forthcoming in Semantics of Aesthetic Judgement (ed. James O. Young), OUP

Against the Semantic Orientation Towards Aesthetic Judgement

Michael J. Raven

1. Overview

Hume emphasized two apparently conflicting characteristic features of

aesthetic judgements: their subjectivity and their universality. Roughly put,

subjectivity concerns how one’s aesthetic judgements are beholden to one’s

subjective sentiments, whereas universality concerns how all aesthetic

judgements may be reconciled according to some objective rule “confirming

one sentiment, and condemning another.” These features appear to conflict:

universality seems as if it requires an objective aesthetic standard which

evaluates judgement diverging from it as faulty, whereas subjectivity seems

as if it tolerates such divergence as faultless. One of the main open problems

in aesthetics is to reconcile the Humean conflict between the subjectivity and

universality of aesthetic judgement.

Recent approaches to the Humean conflict have taken on a broadly

semantic orientation. It is often supposed that one of the main threats to the

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universality of aesthetic judgement is the (alleged) phenomenon of faultless

disagreement. Some have offered certain linguistic data as evidence for

faultless disagreement. Accommodating these data is often taken to require

adopting certain distinctive views about the semantics of aesthetic

judgements. And so, generally, assessing the extent to which aesthetic

judgement is universal is taken to require substantial engagement with the

semantics of aesthetic judgement.

My aim will be to argue against this semantic orientation. This should

not be misinterpreted as an indiscriminate challenge to semantic inquiry in

general or to its role in helping systematize the semantics or pragmatics of

aesthetic discourse in particular. I have no quarrel with these projects per se.

Rather, my challenge concerns the semantic orientation’s contribution toward

some distinctively aesthetic problems (such as the Humean conflict) and

suggests that its significance to problems of that sort tends to be

overestimated.

Specifically, recent work of the semantic orientation has tended to

focus on the viability of a semantics that takes the truth-value of an aesthetic

judgement to be relative to the context in which it is assessed. But there has

been little discussion of how to understand the underlying states of the world

which might give rise to the relative truth of an aesthetic judgement. Once

these metaphysical options are made clear, not only is the semantics revealed

to obscure the differences, but it is also revealed to be ill-suited to capturing

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the alleged data it was supposed to accommodate. This would seem to

challenge the contribution the semantic orientation might make toward

reconciling the Humean conflict.

The paper proceeds as follows. I first outline aesthetic judgement and

its characteristic features of subjectivity and universality (§2). Then I sketch

the subjectivist agenda which restricts universality to a subjective source

(§3). The phenomenon of faultless disagreement is often taken to be evidence

for the subjectivist agenda (§4). This is where the semantic orientation

emerges, since accommodating faultless disagreement is often taken to turn

on adopting a distinctive semantics which takes the truth-value of an

aesthetic judgement to be relative to the context in which it is evaluated (§5).

I raise a dilemma for faultless disagreement which is left unanswered by the

bare semantics (§6). This prompts “metaphysical descent” into exploring what

underlying states of the world might verify the relative truth of an aesthetic

judgement (§7). Refocusing on these underlying states (§8) prompts a

reformulation of the Humean conflict which gives rise to an apparent proof of

the unreality of the aesthetic (§9). Reactions to the proof constrain how the

semantics is to be understood and what it can say about faultless

disagreement (§§10-13). The dilemma reemerges on each reaction no less

forcefully than before (§14). I conclude by drawing lessons against the

semantic orientation (§15).

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2. Aesthetic judgement

An aesthetic judgement is an assertoric tokening (an utterance or thought) of

an aesthetic sentence. Examples of aesthetic sentences include:

(M+) Mona Lisa is beautiful.

(M-) Mona Lisa is hideous.

(B+) This bust is an elegantly dignified representation of Plato.

(B-) This bust is a condescending caricature of Plato.

What makes these sentences aesthetic is that they contain distinctively

aesthetic expressions, such as ‘beautiful’ or ‘condescending caricature’. While

it is difficult to say what precisely makes expressions like these aesthetic, we

have a working ability to recognize them when we see them.1

This working ability inclines us to ascribe two characteristic features

to aesthetic judgements: subjectivity and universality.

Subjectivity concerns how aesthetic judgements are somehow beholden

to the judge’s sentiments. To illustrate, one’s judgement of (say) (M+) might

be beholden to one’s pleasurable sentiments toward Mona Lisa. Various

characterizations of these aesthetic sentiments, and how aesthetic judgements

are beholden to them, have been proposed: Kant (2000) says they involve a

disinterested but harmonious free play of imagination and understanding;

Railton (2012) says they involve a distinctive kind of appreciation; and

1 Sibley (1959) and Davies (this volume) discuss the subtleties of aesthetic

notions.

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Iseminger (1981), Walton (1993), Carroll (2002), Levinson (2010), and others

emphasize various flavors of a distinctively aesthetic experience, attitude, or

profile.2 My focus will be only on their abstract but shared commitment to

taking an aesthetic judgement to be somehow beholden to the sentiments of

the judge’s subjective point of view.

Universality concerns how aesthetic judgements answer to an objective

standard of evaluation applicable across judges. To illustrate, we might

suppose that those who would judge (M-) are at fault. The fault would not

stem from a conflict between the judgement and the judge’s sentiments, since

the former is beholden to the latter. Rather, the fault would stem from a

conflict with universal aesthetic sentiments anyone ought to have even if one

doesn’t. Various characterizations of this universality have been proposed:

Hume (1985) says it involves deference to ideal aesthetic judges; Kant (2000)

says it involves the expectation of universal agreement in judgement; and

others, like Zemach (1997), would say it involves objective aesthetic features

or facts in reality. My focus will be only on their abstract but shared

commitment to their being objectively better and worse, right and wrong,

aesthetic judgements.

