Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

Photography is highly valued as a recording medium. Traditionally it has been claimed that photography is fundamentally a causal recording process, and that every photograph is the causal imprint of the world in front of the camera. In this paper I seek to challenge that traditional view. I claim that it is based on a ‘single-stage’ misconception of the process that defines photographs as mind-independent images and leaves no room for photographic depiction. I explain my objections to that view and propose an alternative, ‘multi-stage’ account of the process, in which I argue that causal registration of light is not equivalent to recording and reproducing an image. The proposed account can explain how photography functions as an exemplary recording medium, without supposing that every photograph is a mind-independent causal imprint of the world. Intervention or non-intervention by photographers is a more complex matter than the traditional view allows. Using the framework of the multistage account, I describe three different ways that photographic pictures can be produced. Dawn Phillips studied at the University of Durham and wrote her PhD on Wittgenstein’s say-show distinction. She held philosophy positions at Kent, Cork, Southampton, Oxford, and Warwick. In 2011 she became a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Hull and, also, became Dawn Wilson. Dawn has published on Wittgenstein early and late, particularly the Tractatus, including articles on logical analysis, clarity, symbolism, the picture theory of language and the expression of thought. With David Connearn, she co-authored an article about Wittgenstein’s House in Skjolden and co-ordinated an international letters campaign for the conservation of the house and its legacy. She is interested in language, thought and image, particularly in art and aesthetics and the philosophy of photography. Her article, ‘Photography and Causation’, launched a field of debate known as the ‘New Theory’ of photography and was selected as one of twelve classic texts to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the British Journal of Aesthetics. She recently published ‘Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why we need a Multi-stage Account of Photography’ and she is co-authoring, with Laure Blanc-Benon, the photography entry for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. She is writing a book titled Aesthetics and Photography for Bloomsbury, and articles on temporal representation, co-portraiture, and comparing photography with music. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Wilson's talk - "Reflecting, Registering, Recording and Representing: From Light Image to Photographic Picture" - at the Aristotelian Society on 7th March 2022. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Aesthetic beautification is a familiar artistic phenomenon: Even as they face death, heroes and heroines in operas still sing glorious music. Characters in Shakespearean tragedies still deliver beautifully eloquent speeches in the throes of despair. Even depicting suffering and horror, paintings can still remain a transfixing delight for the eyes. In such cases, the work of art represents or expresses something we would, in ordinary life, attribute a negative valence (suffering, horror, death, and the like), but it does so beautifully. Doubtless there is not a single explanation for what transpires in art of this sort or in our experience of it. With some aesthetically beautified art, its foremost goal might be giving aesthetic pleasure, and the beauty of the aesthetic form, even when depicting horrors, is in the service of this primary aim. In other art, the beautification might seek to be jarring and thought-provoking, highlighting a disconnect between the aesthetic frame and what is portrayed. These routes explain much of aesthetic beautification. But I am particularly interested in considering another more specific response still: finding ourselves somehow consoled by the beautification. I begin with some reflections on aesthetic beautification in general, and then turn to consider how beautification and consolation might be connected, and what to make of this. Andrew Huddleston is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, where he is co-Director of the Centre for Research in Post-Kantian European Philosophy. He studied as an undergraduate at Brown and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and did his PhD at Princeton under the supervision of Alexander Nehamas. Huddleston previously taught at Exeter College, Oxford and at Birkbeck College, University of London. He specializes in 19th and 20th Century European Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Ethics. His book Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture (2019) was published by Oxford University Press, and he is presently at work on a book tentatively titled Art’s Highest Calling: The Religion of Art in a Secular Age. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Huddleston's talk - "Aesthetic Beautification" - at the Aristotelian Society on 21 February 2022. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Nietzsche’s attitude toward science is ambivalent: he remarks approvingly on its rigorous methodology and adventurous spirit, but also points out its limitations and rebukes scientists for encroaching onto philosophers’ territory. What does Nietzsche think is science’s proper role and relationship with philosophy? I argue that, according to Nietzsche, philosophy should set goals for science. Philosophers’ distinctive task is to ‘create values’, which involves two steps: (1) envisioning ideals for human life, and (2) turning those ideals into prescriptions for behaviour and societal organisation. To accomplish step (2), philosophers should delegate scientists to investigate what moral rules and social arrangements have best advanced this ideal in the past or might in the future. Rachel Cristy is a Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College London. She received her PhD in Philosophy from Princeton University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics before coming to King’s. She works on the history of late modern philosophy, primarily on Nietzsche, sometimes putting him in conversation with William James, one of the founders of American Pragmatism. She is especially interested in late modern philosophers’ attitudes toward science, including both epistemological views (on its methods, its limitations, what sort of philosophical foundation it has or needs) and ethical views (on the proper place of science in the life of individuals and societies). She has also published on Kant’s aesthetics as it relates to wine. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Cristy's talk - "Commanders and Scientific Labourers: Nietzsche on the Relationship Between Philosophy and Science" - at the Aristotelian Society on 31 January 2022. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Metaphysicians are in the business of making and defending modal claims – claims about how things must be or cannot be. Wittgenstein’s opposition to necessity claims, along with his various negative remarks about ‘metaphysical’ uses of language, makes it seem almost a truism that Wittgenstein was opposed to metaphysics. In this paper I want to make a case for rejecting that apparent truism. My thesis is that it is illuminating to characterise what Wittgenstein and Anscombe are doing in their philosophical writing as metaphysics without manufactured necessities. Doing so helps to articulate a sharper, more interesting, critique of contemporary metaphysical practices than therapeutic or linguistic framings of Wittgenstein’s method make possible. It also allows us to place Anscombe in the context of a tradition of British metaphysics that emerged in the 1940s in an attempt to reverse the devastating impact on ethics of the new ‘analytical’ philosophy. Rachael Wiseman is Senior Lecturer in Philosphy at University of Liverpool. She is the author of the Routledge Guidebook to Anscombe’s Intention (Routledge, 2016) and, with Clare Mac Cumhaill, Metaphysical Animals (Chatto & Windus, 2022) — a joint philosophical biography of GEM Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch. She is associate editor (for analytic philosophy) at British Journal for the History of Philosophy. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Wiseman's talk - "Metaphysics by Analogy" - at the Aristotelian Society on 17 January 2022. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

