Alan Goldman's classification of aes properties
- Broad or general value properties: beauty, ugliness, great
- Knowing that an object is beautiful tell us little/nothing about what makes it so
- These are purely evaluative and contain little description
- More specific value properties: graceful, elegant, witty
- Knowing an object is elegant gives us more information about its features (it is more descriptive)
- Specific value properties both evaluate and describe
- What is the difference between evaluating and describing?
- Pure describing tells us what an object is like without placing a value on it
- Evaluating places a value on an object: it is good/bad, right/wrong
- Often phrases do both at same time
- (Note: some of the following are purely descriptive properties)
- Formal properties: balanced, unified, harmonious
- Expressive properties: Sad, joyful, angry, serene, somber
- Evocative properties: powerful, stirring, amusing, or boring
- Behavioral or dynamic properties: sluggish, bouncy, or buoyant
- Second order perceptual properties: vivid, dull, muted, mellow, steely
- 2nd order perceptual properties are something we perceive in perceiving something else:
- As when perceive color of maple tree in fall and perceive the vividness of the color at the same time (do we perceive this or judge this?)
- Representative properties: being true to life, distorted, realistic
- Note again: This categorization of aes properties do not include ordinary perceptual qualities like color and shape
- Thin, smooth curve is not a description appealing to aes properties
- Stecker's discussion of aes properties in chapter two
- Emily Brady's discussion of aes properties
Various points about aes properties:
- Some can fall in several categories: Vivid is both specific value property and second order perceptual property
- Do all these aes properties give value to objects?
- Most think no: Vivid would seem to, but expressive (sad), behavioral (bouncy) and many second-order perceptual (mellow) and rep properties (distorted) don't seem polarized toward + or - value
-
Properties with "value polarity" can be reversible when interact with other properties
- Grace usually gives positive value, but it can detract from overall value of object of app: Work aimed at showing brutality of war would be less valuable if it the dying figures were graceful
- Justification of claims about aes properties proceed by citing other, lower level aes properties (either those that are less general, or those that are more descriptive and less evaluative)
Stecker suggests that when trying to justify/explain a judge of positive aes value, we need to get to a non-evaluative level of explanation, at least when there is disagreement about the aes value being justified
- Example: Beautiful (general value property) because graceful (specific value property), graceful because thin smooth curves (non-aes property)
- Disagreement over whether this music powerful not likely to be settled by pointing to its "piercing poignancy" or even its "subtle expression of deep sadness"
- For these are still evaluative claims that are likely to be disputed if power is not heard in first place
- To simply say it is sad (which is an aes property), carries little evaluative force
- Stecker's idea is that we are more likely to agree on the descriptive (nonevaluative) features so we should appeal to those
- But why can't pointing out other evaluative aes qualities to justify a more general eval aes quality get the desired agreement or justification, especially if the other person didn't notice them
How determine if something is an aes property?
One: What critics refer to when eval artworks
- But not all artistic evaluation is aesthetic evaluation
- And non-art (e.g., nature) also has aes properties, and no reason to be sure that any aes property mentioned here will be mentioned by critics evaluating art
Two: Aes properties are ones that require taste (sensibility) to detect?
- A special faculty over and above ordinary perceptual abilities
- But some of items on list of aes property require no more than ordinary perception (second-order perceptual abilities--is this true? )
- Expressive properties sometimes require no more than certain kinds of background knowledge, not some special taste faculty
- Best candidates for need for taste faculty are formal or specific value properties
- But not clear a different faculty comes into play to to discern visual grace than to discern fine shade of red
Three: Aes properties those we appeal to in aes evaluations and we use a conception of aes exp from chapter 3 to explain aes properties and evaluations
- If take Stecker's minimal view of aes exp
- The view that: Aes exp is exp valued for own sake in virtue of being directed at forms, qualities or meanings of an object
- Aes eval is eval of object's ability to deliver such exp (when truly perceived and correctly understood) and it often mentions aes properties
- Aes properties are those appro related to the exp we value for own sake
- Not every property that is involved in causing this exp is an aes property, for microstructure of a object causes it to be red and circular, and that causes it to be elegant and graceful, and only the latter are clearly aes properties; clearly the micro structure is not
Response Dependency (=RD)
- Are aes properties RD?
