by Dwight Furrow
Aesthetic properties in art works are peculiar. They appear to be based on objective features of an object. Yet, we typically use the way a work of art makes us feel to identify the aesthetic properties that characterize it. However, dispassionate observer cases show that even when the feelings are absent, the aesthetic properties can still be recognized as such. Feelings seem both necessary yet unnecessary for appreciation of the work.
How do we square this circle?
When we ascribe to works of art properties such as beautiful, melancholy, mesmerizing, charming, ugly, awe-inspiring, magnificent, drab, or dynamic we are typically reporting how the work affects us, and we often use what we loosely call “feelings” to help in the ascription. A painting is charming if the viewer feels charmed. The architecture of a building is awe-inspiring if an admirer has the feeling of being awed. To say that a musical passage is beautiful but it leaves me uninspired and bored is peculiar and would require some special explanation for what is meant by “beautiful” in this case. We typically use the degree and kind of pleasure we feel about an object to be one measure of its beauty. The feelings involved in our response to artworks or other aesthetic objects need not be full blown emotions. As many commentators have pointed out, a sad song does not necessarily make one feel sad if you have nothing to be sad about. In fact, we often find sad songs exhilarating. Yet sad songs make us feel an analog to sadness which helps us attribute the property “sad” to the song.
In other words, there is something that it is like to feel charmed, awed, in the presence of beauty, or “sad-adjacent” that typically accompanies the identification of that property in an object. And the feeling state helps us identify the property. We know a film is amusing because it makes us feel amused, joyful because it sparks feelings of joy, etc.
But this raises a puzzle about dispassionate observers.
Consider the following: a student taking a music theory exam about the use of modes to generate expressiveness; a painter hard at work scraping a paint surface to get a desired effect; a film critic taking notes on how the use of shadows in a scene shapes the narrative; or an art museum curator, tired and distraught because of a personal problem, assessing the aesthetic value of a work to be purchased. All are presumably able to correctly ascribe aesthetic properties to the works they are analyzing. Yet, they are unlikely to be in the relevant feeling states that typically accompany such ascriptions because their attention is directed toward accomplishing a task rather than enjoying the work. They are dispassionate observers with a phenomenology quite different from that of someone feeling exhilarated, awed, mesmerized, or charmed by a work.
This is not a phenomenon that affects only experts. All of us experience aesthetic properties when we’re not in a condition to fully appreciate them because we are tired or distracted. Yet the virtues of a work may still be apparent to us. If the apprehension of aesthetic properties is tied to feeling states, how are dispassionate observers able to identify them? The most plausible answer to this question tells us something about the nature of aesthetic properties.
One possibility might be that the dispassionate observer experiences the same property as the passionate observer but with less intensity. Another explanation might be that the dispassionate observer is inferring the property from past experience of the same or similar works experienced under more favorable conditions or from generalizations about how such an object typically influences observers. But both these possibilities are implausible because they suggest there is something crucial about the aesthetic property that the dispassionate expert has no access to, namely the way it makes us feel. Awe, charm, pleasure, or a sadness-analogue are all experiences that require a certain degree of intensity if they are to be experienced as such. It is unlikely a dispassionate expert experiences these properties less intensely since her task depends on identifying the degree of intensity generated by the work.
Furthermore, as noted, these are feeling states not belief states only. Thus, if the expert’s ascription of an aesthetic property is an inference, that would not provide access to the required feeling state. It is unlikely that the dispassionate expert, trained to recognize such properties, intensely focused on them, and charged with working with them in a way that requires understanding would be so epistemically deficient.
I want to suggest an alternative explanation, one that doesn’t entail that a dispassionate observer is epistemically deficient. A dispassionate observer such as an artist or critic, when carrying out their various tasks, may not experience the feelings associated with an aesthetic property, but what they do perceive is the capacity or power of the object to cause such feelings. On this view, an aesthetic property is a disposition in an object to cause a certain kind of experience in an observer. To say that a painting is mesmerizing is to say that the painting has the power to mesmerize an observer.
But how do we perceive the capacity or disposition to charm, mesmerize, inspire awe, or cause pleasure without being charmed, mesmerized, awed, or pleasured? The answer lies in the nature of dispositions.
Dispositions are commonplace properties to which we routinely make reference—this glass on the table is fragile, that rock is lift-able, this building is sturdy, Emily is conscientious, etc. A disposition or power is a potentiality of an object or person to do something under certain conditions. The fragile glass under the right conditions will break. The sturdy building in a windstorm will remain standing. If Emily makes a promise, she will keep it. Dispositions point to something beyond what is the case, some set of conditions, not necessarily actualized in the present, that will manifest the disposition. And they typically come in degrees—a building is sturdy only up to a point; Emily is conscientious but there are limits to her diligence. And whether a disposition will manifest or not depends on other objects. A glass is fragile only when struck by something disposed to break glass, a knife has the capacity to cut when in the presence of something “cut-table”—dispositions typically require partner dispositions in order to manifest.
My argument is that aesthetic properties are powers or dispositions of objects to affect observers. They are recognizable as such by the experience they cause under the proper manifestation conditions—one of which is the presence of partner dispositions in the observer—and their effectiveness comes in degrees.
How does this explain the dispassionate observer who is not undergoing the feeling state typically brought about by aesthetic powers? Dispassionate observers are capable of perceiving such powers even when they are not fully manifest through a partial manifestation event.
Consider this routine example. I have a belief that wine glasses are fragile. But when someone starts tapping a wine glass with a knife to get attention, I see the fragility beginning to unfold even though the wine glass doesn’t break. I’m not inferring its fragility from generalizations about wine glasses. The causal power of the knife and the condition of the glass are perceptually available. Even though I know that wine glasses are fragile, it’s this knife, this wine glass, struck with a particular degree of force that gets me to see the fragility rather than just infer it. We are sensing the causal power of the disposition of fragility even if the glass does not break. Or to use another example, I know that apples are in general edible. But when hungry, I perceive the edibility of the apple, represented by its lush color, unblemished surface, and sweet aroma.
A similar condition obtains when perceiving aesthetic properties. I sense the causal power of a melancholy passage of music or the impact of a mesmerizing painting beginning to unfold even though I’m not in a position to feel the full manifestation of the property. It is, after all, in virtue of some set of perceptual qualities that the painting is mesmerizing or the musical passage is melancholy and those perceptual qualities have causal power even if my attention is not directed toward experiencing their full impact.
The tonal shifts in a singer’s voice, the way color leaves an impression of three dimensions, or the size and aspect of a building are all perceptually available and function as indicators of a disposition to cause, respectively, sad-adjacent feelings, feelings of being mesmerized, or awe. The partial manifestation is sufficient to observe the aesthetic property and its intensity even in the absence of the feeling state that would be, under favorable conditions, the upshot of the disposition.
Aesthetic properties are best viewed as dispositions because it is evident that the condition of the observer plays a role in whether an aesthetic property is experienced or not. Aesthetic properties understood as dispositions of an object require partner dispositions in observers which account for the subjective dimension of art appreciation without denying that the aesthetic property exists in the object.