As Hume (1985) famously pointed out, subjectivity and universality

apparently conflict. Emphasizing subjectivity threatens the applicability of

an objective standard to an aesthetic judgement, whereas emphasizing

2 But see Dickie (1964) for a notable criticism of such distinctively aesthetic attitudes.

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universality obscures how it could be beholden to one’s own sentiments. And

so it is obscure how one’s aesthetic judgement can both be beholden to the

sentiments from one’s own subjective point of view while being answerable to

an objective standard.3

A satisfying theory of aesthetic judgement should attempt to

illuminate its characteristic features and reconcile their apparent conflict.

But it will not be my aim to engage with the many, varied proposed

reconciliations of this conflict, nor to attempt my own. My aim, instead, is to

use the conflict as a point of departure.

3. Subjectivism

Reconciling the Humean conflict often involves emphasizing one of

universality or subjectivity over the other. I will use the term ‘subjectivism’ to

characterize a broad philosophical agenda emphasizing subjectivity over

universality.

This emphasis often manifests as resistance to a kind of objectivity

often associated with universality. There are notorious challenges

characterizing notions of objectivity (Wright, 1992). But we may gesture at

the intended notion with a picture. The intended objectivity is exemplified by

(say) the judgement that Earth is flat. Even if a judge judges this from a

3 My rough characterization of Hume’s problem is intended to gesture at the

core problem rather than to engage with the various disputes in the

literature over its nuances.

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subjective point of view, only the objective point of view from the world

itself—Nagel (1986)’s view from nowhere—is relevant to the judgement’s

being right. While subjectivists might endorse this picture for some domains,

they will resist applying it to aesthetic judgement. They will instead endorse

the slogan that beauty is (merely) in the eye of the beholder.

Resistance to objectivity should not be confused with resistance to

normativity. Some subjectivists explicitly attempt to accommodate

normativity: Humeans would say normativity derives from the aesthetic

sentiments of ideal judges, whereas Kantians would say it derives from

judges’ demand for intersubjective agreement. It is controversial whether

subjectivist attempts to accommodate normativity succeed. But we avoid

prejudging the issue by saying that subjectivism is constrained to take

whatever normative force an aesthetic judgement might have (if any) to

derive from a subjective source. Thus, if an aesthetic judgement demands

conformity at all, it will not be in the way demanded by the judgement that

Earth is flat.

One divide among variants of subjectivism is over whether aesthetic

judgements express aesthetic propositions. Ayer (1952)’s aesthetic emotivism

notoriously denied that aesthetic judgements express aesthetic propositions.

But my focus in this paper will be on the broad category of views which are

both (i) cognitivist in saying that aesthetic propositions do express aesthetic

propositions containing distinctively aesthetic constituents (such as the

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properties, or concepts of the properties, of being beautiful or being a

condescending caricature) and (ii) subjectivist in rejecting the universality (in

some important sense) of these aesthetic propositions. Since my attention will

be focused only on cognitivist subjectivist views, I henceforth omit the

‘cognitivist’ qualification.

4. Disagreement

It is commonly assumed that the alleged phenomenon of faultless

disagreement is evidence for subjectivism.4 To a first approximation, faultless

disagreement is a genuine disagreement over some judgement in which both

judges are faultless for not making a mistake. This is supposed to be evidence

for subjectivism because its existence would seem best explained by

subjectivity and a failure of universality. For if either judges’ judgement were

universal, then that would render the other judgement faulty. Instead,

faultless disagreement restricts the sense in which both judges’ get things

right: each gets things right only relative to their respective subjective points

of view. There is no further sense in which either judges better or worse than

the other.

4 Some of the literature also discusses the alleged phenomenon of retraction.

While there are differences between retraction and disagreement, there is an

abstract sense in which they are similar: the alleged data commonly called

‘disagreement data’ involves interpersonal disagreement, whereas the alleged

data commonly called ‘retraction data’ involves intrapersonal disagreement.

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For reasons like these, faultless disagreement has emerged as a major

focal point in the debate over subjectivism. Attention has focused on how to

characterize faultless disagreement, and whether the data claimed to support

its existence genuinely do so.

While it is not agreed how best to characterize faultless disagreement,

a representative characterization inspired by Kölbel (2004) is:5

FAULTLESS DISAGREEMENT A faultless disagreement is a situation

where there are judges J1 and J2 and a proposition , such that:

(a) J1 judges that ;

(b) J2 judges that not-; and

(b) Neither J1 nor J2 is at fault.

I have left the notion of fault unspecified because I believe there are many

eligible notions and doubt that much is to be gained by anointing one over the

rest. But for concreteness, I will provisionally assume that neither J1 nor J2

is at fault if neither has failed to judge correctly, given their respective

evidence. Although the resulting characterization of faultless disagreement

might be improved in various ways, it will do for present purposes.6

The data typically claimed to support the existence of faultless

disagreement are dialogues involving differences in judgement. To illustrate,

consider the following dialogue about (M+):

5 Although Kölbel (2013) now writes as if he would withhold assent from this. 6 One improvement replaces the requirement that J2 judges the negation of

what J1 judges with their making “incompatible” judgments (Sundell, 2010).

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(1a) ALICE: Mona Lisa is beautiful.

(1b) BOB: No, Mona Lisa isn’t beautiful.

Proponents of faultless disagreement take this dialogue to capture a scenario

conforming to FAULTLESS DISAGREEMENT: Alice and Bob disagree since Alice

asserts what Bob denies (hence (a)–(b)), but both are faultless since neither

has judged to be true what is not true (hence (c)).

While the preceding might be good enough to help fix ideas, it is widely

thought that systematic theorizing about faultless disagreement and the data

claimed to support it requires a distinctive approach to the semantics of

aesthetic judgement. This has led to the recent semantic orientation.