- Definition of RD: A property is RD if its instantiation in an object consists in the object having a steady disposition to bring about a certain reaction in human beings
- Example: Being red is a RD property if an objects being red consists in humans with normal vision experiencing it as red in daylight
Ideal observers, response dependent account of aesthetic properties
- Something has an aes property if ideal observers would experience it as having that property
- The move from normal observers to ideal observers is necessary because unlike perceiving color--which takes no skill--perceiving aes properties requires skill
- Skills one needs
- Ability to discriminate finely
- Background knowledge
- Familiarity with the type of object under appreciation so one has a comparison class
- Ability to draw connections and inferences
- To be free from bias
- Ideal observer is a normal observer with these skills
Ideal observer RD account of general value properties
- Something is aes excellent (beautiful, fine) if an ideal observer of the object would exp it with high degree of satisfaction (will have an exp highly valued for its own sake) based on apprehension of more basic properties of the object (e.g., forms, qualities or meanings)
- Stecker likes this:
- He thinks aes value is plausibly understood in terms of a kind of valuable experience
- This explains the subjectivity of aes judgments (as they are tied to how we would ideally react to objects)
- The universality comes from claimed uniformity of reactions of ideal observers
- It is possible that ideal observers reactions will not be uniform (the same) and this undermines unqualified ascriptions of general aesthetic merit/value/beauty
Ideal observer RD account of specific value properties
- Something has a specific value property if ideal observer will react with satisfaction in virtue of apprehending descriptive features of this specific value property
- E.g., a vivid color will be one that has high saturation or brightness
- Stecker does not like this:
- No reason to think being vivid involves reacting positively to one set of descriptive features that makes all things vivid (vivid color, a vivid character portrayal in a novel--what makes each of these vivid is likely to be different)
- The problem is that many different descriptive features lead to judgment of the same specific value aesthetic property
Impression view of aes properties: (While the descriptions are different, all give same impression)
- While there is no common descriptive content that underlies aes properties, each aes property identifies an "emergent holistic impression" in ideal observers of the property
- Aes properties exist when an object has a disposition to produce a particular impression in an observer
- Vividness of portrayal of a character could be done in various ways in different contexts, but in all the result is that an ideal observer would get the impression of the character as "coming to life"
- This is like the account of descriptive aes properties that says, e.g., music is sad when it causes a certain impression in ideal listeners--they hear sadness in the music
- What is this impression like? It is the common impression given by weeping willows, certain dog faces, foghorn sounds, musical passages
- Being amusing is a disposition to affect people in certain way that we all recognize
- All this is a worry about whether there are some uniform descriptive features that underlie the specific value properties
Diversity problem or objection to impression view:
- Why think that ideal observers can't have different impressions based on the same objective (descriptive) properties?
- This would lead to
- Anti-realism about aes properties: They don't exist
- Objects do not have unique dispositions to cause any aes impression in an ideal observer
- Why couldn't one be a pluralist here and allow that ideal observers might have a (constrained) range of impressions they get from one aes object, but also have a range of impressions they would not get.
Is the diversity of reaction of ideal observers to aes objects due to
- Disagreement on the descriptive content of these properties, or
- Disagreement on the evaluative reactions to these contents, as a result of distinct sensibilities (tastes) in ideal observers
- Example where agreement on description and disagreement on evaluation
- Schubert's "Death of Maiden" quartet
- One: most powerful expression of grief stricken sadness among music
- Another: overly dramatic or insufficiently subtle
- All agree that from beginning to end it has a dark, sad quality
- Stecker thinks that we can have disagreement at both levels, especially when the description and evaluation are not separable
- Example: Are the colors in the painting gaudy or attractively vivid? The judgment of gaudy is based on impression of disharmony in colors which the second person did not get; Disharmony may seem descriptive, but it also has a negative polarity, so which description applies may depend on one's evaluative reaction
- Even pure descriptive aes properties may leave different impressions
- Example: Does that music have despair mixed with resignation
Anti-realism about aesthetic properties
- There are no aesthetic properties (aesthetic properties are not real)
- This position needs to explain what we are doing when we make aesthetic judgments (such as, the fall foliage is vivid, the painting is sad, the sculpture is beautiful), if we are not asserting that an object has a property true of it.
- Note that Stecker's account would seem to be that the belief in response-dependent aesthetic properties is a kind of realism about aesthetic properties:
- They are real, but relational and depend on a relation between the aesthetic object and the aesthetic appreciator.
