Abstract
What is the source of aesthetic knowledge? Empirical knowledge, it is generally held, bottoms out in perception. Such knowledge can be transmitted to others through testimony, preserved by memory, and amplified via inference. But perception is where the rubber hits the road. What about aesthetic knowledge? Does it too bottom out in perception? Most say “yes”. But this is wrong. When it comes to aesthetic knowledge, it is appreciation, not perception, where the rubber hits the road. The ultimate source of aesthetic knowledge is feeling. In this essay, we articulate and defend the very idea of affective knowledge and reveal aesthetic knowledge to be a species of the genus. We then show how the view resolves a thorny problem that has bedeviled aesthetic epistemologists: how to reconcile the seemingly direct character of aesthetic knowledge with the possibility of acquiring such knowledge from criticism. One learns from criticism, we argue, when it guides one’s engagement with an object so that one can appreciate it in virtue of those of its features that render it worthy of appreciation.
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Notes
This view is so ubiquitous that it is often regarded as a “truism” (Livingston, 2003) or as “the ‘Perceptual Requirement’ in aesthetic epistemology” (Schellekens, 2019: 22). Among the many Perceptualists, see Walton (1970, 1993), Tormey (1973), Stokes (2014, 2018), as well as Hopkins (2006) and Lord (2019), both of whom we discuss below.
Goffin (2018) also argues for a version of Affectivism but is blocked from the proper account of aesthetic knowledge by his failure to identify the rational structure of the emotions.
More recently, James Shelley describes himself as a ‘Perceptualist’, but unlike those we call Perceptualists in this paper, he also uses the term in the broader sense (see his 2003, 2006). Similarly, though in a different context, when McDowell (1978) argues that one can perceive moral requirements, he too employs a broad sense of ‘perceptual’, one on which a perceptual state can be (indivisibly) both receptive and conative.
See Livingston (2003), Goldie and Schellekens (2008), and Schellekens (2019). For disagreement, see Dorsch (2007). The underlying intuition has been defended under a variety of headings, e.g., in terms of principles such as Autonomy [e.g., Hopkins (2001) and Nguyen (2020)] and Acquaintance [e.g., Wollheim (1980: 3) and Tormey (1973)].
Hopkins (2006: 150).
In this paper, we use the terms “feeling” and “emotion” interchangeably. We do not mean to imply that these terms as they are ordinarily used have precisely the same extension; however, everything we say here is (we take it) true of what they both paradigmatically denote.
Although we will not explore the connection in detail here, we would argue that the underlying point is closely connected with G.E. Moore’s famous observation concerning perception: “when we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous" (1922; p .25).
Susanna Siegel has recently (2017) argued that perception itself is rationally assessable. But the disagreement between us and Seigel does not so much concern perception as it does the nature of rationality. Unlike Hopkins, Siegel would reject including ‘the argument’ inside perception; her point is partly that rationality does not require Taking. Although we cannot adjudicate this dispute here, if the view of aesthetic knowledge on offer in this essay is an illuminating one, then the general conception of rationality should to that extent be credited.
Cf., Gregory (2018: 1066).
A few have raised doubts about the idea that feelings are motivating, e.g., Robinson et al. (2015), Corns (2014), and Corns and Cowan (2021). But their arguments establish only that the so-called “affective” and “motivating” sub-personal processing systems are two separate systems, though often working in tandem. Even if true, it does not follow that the emotions, which are person-level states, do not on their own motivate and rationalize behaviors. What we say in this section is meant to intuitively support the motivating power of feelings by means of examples. We would also argue that alleged counterexamples to the motivational power of feelings on the personal level introduced by Corns and Cowan (2021) misfire insofar as (a) they target only the view that affect is constituted by desire, a view we reject below; (b) assume that sensory perceptions and feelings have analogous rational structures, a view that we refute; and (c) address mainly moral internalism, to which we are not committed here. Furthermore, the fact that even Perceptualists about emotions accept the challenge of reconciling their view with the truism that emotions are intrinsically motivating (e.g., Tappolet, 2016) speaks to its intuitiveness. The connection is so tight that some suggest that it is part of the etymology of the term, going back to the “Old French ‘emouvoir,’ which means to stir up, itself going back to the Latin emovere, meaning to move out, remove, agitate” (Tappolet, 2016: 47, n.1).
This conception of motivation is developed and defended at length in Marcus (forthcoming).
The distinction between desiring to do something and believing it would be good to do is emphasized in, e.g., Stampe (1987). We do not, in any case, commit ourselves to a ‘pro-attitude’ theory of desire. For a conception of desire according to which it is presentational and internally evaluative, see, for example, Tenenbaum (2007) and Brewer (2009).
Johnston (2001): 187.
