Rethinking Aesthetic Properties: An Argument for Aesthetic Particularism

Reviews161 An Ontofogy ofArt, by Gregory Currie; xii & 143 pp. London : Macmillan, 1989, £29.50. This book is an inquiry into the nature and status of works of art. Both the style and the goals are in the purest analytical tradition. Currie argues for the "plausible hypothesis" that works ofart are action types and the notion ofaction which he uses is that which derives from the work ofJaegwon Kim. On this view, all works of art are performances which result in discoveries of structures by individuals via certain heuristic paths at particular times. The two elements used to differentiate particular works of art are the structures which are discovered and the heuristic path which is followed by the individual who does the discovering. Neither the individual nor the time of the performance are supposed to be essential to the identity of a particular work of art. Thus, if Cassandra Austen had discovered the sequence of words which make up the structure which is an essential component of Emma and if she had done it at a slightly earlier time than that at which Jane Austen discovered the same structure, then, provided only that she followed the same heuristic path, Cassandra Austen's action would have been a token of the same action type as Jane's. And the work of art would be one and the same in the two cases. It is fairly clear that there will be very few instances where action types of this kind have more than one token. This follows direcdy from the requirements that the structure be discovered by the same heuristic path. This means that all the same influences must prevail, the same models be used and to the same degree, the same sets of social and political restraints be operative, and so on. Currie claims that one of the chief virtues of his theory is that it allows all works of art to have multiple instances, in principle, though this will be very difficult in practice. Within the analytical tradition, the raising and answering of questions about "what there is" are usually done in the context of examining the adequacy of a theory purporting to explain some "facts," which are, for these purposes, "given." In this context, the "given" against which the adequacy ofthe ontological answers are tested is facts about "our" aesthetic appreciation of works of art. Currie does not address the question of who "we" are, but "we" are easily recognizable. "We" belong to a Western post-Enlightenment tradition in which originality, skill, and individual achievement are highly valued and where the work of art is essentially an aesthetic object. By this, I mean that all its aesthetic properties and value must be seen as depending on properties which make it the kind of thing that it is. Currie betrays no awareness that this is not the only tradition of aesthetic appreciation nor that this tradition is currendy the focus of radical criticism within academic circles, particularly those most concerned with the theory and practice of the arts. 162Philosophy and Literature The only opposing view that Currie considers is one which is within the tradition, but opposed to the more romantic aspects of it. This view is that of the formalist who thinks that the proper bearer of aesthetic properties and value, and thus the proper object of aesthetic appreciation, is the structure. Currie calls this view "empiricist." He argues that the structure which is essential to any work is never, by itself, the bearer ofany aesthetic properties and value. This is very extreme and I do not think that he establishes his case. It is true that within the tradition from which he speaks there are many aesthetic properties ascribed to works which cannot be properties of a structure treated as an isolated and autonomous system. Properties such as "visionary," "Liszt-inspired ," "dynamic," "skillfully executed," and perhaps even expressive properties such as "joyful" or "sad" (which he does not mention), relate the structures to other works of art or to features of a social context. However, it is difficult to see why anyone who was not already in the grip of a theory would find it plausible to claim that...

Aesthetic experience, as I have defined it, involves attending to—perceiving and reflecting upon—an object or event’s intrinsic properties considered worthy of that attention within a community into which one has been socialized. These experiences, I have argued, are not necessarily—indeed, are rarely—“pure” in the sense that one’s attention is aimed only at aesthetic properties. One can look at a painting or landscape, listen to a song or poem and, while paying due attention to shapes or rhythms or repetitions, also think about grandma, sex, oppression, or anything else. As long as one continues to perceive or reflect on aesthetic properties, one is having a genuine aesthetic experience. Aesthetic values are different than, but they are not necessarily separate from, other values. Still, some people’s lives include more occasions of aesthetic attention than do the lives of some other people. Stated simply, “the aesthetic life” is one in which at tending to intrinsic properties valued in one’s culture because they repay that attention plays a significant role in one’s life, both quantitatively and qualitatively. In this chapter, I shall look at a literary depiction of someone who leads such a life. I shall show in detail what it entails and suggest how even those whose lives are what we might call “very aesthetic” still lead lives in which the aesthetic is integrated with other values, in particular, with ethical values1.

