De gustibus est disputandum: An empirical investigation of the folk concept of aesthetic taste

Past research on folk aesthetics has suggested that most people are subjectivists when it comes to aesthetic judgment. However, most people also make a distinction between good and bad aesthetic taste. To understand the extent to which these two observations conflict with one another, we need a better understanding of people's everyday concept of aesthetic taste. In this paper, we present the results of a study in which participants drawn from a representative sample of the US population were asked whether they usually distinguish between good and bad taste, how they define them, and whether aesthetic taste can be improved. Those who answered positively to the first question were asked to provide their definition of good and bad taste, while those who answered positively to the third question were asked to detail by what means taste can be improved. Our results suggest that most people distinguish between good and bad taste, and think taste can be improved. People's definitions of good and bad taste were varied, and were torn between very subjectivist conceptions of taste and others that lent themselves to a more objectivist interpretation. Overall, our results suggest that the tension Hume observed in conceptions of aesthetic taste is still present today

De gustibus est disputandum: An empirical investigation of the folk concept of aesthetic taste

Past research on folk aesthetics has suggested that most people are subjectivists when it comes to aesthetic judgment. However, most people also make a distinction between good and bad aesthetic taste. To understand the extent to which these two observations conflict with one another, we need a better understanding of people's everyday concept of aesthetic taste. In this paper, we present the results of a study in which participants drawn from a representative sample of the US population were asked whether they usually distinguish between good and bad taste, how they define them, and whether aesthetic taste can be improved. Those who answered positively to the first question were asked to provide their definition of good and bad taste, while those who answered positively to the third question were asked to detail by what means taste can be improved. Our results suggest that most people distinguish between good and bad taste, and think taste can be improved. People's definitions of good and bad taste were varied, and were torn between very subjectivist conceptions of taste and others that lent themselves to a more objectivist interpretation. Overall, our results suggest that the tension Hume observed in conceptions of aesthetic taste is still present today

Lost in Intensity

Contrary to the emotions we feel in everyday contexts, the emotions we feel for fictional characters do not seem to require a belief in the existence of their object. This observation has given birth to a famous philosophical paradox (the ‘paradox of fiction’), and has led some philosophers to claim that the emotions we feel for fictional characters are not genuine emotions but rather “quasi-emotions”. Since then, the existence of quasi-emotions has been a hotly debated issue. Recently, philosophers and psychologists have proposed to solve this debate by using empirical methods and experimentally studying differences between ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ emotions. In this paper, our goal is to assess the success of these attempts. We begin by surveying the existing empirical literature and stressing the methodological problems that plague most studies that might seem relevant to the debate, before focusing on recent studies that avoid this pitfall. We then argue that, due to conceptual problems, these studies fail to be relevant to the philosophical debate and emphasise new directions for future empirical research on the topic