5. The semantic orientation

One of the primary motivations behind the semantic orientation is to

systematize faultless disagreement by representing the subjectivity of

aesthetic judgement as a semantically-relevant parameter within a formal

semantics. Two main semantic approaches have emerged.

Contextualism represents the subjectivity in the content of the

aesthetic judgement.7 Just which proposition is judged will depend on the

judge. This is typically done by taking these propositions to represent

7 This use of ‘contextualism’ is more common among semanticists and should

not be confused with another use more common among aestheticians which

denotes the view that something’s aesthetic features depend on the historical

context in which it is situated.

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relations between artworks and judges’ subjective points of view. For

example, in uttering (1a) Alice asserts the contextualized proposition (Ca)

whereas in uttering (1b) Bob denies the contextualized proposition (Cb):

(Ca) Mona Lisa is beautiful to Alice.

(Cb) Mona Lisa is beautiful to Bob.

Since (Ca)-(Cb) are compatible, neither Alice nor Bob get the facts wrong.

Neither is at fault.

(Aesthetic) evaluativism represents the subjectivity in the truth of the

aesthetic judgement.8 Whereas which aesthetic proposition is judged will not

depend on the judge, its truth-value will. Relativizing truth in this way can

be systematically represented within a semantics. The familiar idea of

evaluating a proposition’s truth-value relative to a circumstance of evaluation

is extended to include a context of assessment representing the judge’s

subjective point of view. MacFarlane (2014, p. 90) gives a characteristic

formulation of this as:

(AS) Proposition is true at a context of use u and a context of assessment a iff is

true at all circumstances of evaluation compatible with ⟨u,a⟩.

To illustrate, letting uA represent the context in which Alice’s judgement is

made and letting aA and aB represent, respectively, Alice’s and Bob’s

subjective points of view, then in uttering (1a) Alice asserts (M+) which is

8 Evaluativists are more commonly labeled ‘relativists’ in the literature. I use

‘evaluativism’ instead of ‘relativism’ to avoid confusion with the kind of

relativism discussed later.

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true relative to ⟨uA,aA⟩ whereas in uttering (1b) Bob denies (M+) which is

false relative to ⟨uA,aB⟩. Since the truth of Alice’s assertion is compatible with

the truth of Bob’s denial, neither is at fault for getting the facts wrong.

Much of the interest in the debate between these two semantic

approaches stems from their dialectical roles in accommodating faultless

disagreement.

A familiar problem for contextualism is its struggle to capture the

disagreement of faultless disagreement. Alice does not assert what Bob

denies. Generally, there is no common aesthetic proposition asserted by one

judge and denied by the other. Disagreement lost.9

Evaluativists advertise their view as improving over contextualism by

retaining disagreement. Although Alice’s assertion is true relative one

context of assessment and Bob’s denial is true relative to another context of

assessment, Alice nevertheless asserts the proposition Bob denies.

Disagreement regained.

Here we have a working illustration of the semantic orientation:

Faultless disagreement is widely thought to be evidence for subjectivism. But

accommodating faultless disagreement apparently turns on the semantics of

aesthetic judgement. So the subjectivist agenda itself apparently turns on the

9 Plunkett and Sundell (2013) criticize the implicit assumption that Alice and

Bob disagree only if she asserts what he denies.

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semantics of aesthetic judgement. Hence the dialectical significance of the

semantic debate to assessing the subjectivist agenda.

6. Disagreement lost? A dilemma

But, upon reflection, the significance of this semantic orientation is called

into question by doubts about whether faultless disagreement can play the

desired dialectical role in helping to settle the debate over a contextualist or

an evaluativist semantics.

These doubts are perhaps best brought out in the form of a dilemma

over what the locus of disagreement is. Abstractly, a locus is a possible

subject of disagreement. Although we ultimately wish to say something more

concrete about what a locus is, I will not build anything more into this

abstract characterization. This is because the horns of the dilemma focus on

different concrete options for what a locus might be, and its abstract

characterization shouldn’t prejudge which horn to take.

It is widely thought that a locus must somehow involve a proposition

(or at least something proposition-like). But we may distinguish between

whether a proposition’s involvement is “ambivalent” or “concerned.” Consider

this example from MacFarlane (2007, p. 23):10

Consider Jane (who inhabits this world, the actual world) and

June, her counterpart in another possible world. Jane asserts

10 MacFarlane (2014, p. 128) reiterates this case but hedges how seriously to take it.

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that Mars has two moons, and June denies this very proposition.

Do they disagree? Not in any real way. Jane’s assertion concerns

our world, while June’s concerns hers. If June lives in a world

where Mars has three moons, her denial may be just as correct

as Jane’s assertion.

The proposition that Jane asserts and June denies represents Mars having

two moons. But Jane’s assertion concerns Jane’s world, whereas June’s

denial concerns June’s word. So if we ask whether Jane and June disagree,

then we must take the locus to be the proposition as ambivalent about or

concerned with its targets. Generally, an ambivalent locus is a proposition

apart from its target whereas a concerned locus is a proposition paired with

its target. Presumably, what explains MacFarlane’s inclination to say that

Jane and June don’t disagree is his temptation to take the locus of their

respective judgements to be concerned, not ambivalent.11

A dilemma then arises for evaluativists when deciding whether the

locus of Alice’s and Bob’s respective judgements is ambivalent or concerned.

The first horn is that the locus is ambivalent. It seems that ambivalent

loci do not represent in any familiar sense (cf. (Einheuser, 2008) and (Wright,

2008)). They would be just as inept at representing a state of the world as the

Kaplanian character of ‘I am here now’ without its targeted person, place,

11 This proposal is, in effect, MacFarlane (2007)’s (although I should add that

MacFarlane has reservations about this proposal).

