JOHN E. MACKINNON Scruton, Sibley, and Supervenience Inhis book The Transfiguration of the Common- place, Arthur Danto suggests that the simple, ‘geometrical quality of Hemingway's characters ‘owes much to “the simple declarative sentences by which they are described,” just as, by contrast, the “nuanced, subtle, involuted, .. often neurotic interiors” of Proust’s characters are conveyed by means of lengthy, inflected sentences and “counterposed qualifications.”! Danto’s remark nicely illustrates Frank Sibley’s distinction be- tween the aesthetic and the nonaesthetic, Accord- ing to Sibley, aesthetic qualities are “tertiary” or “emergent” properties that in one way or another depend upon corresponding sets of nonaesthetic features. Thus, when William Paley complained about “the puffy, spongy, spewy, washy style” of undergraduate essays in eighteenth-century Cam- bridge, he would have had to defend his judgment in terms of, for instance, vocabulary, grammar, and certain canons of composition.* Similarly, Guy Davenport's remarks on the “pathos” of Rembrandt, the “voluptuousness” of Titian, and the “glossy triviality” of Dali, or Seamus Heaney's on the “fruity corruption” of a line from Lowell and the “pure windfall grace” of a Walcott lyric are to a considerable extent confirmed, or dis- confirmed, by appeal to colors, textures, and fin- ishes in the one case, and words, sounds, and shythms in the other.* Having granted Sibley’s distinction, one might be tempted to conclude that whereas “we see a bluish-green, ... we only infer the nonextended or nonphysical quality of emotional depth,” that whereas “we read the words on the page, we only infer the human seriousness of the story,” that whereas “we hear a move from E to E-flat, wwe infer a darkening sense of foreboding.” It is important to understand, however, that Sibley, in spite of his having drawn a distinction between types of features and alleged a relation of de- pendence of the one upon the other, does not en- dorse what Garry Hagberg calls this “aesthetic variant of metaphysical extensionalism.”6 Aes- thetic qualities, Sibley insists, are not “condition- governed,” which is to say that the presence of a Tange of nonaesthetic features does not entail the presence of a particular aesthetic quality or set of qualities.” Nor can we be said to infer the pres- ence of such a quality or set of qualities on the basis of our acquaintance with that same range of features. Indeed, Sibley concludes, aesthetic judgment is a fundamentally perceptual matter, amounting to “an ability to notice or see or tell that things have certain qualities.” Inhis book Art and Imagination, Roger Scru- ton, too, insists upon the indispensability of per- ception to aesthetic judgment. According to his affective theory, aesthetic descriptions express. direct experiences that themselves proceed from perceptions of a work's aspects, Thus, one would fully expect him to support Sibley’s account. Surprisingly, however, he does not. What is the precise nature of Scruton’s disaffection? In what follows, I propose to review those criticisms that Scruton marshals against Sibley’s account. We will find that, though a number of the challenges can be countered, the sharpest point of attack for Scruton consists in his implied charge that Sibley’s theory of aesthetic perception is a dis- guised supervenience claim. In this, he commits himself to an interpretation of Sibley that most. commentators take for granted. It is an interpre- tation, however, that ought o be challenged. While there are certainly grounds for assuming that Sib- ley endorses aesthetic supervenience, there are ‘grounds, too, not just for qualifying the strength of his commitment to that view, but even for ab- solving him of any commitment to itat all, ‘The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Cticism 58:4 Fall 2000 Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.384 1 ‘The aesthetic, says Sibley, is rooted in the non- aesthetic without being entailed by it. We might say, therefore, that the dependence in question is real but not entire. For Scruton, however, such a characterization is unacceptably lenient, since it compromises the view of dependence to which he takes Sibley to be committed. He cites Sib- ley’s contention “that emergent properties de- pend on others in some way, but in no particular way.” That the relation of dependence is vague, however, does not diminish the fact of that rela- tion, And the fact of that relation of dependence renders Sibley’s account of aesthetic perception incapable of accommodating the phenomenon of aspect perception. In the case of aspects, Scru- ton observes, “different emergent ‘properties’ can depend on precisely the same set of ‘first-order’ properties,” or nonaesthetic features (p. 36). Here, concerning the duck-rabbit figure that Wittgen- stein discusses, he adds that “the duck aspect and the rabbit aspect are not the same aspect, even though they depend on the same observ- able shapes” (p. 36). Thus, by analogy, the same set of nonaesthetic, or first-order, features can support incompatible critical judements.1° Scru- ton is troubled, not by the possibility of incom- patible judgments, but by the prospects of a the- ory that insists upon a relation of dependence between the aesthetic and the nonaesthetic for accommodating such judgments. In what sense, he asks, “are the incompatible properties A and B dependent on the first-order properties P, Q and R if P, Q and R do not determine either A or Buniquely?” (p. 38). Scruton is aware of Sibley’s insistence that a feature that counts in support of ‘one work's being sad can count in support of an- ‘other work’s being boring or staid and, further, that two works can be sad, boring, or staid in very different and often conflicting ways. Still, ‘he argues that on Sibley’s view a “list of features that constitutes the