bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Self-interest
Authors: O’Neill John
Published: September 2018

The concept of self-interest is used in two distinct ways. It sometimes refers to what is in a person’s interests, to well-being understood as what makes their life go well. Self-interest can also refer to a motive or disposition of character: persons are said to act from self-interest when they aim at their own good or to be self-interested when they are disposed to pursue their own good.

Are humans always really motivated by self-interest? Psychological egoists believe that all actions, including apparently other-regarding actions, spring from self-interested motivations. Some arguments for this view depend on a fallacious inference from the claim that a person gets pleasure from the satisfaction of an other-regarding desire to the claim that the agent acts in order to get pleasure. Recent appeals to the assumptions of economic theory also fail to establish the universality of self-interested motivation. The weak assumption that individuals aim to maximize preference-satisfaction does not entail that they are self-interested. Stronger assumptions about self-regarding interests used in the explanation of behaviour in markets cannot be extended to explanations of behaviour in non-market settings. Individuals’ identities are constituted by a variety of roles, relations and commitments, and in different institutional contexts under different descriptions individuals can have distinct and sometimes conflicting conceptions of their interests.

What is the relation of self-interest and morality? Classical theories of morality claim that the virtuous life is the best life for the individual. This view ties morality to what is in a person’s interests. But this does not entail that agents are necessarily motivated by self-interest. In contrast, some contractual theories tie morality to self-interested motivation: moral rules are those that agents motivated by self-interest would agree upon in order to realize their long-term good given a rough equality of power. Ethical theories in the Kantian tradition reject any justification of ethical obligations that appeals to self-interest. In claiming that commitments to others and excellences of character are part of the good life, however, classical theories can avoid the more plausible versions of Kantian objections.
Cloning
Authors: Harris John , Giordano Simona
Published: September 2018

‘Cloning’ is the popular name given to Cell Nuclear Replacement (CNR) or Cell Nuclear Transfer (CNT) techniques. CNR involves a recipient cell, generally an egg (oocyte), and a donor cell. The nucleus of the donor cell is introduced into the oocyte. With appropriate stimulation the oocyte is induced to develop. In some cases, the created embryo may be implanted into a viable womb and developed to term. The first mammal to be born by CNR was Dolly the sheep (1996–2003).

It is thought that CNR may have various potential applications ranging from reproduction to treatment of some of the most serious and life-threatening diseases that afflict humankind (such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries). However, many technical problems must be addressed and resolved before CNR becomes viable for use in either therapy or reproduction. Although research on CNR is still at its early stages, CNR (cloning) attracts people’s attention in a way that few other advances in biomedical research do. Public debate on cloning has unfortunately been influenced more by fiction than science. The horrendous or absurd scenarios pictured in novels and films are often mistakenly believed to be possible, or even likely, outcomes of cloning. The international community, immediately after news of the birth of Dolly, imposed restrictions that may make it difficult to refine the technique used. Against ‘reproductive cloning’ a prohibition is enforced virtually everywhere. ‘Reproductive cloning’ is considered offensive to human dignity and a threat to the well-being of the child or even to the future of humankind. Most of these objections are based on either a misunderstanding of CNR or on inconsistent philosophical arguments. Against ‘therapeutic cloning’ objections are also raised. The strongest are that CNR involves the creation and destruction of embryos, and this is widely believed to be unethical. Advocates of this position contend that, although CNR may save human lives, the technique still involves the taking of an innocent life and therefore is the equivalent of killing one person to save another. The debate on the moral status of the embryo is ongoing, in bioethics, philosophy and theology. However, if the arguments against the killing of the embryo for the morally important, life-saving purposes envisaged for CNR were to be accepted, then the current legal and social context of most European countries would have to be revised, and abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF) made criminal offences. Abortion and IVF (which involves creation of extra-embryos that may be destroyed) are in fact accepted practices in most European countries. Those who believe that abortion, even in its therapeutic form, and IVF are acceptable, admit that it may be ethical to destroy an embryo either to save a life or to treat infertility. If this is accepted, it is unclear why is it unacceptable that embryos are used to treat highly serious and lethal diseases (cancer or Parkinson’s disease for example).
Incommensurability in ethics
Authors: Carlson Erik
Published: September 2018

In ethics and neighbouring subjects, incommensurability has been attributed to at least three different kinds of entities, namely moral theories or traditions, abstract values, and particular bearers of value. Even when confined to a given kind of entity, ‘incommensurable’ and its cognates are used in several different senses. Moral theories or traditions have been judged incommensurable in the sense that rational agreement or disagreement between their proponents is impossible. Incommensurability of abstract values may mean that any bearer of a particular value is better than any bearer of some other value, or that all or some bearers of one value are incomparable in value to all or some bearers of another value. In either case, incommensurability of abstract values reduces to incommensurability of value bearers.