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and time. If ambivalent loci do not represent a state of the world, they are not

truth-apt. The evaluativist semantics reflects this: since the truth-value of a

proposition cannot be evaluated without a context of assessment, ambivalent

loci will not be truth-apt. The “truth-ineptness” of these ambivalent loci not

only obscures how there could be disagreement about them, it also blocks the

application of evaluativism’s distinctive characterization of faultlessness in

terms of relative truth. There is no faultless disagreement.

The second horn is that the locus is concerned. Although there are

different views about what the targets of concern will be, it would seem the

details don’t matter.12 Whatever they are, Alice’s assertion will not concern

what Bob’s denial concerns. The evaluativist semantics reflects this: the

target of Alice’s assertion will be represented by ⟨uA,aA⟩ whereas the target of

Bob’s denial will be represented by ⟨uA,aB⟩, and so there will be no common

concerned locus. But then Alice and Bob no more disagree—faultlessly or

not—than do Jane and June.13 Again, there is no faultless disagreement.

The dilemma therefore raises the difficulty that there is no way for

evaluativists to construe the locus of disagreement between Alice and Bob in

12 Anticipating what’s to come later: relationism, relativism, and

fragmentalism each provide its own distinctive view about what the target of

a concerned locus will be: relationists will take it to be an evaluational fact;

relativists will take it to be an aesthetic fact composing reality relative to a

beholder; and fragmentalists will take it to be a fragmented aesthetic fact. 13 Moltmann (2010) makes similar point: that judgers aware of the

evaluativist semantics for the aesthetic sentences they judge would not

plausibly take themselves to disagree.

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a way that retains faultless disagreement. If that’s right, then faultless

disagreement won’t play the dialectical role of helping to settle the debate

over a contextualist or an evaluativist semantics. And that would diminish

interest in the semantic orientation which makes that debate so prominent.

Now, that’s all rather quick. My presentation of the dilemma has been

abstract. In particular, the contrast between ambivalence and concern is

somewhat obscure. Until it is clarified, it will be unclear what precisely the

dilemma is, and what its significance for the semantic orientation really is.

But perhaps some clarity can be gained by reversing the usual practice

of semantic ascent and “metaphysically descending” to examine what the

concern is of at the object level. What about the world might make for the

relative truth of an aesthetic proposition?

7. Metaphysical descent

Appreciating what “metaphysical descent” might offer requires isolating

evaluativism’s semantics from its metaphysical interpretation.

To illustrate what I have in mind, consider the proposition expressed

by a token judgement of the sentence:14

(S) Mike is sitting.

14 This illustration relies on denying that propositions are “time-stamped”: a

time does not help determine the truth-value of a proposition by being a

constituent of that proposition.

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Since there are times when I’m sitting and other times when I’m not, the

truth-value of the proposition will vary with the state of my body over time.

One thing we might want a semantic theory to do is systematize this.

This is typically done by introducing circumstances of evaluation into the

semantics to represent these states of the world so that we can evaluate the

truth-value of propositions relative to them.

Systematizing the evaluation of a proposition’s truth-value relative to

a circumstance of evaluation does not by itself target the particular state of

my bodily position at a time my judgement of (S) concerns. That requires

supplementing the semantic theory with a speech act theory, which supplies,

for a given token judgement of a sentence, the targeted state of the world for

representation by the circumstance of evaluation.

Even the combined semantic/speech act theory does not reveal the

nature of the targeted states of the world represented by the circumstances of

evaluation. One view is that it is the state of an individual (me) instantiating

a universal (sitting). Another view is that it is the state of a complex

individual (my bundle of tropes) having a simple individual as a part (the

trope Mike’s sitting). Deciding between views like these requires

supplementation with a metaphysics.

These considerations suggest that the semantic role of a circumstance

of evaluation underdetermines the metaphysics of whatever might fill that

role. This shouldn’t be misinterpreted. I am not claiming that the

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underdetermination is a defect in the evaluativist’s semantics. I concede that

the underdetermination may be irrelevant to reasonable goals that the

semantics is intended to serve. Nothing prevents us from supplementing the

semantics to resolve the underdetermination, if we so wish. My point, rather,

is that the resources at the metaphysical level might outstrip those at the

semantic level. And this might be important, especially if overlooking those

resources leads us to miss opportunities for progress. Thus, metaphysical

descent might help illuminate evaluativism’s distinctive contribution to

subjectivism in a way that the semantics by itself cannot.

8. Aesthetic fact

Metaphysically descending, our question is: What state of the world might

verify the relative truth of an aesthetic proposition?15

Perhaps the most straightforward answer is an aesthetic fact. The

notion of fact that I have in mind is (I think) uncontroversial. I say that a fact

is a state of the world. Examples of such states include your existing and

electrons being charged. Anyone who thinks there is a world that is ever in

some or other state will think there are facts in my sense. While it will be

15 My use of ‘verifier’ stems from Russell (1940) and has more in common

with current usage of the term ‘truthmaker’, although I have avoided that

term to sidestep debates about what truthmakers are (cf. (Mulligan, Simons,

& Smith, 1984), (Armstrong, 2004), and (Fine, forthcoming)). In particular,

my use of ‘verifier’ does not have verificationist connotations.

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disputed what the nature of facts so understood is, it won’t be disputed

whether there are any.

Facts are verifiers for propositions. A proposition is true just in case it

is verified by the facts, i.e. that the targeted fact obtains. For example, the

proposition that you exist is true just in case it is verified by the fact that you

exist, i.e. that the fact that you exist obtains. We might say that a fact is the

truth of a proposition, as opposed to a true proposition.

Facts are what are represented by circumstances of evaluation. In

taking the evaluation of a proposition’s truth-value to be relative to a

circumstance of evaluation, we are taking its truth-value to depend on

whether its verifiers obtain. These verifiers are facts.