complete, phenomenal, ‘first- order’ description of the work of art must entail the presence of whatever aesthetic features it has” (p. 33).44 That aesthetic qualities are not condition- governed for Sibley indicates that there are no criteria in respect of which they can be ascribed toa work. This prompts a further, intriguing, crit- icism from Scruton. He points out that most of the terms that we use metaphorically to ascribe ‘The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Crit aesthetic qualities to objects have primary uses in other contexts, But to have a primary use is to have a literal meaning and, therefore, to be ap- plied on the basis of criteria. Accordingly, since our use of such terms in the aesthetic case is in- dependent of the criteria on the basis of which those same terms are applied in their primary contexts, one “could understand one use without understanding the other” (p. 38). In other words, Sibley’s theory of aesthetic perception allows that terms are ambiguous between their aesthetic and primary uses. The consequence of this view would be to sever the vital connection between our aes- thetic and other interests, between, say, the sad- ness of a symphonic passage and the sadness of a person. According to Scruton, however, itis a consequence that we must avoid and that, deed, must fail. The use of the term “sad” to refer to an emotional state is primary, he says, and anyone who does not understand this use of the term “would not know what he was talking about in attributing sadness to a work of art” (p. 38). Indeed, in the absence of any acknowledged re- lationship between art and emotional states, the whole point of using emotion terms to ascribe qualities to works “seems to vanish” (p. 40). For Scruton, the acceptance of this kind of ambigu- ity constitutes the greatest failing of the theory of aesthetic perception. Scruton himself proceeds to defend what he calls an “affective theory” of aesthetic judgment (p. 49), Central to this theory is the notion of di- rect of first-hand experience. According to the affective theory, aesthetic descriptions, so-called, are “non-descriptive” to the extent that they “ex- press not beliefs but rather ‘aesthetic experi- ences” (p. 49). Understanding such a descrip- tion, then, “involves realizing that one can assert it or assent to it sincerely only if one has had a certain ‘experience,’ just as one can assert or as- sent to a normal description only if one has the appropriate belief” (p. 49).12 ‘Scruton expresses his dissatisfaction with the ‘questions that are ordinarily asked in an effort to clarify the nature of aesthetic judgment. These include, “What is an aesthetic feature?” “What is an aesthetic description?” and “How do know that a work of art possesses a certain aesthetic feature?” All ofthese, he concludes, are the wrong, questions. Instead, “we should ask ... what it is to agree to or dissent from an aesthetic descrip- tion” (p. 49). Later, Scruton provides an answer, Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.MacKinnon Scruton, Sibley, and Supervenience suggesting that “to agree to an aesthetic descrip- tion isto ‘see its point,’ and this ‘seeing the point” is to be elucidated in terms of some response or experience” (p. 55). As genuine descriptions are to beliefs, he says, so aesthetic descriptions are to experiences, or what he elsewhere calls “certain “non-cognitive’ states of mind” (p. 49). Scruton refers to the “intimate relation” between descrip- tion and experience as “expression,” explaining that aesthetic description “gives direct expres- sion to the state of mind itself” (pp. 49 and 48). Eventually, he redescribes expression in turn as “the relation of a sentence to its acceptance con- dition,” adding that “the acceptance condition of an aesthetic description ... is an experience” (pp. 55-56). ‘This brings us to a further complaint against the theory of aesthetic perception. According to Sibley, aesthetic qualities are emergent proper- ties. However, Scruton claims that a feature Y is a property of some object X only if it has “real- istic truth conditions,” that is, truth conditions in what he calls “the strong (epistemological) sense” (pp. 29 and 48). Truth conditions of this Kind are able ostensively to verify claims made about the work and are therefore crucial to the teaching and learning of the sentences that ex- press those claims. But this is just another way of saying that such truth conditions furnish the meaning of the sentences in question. Justifica- tion in such cases is ready to hand, in the form of the relevant meanings or truth conditions. With aesthetic descriptions, however, we are pre- sented with cases where the éxtended application of terms confirms an established practice among people who may yet have no idea how their re- sponses are to be justified. As Scruton says, many philosophers deny truth conditions to aesthetic descriptions precisely because we can use them naturally and understand them readily “without knowing how they might be justified” (pp. 48-49). Given that we could never teach or learn the meaning of “sad” on the basis of extended uses of that term alone, Scruton concludes that “aes- thetic descriptions are divorced from truth con- ditions in the epistemological sense: aesthetic features are not properties” (p. 53). Even though he commends the theory of aesthetic perception for assuming that ‘‘in matters of aesthetic judg- ‘ment, you have to see for yourself,” he challenges iton the grounds that itis “unable to explain why you also have to see for yourself” (p. 54), His point 385 is that if, as the theory of aesthetic perception claims, aesthetic qualities are emergent proper- ties, then, since properties have truth conditions, itis not the case that I have to see the quality my- self in order to know that an object possesses it. For “there are circumstances where the opinion