Applied to value bearers, there is one usage of ‘incommensurable’ according to which items are incommensurable if they cannot be measured on a common cardinal, i.e. interval or ratio, scale. Another usage identifies incommensurability with incomparability. Since there are competing understandings of incomparability, this usage gives rise to different notions of incommensurability. Finally, incommensurability of value bearers may be understood in terms of vagueness in the betterness relation.

Many arguments for incommensurability, understood primarily as incomparability of value bearers, have been given. Often such arguments appeal to the apparent diversity of values, or to the alleged fact that value is not amenable to ‘calculation’. The latter consideration is not, however, a cogent argument for incomparability. Two further influential arguments for incomparability are the ‘minor improvement’ argument, and the argument from ‘constitutive incommensurability’.

A further question concerns the consequences of incommensurability for ethical theory and practice. Incommensurability of moral theories or traditions appears to yield far-reaching theoretical consequences. Incommensurability of value bearers may affect the cogency of certain moral theories, as well as theories of the good. Furthermore, the possibility of incommensurable value bearers is often thought to impinge on the scope of practical rationality.
Open question argument
Authors: McPherson Tristram
Published: September 2018

The open question argument is the heart of G.E. Moore’s case against ethical naturalism. Ethical naturalism is the view that goodness, rightness, etc. are natural properties; roughly, the sorts of properties that can be investigated by the natural sciences. Moore claims that, for any candidate naturalistic account of an ethical term according to which ‘good’ had the same meaning as some naturalistic term A, we might without confusion ask: ‘I see that this act is A, but is it good?’ Moore claimed that the existence of such open questions shows that ethical naturalism is mistaken. In the century since its introduction, the open question argument has faced a battery of objections. Despite these challenges, some contemporary philosophers claim that the core of Moore’s argument can be salvaged. The most influential defences link Moore’s argument to the difficulty that naturalistic ethical realists face in explaining the practical role of ethical concepts in deliberation.
Moral psychology, empirical work in
Authors: May Joshua
Published: September 2018

How do we form our moral judgments, and how do they influence behaviour? What ultimately motivates kind versus malicious action? Moral psychology is the interdisciplinary study of such questions about the mental lives of moral agents, including moral thought, feeling, reasoning and motivation. While these questions can be studied solely from the armchair or using only empirical tools, researchers in various disciplines, from biology to neuroscience to philosophy, can address them in tandem. Some key topics in this respect revolve around moral cognition and motivation, such as moral responsibility, altruism, the structure of moral motivation, weakness of will, and moral intuitions. Of course there are other important topics as well, including emotions, character, moral development, self-deception, addiction, and the evolution of moral capacities.

Some of the primary objects of study in moral psychology are the processes driving moral action. For example, we often think of ourselves as possessing free will, which undergirds our being responsible for what we do; we often believe we can be ultimately concerned for the welfare of another; and so on. Yet these claims can be tested by empirical methods to some extent in at least two ways. First, we can determine what in fact our ordinary thinking is. While many philosophers investigate this through rigorous reflection on concepts, the empirical methods of the social sciences are at least an additional tool to bring to bear on the issue. Second, we can investigate empirically whether our ordinary thinking is correct. This typically involves checking the empirical adequacy of philosophical theories, assessing directly any claims made about moral cognition, motivation, and so forth.

Understanding the psychology of moral individuals is certainly interesting in its own right, but it also often has direct implications for other areas of ethics, such as metaethics and normative ethics. For instance, determining the role of reason versus sentiment in moral judgment and motivation can shed light on whether moral judgments are cognitive, and perhaps whether morality itself is in some sense objective. Similarly, moral theories, such as deontology and utilitarianism, often rely on intuitive judgments about what one ought to do in various hypothetical cases. Empirical research can again serve as an additional tool to determine what exactly the intuitions are and which psychological processes generate them.
Rationality, instrumental
Authors: Way Jonathan
Published: September 2018

We are instrumentally rational when we take necessary and effective means to our ends, and instrumentally irrational when we fail to do so. For instance, if you decide to give up smoking, it would be rational to stop buying cigarettes, and to limit the time you spend around other smokers. It would be irrational not to take any means to this end.

It is not clear how to formulate the principles of instrumental rationality. It is natural to think that if you have an end, you ought to take the means to that end. But if it would be wicked or crazy to take the means to one of your ends, then you ought not to take this means. In recent years, there has been considerable discussion of what to say about this issue.