According to aesthetic particularism, there are no true, finite, non-trivial principles linking aesthetic value properties (e.g. beauty, elegance) with more fundamental non-value properties (e.g. color, shape). Aesthetic particularists and their opponents tend to agree that such aesthetic value properties are grounded in such non-value properties. But this grounding claim might look inconsistent with aesthetic particularism, insofar as grounding demands a general structure. This chapter defends a form of realist aesthetic particularism against the charge of inconsistency by proposing a new way to make sense of grounding in the aesthetic domain. Grounding’s explanatory role can be realized by general principles, but it is realized in another way in aesthetics: by the use of true aesthetic counterfactuals. An aesthetic counterfactual links an aesthetic value property to a non-value property, and its truth is understood not via general principles but by a special process of imaginative removal of an object’s properties. Understanding this process requires understanding how we interpret and evaluate artworks by imagining how else they might have been. The proposal is applied to analyze the aesthetic value of a particular artwork: Kathleen Ryan’s Bad Lemon. The conclusion is that the aesthetic particularist need not give up realism, nor the plausible claim that aesthetic value properties are grounded in non-value properties.

In this paper, we seek to understand the formation of cultural values and the hierarchies of aesthetic judgment among adults and children from Brazil and Canada. Are aesthetic judgments consistent within cultures? Across age groups? Across cultures? This paper looks at some initial work on these questions. In 1982 Gardner and Winner proposed that the artwork of young children and artist-adults shared important aesthetic properties. Davis's research supported this claim. She found that where judges valued Modernist aesthetic properties they found strong and consistent aesthetic parallels between the work of children and adult artists. On the other hand, our cross-cultural research demonstrated the limitations of such a claim. Elsewhere [Pariser, D. and van den Berg, A. (1997). "The mind of the beholder. Some provisional doubts about the U-curved aesthetic development thesis". Studies in Art Education , 38 (3), 1997, 158-178; Pariser, D. and van den Berg, A. (2001). "Teaching art versus teaching taste: What art teachers can learn from looking at a cross-cultural evaluation of children's art. Poetics". Journal of Empirical Research on Literature, the Media and the Arts , 29 , 2001, 331-350], we have suggested that the notion of the equivalence of infant and adult art is largely a by-product of Modernist aesthetic values. Using some of the data gleaned from our most recent study [Kindler, A., van den Berg, A. and Pariser, D. (2000). "Making drawings, judging drawings: A cross-cultural study of graphic development and aesthetic development". Proposal funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, No. 410-2000-0453] we show that: (a) Modernist-inspired aesthetic rankings of a cross-sectional sample of drawings are relatively rare even among Brazilian and Canadian artist-judges; and; (b) that there exist at least three other ranking patterns, which either reflect non-Modernist aesthetic values, and/or reflect developmental differences among our judges.

It is the beginning of a powerful argument for an experiential account of aesthetic value that one must experience an artwork for oneself in order to appreciate its aesthetic value. One can know that some hero is a great man from an accurate description of his actions or characteristics in nonnormative terms; similarly for a great computer or any other machine. But the aesthetic value of artworks is manifest only in experiencing them for oneself. This point has been made many times by many philosophers of art. Typically, they seek an explanation for it in some peculiar logical relation between the nonaesthetic properties of artworks and their aesthetic properties. But the less mysterious explanation is threefold: first and foremost, that the aesthetic value of artworks lies only in the experience of them; second, that the context in which any property of an artwork is experienced can radically alter the experience of it; and third, that different observers, even fully qualified observers, can experience the same objective properties of artworks differently. If the value of artworks lies in the experience of them, and if that experience varies with context and observer, then one must experience artworks in order to appreciate their value. (What may look like the fallacy of affirming the consequent is really an inference to the best explanation.) That the aesthetic value of artworks lies in the

