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2015 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

METAPHILOSOPHY
Vol. 46, No. 2, April 2015
0026-1068

DEFENDING THE CONTENT APPROACH TO

AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

NOL CARROLL

Abstract: This article defends the content approach to aesthetic experience. It

begins by sketching this approach to aesthetic experience. It then rehearses certain
recent criticisms of the view by Alan Goldman and attempts to rebut them. One of
those criticisms raises a long-standing concern about the authors account that has
recently been called the qua problem. The article concludes by putting this issue
to rest.

Keywords: aesthetic experience, moderate moralism, moderate autonomism,

Immanuel Kant, Monroe Beardsley, Francis Hutcheson, Alan Goldman, disinter-
estedness, the qua problem, embodiment.

The Content Approach to Aesthetic Experience

Over a series of papers, I have advanced what I have called a content
approach to the aesthetic experience of artworks (see, e.g., Carroll 2012).
This approach begins with the observation that inasmuch as aesthetic
experience is an experience, it has content. Thus, a straightforward way to
begin to characterize that experience, it would appear, is to specify its
content.
So, with respect to artworks, what is the content of aesthetic experi-
ence? Looking at the sorts of things that people have most frequently
cited as the objects of aesthetic experience, I think these include formal
properties, expressive properties, and aesthetic properties. All these prop-
erties, of course, might be called aesthetic properties in the broad sense;
however, I am using that term narrowly in order to denote qualities like
brittleness or garishness that, although not expressive properties, are
like them in that they refer to the qualitative dimensions of artworks.
Roughly, these are the kinds of non-expressive qualities to which Frank
Sibley often alludes (see, e.g., Sibley 1959). Furthermore, under the cat-
egory of objects of aesthetic experience I include also reflexive relations
such as attention to the reciprocal interplay between the formal, expres-
sive, and/or aesthetic properties of the artwork and the viewer, listener, or
reader of the work.
Perhaps needless to say, for these experiences to be properly aesthetic,
the viewer, listener, or reader of the artwork must be doing more than

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merely, for example, staring at a painting replete with expressive proper-

ties, like Munchs The Scream. She must be attending to those properties
with understanding that will, in the typical case, require that she be
informed to some degree about the kind of work to which she is attending.
So, on my account, one is having an aesthetic experience of an artwork
just in case one is attending with understanding to the formal properties
and/or the expressive properties and/or the aesthetic properties and/or the
reflexive relations of the aforesaid properties (or just one of them) of the
artwork to the relevant spectator. That is, you are undergoing an aesthetic
experience if you are attending to one or a combination of these features
of the artwork with understanding.
This conception of aesthetic experience is disjunctive. If you are in one
of the preceding mental states with respect to an artwork, then your
experience is aesthetic. That is, meeting at least one of these conditions is
sufficient for aesthetic experience. That is why this version of the content
approach can also be called disjunctive. In addition, it is a deflationary
account because it does not require that aesthetic experience involve some
special evaluative dimension, such as that the experience be valued for its
own sake, a desideratum commonly associated with aesthetic experience
in many of the leading accounts of the phenomenon (see, e.g., Stolnitz
1969).
This kind of approach to aesthetic experience is not unprecedented. In
his earliest attempts to characterize aesthetic experience, Monroe
Beardsley favored an approach like thisthat is, a content approach. He
counted experiences as aesthetic if they involved attention to the unity,
complexity, or intensity of the artwork (see Beardsley 1981, 462). My
approach covers at least the same territory that Beardsley charted insofar
as unity and complexity are formal properties, while the expressive and
aesthetic properties I have in mind are what makes for the intensity of the
artwork; Beardsley referred to these features as regional qualities. Also,
like Beardsley, I do not believe that our attention to these properties needs
to be self-rewarding or valued for its own sake in order to be aesthetic. It
is enough that our attention to them be informed, if only minimally, and
be accompanied with understanding.
I maintain that this sort of approach is superior to evaluative ones
that rest upon the notion that aesthetic experiences be self-rewarding or
valued for their own sake. I see no reason to discount as aesthetic the
experiences of the relevant properties of the artwork that are undertaken
with the aim of some advantage, such as enlarging ones powers of dis-
crimination and improving ones perceptual capacities. For how else
would we categorize attending with understanding to the aesthetic prop-
erties of an artwork besides calling it aesthetic? What other sort of an
experience would it be?
A second advantage of my version of the content approach is that
it allows for negative aesthetic experiences, whereas, arguably, the

