Through much of the twentieth century, philosophical thinking about works of art, design, and other aesthetic products has emphasized intuitive and reflective methods, often tied to the idea that philosophy's business is primarily to analyze concepts. This "philosophy from the armchair" approach
contrasts with methods used by psychologists, sociologists, evolutionary thinkers, and others who study the making and reception of the arts empirically. How far should philosophers be sensitive to the results of these studies? Is their own largely a priori method basically flawed? Are their views
on aesthetic value, interpretation, imagination, and the emotions of art to be rethought in the light of best science? The essays in this volume seek answers to these questions, many through detailed studies of problems traditionally regarded as philosophical but where empirical inquiry seems to be
shedding interesting light.
No common view is looked for or found in this volume: a number of authors argue that the current enthusiasm for scientific approaches to aesthetics is based on a misunderstanding of the philosophical enterprise and sometimes on misinterpretation of the
science; others suggest various ways that philosophy can and should accommodate and sometimes yield to the empirical approach. The editors provide a substantial introduction which sets the scene historically and conceptually before summarizing the claims and arguments of the essays.
Gregory Currie, Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin and Jon Robson: Introduction
Part I: Method
1. Dominic McIver Lopes: Feckless Reason
2. Sherri Irvin: Is Aesthetic Experience Possible?
3. David Davies: 'This is Your Brain on Art': What Can Philosophy of Art Learn from
Neuroscience?
4. Fabian Dorsch: The Limits of Aesthetic Empiricism
5. Bence Nanay: Philosophy of Perception as a Guide to Aesthetics
6. Christy Mag Uidhir and Cameron Buckner: Portrait of the Artist as an Aesthetic Expert
Part II: First Order Issues
7. Jesse Prinz: Seeing
with Feeling
8. Noël Carroll: The Arts, Emotion, and Evolution
9. Jonathan Weinberg: All Your Desires in One Box
10. Kathleen Stock: Physiological Evidence and the Paradox of Fiction
11. Stacie Friend: Believing in Stories
Index
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Greg Currie taught for many years in New Zealand and Australia. He now teaches at the University of York. His most recent book is Narratives and Narrators (OUP, 2010) and he is now working on a book on literary representations of mind.
Matthew Kieran is Professor of Philosophy and
the Arts at the University of Leeds. He is the author of numerous articles and books such as Revealing Art (2005) which has been translated into various languages including Chinese and Korean. His wider philosophical interests include creativity, art, psychology, and ethics.
Aaron Meskin
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on aesthetics and other philosophical subjects. He co-edited Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007) and The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
Jon Robson is a teaching associate at the University of Nottingham, having previously served as a postdoctoral fellow on the AHRC project "Method in Philosophical Aesthetics: the Challenge from the Sciences". He has published papers in a range of subjects
including the epistemology of aesthetic judgements, the philosophy of videogames, and the beauty of God.
Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin
