea of a “tragic flaw” of character leading a protagonist to grief. Oedipus' arrogance, for instance. In Aristotle the defect is an error of judgment, not a moral error. But later critics turned it into a moral shortcoming. (An authoritative account of the “tragic flaw” idea is given in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics under that heading.) Regardless of that, Aristotle also favors tragic protagonists being people of stature, which would include their having notable moral and intellectual properties, therefore moral and intellectual excellence, arête. OK. But the latter won't free the protagonists from the moral limitations of their value system. If they act immorally (by our standards) in the course of doing what they think is virtuous, we, the present readers, are in effect asked to admire them for their behavior. That is where the problem arises. If that request is one we can't in good conscience comply with (without moral fault, that is), then it seems plausible that the aesthetic value of the work is somewhat flawed. The work does not have the capacity to engender a well-unified and fault-free aesthetic experience of imaginative engagement. Or so the complaint goes.

There is an important difference between the world of 5th century tragedy and that of the Homeric epics. By the 5th century a lot of the warrior ethic had been abandoned or softened. The tragedies typically pose a dilemma that humans cannot solve and have to leave to the gods, as in the case of Oedipus. Still, there are survivals of the old ethic in the “pollution” or blood guilt that doomed Oedipus and other tragic figures. The Homeric epics represent the warrior ethos in a less diluted form. Accordingly the moral questions arise more urgently regarding them than they do for tragedy.

Traditionally the Homeric works were taught as revered literary paragons, without any systematic critical evaluation of the value systems they represent. That is to say, their exalted cultural status led teachers to soft-pedal the morally unacceptable parts of them. We should not close our eyes to their immorality just because we want to be able to admire them (the same is true of any number of things in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament). Otherwise we are letting ideology distort our moral and artistic judgment.

41. From Rajna Sekhri, 5/1/07, re. oratory composed by another. In class today, we talked about speeches and aesthetic value. I think of speeches as having the components of content and delivery. I was thinking about the many cases in which a speech is not written by the person delivering it, and was wondering how this impacts the aesthetic value of the speech, if it all. I feel as though even the most skilled speaker delivering a powerful, eloquent speech cannot make up for the fact that he himself has not written the words, or pieced together the content himself. There is some sense of disingenuousness here, at least if the audience is under the impression the speech is solely by to the speaker. How does aesthetic value factor in these types of cases, if it is indeed a concern in this area?

JB's response. In the classic cases the orator is the author (Demosthenes, Lincoln, et al). But even then one could distinguish the artistry of the composition from the artistry of the delivery. You are concerned about what we might call sincere self-expression, which suggests a self-authored and self-delivered speech. But perhaps you are a bit hasty. To be sure a lot of political oratory is not sincerely self-expressive, but that can be so even if the speech is self-authored and self-delivered. On the other side one can easily imagine a work being sincerely self-expressive if the speaker genuinely believes and feels in ways fully consonant with the text. Such a one doesn't deserve credit for the composition, of course. The text isn't her work at all. It isn't creative self-expression. Only the performance is the speaker's. But the text may be a perfect vehicle for her to express what she believes and feels. We might call such a text discovered self-expression for the person whose beliefs and feelings it perfectly expresses. Collingwood suggests that such a thing is not only possible but is what makes art (true art) so valuable to non-artists.

42. From Sabrina Berns, 5/1/07, re. costliness again. I would like to continue on this notion of costliness of materials in a work of art: many sculptors in particular have their well-known steel, brass, or stone sculptures as well as a number of molds made of wax, plaster, and whatnot. Clearly, a sculpture cut from one block of stone in its entirety will be shown in a museum before a wax mold of the same design. However, the artist's hand is still present in all of the molds while in many of the final pieces, the artist played no or very little part (for example, the artist is not responsible for pouring metal into a cast). The artistic mold is made of cheaper materials and yet is still seen as extremely valuable by those in the art world.  

JB's response. You raise issues in the complicated field of sculpture. There certainly are many, many things to consider. A carved sculpture that is carved entirely by the sculptor in all relevant respects has some advantages over a plaster model from which a bronze (say) is cast, but they aren't superiorities so far as modeling or showing the artist's hand is concerned. They are advantages of toughness as opposed to fragility, permanence as opposed to impermanence. As you say, the artist's artistic character is well shown by a model and those who care a lot about that will prize the model. Who does the casting from a modello doesn't matter, as long as the sculptor approves of it and provides (or supervises) the finishing touches (more than just “touches”!). Where assistants do all that, the finished bronze is really jointly authored, for better or worse. (Many frescoes were jointly authored too.) Rodin's highly varied work illustrates these variations – many of his greatest works were not cast in his lifetime. Of course in recent times some sculptures have not been meant to show the hand of the artist. They are essentially designed and then produced by artisans to the artist's specifications. They can also show the artist's creativity, but the specific achievements are not entirely the same.