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DEFENDING THE CONTENT APPROACH TO AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 173

evaluative approach does not. It seems undeniable that many of our

encounters with artworks can be negative or indifferent. But it does not
seem that these count as aesthetic experiences on the view that aesthetic
experiences are self-rewarding. For it sounds like a contradiction in terms
to say that an unhappy experience of an unintentionally incoherent novel
is self-rewarding.
Defenders of the evaluative view may charge that I am mistaken here.
But they may be relying on an ambiguity in the notion of somethings being
valued for its own sake. This can mean at least two things: that it is being
valued as the kind of thing it is (for example, a lyric poem) and that the
experience is self-rewarding. The former interpretation, of course, is not
subject to the objection that I have just made. But that is not what is at
stake with respect to the evaluative view, since it concerns the object of the
experience and not the experience itself (which is what the evaluative view
maintains is valued for its own sake).
The evaluative view of aesthetic experience claims that aesthetic experi-
ences are necessarily self-rewarding. But, on an unforced reading, all
things being equal, it appears virtually self-contradictory to maintain that
the unfortunate experiencing with understanding of an incoherent drama
is self-rewarding. Nevertheless, such an experience is aesthetic. Again
what else would it be?1
The content approach to aesthetic experience has other virtues, but, for
the moment, let mention of one more consideration suffice. The evaluative
approach to aesthetic experience is very uninformative. How would one
go about instructing the uninitiated about the way in which to go about
having aesthetic experiences? How would you instruct neophytes to have
experiences valued for their own sake? What would you say?
Yet we can instruct others in the ways of having aesthetic experiences
by telling them what to attend to in the pertinent artworks (along with
informing them about the background necessary for attending to those
artworks with understanding). If the friend of the evaluative approach
claims that he will give the same advice to the uninitiated, we will want to
know then what the addition of the requirement that the experience be
self-rewarding adds to the lesson.
One question that arises about the properties Ive listed as the sorts of
things to which aesthetic experiences of artworks attend is what these
properties have in common. Is what I have proposed a mere shopping list
or is there some coherent principle that holds it together?
I maintain that there is a coherent principle here. Recall that we are
speaking of the aesthetic experience of artworks. Thus, it pays to consider

1
Perhaps the defender of the evaluative view of aesthetic experience will argue that
experiences of bad art are valuable because they teach us about badness in art. But even if
that is coherent it shows, at best, that these experiences are instrumentally valuable, not that
they are valuable for their own sake.

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certain common features of artworks in order to get at what binds the

aesthetic experience of them together.
It seems rather uncontroversial to propose we can regard artworks as
having purposes, on the one hand, and ways those purposes are articu-
lated, on the other hand. Arthur Danto, following Hegel, maintains that
something is an artwork only if (1) it is about something and (2) presents
it in a manner appropriate to whatever it is about (see Danto 1997). Danto
refers to this second condition as embodiment. That is, artworks are
about something, and whatever they are about is ideally embodied in an
appropriate manner; this is why Danto refers to artworks as embodied
meanings.
However, the requirement that artworks have aboutness in the sense
of a meaning is too narrow. For artworks may be beneath meaning; they
may be predicated only upon raising a perceptual state or a sensation of
pleasure with nothing else to say. Yet, all artworks have purposes,
including the purpose of celebrating uselessness. So, to return to Dantos
formula, we may amend it by saying that artworks have purposes that
they make manifest, articulate, advance, reinforce, or embody in ways
that are ideally adequate to, or appropriate to, or fitting for their
purposes.
But what does this have to do with the properties to which I contend
aesthetic experience attends? Simply this: those properties are ways in
which the purposes of artworks are articulated or embodied. The form or
structure of the suspense story realizes the aim of the novelto thrill
readers. The expressive properties of the writing articulate its point of
view, as do the aesthetic properties. That is, the formal properties, the
expressive properties, and the aesthetic properties are what implement the
purposes of the artwork. They are how the artwork articulates or
embodiesgives flesh tothe purposes of the artwork. To experience the
artwork aesthetically then is to attend with understanding to the how of
the artworkto contemplate how the artwork works.
Why call this attention aesthetic? Consider how we speak of artifacts
that are not artworks. When we appreciate the fearsomeness of a suit of
medieval armor, we say we are appreciating it aesthetically. Why? Because
we are appreciating the way in which the design of the ensemble facilitates
its purpose, namely, intimidating the enemy. Likewise, when we appreci-
ate the how of a work of art, we are appreciating it aesthetically, that is,
experiencing it with understanding.2

2
At this point, the reader may wonder whether an approach like this can be extended to
the aesthetic experience of nature. This account is based on thinking about artifacts, but
nature is not an artifact. Nature is, however, often heuristically said to have purposes, and
one can contemplate its putative design in light of those putative purposes. Although that is
not the only way in which I think we can experience nature aesthetically, it is one way, as Allen
Carlson has demonstrated throughout his distinguished career.

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Speaking summarily, on my view, when we experience an artwork

aesthetically, we are attending with understanding to how the artwork
works. Ideally the artwork has been formally, expressively, and/or aes-
thetically contrived in ways that advance its purposes. Those purposes
can be as varied as propounding a thesis (for example, that flatness is an
essential feature of painting), raising a feeling (for example, uplifting
delight at the sound of music), or even the apprehension of meaning-
lessness (for example, the disjunctive cutting in a surrealist film). Where
the means of embodying the purposes of the work succeed, we appreci-
ate the work and regard our experience of it as worthy of our attention.
Where the how of the work falters, we depreciate it and, all things
being equal, regard it as having been unworthy or undeserving of our
attention.