It is often suggested that instrumental rationality might be all of practical rationality – that to be rational in respect of one’s actions is just to be instrumentally rational. This view has serious implications for the normativity of morality, since it suggests that it is not always rational to be moral. Some philosophers suggest that a proper understanding of instrumental rationality shows that we should reject this view.
Deontic modals
Authors: Chrisman Matthew
Published: September 2018

Modality, as it is usually understood in contemporary philosophy, has to do with necessities and possibilities. Deontic modality is a kind of modality which has to do with what is necessary or possible according to various rules, such as the norms of morality, the principles of practical rationality or the laws of some country. Deontic modality can be contrasted with alethic modality and epistemic modality. The former has to do with what propositions are necessarily or possibly true given various metaphysical, logical or nomological laws. The latter has to do with what propositions are necessarily or possibly true given various bodies of evidence or information.

Words commonly thought to express deontic modalities include the auxiliary verbs ‘must’, ‘have to’, ‘may’, ‘can’, ‘should’ and ‘ought to ’, but also the adjectives ‘obligatory’, ‘permissible’ and ‘impermissible’. The meanings of such deontic modals are studied by semanticists and philosophers of language interested in developing general theories of the content of modal language and concepts. The logical relations between deontic modal concepts are studied by deontic logicians interested in developing a formal language suitable for representing these relations in a logical system. The distinctive nature of deontic modals, their role in normative thought and their relations to other normative and evaluative concepts, such as reason, value, virtue and rationality, are studied by ethical theorists, especially metaethicists. All of these projects are deeply interconnected.
Ethics and action
Authors: King Matt
Published: September 2018

Moral theories are theories of right action. Moral principles are meant to guide action. And, if moral rules exist, they apply to all agents. Theories of action and agency seek to determine what counts as an action, what distinguishes agents from nonagents and the principles that govern what happens when agents act. These joint ventures both depend on and inform one another.

When we deliberate about what to do, we often consider what moral requirements we might be under. We think about what we morally ought to do. It often seems like the answer to that question can depend on what sorts of abilities we have, what options are available. If I cannot do something, either because I lack the ability to do it or because I do not have the opportunity to act in that way, then plausibly it is not the case that I should do that thing. More importantly, perhaps, it is not the case that I failed a moral requirement. So what sorts of abilities do we have and how do they constrain what we ought to do?

Moral principles tell us what we should do. But action theory tells us that what people do is a complicated affair. Typically, agents want and believe things, form intentions to act, then act on those intentions, while producing various results or outcomes. So an important question for ethics and action theory is: What parts of my action determine whether I act wrongly? Am I morally evaluable only for those parts I intend explicitly? Or must I answer for unintended consequences? In difficult cases, which take priority?

Only moral agents need concern themselves with right action. However, we also think that morality is not optional. If some action is wrong, then no one should do it. No matter how much you want to, you still should not. And this seems like an important and necessary feature of morality. Ethicists have struggled, however, to justify why moral requirements should be universally binding. Some think that if we pay close attention to what it is to be an agent, one who performs actions for reasons, then we will find such a justification. Thus, a major foundational question of morality depends on a deeply foundational question from action theory: What does agency consist in?
Art, abstract
Authors: Brown John H.
Published: September 2018

The use of the term ‘abstract’ as a category of visual art dates from the second decade of the twentieth century, when painters and sculptors had turned away from verisimilitude and launched such modes of abstraction as Cubism, Orphism, Futurism, Rayonism and Suprematism. Two subcategories may be distinguished: first, varieties of figurative representation that strongly schematize, and second, completely nonfigurative or nonobjective modes of design (in the widest sense of that term). Both stand opposed to classic representationalism (realism, naturalism, illusionism, mimeticism) understood as the commitment to a relatively full depiction of the subject matter and construed broadly enough to cover the traditional ‘high art’ canon through to Post-Impressionism. Analytic and Synthetic Cubism are model cases of the first subcategory while Mondrian’s neoplasticism and Pollock’s classic drip works are paradigms of the second. Though the effect was revolutionary, the positive motivations for this degree of abstraction in visual art were not wholly new. What was new was the elevation of previously subordinate aims to the front rank and the pursuit of certain principal aims in isolation from the full pictorial package. Thus abstract art variously celebrates structural and colour properties of objects, scenes and patterns; effects of motion, light and atmosphere; aspects of perceptual process, whether normal or expressively loaded; and forms expressing cosmic conceptions, visionary states or utopian ambitions. With a few exceptions (for example, the Futurists) the founders of abstract art were far from lucid or forthcoming about the significance of their work, and viewers have found successive waves of abstraction initially baffling and even offensive. But abstract art now forms a secure part of the ‘high art’ canon, though generally its appeal is less well understood than that of the classic modes of representation. Criticisms of abstract art have also become more lucid.

