Cain Todd | Lancaster University (original) (raw)
Papers by Cain Todd
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, 2011
The Philosophical Quarterly, Apr 1, 2007
This collection of Guyer's essays on the history of aesthetics, only three of them previousl... more This collection of Guyer's essays on the history of aesthetics, only three of them previously unpublished, is valuable not merely for gathering together an important body of work, but for the overall coherence of this body. This is a result of the continuity of certain themes, ...
British Journal of Aesthetics, Oct 1, 2003
OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford oxi 6Dr Oxford University Press is a depar... more OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford oxi 6Dr Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. If furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship. and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York ...
... Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi N... more ... Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New ... The first chapter acts as an introduction to the conceptual project of this book, and here ... word, who keeps trying to turn the hors-texte into the object of literary investigation. ...
Values of Beauty Historical Essays in Aesthetics In Values of Beauty, Paul Guyer discusses major ... more Values of Beauty Historical Essays in Aesthetics In Values of Beauty, Paul Guyer discusses major ideas and figures in the history of aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. At the core of the book are Guyer's most recent essays on the ...
Multilingual Matters eBooks, Dec 31, 2009
Amongst inanimate objects, it is generally accepted that at least some art forms, such as music a... more Amongst inanimate objects, it is generally accepted that at least some art forms, such as music and painting, are capable of being genuinely expressive of emotion, even though it is difficult to understand exactly how. In contrast, although expressive properties can be attributed to non-artworks, such as natural objects or wine, it has often been claimed that such objects cannot be genuinely expressive. Focussing on wine, I argue that once we understand properly the nature of expressiveness, if we allow that music can be expressive there is no good reason to withold the ability to be genuinely expressive from wine.
Page 167. Chapter 9 Nature, Beauty and Tourism CAIN SAMUEL TODD Background If philosophical discu... more Page 167. Chapter 9 Nature, Beauty and Tourism CAIN SAMUEL TODD Background If philosophical discussions of natural beauty have hitherto been limited to the outer margins of Anglo-American 'analytic'aesthetics, the phenomenon of tourism lies well beyond its purview. ...
Philosophy Compass, Oct 1, 2014
The nature of the general connection between emotion and value, and of the various connections be... more The nature of the general connection between emotion and value, and of the various connections between specific emotions and values, lies at the heart of philosophical discussion of the emotions. It is also central to some accounts of the nature of value itself, of value in general but also of the specific values studied within particular philosophical domains. These issues all form the subject matter of this article, and they in turn are all connected by two main questions: (i) How do emotions disclose or create values? (ii) What are the epistemic credentials of emotion in justifying evaluative thought and discourse? This second question obviously presupposes some answer to the first question concerning the way in which emotions reveal, constitute, or create value.
Synthese
This paper examines two phenomena that are usually treated separately but which resemble each oth... more This paper examines two phenomena that are usually treated separately but which resemble each other insofar as they both raise questions concerning the difference, if there is one, between so-called ‘real’ and ‘as if’ emotions: affective memory and imagined emotion. The existence of both states has been explicitly denied, and there are very few positive accounts of either. I will argue that there are no good grounds for scepticism about the existence of ‘as if’ emotions, but also that the existing positive accounts of them are all explanatorily inadequate. Comparing the two phenomena directly, I contend, allows us to defend the existence of both by showing how they essentially involve the same ‘affective bodily imagery’. The final part of the paper offers an original, empirically informed account of the nature of this imagery, the role it plays in ‘as if’ emotions, and how it may help illuminate some important connections between memory, imagination, and emotion.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Nov 29, 2012
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue against the view that visual pornography qua por... more The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue against the view that visual pornography qua pornography-that is, regarded as such-cannot be simultaneously viewed with aesthetic interest. Second, I argue that where it is so regarded it engages states of imagining that are desire-like, rather than real desires. Moreover, insofar as this activity essentially involves the self in de se imaginative projects, it can possess certain cognitive values. The argument for both claims draws on the idea that the appreciation of pornographic representations is heterogeneous; in particular, I make a distinction between two different appreciative attitudes or states: regarding pornography as fiction, and regarding it as non-fiction. The latter, I hold, does not involve the imagination, but involves instead the voyeuristic-like 'transparency' that, as some philosophers have argued, precludes aesthetic interest, and in virtue of doing so I hold that it involves real sexual desire. Indeed, this is what partially explains the phenomenon and phenomenology of transparency. In contrast, the appreciation of pornography as fictional, I contend, essentially involves the imagination and the 'opaque' aesthetic attention to and appreciation of the 'formal features' of the work. This constitutes an awareness of fictionality and ensures that our imaginative engagement is one involving merely imagined 'desire-like' states involving some aspects of the self as a character in the fictional world. Significantly, this imaginative engagement is sufficient to cause certain physiological and emotional sexual responses, but ones that we are sufficiently detached from such that they can serve as objects of reflection, of meta-responses of approval and disapproval.
