How should one explain the relative disappearance of a major preoccupation of English-speaking Analytical Philosophy in the late 1950s/early 1960s: an anti-essentialist response to the question, ...‘What is art?’, typified in papers by Kennick and Weitz? Minimally, anti-essentialism denies the widely-held assumption that something must be in common between all the instances where (in our case) the term “fine art” or the concept art is rightly ascribed, in virtue of which all are called ‘art’; a stronger version urges that, in fact, there is no essence to (our example) art.
An Old Dog Rants Backwards: 1 McFee, Graham
Aesthetic investigations,
12/2017, Letnik:
2, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
Those familiar with my more general views will be unsurprised to find me ranting about the need to find philosophical room for the normative, as well as the causal. In this respect, this typical ...thread in my ranting aligns in effect with two points made by Frege (1984 p. 351) in noting that “error and superstition have causes just as much as correct cognition.” Now, it seems to me that in the fairly recent past there has arisen a new way of making a similar mistake.
A review of Gary Kemp’s and Gabriele M. Mras’s Wollheim, Wittgenstein, and Pictorial Representation: Seeing-As and Seeing-In (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, 307 + xv pp. ISBN 978-1-138-12346-5).
Why should the philosophical achievement of Ludwig Wittgenstein be taken seriously in the twenty-first century? This text answers this question by elaborating the distinctive therapeutic conception ...of philosophy defended in Wittgenstein's later work, typified by Philosophical Investigations. Here, Wittgenstein's highly contextual, problem-specific and person-specific conception of the philosophical project is clarified with reference to his own writings. In so doing, this text challenges contemporary failures to properly acknowledge all publications from those writings as posthumous, Nachlass (Legacy), or to treat judiciously the material published from that Legacy. Explicitly following Gordon Baker's last essays (Wittgenstein's Method: Neglected Aspects, 2004), and drawing on biographical sources as well as scholarly ones, the text addresses Wittgenstein's published oeuvre. Importantly, this exposition gives weight to the Big Typescript (2005) and Voices of Wittgenstein (2003), as two "projected works" attempting to present Wittgenstein's philosophical agenda. Further, Wittgenstein's very last writings are argued here to constitute a single, broadly unified project, rebutting the suggestion of a "third Wittgenstein". Moreover, the book sketches philosophical discussions conducted in line with Wittgenstein's own conception of philosophy's project to continue chains of examples of the kind he used in exposition of it.
The study of sport is characterised by its inter-disciplinarity, with researchers drawing on apparently incompatible research traditions and ethical benchmarks in the natural sciences and the social ...sciences, depending on their area of specialisation. In this groundbreaking study, Graham McFee argues that sound high-level research into sport requires a sound rationale for one’s methodological choices, and that such a rationale requires an understanding of the connection between the practicalities of researching sport and the philosophical assumptions which underpin them.
By examining touchstone principles in research methodology, such as the contested ‘gold standard’ of voluntary informed consent in the natural sciences and the postmodern denial of ‘truth’ in the social sciences, McFee demonstrates that epistemology and ethics are inextricably linked. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from the laboratory to the sports field, McFee explores the concepts of ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’ in sports research and makes a powerful case for a philosophical deepening of our approach to method and methodology in sport. This book is important reading for all advanced students and researchers working in sport, exercise and related disciplines.
Preface Part 1: Overview Chapter 1. A Vision of the Epistemology and Ethics of Qualitative Research Into Sport Part 2: The Nature of Qualitative Research Chapter 2. Research Must Answer its Question: Research as Erotetic Chapter 3. The Idea of the ‘Qualitative’ is not so Helpful Part 3: The Place of Truth Chapter 4. Research Must Aim at Truth Chapter 5. Scientism is a Bad Model of Truth (and Natural Science) Chapter 6. Postmodernism and Truth-Denial as a Kind of Scientism Chapter 7. Truth-Denial is Not Just a Style of Writing Part 4: Ethics for Research Chapter 8. Voluntary Informed Consent is Not a Gold Standard Chapter 9. Covert Research into Sport can be Ethical Chapter 10. The Researcher is Not the Research Subject Part 5: Conclusion (and Appendix) Chapter 11. In Summary. Appendix: Considerations of Exceptionlessness in Philosophy. Bibliography
Graham McFee is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Brighton and at California State University Fullerton. He was Vice President of the British Society of Aesthetics. He has written and presented extensively, both nationally and internationally, on the philosophy of Wittgenstein and on aesthetics, especially the aesthetics of dance.
