A01eriean SOCIETY FOR

Aestheties

36TH AN NUAL MEETING · SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS AND DORAL INN, NYC

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THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR AESTHETICS 36TH ANNUAL MEETING

OFFICERS

Jerome Srolnitz, President Rudolf Arnheim, Vice-President

Arnold Berleant, Secretary-Treasurer

TRUSTEES

Marcia M. Eaton Peter Kivy

Anita Silvers Francis E. Sparshott

Alan Tormey

Arnold Berleant Herbert M. Schueller Hilde Hein John Fisher Selma Jeanne Cohen

PROGRAM COMMITIEE

Perer Kivy, Chair Noel Carroll

Berel Lang Robert Matthews

Noel Rudinow Anita Silvers Laurent Stern John Titchener

CONVENTION CHAIRPERSON

Timothy Binkley

Am.eriean SOCIETY FOR

Aesthetles ---~~ --------

('SVednesday, October 25: Doral 1n0

Evening:

Registration: 8:00-11 :00, Oak Room A (2nd floor) Trustees' Meeting: 8:00- 10:00, Roosevelt Room (6th floor) Smoker: 8:00-11 :00, Oak Room B (2nd fl oor)-Cash Bar

0 ursday, October 26: Doral I~ RegiJtration: 9:00-5 :00, Ballroom Foyer (2nd floor)

Morning:

9:00-10:30 Plenary Session: Opening Address " Vicarious Experience", Ballroom (2nd floor)

Speaker.: Zeno Vendler, University of California, San Diego

Comment: J oseph Margolis, Temple University

Chair: J ohn Fisher, Temple University

10:40- 12:10 Concurrent Sessions: A ) Goodman Topics

Lincoln Room (6th floor) 1. "The Moral of rhe Story: Expression

and rhe Literary Work" Speaker: Mary Sirridge, Louisiana State

Un iversity. Comment: Annette Barnes, University

of Maryland, Baltimore County

2. "Paintings, Conceptual Art and Persons"

Speaker: David Carrier, Carnegie-Mellon Univetsity

Comment: Jenefer Robinson, University of Cincinnati

Chair: William Blizek, University of Nebraska

0 ) Some Contemporary Issues in Aesthetics, Jefferson Room (6th floor) 1. "Aesthetic Descriptions and

Secondary Senses" Speaker: B. R. Tilghman, Kansas State

University Comment: David Goldblatt , Denison

University

2. HUnderstanding Art" Speaker: Robert Ktaut, Ohio State

University Comment: Catheri ne Lord, Syracuse

University

Chair: Stephen Ross, State Un iversity of New York at Binghamton

Lunch: 12:10-1:50 Afternoon:

1 :50- 3:20 Plenary Session: l..ecrure: HLinguistic and Pictorial Representation" Ballroom. (2nd floor)

Speaker: Arthur Danro, Columbia University

Comment: Francis Sparshott, Victoria College, University of Toronto

Chair: Kendall 1. Walton, University of Michigan

3:30-5:00 Plenary Session: Symposiu m: Art and Cognition, Ballroom (2nd floor)

Participants: Monroe Beardsley, Temple University Robert Howell, State University of New York at Albany Alan Torm ey, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Judith Tormey, Temple University

Chair: Marcus H ester, Wake Forest Uni versity

Frida, October 27: Doral Inn Registration: 9:00- 5:00, Ba room Foyer (2nd floor)

Morning:

9:00-10:30 Plenary Session: Symposium: The Aesthetics of Science, Ball room (2nd floor)

Participants: Ronald Munson, Stephanie Ross, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Richard Rudner, Washington University

Comments: Martin Bunzl, Rutgers University, Howard Stein, Columbia University

Chair: Gerald Barnes, Trenton State College

10:40- 12:10 Plenary Session: Lenu re: HVersions of Belisarius: From Diderot ro David" Ballroom (2nd floor)

Speaker: Michael Fried, Johns Hopkins University

umlllzent: J ack Spector, Rutgers University

Chair: Donald Kuspit, State University of New York at StOny Brook

Lunch: 12:10-1:50

I ~:s:e:s L;:~:~r~:n~O:e~~:::~ak Ro~nd floor)

II LW- .,.) Symposium: The Enlightenment

Lincoln Room (6th floor)