Fine wine recognition and appreciation: It is time to change the paradigm of wine tasting

Article Summary The resumption of serious and sustained analysis of the concept of aesthetic value in the twentieth century which was described in Section 5 of the article ‘Beauty’ in the 1998 edition of the Encyclopedia (hereafter ‘Beauty1998§5’) broke new ground but failed to solve the problems that stand in the way of a credibly unified theory. For instance, Guy Sircello provides a keen analysis of beauty-making properties, which he takes to be ‘properties of qualitative degree’ (‘PQDs’) such as the vividness or softness of colour, the brilliance or harshness of sound, the melancholy or joviality of a mood. These admit of no quantitative analysis and range over a wide swath of domains. They are not in themselves positively or negatively value-laden, which is essential to avoid circularity. Their aesthetic value is determined by their being intense, non-defective, and non-defective seeming on a nonaesthetic basis (again, to avoid circularity). By intensity is meant that the PQD exists to a high degree. Thus the seeming suede-softness of hills as seen from a distance in a certain light is intensely suede-soft. In a different context the softness might be drab. But he finds little to tell us about the ontological and epistemological standing of these properties or about the rank properly assigned to the overall value of the complex ensembles of properties of a thing. A second standout is the reflection of Kendall Walton (see Walton, K. (1939–)) on what we can call secondary appreciation aroused by awe or wonder at the capacity of things to elicit pleasurable admiration even when they have little claim to direct aesthetic appeal but impress us for their practical, moral, intellectual, or natural value, or for their radically avant-garde strangeness. The virtue of this is to expand the reach of aesthetic admiration beyond traditional limits without losing connection with more paradigmatic beauties. But it raises deep questions about how far we should extend our vision of aesthetic appreciation and how to understand the ontology and epistemology of beauty. What criterion of accuracy will apply to wonder and awe? (Aside from that question there is an important connection between it and aesthetic evaluation. Awe heightens a person’s disinterestedness: ‘Awe basically shuts down self-interest and self-representation and the nagging voice of the self,’ said Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, ‘two- to three-minute “micro awe” experiences (like gazing at a reflection on the water or visiting a nostalgic playground). … Both can have a profound impact on one’s quality of life.’ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/well/live/awe-microadventure-exploration.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage). If we scan the scene of philosophical aesthetics honestly, we can hardly fail to be impressed by how much disarray it presents, ranging from presumption to disinclination to take a position. Consider the presumption of Mary Mothersill’s claim that the aesthetic properties of a work depend on literally every feature being what it is. This is certainly not true for the wavelike contour she cites in El Greco’s Burial of Count Orgaz. Much detail could be altered without affecting that contour. If this were not so then all changes in the work, even its aging, would affect the aesthetic properties we confidently ascribe to it. The opposite of presumption is evasion, as when philosophers refuse to engage with the issue of how aesthetic value can be a single species of evaluation, doubtless wide but still possessed of unity. A case can also be made for the evasiveness saturating the prevalence of studies of what a historical philosopher may or may not have meant in this or that work, rather than direct confrontation with the central theoretical issues. The conclusion one comes to is that philosophical aesthetics is at present a strikingly undercultivated domain. We have much work to do. At the same time our aesthetic commerce with the things that move us (positively or negatively) is a source of major satisfaction. That is a deeply important truism. The oddity is that our passion does not come with deep understanding. It is to this mismatch that the best twenty-first century contributors are devoting themselves. To their contributions we now turn.

