Abstract
AbstractThis chapter focuses on a common motivation for pessimism which comes via an appeal to intuitions concerning various cases. The pessimist will describe some situation where they claim that (i) an individual forms an aesthetic judgement on the basis of testimony, (ii) the standard conditions for testimonial knowledge (in non-aesthetic cases) are met, and (iii) the individual’s aesthetic judgement is intuitively illegitimate. This chapter offers two lines of argument against using such appeals to motivate pessimism. First, it briefly highlights some reasons for being sceptical as to whether these ‘pessimistic intuitions’ really carry much epistemic weight. Second, it argues that (even granting the force of these intuitions) it is possible to construct an optimistic view which can incorporate many of these intuitions. In order to demonstrate this, the majority of the chapter is spent outlining an account of this kind (one which draws on some insights from contextualist theories in epistemology).
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