The chief philosophical issues affecting abstract art concern the definition of the term and the delineation of subordinate types; the relation between abstraction and other modes of avant-garde art that superficially resemble it; the magnitude of the artistic values so far achieved by the various forms; and finally the theoretical limits of significance attainable by abstraction as compared with the limits encountered in figurative art.
Art, abstract
Authors: Brown John H.
Published: September 2018

The widespread use of the term ‘abstract’ for a category of visual art dates from the second decade of the twentieth century, when painters and sculptors had turned away from verisimilitude and launched such modes of abstraction as cubism, Orphism, futurism, Rayonism and suprematism. Two subcategories may be distinguished: first, varieties of figurative representation that strongly schematize, and second, completely nonfigurative or nonobjective modes of design (in the widest sense of that term). Both stand opposed to classic representationalism (realism, naturalism, illusionism, mimeticism) understood as the commitment to a relatively full and undistorted depiction of the subject matter and construed broadly enough to cover the traditional ‘high art’ canon through to post-Impressionism. Analytic and synthetic cubism are model cases of the first subcategory while Mondrian’s neoplasticism and Pollock’s classic drip works are paradigms of the second. Though the effect was revolutionary, the positive motivations for this degree of abstraction in visual art were not wholly new. What was new was the elevation of previously subordinate aims to the front rank and the pursuit of certain principal aims in isolation from the full pictorial package. Thus abstract art variously celebrates structural and colour properties of objects, scenes and patterns; effects of motion, light and atmosphere; aspects of perceptual process, whether normal or expressively loaded; and forms expressing cosmic conceptions, visionary states or utopian ambitions. With a few exceptions (for example, the Futurists) the founders of abstract art were far from lucid or forthcoming about the significance of their work, and viewers have found successive waves of abstraction initially baffling and even offensive. But abstract art now forms a secure part of the ‘high art’ canon, though generally its appeal is less well understood than that of the classic modes of representation. Criticisms of abstract art have also become more lucid.

Issues concerning abstract art include the definition of the concept itself and the delineation of subordinate types; the relation between abstraction and other modes of avant-garde art that superficially resemble it; the magnitude of the artistic values so far achieved by the various forms; and the theoretical limits of significance attainable by abstraction as compared with the limits encountered in nonabstract figurative art. Abstract art merits attention from philosophers more than do traditional types of figurative and decorative art for at least two reasons: philosophical theories played a significant role in engendering abstraction and subsequent art-world discourse purporting to elucidate abstractions often operates with concepts requiring philosophic analysis to clarify and assess.
Aesthetic attitude
Authors: Budd Malcolm
Published: September 2018

It is undeniable that there are aesthetic and non-aesthetic attitudes. But is there such a thing as the aesthetic attitude? What is meant by the aesthetic attitude is the particular way in which we regard something when and only when we take an aesthetic interest in it. This assumes that on all occasions of aesthetic interest the object attended to is regarded in an identical fashion, unique to such occasions; and this assumption is problematic. If an attitude’s identity is determined by the features it is directed towards; if an aesthetic interest in an object is (by definition) an interest in its aesthetic qualities; and if the notion of aesthetic qualities can be explained in a uniform manner; then there is a unitary aesthetic attitude, namely an interest in an item’s aesthetic qualities. But this conception of the aesthetic attitude would be unsuitable for achieving the main aim of those who have posited the aesthetic attitude. This aim is to provide a definition of the aesthetic, but the aesthetic attitude, understood as any attitude focused upon an object’s aesthetic qualities, presupposes the idea of the aesthetic, and cannot be used to analyse it. So the question is whether there is a characterization of the aesthetic attitude that describes its nature without explicitly or implicitly relying on the concept of the aesthetic. There is no good reason to suppose so. Accordingly, there is no such thing as the aesthetic attitude, if this is an attitude that is both necessary and sufficient for aesthetic interest and that can be characterized independently of the aesthetic.
Architecture, aesthetics of
Authors: Haldane John J.
Published: September 2018

The philosophy of architecture is a branch of philosophical aesthetics concerned with various issues arising from the theory and practice of building design. The oldest writings on architecture date from antiquity and link architectural principles to more general, metaphysical elements of form and order. This tradition persisted into and beyond the Renaissance, but in the eighteenth century it began to give way to new philosophies of mind and value, according to which the determining factors of aesthetic experience are the interests and attitudes of informed subjects. Thereby architecture came within the sphere of the theory of taste.