The paper considers the issue of developing aesthetic needs of a future music teacher in the course of professional training. The author defines notions such as culture, aesthetic culture, aesthetic activity as well as explores the essence of the notion of an aesthetic need of a future music teacher. The paper substantiates the role of art and aesthetic activity as the main factor for aesthetic needs development. The study reveals that there is a reason for the interest to human needs since a large number of branches in material and spiritual culture of society depend on defining the nature of needs and trends in their development. The author emphasises that the functioning of all levels of human life requires needs that would meet human development both physically and emotionally, thus, there should be an aesthetic form of activity because it harmoniously combines both spiritual and functional aspects. The paper substantiates the role of art as the main factor for development of aesthetic needs that can be met in various activities, but it is in art that they find the greatest expression. The author supports the idea that art is a special area of human existence and it combines knowledge and communication, intelligence, a sense of morality, and imagination of people. Involvement of a person in art is a necessary condition for development of aesthetic consciousness since elevation of the spirit and actualization of an essential aesthetic force take place during the process of perception, experience and understanding of works of art. Art integrates a dialogue of a person with the world. Considering the concept of an aesthetic need, the author defines it as an internal need to comprehend certain aesthetic values, development of certain skills, because an aesthetic need is based on aesthetic feelings that are embodied in aesthetic tastes and consist of individual selection of those aesthetic phenomena and objects that best suit views and interests of a person. The paper emphasises that an aesthetic need embodies richness and diversity of spirituality of a person who seeks to fulfill their potential in all fullness of life and if a person has a need for personal fulfillment, they will find the strength and ways to do that. It has been proved that an aesthetic need has semantic and aesthetic properties and has an artistic and perceptual nature, which provides an opportunity to obtain pleasure, enjoyment, joy, delight from beauty. It has been established that the process of perception or direct creativity of art are characterized by a combination of a goal and means, where the means develop into the goal, and the goal is the process itself when spiritual, functional and aesthetic needs of the individual are met, i.e. a person reaches a certain level in their activity when they create products and forms of cultural activity that meet more and more of their needs. The paper outlines that an emerging aesthetic need motivates a music teacher to create conditions and means for achieving satisfaction with their own creative activities, because an aesthetic need is a desire of a future music teacher to harmonize the internal and external world as well as development of aesthetic awareness of the world: to perceive and appreciate the beauty, to live and create according to the laws of beauty.

PurposeSocial media bring about the imagery of people, places and products. Showing particular success in attracting women and millennials, these media (e.g. Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest) are built around imagery consumption. This paper follows a qualitative theory building approach to extend the theory of consumption values and develop a framework based on the values social media deliver to consumers that explain their use outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThe framework was analytically developed based on a review of the literature. In contrast to frameworks such as stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R), the framework proposes that people consume social media to maximize relevant values, namely, the aesthetic, social and learning value. Then, a study based on semi-structured interviews is performed to elaborate on the values and their undertakings.FindingsThe paper defines the consumption’s aesthetic value and underscores it as a focal driver of social media use and a key concept in social commerce. Data analysis suggests that aesthetic value engenders such responses as consumer’s inspiration, infinity sensation and habitual entertainment. Additional drivers of social media users are social and learning values. The social value engenders self-expression and social privacy, whereas the learning value engenders resourcefulness and parallel shopping.Originality/valueThis paper stipulates that people consume (i.e. use) social media to maximize relevant values, which, in turn, result in two groups of responses (inner and outer responses). The framework indicates that the relevant values mediate the relation between a stimulus (e.g. social media use) and response (e.g. entertainment, inspiration and behavioral intent). It highlights the centrality of aesthetic value in digital marketing and social commerce environments. The framework, thus, contrary to S-O-R, views the consumer as a maximizer of values rather than (a) processor of emotional and cognitive rejoinders.

