A fitness model of evaluation

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 263-275

  Richards, Richard A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249358250     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0021-8529.2004.00158.x     Document Type: Review

References (27)

1. Monroe Beardsley, The Aesthetic Point of View, ed. M. J. Wreen and D. M Callen (Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 211
2. Colin Lyas, "The Evaluation of Art," in Philosophical Aesthetics, ed. Oswald Hanfling (Blackwell, 1992), pp. 353-354
3. Lyas, "The Evaluation of Art," p. 355
4. James Shelley, "The Character and Role of Principles in the Evaluation of Art," The British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 37
5. Frank Sibley, "General Criteria and Reasons in Aesthetics" in Approaches to Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 104-118
6. George Dickie, Evaluating Art (Temple University Press, 1988), p. 158
7. This would be akin to proving there are no Platonic forms. But we need not prove there can be no forms to establish that Plato conceived his evaluative principles incorrectly
8. We can speak of both the fitness of the individual organism - insofar as it is able to survive and reproduce - and the fitness of types - species, genera, and so on - insofar as we can generalize about their features, environments, and abilities
9. What will constitute the context will depend on which persons or group of persons we wish to consider. We can consider those who actually experience an artwork, for instance, or a person or group that might experience a work, or even an abstract person or group
10. Meyer Schapiro, "Mondrian" in Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: George Braziller, 1978), pp. 233-234
11. Here the evolutionary analogy breaks down somewhat. For art, the internal context always depends on the external context - those who experience the "correlation of parts." In evolution we can consider the fitness conferred by internal context independent of external context
12. Robert. L. Solso, Cognition and the Visual Arts (MIT Press, 1999), p. 62
13. Solso, Cognition and the Visual Arts, p. 90
14. Kendall. L. Walton, "Categories of Art," The Philosophical Review 79 (1970): 340. Walton goes further than I do, claiming that knowledge of these categories is essential to aesthetic judgment (p. 337). In my view, this kind of knowledge is clearly desirable, and makes for better judgment, but is not always essential
15. Walton, "Categories of Art," p. 354
16. Otto von Simpson, The Gothic Cathedral (Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 51-55
17. This is not to say that bad works do not engage these faculties. The difference between good and bad work relative to these faculties is the functional effect in the experience of the work
18. David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste" in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, vol. 1 (London: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1964), p. 278
19. I am not suggesting that we cannot also evaluate an artwork in terms of the intentions of the creator. But we should not confuse the evaluation of the context with the evaluation of the intentional creative act
20. Like other critics, Mary Devereaux, in her "Beauty and Evil: The Case of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will" in Aesthetics and Ethics, ed. Jerrold Levinson (Cambridge University Press, 1998), seems to have difficulty in keeping distinct the role of the various functional contexts. She asks what role the evil of the portrayed events should play in evaluation, but neglects to consider how functioning might vary according to context. Consequently, she conflates cases where the evil is most relevant and where it is less so - among cinematographers for instance
21. Beauty has long been regarded as an aesthetic property and criterion, but others have recently been identified. Noël Carroll, for instance, identifies three basic types of aesthetic properties - expressive, sensuous, and formal. See Noël Carroll, Philosophy of Art (Routledge, 1999), p. 168. I will not try to identify what counts as an aesthetic property or criterion, nor do I think it is necessary here. What is important is that some functioning is on the basis of factors that are not typically regarded as aesthetic - moral, political, religious, and pragmatic
22. For an account of the distinctive functioning associated with artworks, see Susan Feagin, "On Defining and Interpreting Art Intentionalistically, " The British Journal of Aesthetics 17 (1977): 65-77
23. See, for instance, Alan Goldman, "The Aesthetic," in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2002)
24. and Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present (University of Alabama Press, 1966)
25. In their "diagnosis" of species, most contemporary taxonomists ("cladists") follow the example of Willi Hennig in his Phylogenetic Systematics (University of Illinois Press, 1979), p. 67
26. See also Richard Mayden, "A Hierarchy of Species Concepts," in Species, the Units of Biodiversity, ed. Michael F. Claridge, H.A. Dawah, and M.R. Wilson (London: Chapman and Hall, 1997)
27. This paper has benefited greatly from the helpful criticism and suggestions of the Editor, Susan Feagin, and the anonymous referees. I am also indebted to Peter Achinstein, Max Hocutt, and James Otteson for their insight and criticism