To a first approximation, we may say that an aesthetic fact is a fact

containing some aesthetic property, such as being beautiful or being an

elegantly dignified representation. While I will make no attempt to say

precisely what aesthetic properties are, they will presumably be relational,

involving: spatial relations among particles of ink or marble; or dispositional

relations among my visual apparatus, lighting conditions, and such particles;

or historical facts about the conditions under which those particles were

arranged.

But the intended significance of the debate over aesthetic facts will be

lost if these aesthetic properties are taken to be relational in certain other

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ways.16 To illustrate, consider the fact I find Mona Lisa beautiful. This fact

does not ascribe the aesthetic property of being beautiful to Mona Lisa.

Instead, it ascribes the evaluator relational, or evaluational property of being-

beautiful-to to the pair of me and Mona Lisa. This evaluational property is

not an aesthetic property. To think otherwise would be to confuse an

aesthetic property with what one takes to be an aesthetic property. So the

evaluational fact that I find Mona Lisa beautiful is not a genuine aesthetic

fact. Again, to think otherwise would be to confuse an aesthetic fact with

what one takes to be an aesthetic fact. This sort of confusion would be

analogous to confusing a moral property, or fact, with what a moral code

takes to be a moral property, or fact.

Thus, I will use ‘aesthetic fact’ in such a way that no aesthetic fact is,

or is grounded in, any evaluational fact, or indeed any non-aesthetic fact.17 I

realize that some philosophers would adopt a contrary usage of ‘aesthetic fact’

that allows aesthetic facts to be, or to be grounded in, non-aesthetic facts,

such as these evaluational facts. Even if this were a terminological matter,

the terminology would matter. While there is no serious question whether

there are evaluational facts of this sort (cf. what a moral code takes to be a

moral fact), there is a substantive question whether there are aesthetic facts

16 Fine (2005, pp. 271-272) and Harman (ms) make related points, albeit

about different domains (tense for Fine, morality for Harman). 17 Some facts ground another fact just in case the latter holds in virtue of the

former. Raven (2015) gives an overview of ground.

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(cf. moral facts). But this substantive question is obscured with the contrary

usage. My usage avoids this pointless obscurity, and so is preferable.

9. Proof of the unreality of the aesthetic

The focus on aesthetic facts helps sharpen the Humean conflict between

subjectivity and universality. Indeed, it can be leveraged into an apparent

proof of the unreality of the aesthetic that is importantly analogous to Fine

(2005)’s reconstruction of McTaggart (1908)’s infamous proof of the unreality

of time.18 The upshot is that the proof starkly exposes how evaluativism

underdetermines the metaphysics underlying the relative truth of an

aesthetic judgement.

To formulate the proof, we will need to appeal to the idea of an

aesthetic fact being oriented toward a beholder. The idea can be brought out

in analogy with how a tensed fact might be oriented toward a time. Focusing

on the case of time, suppose we recognize the tensed fact (S)—that Mike is

sitting. Whether or not the tensed fact (S) holds will somehow depend upon

to which time it is oriented (e.g. it might hold now, not then). And perhaps we

might distinguish various accounts of what it would be for (S) to be oriented

toward this or that time. But in insisting that (S) is tensed, we will refuse

18 Much of the following discussion of the proof, reactions to it, and its

application to subjectivism is drawn from or inspired by Fine (2005).

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any attempt to explain this orientation by explaining (S) in terms of the

tenseless fact that Mike is sitting at time t.19

The role a time plays in orienting a tensed fact is analogous to the role

a beholder plays in orienting an aesthetic fact. Just as we may conceive of a

tensed fact being oriented toward a time, we may analogously conceive of an

aesthetic fact being oriented toward a beholder. Just as a time is that to

which a tensed fact is oriented, so too a beholder is that to which an aesthetic

fact is oriented.

This abstract characterization of a beholder’s role underdetermines

precisely what might play that role. Perhaps it is a person capable of

aesthetic sentiment and judgement, or perhaps it is a standard relative to

which aesthetic sentiments and judgements might be evaluated. For now, I

don’t want to venture any guesses as to what precisely a beholder is.20 We

will soon see that the proof offers several broad glimpses of what a beholder

might be like. But I don’t want to prejudge any of that at this stage.

Given the notion of beholder-orientation, the proof of the unreality of

the aesthetic proceeds as a derivation of a contradiction from the following

four theses:

19 This case is indebted to Fine (2005), who also explores analogies in the case

of first-personal facts being oriented toward a self. 20 See Lopes (this volume) for relevant discussion. The evaluativist semantics

by itself does not constrain what a beholder might be, other than by

constraining it to be some part of what is represented by the circumstances of

evaluation. (Since I later take circumstances of evaluation to represent states

of the world, this turns out to be an easily satisfiable constraint.)

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REALISM Reality is irreducibly composed of aesthetic facts.

NEUTRALITY No beholder is privileged: the aesthetic facts that

compose reality are not oriented towards one beholder as

opposed to another.

ABSOLUTISM The composition of reality is not irreducibly relative (to a

beholder), i.e. its relative composition by the facts is grounded in

its absolute composition by the facts.

COHERENCE Reality is not irreducibly incoherent (its composition by

incompatible facts is grounded in its composition by compatible

facts).

Proof. REALISM states that the facts that compose reality include at least

some aesthetic facts (and, given our use of ‘aesthetic fact’, these aesthetic

facts will not be grounded in non-aesthetic facts). Each of these will thus

obtain at some beholder. Now NEUTRALITY states that reality is not oriented

towards one beholder as opposed to another. So reality will presumably be

composed of similar sorts of aesthetic facts that obtain at other beholders.

Thus, as long as aesthetic reality is sufficiently variegated, some of these

facts will have incompatible contents. (For example: if reality is composed of

the fact (with Alice as beholder) that Mona Lisa is beautiful, then it might

also be composed of the fact (with Bob as beholder) that Mona Lisa is

hideous.) By ABSOLUTISM, reality is absolutely composed of such facts. And

that is contrary to COHERENCE.