,

( 1\ Participants: Ted Cohen, University of Chicago

(.,..1 Donald Crawford, University of Wisconsin

(}) Carolyn Korsmeyer, State University of New York at Buffalo

Comments: Elmer Duncan, Baylor University Henning Jensen, University of Arizona

1 .... Robert Zimmerman, Sarah Lawrence College

Chair: George Dickie, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle

, I J

B ) The Visual Arts: Something Old, Something New, J efferson Room (6th floor) 1. "Reading the Passions in the Eighteenth Century: The Implications for Aesthetics"

Speaker: Alan T. McKenzie, Purdue University

Comment: Richard F. Kuhns, Columbia University. 2. "Blocker, and Others, on Photography"

Speaker: Bill Bywater, Allegheny College

Comment: William ROthman, Harvard University

Chair: Jay Bachrach, Central Washington State College

4 :00-5:00 ' Plenary Session: P©idential Address, Ballroom (2nd floor)

Introduction: Rudolf Arnheim, Uni versity of Michigan , Vice President, American Society for Aesthetics

AddresJ: "The Artistic and the Aesthet ic 'i n Interesting Times' ": Jerome Stoln irz, Lehman College, City University of New York, President, American Society for Aesthetics

Reception: 5 :00- 7 :00, Crystal Room C & D (2 nd floor)

Saturday, October 28: The School of Visual Arts

Morning :

Business Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics: 9:00-9:30, Room 111

9:40-1 1: 10 Concurrent Sessions: A ) Symposium: Plato, Music, and Mathematics, Room 111

Speaker: Ernest G. McClain , Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Comments: Malcolm Brown and Siegmund Levarie, Brooklyn College, City University of N ew York

Chair: William W ebster, Philadelphia College of Art

B ) Literature and Reality: East and West, Room 203

l."The Nature of Poetic Truth" Speaker: VK. Chari , Carleton

Universi ty Comment: Pheroze Wadia, Rutgers

University 2. " Identifying with Characters"

Speaker: Mary Bittner Wiseman , Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Comment: Jack Glickman, State University of New York ar Brockport

Chair: Michael H. Mitias, Mill saps College

11 :20- 2:00 Plenary Session: Demonstration and Discussion: The Video Arts, Amphiteatre (3 rd flr)

Participants: Nam June Paik, Video Artist Joyce Neraux, School of Visual Arts and Director, Sonnabend Galleries Richard Lorber, New York University

OJair: Curtis Carter, Marquette University

The Moral of the Story: Expression and the Literary Work

Nelson Goodman's description of the process and resul t of determining the expressive and exemplificational properties of a literary work as a mapping of two syntacri­cally articulate and semantically dense vocabularies 011 to

each other is not a paradigmatically accessible, or even easily understandable, description of the process and result of literary criticism. Nevertheless, I will argue that, once explained, Goodman's description offers a good account of a significant part of literary criricism: rhe enterprise of finding the righr words with which to talk abour rhe work. I will then argue that Goodman's account is quite surprisingly useful in explaining the narure of rhe relarion of a work of literature to irs theme, thesis , or "message." The element of surprise stems from the fact that if a work of literature is said to express irs "message," '(moral" or theme in Goodman's sense, then determining that message is not a mantr of ascertaining what the work denotes - its semantic proper­ties-but of choosing a label which denores it. This, I think, is JUSt the opposite of what one would naturally expect. Bur, as I will argue, the frequent use of content-classificatory labels like 'anacreontic' provides strong additional suppOrt for the theoretical acceptability of rhe move.

Mary Sirridge, Louisiana State University

Paintings, Conceptual Art and Persons

Using an analogy with the problem of personal identity, I ask : How do we explain the identity over time of paintings. Today the identity of a painting is defined in terms of the identity of that unique object made by the artist. I explore the implications of instead thinking of paintings as types, the tokens of these types being very accurate Csuperxerox ') copies of the original painting. I argue that such a procedure raises surprising problems, and is very difficult to describe coherently. I thus defend the account of forgeries given in chapter 3 of Nelson Good­man's LanguageJ of Art. I extend the analysis to discuss conceptual art, and conclude that , contrary to the artists' intentions, conceptual artworks are, in the crucial respects, very much like traditional visual artworks, and unlike written literary artworks. Finally, I suggest that my account of the identity of paintings raises interesting questions about the analogies between how we think of paintings and persons.

