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This essay revisits a position on aesthetic attributions, a position rooted in some seminal essays of Frank Sibley, and which can be labelledaesthetic realism. It reflects on some challenges which have emerged on the viability of that position, and determines what accommodations, if any, are called for. This position is sketched, borrowing with modification from an earlier short essay. A number of worries about the position which have lately come into view are considered.

This essay presents a defence of aesthetic realism, focusing on the issue of how properties in general and aesthetic properties in particular should be conceived. It is proposed that at least paradigm cases of the latter are to be understood ashigher-order perceptual ways of appearing. In the course of developing this proposal, the vexed issue of whether or not aesthetic properties areresponse-dependent, or such that they cannot be conceived or analyzed except in terms of kinds of responses in relevant perceivers is addressed. It is suggested that there is a spectrum, among properties usually thought of as aesthetic, from ones that are clearly response-dependent to ones that are clearly non-response-dependent, with many gradations in-between.

This chapter examines disagreement between ideal critics and the prospects for realism in aesthetics. Hume’s posit of blameless differences, his supposition that critics will differ based on (i) their temperament and (ii) the manners and cultures of their time, occupies center stage. I formalize and assess two opposing views regarding critical disagreement, Alan Goldman’s argument for non-realism in aesthetics and Jerold Levinson’s argument for realism. When two critics disagree in their ascription of aesthetic qualities, we need to determine whether the disputants are perceiving the same quality but evaluating it differently (Levinson’s claim) or discerning two distinct qualities whose descriptive and evaluative aspects are inextricably linked (Goldman’s proposal). I propose that this debate leads to a verificationist impasse and canvas four possible solutions: attending closely to Hume’s wording in introducing blameless differences, maintaining that disputants are talking by one another unless they are discussing aesthetic properties experienced in common, reconfiguring our understanding of aesthetic qualities in light of aesthetic empiricism, and introducing the insights of recent empirical work on aesthetic preference. Since none of these approaches resolves the dilemma, I urge that we put in place a Suitability Requirement: critics ought only assess works of types capable of interesting them.

This chapter describes the model of aesthetic realism developed by the Hungarian theorist György Lukács, and sets out the parameters of a Lukácsian theory of cinematic realism. It discusses one of the most trenchant criticisms levelled against Lukács: that the model of realism is umbilically associated with a particular form of literature: the nineteenth-century realist novel. As a consequence of this concentrated focus, the chapter dismisses some of the most vital artistic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including naturalism, and most forms of modernism. It establishes the link as to how Lukács appropriated the nineteenth-century realist tradition and examines the two central aspects of Lukács's theory: the notion of alienation and the model of the intensive totality. Lukács's writings on cinematic realism are also considered and contradicted for the type of naturalist/impressionist realism.

This chapter discusses Marxist aesthetics and the reasons behind its being one of the liveliest and most interesting of all the many Marxist themes. Major themes in Marxist aesthetics include aesthetic realism, art as ideology, and the relation of aesthetics and politics. It is further an important source of the anti-Platonic argument for art as a source of truth. Yet after the breakup of the Soviet Union starting in 1989, leading to a widespread turn away from Marx and Marxism, interest in Marxist aesthetics sharply declined in the West. Throughout the Middle Ages no wide-ranging philosophical effort of any kind was ever undertaken to justify artistic claims to knowledge. Such claims were simply assumed to be correct as the theological basis of a series of Christian analyses of beauty firmly rooted in religious faith. In Marxism a postreligious political faith arguably takes the place earlier occupied by religion.

In Chapter 13, interpretation of artworks is contrasted with analysis. And it is stipulated that by analysis of an artwork is meant the teasing out of what are termed its “aesthetic” features, as opposed to its meaning or what it may represent. The question is then raised as to why we dispute over the presence or absence of aesthetic features in works of art. The answer given, consistent with the general thesis of the book, is that we dispute over the presence or absence of such features because we are aesthetic realists with regard to them. We think we are disputing over matters of fact, which is reason enough for dispute. But what kind of features are they? It is suggested that they are “emergent properties,” but no less “real” for being such. For, it is further argued, that they are, in spite of being emergent features, “ontologically fundamental” features.

Though predicates of personal taste (PPT) have been given a considerable amount of attention, aesthetic expressions have not. Perhaps this is because it is assumed that aesthetic expressions function semantically as PPTs do. There is, however, good reason to think that this is not so. PPTs are expressions of subjective opinion, whereas aesthetic expressions seem not to be. Qualified art critics are in a better position to evaluate artworks than novices. That observation places us in a difficult position, as critics often contest each others’ judgments, even when no clear error can be found. This finding, together with the observation that aesthetic judgments are not expressions of a subjective opinion, renders both standard non-relativistic semantics and standard relativistic semantics unable to accommodate aesthetic expressions. I outline a semantics that integrates the idea of an expert evaluator. Aesthetic predicates must be treated as a special kind of self-locating properties.

This chapter develops a foundational account of aesthetic value in general. It presents an analysis of aesthetic value as ‘objectified final value’. It is not only that we can aesthetically value the world, but also that we only really value the world in its own right by means of aesthetic value. This analysis is then underwritten with a key psychological claim: that aesthetic values are ‘distal versions’ of practical values. Moreover, the intensity of each aesthetic value rests on an ‘essential tension’ where a psychological reward is balanced against a challenge. It is then argued that this characterization demands a realist, object-focused (rather than experience-focused) model of aesthetic value. This permits the genuine sharing of aesthetic value.

In the final chapter, Chapter 15, the thesis of the book is re-emphasized, namely, that the argument to the best explanation of why the art-interested dispute over art is that they are realists with regard to what they are disputing about. They think they are disputing over matters of fact, and that is reason enough to dispute. But there remain two, shall we say, anomalous characters to deal with, the character who firmly believes that taste in art is purely subjective, and the character who firmly believes in the error theory of artistic value, who both, nevertheless, dispute over taste, even though it is quite irrational for them to do so. An explanation is proffered for both. And the book ends with the conclusion that general opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, aesthetic realism may be more plausible, all things considered, than moral realism.

The chapter looks at descriptions of sound across texts and across historical contexts. Starting from the invention of the phonograph through multitrack recording to digital audio, the chapter accounts for change and stability in the way sound quality is processed in relation to discourses of sound. It shows how listeners, the industry, and other communities build specific listening preferences through the discourse of sound quality. The chapter also addresses the contributions of the phonograph, vinyl disc, cassette tape, CD, and MP3 formats to the discourse of sound, and it enumerates two cognitive metaphors, the ONE REALITY type and the MULTIPLE REALITIES type.