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The four theses are therefore jointly inconsistent. The reasoning on

which the proof relies would appear to be beyond dispute. And so we are

forced to reject at least one of the theses.21 It turns out, however, that these

theses, in spite of their joint inconsistency, are individually plausible.

The characteristic features of aesthetic judgements, at least at first

glance, offer some support for REALISM and NEUTRALITY. Universality would

seem to support REALISM: for how could either Alice’s or Bob’s aesthetic

judgements be universal unless answerable to underlying aesthetic facts?

Subjectivity would seem to support NEUTRALITY: for how could the

subjectivity of Alice’s and Bob’s aesthetic judgements be respected if both

judgements were oriented toward the same privileged beholder?

General considerations about the nature of reality support

ABSOLUTISM and COHERENCE. What supports ABSOLUTISM is the robust

sense that which facts compose reality is an absolute matter, not irreducibly

relative. What supports COHERENCE is the robust sense that the facts

composing reality must ultimately cohere, not fragment.

The proof thus has an air of paradox: for avoiding inconsistency will

require letting go of something about aesthetic judgements or the nature of

reality which we would have naively wished to accept.

21 Correia and Rosenkranz (2012) argue the proof also relies on a fifth thesis.

But, as far as I can tell, if they are right, the fifth thesis won’t play a

significant role in the present context.

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While the proof is of general interest my focus here is on how it

impacts evaluativism. To my knowledge, evaluativism has not been

considered directly in the light of the proof. Nevertheless, I think it is

profitable to do so.

Evaluativists must reject one of the four theses generating the proof if

they wish to avoid contradiction. But the letter (if not the spirit) of

evaluativism’s semantics is consistent with denying any of the four theses on

which the proof relies. Moreover, each thesis provides its own distinctive

constraint on the underlying metaphysics. Evaluativism is therefore

substantially incomplete without a reaction to the proof.

Although evaluativism itself underdetermines which thesis to reject,

some theses are more natural candidates for rejection than others. The

following sections discuss what evaluativism and its underlying metaphysics

looks like in the light of which thesis it rejects, to what extent the result

offers a distinctive contribution toward the subjectivist agenda, and what

distinctive lacunae it has.22

22 While my focus has been on evaluativist semantics, I believe the central

points would also apply to the factual relativist semantics from Einheuser

(2008) and Einheuser (2011) which evaluates the truth of a proposition

relative to perspectival worlds. A perspectival world is represented by the

ordered pair ⟨o,p⟩, where p represents a perspectival “overlay” applied to the

objective world represented by o. Einheuser (2011, p. 594) writes that

“perspectival contents [propositions] and perspectival facts go hand in hand”.

This claim is plausibly interpreted as saying that the truth of a proposition

relative to a perspectival world is witnessed by the existence of a perspectival

fact. But Einheuser never provides a metaphysical account of what a

perspectival fact is beyond construing them as the verifiers of true

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10. Chauvinism: rejecting NEUTRALITY

To reject NEUTRALITY is to endorse a kind of aesthetic chauvinism.

Continuing the temporal analogy, rejecting the temporal analogue of

NEUTRALITY would chauvinistically privilege some time (such as the present)

toward which the tensed facts would be oriented. In the aesthetic case,

rejecting NEUTRALITY is to chauvinistically privilege some beholder (such as

that of the “One True Aesthetic Standard”) toward which the aesthetic facts

would be oriented.

Oddly, nothing about the evaluativist’s semantics prohibits them from

rejecting NEUTRALITY. The semantics would provide for relativizing truth-

values to contexts of assessment, but an anointed context of assessment

would chauvinistically be privileged over the rest.23 Granted, one might

wonder what the point of the evaluativist’s semantics would be, were it

permitted to indulge in this chauvinism. But that would merely reflect a

curious application of the semantics, and not any incoherence internal to it.

propositions (Einheuser 2011, 594). So, as far as I can see, it is open to

characterize Einheuser’s perspectival facts in any of the three flavors

available to evaluativists: as evaluational facts (§11), or as the relative

holding of aesthetic facts (§12), or as the holding of aesthetic facts in a

fragment of reality (§13). 23 Wright (2008), Schafer (2011), and Sundell (2010) each, albeit in different

ways and for different reasons, take the presence of assessment sensitivity by

itself to be insufficient for whether there is a privileged context of

assessment.

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But rejecting NEUTRALITY conflicts with subjectivism. If some

anointed beholder is chauvinistically privileged over the rest, then it would

establish fault in the “wrong” side of a putative cause of faultless

disagreement. For this reason I exclude rejecting NEUTRALITY as a live

option for evaluativists (given their commitment to the subjectivist agenda).

Evaluativism combined with NEUTRALITY paves the way for the

desired account of faultless disagreement. With evaluativism, the truth-value

of aesthetic judgements will be relative to the context of assessment. With

NEUTRALITY, no context of assessment will be privileged over the rest. This

would then help to explain faultless disagreement over aesthetic judgements.

But the explanation might proceed in several ways, depending on

which of the other theses is rejected. It might initially seem inevitable for the

evaluativist to reject REALISM. For were any aesthetic fact to compose

reality, it would make faulty any aesthetic judgement incompatible with it.

But it turns out that evaluativism permits retaining REALISM and

NEUTRALITY if either ABSOLUTISM or COHERENCE is rejected instead. So all

three options remain. I will consider each in turn.

11. Relationism: rejecting REALISM

To reject REALISM is to accept some kind of aesthetic antirealism. There are

different varieties of antirealism. What they agree on is that either reality is

not composed of aesthetic facts, or its composition of aesthetic facts is

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grounded in its composition of non-aesthetic facts of a certain sort (such as

evaluational facts). Either way, there is a demand to account for aesthetic

judgements without relying on aesthetic facts.

