Call for Papers: Philosophical Threads in the Work of Marcia Muelder Eaton Marcia Muelder Eaton (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, emerita) is former President of the American Society of Aestheti...

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

Patina of Sound: Valuing Vinyl Records as Relics of Aged Interaction

If you follow Brandon Polite’s work, and you should, you will immediately recognize this anthology’s roots in his Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics Case S

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

Abstract. After nearly being killed off by CDs in the 1980s and 1990s, and despite the rise of streaming services like Spotify, vinyl records have had a ma

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

A lively and thorough exploration of the aesthetic, metaphysical, ethical, political, and legal implications of Taylor Swift's ongoing project of re-recording h…

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

A lively and thorough exploration of the aesthetic, metaphysical, ethical, political, and legal implications of Taylor Swift's ongoing project of re-recording h…

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

YouTube video by Philosophers Discussing Art

Philosopher Barbara Montero, who has written widely on the body, talks about George Balanchine's Concerto Barocco.

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In this episode, Brandon Polite (Knox College | he/him) talks with Jenny Judge (University of Melbourne | she/her) about the role that algorithms, like Spotify's recommendation system, can affect our taste. Judge begins by explaining how Spotify's recommendation algorithm works. It's goal is to recommend the perfect song to play for you by learning about your mood based on real-time information it has about you with the aim of keeping you engaged with Spotify. In building up this profile of you, it can target specific ads to you to generate revenue for itself. With the basics explained, we first explore the moral implications of how Spotify's recommendation system operates. Among other things, Judge finds it morally problematic that Spotify is trying to exploit our emotional states for the purpose of selling us stuff we probably don't need. We then shift to discuss the aesthetic implications of how Spotify's recommendation system operates. Judge argues that Spotify not only fails to help us improve our taste in music, it also actively harms our relationship with music. Spotify cannot help us improve our taste in music mainly because its algorithm is set up to give us more of same the kind of music we're already listening to; thus, it can't help us expand our musical horizons. It harms our relationship with music mainly by habituating us to listen to music as mere background mood setting rather than as an object worthy of careful and fine-grained aesthetic engagement. This leads us briefly to consider whether Spotify could intentionally manipulate our moods by playing certain happy, sad, etc. songs to make us susceptible to certain ads to increase its revenue. Judge believes that the answer to this is very probably yes. From there we discuss the basic question of whether its possible for our taste to actually "improve," since this implies the existence of an objective standard of aesthetic value and also smacks of elitism. Judge believes that our tastes really can improve: that some music within particular domains (genres, subgenres, styles, artist's oeuvre, etc.) really are better than others. She argues that having good musical taste involves not just being able to tell what songs are the better ones, but also be able to give reasons for why they're good. Judge says that Spotify can't help us improve our taste because it can't help us with either task, since it merely gives us music without suggesting anything about its value or telling us anything about it. We next consider the financial cost of cultivating our taste: how it can be really expensive to care about the more aesthetically valuable objects in certain domains -- fine wine, craft beer, etc. Judge points out that while this is true for many aesthetic domains, it isn't really true for music thanks, in part, to it being widely and freely available to listeners on radio stations and streaming platforms like Spotify. We then loop back to follow up on an issued discussed earlier. As Judge described, Spotify benefits from us listening to music in a superficial way by having it on constantly in the background as a soundtrack to our daily lives. But why do some people want music on constantly in the first place? Judge suggests two possibilities: (1) because some people just can't handle silence and (2) because music can help us regulate our emotions. A constant musical stimulus, then, might be functioning as a sort of existential balm for many of us. We conclude the conversation by shifting away from Spotify to how other artificial intelligence systems might affect how we will relate to music in the future. Recently, several record labels have sued fledgling music-generating AI companies for copyright infringement because those companies have been training their algorithms on their catalogs. The labels suing not to protect their recording artists' rights, though, but rather because they're developing their own in-house music-generating AI's and want exclusive access to their catalogs to train them. The goal seems to be to produce "new music" from artists in their stables, including dead artists. We discuss not just how this is morally problematic, but also how it will negatively impact how we appreciate music moving forward. Chapters: Introductions How Spotify's Recommender System Works The Moral Implications of Spotify's Surveillance The Aesthetic Implications of Spotify's Surveillance Algorithmic Mood Altering & Targeted Ads Does Our Taste Ever Really "Improve"? The Price ($) of Cultivating Your Taste Why Do We Want a Soundtrack for Our Lives? Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Music Conclusion SUBSCRIBE TO THIS CHANNEL https://www.youtube.com/c/PhilosophersDiscussingArt?sub_confirmation=1 * Subtitles edited by Athko Ehrnstein