Objections to the Content Approach to Aesthetic Experience

Alan Goldman is, at present, a leading critic of the content approach to
the aesthetic experience of art (see Goldman 2013). He regards the content
approach to be an unacceptably narrow view of aesthetic experience; he
argues for a broad view. In addition to attention with understanding to the
formal, expressive, and aesthetic properties of artworks, Goldmans broad
view countenances attention to the cognitive, moral, representational, and
presumably spiritual, political, and so on, properties of artworks. In order
to support his broader view, Goldman challenges the content approach as
a means of dialectically promoting his own position.
In advancing the content view, I claimed, among other things, that it
respects the traditional account of the objects of aesthetic experience in
the evolving tradition from the eighteenth century onward. That is why
I did not include such things as the recognition of what pictures repre-
sent or the cognitive insight the artwork affords as an object of aesthetic
experience. For I argue that these things were largely excluded from the
domain of aesthetic experience as that conversation has developed
historically.
Initially that tradition tended to talk in terms of beauty. For the
German branch of the family, including Mendelssohn and Wolfe, beauty
was conceived of in terms of perfection, which, in turn, was thought of in
terms of a ratio of unity and diversityin terms of formal properties, in
other words (see Beiser 2009). Likewise, Hutcheson, representing the Scot-
tish Enlightenment, thought beauty to be a function of a compound ratio
of unity and diversityagain, what we might think of as a formal property
(see Hutcheson 2009).
Kant took the object of the aesthetic judgment of free beauty explicitly
to be forms of purposiveness (see Kant 1987). From Kant, undoubtedly by
way of some misinterpretation, the art for arts sake persuasion, including
aestheticism, presumed the function of artworks to be the production of

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aesthetic experience expressly understood as divorced from any practical

or instrumental concerns, including explicitly cognitive and moral ones.
This is how they understood the notion of disinterestedness. In the hands
of Clive Bell, the positive version of this doctrine demanded that aesthetic
experiencewhich Bell called aesthetic emotionbe focused upon what
he called significant form (see Bell 1958).
Beardsley in his earlier writings, as I have already indicated, identified
the formal properties of unity and complexity as objects of the aesthetic
experience of artworks, while also adding attention to the qualitative
intensities of the workwhat he called regional qualities, and what I have
labeled expressive and aesthetic properties. Furthermore, a great many of
the properties denominated as aesthetic by the already referenced Frank
Sibley, a canonical figure in this discussion, fall squarely into my expres-
sive and aesthetic categories.
Goldman, however, disputes this genealogy. He reminds us that
Baumgarten introduced our neologism of aesthetics as an epistemological
conceptas pertaining to sensate cognition. Hutcheson, Goldman points
out, includes theorems as the objects of taste (Hutchesons idiom for
discussing what comes to be called aesthetic experience), where attending
to theorems with understanding, of course, would involve the exercise of
cognition. Goldman also notes that for Kant aesthetic judgments of free
beauty require the reciprocal operation of the imagination and the under-
standing; thus, cognition is part and parcel of the Kantian conception of
aesthetic experience as that can be derived from Kants Analytic of the
Beautiful. Likewise, in the twentieth century, theorists like Beardsley also
affirm that aesthetic experience recruits many different mental faculties,
including the cognitive and affective capacities of viewers, listeners, and
readers.
Goldmans point in drawing attention to the deployment of our various
faculties, including cognitive faculties, in the course of undergoing aes-
thetic experience is meant to undermine the apparent exclusion of cogni-
tive, moral, representational, and so on, properties in my account of
aesthetic experience. Goldmans recurring claim is that aesthetic experi-
ence marshals the whole person in response to the artwork. The faculties
that can come to play a role in aesthetic experience are in principle insepa-
rable. Call this Goldmans inseparability thesis.
Goldman uses it to challenge my genealogy of the notion of aesthetic
experience. That is, insofar as the tradition repeatedly admits the opera-
tion of faculties like cognition in the process of aesthetic experience, the
kind of reference that I have made to the tradition to support a narrow
view like mine should be rejected, if only on historical grounds.
And, Goldman also uses the inseparability thesis to motivate a positive
argument for his broader view of aesthetic experienceto wit: since aes-
thetic experience involves the inseparable, reciprocal operation of the
various facultiessuch as cognitionone cannot separate the operation

