Fabian Dorsch / Writings / Drafts
Under Review
- The Phenomenal Presence of Reasons
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Intentionalism, Experiential and Phenomenal Error (with Gianfranco Soldati)
[abstract]
In this paper we shall address some issues concerning the relation between the content and the nature of perceptual experiences. More precisely, we shall ask whether the claim that perceptual experiences are by nature relational implies that they cannot be intentional. As we shall see, much depends in this respect on the way one understands the possibility for one to be wrong about the phenomenal nature of one’s own experience. We shall describe and distinguish a series of errors that can occur in our introspective access to our perceptual experiences. We shall argue that once the nature of these different kinds of error are properly understood, the metaphysical claim that perceptual experiences are relational can be seen to be compatible with the view that they are intentional. Before presenting the argument, we shall try to articulate some elements of an intentionalist approach concerning the role of experience in our relation to ourselves and to our environment. The picture should offer a motivation for the arguments that follow.
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The Relevance of Empirical Findings for Aesthetic Evaluation
[abstract]
Empirical findings can have an impact on aesthetic evaluation in at least two ways. First - within criticism - they may influence how we assess particular objects, or types of objects. And second - whithin philosophy - they may influence which account of aesthetic value and evaluation we prefer. In this paper, I would like to address both kinds of relevance, and with respect to a variety of possible sources of empirical evidence reaching beyond our own experiences of the objects concerned (including art-history and both cognitive and evolutionary psychology). My discussion concentrates thereby on several features which are commonly ascribed to aesthetic evaluations, notably: (i) that they are concerned with concrete objects, and not with types of objects; and (ii) that they are to be justified in terms of reasons.
Within criticism, both features threaten to severely limit - or even negate - the applicability of empirical findings (especially of a more systematic and scientific nature). The concreteness of aesthetic evaluations manifests itself in two facts: (i.1) not only the qualities, but also the particularity of the objects may matter (e.g., because of the particularity of expression and attachment); (i.2) relatively small qualitative details may matter. Empirical research, however, is not concerned with (i.1); and it can capture (i.2) only in exchange for generality (not to speak of the needed resources and, possibly, luck). In particular, even if it is possible to discover hedged aesthetic principles, empirical evidence cannot help us to discern when they apply due to the openness of the hedging condition. The rationality of aesthetic evaluations, on the other hand, is closely related to the fact that what matters in aesthetic appreciation is not only to recognise the value of objects (we often know it already), but also to understand why they possess this value, or how they realise it (we often disagree about this). But empirical findings cannot contribute much to the identification of reasons (rather than what we take to be reasons), nor to the explanation of how these reasons render the attribution of specific aesthetic values intelligible, given that both tasks are essentially concerned with normativity. At best, they may help us to notice features of objects which we then recognise as reasons - but only if they take the concreteness of the latter sufficiently into account (e.g., by investigating the nature and context of an individual painting).
Within philosophy, empirical studies promise to be more relevant - for instance, by tracing back sophisticated aesthetic sensibilities to basic aspects of natural or sexual selection, or by identifying factors as substantially influencing our aesthetic evaluations, which our theories of aesthetic value take to be irrelevant or even detrimental. This may actually link back to the discussion about aesthetic criticism in so far as the suggested revisions of our theories may very well lead to the denial of the features (i) or (ii). Empirical facts about the origin of one of our current practices, however, do not automatically render that practice intelligible: they may be completely extrinsic to its contemporary significance for our lives. And even if they do contribute to the explanation of our practice, this is not something that we can discover empirically due to the normative nature of the explanation concerned. The same is true of the assessment of whether certain evaluations (e.g., those influenced by what we take to be non-aesthetic factors) are of good aesthetic standing (or even aesthetic in the first place). Empirical evidence may show that we often fail to live up to our standards and thus perhaps question them; but it may not weaken those standards, or replace them with new ones.
The same limitations do not pertain to our first-hand and first-personal experience of aesthetics objects, which is also of an empirical nature. It concerns particular objects and provides us with reasons; and it enables us to make sense of the aesthetic value of an object. This appears to suggest that there is a fundamental divide among our empirical ways of accessing aesthetic objects. Perhaps, any more indirect or third-personal evidence becomes relevant for aesthetic evaluation only if it is integrated with our more basic aesthetic experiences (e.g., when art-historical facts concern the particular object in question, or psychological evidence is focussed on our specific response). Otherwise, empirical findings may just bring us to question our considered views about the values of objects or the nature of those values. The so-called 'test of time' may serve as an illustration. Part of why objects survive this test is that people (whether they are experienced critics or ordinary lay people) continue over the centuries and cultures to care about their preservation for aesthetic reasons. This provides us with empirical evidence - though, it seems, not about the aesthetic value of the objects concerned, but instead about the more general quality of our own evaluation (e.g., bringing us to reconsider the matter). -
Non-Inferentialism about Aesthetic Judgements
[abstract]
In this essay, I present two objections against the view that aesthetic judgements - that is, ascriptions of aesthetic qualities like elegance or harmony - are justified non-inferentially. The first is that this view has problems to make sense of our practice to support our aesthetic judgements by reference to lower-level features of the objects concerned. The second objection maintains that non-inferentialism about aesthetic judgements cannot explain why our aesthetic interest is limited to only some of the lower-level features that realise higher-level aesthetic qualities. Although my concern is with non-inferentialism about aesthetic judgements in general, my discussion is mainly guided by Sibley's well-developed and influential version of this view. Besides, and despite my exclusive focus on aesthetic qualities, I also hope that some of my conclusions apply equally to other kinds of higher-level properties.
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Pictorial Experience, Imagining De Re and Imaginative Penetration
[abstract]
In pictorial experience, we are normally aware of the visible features of two distinct sets of objects: the depicting surface and the depicted entities. Imagination-based accounts of pictorial experience maintain that our awareness of the depicted (e.g., of a landscape or a man) is essentially imaginative. My main aim in this paper is to provide a specific objection to imagination-based accounts. More specifically, I argue that they are unable to account for the fact that the kind of awareness, which is exemplified by our awareness of the depicted scene involved in our non-illusionistic pictorial experience of a two-dimensional picture, could not be instantiated without the simultaneous perceptual awareness of some marked surface.
The sustainability of imagination-based accounts is relevant not only for the on-going debate on the nature of pictorial experience, but also for the characterisation of imagining. If an imagination-based account of pictorial experience turns out to be true, the Agency Account of imagining — according to which episodes of imagining are essentially instances of mental agency in such a way as to give us (some) substantial control over what they represent — comes under threat, given that our basic recognition of what pictures depict is essentially passive. Indeed, this article forms part of the wider project of defending the Agency Account by removing a particular objection to the latter, namely that it cannot accommodate the supposedly imaginative character of pictorial experience.
First of all, I clarify and argue for the claim that the non-illusionistic awareness of what two-dimensional pictures depict depends on the simultaneous awareness of some suitable depicting surface. Then, I discuss and criticise the two main ways in which imagination-based accounts may attempt to explain this dependence — namely either in terms of imagining from the inside and de re imagining, or in terms of imaginative penetration through seeing something under an imaginatively employed concept. My main focus is thereby on the accounts of Kendall Walton and Roger Scruton, but I also say something about the views of Brian O'Shaughnessy and Kathleen Stock. Finally, I sketch very briefly an alternative, perception-based account of pictorial experience, which explains the dependence between the two kinds of awareness by reference to a dependence between two corresponding kinds of experienced objective appearances.