Jennifer A. McMahon

The aesthetic appeal of minimal structures: Judging the attractiveness of solutions to traveling salesperson problems

Ormerod and Chronicle (1999) reported that optimal solutions to traveling salesperson problems were judged to be aesthetically more pleasing than poorer solutions and that solutions with more convex hull nodes were rated as better figures. To test these conclusions, solution regularity and the number of potential intersections were held constant, whereas solution optimality, the number of internal nodes, and the number of nearest neighbors in each solution were varied factorially. The results did not support the view that the convex hull is an important determinant of figural attractiveness. Also, in contrast to the findings of Ormerod and Chronicle, there were consistent individual differences. Participants appeared to be divided as to whether the most attractive figure enclosed a given area within a perimeter of minimum or maximum length. It is concluded that future research in this area cannot afford to focus exclusively on group performance measures.

Aesthetics and material beauty : aesthetics naturalized

1. Introduction: Formalism and the Problem of Beauty 2. Universality and Subjectivity 3. Objectivity and Autonomy 4. Critical Aesthetic Realism 5. Beauty and Truth 6. Natural Generativity and Systematicity 7. The Ubiquity of Beauty 8. Ugliness 9. Conclusion: An Ontology of Art

Aesthetic Autonomy and Praxis: Art and Language in Adorno and Habermas

Abstract Aesthetic autonomy has been given a variety of interpretations, which in many cases involve a number of claims. Key among them are: (i) art eludes conventional conceptual frameworks and their inherent incompatibility with invention and creativity; and (ii) art can communicate aspects of experience too fine‐grained for discursive language. To accommodate such claims one can adopt either a convention‐based account or a natural‐kind account. A natural‐kind theory can explain the first but requires some special scaffolding in order to support the second, while a convention‐based account accommodates the second but is incompatible with the first. Theodor W. Adorno attempts to incorporate both claims within his aesthetic theory, but arguably in his aesthetic theory each is cancelled out by the other. Art’s independence of entrenched conceptual frameworks needs to be made compatible with its communicative role. Jürgen Habermas, in contrast, provides a solution by way of his theory of language. I draw upon the art practice of the contemporary Icelandic‐Danish artist Olafur Eliasson in order to demonstrate this.

From Kantianism to Aesthetic Hedonism: Aesthetic Pleasure Revised

No matter how unintuitive it might seem that aesthetic pleasure should be the point where art and morality meet (in terms of philosophical structure and import), this is a noteworthy possibility that has been overshadowed by aestheticians’ more visible concerns. Here I briefly survey relevant strands in the literature over the past century, before introducing themes covered in this inaugural issue of Australasian Philosophical Review.

Art and Ethics in a Material World : Kant’s Pragmatist Legacy

1. Introduction: The Ethical Dimension of Art 2. Perceiving Intention in Order 3. Finding Fault with Feeling 4. Reasoning Our Way to Pleasure 5. Talking Morals 6. Imagining Freedom 7. Cultivating Genius 8. Meaning and Morals: A Post-Kantian Conception of Art and Community

The Aesthetics of Perception: Form as a Sign of Intention

Aesthetic judgment has often been characterized as a sensuous cognitively unmediated engagement in sensory items whether visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory or gustatory. However, new art forms challenge this assumption. At the very least, new art forms provide evidence of intention which triggers a search for meaning in the perceiver. Perceived order excites the ascription of intention. The ascription of intention employs background knowledge and experience, or in other words, implicates the perceiver’s conceptual framework. In our response to art of every description we witness the incorrigible tendency in humans to construct meaningful narratives to account for events. Such meaningful narratives always implicitly involve the ascription of intention, even when the agent of the intention is not explicitly acknowledged or even clearly conceived. This principle of intention-in-order may seem incompatible with another truism which is that art is a source of novel ideas and essentially a critique of prevailing values and norms including conceptual schemes. I argue on the contrary that the human impulse to read intention in order is a precondition of art’s critical edge. Creativity is possible even though there is no raw perceptual data to which we have conscious access. That is, there are no sensory items, unmediated by the concepts we have internalized through our interaction with our communities, to which we have conscious access.

Immediate Judgment and Non-Cognitive Ideas: The Pervasive and Persistent in the Misreading of Kant’s Aesthetic Formalism

Kant’s aesthetic theory is misinterpreted when understood in terms of uncritical empiricism. By analyzing standard interpretations of Kant’s aesthetic formalism, McMahon argues that the meaning of direct/immediate and non-cognitive judgment is distorted when taken out of the context of Kant’s critical system of the mind. She concludes by drawing out the implications for understanding Kant’s aesthetic theory in the contemporary context.

Backing Kant, with Interest: A Global Concept of Art

Art must be construed in a way that allows the particular features of an artworks time and place to feature within the broader placeholders of a global concept of art. The aesthetic theory of the post-Enlightenment German philosopher Immanuel Kant as panned out in the context of the 21st century is highlighted.