Abstract: There are two observed features of aesthetic judgment which seem distinctive from other kinds of judgment, especially scientific judgment. First, we often do not base our aesthetic judgments on expert testimony; we do not defer. Second, we often do not usually acquire our aesthetic judgments by using anything like scientific inference from past evidence. We seem to acquire our aesthetic judgments through means that are individual, autonomous, and particular. Why? Some have attempted to explain these phenomena as arising from the metaphysics of aesthetic properties, or as features of aesthetic perception. I suggest, instead, they arise as part of social norms, as part of a constructed (and contingent) social practice. That social practice functions to insulate us from the demands of scientific efficiency, and restore to us some measure of intellectual autonomy and perceptivity. Finally, I suggest that these norms can, in fact, be used to demarcate the domain of the aesthetic — that what it is to be aesthetic is to be part of the social practice that is sculpted by these norms. This account can be used to ground a radically pluralistic and social theory of aesthetic value, as the various goods that arise from engagement in this constructed practice.
LOCATION:Emerson Hall 210 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20240405T190000Z DTEND:20240405T210000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR