Aesthetics

Spring 2012

Course: PHIL 3510

Time: Tues/Thurs 1:25-2:40

Instructor: Assistant Professor Nico Silins

Office: 219 Goldwin Smith Hall

Office Hours: Tues 2:45-3:45 or (easily) by appointment

Email: ns338@cornell.edu

Course Description

A selective survey of topics in the philosophy of art, with an emphasis on issues about the mind.

Required Texts

All readings will be available on Blackboard or elsewhere online.

Evaluation

Two Papers: 80%

Each paper will be 6-12 pages long and will determine 40% of your grade.

Participation: 20%

The participation grade is based on your overall engagement with the course, including attendance, classroom discussion, and individual meetings. It takes into account both the quality and quantity of your participation.

A key component will be a weekly email to me, due by 10am on Tuesdays. This email should respond to the readings of the week, in roughly 100 to 200 words.

Policies

When reading assignments are spread across a Tuesday and a Thursday, you must at least skim all the readings by Tuesday. When readings are assigned for Tuesday only, you are not required to skim the Thursday readings by then, and you are not required to address the Thursday readings in your email response.

Late papers and assignments will be marked down by 1/3 of a letter grade for each day the paper is late (e.g., from A- to B+, from B+ to B, and so on).

You are responsible for following Cornell’s Code of Academic Integrity, available at <http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html>.

For the record: plagiarism is sufficient grounds for an F in the course.

I will readily accommodate religious holidays and disabilities, but please give me advance notice of any such accommodation you might need.

Readings (subject to change)

1/24: Introduction

Part One: The Philosophy of Fiction

1/26: Emotional Responses to Fiction, I

Walton, “Fearing Fictions”, Journal of Philosophy, 1978

If you are not able to get on Blackboard in time, you can find this reading on jstor.org, at

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025831

1/31, 2/2: Emotional Responses to Fiction, II

Gendler and Kovakovich, “Genuine rational fictional emotions”

Matravers, “The challenge of irrationalism and how not to meet it”

Walton, “Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime”

2/7, 2/9: “The Paradox of Horror”

Gaut, “The Paradoxes of Horror” Carroll, “Enjoying Horror Fictions: A Reply to Gaut” Gaut, “The Enjoyment Theory of Horror: A Response to Carroll”

2/14, 2/16: Imagination and Morality

Gendler, “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance”

Walton, “On the (so-called) Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance”

Gendler, “Imaginative Resistance Revisited”

2/21: Truth in Fiction

Lewis, “Truth in Fiction”

Currie, “The Structure of Stories”

2/23: Fiction and Existence

van Inwagen, “Creatures of Fiction”

Everett, “Against Fictional Realism”

Part Two: Representation

2/28: Musical Expression, I

Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music, chapter 5

Boghossian, “On Hearing the Music in the Sound”

3/1: Musical Expression, II

Peacocke, “The Perception of Music: Sources of Significance”

+replies

3/6, 3/8: Pictorial Representation, I

Goodman, Languages of Art, selection

+critics

3/13: Pictorial Representation, II

Wollheim, “On Pictorial Representation”

Budd, “On Looking at a Picture”

Wollheim, “In Defense of Seeing-In”

3/15: Photography

Walton, “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism”

+postscript in Marvelous Images

Scruton, “Photography and Representation”

*****First Paper due at 5pm on Friday 3/16*****

SPRING BREAK: no class on 3/20, 3/22

Part Three: Evaluation

3/27, 3/29: Art and Morality

Carroll, “Art and Ethical Criticism”, “Moderate Moralism”

Gaut, “The Ethical Criticism of Art”

4/3, 4/5: Art and Knowledge

Stolnitz, “On the Cognitive Triviality of Art”

+critics

4/10: Art and Originality, I

Boden, “What is Creativity?”

Gaut, “Creativity and Imagination”

Novitz, ”Creativity and Constraint”

4/12: Art and Originality, II

Goodman, “Art and Authenticity”

Dutton, “Artistic Crimes”

Lessing, “What is Wrong with a Forgery?”

4/17, 4/19: Realism and Relativism, I

Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste”

Wiggins, “A Sensible Subjectivism?”

4/24, 4/26: Realism and Relativism, II

Sibley, “Aesthetic Concepts”

Walton: Categories of art”

Pettit, “The Possibility of Aesthetic Realism”

5/1: Conceptual Art

Danto, “The Art World”

Shelly, “The Problem of Non-Perceptual Art”

5/3: Popular Art

Gould, “Pursuing the Popular”

Cohen, “High and Low Art, and High and Low Audiences”, “High and Low Thinking about High and Low Art”

*****Final paper due at 5pm on Tuesday 5/14*****