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of any of the faculties from the process of undergoing aesthetic experience

in the way that my allegedly narrow, content approach to aesthetic
experience does.
Another objection that Goldman levels at my position is that my con-
ception of form is too broad. I define the form of a work of art as the
ensemble of choices elected to realize the point or purpose of the work
(see Carroll 1999). This is a functional definition of form. Form facili-
tates function. For example, in order to achieve the purpose of tragedy
in Aristotles sense, one would not feature the historical Hitler as the
protagonist, since instead of pity, his downfall would elicit applause.
Goldman, however, argues that Hitler is wrongly construed as a formal
element here; rather Hitler is a content element. If my theory of form
counts Hitler as a formal element, it is a revisionist view and, there-
fore, is not available to support my supposedly narrow view of aesthet-
ic experience in debates with disputants not party to my putative
stipulation.
Goldman further argues that my view of aesthetic experience with
respect to attention to form is insufficient, since we can attend, in
my sense, with understanding to the form of artifacts other than
artworks.
Goldman also charges my view with inconsistency. On my view, some-
times a moral defect in a work of art can simultaneously count as an
aesthetic defect. But how can that be, if neither virtue nor vice as such is
an object of aesthetic experience? The appearance of inconsistency admit-
tedly looms here. So, now I must turn to responding to this objection,
along with the others.
Let me begin by defending my version of the tradition. I will put
Baumgarten to one side because he is a very complex case. Goldman is
right: Baumgarten does introduce the notion of the aesthetic as a label for
sensate cognition. But when he speaks of poetry he appears to require of
it that every element of it be indispensablethat every part must play a
role in the whole. This seems to be getting at the notion that poems are to
be unified and, presumably, that unity is something upon which we should
focus with understanding. So, it seems, both Goldman and I can lay claims
to different aspects of Baumgarten.
Goldman is also correct that Hutcheson maintains that the experience
of beauty can occur when we contemplate geometrical theorems.
Hutchesons point here, however, is that the contribution to knowledge
that the theorem might afford to our fund of geometrical knowledge is not
the source of the relevant pleasure. The pleasure is a result of our appre-
hension of a supposed compound ratio of unity and varietyspecifically,
our realizing that an infinite number of geometrical figures (thats the
variety element) fall under a single unifying element (the proposition the
theorem demonstrates). Undoubtedly, this is a rather strained reading of
the unity-in-variety principle. But it is Hutchesons, not mine. And what

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Hutcheson is getting atperhaps confusedlyis that the point of aes-

thetic experience is not to gain knowledge. The pleasure it seeks is some-
thing else, notably the pleasure that comes from apprehending a
compound ratio of unity amid varietywhich is, needless to say, a matter
of attending to the form of the stimulus.
I am sure that Hutcheson would agree with Goldman here, that, with
respect to theorems, in order to apprehend the phenomena of the com-
pound ratio of unity amid variety that, he, Hutcheson, has in mind,
cognition must be enlisted. After all, one has to understand the theorem
before one can envision the infinite range of cases it encompasses. But
cognitive acquisition is not the point of aesthetic experiencenot the
point of engaging tastein Hutchesons view. The point is something else.
It is appreciating a certain formal constellation, that is, attending to it with
understanding. Parenthetically, this is parallel to Humes claim that good
sense is not an element of taste, although it is necessary for the operation
of good taste.
In the philosophical tradition, perhaps most strikingly in the analyti-
cal branch, when we talk of the cognitive value of something, we
mean that which makes a contribution to knowledge by being true.
Cognition is thought of in terms of determining truth and falsity.
When Hutcheson detaches cognition from the pleasure referred to
as beauty, he does not mean that our mind is not involved in under-
standing the pertinent stimulusin this case a theorem. He simply
means that that the pleasure in question is not the result of learning
some new truth.
Obviously Hutcheson does not deny that we can derive pleasure from
cognition in the sense that we can take pleasure from learning things. But
that is not the sort of pleasure that is relevant to the activation of the
so-called faculty of taste. That is the pleasure of apprehending the com-
pound ratio of unity amid diversity.
Goldmans criticism of my account of Hutcheson involves a confusion
over the conception of cognition involved in the debate. I am not denying
that cognition as a psychological process is in play in the process of
engaging taste. Rather what I am excluding, as I believe Hutcheson is also
excluding, is cognitive insightin terms of the discovery of truthas an
object of aesthetic experience. And that, moreover, is consistent with
admitting that cognitionin the faculty psychology senseis operating in
the appreciation of form.
Indeed, since understanding is a component of aesthetic experience on
my account, I could hardly be excluding cognitive processing from the
phenomenon. I am only excluding truth tracking for its own sake from the
aesthetic transaction. Even if cognition recognizes a truth in aesthetic
experience, it is not for the purpose of gaining a truth but for the purpose
of apprehending some formal, expressive, and/or aesthetic feature of the
work.

