Nature’s Handmaiden, Art

Catherine Elgin (Harvard University)

London Aesthetics Forum (Institute of Philosophy) Wednesday, 10 December 2014 | 16.00 – 18.00
Senate House, G26
Catherine Z. Elgin (Harvard) Nature’s Handmaiden, Art

Many consider art non-cognitive, contending that art bypasses reason and acts directly and exclusively on emotion. I will argue that the arts like the sciences embody, convey and advance understanding. Once we appreciate the multiple and complex modes of symbolization by which both the arts and the sciences advance understanding, we see that the differences between them are differences in degree rather than differences in kind. Both are powerful instruments that enable us to leverage our epistemic resources. Response dependent properties are properties that owe their identities to the responses they evoke. If works of art or science evoke novel responses, they may constitute the properties they disclose.   The talk will be free and open to all. For more information please visit our website www.londonaestheticsforum.org

The London Aesthetics Forum (Institute of Philosophy) is generously supported by the British Society of Aesthetics (http://www.british-aesthetics.org/) ------------------------------

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