of others can give me a logically conclusive rea- son for saying that [the quality] is there.” “In aesthetics,” he continues, “you have to see for yourself precisely because what you have to ‘see’ isnot a property” (p. 54). Ifa feature lacks truth conditions, then it is not a property, and in the absence of truth conditions, a description of that feature can only be confirmed by acceptance con- ditions, namely, “what its to understand it, accept it, or see its point,” that is, an experience (p.52).!3 Before proceeding any further, we ought to pause in order to reflect briefly on the criticisms Scruton has advanced against Sibley’s theory of aesthetic perception. The three primary fronts on which he challenges Sibley are those concerning the dependence of aesthetic qualities on nonaes- thetic features, the ambiguity of aesthetic language, and the conception of aesthetic qualities as emer- gent properties. Let us consider these in reverse order. Even if Scruton’s rejection of the conception of aesthetic qualities as properties is convincing, it remains to be asked whether it constitutes a fair complaint against Sibley. For while itis true that Sibley regards aesthetic qualities as emer- gent properties, it is no less true that he denies that descriptions of these properties have criteria. Scruton, we know, is aware of this, noting that “it is Sibley’s contention that there simply are no ctiteria for aesthetic descriptions” (p. 32). In- deed, bearing in mind his rejection of the idea that aesthetic qualities and our judgments about them are condition governed, we could justifi- ably characterize Sibley's denial of criteria as the central feature of his argument. Therefore, if the thrust of the objection against the portrayal of aesthetic qualities as properties is that proper- ties require truth conditions, which cannot be determined for aesthetic qualities, then Sibley ‘would surely concur. Here, then, the disagreement ‘must simply be verbal. In other words, if Sibley ‘were to embrace Scruton’s definition of proper- ties in terms of realistic truth conditions, he could not help but deny that aesthetic descriptions iden- tify properties, if only to be consistent with the direction of his own argument, Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.386 Above, I described as intriguing Scruton’s ar- ‘gument that the theory of aesthetic perception relies on terms that are ambiguous between their aesthetic and nonaesthetic uses and that this am- biguity undermines in turn the vital connection between our aesthetic and other interests. But however intriguing it may be, the question re- ‘mains as to whether it is accurate. The contrast that Scruton draws between the theory of aes- thetic perception and the affective theory that he favors is in effect a distinction between a theory that defends the idea of metaphorical meanings and one that rejects it, insisting instead that lit- eral meaning persists unaltered through all ex- tended uses. Thus, having declared that the “first problem for an affective theory is how to avoid the ambiguity that destroyed the theory of aes- thetic perception,” Scruton indicates that the so- lution consists in ensuring that “the same mean- ing” of a term be preserved in all extended uses to which it is put (p. 49). If the “normal referen- tial function” of terms is suspended, after all, the “normal meanings” of those terms must be re- tained if we have any hope of our remarks being understood (p. 49). ‘Now, Scruton presumes to have established that on the theory of aesthetic perception the use of terms is ambiguous, that, in other words, one could in principle understand a term’s extended use without understanding its primary use. This follows from the discrepancy that he notes be- ‘tween literal uses for which there are criteria and extended uses for which there are none. How- ever, this discrepancy is apparent on the affec- tive theory too. Aspects, like aesthetic features, Scruton admits, “do not have criteria” (p. 52). Furthermore, so radically different are their re- spective uses, he says, that there is no relation between the extended and the literal (p. 50). In- deed, “we can find no clue in the meaning of the term as to how we can justify applying it in aes- thetic judgement” (p. 56, emphasis added). Why, then, as in the case of aesthetic perception, does this not condemn the affective theory to ambi- ‘guity and the consequent fracturing of our vari- ‘ous interests? Scruton’s response amounts to a condensed version of the arguments that Donald Davidson and Stephen Davies mount against the notion of metaphorical meaning.'¢ “The only clear expla- nation of what the terms mean in their aesthetic ‘The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism use,” he says, “is to be given by referring back to their ordinary use,” adding that “terms do not have a speciai kind of meaning when used in aes- thetic descriptions, even though terms are being employed differently there” (p. 56). In other words, terms used to describe aspects or aesthetic qualities are derived from some primary or lit- eral use. And yet, they “must have the same mean- ing when describing aspects as they normally have: hence they cannot have other criteria for their application in this secondary use. It follows that, in their use to describe aspects, terms need have no criteria for their application” (p. 53). According to the affective theory, then, while literal uses of a term have criteria and extended uses do not, the fact remains that the one derives from the other, thereby ensuring a relation be- tween them and averting a decline into ambigu- ity. But then, why is it assumed that this option is not also open to Sibley? In fact, itis an option of which Sibley himself is aware and that he fully endorses. He challenges, for instance, the assumption that common or lit- eral language is “an ill-adapted tool with which we have to struggle” in our effort to frame aes- thetic descriptions, urging that we could not use terms aesthetically “without some experience of situations where they are used literally.”