Nineteenth-century revivals of classical and Gothic styles produced renewed interest in the nature of architecture, its place within the scheme of arts and sciences, and its role in society. Following this, twentieth-century modernism offered various accounts of the rational basis of architectural form and combined these with utopian political philosophies. As it had been in antiquity and during the Renaissance, architecture was again viewed as central to and partly definitive of a culture. More recently, however, attention has returned to analytical questions such as ‘What is the nature of the aesthetic experience of architecture?’ and, relatedly, ‘How is it possible for there to be reasoned, critical judgments about the meaning and value of buildings?’

In order to deal with such issues philosophers in different traditions have begun to develop accounts of the social aspects of architecture, recognizing that critical judgments presuppose the capacity to identify buildings as being of various types: public, domestic, formal, informal and so on. The nature of architecture is in part, therefore, a matter of social convention or more generally ‘forms of life’, and this limits the scope for abstract ahistorical theorizing. None the less, the resources of metaphysics, the theories of mind, action, meaning and value are all utilized in contemporary philosophy of architecture.
Art and truth
Authors: Taylor Paul
Published: September 2018

Some things are true within the world of a literary work. It is true, in the world evoked by Madame Bovary, that Emma Roualt married Charles Bovary. In this entry, however, we are not concerned with truth in fiction but rather with what it is for a work of art to be true of, or true to, the actual world. Representational works represent states of affairs, or objects portrayed in a certain way. The concept of truth naturally gets a grip here, because we can ask whether the represented state of affairs actually exists in the world, or whether a represented object exists and really is the way it is represented to be, or whether a representation of a kind of thing offers a genuinely representative example of that kind. If so, we could call the work true, or true in the given respect.

A work will often get us to respond to what is portrayed in a way similar to what our response would have been to the real thing – we are moved to fear and pity by objects we know are merely fictions. But a work could also portray characters responding in certain ways to the imaginary situations it conjures, often with the implication that the response is a likely human emotional or practical response to that situation, or a response to be expected of a character of the given type, and we could reasonably call the work true if we believed the portrayed reaction was a likely one.

Arguably, if we judge a work to be in some respect true to life, we must already have known that life was like that in order to make the judgment. But, interestingly, works of art appear to be able to portray situations that we have not experienced, in which the portrayal seems to warrant our saying that the work has shown (that is, taught) us a likely or plausible unfolding of the portrayed situation, or shown us what it would have been like to experience the situation. It is also said, especially of narrative fiction, that, because of its power to show us what various alternative imaginary situations would be like, it can enlighten us about how we ought to live.

So we may consider how a work of art might be a vehicle of truths about the actual world. This gives rise to a further question – sometimes called the problem of belief – of whether the value of a work of art as a piece of art is related to its truth. If a work implies or suggests that something is the case, ought I to value it more highly as art if I accept what it implies as the truth? Alternatively, should I take it as an aesthetic shortcoming if I do not?
Artist’s intention
Authors: Taylor Paul
Published: September 2018

W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley’s famous paper ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (1946) began one of the central debates in aesthetics and literary theory of the last half-century. By describing as a fallacy the belief that critics should take into account the author’s intentions when interpreting or evaluating a piece of literature, they were rejecting an entrenched assumption of traditional criticism – and a natural one, since we normally take it for granted that understanding actions, including acts of speech and writing, requires a grasp of the intentions of the agent. But they were expressing an idea that has been greatly influential; it was a central claim of the ‘new criticism’, while the marginalization of the author is also a marked feature of structuralist and poststructuralist literary theory. Most of the debate over the artist’s intentions – ‘artist’ here being used as a general word for writer, composer, painter, and so on – has centred on their relevance for interpreting art works. More particularly, the question has been whether external evidence about the artist’s intentions – evidence not presented by the work itself – is relevant to determining the work’s meaning.
Beauty
Authors: Brown John H.
Published: September 2018

On the subject of beauty, theorists generally agree only on rudimentary points about the term: that it commends on aesthetic grounds, has absolute and comparative forms, applies to parts, aspects and wholes, and so forth. Beyond this, dispute prevails. Realists hold that judgements of beauty ascribe to their subjects either a response-independent property inherent in things or a capacity of things to affect respondents in a way that preserves objectivity. In both cases acute problems arise in defining the property and in explaining how it can be known. Classical Platonism holds that beauty exists as an ideal supersensible ‘form’, while eighteenth-century theorists view it as a quasi-sensory property. Kant’s transcendental philosophy anchors the experience of beauty to the basic requirements of cognition, conferring on it ‘subjective universality and necessity’. Sceptics complain that the alleged property is merely a reflection of aesthetic pleasure and hence lacks objective standing. Partly due to its preoccupation with weightier matters, the philosophic tradition has not yet developed a theory of beauty as fully and deeply as it has, say, theories in the domain of morality. For most of the twentieth-century the generally subjectivistic and relativistic bent of the social sciences and humanities, as well as the scorn heaped on beauty by avant-gardism in the arts, discouraged concentration on beauty. However, the turn of the century has brought a remarkable reawakening of interest in theorizing about beauty. The burgeoning fields of cognitive science and evolutionary developmental biology have played a part.
Emotion in response to art
Authors: Levinson Jerrold
Published: September 2018