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Hutcheson, I maintain, must believe something like this, since he

believes we will derive disinterested pleasure from contemplating theorems
that are already part of our knowledge stock. So, the pleasure here cannot
be a function of having learned the conclusion of the geometrical deduc-
tion, since we already know that. Rather it is a function allegedly of
envisioning the infinity of information the theorem unifies. That involves
cognition, but the point of the experience is not the acquisition of a truth.
That is, the point is not cognitive value in the narrow, truth-versus-falsity
sense.
Similar points can be made with regard to Goldmans contention
that Kant should count as evidence against my view of the traditions
recurring use of the concept of aesthetic experience. One cannot deny
Goldmans observation that for Kant aesthetic judgmentwhich we can
interpret as aesthetic experienceinvolves the interplay of understanding
and the imagination, where the understanding is a cognitive faculty for
Kant and the imagination is arguably one from a contemporary psycho-
logical perspective. But notice that in aesthetic experience Kant does not
see these faculties operating together as they normally do. Rather these
faculties are in play with respect to the experience of free beauty.
Whereas in the ordinary course of affairs the imagination synthesizes
objects so that the understanding can categorize them, when it comes to
aesthetic experience, such cognitive pursuits are suspended. Instead, the
understanding and the imagination explore alternative ways of organiz-
ing stimuli.
For example, think of cloud gazing. When we look at the sky embarked
upon aesthetically experiencing it, the imagination proposes different
ways of grasping the array and presenting it to the understanding. First we
may see it as a mountain or a happy face and then as a scoop of ice cream
or a plate of fluffy mashed potatoes and then maybe some puffy aquatic
sponge-fish, and so on. Unlike the typical, knowledge-seeking operation
of cognition, the imagination and the understanding in the aesthetic mode
are not out to identify the cloud as belonging to the class of cumulonim-
bus. They are engaged in playing with the stimulusin seeing it this way
and then that waywith no aim of achieving determinate closure, that is,
with no intention of securing an accurate and true categorization of the
phenomenon. That would be a matter of having cognitive aimor of
making a cognitive judgmentfor Kant, and that is exactly the kind of
interaction between the imagination and the understanding that he wishes
to propose as a contrast to aesthetic judgment.
Kant can agree that the psychological processes we call cognitive are
involved in aesthetic experience. For instance, the understanding plays an
indispensable role in aesthetic experience. In fact, Kant can concede that
we know we are looking at a patch of clouds when we engage in the
imaginative play in response to it that I rehearsed a moment ago. Yet, our
aim, on Kants view, is not to identify the stimulus as a cloud, or, more

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narrowly, a certain kind of cloud. The point of aesthetic experience is to

explore the alternative ways of seeing the cloud formation with no pres-
sure to establish that one way is the determinately right way from the
perspective of the truth-tracking vocation of the mind.
So, once again, we see that Goldmans inseparability thesis is irrel-
evant to the question of whether or not I have described the tradition
correctly. For I agree that the tradition acknowledges that cognition, in
the psychological sense, is in operation in the course of aesthetic experi-
ence. For Kant, the imagination and the understanding are. But they are
not playing their usual cognitive role. They are not involved in identify-
ing truthssuch as that the cloud formation before us belongs to the
class cumulus nimbus.
The relevant cognitive faculties explore the clouds for, perhaps, their
aesthetic properties, for example, their fluffiness, and/or their expressive
properties, such as their appearance of a joyful countenance. Truth is not
the point of aesthetic experience for Kant; the cognitive faculties are not
operating in their typical manner in aesthetic experience. Truth is not the
object of aesthetic attention; form, expressive properties, and aesthetic
properties are. But this is, contra Goldman, consistent with observing that
cognitive faculties are inseparably in play in having aesthetic experiences.
This is what Kant thought and what the tradition that descended from
him holds as well.
Despite Goldmans protests otherwise, Monroe Beardsley belongs to
this lineage. Yes, Beardsley agrees that the whole personincluding mind
and heartis engaged in the pursuit of aesthetic experience. But at the
same time, he explicitly denies that cognition in the narrow sensethat is,
cognition dedicated to truth trackingis a value perspicuously available
to art in general and to literature in particular. Beardsley denies being a
formalist, but he agrees that art is autonomous from other human prac-
tices. For him, an artwork is something made with the intention to afford
some magnitude of aesthetic experience, where aesthetic experience is
independent from the direct acquisition of knowledge. For example,
Beardsley defends a no-truth theory of fiction.
Even John Dewey tends toward the account of aesthetic experience
that I argue is traditional, given the emphasis that he places on unity in
his characterization of aesthetic experience (see Dewey 1966, 172; for
comment, see Carroll 2001a, 4951). Of course, I would agree with
Goldman that Dewey is closer to his view of the aesthetic experience of art
than he is to mine. I dont think, however, that cuts so deeply against my
history of the tradition, insofar as I think it is fair to say that Hutcheson,
Kant, and Beardsley have been far more influential than Deweyat least
among analytic philosophers of art.
Moreover, I think that another way in which to see the superiority of
my account of the way the tradition conceives of the objects of aesthetic
experience is to notice that it would be difficult to explain the enduring