In this episode, Brandon Polite (Knox College | he/him) talks with Robbie Kubala (University of Texas at Austin | he/him) about the aesthetics of crossword puzzles. We begin by briefly discussing why Kubala finds crossword puzzles interesting and worthy of philosophy attention. We then discuss the reasons why some philosophers reject the claim that crossword puzzles merit aesthetic experience, namely: (1) they're too rule-governed, (2) they're only solvable once, (3) they only have one solution, and (4) they're too goal-oriented. From there, we turn to consider Kubala's reasons for believing that crossword puzzles do merit aesthetic experience. The first of them is the most central to his view. Following C. Thi Nguyen's account of the aesthetics of games, Kubala argues that crossword puzzles are striving activities that give rise to two kinds of practical harmony. The first is the harmony of solution, or the felt pleasingness of the fit between a practical obstacle (e.g., a crossword clue) and its solution. The second is the harmony of capacity, or the felt pleasingness of our own agential capacities (e.g., crossword solving abilities) fitting the demands of the world (the difficulty of a clue). There are times, however, when a crossword puzzle outstrips our capacity to solve it. These cases give rise to a negative aesthetic experience of disharmony, which Kubala suggests is similar to experiencing the sublime. After considering the sublime, we apply the harmonies of solution and capacity to Kubala's own experiences as a competitive crossword solver. We next discuss the distinct between British-style cryptic crosswords and American-style non-cryptic crosswords. The latter rely primarily on knowledge of trivia, vocabulary, or cultural references to solve, whereas the former depend on one's abilities to reason through the hints embedded within their clues' wordplay to suss out their solutions. The difficulty of cryptic crosswords lends credence to the position that some advance that they're aesthetically superior to non-cryptic crosswords -- a position that Kubala himself doesn't advance. We then discuss other, although arguably less central, aesthetic aspects of crossword puzzles apart from those pertaining to our agency: namely, their linguistic and visual aspects. Like poems, crossword clues can make us aware of just how evocative language can be -- how just a short phrase can cause our imaginations to run in all sorts of directions. And like Piet Mondrian's paintings, crosswords can reveal the visual appeal of grids. We conclude by considering whether crossword puzzles count as works of art. Reasons for thinking they can be are the individual styles that crossword constructors can develop, the critical discourse that crossword puzzles have spawned, and the existence of crossword connoisseurs. References: Robbie Kubala, "The Aesthetics of Crossword Puzzles," British Journal of Aesthetics (2023) | https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayac049 Robbie Kubala, "The Art and Style of Crosswords," The Philosophers Magazine (2023) | https://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/319-the-art-and-style-of-crosswords C. Thi Nguyen, *Games: Agency as Art* (OUP 2020). Chapters: Introductions The Aesthetic Interest in Crossword Puzzles Value Skepticism about Crossword Puzzle Crossword Solving & Aesthetic Striving Crosswords & the Sublime Competitive Crossword Solving Cryptic v. Non-cryptic Crosswords Crosswords, Poetic Language, & Visual Art Are Crossword Puzzles Art? Conclusion SUBSCRIBE TO THIS CHANNEL https://www.youtube.com/c/PhilosophersDiscussingArt?sub_confirmation=1 * Subtitles edited by Athko Ehrnstein