!5 Not only does Sibley thereby avoid the problem of ambiguity, he also passionately defends the very connections between our aesthetic and other in- terests that that ambiguity is supposed to threaten. Protesting the portrayal of our aesthetic interests as merely esoteric, he counters that we exercise our taste “not only when discussing the arts but quite liberally throughout discourse in everyday life” and that our habit of describing objects and situations aesthetically proceeds from “natural interests and admirations.”!6 This leaves only Scruton’s reservations about the dependence of aesthetic qualities upon non- aesthetic features to stand as an objection against the theory of aesthetic perception. As Thave noted, his response differs from our own on this subject. Granted, aesthetic qualities depend on nonaes- thetic features for Sibley, but, equally, no list of such features can entail any judgment about those qualities. For Scruton, this incomplete depen- dence is dependent enough to render problematic the possibility of incompatible aspects or judg- ‘ments, whereas, forus, itis sufficiently incomplete Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.MacKinnon Scruton, Sibley, and Supervenience to allow openly for such incompatibilities. None of these challenges to Scruton’s critique of Sib- ley counts against his own affective theory, but they do collectively suggest that the directions of the two arguments are generally common. Both, in other words, emphasize the perceptual as opposed to the propositional character of aes- thetic judgments. What accounts, then, for Scru- ton’s uneasiness? For Sibley, an object has aesthetic qualities because ofits nonaesthetic constitution. The one depends upon the other. But that that depen- dence is odd or incomplete is illustrated both by the fact that the same arrangement of nonaes- thetic features can support different aesthetic ascriptions and by the fact that the same aes- thetic quality can be ascribed to different arrange- ments of nonaesthetic features. Concerning the former, we can imagine cases where the same arrangements of textures, notes, words, or ges- tures will warrant the ascription of serenity to ‘one work, but solemnity or sentimentality, cold- ness or ponderousness to others. Now, one might ‘well concede this, but simply claim that the par- ticular arrangement of nonaesthetic features ap- pears in each such case with different accompa nying sets of nonaesthetic features. In other words, there ought to be nothing surprising about an arrangement of nonaesthetic features count- ing toward a particular aesthetic quality in one work while counting toward different aesthetic qualities in others if that arrangement is simply ‘common part of otherwise different wholes. Thus, one might proceed to argue that while fea- tures can count toward or contribute to different aesthetic qualities, depending on the greater whole of which those features are a part, itis in- Coherent to claim ‘that works that are identical across their respective ranges of nonaesthetic features can be aesthetically different. In other ‘words, any aesthetic difference presupposes some nonaesthetic difference, however minor. On this view, aesthetic qualities are said to be superve- nnient on nonaesthetic features. ‘We see now the force of Scruton’s objection. Like Jaegwon Kim, Scruton takes Sibley to be a defender of aesthetic supervenience.'? Our ques- tion is, Does Sibley in fact defend such a view? Is that view at least implied by his remarks? And, if so, are his pronouncements unqualified in their enthusiasm, or is there evidence to the contrary, + 387 indications of uneasiness, indifference, even out- right rejection? Sibley’s work, perhaps more than anyone else's, has served as an impetus for serious inquiry into the logic of aesthetic judgment. And certainly, he has managed to direct our attention in this way by, above all, focusing on the curious de- pendence of the aesthetic upon the nonaesthetic. Interest in this dependence relation lies at the heart of the supervenience claim. Kim advances his own account of supervenience because, he says, if we want to give content to the view that the mental is dependent upon the physical or the aesthetic upon the nonaesthetic, “we need anew account of this dependence.”!® In its most basic and unapologetic form, the supervenience theory dictates that a quality or set of qualities cannot change unless its subve- nient base changes. The attraction of this strat- egy, at least for one committed to the view that there are such things as fitting, illuminating, and even correct aesthetic judgments, as well as those that are inept, confused, and even wrong, is that it grounds aesthetic qualities so firmly in their nonaesthetic base. It amounts to the claim, “a work thus constituted can only be x, oF x, y, Z at the same time, but not x at one time, y at an- other, and z at still another, or x from one point of view, y from another, and z from still another.” In other words, there is a way that works of art are. ‘There is ample evidence in Sibley’s work to ‘suggest that he is committed to this view. Our in- terest in aesthetics, he says, is with “what really is,” with the “‘intrinsic’ qualities” of works, the character they “have.”