43. From Brendan Finegan, 5/1/07, re. moral and artistic value. It seems to me that when a movie is presented from the "bad guy's" point of view (bad guy meaning what his line of work or what have you in the movie is not one of moral rectitude), the audience finds itself rooting for that character to get away/escape the authorities etc. For example, in the movie Catch Me If You Can, the main character is a con-artist trying to escape the FBI. Despite this, everyone who watches the movie is happy when he gets away and sad when he gets caught. Are we supposed to be made blind to a characters immoral behavior for the sake of aesthetic enjoyment? If not, this seems to discount any connection between ethical and aesthetic value, even on the microconsequential level. If someone can enjoy and be just as happy watching a movie in which he/she roots for the bad guy as he/she can be rooting for a good guy, then there can be no correlation.

JB's response. True, only a moral prude would root for the authorities in such a case (I say this depending on your description since I haven't seen the film). As the title indicates this is a contest film, a matching of wits, and the con man is celebrated for his ingenuity, isn't he? Cleverness is a human excellence that we rightly admire. Also it matters a lot whether the mischief that the con man does is very hurtful to others. Is any innocernt person seriously harmed by the con man's activity? Usually in these flicks it's gamblers and other risk-takers who lose out -- for instance the management of the casino, which is apt to be crooked anyway. So the immorality is marginal and the interest of the viewer is entirely on the cat-and-mouse game. It's when the morality is heavy, when innocent people are killed or badly hurt, that the moral flaw can lower the artistic value.

To be sure, the con man wastes the government's time and the taxpayers' money. That is disregarded by even the morally upright because of being comparatively slight -- a moral misdemeanor rather than a moral felony. Half the audience, esp. the young part, may also enjoy the G-men's embarrassment out of a general resentment of authority. That's an immature response, and if a work exploits that, its artistic value is (in my view) lessened. From what you say, I take it that the con man is finally caught and the audience is disappointed. Do you think that ending detracts from the artistic value of the work? If so, then your conclusion that there is a complete break between morality and artistic quality doesn't seem supported.

Today's NY Times carries an op-ed piece that bears on the general problem, but focuses on really bad movies for muddled youths, written by a screen-writer who now has a bad conscience about the consequences: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/opinion/02white.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

44. From Joey Tercero, 5/2/07, moral values again. I am a bit confused on the subject of moral flaws or defects creating aesthetic flaws in the work itself. The argument for the Iliad not containing an aesthetic flaw despite the moral repugnance we may feel towards some of the values it presents is because it stays within the moral boundaries of its culture. In other words, the Iliad may not hold the same actions to be morally right by today's standards, but it does champion the proper moral values of the 5th c. Greeks. Is it correct to then say that the Iliad does not lose any aesthetic value because it properly values the ethical code of its time? Therefore, a work such as Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables is aesthetically flawed because it inconsistently follows the ethical code, which it portrays. We feel a repugnance for the narrator's vindictive pleasure over the death of the villain, but this is an aesthetic flaw because this vindictiveness is inconsistent with the morals the author has be championing throughout the novel. Is this the basic concept or am I missing something?

JB's response. You are oversimplifying a bit. You're right about the inconsistency in Hawthorne being an aesthetic, and therefore an artistic, fault. But the case of the Iliad is harder. That its values are those of the Homeric Greeks (not the 5th c. Greeks who had progressed morally) does have some tendency to lessen the repugnance that the viewer justifiably feels and therefore lessen the aesthetic fault. There are several other considerations that reinforce this tendency. See the relevant part of lecture outline 26. But there is also the possibility that it would be better artistically if the work expressed some disapproval of the Homeric values. Stecker and I disagree about this. Check out numbers 40 and 43 above for more discussion of the general issue.

45. From Nguyen Nguyen, 5/2/07, re. aesthetic properties of everyday things. I know we haven't talked alot about this (or I was not in class the day we did), but I was thinking about other forms that sometimes can be considered art and what aesthetic properties they would possess. Stecker gave us a somewhat clear set of qualifications of what can be considered aesthetic properties to use in finding and judging art objects. Can we ever expand this to include other forms? For example, a cake can be made into a very beautiful piece of edible art. We can judge a cake based on properties that can be applied to a statue or other 3-dimensional objects, but can we also use the taste of the cake as another aesthetic property? While this may seem unconventional, I feel this perspective can be evolved from how a piece of music can be judged using our hearing, furthermore, it can be categorized as a formal aesthetic property of the object. From this, how far can we "stretch" certain properties to force other forms to be art? Could it be possible to call the carpeting of your house "art" with the added property of how it feels under your feet?

