Diversity Reading List

Abstract: A thesis that is rarely stated but often assumed in art criticism and aesthetics concerns the inseparability of form and content in art. The thesis of inseparability states that (1) it is impossible to have the same content in two different forms; and (2) it is impossible to have the same form in two different contents. 1 Clearly, the thesis needs elucidation in terms of a plausible account of the distinction between form and content. It also needs to be considered whether the inseparability of form and content motivates a theory of art or, less ambitiously, identifies an important criterion in an account of art. 2 The inseparability thesis is traditionally associated with formalism, which, as a general theory of art, has been widely condemned. Nevertheless, formalism is currently making a comeback in particular philosophies of the arts - notably, philosophy of music and philosophy of film.3 Sophisticated formalism in relation to both music and film allows for the aesthetic relevance of other features of the work besides form while recommending a structural focus for aesthetic appreciation. If the assumption that formalism is no longer relevant to our under- standing of the arts involves a major oversight, then the inseparability thesis cannot be ignored just because of its traditional association with formalism. But even if one persisted in this oversight, it does not warrant ignoring the importance of the inseparability thesis for the thesis bears no necessary relation to any theory of art, including a formalist one. In what follows, I consider whether the inseparability thesis is compatible with aesthetic cognitivism, the view that art is valuable in part because it can give us nontrivial knowledge. Ultimately, I argue that the two are compatible because there are ways of learning from art that depend on the inseparability of form and con- tent. Given the long and tangled history of the debate over the possibility and value of learning from art, it is supremely important to recognize, finally, such compatibility. Against defenders of aesthetic cognitivism, skeptics and critics have regularly resorted to brandishing the inseparability thesis, defiantly claiming that you cannot expect to learn about the world from art if you cannot 'get to' a work's content unaffected by style and medium. Here the assumption is that the kind of aesthetic transformation that grounds the inseparability of form and con- tent precludes either the practicality or the aesthetic significance of looking to art for real-life insight in the form of facts, principles, or new perspectives. If the compatibility I defend is really there, however, we can expect insight through such transformation. As we shall see, art serves as a primary means for gaining insight of a rare and valuable kind. In what follows, I begin by outlining the preliminaries of the contemporary debate between aesthetic cognitivists and aesthetic anti-cognitivists.4 Then I employ three strategies for elucidating the thesis of inseparability: I identify a particular account of form and content as the one invoked by the thesis, I show that the thesis does not motivate a theory of art in order to circumvent standard criticisms against the thesis as a necessary and sufficient condition of art status, and I explore the ways inseparability influences our understanding of representational art. Armed with a proper understanding of inseparability, I then consider its relation to the debate over aesthetic cognitivism. This involves laying out the assumption that inseparability precludes the aesthetic relevance of learning from art. Finally, I challenge this assumption by outlining two kinds of insight that depend on inseparability. The point is not that such insight can only be gained from art but that it is most readily and relevantly gained from art because of the aesthetic value of inseparability.

Abstract: In his article 'Fantasy, Imagination and the Screen' , Roger Scruton offers an account of fantasy, arguing that it is directed away from reality in some important sense, and that cinema is its natural representational medium. I address certain problems with Scruton's basic account, thereby producing a signifi cantly amended version, though one that owes a great debt to his. I explain why, as he says, much fantasy is signifi cantly directed away from reality; and conclude with some brief remarks about.

Abstract: Philosophers of language distinguish among the lexical or linguistic meaning of the sentence uttered, what is said by an utterance of the sentence, and speaker's meaning, or what is conveyed by the speaker to her audience. In most views, what is said is the semantic or truth-conditional content of the utterance, and is irreducible either to the linguistic meaning or to the speaker's meaning. I will show that those views account badly for people's intuitions on what is said. I will also argue that no distinguished level of what is said is required, and that the notion of linguistic meaning is the best placed to play the role of what is said. This relies on two points. First, our intuitions on what is said cannot be detached from the ways in which we talk about what is said, and from the semantics of speech reports and indirect discourse in general. Second, besides what is said, there is an equally important notion of what what-is-said is said about, or that about which the speaker is talking. These are, then, the three main ingredients needed for the theory of what is said: linguistic meaning, what is talked about, and a semantic account of reported speech

Abstract: The debate concerning the phenomenology of thought is marked by severe disagreement about how best to characterize a given conscious thought on the basis of introspective reflecting upon it. In this paper I focus on the fact of this introspection-based disagreement - in particular, on its epistemic import for participants in the debate. How ought these philosophers respond when facing such radical disagreement about the deliverance of introspection? I argue that the fact of such disagreement itself should lead participants to be less confident - or even to suspend judgement - in their own introspection-based claims. If that is right, then to the extent that the debate about the phenomenology of thought is carried out by appeal to introspective evidence, this constitutes a serious epistemological concern. At the very least, if this is the epistemically appropriate response, non?trivial reliance of introspective evidence in the debate comes under pressure.