The main philosophical questions concerning emotion in response to art are as follows. (1) What kind or type of emotions are had in response to works of art? (2) How can we intelligibly have emotions for fictional persons or situations, given that we do not believe in their existence? (This is known as ‘the paradox of fiction’.) (3) Why do abstract works of art, especially musical ones, generate emotions in audiences, and what do audiences then have these emotions towards? (4) How can we make sense of the interest appreciators have in experiencing empathetically art that is expressive of negative emotions? (A particular form of this query is ‘the paradox of tragedy’.) (5) Is there a special aesthetic emotion, raised only in the context of experience of art? (6) Is there an irresolvable tension between an emotional response to art and the demands of aesthetic appreciation? Answers to these questions depend to some extent on the conception of emotion adopted.
Music, aesthetics of
Authors: Levinson Jerrold
Published: September 2018

The aesthetics of music comprises philosophical reflection on the origin, nature, power, purpose, creation, performance, reception, meaning and value of music. Some of its problems are general problems of aesthetics posed in a musical context; for example, what is the ontological status of the work of art in music, or what are the grounds of value judgments in music? Other problems are more or less peculiar to music, lacking a clear parallel in other arts; for example, what is the nature of the motion perceived in music, or how can the marriage of music and words best be understood?

Attempts to define the concept of music generally begin with the fact that music involves sound, but also posit such things as cultural tradition, the fulfilment of a composer’s aims or the expression of emotions as essential features of music. Perhaps any plausible concept, though, has to involve the making of sounds by people for aesthetic appreciation, broadly conceived. In deciding what is meant by a musical work, further considerations come into play, such as might lead to the identification of it with a sound structure as defined by a given composer in a particular musico-historical context.

In what sense can a piece of music be said to have meaning? Some hold it has meaning only internally – in its structure as an arrangement of melodies, harmonies, rhythms and timbres, for instance – while others have claimed that its meaning lies in the communication of things not essentially musical – such as emotions, attitudes or the deeper nature of the world. The most popular of these beliefs is that music expresses emotion. This is not to say, however, that the emotion expressed in a work is necessarily experienced by those involved in its composition or performance: composers can create peaceful or furious music without themselves being in those states, and the same goes for the performance of such music by performers. Also, the emotions evoked in listeners seem of a different nature from those directly experienced: negative emotions expressed in music do not preclude the audience’s appreciation, and in fact commonly facilitate it. Ultimately, a work’s expressiveness should be seen as something directly related to the experience of listening to that work. Music is often said to have value primarily in so far as it is beautiful, its beauty being whatever affords pleasure to the listener. But the quality of a work’s expressiveness, its depth, richness and subtlety, for example, also seems to form an important part of any value judgment we make about the work.
Narrative
Authors: Currie Gregory
Published: September 2018

Narrative, in its broadest sense, is the means by which a story is told, whether fictional or not, and regardless of medium. Novels, plays, films, historical texts, diaries and newspaper articles focus, in their different ways, on particular events and their temporal and causal relations; they are all narratives in the above sense. Accounts of mathematical, physical, economic or legal principles are not. A narrower sense of narrative requires the presence of a narrator mediating between audience and action, and contrasts with imitative discourse wherein the action is presented directly, as in drama. The boundary between narration narrowly construed and imitation is disputed, some writers arguing that apparently imitative forms are covertly narrated.