Our view of the emotions thus differs both from the standard cognitivist’s view, according to which emotions are beliefs or judgments about values (e.g., Nussbaum, 2001; Solomon, 1993) and from perceptual theories of emotions, according to which emotions just are perceptions—in the narrow sense—of value (e.g., Milona, 2016; Tappolet, 2016).
For a fuller defense, see Gorodeisky (MS).
See Gorodeisky (2021b). This is why some of those working on emotions agree that emotions cannot be desires if the latter are characterized by what is often known as a world-to-mind direction of fit [e.g., Helm (2001), Döring (2003), Raz (2011)]. The point is that, like beliefs and doxastic judgments, the emotions are measured partly by their answerability to the facts: their success depends (partially) on correct reflection of the world.
For extensive discussion of rational explanation, see Marcus (2012).
Contemporary skepticism about this style of argument traces back to Austin (1962).
To say that a piece of aesthetic knowledge is primary is to say that its justification has not been transmitted by testimony or inference. But aesthetic justification does not operate independently of our being justified in holding other attitudes and so is not foundational in Lord’s sense. Without perceptual knowledge, we would not be in a position to respond to the world emotionally. Our argument here is thus consistent with the idea that perception, unlike affect, is a source of foundational knowledge.
We thus explain why Beardsley, like many after him, is wrong to argue that aesthetic qualities are “perceptual” in the sense of being “open to direct sensory awareness” (Beardsley, 1958: 31), or more generally, what’s wrong with “aesthetic empiricism,” the view that (in the words of Gregory Curry, who rejects it), “the boundaries of the aesthetic are set by the boundaries of vision, hearing or verbal understanding” (An Ontology of Art, p. 18). One can also think of the argument in this section as the argument that Carroll demands for “demonstrating” that aesthetic experiences (at least insofar as they amount to primary aesthetic knowledge) must be affective (Carroll 2012: 169).
For more on rational causes, see Marcus (2012).
E.g., Prinz (2011).
Dispositionalist accounts of color go wrong precisely by denying this intuitive idea. See Johnston (1992).
Clearly, this is not meant as a complete defense of the presentational power of feelings, but along with the responses to the queries above, it suffices for our purposes in this paper. For a more detailed defense, see Gorodeisky (MS).
Notice that while Jesse Prinz (2011) also views appreciation as affective, he wrongly regards it as non-cognitive (and not as pleasure but as the emotion of wonder). Furthermore, our view significantly differs from aesthetic empiricist views of appreciation such as Iseminger’s (2004): on our view, appreciation is directed at and presents not itself as finally valuable (as Iseminger has it) but the appreciated object as meriting appreciation. Our view is thus not empiricist: it is not committed to the claim that aesthetic value is the value of its appreciation. Furthermore, since Carroll (2012) understands both what he calls the affective approach and the valuing approach as empiricist, his criticisms of both views miss ours.
We have shown elsewhere (Gorodeisky and Marcus, 2018) that this distinction is also crucial for solving another puzzle that has bedeviled aestheticians since at least Kant: how to reconcile the (at least seemingly) first-personal nature of aesthetic judgment (its independence of the judgments of others) with our rationally doubting such judgments they conflict with that of qualified judges.
By ‘causal’, we do not mean ‘mechanistic’. The point is simply that criticism leads one, in the ordinary sense, to experiences that constitute aesthetic knowledge.
Someone might think that this shows aesthetic judgments need not be rational after all, but that is not so. To make this judgment is to experience the color as to-be-appreciated. As such, the question: “Why do you find it beautiful?” has application. But one way of showing it to have application is to say: “No reason, I just like it; that’s all.” Our view thus does not require that, in every case, one’s feelings have a rational cause. Cf., Anscombe on the distinctive ‘Why?’ question that marks intentional action: “Now of course a possible answer to the question ‘Why?’ is one like ‘I just thought I would’ or ‘It was an impulse’ or ‘For no particular reason’….The question is not refused application because the answer to it says that there is no reason, any more than the question how much money I have in my pocket is refused application by the answer ‘None’” (Anscombe, 2000: 25).
Robbie Kubala in a review of our Gorodeisky and Marcus (2018).
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Acknowledgements
This article evolved from our response to comments on Gorodeisky and Marcus (2018) by Robbie Kubala and Aaron Meskin at the 2020 Eastern Division Meeting of the APA. We thank Kubala and Meskin for those comments, and are grateful to Arata Hamawaki for conversations that helped to inspire this article. We also extend our thanks to Ram Neta and James Shelley, to anonymous reviewers of this journal, and to audiences at an “Aesthetic Epistemology Workshop” at the University of Georgia and at a meeting of the “Ethics Seminar” at Boston University.
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Gorodeisky, K., Marcus, E. Aesthetic knowledge. Philos Stud 179, 2507–2535 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01775-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01775-1