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controversy over aestheticism, unless something like the view of aesthetic

experience that I discern in figures like Hutcheson, Kant, and Beardsley
obtains and plays a role in aesthetic conceptions of the nature of the
artwork.
In fact, one of my motives for crafting the concept of aesthetic experi-
ence in the way I have is that it makes sense of the debate over aesthetic
autonomism. I am not an autonomistfar from it. Nevertheless, I think
we need a concept of aesthetic experience that both autonomists and their
opponents can share, if the debate is to go forward and, furthermore, I
think the content approach to aesthetic experience meets this requirement.
Moreover, I contend that if one conceives of aesthetic experience as
Goldman does, then it seems to me there would be no dispute about
whether, for example, cognitive valueconceived in terms of truthis a
value of art qua art. That is, autonomism would be inadmissible by
conceptual stipulation. However, saying a challenge does not exist in this
case is to ignore an entire history of debate.
To summarize my response to Goldmans dismissal of my claim that I
am basing my account of aesthetic experience on the way in which that
concept seems to have been applied traditionally, I maintain that
Goldman has confused the issue of the inseparability and interplay of our
various cognitive and affective powers in the psychological process of
experiencing art aesthetically with the question of isolating the objects of
aesthetic experience. That cognition may be involved in aesthetic experi-
ence does not entail that cognitive insight, also known as truth, is an object
of aesthetic experience.
Cognition is employed in playing chess, but truth is not an object of the
chess experience. Playing chess with understanding obviously involves
employing cognition, but learning something is not typically what the
chess experience is about. What mental capacities are deployed does not
entail the object of our experiences, if only because the inseparable inter-
play of our various faculties underwrites so many different kinds of
experiences.
For leading figures in the tradition, the point of aesthetic experience
was not cognition, understood as the acquisition of knowledge. Truth, in
other words, was not an object of aesthetic experience, whereas formal
properties, expressive properties, and aesthetic properties consistently
recur as the objects of aesthetic understanding. Traditionally the point of
aesthetic experience of art, it seems, at the very least, is attention to and
appreciation of these properties.
And attention to these properties appears to be able to supply a
common ground to the disputants in the controversy over aesthetic
autonomy. Thus, my version of the content approach to the aesthetic
experience of art makes sense of the history of aesthetic debate in a way
that Goldmans broad view cannot. And this, of course, provides a reason
to prefer my position over Goldmans broad view.

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Goldman not only uses the inseparability thesis to attempt to under-

mine my historical account of the history of aesthetics. He also believes
that it affords him a positive argument in favor of his broad view. Basi-
cally, he seems to believe something to the effect that if various mental
powers are employed in the pursuit of aesthetic experience, then whatso-
ever those powers produce is the object of aesthetic experience. So, if
cognition in relation to an art object produces insight, then truth is an
object of aesthetic experience. But this is not convincing. Cognitive pro-
cessing is an ingredient in getting a joke. That is, cognition as a psycho-
logical process is mobilized. But truth is not the object of comic
amusement. Quite the contrary! Jokes deliver absurdities for contempla-
tion, not truths (see Carroll 2014).
What Goldman appears to be confusing in his inseparability argument
is cognition understood psychologically and cognition understood
epistemically, that is, in terms of truth. The tradition kept truth-value out
of aesthetic experience, as does my content analysis of the aesthetic experi-
ence of art. Moreover, as the distinction between psychological cognition
and epistemic cognition indicates, Goldmans attempt to move inferen-
tially from one to the other seems to flirt with equivocation. Similarly, as
we shall see, Goldmans other attempts, on the basis of inseparability
considerations, to incorporate other features of our cognitive and emotive
makeup, such as moral judgments as such, into aesthetic experience may
also ride on crucial ambiguities.
Goldman worries that my content approach to the aesthetic experience
of art is insufficient inasmuch as artifacts other than artworks may be
attended to with understanding with focus upon their formal properties,
their expressive properties, and their aesthetic properties. Of course, I
agree. I was not, however, attempting to identify artworks in virtue of
their elicitation of certain forms of attention, as an aesthetic theorist of art
might do. I think that we have independent ways of identifying artworks.
Conceiving of aesthetic experience in terms of the content that I have
isolated does not entail that any artifact that affords attention to those
properties is an artwork. I contend rather that when we are dealing with
an artwork and we ask how to experience it aesthetically, we say: attend
with understanding to its formal properties, its expressive properties,
and/or its aesthetic properties.
Likewise when we attend to expressive properties of a fishing hook with
respect to the menacing appearance of its claws, we are having an aesthetic
experience of the hook. Yet the menace embodied in its claw-like struc-
tures is not what makes the artifact a hook. We identify the hook by other
means.
Similarly, the aesthetic experience of art as Ive characterized it is
not what marks something as an artwork. We have other grounds for
attributing art status to the artifact; but if we want to know how to go
about experiencing an artwork aesthetically, my view says: attend with

