My paper with Emmie Malone, Popular Music and Art-interpretive Injustice, has appeared in a recent issue of Inquiry. Here’s a sentence from the conclusion, which can serve as a pull quote:
Continue reading “Citing “Injustice””We hope the examples we have given make an initial case for adding to the already crowded field of philosophical terms that take the form ‘some adjective injustice.’
The distinction between mimic covers and rendition covers is central to the work my collaborators and I have done on cover songs. Recently at the APA blog, Andrew Kania argues that the distinction is unfounded.
Continue reading “Kania on kopycats”Via the Otus Shrine, I came across this new illustration by Erol Otus which depicts the guitarist Tom Morello jamming out with monsters not of this Earth. It was commissioned by Morello’s friend Dan B. Weiss as a gift for Morello’s 60th-birthday. Appropriately, it distorts my sense of time in a way that feels impossible.
Continue reading “The strangeness of the living present”Two small updates:
Aesthetics For Birds recently posted #89 in the series 100 Philosophers, 100 Artworks, 100 Words.
The series began almost a decade ago. The premise for the series, sometimes abbreviated just 100x100x100, gives it long-form structure. It is not finished yet, but it is clear what’s required for it to be finished.
Over at the APA blog, Noël Carroll whinges about the fact that the blog categorizes his post as Philosophy of Film. He acknowledges that the label is used for a particular philosophical subdiscipline, but he doesn’t like it. On the one hand, the subdiscipline addresses not just movies but also television and video games. On the other hand, “film” in an original sense is strictly photographic. Today even most movies aren’t on film.
Continue reading “A grue by any other name is just as likely to eat you in the dark”A short paper by Christy Mag Uidhir and me has been accepted by Estetika. It further develops and refines the view we’ve articulated in earlier work.
TITLE: Does art pluralism lead to eliminativism?
ABSTRACT: Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word “art” in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate pluralism should lead us to abandon art talk altogether; that is, should pluralism lead to eliminativism? This paper addresses arguments both for and against this move. We ultimately argue that pluralism allows one to retain the word “art”, if one wants it, but only in a loose, conversational sense. The upshot of pluralism is that talk of art in general cannot be asked to do theoretical and philosophical work.
On Cardiff’s academic blog, Tareeq Jalloh blogs about his work on drill music and epistemic injustice. The post summarizes a recent paper of his about the way that, in the UK, lyrics from drill music are interpreted as confessions of criminal activity. In the US context, this has been called the rap on trial mentality. Evan and I take it as our speciment example in our recent paper.
Continue reading “Parallel thinking about rap and injustice”Earlier drafts of my paper with Evan Malone, “Popular music and art-interpretive injustice“, were not just about popular music. Although referees convinced us to drop it, we originally gestured at further examples of art-interpretive injustice arising in relation to street art.
Continue reading “Art-interpretive injustice and the missing bit about street art”My paper “Popular music and Art-interpretive Injustice”, co-authored with Evan Malone, is now accepted and forthcoming in Inquiry.
Continue reading “Art-interpretive injustice”