Attempts have been made to characterize fictional narratives in linguistic terms; another view is that fictions are things which have certain (intended or actual) effects on the audience. Theorists of narrative have mostly concentrated on narratives of the fictional kind and have developed a complex taxonomy of the various narrative devices, some of which are discussed in more detail below. Recently, pressure has been placed on the distinction between historical and fictional narrative by those who believe that history is nothing distinct from the various and conflicting narrative versions we have. It has also been argued that value accrues to an agent’s life and acts when those acts conform to a conception of that life as exemplifying narrative.
Photography, aesthetics of
Authors: Currie Gregory
Published: September 2018

Photography and painting are sometimes thought of as different processes with a common goal: the creation of a depiction of an object or scene. One way to characterize their difference, qua process, is to say that photography is, whereas painting is not, mechanical, though it has not been easy to specify precisely what this means. Attempts to explain the sense in which photography is mechanical sometimes appeal to the idea of a causal chain which is intention-free. In addition, photographs have been said to be transparent, allowing us literally to see things we could not see directly. On this view photographs are not so much depictions of things as aids to vision, as telescopes are. Assessing this more controversial idea requires close attention to the notion of seeing, especially to the question whether, and in what sense, seeing involves the provision of information about the spatial relations between the object and the viewer. The claims that photographs are mechanical and that they are transparent also raise important questions about whether photography is a reliable source of knowledge, and whether it is expressively or representationally limited.

Photographic techniques are subject to various kinds of intervention at the process of development or, these days, through digital manipulation. These interventions, and the kinds of intentional control of the picture’s appearance they allow, blur the distinction between photographs and ‘handmade’ images. The arguments of this entry apply most straightforwardly to unmanipulated images, and care must be taken in applying them more generally.
Tragedy
Authors: Feagin Susan L.
Published: September 2018

Tragedy is primarily a type of drama, though non-dramatic poetry (‘lyric tragedy’) and some novels (for example, Moby Dick) have laid claim to the description. As a genre, it began in ancient Greece and forms a part of the western European tradition. Historically, it has carried prestige for playwrights and actors because it dealt with persons, generally men, of ‘high’ or noble birth, who, by virtue of their stature, represented the most profound sufferings and conflicts of humanity, both morally and metaphysically. The history of the genre is part of the history of how art and culture reflect views about class and gender.

Tragic theory has concentrated primarily on how to define the genre. A persistent feature is the tragic hero, who begins by occupying a position of power or nobility, but comes to a catastrophic end through some action of his own. According to the Aristotelian tradition, the audience is supposed to experience pity and fear in response to the sufferings of the tragic hero, and perhaps pleasure from its cathartic effects. Hegel initiated a paradigm shift in tragic theory in proposing that tragic plots essentially involve conflicts of duty rather than suffering.

Greek tragedy and Shakespearean tragedy provide two different exemplars of the genre. The tradition inspired by Greek tragedy emphasized a rigidly defined genre of dramatic poetry; French neoclassic tragedy is part of this tradition. Shakespearean tragedy, on the other hand, is written partly in prose, and includes comic elements and characters who are not nobly born. Lessing and Ibsen also resisted restraints imposed on the genre in terms of its representation of social class and gender in favour of drama that was more realistic and relevant to a bourgeois audience. Twentieth-century criticism has questioned the viability of the genre for modern times.
Tragedy
Authors: Feagin Susan L.
Published: September 2018

Tragedy began in ancient Greece as a type of drama and has become an important part of the literary and critical tradition in Europe and the United States. Nondramatic poetry (‘lyric tragedy’) and some novels (for example, Moby Dick) have laid claim to being tragedies, or at least to being tragic, explicated as a type of plot or as a way of seeing the world. In general, concepts of tragedy reflect the ways humans think about and try to manage some of the most important features of human life – family, moral duty, suffering, and the noble heights and barbaric depths of human experience – in an unpredictable or intractable world.

Greek and Shakespearean tragedy provide two different exemplars of tragedy as a dramatic genre. The tradition inspired by the former typically emphasizes more formal constraints; French neoclassic tragedy is part of this tradition. Shakespearean tragedy, in contrast, is written partly in prose and includes comic scenes and characters who are not nobly born. Lessing and Ibsen also favoured drama that was more realistic and relevant to a bourgeois audience. Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ has been the centre of much debate in the twentieth-century over the viability of the genre for modern times.

The philosophy of tragedy also has two exemplars: Aristotle and G. W. F. Hegel. In the Aristotelian tradition, protagonists bring suffering as an unforeseen consequence of their actions. Hegel proposes that tragic plots essentially involve a protagonist’s struggle with conflicting duties rather than with unintended or unforeseen consequences. A persistent though not universal feature is a protagonist who comes to a catastrophic end, bringing others down in the process. In general, philosophies of tragedy have attempted to define the genre and elucidate how it depicts human action in relation to reason, morality and emotion. In what follows, I provide a glimpse of the state of the genre for a particular time or place, and then describe the main theories about its potential and purposes.
Gardens, aesthetics of
Authors: Ross Stephanie
Published: September 2018

Because they blend both art and nature, gardens pose special aesthetic problems. These problems arise most forcefully for gardens deemed works of art. Gardens exhibit a great variety of forms and garden content varies also. We use style terms to organize this range, but rather than borrowing from the nomenclature of art history, such terms generally refer to the gardens’ country of origin. This indicates the importance of constraints imposed on garden design by such factors as climate and geography.