JB's response. I fully agree that everything in the world has plenty of aesthetic properties and that all sensory modalities are in this sense "aesthetic." So the short answer to your question is Yes, carpets and cakes and hammers and Hummers and everything else you can think of have aesthetic properties. This includes disagreeable as well as pleasant aesthetic properties, functional as well as dysfunctional ones (awkwardness and ugliness are aesthetic properties) They have descriptive aesthetic properties and evaluative aesthetic properties, good as well as bad. Art works are not exceptional because they have aesthetic properties but because they have combinations of such properties that are especially interesting, delightful, challenging, complex and subtle.

46. From Ry D'Antonio, 4/2/07, re. gangster movies. Isn't it possible that the reason we tolerate the moral repugnance of works like the Iliad is due to a subconscious and perverse nature within ourselves? I am not entirely convinced that all of us merely "tolerate" moral repugnance. I think there are instances where moral repugnance is actually valued.

 There have to be some cases where improper morality in art is valued by the viewer. For example, think about how certain people are utterly fascinated with the mafia. Indeed, the mafia has its own moral code (typically, you do not kill women and children). But this moral code rests upon a presumption of murder, lying, and stealing. It has its own jargon (a friend of mine, as opposed to a friend of ours). The world that mobsters operate in is a separate reality that is foreign to the uninitiated. But for some, there is a fascination that exists in this fact alone.

 The mafia's world translates well into cinema. There are countless movies— The Godfather Series , Goodfellas, Scarface —that depict the moral repugnance of the mafia in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. In these movies, the viewer aligns themselves affectively with the protagonist. The viewer supports the killing, lying, and cheating that must be done to succeed in organized crime. And, if only for a fleeting second, the viewer wishes to be part of the world that contains organized crime. How can the relationship of aesthetic and ethical value be explained in situations like this?

JB's response. I agree with almost everything you say, as is clear from my comments to the other recent discussion notes on this topic -- note also the article by Mike White about a related movie genre cited in #43. The mafia code is a degenerate version of the warrior ethic, degenerate because it operates in opposition to civil society rather than providing the structure of civil law and order. It's a bandit ethic, essentially. Since you agree that our cheering the godfather on is rooted in our own imperfectly moral character, you clearly aren't implying that it's entirely OK for us to have that response. Let it also be noted that the celebrated series of movies is far from being straightforwardly approving of the mafia ethos. Far from it. So the work itself does not recommend, let alone celebrate, the immorality of the mafiosi. The fault lies mainly in the viewers, rather than in the work.

There is much more to be said about the general problem. A vital part of this is that works have many different properties to which we respond, some good and others not at all good.. Another is that emotional responses can be mistaken, our delight can be bad (malicious, selfish) and our appreciation can be based on fantasies of a shortcut to wealth and power. The latter is certainly part of people's admiration of the successful mafioso. If aesthetic appreciation must be appreciation taken in things for their own sake and not for ego-satisfactions, then these are not strictly aesthetic responses. Yet other aspects of our response may be aesthetic: the admiration of ingenuity, resourcefulness, insight, courtesy, style, etc.

47. From Dan McCormack, 4/2/07, re. movie "oratory." Reading Rajna's comment and your reply (# 41) makes me wonder if perhaps certain elements of oratory art are still alive in the performing arts, such as in movies.  While there may seem to be far fewer great political orators in recent years it seems that one could point to films such as Braveheart or Fight Club and say that they contain a sort of discovered self-expression as you have described it, that is, if the actors (or perhaps even other important members of the production) feel that the script is such an appropriate vehicle for expressing their beliefs or feelings.  Is it fair to say that these performances are comparable to the scripted-speeches that make up [political?] oratory?  Or should scripted-speeches be looked at more through the lens of performance?  Or is there another important distinction between them?

JB's response. Certainly characters in movies or plays deliver speeches, and normally they are scripted by others. And the actors may sometimes find that their parts capture just what they feel, and in speaking them they may achieve self-expression. Sure. (Perhaps there is even a sense in which a movie or play could be said to be a piece of oratory, if as a whole it campaigns for a policy or point of view, and that the viewers may find it 'speaking' for them.) But serious political or philosophical oratory bills itself as self-expressive in a straightforward way, whereas the actor's oratory does not and the movie-maker's is a more complicated case). Still, there is, as you point out, a certain likeness between the two forms.