- Aesthetic properties on the response dependent account claims that an object has an aes property if it has a disposition to produce a certain response/impression (graceful, sad) in (ideal) observers or appreciators of the aesthetic object
- Naive-Realism: Another form of realism might be that aesthetic properties are not response dependent: They are properties of aesthetic objects that are independent of responses appreciators might have to them
Three anti-realist views
OVERVIEW
"The ruins are elegant" means:
- Subjectivism:
- We are making assertions, but they are about aes experience rather than the aesthetic object (or properties)
- The simple version can't explain defects in or improvement of aes responses nor allow for disagreements about aes judgments
- More sophisticated subjectivism allows for defects and improvement and disagreement
- On this account: aes judgments are claims to valid experiences, that is, ones without bias and that notice all the relevant features
- While there can be differing valid experiences, there can also be disagreement about whether an individual's experience is valid
- Problem: Does even this more sophisticated version allow for evaluation of aesthetic objects?
- It seems to me it is just evaluating experiences of those objects
- Expressivism
- One is not asserting anything about oneself (one's exp) or the objects, but rather expressing ones experience or an attitude toward one's experience or the object
- Expressing rather than reporting our psychological state
- "The ruins are elegant" means "ahh ruins" (I'm expressing my response, not stating that I have a response)
- Attitudes can be more or less justified by objective properties being judged, so expressivists think they can account for better and worse aes responses
- Problem: "This music is sad" means I am expressing the emotion of sadness (like crying would)? But one can say and believe the music is sad even if one is not sad
- Relativism
- Grants (unlike subjectivism and expressivism) that we are talking about (asserting things about) the aesthetic object:
- "The ruins are elegant" is saying something about the ruins
- See qualification in italics below
- But what we are saying (if true) is true (or false) only relative to something that varies among different groups
- Things (e.g., the ruins) aren't disharmonious per se or elegant per se or beautiful per se, but only relative to the different sensibilities of dif groups (or different critical schools to which appreciators belong)
- Example:
- One group's taste/sensibility is they like bold departures and sharp breaks with tradition and are willing to tolerate what others find unacceptably shocking or discordant
- Another group has more conservative sensibilities and favors more established artworks and can't tolerate what the first group likes
- Whether an artwork is excellent is not true or false for all, but only true or false depending on the group we are talking about and its sensibility
- Possible problem: The claim that different groups are talking about the same object and that two contradictory things can be true of that object doesn't make sense
- The ruins are elegant for group a
- Not elegant for group b
- Makes sense if they are taking about the group's reactions, but not if they are claiming both are true of the ruin
- Unless this is a relational/response dependent idea of aes properties:
- We are not talking about the ruin independently of its relation to different group sensibilities
- Rather we are talking about relations between the aes object and a groups aesthetic sensibilities (or critical school)
- DETAILS ON SUBJECTIVISM, EXPRESSIVISM, AND RELATIVISM
- Subjectivism (details)
- Simplest version: Aesthetic statements are reports of our own current experience
- "These ruins are elegant" is a claim about an experience or impression of elegance a person is having, not a claim about a property the ruin possess (on the response dependent account of aes properties this would be a disposition to produce that impression in appreciators)
- They can point to objective, empirical features of the ruins to justify their claim
- Problem: Can't account for defective experiences and changes for the better
- People's experience change, people can reject initial impressions after they consider the matter further, and the simple version of subjectivism can't accept these as improvements, but just new reports of different experiences
- More complicated version of subjectivism: Aes judgments are claims to valid experiences (Can allow for better and worse aes judgments)
- Some reactions can be seen as defective and less valid
- Perhaps bias toward an item because in love with its creator distorts one's experience of the object (isn't my child the cutest child around?)
- Perhaps earlier experience failed to notice an important feature that once noticed makes an important difference to the experience; the later experience based on this noticing would be more valid
- Provides a way for aes judgments to be incorrect
- Allows for genuine disagreement (simple subjectivism does not)
- While there can be different valid experiences
- I can say your aes experience is not valid and you say it is and there might be a general disagreement about whether your experience has some defect I can identify (you didn't notice this, you are biased)
- Problem for this more complicated version of subjectivism: It does not allow for evaluation of aesthetic objects (but only evaluation of people's impressions about them)
- And this is an important part of what is done in aesthetics
- Stecker claims to have a reply to this objection (70-71), but I'm not clear what it is
(here is what he says)
- Given that this is subjectivism, evaluation of aes objects is not going to be independent of reactions of appreciators
- When I have a valid impression of an aes object and a positive approval goes with that impression (and is based on that impression) then we can say that the positive approval is of the object (and this evaluates it)
- Expressivism
- We are not making claims about ourselves (as subjectivism claims)
- But we are also not making assertions about the objects of experience (and their aes properties)
- A literal interpretation of many aes claims is not plausible
- Music isn't literally sad (as could be a person)
- Seeing roads leading nowhere in a painting is not to imply the painting actually has roads in it
- So we shouldn't take aes talk literally
- So what we are doing when we make aes utterances is expressing rather than reporting a psychological state
- Expressing a feeling or attitude we are undergoing as a result of interaction with the object
- "I love you" is to express my love, not to report my psychological state
- Evaluative element in aes judgment involves expressing our approval or satisfaction or valuing of the object of exp
- Expressivists claim to be able to account for better and worse aes judgments
- There are better and worse expressions of experiences in response to aes objects
- They do this by arguing that attitudes are more or less justified by the objective properties of the object being judged and the ability of the judger to consider relevant facts in an appropriate manner
- Like the subjectivist, an expressivist can argue an attitude is justified when no defects are present.