Modes of imagining

L’imagination est l’état mental le plus fascinant de l’esprit ! Elle a, pour ainsi dire, une aura positive. De fait, chaque discipline revendique, d’une manière ou d’une autre, le déploiement d’une forme d’imagination. En partie à cause de cette fascination, le terme "imaginer" apparait aujourd’hui comme galvaudé : il prend tant de sens distincts qu’il semble vain de postuler une unité entre eux. Le but de cette thèse est double : mieux comprendre la nature de l’imagination via la distinction mode/contenu et mieux comprendre la nature des modes à travers l’étude de l’imagination. L’utilisation de la distinction mode/contenu est utile pour fixer des desiderata afin de clarifier ce qu’Amy Kind (2013) nomme le sens primaire de l’imagination – c’est-à-dire un sens qui réfère à une habilité spécifique, irréductible à d’autres états mentaux comme les croyances, les désirs, les émotions, … – et ainsi de répondre au défi de l’unité de l’imagination. La partie I de cette thèse est consacrée à l’identification de ces desiderata et à la distinction mode/contenu. Après avoir éliminé, à l’aide de desiderata, les mauvais candidats à un sens primaire proposés dans la philosophie contemporaine (partie II), je soutiens que "imaginer" est un terme générique qui renvoie à deux types d’états mentaux : l’imagination sensorielle (S-imagining) et l’imagination cognitive (C-imagining). Tandis que le premier type d’imagination concerne la plupart de nos images mentales ; le second type concerne notre habilité à nos immerger profondément dans des narrations ou des personnages. L’exploration de ces deux états mentaux, leurs architectures et leur normativité sont au cœur des parties III et IV de cette thèse. Dans la partie V, qui conclue mon enquête, je soutiens que ces deux modes sont unifiés par un même type d’aspect architectural – être le miroir d’un autre état mental – et un même type d’aspect formel – tous deux visent spécifiquement à susciter une expérience à la première personne. A partir de l’étude de la particularité de l’imagination, je soutiens également que, contrairement à ce qu’avance la doxa en philosophie de l’esprit, l’imagination n’a pas un rôle doxastique dans la cognition. Elle ne traque pas, per se, une propriété dans le monde actuel ou possible. Cette considération permet de repenser la manière dont la littérature contemporaine aborde les modes psychologiques. En parallèle, cette considération permet de faire un lien nouveau entre l’imagination et l’art : tout comme la valeur de l’art est dite "finale" (ou une fin en soi), la valeur de l’expérience imaginative ne se trouve pas une quelconque contribution à la vérité mais est une fin en soi.</p

C'est quoi ça "philosophie"?

Je présente brièvement l'objet d'étude de la philosophie académique ainsi que les différents courants philosophiques

[Compte rendu de :] Supposition and the Imaginative Realm. A Philosophical Inquiry / Margherita Arcangeli. - New York : Routledge, 2018

In her excellent monograph, Margherita Arcangeli offers a defense of supposition as a sui generis kind of imagination. Endorsing a simulationist account of imagination according to which every imaginative attitude simulates/re‐creates a genuine counterpart (visualizing re‐creates visual perception, for instance), she argues against this backdrop that supposition is a re‐creative state of acceptance. Arcangeli's inquiry concentrates on the most recent literature. She starts by critically examining certain putative features of supposition that place them outside of the realm of imagination (Part I. §1. Phenomenology, §2. Emotionality, §3. Participation). She then explores the positive features of supposition (Part I. §4. Features proper to supposition) and, then, the deflationists' attempts to define supposition in terms of non‐imaginative (Part II. §5. Supposition as non‐imaginative) or imaginative (Part II. §6. Supposition as imaginative) mental states. Through technical and yet crystal‐clear prose, Arcangeli provides what is, in my opinion, the best defense of the imaginative account of supposition to date

La maladie infantile de la politique (le gauchisme, le droitisme)

Dans cet article j'analyse le vice politique du gauchisme et du droitisme. A cause de cette maladie infantile de la politique, gauche et droite sont aujourd'hui ridiculisées au point qu'il n'est plus permis de se référer à nos institutions sans recevoir un rire méprisant. Je définis le gauchisme/droitisme à l'aide de trois conditions nécessaires et suffisantes: 1) son hyper-sensibilités à certaines valeurs qui cause son grand engagement politique; 2) sa double naïveté (manque de maîtrise des raisons pour lesquelles il milite; manque de maîtrise des outils pour répondre aux problèmes qu'il croit percevoir); 3) son attachement exclusif à la valeur paradigmatique de la gauche (l'égalité) ou de la droite (la liberté)

Aphantasia and the Decay of Mental Images

Testimonies about aphantasia are still surprisingly rare, more than a century after Galton. It is therefore difficult to understand how a person devoid of (a kind of) imagination actually thinks. In order to outline "what it is like" to be aphantasic, I will start by compiling two qualitative interviews with aphantasics that I will then compare with other testimonies collected in literature and online. The fact that aphantasia is poorly documented may also explain why few philosophers (with the notable exception of Phillips 2014) seem to take this phenomenon seriously – contrary to others phenomena such as blindsight for instance. To redress the balance, the second part of this paper will consider three debates to which aphantasia could contribute

Et paf ! Ca fait des unités organiques!

Je présente brièvement la notion mooréenne des unités organiques