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understanding to its form, its expressive properties, and/or its aesthetic

properties.
Analogously, if we are talking about fishing hooks and want to know
how to experience them aesthetically, we recommend attention with
understanding to their formal, expressive, and aesthetic properties. The
fact that the same kinds of general properties are apposite in both cases is
irrelevant to my account of aesthetic experience, since where artworks and
fishing hooks belong to distinct categories, we have other than experiential
means to establish that.
Goldman also suggests that my notion of form is peculiar and that it
allows me to count things as attention to form that are really inadmissible,
since they are really examples of attention to content. For example, I
consider the choice of Hitler as the protagonist of a tragedy in Aristotles
sense to be a formal error. Goldman objects that the choice of Hitler in
such a case would be a factor of content.
On my view, form is a matter of the ensemble of choices intended to
realize the point or the purpose of the artwork. I take this to be a well-
known view of form that connects form with function. Thus, if the func-
tion of the artwork is to elicit a certain affective response, then various
narrative elements will be part of the design of the work, pursuant to those
responses.
Suppose the aim of tragedy is, in part, the elicitation of pity. In order to
do that, the protagonist will have to be constructeddesignedin a
certain way. She must be pitiable. And the narrative must be crafted in
such a way that the events that befall her are sorrowful. This is an issue of
how the work needs to be made. These are the means through which the
work is embodied. When one attends to the work contemplating these
features of the work in terms of its construction relative to its purpose,
then I see no problem in saying we are attending to the form of the work.
Viewed from inside our emotional response, so to speak, these features
may count as contentas the objects of our emotional response. But these
features also have a formal facet or dimension as design elements in the
work that can be contemplated for the way in which they advance the
point or purpose of the work.
In the same way, if Hitler were featured as the protagonist of an
Aristotelian tragedy, that choice would be a formal disaster, since we
would applaud his destruction, instead of pitying it.
Perhaps Goldman suspects my view of form because he associates form
with something schematic, like an outline to be filled in by content. I, on
the other hand, think of form as embodimentas when we talk about
things like the human form.
Also traceable to his rejection of my conception of form may be
Goldmans suspicion about a possible inconsistency between my view of
aesthetic experience and my willingness to sometimes regard moral defects
in an artwork as aesthetic defects. This raises what has been recently called

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the qua problem with respect to my view. The problem has recurred so
often that it deserves to be addressed in its own section.

The Qua Problem3

In addition to my content view of aesthetic experience, I have defended a
position that I call moderate moralism (see Carroll 2001b). Moderate
moralism is the contention that sometimes a moral defect in a work of art
can count as an aesthetic defect. Moderate moralism is meant to be
understood in contrast to moderate autonomism, the claim that a moral
defect in an artwork never amounts to an aesthetic defect. The moderate
autonomist does not deny that artworks can be morally blemished, and be
criticized for that very reason from the moral point of view. The moderate
autonomist instead maintains that where an artwork is morally defective
in some respect, this is always irrelevant from the aesthetic point of view.
For the aesthetic autonomist, a moral flaw in an artwork is never an
aesthetic flaw.
My central argument against moderate autonomism has been labeled
the uptake argument. The argument begins by pointing out that many
narrative artworks mandate that their audiences respond emotionally in
a certain way. A horror fiction mandates that audiences react with a
mixture of fear and disgust, for example. A horror fiction that failed to
engender this sort of uptake would be a failure qua horror fiction, since
the purpose of horror fictions is to elicit fear and disgust. If a horror
fiction failed to elicit fear and disgust because it featured a monster like
Casper the Friendly Ghosta being too nice to be fearsome and too
clean to be disgustingthat would be, among other things, a design
(or formal) failure because the choice of Casper to discharge the role
of the monster in a horror fiction would defeat the purpose of the
horror fiction, which, all things being equal, is to provoke fear and
disgust.4
Moreover, a strictly analogous argument can be made in defense of
moderate moralism. A narrative fiction may have as its point or purpose
the aim of promoting admiration for a certain character whom the nar-
rative presents as saintly. But responding to a character with admiration in
this way requires that we regard the character in a positive moral light.
Thus, to take our favorite example again, were the character the historical
Hitler, portrayed as we know him to have been, an ethically normal
audience would recoil at the prospect of viewing him with admiration.

3
Louise Hanson introduced the notion of the qua problem in her paper How to
Establish the Relevance of Ethical Values to Aesthetic Values, at the Eastern Division
Meetings of the American Society for Aesthetics in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in April
2013.
4
This is something like the joke in Ghostbusters.

