Abstract:
My title will have you thinking that I’ll answer the question it poses. I will, but I’ll spend the better part of this talk arguing that we’ve been misunderstanding what we’re asking for when we ask it. Once we understand what we’re asking for, giving an answer won’t be too hard, but that answer may disappoint because it won’t be the one we thought we wanted. I call the question posed by my title the aesthetic value question. My discussion of it proceeds in three stages. The first exposes a series of assumptions we’ve been making about the aesthetic value question. The second casts doubt on those assumptions. The third provides an answer that doesn’t rely on them.
Bio:
Prof. James Shelley is Lloyd and Sandra Nix Endowed Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. He is author of papers on aesthetic value, especially as it relates to pleasure and to perception, on aesthetic judgment, and on the history of philosophical aesthetics. He currently serves as Vice President/President Elect of the American Society for Aesthetics and as Aesthetics Subject Editor for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
