Monroe C. Beardsley's "Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism," published in 1958 by Harcourt, Brace and World Inc., was a watershed event in the history of analytic aesthetics--a climax of sorts with respect to what preceded it and, at the same time, the opening of a new, more intricately developed and defended research program in…

In this article, the authors address the conversation that, given the recent developments in the philosophy of mind, especially in terms of its cognitive turn, one task for philosophers of music might be to begin to speculate about the properties of music and organized sound that enable them to perform their various moral and cultural roles. The…

Modern aesthetic theory maintains that a work is an artwork if it is intended to afford aesthetic experiences that are valuable for their own sake. The author claims that such a definition eliminates from art most of the poetry, novels, films, and music that have been produced in the world. The author examines several responses to his claim from…

In this essay, the author intends to review some of the leading proposals concerning the putative ontological differences between TV and film. The author attempts to undermine these alleged distinctions, generally arguing that they are based on too narrow a conception of TV (and sometimes of film). Specifically, the recurring problem is that these…

Since the early nineties, David Novitz and the author have been engaged in an ongoing debate about mass art. The latest installment in that exchange is Novitz's article "The Difficulty with Difficulty" which represents a sustained attack on the conception of mass art advanced in the author's book "A Philosophy of Mass Art." In this article, the…