!? If one were to give sense to sayings like “beauty is in the object” and “beauty is in the eye of the observer,” he adds, “the case of art tends to favor the former, that of nature the latter.”20 Thus, a work has the char- acter it does independently of whether anyone happens to recognize it as such 2! Specific claims about, say, the sadness of a work are, therefore, “often true.”22 Beyond his evident interest in dependence re- lations and his objectivist sympathies, Sibley’s ‘commitment to supervenience appears to be re- flected, too, in his notion of negative condition governedness. Although aesthetic qualities, he Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.388 ‘maintains, are not governed by conditions in the form of nonaesthetic features, they can be said to be negatively so governed. If I am told, for in- stance, that a painting “consists solely of one or two bars of very pale blue and very pale grey set at right angles on a pale fawn background, I can be sure that it cannot be fiery or garish or gaudy or flamboyant.”23 Imagine, however, that the work in question belongs to a series called “white paint- ings,” that all other paintings in the series are white or cream, and that the executing artist, over the course of a long and productive career, has never used any other paint than white or cream. In such a case, one might well regard the work Sibley describes as flamboyant after all. Given his {quite confident assertion to the contrary, however, it would seem that, for him, aesthetic qualities are not conditioned by contextual or historical factors, that they depend only on nonaesthetic fea- tures that are somehow “natural” in their signif icance, and that the aesthetic, therefore, straight- forwardly supervenes upon the nonaesthetic.2+ And yet, at no point does Sibley explicitly en- dorse the aesthetic supervenience thesis, as ex- pressed in the slogan: “No aesthetic difference without a nonaesthetic difference.”25 In “Aes- thetic and Nonaesthetic” he comes close, claim- ing that “any aesthetic character a thing has de- pends upon the character of [its] nonaesthetic qualities ... and changes in its aesthetic charac- ter result from changes in its nonaesthetic qual- ities.”26 But in order for this passage to express the supervenience thesis definitively, it would have to read, “changes in its aesthetic character result only from changes in its nonaesthetic qual- ities.” Elsewhere, too, Sibley remarks on how the aesthetic character of a work is due to that work's being “just as it is,” its nonaesthetic features being “exactly as they are,” and on how “a small alteration” of those features, “the slightest change” at the nonaesthetic level, “would work a remark- able aesthetic change.”2” But again, it is uncon- troversial that nonaesthetic change can, and likely will, effect aesthetic change. What we want to know is whether Sibley believes that this is the only way in which aesthetic change can be ef- fected, whether or not he would grant, that is, that aesthetic character can change if nonaes- thetic features remain the same while contextual factors shift. Inhis essay in memory of Sibley, Colin Lyas reminds us that “Aesthetic Concepts,” Sibley’s ‘The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism ‘most influential work, is divided into two parts and that these parts address significantly differ- cent, though of course related, issues. The first part is preoccupied with the issue of dependence, that ‘curious relation that obtains between the aesthetic and nonaesthetic: how the former seems some- how to “result from” or be “caused by” the lat- ter. The second, on the other hand, is concerned with what Sibley calls “the critic’s talk,” those methods to which the critic resorts in her or his efforts to furnish us with a “perceptual proof” of the qualities of a particular work.28 Broadly speaking, then, whereas the first reflects a meta- physical interest, the second reflects an episte- ‘mological interest, specifically an interest in what ‘we might call critical epistemology. Clearly, itis, the first set of deliberations that have inclined commentators to identify Sibley as a standard- bearer of aesthetic supervenience. The second set, meanwhile, has been, in Lyas’s words, “un- justly neglected."2° Not surprisingly, it is here that one begins to detect that the fit between Sibley and supervenience is not neatly as cozy as has been commonly supposed. Sibley insists that our ability to notice and re- spond to the aesthetic qualities of works of art can be “cultivated and developed.”2° Such ad- vances are facilitated, however, by more than sim- ply an unflagging attention to those works’ non- aesthetic features. According to Sibley, the critic can assist us, and indeed we can train ourselves, to discern the qualities of a work by drawing com- parisons and contrasts, by referring to “parallels” and “peripheral cases.”3! Thus, the efforts of the viewer, reader, or listener are not exhausted by her or his meticulous attention to nonaesthetic features, Indeed, this activity begins to assume the proportions of a crucial preliminary, or per- haps better, a persistent but only partial interest that must be supplemented by an effort to situ- ate the work in question within a particular com- parison class. Failing this, a “biographical sketch” of the artist may occasion the refinement of judg- ment that we seek.>2 Even an awareness of the title of the work can assist us in this regard.? ‘This last observation is especially striking, since the role that knowledge of a title can play in the refinement of aesthetic judgment is ordinarily cited by inveterate opponents of supervenience, their _ point being that we would surely be inclined to ascribe different qualities to visually indiscernible objects if one were called, say, “A Portrait of Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.MacKinnon Scruton, Sibley, and Supervenience ‘Aunt Mabel” and the other “Scream in Purple and Green.”34 ‘Those who insist upon Sibley’s commitment to supervenience would here remain unrepentant. For to suppose that one necessarily undermines the supervenience claim by invoking a variety of contextual considerations is to subscribe to a quite attenuated conception of what the subve- nient base can be. In other words, one need