Abstract
In this paper I argue against one variety of contextualism about aesthetic predicates such as “beautiful.” Contextualist analyses of these and other predicates have been subject to several challenges surrounding disagreement. Focusing on one kind of contextualism—individualized indexical contextualism—I unpack these various challenges and consider the responses available to the contextualist. The three responses I consider are as follows: giving an alternative analysis of the concept of disagreement; claiming that speakers suffer from semantic blindness; and claiming that attributions of beauty carry presuppositions of commonality. I will argue that none of the available strategies gives a response which both (a) satisfactorily explains all of the disagreement-data and (b) is plausible independent of significant evidence in favour of contextualism. I conclude that individualized indexical contextualism about the aesthetic is untenable, although this does not rule out alternative contextualist approaches to the aesthetic.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 107-123 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Philosophical Studies |
Volume | 157 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 11 Sept 2010 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2012 |
Bibliographical note
AcknowledgementsThanks are due to Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin, Jonathan Robson, Alice Kay, Robbie Williams, Pekka Vayrynen and Wouter Kalf. I am also grateful to audiences at the SIFA Graduate
Conference, the Western Michigan University Graduate Conference and the University of Leeds Postgraduate Seminar. Finally, I wish to thank an anonymous referee for this journal for valuable comments and suggestions.
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