Knowing Art

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiv

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2. Knowing Through Art

   1. Knowing Content in the Visual Arts

      • Keith Lehrer

      Pages 1-18

   2. Pictures, Knowledge, and Power: The Case of T. J. Clark

      • Derek Matravers

      Pages 19-33

   3. Narrating the Truth (More or Less)

      • Stacie Friend

      Pages 35-49

   4. Fiction and Psychological Insight

      • Kathleen Stock

      Pages 51-66

   5. Art and Modal Knowledge

      • Dustin Stokes

      Pages 67-81

   6. Charley’s World: Narratives of Aesthetic Experience

      • Peter Goldie

      Pages 83-94

3. Knowing About Art

   1. Really Bad Taste

      • Jesse Prinz

      Pages 95-107

   2. Solving the Puzzle of Aesthetic Testimony

      • Aaron Meskin

      Pages 109-124

   3. Critical Compatibilism

      • James Shelley

      Pages 125-136

   4. Critical Reasoning and Critical Perception

      • Robert Hopkins

      Pages 137-153

4. Back Matter

   Pages 155-161

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Artworks potentially convey two kinds of knowledge. They obviously afford knowledge of art itself, and they also afford general empirical knowledge, especially knowledge of human psychology and value.

“Knowing Art” collects ten original essays written by leading philosophers who distill and build upon recent work at the intersection of aesthetics and epistemology. Specific topics addressed include the objectivity of critical knowledge, the quality of critical testimony, the roles of principles and perception in critical reasoning, phenomenal knowledge of what a work of art is like, the acquisition of factual information and psychological understanding from fictions, and the limits of images as sources of historical evidence. In addressing these topics, the volume also explores the challenges that art poses for theories of knowledge as well as the challenges that artistic knowledge poses to traditional views about art.

• Aesthetics
• Art
• Criticism
• Knowledge
• Literature
• epistemology
• experience
• reason

" [...] a variety of articles which reaffirm the cognitive character of art from diverse perspectives, among which they emphasize clearly the notion of art as a powerful tool in the realm of modal knowledge."

Sixto J. Castro in Estudios Filosóficos 164, 2008 (translated from Spanish)

• University of Leeds, UK

  Matthew Kieran

• University of British Columbia, Canada

  Dominic McIver Lopes