Philosophia Mathematica, Apr 10, 2017
This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relations... more This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relationship between the epistemic and aesthetic criteria employed in such judgements, and on the nature of the psychological experiences underpinning them. I claim that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are plausibly understood as expressions of what I will call ‘aesthetic-epistemic feelings’ that serve a genuine cognitive and epistemic function. I will then propose a naturalistic account of these feelings in terms of sub-personal processes of representing and assessing the relation between cognitive processes and certain properties of the stimuli at which they are directed.
A Philosophy of Recipes, 2022
For a very long time wine has been undoubtedly a constant reference of philosophy, and also of ae... more For a very long time wine has been undoubtedly a constant reference of philosophy, and also of aesthetics. But in the last years the debate about its ontological, metaphysical, epistemological and aesthetic status has been constantly growing: what kind of object is wine and why is philosophy interested in it? Is tasting an aesthetic experience? Is it legitimate to consider wine as a work of art, and if it is what meaning of art is here at play? Is the world of making and producing also involved in the philosophical enquiry about wine? For the first time, an Italian Journal dedicates a special issue to wine, stemming from these and many other questions,with the aim to offer a new contribution to the international debate on this topic
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, 2011
The Philosophical Quarterly, Apr 1, 2007
This collection of Guyer's essays on the history of aesthetics, only three of them previousl... more This collection of Guyer's essays on the history of aesthetics, only three of them previously unpublished, is valuable not merely for gathering together an important body of work, but for the overall coherence of this body. This is a result of the continuity of certain themes, ...
British Journal of Aesthetics, Oct 1, 2003
OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford oxi 6Dr Oxford University Press is a depar... more OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford oxi 6Dr Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. If furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship. and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York ...
... Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi N... more ... Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New ... The first chapter acts as an introduction to the conceptual project of this book, and here ... word, who keeps trying to turn the hors-texte into the object of literary investigation. ...
Values of Beauty Historical Essays in Aesthetics In Values of Beauty, Paul Guyer discusses major ... more Values of Beauty Historical Essays in Aesthetics In Values of Beauty, Paul Guyer discusses major ideas and figures in the history of aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. At the core of the book are Guyer's most recent essays on the ...
Multilingual Matters eBooks, Dec 31, 2009
Amongst inanimate objects, it is generally accepted that at least some art forms, such as music a... more Amongst inanimate objects, it is generally accepted that at least some art forms, such as music and painting, are capable of being genuinely expressive of emotion, even though it is difficult to understand exactly how. In contrast, although expressive properties can be attributed to non-artworks, such as natural objects or wine, it has often been claimed that such objects cannot be genuinely expressive. Focussing on wine, I argue that once we understand properly the nature of expressiveness, if we allow that music can be expressive there is no good reason to withold the ability to be genuinely expressive from wine.
Page 167. Chapter 9 Nature, Beauty and Tourism CAIN SAMUEL TODD Background If philosophical discu... more Page 167. Chapter 9 Nature, Beauty and Tourism CAIN SAMUEL TODD Background If philosophical discussions of natural beauty have hitherto been limited to the outer margins of Anglo-American 'analytic'aesthetics, the phenomenon of tourism lies well beyond its purview. ...
Philosophy Compass, Oct 1, 2014
The nature of the general connection between emotion and value, and of the various connections be... more The nature of the general connection between emotion and value, and of the various connections between specific emotions and values, lies at the heart of philosophical discussion of the emotions. It is also central to some accounts of the nature of value itself, of value in general but also of the specific values studied within particular philosophical domains. These issues all form the subject matter of this article, and they in turn are all connected by two main questions: (i) How do emotions disclose or create values? (ii) What are the epistemic credentials of emotion in justifying evaluative thought and discourse? This second question obviously presupposes some answer to the first question concerning the way in which emotions reveal, constitute, or create value.
