Aesthetic Properties as Powers

Abstract

Realist positions about aesthetic properties are few and far between, though sometimes developed by analogy to realism about secondary properties such as colours. By contrast, I advance a novel realist position about aesthetic properties, which is based on a disanalogy between aesthetic properties and colours. Whereas colours are usually perceived as relatively steady features of external objects, aesthetic properties are perceived as unsteady properties: as powers that objects have to cause a certain experience in the observer. Following on from this observation, I develop a realist account of aesthetic properties as causally efficient powers. Beauty is not merely in the mind of the observer; it is a power of an object to bring about a certain effect, as much instantiated in the object as its fragility or poisonousness. To show how such a view can be made ontologically respectable, I draw on recent ‘dispositionalist’ accounts of powers in philosophical metaphysics. I then offer two arguments in favour of this view. First, the view matches the phenomenology of aesthetic judgement. Second, the view offers an explanation of how it is that critics can demand agreement with their aesthetic judgements.

Further exploration of anti-realist intuitions about aesthetic judgment

“…1. Other ideas about distinguishing features of realism include: the relevant facts must be robustly mind-independent (Hanson, 2018); the realist believes in 'a property of beauty independent of judgments which ascribe it' (Goldman, 1993); the realist thinks aesthetic judgments state objects in the external world possess aesthetic properties and that '[a]ttributions of aesthetic properties are not reducible to reports of experiences in the mind of the observer' (Simoniti, 2017); realism just is normativism (Schafer, 2011). 2.…”

Do Mathematicians Agree about Mathematical Beauty?

“…Under aesthetic realism, mathematical beauty is conceptualized as existing independently of subjective preferences and social contexts. Realist accounts hold that beauty is not reducible to 'reports of experience in the mind of the observer' (Simoniti 2017(Simoniti , p.1436. They assume normativity of aesthetic intuition, in the sense that judgements of beauty are either correct or incorrect (Cova and Pain 2012), and that some level of expertise is necessary to make such judgements.…”

Response-Dependence and Aesthetic Theory

“…andHanson (2018) both discuss this as the standard view, though both object to it.4 Recently defended in D'Arms andJacobson (2000b),Jacobson (2011),Gorodeisky (2021). See alsoPatridge and Jordan (2018), who defend a fittingness theory for the funniness of jokes.5 For discussion, see alsoSchellekens (2006), andSimoniti (2017).…”