Since gardens contain natural materials and alter natural places, they are subject to many natural forces and processes. They are always changing and the gardener fights a constant battle for control. This marks an important disanalogy between gardens and all the other arts: there is no final form to a garden. As a result, there are problems in determining a garden’s identity, its aesthetic qualities and its aesthetic value.

Appreciation of gardens involves all our senses, not just that of sight; it also involves the faculties of imagination and understanding. Viewing a garden can prompt various trains of thought – personal as well as cultural associations come into play here. In addition, gardens have representational powers and refer beyond themselves in various ways. Thus gardens can represent other places. Some gardens are designed to convey complex messages to those who view or walk through them. Such gardens function much like poems. Gardens can also allude to or copy paintings – the eighteenth-century cult of the picturesque fostered additional lines of connection and influence between these arts.
Sibley, Frank (1923–96)
Authors: Lyas Colin
Published: September 2018

Sibley was an English philosopher, noted for his contributions to aesthetics. His most famous published paper, ‘Aesthetic Concepts’, distinguishes ‘aesthetic’ terms (such as graceful) from ‘non-aesthetic terms’ (such as curved) and makes the much contested claim that although aesthetic features are dependent on non-aesthetic features, a knowledge of the former cannot be deduced from a knowledge of the latter. Aesthetic knowledge comes from the perceptual exercise of taste. Subsequent published papers spell out the implications for claims about objectivity and for the nature of critical reasoning. Important posthumously published papers examine the distinction between attributive and predicative adjectives and its bearing on the understanding of responses to art and nature.
Change
Authors: Le Poidevin Robin
Published: September 2018

Change in general may be defined as the variation of properties (whether of things or of regions of space) over time. But this definition is incomplete in a number of respects. The reference to properties and time raises two important questions. The first concerns whether we need to specify further the kinds of properties which are involved in change. If we define change in an object as temporal variation of its properties we are faced with the problem that some properties of an object may alter without there being a consequent change in the object itself. The second question concerns the passage of time: does temporal variation constitute change only in virtue of some feature of time itself, namely the fact (or putative fact) that time passes? Some philosophers have wished to reject the notion of time’s passage. Are they thereby committed to a picture of the world as unchanging?
Continuants
Authors: Le Poidevin Robin
Published: September 2018

There is a common-sense distinction between terms such as ‘statue’ or ‘chair’ on the one hand, and ‘concert’ or ‘war’ on the other. A long-standing tradition in metaphysics has attached some significance to this distinction, holding that the first kind of term is used to name continuants, whereas the second kind is used to name events or processes. The difference is that continuants can be said to change, and therefore persist through change, whereas events do not. However, the distinction between continuants and events has been challenged on the grounds that no concrete object does, in fact, retain its identity through time. It has been suggested, for example, that unless we give up the notion of identity through time, we are faced with questions that we cannot answer. In addition, the notion that things persist through change is, apparently, threatened by a certain view of time. On this view there is in reality no past, present and future, but rather unchanging temporal relations between events. It has been suggested that such a view is committed to the idea that objects have temporal parts, and these by definition cannot persist through time.
Ecological philosophy
Authors: Mathews Freya
Published: September 2018

In the early 1970s a small number of academic philosophers in the English-speaking world began to turn their attention to questions concerning the natural environment. Environmental philosophy initially encompassed various types of inquiry, including applied ethics oriented to issues such as nuclear power and the deployment of toxic chemicals; more abstract extrapolations of traditional ethical theories, such as Kantianism and utilitarianism, into environmental contexts; and, also, a far more radical project involving the reappraisal of basic presuppositions of Western thought in the light of their implications for our relation to the natural world. The first two were basically extensions of existing areas of philosophy, and it is arguably the third project – often described as ’ecological philosophy’ or ’ecophilosophy’ – which constitutes a distinctively new branch of philosophy. It is to environmental philosophy in this third sense that the present entry is devoted.

Although the ecophilosophical project was explicitly normative in intent, it was quickly found to entail far-reaching investigations into the fundamental nature of the world. Indeed it was seen by many as entailing a search for an entirely new ecological paradigm – a worldview organized around a principle of interconnectedness, with transformative implications for metaphysics, epistemology, spirituality and politics, as well as ethics. Moreover, the process of elaborating a new ecological view of the world was found to uncover the contours of an already deeply embedded worldview, organized around a principle of separation or division, underlying and shaping the traditional streams of modern Western thought.