Skip to main content

CDR Seminar: Aaron Meskin - Aesthetic Testimony: An Experimental Investigation

Date
Date
Wednesday 14 February 2018, 14:00 - 15:00
Location
Leeds University Business School, Maurice Keyworth Building, G.31
Who can attend
Staff, students, alumni and external guests

Associate Professor Aaron MeskinAbstract

Ordinary testimony transmits knowledge. Much of what we know about the world is based on what other people tell us. But philosophical aestheticians have debated whether aesthetic testimony (claims about the beauty, ugliness or aesthetic value of various objects and experiences) transmits aesthetic knowledge. Do we really come to know that things are beautiful simply on the basis of what other people tell us? Many philosophers have been sceptical. And this is not because they think that aesthetic knowledge is impossible.

Although the debate in the philosophical literature focuses largely on normative and conceptual questions, empirical claims about folk resistance to aesthetic testimony play a significant role in that debate. Our studies explore folk attitudes towards aesthetic testimony. We argue that experimental results do not support pessimism about the epistemic value of aesthetic testimony.

About the speaker

Aaron Meskin joined Philosophy at Leeds in 2005. Before his move to Leeds, Dr Meskin taught at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

His current interests include experimental aesthetics, the philosophy of food, and the aesthetic issues raised by comics, graphic novels and improvisational dance.

He is former Treasurer and Officer of the British Society of Aesthetics and a former Trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics. From 2009-2013 he was co-investigator on the AHRC project "Method in philosophical aesthetics: the challenge from the sciences." He is Director of the Centre for Aesthetics, Director of the Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Thought degree programme, and Alumni Director for the School of PRHS.

For further information, contact research.LUBS@leeds.ac.uk.