Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception

Abstract

Aesthetics is about some special and unusual ways of experiencing the world. Not just artworks, but also nature and ordinary objects. But then if we apply the remarkably elaborate and sophisticated conceptual apparatus of philosophy of perception to questions in aesthetics, we can make real progress. The aim of this book is to bring the discussion of aesthetics and perception together. Many influential debates in aesthetics will look very different and maybe not as difficult to tackle if we clarify the assumptions they make about perception and about experiences in general. The focus of the book is the concept of attention and the ways in which this concept and especially the distinction between distributed and focused attention can help us re-evaluate various key concepts and debates in aesthetics. Some of the key concepts and debates that the book covers are picture perception and depiction, about aesthetic experiences, about formalism, about the importance of uniqueness in aesthetics, about the history of vision debate, and about our identification with fictional characters (among others).