48. From Tanya Schmoeger, 5/4/07, re. oratory as an art. In class all of the examples of people who were great orators were people who were powerful and who had a vast influence (e.g. Demosthenes played a leading part in warning the Athenians against Philip of Macedon). In class you also mentioned how people in power are who we often think of as being great orators, and how the large- often national- impact that their speeches have is part of what makes them great. So, my question is that if having a large impact is what makes a person a great orator can people who are not in the national limelight, yet who possess similar characteristics, be considered equally good orators. In other words, how is having a large impact or making a stirring speech measured, and is it a core requirement for being a good orator?

JB's response. I don't think the size of the impact measures the quality of the oratory, since actual audiences are not at all ideal judges. Also political importance is not a measure, since lots of great speeches are not political. But it is true that one aim of most political oratory is to persuade the audience to accept a policy or resolve to act. Because of this the clever orator will pitch his or her speech at the level appropriate to the audience and to shape it in such a way that it persuades, or moves to action. Success in that aim is a mark in favor of the suitability of the speech for practical purposes, other things being equal. But for art more than suitability is required. There cannot be art grade oratory that is tailored to an audience not prepared to appreciate the 'literary' characteristics of the speech, roughly its aesthetic and intellectual excellence.

The ancient Athenians were in general good judges of oratorial quality, being so well practiced in it. But they were far from infallible, allowing themselves to be duped by demagogues plenty of times. Their moral failings often clouded their judgment.

49. From Nguyen Nguyen, 5/7/07, re. gangster movies. As Ry mentioned, viewers of gangster movies sometimes wishes for a moment that they are a part of that world. Then what about interactive art that allows the audience to experience that world as close to reality as possible? Furthermore, the films mentioned above do not necessarily condone unethical lifestyles, but what if an interactive art lets the audience decides their own fate? More specifically, I want to talk about video games (such as the Grand Theft Auto series if you've heard of it) where the audience interacts with the game and control a character. This character must progress through the story of the game by killing, stealing, and other ethically repugnant activities to climb up the organized crime ladder (whether for a mafia or an urban gang). On the surface, we can talk about the aesthetic properties of the visuals of the game, the sounds, the script, etc. Even the way you play the game can be an aesthetic property. However, should we include the moral consequences of the game as an aesthetic property? You said that "if aesthetic appreciation must be appreciation taken in things for their own sake and not for ego-satisfactions, then these are not strictly aesthetic responses." Would that applies to this situation, where the player of the game performs these actions in the game and it is assumed that the player knows what they're doing in the game is wrong (these games are rated for adults, after all)?

JB's response. The person playing the game may conceive of herself as an author of sorts.If so, then questions about the meaning of the game, including its moral message, will be questions about what an observer is entitled to take the player-author's intentions to be, on my view of the matter. Of course a player may conceivably just play the game without intending to create a work at all, in which case there is no question of the playing having a meaning (except to the player's psychologist). A player may play with more or less interest in appreciating the moves in the game aesthetically, or in guiding another person's aesthetic appreciation of it. A person whose interest is aesthetic will have to appreciate the moves for their own sake, not for the ego-satisfaction they may give -- even if they are ego-gratifying.

Pretending to commit immoral acts is not necessarily immoral, of course, if there's no carryover into life. But a fascination with such make-believe is at least somewhat problematic. It gives prima facie reason to think the pretender is emotionally a bit disturbed or morally confused.

50. From Nguyen Nguyen, 5/7/07, re. costliness (##36, 39). I do agree with your terminology for "costliness" and "show" as you defined in #39, but as Hunter stated in #36, I also think there must cases where the costliness of materials indeed add to the artistic value of the object. The angle that I want to discuss is what constitutes "materials" of an art work? In films, most often the cost of the film depends on the actors and actress hired to act in the film. I will note that their talents as artist are not affected by the costs of the costumes they wear for the film. However, the producers and directors of the films are often credited overall for the film. Then would the cost of the different actors and actresses be a part of the artistic value of the movie? At first it would seem not. After all, the orchestration of the film and direction of the actors are the talents of the producers/directors, but the costs of the actors would not show these talents. But I propose this scenario: The actors hired are not famous, so they do not cost much, however they are just as talented as the famous actors originally intended for the role. It was a chance encounter that the producers hired these actors to replace the famous ones, mainly to lower the cost of the film. In this case, wouldn't you say that the