Friday, April 13, 2018 - 3:00pm
Cohen Hall, Room 402
Abstract: Aesthetic values appear to be located in objects, for we see the grace of a dancer’s step and hear the jauntiness of a guitar riff. Indeed, we understand perfectly well how to manipulate an item’s aesthetic value by manipulating its other features. Yet, at the same time, we want to say that aesthetic values are subjective, constituted by our responses. In this talk, Lopes reorients the dialectic by explaining how aesthetic values are natural properties. The correct picture of how aesthetic values form part of the fabric of the natural world explains their objectivity and explains away our impulse to aesthetic subjectivism.