The Experience of Magic

Abstract

Despite its enduring popularity, theatrical magic remains all but ignored by art critics, art historians, and philosophers. This is unfortunate, since magic offers a unique and distinctively intellectual aesthetic experience and raises a host of interesting philosophical questions. Thus, this article initiates a philosophical investigation of the experience of magic. Section I dispels two widespread misconceptions about the nature of magic and discusses the sort of depiction it requires. Section II asks, “What cognitive attitude is involved in the experience of magic?” and criticizes three candidate replies; Section III then argues that Tamar Szabó Gendler's notion of “belief‐discordant alief” holds the key to a correct answer. Finally, Section IV develops an account of the experience of magic and explores some of its consequences. The result is a philosophically rich view of the experience of magic that opens new avenues for inquiry and is relevant to core issues in contemporary aesthetics.

The magic of magic: The effect of magic tricks on subsequent engagement with lecture material

“…A magician could, for example, retrieve an object from a box that, moments earlier, seemed empty. This seemingly impossible sequence of events can elicit a profound sense of wonder (Rensink & Kuhn, 2015), especially when spectators have discounted all plausible methodsmethods that were often surreptitiously prompted by the magicianand are situated close to the performance (Leddington, 2016).…”

Race Magic and the Yellow Peril

“…As Jason Leddington argues in “The Experience of Magic,” theatrical magic has an ironic, antinomic structure in which impossible events are presented as impossible . When a magic trick is successful, “it appears to be what it simultaneously admits cannot be” (Leddington , 256). That is, the audience must believe the trick is impossible and is happening anyway.…”

“…Learning that not‐ P may well not cause me to cease alieving that P —but if it does not, then … I am violating certain norms of cognitive‐behavioral coherence. No such criticism is possible in the analogous case of imagining” (Leddington , 257–258). When we suspend disbelief by imagining, for example when reading fiction, we do not violate any cognitive norms (I can imagine not‐ P while believing P ), but magic requires that the audience does not believe what they are seeing is possible.…”

Art as emotional exploration

“…And though there is a trend toward treating the science of magic as a part of a general "psychology of wonder" (Lamont 2017;Rensink & Kuhn 2015), the question why we enjoy magic remains largely unexplored. This commentary takes a step toward rectifying this by sketching how the Distance-Embracing (D-E) model might be applied to the philosophical analysis of the experience of magic developed in Leddington (2016). On the account recommended here, the experience of magic is aesthetically pleasurable, not despite, but thanks to, some of the strong negative emotions it provokes.…”

“…The core idea in Leddington (2016) is that the experience of magic is essentially aporetic: It involves a form of intellectual bafflementand so, a form of cognitive failurethat follows from encountering an apparent violation of the laws of nature that we know is fake, but that we nevertheless cannot explain. (Effective magic performance should leave you saying, "I know it's a trick, but I don't see how it could be.")…”