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Literature and Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Catherine Wilson
Catherine Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
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Extract

There is probably no subject in the philosophy of art which has prompted more impassioned theorizing than the question of the ‘cognitive value’ of works of art. ‘In the end’, one influential critic has stated, ‘I do not distinguish between science and art except as regards method. Both provide us with a view of reality and both are indispensable to a complete understanding of the universe.’ If a man is not prepared to distinguish between science and art one may well wonder what he is prepared to distinguish between, but in all fairness it should be pointed out that the writings of anti-cognitivists contain equally strenuous statements of doctrine. For I. A. Richards, poetry consists of ‘pseudo-statements’ which are ‘true’ if they ‘suit and serve some attitude or link together attitudes which on other grounds are desirable’.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 58 , Issue 226 , October 1983 , pp. 489 - 496
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1983

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References

1 Herbert, Read, Education Through ArtGoogle Scholar. Quoted in M., Rader and B., Jessup, Art and Human Values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976Google Scholar), 254.

2 I. A., Richards, ‘Poetry and Beliefs’ in Weitz (ed.), Problems in Aesthetics, 2nd edn (New York: Macmillan Co., 1970Google Scholar), 569.

3 Morris, Weitz, Philosophy in Literature (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963Google Scholar), 78-84.

4 Peter, Jones, Philosophy and the Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975Google Scholar), 47-49.

5 John, Hospers, ‘Implied Truths in Literature’, in Levich (ed.), Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Criticism (New York: Random House, 1963Google Scholar), 367.

6 S. T., Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism quoted in Weitz, op. citGoogle Scholar., 59.

7 Morris, Weitz, ‘Does Art Tell the Truth?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research III, No. 3 (March 1943Google Scholar), 345.

8 Dorothy, Walsh, Literature and Knowledge (Middletown, Ct: Wesleyan University Press, 1969Google Scholar), 96.

9 Monroe, Beardsley, Aesthetics (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1958Google Scholar), 383.

10 Walsh, op. cit., 104.

11 Edith, Wharton, The Age of Innocence (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1920Google Scholar).

12 D. Z., Phillips, ‘Allegiance and Change in Morality’ in Philosophy and the Arts, VI (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures) (New York: St Martin's, 1973Google Scholar). 54-58.

13 L., Auchincloss, ‘Edith Wharton and her New Yorks’ in Edith Wharton: A Collection of Critical Essays, I. Howe (ed.). Quoted in Phillips, op. citGoogle Scholar., 56.

14 Phillips, op. cit., 58.

15 This paper was orignially read at the 1980 sessions of the American Society for Aesthetics in Milwaukee, USA.