One way of being an antirealist is to deny that reality is composed of

any facts which might verify aesthetic judgements. An example of this kind of

antirealism is Ayer (1952)’s emotivism.

But this way of being an antirealist is unavailable to evaluativists.

Their view is that aesthetic judgements are truth-apt. It’s just that their

truth is assessment relative. The truth-aptness of aesthetic judgements

requires them to have verifiers. The antirealist evaluativist merely denies

that these verifiers are, or are grounded in, aesthetic facts.

What might the verifiers of aesthetic judgements be, if they cannot be

aesthetic facts? Presumably, evaluational facts. Thus, an aesthetic judgement

will be verified by some evaluational fact relating a beholder and the beheld

artwork. Relationism thus retains an absolute and coherent conception of

reality: the evaluational facts grounding the relative truth of aesthetic

judgements absolutely compose a unified reality.

Relationism thus provides for a distinctively relationist

characterization of subjectivity. It is that there are no aesthetic facts, but

only evaluational facts relating beholders to artworks beheld. The

evaluational fact verifying one aesthetic judgement needn’t verify any other

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aesthetic judgement. So these evaluational facts are essentially not universal

because they are jointly compatible.

But relationism has at least four lacunae. The first is to defend the

reification of beholders, since they must exist in order to be relata of the

evaluational facts. The second is to explain the nature of beholders in a way

suitable for their being relata of the evaluational facts. The third is to explain

what relation is contained in these evaluational facts binding artworks to

beholders. The fourth is to explain how the obtaining of such evaluational

facts grounds the relative truth of aesthetic judgements, in light of

evaluativist’s desire to take aesthetic judgements to express non-evaluational

propositions.

12. Relativism: rejecting ABSOLUTISM

Rejecting ABSOLUTISM is to accept a kind of aesthetic relativism. Although

there is a single coherent reality composed of aesthetic facts, its composition

by those facts is an irreducibly relative matter. Whether an aesthetic fact

composes reality is relative to a beholder. No aesthetic fact composes reality

absolutely.

Relativism thus accommodates realism about aesthetic facts by

rejecting an absolute conception of reality: no aesthetic fact composes reality

absolutely, but only relative to a beholder. Relativism avoids chauvinism by

taking these beholders to be on a par: none is privileged.

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Relativism thus provides for a distinctively relativist characterization

of subjectivity. While there are aesthetic facts, it is only ever relative to a

beholder which compose reality. Relative to no beholder will incompatible

aesthetic facts compose reality. Aesthetic facts are thus essentially not

universal because it is never an absolute matter whether any composes

reality and, given NEUTRALITY, no beholder is privileged.

Unlike relationism, relativism needn’t say what relations an artwork

must stand in to a beholder in order to ground the relative truth of aesthetic

judgement, for the aesthetic judgement will be true (relative to a beholder)

just in case reality composes the relevant aesthetic fact (relative to that

beholder).

But relativism has lacunae of its own. The first is to defend the

reification of beholders, since they must exist in order to secure its

availability as that relative to which an aesthetic fact composes reality. The

second is to explain the nature of beholders in a way suitable for it being the

sort of thing relative to which a fact could compose reality. Addressing this

lacuna would seem to require saying how, in principle, it could be a relative

matter whether any fact composes reality and how, in this special case, it

could be relative to a beholder whether an aesthetic fact composes reality.

General doubts about the intelligibility of the former would then extend to

this special case, and this special case might raise doubts of its own if

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beholders are ill-suited for being the sort of thing relative to which a fact

might compose reality.

13. Fragmentalism: rejecting COHERENCE

To reject COHERENCE is to accept a kind of aesthetic fragmentalism.

Although it is not a relative matter whether some fact composes reality, there

is no unified reality composed of all facts. Instead, reality is fragmented, with

each fragment consisting in facts “as held” at a beholder. Two facts which

could not jointly obtain within a fragment might nevertheless separately

obtain across two fragments. But these two facts do not cohere: there is no

unified reality comprising both.

Fragmentalism thus accommodates realism about aesthetic facts by

rejecting a coherent conception of reality: there is no unified reality

comprising the aesthetic facts. Fragmentalism avoids chauvinism by taking

the fragments to be on a par: none is privileged.

Fragmentalism thus provides for a distinctively fragmentalist

characterization of subjectivity. While there are aesthetic facts, they are

fragmented. Reality is divided into fragments, each composed of aesthetic

facts which compose no other fragments. No fact composing any one fragment

precludes any fact composing any other fragment. Aesthetic facts are thus

essentially not universal because there is no unified reality which they all

compose.

305

Unlike relationism and relativism, fragmentalism perhaps needn’t

reify beholders. For a beholder might simply be identified with those

aesthetic facts obtaining in a fragment, where a fragment is identified with a

“maximal” coherent group of aesthetic facts.

But fragmentalism has its own lacunae too. Perhaps the main lacuna

is its intelligibility. Somehow localizing aesthetic facts to a fragment must

not reduce to their composing reality relative to a beholder, on pain of

collapsing into relativism. Somehow the aesthetic facts composing one

fragment will cohere without cohering with the aesthetic facts composing

another fragment. And somehow this is not supposed to induce any

contradiction in reality since there is no unified reality in which the

contradiction exists. General doubts about the intelligibility of a fragmented

reality and the requisite notion of coherence would scuttle fragmentalism

unless they are satisfactorily addressed.

14. Disagreement lost!

Evaluativism thus has three distinctive characterizations of subjectivity

available. And each of these would seem to provide a distinctive

characterization of the problem of disagreement.

While evaluativists will maintain that the propositions judged by Alice

or Bob are ambivalent, the judgements will differ in what they concern. This

can be illustrated by reexamining the dispute captured in the dialogue:

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(1a) ALICE: Mona Lisa is beautiful.