not identify the subvenient base with nonaesthetic features alone. Instead, one might follow Jerrold Levinson and include contextual attributes within the subvenient base. Thus, one can defend aes- thetic supervenience while at once granting that such considerations as “being painted by Mon- drian,” “being in a certain genre,” or “being in- fluenced by some earlier work W” are indispens- able to a just assessment of a given work.35 There. are two principal objections that the advocate of this more robust brand of supervenience must. address. The first of these concerns the extent to which the effort to fix qualities to a subvenient base (no matter how richly supplemented) fore- closes on interpretative possibilities. There are no doubt cases where we are justified in our con- fidence that we have determined the proper com- parison class for a particular work and arrived, in turn, at a judicious assessment of its qualities. Still, as Sibley himself suggests, we can draw ‘comparisons and frame metaphors “indefinitely” in an effort to characterize a work more finely. Now, if these critical devices can indeed be in- definitely exercised, and if we concede that it is ‘by means of apt comparison and novel metaphor that we are able to discern features of a work that had previously eluded us, is it not odd to conclude in advance of such attempts that nothing more ‘can be seen, heard, or in any way appreciated about that work? Here, the supervenience theorist protests that she or he never meant to deny that the subve- nient base, even the more robust version that she or he now defends, can be successively rede- scribed, nor that, if it is so redescribed, the aes- thetic character of the work will change accord- ingly. All she or he maintains is that with every adjustment to our conception of the subvenient base, the set of supervenient qualities can, and likely will, change and, furthermore, that those qualities are entirely accountable in terms of the subvenient base, as successively reconceived. Even if the critic were to grant this account, or 389 at least express mystification as to how she or he might go about challenging it, it is likely to frus- trate her or him. For it begins to appear at this point as if the success of supervenience depends upon a persistent moving of the goal posts. It might well be salvaged, that is, but only at the expense of trivializing it.37 Indeed, that so con- venient and sustained a series of redescriptions is required exposes the supervenience claim as little more than an assertion that some quality or set of qualities is grounded in a particular sub- venient base. To the question, “How do you know those qualities can be properly ascribed to that work?” the supervenience theorist replies, “Be- cause they supervene upon its subvenient (ie., nonaesthetic and contextual) features,” which is. simply to assert that they are properly so as- cribed. But, of course, how one might know this is precisely what needs to be addressed. Another way of putting this objection is to observe that in such cases supervenience itself does no work. What matters above all is the perceptual charac- ter of aesthetic experience, how knowledge and attention fashion a perspective that enables us to see for ourselves the various aspects of a work. This leads us to the second of the principal objections that the advocate of supervenience must address. Indeed, it is at this juncture of the debate that Sibley’s remarks are especially re- vealing. Suppose it were known, he says, “that a thing, X, had a determinate characteristic, Q, and that Q was responsible for X having the aesthetic merit P.”38 For our purposes, the “determinate characteristic, Q,” amounts to the subvenient base and “the aesthetic merit, P,” the allegedly super- venient quality. Such a determinate characteris- tic, or base set of characteristics, he insists, could “rarely, if ever, be achieved."3> We might, it is true, succeed in describing a Mondrian to a suf- ficiently exhaustive degree (“two vertical black bars on a white background,” etc.), but we pre- sumably could not do the same for a Turner or a Pollock. “And when we come to poems and music,” Sibley adds, “it is hard to see what a de- scription of their determinate properties would be at all.”#0 Significantly, though, even if we could in a particular instance convincingly detail the sub- venient base, such that all nonaesthetic features ‘were supplemented by all relevant contextual con- siderations, it would be, he claims, “of very little value since it would be usable only with other Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.390 things, Y and Z, which had precisely the same determinate characteristic [or subvenient base], 1 Elsewhere, he resorts to this same strong, even dismissive, language, maintaining that such painstaking determinations are “virtually us less,” since they would apply only to “determi nately identical things."*2 Here, supervenience amounts to the true but vacuous claim that any thing, to the extent that it is that thing, has the qualities that it does. In- deed, the prospect of arriving at a determinate description of a work’s subvenient base is so “dubious,” Sibley says, as to leave us with the preferable, and more sensible, option of saying, in effect, “It goes like this,” and then reproduc- ing, quoting, or playing the work in order to draw attention to those features, and the relations among them, that account for its aesthetic character.43 ‘Ultimately, then, the issue of critical epistemol- ogy is more vital, for Sibley, than any metaphys- ical deliberations about the relation between dif- ferent kinds of properties. Sibley himself lends some support to this view when he remarks that in““Aesthetic Concepts” he was interested above all to show “not what kinds of dependence there are between aesthetic and non-aesthetic quali- ties, but what kinds there are not.”