- Problems
- Stecker thinks that not plausible to think that when I say the music is sad, I am expressing some feeling I am undergoing
- Because I might have that feeling even if music is not sad
- When we say the music is sad, we aren't necessarily suggesting we are sad
- Relativism
- Do allow that when say ruins are elegant we are stating something directly about the ruins
- But with the qualification that the truth of the claim varies across dif groups
- Elegant relative to one group but not relative to another
- The variable feature that is responsible for these dif judgments might be dif sensibilities/tastes or dif in the community or critical school to which one belongs
- These dif don't just explain the different judgments, but they make them true or false relative to the standard of the group
- Stecker's comments on these positions
- Sophisticated subjectivism and relativism are quite similar positions
- Subjectivism expressed in terms of ideal observers becomes relativism
- Relativism says blameless dif in aes judge are due to dif in group character
- One can question this
- Subjectivism is preferable as long as don't know if robust groupings of dif sensibilities exist
- Stecker thinks subjectivism is better than expressivism
- END DETAILS ON ANTI-REALISM
- Overall summary of positions
- Realist positions
- Ideal observer account of aes properties (they are real and dispositions)
- Aes properties are dispositions of objects to cause certain reactions in ideal observers
- Naive Realism; Non-dispositional account of aes properties: They are real properties of aesthetic objects that are not to be analyzed as dispositions to cause certain experiences in appreciators
- Nor are these properties such that their existence is relational with respect to different appreciative groups (and their sensibilities or critical schools)
- Non-realist positions
- Subjectivism & expressivism: no aes properties, only experiences (and impressions and evaluative reactions)
- Relativism
- Acknowledges aes properties, but they are relativized to dif groups of appreciators
- Deny aes properties: no properties available to everyone
Take-it-or-leave-it aes value objection to non-realism and Stecker's response: (Unlike not liking the taste of a food, not appreciating some aes object is to miss real value that is present)
- Stecker considers the criticism of anti-realism that objects to these views for allowing for blameless differences in aes judgment that leave no one wrong
- This may make sense for taste in sushi: If you don't like it, you are not showing insensitivity to presence of value
- And your not liking it is blameless: you are not be biased against it-it doesn't turn your stomach just to think of it; you've had lots of experience eating different foods, your taste buds aren't damaged, and yet you don't like the taste of sushi (and someone else does)
- But the inability to appreciate beauty (in music, painting, nature) when one encounters it is an insensitivity to the presence of value
- Allowing for blameless differences (take it or leave it response) to objects of high aes merit is not plausible
- Stecker thinks this argument begs the question
- Anti-realists allow that there is some dif in judgment that is not disputable
- An element of nonrational preference or sensibility in these judgments just as there is in taste of food
- The barren hills or mountainsides one finds in parts of California hold no beauty for Stecker, but he can imagine others reacting differently
- Which is better realism or anti-realism?
- Stecker says it may depend on aes property
- Realism perhaps better for these:
- For aes properties like visual gracefulness whose awareness occurs below the level of different sensibilities (and hence we get a steady disposition to affect aes experiences in certain ways)
- For some properties there may be a right culturally determined sensibility to bring to bear - joy or sadness in Western tonal music
- Other properties, a more anti-realist view may be right.
- Answers to beginning questions
- One: Aes property can not be understood independently of aes exp
- Two: Are aes prop (if there are any) response-dependent that essentially involves attitudes and evaluation of appreciators
- Answer: if there are aes properties many would involve these things
- Content -oriented conception of aes exp works only if aes properties can be understood w/o appeal to aes exp and in a way that does not value this exp. for own sake
- These conditions not met (thus he rejects content-oriented view of aes properties)
- Three:
- Can be aes exp of non-aes property: He does say we have aes exp of color and it is a non aes property
- Non-aes exp of aes properties: Yes? Exp of toaster while shopping is non-aes but the focus is on its aes properties.