The paper highlights the centrality of some concepts from philosophy of sport for philosophical aesthetics. Once Best (BJA, 1974) conclusively answered negatively the fundamental question, ‘Can any ...sport-form be an artform?’, what further issues remained at the intersection of these parts of philosophy? Recent work revitalizing this interface, especially Mumford’s Watching Sport (2012), contested Best’s fundamental distinction between purposive and aesthetic sports, and insisted that purist viewers are taking an aesthetic interest in sporting events. Here, we defend Best’s conception against considerations Mumford hoped would bring the aesthetics of art and sport closer together, thereby elaborating the aesthetics of sport. But, against Mumford’s resolutely psychological conception of an aim, we follow Best to defend the centrality, for purposive sports, of the means/ends contrast even when taking an aesthetic interest in such sports. We conclude with general speculations about the potential future of the discussions originated here.
Artistic Judgement McFee, Graham
2011, 20101228, 2011-01-01, Letnik:
115
eBook
Artistic Judgement sketches a framework for an account of art suitable to philosophical aesthetics. It stresses differences between artworks and other things, and locates the understanding of ...artworks both in a narrative of the history of art and in the institutional practices of the art world. Hence its distinctiveness lies in its strong account of the difference between, on the one hand, the judgement and appreciation of art and, on the other, the judgement and appreciation of all the other things in which we take an aesthetic interest. For only by acknowledging this contrast can one do justice to the importance regularly ascribed to art. The contrast is explained by appealing to an occasion-sensitive account of understanding, drawn from Charles Travis directly, but with Gordon Baker (and Wittgenstein) as also proximate rather than remote. On this basis, it argues, first, that we need to offer accounts of key topics only as far as questions might be raised in respect of them (hence, not exceptionlessly), and, second, that we should therefore defend the view that the meaning of artworks can be changed by later events (the historical character of art, or forward retroactivism) and that art has an institutional character, understood broadly on the lines of Terry Diffey's Republic of Art. Besides providing a general framework, Artistic Judgement also explores the applications of the ideas to specific artworks or classes of them.
The paper considers an argument of Richard Wollheim’s, originally presented in a 1976 symposium with Goodman and Wiggins, which disappeared when the symposium contribution was ‘reprinted’ in the ...supplementary essays to the expanded edition of 'Art and Its Objects' (Wollheim, 1980). It lays out the argument’s original context, locating its objectives by means of a comparison with Goodman’s autographic/allographic distinction, with its attendant discussion of the ‘history of production’, and presents Wollheim’s defence of ‘the artist’s theory’. This defence coheres in interesting ways with Wollheim’s aesthetics emphasis on the importance of the artist’s intention (suitably understood) as part of a specification of what 'the work itself' is. This conception reinforces the importance Wollheim grants both to the fulfilled intentions of the artist and to a suitably positioned, suitably informed, and suitably sensitive spectator. Both should be modelled as operating under the aegis of 'the artist’s theory', a notion this ‘missing’ argument serves to emphasize. Abstrakt Der Beitrag kehrt zu einer These zurück, die Richard Wollheim zum ersten Mal 1976 auf einem Symposium mit Nelson Goodman und David Wiggins vorgestellt hat und die verschwand, als es zu einer „Neuauflage“ der Symposionsbeiträge in den Supplementa zur erweiterten Auflage von 'Art and Its Objects' (Wollheim, 1980) kam. Dargelegt wird der ursprüngliche Kontext der These; zudem werden ihre Ziele verortet und zwar durch Vergleiche mit Goodmans Unterscheidung autographic/allographic und mit der dazugehörigen Diskussion zum Begriff „Produktionsgeschichte“. Wollheims Verteidigung der „Künstlertheorie“ hängt auf interessante Weise damit zusammen, dass im Rahmen von seiner Ästhetik die (entsprechend konzipierte) Intention des Künstlers als Teil einer Bestimmung dessen betont wird, was 'das Werk selbst' ist. Diese Konzeption verleiht der Bedeutung Nachdruck, die Wollheim sowohl den verwirklichten Intentionen des Künstlers als auch einem entsprechend positionierten, informierten und sensiblen Zuschauer zuschreibt. Beide sollten als unter dem Vorzeichen einer 'Theorie des Künstlers' funktionierend konzipiert werden, ein Begriff, der durch dieses ‚fehlende‘ Argument hervorgehoben werden soll.
Free will McFee, Graham
Free will,
c2000, 2000, 20141218, 20001110, 2014, 2000-10-31, 2000-11-10, 2014-12-18, 2000-10-04, 20000101, Letnik:
1
eBook
Free Will explores the determinist rejection of free will through detailed exposition of the central determinist argument and consideration of responses to each of its premises. At every stage ...familiar examples and case studies help frame and ground the argument.
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