David Carrier, Carnegie-Mellon University

Aesthetic Descriptions and Secondary Senses

When Wittgenstein discusses the various phenomena that can be subsumed undet the headings of "seeing-as" and "aspect~perception" he mentions a distinction between ptimary and secondary senses of a word . This paper suggests that many aesthetic descriptions involve using words with secondary senses and that the distinction can shed a certain amount of light on the question of which aesthetic descriptions can be supported by criteria, i.e. are Hcondition­governed", and which nor.

B.R. Tilghman, Kansas State University

U nderstanding Art

Some of us understand Picasso's work ; some of us don't. What exactly does thi s mean? What mUSt I be able ro do, or say, or feel , in order ro qualify as understanding a gIven work of art? Is understanding a paInting like understanding a foreign language' Or like understanding a person' Or like a physicist undemanding the data' Or is artistic understanding in a category by itself'

My goal in this paper is ro survey twO attempts ro define ~(artis(ic understanding". The first attempt, namely

(1) Understanding a painting (a piece of music, etc.) consists in knowing the intentions of the artist.

is dismissed. My arguments are quite different from those usually persented against "intentional isr" approaches, and I provide an analysis of the very concept of intention which serves to render (1) circular.

The second attempt, namely (7) Understanding a painting (a piece of music, etc.) consists in the abili ty to translate the work into one's backgrou nd language.

proves more promising, and I briefly explore its ramifica­tions for aesthetic theory.

Robert Kraut, Ohio State University

Blocker, and Others, on Photography

The view that photography differs from the other visual arts because photography is an automatic reproduc­tion of reality has recently come under fire. The paper pinpoints twO bases for this type of realism and indicates how these bases give rise to realist theories. Realism is defended against recent critics, bur is criticised on other grounds. An alternative understanding of realism is pro­posed which makes realist theorizing progressive rather than reactionary but which still keeps in view the central concern of realism, viz., the relationship between photogtaph and world.

Bill Bywater, Allegheny College

Identifying With Characters in Literature

This is an account of the appreciation of literature which captures what I take to be central, namely, that ro be able to appreciate a literary work one must empathetically identiJj! with its characrers. The identification IS an ex­periment in imagination. What is to be imagined is that we both have rhe characccrs' characterist ics and are in their predicaments. These are given by the artwork. The perfor­mance of the experiment is imagining having the chatac­teristics and being in the predicaments of each chatacter and discovering what it is like, how it feels, to be there. Thi s provides the character's subj ective side and makes the appteciation of the work lively.

Full appreciation, however, depends on entenng the world posited by the artwork. This is achieved by adopting, in turn, the different points of view of the characters. We enter the world as one or anothet of its inhabitants, nOt as ourselves. We are left behind as pure subjects: the subj ect of our responses to rhe world whose charaCters' viewpoints we identify as ours, making objects of ourselves thereby. Imagination bridges the teal world (where we are pure subjects) and the artwotk's world (where we are the characters). "There (in imagination) I have in readiness even the heavens and the earth and the sea ... there also I meet with myself."

Mary Bittner Wiseman, Brooklyn College, City University o[ New York

The Nature of Poetic Truth: Imitation and lJIusion

In his com mentary on Bharara's treatise on drama· rurgy Natyafastra, Abhinavagupta argues against the th eory of mimetic illusion. Drama is not an imitation because the emotions, which it is [he aim of all poetry to express, cannot be reproduced either directly, or indirectly through their external signs. Physical actions reveal no correspondence to the form of the emotions. Hence drama does not create a semblance of the real. It is rather a configuration of the essential elements of the emotion-its causes and beha· vioural concomitants-which are relived by the actor and spectator alike.

There is also no illusion involved in our aesthetic experience because, first, [here is no sense of a semblance, and second, the semblance is not taken for reality. Neither is the consciousness of fi ction a condition of aesthetic percep­tion. The presented situation is apprehended in its general. ized form, although its reference is to rhe particular. Poetic statements are nOt a fi ctional or parasitic use of language, because reference IS not suppressed, and all mea ning conditions are satisfied. Theatrical illusion may be admitted, but (he action of the drama is not fictitious in its generalized form. The question of truth is not suspended in literary judgement.

V.K. Chari, Carleton University

Printed and produced at the School of Visual Arts, courtesy of the Visual Arts Press. Design: Susan Cullen Eckrote