(1b) BOB: No, Mona Lisa isn’t beautiful.

The details will depend on relationism, relativism, or fragmentalism.

Relationists will say that evaluational facts verify Alice’s and Bob’s

judgements. These evaluational facts might be:

(Ca) Mona Lisa is beautiful to Alice.

(Cb) Mona Lisa is beautiful to Bob.

Relationists take these evaluational facts jointly to compose reality. Alice’s

judgement (1a) concerns (Ca), whereas Bob’s judgement (1b) concerns (Cb).

But since (Ca)-(Cb) are compatible, (Ca) may verify (1a) without rendering

Bob’s judgement wrong, and (Cb) may verify (1b) without rendering Alice’s

judgement wrong.

Relativists and fragmentalists do not take evaluational facts like (Ca)-

(Cb) to verify Alice’s and Bob’s judgements. Instead, they say these

judgements are verified by aesthetic facts like:

(M+) Mona Lisa is beautiful.

(M-) Mona Lisa is hideous.

But relativists and fragmentalists disagree over the manner in which these

aesthetic facts compose reality.

Relativists will say that (M+) holds relative to one beholder, whereas

(M-) holds relative to another. But neither (M+) nor (M-) compose reality

absolutely. Alice’s judgement (1a) concerns reality relative to her, whereas

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Bob’s judgement (1b) concerns reality relative to him. It is an irreducibly

relative matter which aesthetic facts compose reality. So Alice’s and Bob’s

judgement are verified, respectively, by the relative composition of reality by

(M+) and (M-). But since reality is only ever relatively composed of one and

not the other of these facts, the verification of the one judgement by the one

fact’s composing reality relative to the one beholder does nothing to preclude

the verification of the other judgement by the other fact’s composing reality

relative to the other beholder.

Fragmentalists will say that (M+) composes the fragment oriented

toward Alice, whereas (M-) holds composes the fragment oriented toward

Bob. Alice’s judgement (1a) concerns her fragment of reality, whereas Bob’s

judgement (1b) concerns his fragment of reality, and neither concerns any

more unified reality. Their judgements are verified, respectively, by reality’s

fragmented composition by (M+) and (M-). But since reality is fragmented,

the verification of the one judgement by the one fact composing the one

beholder’s fragment does nothing to preclude the verification of the other

judgement by the other fact’s composing the other beholder’s fragment.

The common thread is that Alice’s and Bob’s judgements differ in what

they concern: distinct evaluational facts (relationism), distinct compositions

of reality (relativism), or distinct fragments of a fragmented reality

(fragmentalism). But if their judgements differ in what they concern, then

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there would appear to be no common concerned locus between them. The

dilemma from section 6 thus seems vindicated.

15. Against the semantic orientation

I wish to conclude by drawing some lessons from the foregoing against the

semantic orientation.

First, the vindication of the disagreement dilemma suggests a tu

quoque challenge: evaluativism is no better off than contextualism in

accounting for faultless disagreement. This lesson gels with Stojanovic

(2008)’s “equivalence” proof between evaluativist and contextualist semantics

and Dreier (2009)’s similar arguments that they (along with expressivist

semantics) are on par vis-à-vis faultless disagreement. We might learn much

from the debate between evaluativists and contextualists about how aesthetic

language works. But if this debate is to make a distinctive contribution

toward the subjectivist agenda, it is not by way of any distinctive take on

faultless disagreement.

A second lesson is that faultless disagreement is something of a red

herring anyway. Perhaps faultless disagreement is not the evidence for

subjectivism it is commonly taken to be. If so, the inability for evaluativism

or contextualism to represent faultless disagreement is no help or hindrance

to their common subjectivist agenda. Instead, perhaps the subjectivist itch

the evaluativist semantics was supposed to scratch is first and foremost their

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resistance to universality. Metaphysical descent sharpens this point. For the

resistance to universality is naturally expressed as a commitment to

NEUTRALITY which, in light of section9’s proof, might take any of three forms

depending on which of REALISM, ABSOLUTISM, or COHERENCE is rejected.

Accounting for this resistance is thus best done directly in terms of

relationism, relativism, or fragmentalism without gratuitous detours through

a semantics that fails to distinguish between them.

A third lesson is that the metaphysics of (cognitivist) subjectivism

ought to be confronted head-on without false consciousness. We have seen

three different metaphysical foundations which might underwrite

evaluativism, and that it is not at all evident that they are any less “spooky”

than the metaphysical foundations for universalism. Indeed, some are

tempted to view subjectivism as a negative project concerned with showing

that there are no universal aesthetic facts. But this temptation is misguided.

Subjectivism turns out to be a positive project concerned with defending the

existence of evaluational facts relating artworks to beholders (relationism), or

the composition of reality relative to beholders (relativism), or the fragmented

composition of reality (fragmentalism). It is a misleading oversimplification

to say that subjectivism has the “simpler” metaphysics. Subjectivists and

their opponents alike must stake out their own distinctive metaphysics with

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their own distinctive lacunae. The chances of progressing their debate are

dim if these lacunae are not confronted head-on in the light.24

24 Thanks firstly to James Young for organizing the Semantics of Aesthetic Judgment

workshop at which this material was first presented, for editing this volume, and for his

discussion, feedback, advice, and encouragement. Thanks also to the participants of the

aforementioned workshop (Berit Brogaard, David Davies, Craig Derksen, Max Kölbel,

Dominic Lopes, Dan Lopez de Sa, Aaron Meskin, Peter Railton, Isidora Stojanovic, Tim

Sundell) as well as to Margaret Cameron, Alexander Jackson, Klaus Jahn, Colin

Marshall, and Patrick Rysiew for helpful discussion and feedback.

311

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