Art and knowledge

Cognitivism
Epistemic question: Can art provide
knowledge?
Aesthetic question: If so, does this
increase its value as art? Plato and
Aristotle, yes. Formalism: no.
Fine (Beauty) Arts: points out to beauty,
not to knowledge
Cognitivism
Aesthetic cognitivism: 1) art can provide
(non trivial) knowledge and 2) art ability to
provide (non trivial) knowledge, to some
extent, determines ist value as art.
Aesthetic anti-cognitivism denies 1 and/or
2.
What kind of knowledge?

Cognitivism
M. Nussbaum (Love's Knowledge): Literature can provide
knowledge in moral areas. Some moral truths can be revealed only
in literature. Philosophy is more abstract, privileges reason; literature
is particular and recognices feelings and emotions. Philosophy can
sketch good life, but specificly we can only understand it in literature.
Carroll: art can deepen our understanding of the moral knowledge
we already have.
R. W. Beardsmore: art deepens our understanding of the actions
manifesting different emotions and moral qualities, and so art allows
us to be more sensitive in our perceptions.
Art can teach us abour values (specially moral values): Novitz,
Eldridge, Sharpe, Kieran y Ricoeur
Cognitivism
Art can provide a knowledge of possibilities:Frank
Palmer holds that thanks to literature we learn through
imaginative imagination what it is like to be a determined
person (z.B, Hamlet) Hilary Putnam, por su parte, afirma
que la novela de Doris Lessing
Aristotle: poetry provides universal knowledge. Fictional
reality, but coherent (truth as coherence).
Kundera: man cannot compare his life with anything
else: Einmal ist keinmal.
But man can create fictional worlds in which can test this
as if (als ob), so art is a kind of epoch that allows man
to explore what could have happened in some other
circumstaces or if he had taken some other decissions.

Cognitivism
Kieslowski (Random, 1981), Lawrence
Durrell (Alexandria Quatrain), Orson
Welles (Citizen Kane, 1940) de Orson
Welles, Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon,
1950) Sidney Lumet (Twelve angry men,
1957), Anand Tucker, Hilary and Jackie,
1998).
Cognitivism
Art can provide knowledge of what actually is (not only of
possibilitis). Freud claimed that many of his insights had been
foreseen by Sofocles and Shakespeare.
Art can provide practical knowledge, namely, the knowledge of how
to carry out some actions (phrnesis).
Collingwood: art as knowledge of emotions.
Goodman: Visual art shows us how to look at the world.
E. W. Beardsmore: literature can help to find sense or meanign in
events previosly meaningless.
Romanticism: art is the place of a relation with the deep mistery of
the world. Art can say the truth about the world.
Novitz: Art provides an experiential knowledge, a knowledge of
what it is like to be in love or loosing a beloved person, by
expanding our consciousness (virtual experience).
Cognitivism explains in part why we give a so important place to art
in our culture and society.

Anti-cognitivism
Plato: art as appearance.
Even though the audience can speak about
learning from art, either they cannot say what
they have learnt, or if they can, it is trivial.
Even if we can learn something from art, there
are no distictive artistic truths, as they are in
science. There are no truths that only art can
provide.
Cognitivist reply: But these truths come with
some other non-cognitivs values (beauty,
density, emotion)



Anti-cognitivism
We cannot learn from art, because art cancels
the reference to real world. Knowledge is not a
question of true beliefs, but of verifiable
truths.
Re: What about new knowledge? z.B: Faustic.
This criticism apply to reference books as well.
We only have an institutional warranty.
Re: Art can be seen also as an evidence of
Weltanschuungen (iconology, ancient art)
Aesthetic relevance of knowledge: how the work
conveys it.
Anti-cognitivism
Music can expand our capacity of listening. Painting our
capacity of viewing.
Objection: In art (literature) we dont mind about the data
(dates, names).
Re: not all cognitive flaw is an aesthetic flaw. Cognitive
values are some between others.
Reference to real world required: makes nudity people
more clever? Try to defend it in a novel (not a satire). So,
reference to real world is nor incompatible with art.
Re: Some topics are always in art (life, sense, God).
So that shows we are not indifferent to its truth.
Anti-cognitivism
An elegant scientific theory, if it is wrong,
is rejected. A beautiful artwork, even
though is false, is accepted. But, agreeing
that truth in art has not the final authority it
has in science does not involve agreeing
that truth is never relevant to the aesthetic
evaluation.