Umeå Winter Workshop in Philosophy: Aesthetic Language
Wed
11
Dec
Wednesday 11 December until Thursday 12 December, 2024at 09:15 - 16:00
The Humanities Building, Umeå University. See program for details.
Umeå Winter Workshop in Philosophy: Aesthetic Language
Welcome to a workshop where Philosophical Aesthetics and Philosophy of Language meet to illuminate what we talk about when we talk about art.
The workshop is open to all interested. Contact Per Algander if you wish to participate in the workshop.
Program
Wed 11/12
9.15 - 10.25. H.119. James Lewis (Cardiff). "Aesthetic Community and Appreciation (Or vice Versa)".
10.25 - 10.45. Coffee.
10.45 - 11.55. H.119. Rebecca Wallbank (Geneva). "Epistemic Permissivism and Norms of Convergence".
11.55 - 13.15. Lunch.
13.15 - 15. H.119. Round table: Nick Riggle (San Diego), Nathaniel Hansen (Reading), Zed Adams (New School). "Hoping and Vibing in Aesthetic Conversation".
Thu 12/12
10.15 - 11.25. G.233. Irene Martinez-Marin (Uppsala). "The Normativity of Aesthetic Coherence".
I present an account of what I call the ‘aesthetic slur’. Derived from Patricia Hill Collins’s notion of ‘controlling images’, I will delineate images which behave in much the same way as slurs, analysing particularly their feature of ‘effluence’; how their harmful content can leak out and not be insulated by intention or context. I will then use this analysis to explain what went wrong with Makode Linde's controversial artwork Painful Cake (2012). Content warnings: brief showings of racist & antisemitic imagery.
James Lewis Aesthetic Community and Appreciation (Or vice Versa)
Aesthetic practices afford social goods, principally, communion. We sing and dance together, we tell stories to, and make handsome objects for one another. Creative expression is (or at least often seems) a social act for which the appreciation of another person is an internal goal. This insight has prompted some aesthetic theorists – recently including Nick Riggle (2022, 2024a, 2024b) and Jessica Williams (2024) – to develop theories of the nature of the aesthetic domain which treat the social function of aesthetic practices as foundational. These views call themselves aesthetic communitarianism. Aesthetic communitarianism holds that the social goods afforded by aesthetic practices play a central role in explaining the normativity of aesthetic value. In this paper, I argue that such theories get the explanatory relation the wrong way around. Social goods do not explain aesthetic value, but they are explained by it.
Through a series of examples, I consider why it is that aesthetic practices can be a site of communion, or togetherness. Drawing from a broader project about the nature of such social goods, I articulate the role of joint attention and external value in what it is like for people to commune with one another. Attending to this subject matter reveals that communion must have an object: something with respect to which parties are joined together. The examples also show that the value of communion must be understood with reference to the value of its object. The value of the principal social goods of aesthetic life are grounded, partly, in that of their aesthetic object: the song, the dance, or whatever. It follows, I argue, that the aesthetic value of those objects cannot also be grounded in that of the social goods they afford – contrary to aesthetic communitarianism.
Irene Martínez Marín (Uppsala University) The Normativity of Aesthetic Coherence
Being rational is a matter of exhibiting mental coherence. This notion of coherence is linked to a set of distinctive principles or rational requirements aimed at avoiding certain combinations of attitudes (e.g., inconsistent beliefs, means-end incoherence, and various forms of akrasia). However, whether we ought or have any reason to try to be coherent remains an open question. Meanwhile, although many claim that aesthetics falls within the scope of rationality, the existence of aesthetic rational requirements and their normative weight remains notably unexplored. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining the apparent normative relationship between two central aesthetic attitudes: 'aesthetic judgement' and 'aesthetic liking'. Within this context, the concept of aesthetic respect will be closely examined. The paper explores how agents, by not liking what they judge as aesthetically valuable, may be violating a duty of respect for aesthetic value. Not only will this project enhance our understanding of how our mental states correlate in a structural way, but it will also contribute to resolving long-standing debates about appropriate engagement with aesthetic value, and explore the importance of aesthetic self-obligations.
Rebecca Wallbank Epistemic Permissivism and Norms of Convergence
Verdictive aesthetic competence is assessed upon the basis of standards that have either been societally imposed or which reflect our own aesthetic sensibilities. We cannot independently verify either of these standards and they often come apart. In fact, we cannot even ascertain that the aesthetic domain is a domain with sharable standards. If we were to find ourselves in a comparably poor epistemic position in many other contexts, we might be tempted to suspend judgement. But, to the contrary, in aesthetics many of us form verdictive aesthetic beliefs and maintain them with such strength and commitment that our identities are forged around them; we sometimes even try to convince others of their accuracy. Is this process responsible or rational? Is it justified? Ought we suspend our judgements? Ought we avoid trying to convince others? I will argue that despite our precarious epistemic situation, our aesthetic beliefs may well still meet some external standard of epistemic justification or reasonableness. At the very least our verdictive aesthetic judgements appear to meet some internal standard of epistemic permissiveness. Such that forming and maintaining verdictive aesthetic beliefs is permissible from the perspective of rationality, even upon awareness that we are in an epistemically poor position and a permissive state. Yet it is not clear that attempting or hoping to convince others can meet the requirements.