Synthese
This paper examines two phenomena that are usually treated separately but which resemble each oth... more This paper examines two phenomena that are usually treated separately but which resemble each other insofar as they both raise questions concerning the difference, if there is one, between so-called ‘real’ and ‘as if’ emotions: affective memory and imagined emotion. The existence of both states has been explicitly denied, and there are very few positive accounts of either. I will argue that there are no good grounds for scepticism about the existence of ‘as if’ emotions, but also that the existing positive accounts of them are all explanatorily inadequate. Comparing the two phenomena directly, I contend, allows us to defend the existence of both by showing how they essentially involve the same ‘affective bodily imagery’. The final part of the paper offers an original, empirically informed account of the nature of this imagery, the role it plays in ‘as if’ emotions, and how it may help illuminate some important connections between memory, imagination, and emotion.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Nov 29, 2012
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue against the view that visual pornography qua por... more The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue against the view that visual pornography qua pornography-that is, regarded as such-cannot be simultaneously viewed with aesthetic interest. Second, I argue that where it is so regarded it engages states of imagining that are desire-like, rather than real desires. Moreover, insofar as this activity essentially involves the self in de se imaginative projects, it can possess certain cognitive values. The argument for both claims draws on the idea that the appreciation of pornographic representations is heterogeneous; in particular, I make a distinction between two different appreciative attitudes or states: regarding pornography as fiction, and regarding it as non-fiction. The latter, I hold, does not involve the imagination, but involves instead the voyeuristic-like 'transparency' that, as some philosophers have argued, precludes aesthetic interest, and in virtue of doing so I hold that it involves real sexual desire. Indeed, this is what partially explains the phenomenon and phenomenology of transparency. In contrast, the appreciation of pornography as fictional, I contend, essentially involves the imagination and the 'opaque' aesthetic attention to and appreciation of the 'formal features' of the work. This constitutes an awareness of fictionality and ensures that our imaginative engagement is one involving merely imagined 'desire-like' states involving some aspects of the self as a character in the fictional world. Significantly, this imaginative engagement is sufficient to cause certain physiological and emotional sexual responses, but ones that we are sufficiently detached from such that they can serve as objects of reflection, of meta-responses of approval and disapproval.
Philosophia Mathematica, Apr 10, 2017
This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relations... more This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relationship between the epistemic and aesthetic criteria employed in such judgements, and on the nature of the psychological experiences underpinning them. I claim that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are plausibly understood as expressions of what I will call ‘aesthetic-epistemic feelings’ that serve a genuine cognitive and epistemic function. I will then propose a naturalistic account of these feelings in terms of sub-personal processes of representing and assessing the relation between cognitive processes and certain properties of the stimuli at which they are directed.
A Philosophy of Recipes, 2022
For a very long time wine has been undoubtedly a constant reference of philosophy, and also of ae... more For a very long time wine has been undoubtedly a constant reference of philosophy, and also of aesthetics. But in the last years the debate about its ontological, metaphysical, epistemological and aesthetic status has been constantly growing: what kind of object is wine and why is philosophy interested in it? Is tasting an aesthetic experience? Is it legitimate to consider wine as a work of art, and if it is what meaning of art is here at play? Is the world of making and producing also involved in the philosophical enquiry about wine? For the first time, an Italian Journal dedicates a special issue to wine, stemming from these and many other questions,with the aim to offer a new contribution to the international debate on this topic
This paper explores some connections between flavour perception, emotion, and temporal experience... more This paper explores some connections between flavour perception, emotion, and temporal experience. Focussing on the question: 'if you like that taste of X and I do not, are we tasting the same thing X'? I will approach it by looking at some differences between how experts and non-experts 'taste'. I will eventually answer that if by 'the same thing' we mean the overall flavour profile of a complex sensory object, then the answer must be negative. I will argue that there is indeed a relatively trivial sense in which one tastes the same thing, but that this is not an experience of flavour. In the process I will reject the view that there are real emergent flavour properties.