“4 In other words, his interest in the metaphysical issue of dependence relations is largely negative.45 ‘We have considered evidence that appears both to establish Sibley’s commitment to superve- nience and to progressively qualify the enthusi- asm of that commitment, There are other passages in his published work, however, that constitute a rejection of the theory. For instance, he refers to “notorious cases” in the history of art criticism where no consensus has been reached, where we are inclined to “understand the difference,” “see both sides,” and conclude that “either judgment is acceptable.” For, he says, “not all disputes are settleable as between certain alternatives.”#6 One might counter, of course, that this is merely a pragmatic concession, that it simply expresses an awareness on Sibley’s part of the advisability of critical accommodation in the face of persistent disagreement. And yet, he allows that, in com- plex works particularly, “different critics claim, often justifiably, to discern different features."*7 Thus, one and the same work can sustain the as- cription of different aesthetic qualities. Of the three main reasons we reviewed for as- suming that Sibley advocates aesthetic superve- ‘The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism nience, one was only obscurely implied by his notion of negative condition-governedness. Of the remaining two, his interest in dependence rela- tions is, Ihave argued, ultimately secondary. But we now see how significantly his antisuperve- nience remarks qualify his commitment to ob- Jjectivity as well. For he insists that, though we ‘ought to renounce the sort of “tigid” objectivism that presumes permanently tofix qualities to works, objectivity in aesthetics can nonetheless be cred- ibly defended.*® The objectivity he has in mind, however, is achieved by means of “the critic's talk,” of gesture, allusion, comparison and con- trast, of reason-giving in general. On this view, objectivity is conceived as normative rather than ‘ontological. It is an epistemological, not a meta- physical, standard.*9 ‘According to Sibley, “Aesthetics deals with a kind of perception. People have to see the grace ‘or unity of a work, hear the plaintiveness or frenzy in the music, notice the gaudiness of a color scheme, feel the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone.”5° This seems as un- equivocal an endorsement of Scruton’s affective theory as one could hope for. Still, we know that Scruton is determined to distinguish between his ‘own account and Sibley's theory of aesthetic per- ception, and that he is particularly intent on doing so because he, like many, takes Sibley to be a proponent of aesthetic supervenience. There are certainly some grounds for this suspicion. [have tried to show, however, that there is plenty of ev- idence to the contrary, enough to indicate that Sibley is not so much inclined toward or away from supervenience as he is indifferent to it.51 JOHN E, MACKINNON Department of Philosophy Saint Mary’s University Halifax, Nova Scotia ‘Canada B3H 3C3 INTERNET: jmackinn@shark.stmarys.ca 1. Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Common- ‘place: A Philosophy of rt (Harvard University Press, 1981), 196. 2, See, for instance, Sibley's “Aesthetic Concepts,” Collected Papers in Aesthetics, ed. Cyril Barrett (Oxford Basil Blackwell, 1965), pp. 61-89, and “Aesthetic and Non- aesthetic.” Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 135-159. 3.M.L. Clarke, Paley: Evidences for the Man (University ‘of Toronto Press, 1974), p.25. Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.MacKinnon Scruton, Sibley, and Supervenience 4, Gay Davenport, Every Force Evolves Form (San Fran- cisco: North Point Press, 1987), p. 15; Seamus Heaney, The Government ofthe Tongue (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), pp. 27 and 145. 5.Towe these examples to Garry L. Hagberg. See his Mean- ing and Interpretation: Wingenstein, Henry James and Liter- ary Knowledge (Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 4, em- phases added. Hagberg himself, incidentally is unhappy with this way of putting the problem. 6.Ibid. 7. See, for instance, Sibley's “Aesthetic Concepts,” pp. 64-67, 8, Ibid. p63, See also his subsequent remarks that “we Just see (or filo see) that things are delicate, balanced, and the like” (p. 77) and that our contributions to aesthetic de- bate are attempts at “bringing others to see what we see” (p.79). 9. Roger Scruton, Art and Imagination (London: Methuen, 1974), p.36. All subsequent references to Art and Imagina. tion in this section willbe made parenthetcally inthe text. 10. What Scruton cals first-order and second-order prop- erties correspond, respectively, to nonaesthetic features and sesthetic qualities. See Art and Imagination, . 34, 11. This follows, says Scruton, if we recognize that acs- thetic qualities are “truly dependent” upon their nonaes- thetic counterparts (p. 33). By “truly dependent” he must mean “completely dependent.” Or pethaps he would want to claim thatthe question of completeness is not even appro- priate here: a property is either dependent or it is not. My ‘characterization of the dependence as real but not entire, then, would strike Scruton as an exercise in hedging. 12, Here, itis worth bearing in mind Wittgenstein’ re- mark, “I should lke to say: experience the because.” See his Philosophical Investigations tans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), p. 84 (sec. 177). 13, As Roger Shiner writes, “The problem is not one of un- derstanding how the mention of some non-aesthetic feature licenses an inference to some aesthetic feature. It is rather ‘one of understanding how itis that we come to see what is before our eyes." See his “On Giving Works of Arta Face” Philosophy 53 (1978). 