In this episode, Brandon Polite (Knox College | he/him) talks with Alice Harberd (University College London | she/her) about the power of aesthetic stereotypes. We begin by briefly discussing the relationship between stereotypes and aesthetics -- how certain stereotypes have thick aesthetic content associated with them. This leads us to consider an important example: "basic bitches." A basic bitch is the stereotype of a particular kind of white, middle-class woman with quite mainstream aesthetic tastes -- things that are comfortable, cozy, and feminine-coded, and thus are condescendingly looked down on as "simplistic." Harberd believes the stereotype becomes harmful when one shifts from thinking that a woman's tastes are simplistic to thinking that she herself is simplistic -- intellectually, politically, etc. This leads us to discuss how simplicity has been problematically disvalued, especially among philosophers and other academics. From there, we discuss how our fashion choices -- and other ways we present ourselves to others -- can sometimes signal aspects of ourselves (our tastes, group affiliations, etc.) to others. The standard basic bitch outfit (Ugg boots, leggings, oversized sweatshirt, etc.) could be taken to signal something about a person in just the way a typical goth outfit signals something about a person (their love for the macabre, distaste for mainstream attitudes, etc.). We talk about how this can sometimes be positive but is oftentimes problematic -- involving flattening a person to a two-dimensional caricature rather than a complicated, multifaceted, fully three-dimensional person. This leads us to discuss the intersection of the aesthetic and other domains, such as the ethical, social, and political, and how Kant's notion of aesthetic judgments as inherently "disinterested" just doesn't match most of our everyday discourse and experience of the aesthetic. We next turn to discuss what I'll call "intergenerational aesthetic strife" -- that is, difficulties that members of one generation have with the aesthetic practices and tastes of members of another generation. One important example of this is how Gen Xers often complain about Gen Zers wearing t-shirts of bands and musicians they're not fans of, who perhaps they can't even name three songs of. We consider how, for Gen Z, this involves a pure, decontexualized aestheticization of band t-shirts: they wear them just because they look cool or good rather than, as Gen Z would, to signal something about themselves (namely, their fandom). We talk about how why Gen Z may do this in the context of t-shirts, they don't do it in other aesthetic domains like public statues, where they believe context matters in a way that a Boomer is more likely to decontextualize statues of slave owners or Confederate generals. This indicates that Gen Z is less superficial or simplistic than members of other generations often stereotype them as being. We spend the remainder of our discussion discussing a set of related issues on our aesthetic identities: the value (or possible disvalue) of having a unified aesthetic self, of problems with authenticity and the value of comfort in becoming who we want to be, and how our selves are fundamentally malleable and yet coherent in many respects. References: See Alice's contribution to "Are the Kids Alright? On Cottagecore, Quiet Luxury, Clean Girl and Other Internet Aesthetics," edited by Aaron Meskin and Alex King, Aesthetics for Birds, 2024: https://aestheticsforbirds.com/2024/03/07/are-the-kids-alright-on-cottagecore-quiet-luxury-clean-girl-and-other-internet-aesthetics/ Chapters: 0:00 Introductions 0:24 Aesthetics and Stereotypes: The Basics 1:53 Basic Bitches 11:22 Fashion, Projection, & Stereotypes 17:12 Interested Aesthetic Judgments 23:04 Intergenerational Aesthetic Conflict 33:15 Unified (Aesthetic) Selves 41:07 Authenticity & Comfort 46:36 Malleability & Identity 54:09 Conclusion SUBSCRIBE TO THIS CHANNEL https://www.youtube.com/c/PhilosophersDiscussingArt?sub_confirmation=1 * Subtitles edited by Athko Ehrnstein

In this episode, Brandon Polite (Knox College | he/him) talks with Cheryl Frazier (Auburn University | she/her) about positive and negative depictions of fatness in popular media. We begin by discussing the basics of what Frazier calls "responsible artistic agency," which is minimally exercised when artists aim to avoid promoting harmful stereotypes or falsehoods about particular communities in their work. We then distinguish this concept from Jeremy Fried's account (discussed in Ep. 65) of artistic allyship. A key difference, according to Frazier, is that being an ally is a much more involved commitment to promoting the cause of an oppressed group, whereas responsible artistic agency merely involves avoiding harm toward such groups. From there, we turn our focus to positive and negative (responsible and irresponsible) depictions of fatness in film and television. The first example we consider at length is the character of "Fat Thor" in *Avengers: Endgame* (2019). Frazier believes the film's depiction of Thor's fatness is largely positive: Thor remains heroic and is worthy of his hammer while staying fat throughout the film, which goes against negative stereotypes about fat people common in superhero media. The film isn't totally successful, though, because of the number of jokes about Thor's fatness made by other characters in the film. We then consider some overused harmful tropes in film and television: e.g., how trans women in 90s films were all murderers, or how Bond villains usually have facial disfigurements, or how fat characters are only sidekicks who are the butt of jokes and denied serious sexual agency. This leads us to discuss the use of fat suits by actors. The case of Fat Thor is one where a fat suit is justified, given the largely positive depiction of the character in the film and the fact that it would've been weird to replace Chris Hemsworth with a fat actor when he'd played the role for so long. Many other cases, though, are problematic. Among other considerations: why hire a thin actor and use prosthetics to make them look fat when a fat actor could've just been hired? We conclude with a lengthy discussion of the positives and (mostly) negatives of actors radically transforming their bodies for roles: either gaining a lot of weight to play a fat character or getting extremely jacked to play, say, a superhero. References: "Toward a Responsible Artistic Agency: Mindful Representation of Fat Communities in Popular Media," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism | https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad064 Chapters: 0:00 Introductions 0:22 Responsible Artistic Agency: The Basics 5:28 Responsible Artist Agency & Ally Aesthetics 12:54 The Case of Fat Thor 24:50 Overused Negative Stereotypes 30:06 The Use of Fat Suits in Film & Television 35:01 Actors Gaining Weight for a Role 39:07 Actors Getting Jacked for a Role 50:00 Conclusion SUBSCRIBE TO THIS CHANNEL https://www.youtube.com/c/PhilosophersDiscussingArt?sub_confirmation=1 * Subtitles edited by Athko Ehrnstein

In this episode, Brandon Polite (Knox College | he/him) talks with Jeremy Fried (Auburn University| he/him) about artists attempting to be allies in their wo...

How scientific experiments and instruments, and the scientific method itself, can be a source of aesthetic appreciation.