Abstract: This article is about the description of all the situations in which clinician find difficult to tell the truth to patients regarding their condition. Moral importance of telling the truth is recognized in both moral theory and in the practical reality of everyday living. However, empirical studies continue to show that health- care professional identify the question of truth-telling and disclosure as a source of moral and psychological discomfort in many situations. Other situation creating difficulties for clinicians are not related directly to the patient's wants or needs regarding their illness but to wider issues such as disclosure of medical error and identifying poor performance in colleagues.

Abstract: Few philosophical debates seem to allow for as little theoretical disparity as that on the subject of Realism or Anti-Realism. That the two antithetical positions uphold the broad structure of a dichotomy may come as no surprise: the question under scrutiny is, after all, one about whether the world and its contents are autonomous of our minds, or whether the world and its contents simply cannot be said to exist independently of our perception and understanding of them. There does not, in other words, seem to be much leeway between the two stances, at least partly because what they capture is a deeply entrenched conceptual divide over what does and does not exist. How, one may ask, could some thing exist but a little?

Abstract: I want to suggest that the notion of the suspension of disbelief cannot coherently be used to explain or account for our reactions to fictional characters and events, and that in any case it is unnecessary to the solution of the alleged paradox. I take fiction here to cover art works in which a story is told, presented or represented, i.e. novels, short stories, plays, certain kinds of painting and sculpture and dance-any works in fact is connection with which it makes sense to speak of characters appearing and events taking place in them.

Introduction: One of the least controversial aspects of the highly provocative project that was early conceptual art was its wholesale rejection of the modernist paradigm. For artists adhering to the conceptual approach, modernism's loyalty to the notions of beauty, aesthetic sensation, and pleasing form, represented a commitment to obsolete artistic axioms.' Art, it was argued, should be purged of expressivist or emotivist aims; it was to '[free] itself of aesthetic parameters' and embrace an altogether different ontological platform. On this line, a conceptual artwork was taken to be 'a piece: and a piece need not be an aesthetic object, or even an object at all' (Binkley 1977: 265). In contrast to modernism, then, conceptual art set itself, from its very beginning, a distinctively analytic agenda by proposing to revise the kind of thing an artwork can be in order to qualify as such, and pronouncing aesthetics 'conceptually irrelevant to art' (Kosuth 1969). It is in view of this that conceptual art, to use the words of some of its most prominent exponents, can be understood as 'Modernism's nervous breakdown' (Art - Language 1997).

Abstract: In recent year a growing number of political philosophers have expressed worries about the nature of ideal theory and its dominance in the literature on social justice. Differently, in the post-Rawlsian literature on theories of justice, most of the work done by mainstream political theorists and philosophers is part of what is known as 'ideal theory'.

Publisher's Note: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz stand out among their seventeenth-century contemporaries as the great rationalist philosophers. Each sought to construct a philosophical system in which theological and philosophical foundations serve to explain the physical, mental and moral universe. Through a careful analysis of their work, Pauline Phemister explores the rationalists seminal contribution to the development of modern philosophy. Broad terminological agreement and a shared appreciation of the role of reason in ethics do not mask the very significant disagreements that led to three distinctive philosophical systems: Cartesian dualism, Spinozan monism and Leibnizian pluralism. The book explores the nature of, and offers reasons for, these differences. Phemister contends that Spinoza and Leibniz developed their systems in part through engagements with and amendment of Cartesian philosophy, and critically analyses the arguments and contributions of all three philosophers. The clarity of the authors discussion of their key ideas including their views on knowledge, universal languages, the nature of substance and substances, bodies, the relation of mind and body, freedom, and the role of distinct perception and reason in morals will make this book the ideal introduction to rationalist philosophy