A theory of aesthetic value should explain what makes aesthetic value good. Current views about what makes aesthetic value good privilege the individual’s encounter with aesthetic value—listening to music, reading a novel, writing a poem, or viewing a painting. What makes aesthetic value good is its benefit to the individual appreciator. But engagement with aesthetic value is often a social, participatory matter: sharing and discussing aesthetic goods, imitating aesthetic agents, dancing, cooking, dining, or making music together. This article argues that we should understand aesthetic value in a way that centers these social forms of aesthetic engagement. To this end, the article argues that there is a social practice of aesthetic valuing, characterized as a participatory practice governed by the value of aesthetic community, which engages us in the social development of our capacities for discretionary valuing and volitional openness. Current theories of aesthetic value have trouble capturing the character of the practice of aesthetic valuing, and this motivates a novel communitarian theory of aesthetic value: aesthetic value is what is worthy of engagement in the social practice of aesthetic valuing.

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we propose a method of shape editing based on the quantification of aesthetic properties for more efficient and effective industrial design. The aesthetic measure, proposed in this paper, consists of two different characteristics; namely, the Class A condition and the minimum energy approach. Based on this idea, we defined two aesthetic measures; the curve aesthetic value and the surface aesthetic value. The former is used to evaluate the aesthetic property of a given curve, and the latter is used for a given surface, respectively. These values were tested on some examples, and their usefulness was shown.

Much has been written about the presumed interaction between moral and aesthetic properties in art, about whether moral flaws in a work or its artist can compromise the work’s aesthetic value. In the philosophy of sport, similarly, the beauty of an athlete’s performance may be undermined by moral flaws in the performance itself (e.g., in a case of cheating). Yet to be addressed, however, is a potential analogy between artists and athletes where personal moral flaws failing to register in the work or performance may nonetheless compromise aesthetic response. Along with tracing the conceptual terrain in these debates and drawing on earlier work endorsing pluralism in such matters, I will argue that an athlete’s moral flaws may indeed compromise the aesthetic appeal of their performances, even where such flaws stand apart from those performances. In contrast to creative artists whose presence is immaterial to accessing their work, in the case of performing artists and athletes—since they themselves are the vehicles of their work—it is, and ought to be, harder to avoid having one’s moral response to the person diminish one’s aesthetic response to the work. We want athletes to be moral exemplars, I propose, less because they serve as role models and more because we want to preserve unspoiled the aesthetic rewards they provide.

In this paper, I ask: what is the role of function in appreciating artifacts? I will argue that several distinguishable functions are relevant to the aesthetic appreciation of artifacts, and sometimes more than one of these must be taken into account to adequately appreciate these objects. Second, I will claim that, while we can identify something we might call functional aesthetic value or functional beauty, the aesthetic properties that contribute to this value neither need to enhance the object’s performance of its primary function nor manifest that function. There are broader criteria for what properties are relevant to functional beauty. Finally, I suggest that the aesthetic appreciation of artifacts may contribute to a larger appreciative project: the understanding and evaluation of a way of life, or social or cultural practices in which the artifact plays a role.

The aim of this paper is to explore the interaction between aesthetic properties and cognitive value in serial television. This study is based on a survey focused specifically on one television series: the second season of My Brilliant Friend, created by Saverio Costanzo. The survey was designed with the aim of getting respondents to express their perceptions of the relationship between the aesthetic qualities of the series and their assessment of it in cognitive terms. The responses obtained in the survey offer a clear answer to the key question of concern for this article. The vast majority of respondents (more than 90% in almost all cases) believe that aesthetic and cognitive qualities mutually influence one another. Additionally the qualitative results invite us to further explore interactionism conceptually: the cognitive content is taken as a criterion for evaluating the season’s aesthetic value overall, suggesting a link between meaning and narrative form.

This chapter investigates two phenomena where values plausibly interact within artworks. One is the case of purported aesthetic value ‘inversions’ within artworks. The other is the case of purported ethical-artistic value inversions within artworks. I hypothesize that one gets inversion in the valuable properties of artworks, when the properties in question are aesthetic properties. I will look for principles for evaluating artworks that best accommodate that fact of inversion. I will argue that there is a good candidate for such a principle, but it is neither a pro tanto nor a prima facie principle as they are ordinarily conceived. I will finally argue that some proponents of ethical-artistic inversion do indeed treat it as a species of aesthetic inversion.