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Rather, the audience would resist seeing him as saintly. It would find this
unimaginable. The fiction in question will fail to obtain uptake of its
mandated response. It will fail because it advocates a morally defective
view of Hitler, one the audience cannot imagineone, indeed, that its
imagination resists.
In such a case, the choice of Hitler would be a formal defect, given the
purpose of the putative narrative, which, by stipulation, is to raise admi-
ration for him in virtue of his supposed saintliness. It is a formal defect
because the proposed view of Hitler is morally defective, even degraded.
And a formal defect is an aesthetic defectthat is, a formal choice that
is flawed relative to the aim of the work. Therefore, sometimes a moral
defect can also be an aesthetic defect. Or so the moderate moralist
claims.
The opponents of moderate moralism, however, argue that this con-
clusion is too hasty. They concede that the sort of moral flaw that I
envision may cause the kind of imaginative moral resistance that I predict
will arise in audiences against the authorial proscription to admire Hitler
as saintly. But the opponents maintain that the problem here is not the
moral defect qua moral defect that is preventing uptake but that the moral
defect as something else is provoking the problemnamely, the moral
defect qua providing an obstacle to uptake. That is, it is not the
moral defect qua moral defect but the moral defect qua psychological
obstacle that is at issue. The moral defect qua moral defect is not an
aesthetic defect. It is the moral defect qua psychological barrier that is
aesthetically defective.
By this critics may mean that moral merits and/or demerits as such are
not necessary considerations in evaluating every artwork. These only
become such when they, for example, aid or obstruct uptake. Of course,
the moderate moralist agrees, since he only asserts that sometimes a moral
defect will count as an aesthetic defect. When? At least when the moral
defect provokes imaginative resistance to uptake on the part of morally
conscientious audiences.
The critic of moderate moralism responds that it is not the moral defect
qua moral defect that is the problem. It is the moral defect as a barrier to
uptake that is the culprit. But why is uptake impeded by this feature of
the work? Well, because it projects a morally defective view. That is, the
barrier to uptake here just is the moral defect. That is what stands in the
way of the audiences emotional admiration and endorsement of Hitler as
saintly. The reason this portrayal of Hitler presents a barrier to audience
uptake is precisely that it is a morally defective conception of Hitler. Its
obstacleness and its moral defectiveness are one.
Perhaps some will argue that the moral defectiveness is not really a
formal element. Moral defectiveness is a content element, it might be
said. But it is important to remember that characters in fictional narra-
tives are constructions. They are ideally designed to bring about certain

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responses. There are the characters we love to hate and the characters
we love to love. In this respect, fictional characters have a formal dimen-
sion. They are composed of attributes that are chosen to advance the
points and purposes of the work. Very often those attributesperhaps
most ofteninvolve moral qualities. Consequently, if fictional charac-
ters are constructed with moral profiles or affordances at variance with
the emotive responses the audience is mandated to embrace, then the
choices of those attributes are defective formal choices. They are errors
of design.
Again, fictional characters are built, in a manner of speaking, to elicit
certain responses, probably most often emotional responses. Emotional
responses, in turn, often require that the characters be rendered in a
certain moral light. For our purposes, let us consider cases where the
emotional responses call for positive moral virtues to be exemplified by the
character, rather than defects or vices. If the characters are not repre-
sented morally in the way the mandated emotion requires, as would be the
Hitler character in our imaginary case, audience uptake is likely to abort.
In those instances, the moral defectiveness of the character is equally a
formal defect, and it is a formal defect due to its moral defectiveness
relative to the aims of the work.
That is, although it may not be the case that with respect to artworks
moral defects are always formal defects, sometimes a moral defect is a
formal or aesthetic defect. In those cases, the moral defect can be regarded
from two points of view: formally and content-wise. As content, the moral
defect provokes imaginative resistance in the audience. Yet, when viewing
it as an object of aesthetic experience, we attend to the way in which it
thwarts the point or purpose of the work. These are two faces of the same
phenomenon, viewed from different perspectives.
Thus, moderate moralism is not inconsistent with my view of aesthetic
experience. Goldman is right to point out that when we engage certain
artworks, such as narrative fiction, our moral capacities are in play.
Indeed, my defense of moderate moralism depends upon this supposition.
When we experience the artwork aesthetically, however, what we attend to
is the way in which, for instance, the characters are designed to facilitate
the point and purposes of the workthat is, whether the characters
formally advance them or block them.
This is not to deny we can and should also respond substantially to the
morally defective features of the work as part of our overall response to
the work; we indignantly and with justification reject the authors mandate
that we embrace immoral points of view. But in addition to being artisti-
cally defective for this reason, such works may be aesthetically defective
because they are formally defectivewhere their formal defectiveness, in
turn, is rooted in their moral defectiveness.
Pace Goldman, that our moral capacities are mobilized in response to
certain artworks does not entail that moral properties are objects of

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aesthetic experience.5 When moral defects become objects of aesthetic

experience per se is when they are seen to play a role in our attention to the
formal structure of the work.
Moreover, this is consistent with our solution to the qua problem,
since we maintain that it is only qua formal problem that a moral defect is
an aesthetic defect. Of course, it is an aesthetic defect in such cases pre-
cisely because it is a moral defect. Its being a moral defect does not cause
it to be a formal problem. Its being a moral defect in the context of
relevant sort of art work constitutes its identity as a formal problem. But
it is the formal mismatch between the design of the character and the aim
of the work that we attend to when approaching the work from a narrow
aesthetic viewpoint, even though it is our moral resistance to the work in
the process of attempting to follow itthat is, in trying to assimilate it in
the manner in which it has been authorially mandatedthat has alerted us
to its aesthetic defectiveness.

Philosophy Program
City University of New York
365 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY 10016
USA
knollcarroll@gmail.com

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5
When we isolate a moral defect in an artwork, our powers of moral detection are
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the viewpoint of aesthetically experiencing it that evil is the object of our experience. Rather
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