Upcoming Talks

• There Are Exceptionless Principles about Artistic Value British Society of Aesthetics Annual Conference, 2020 (postponed until 2021 due to COVID-19).

I aim to defend generalism about artistic value, the view that there exist general principles regarding artistic value. One challenge this view faces is the phenomenon of valence switching, which occurs when the same feature contributes to artistic value in one artwork while remaining neutral or detracting from artistic value in another. I propose a new defense of generalism against this challenge. I show that the phenomenon of valence switching is in fact evidence for, rather than a problem for, generalism because the phenomenon implies the existence of general principles at a higher level. I argue for this claim by showing that if there were no such principles, the fact that a valence switch occurs would entail that there are infinitely many levels of considerations relevant to artistic value, which is not plausible.

Past Talks

• The Fictionality Puzzle, Fictionality, and Explanation” American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting, Virtual, November 13, 2020.

• Aesthetic Explanation and Its Selectivity American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting, Phoenix, USA, 2019.

• Aesthetic Explanation and Its Selectivity British Society of Aesthetics Annual Conference, Oxford, UK, 2019.

• The Ambiguity of ‘Moral Defect’ and Its Implications Art and Ethics Workshop, University of Southampton, UK, 2019.

• The Notion of the Interaction between Moral and Artistic Value American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting, Seattle, USA, 2016.

• Anti-intentionalism about Musical Expressiveness International Congress of Aesthetics, Seoul, Korea, 2016.