323, 14, Donald Davidson, “What Metaphors Mean,” Critical Inquiry $ (1978): 31-47; Stephen Davies, "Truth-Values and Metaphors,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 42 (1984); 291-302. 15. Sibley, “Aesthetic Concepts,” pp. 82 and 86. 16, bid. pp, 78, 62, and 88. See also Sibley's “Aesthetics andthe Look of Things,” The Journal of Philosophy $6 (1959): 913-914, 12. aegwon Kim, “Supervenience and Nomological In- commensurabes American Philosophical Quarterty 15(1978): 149, See also Shiner, p. 310, and Gregory Currie, “Superve- rience, Essentalism and Aesthetic Properties," Philosophi- cal Studies 58 (1990): 256, n. 7. 18. Kim, p. 151, See also Kim's “Concepts of Superve- rience,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4S (1984): 153. 19. Sibley, “Aesthetics andthe Looks of Things,” pp. 909 and 908, and “Aesthetic Concepts,” p. 63. 20, Sibley, “Aesthetics and the Looks of Things.” p. 909. 21. Sibley. “Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic,” pp. 140 and 146. 22. Ibid, p. 157. 23, Sibley, “Aesthetic Concepts,” pp. 66-67. 391 24, Lowe this point, and the example that illustrates it, to Stephen Davies. 25. Noman Chase Gillespie, “Supervenient Idetites and Supervenient Differences,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 22 (1984): 112. See also John Bender, “Supervenience the Fustfication of Aesthetic Judgments," The Jownal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1987): 38.0. 2 26, Sibley, “Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic"p. 138, 21 id, p. 139. 28, Sibley, “Aesthetic Concepts; Nonaesthetic,”p. 143. 29,Colin yas, "Frank Sibley: In Memoriam,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 36 (1996): 381. 30. Sibley, “Aesthetic Conceps,”p 86. 31. Ibid, pp. 83 and 86-87, 32. Ibid, p. 84, 33.Sibley “Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic,"p. 141. 34, See, for example, Robert Wick, “Supervenicnce and Aesthetic Judgment,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1988): $09-Si1, and Marcia Muelder Eaton, “The Incinsic, Non-Supervenient Nature of Aesthetic Prop- ties," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 521994): 383-397. owe the Aunt Mabel example t Eaton, 35. Jerrold Levinson, “Aesthetic Supervenience,” South. ern Journal of Philosophy 22 (1984): 93-110. 136, Sibley, “Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic,”p. 143 37, Others have made this same point. See, for instance, Wicks, p. SH: Simon Blackbur, Spreading the Word: Ground- ings inthe Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Clarendon Pres, 1984) p. 186; Cute p. 248; Eaton, pp. 387389. 38, Sibley, “‘Particulaity, Art and Evaluation,” Proceed- ings of the Aristotelian Soctety Supplementary Volume 48 (19745: 13. Sibley’s reference here to an sesthetic “merit” ‘ay trouble some readers, given his frequently expressed ‘wish to distinguish between his particular interest in aes- thetic concepts and the perfectly worthwhile, but nonethe- Jess different, interest in “verdicts"—that is, judgments of work as good or bad, excellent or mediocre, superior or inferior to other works, and so on. One might presume, after all that aterm tha confers meri simply na verdict, and that itis therefore iit of me to assume In what flows thatthe “determinate characterization” to which Sibley efersistants- ‘mount fo the subvenient base upon which aesthetic qualities are alleged to supervene. Among the “mert-terms” he dis- cusses, however ar “graceful” and “balanced,” bth of which count as descriptions of aesthetic qualities, not verdicts. 28. Ibid. p. 14, 40. Ibid, p. 12. 41, Ibid, p. 14, emphasis added. 42. Ibid. pp. 19 and 20. 43. Thi, p. 12. 4, Sibley, “Aesthetic Concepts: A Rejoindes,” Pilosoph- ical Review 72 (1963): 81. 45. In ight ofa recent debate between Robert Wicks and ‘ick Zangwil some clarification i perhaps called for here. Zangwill complains that, although fupervenience “is nor ‘mally taken to refer'o a certain relation of metaphysical de- termination between two families of properties," Wicks construe it as “an epistemological matter” (See Nick Zang- will, “Supervenience Unthwarted: Rejoinder to Wicks," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 {1994}: 466), In ‘aiming that Sibley's interes is overwhelmingly epistemo- logical, Iam not suggesting that he, like Wicks, regards su- >. 78, and “Aesthetic and Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.392 pervenione as an eistemoogia matter. Instead ike Zang- will, he recognizes it as metaphysical. Unlike Zangwi However, Sibley appears to regard the decidedly metaphy cal notion of pervenience as uninteresting, T ay tha his interests are primanly epistemological then, ist say that they are peneralydrcted away from the whole ue of ‘46, Sibley, “Objectivity and Aesthetics,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 42 (1968): 32. 47. Sibley, 48. Sibley, “Objectivity and Aesthetics’ 49. Here again, Sibley’s remarks conform nic ton’s own, Compare Scruton’s observations, for instance, in “Aesthetic Concepts,” p. 80, emphasis added. ‘51 and 52. ‘The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism ‘Art and Imagination, p. 182. For related discussions, see Renford Bambrough, “Objectivity and Objects,” Proceed ings of the Aristotelian Society, n.., 72 (1971-12. 65-81 RW. Newell, Objectivity Empiricism and Truth (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), chap. 2 and pp. 36 and 19; Fred D'Agostino, “Transcendence and Conversation: ‘Two Conceptions of Objectivity.” American Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1993): 7-108. 50, Sibley, “Aesthetic and Nonacsthetic.”p. 137. 51. Iwould like to express my gratitude to Stephen Davies of the University of Auckland and Jerrold Levinson ofthe University of Maryland for their comments and eriticisms. ‘Thanks also to Deborah Keema for her help in preparing the final version ofthis paper. Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.