According to the doxastic wrongs thesis, merely entertaining certain beliefs about others can wrong them, even if one does not act on those beliefs. Beliefs based on socially salient characteristics such as race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc., and which turn out to be false and are negatively valenced are prime candidates for the charge of doxastic wronging. My aim, in this paper, is to show that a plausible, Kantian argument for the thesis licences extending the latter to cases in which the belief is true and/or positively valenced. I begin by setting out the doxastic wrong thesis in its general form. I then reject Mark Schroeder’s argument for restricting it to false beliefs, and mount a positive, Kantian argument for including true beliefs within the ambit of the thesis. I end the paper by tackling some objections, in the course of which I extend the thesis to further cases. Cécile Fabre is Senior Research Fellow in Politics at All Souls College, Oxford, and Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Oxford. She previous taught at the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh. She holds degrees from La Sorbonne University, the University of York, and the University of Oxford. Her research interests include theories of distributive justice, issues relating to the rights we have over our own body and, more recently, just war theory,and the ethics of foreign policy. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Fabre's talk - "Doxastic Wrongs, Non-spurious Generalisations and Particularised Beliefs" - at the Aristotelian Society on 15 November 2021. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Heather Widdows is the John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research and Knowledge Exchange) at the University of Birmingham. She is Deputy Chair of the Philosophy sub-panel for REF 2021 and was a member of the 2014 sub-panel. Her most recent book, Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal (2018), was described by Vogue as “ground-breaking” and listed by The Atlantic as one of the best books of 2018. She is author of The Connected Self: The Ethics and Governance of the Genetic Individual (2103), Global Ethics: An Introduction (2011), and The Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch (2005). She has co-edited, with Darrel Moellendorf, The Routledge Handbook of Global Ethics (2014). She co-runs the Beauty Demands Network and Blog and the #everydaylookism project. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Widdows' talk - 'No Duty To Resist: Why individual resistance is an ineffective response to dominant beauty ideals' - at the Aristotelian Society on 18 October 2021. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

As the first talk for the 2021-22 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, this year’s Presidential Address marks the official inauguration of Professor Robert Stern (University of Sheffield) as the 114th President of the Aristotelian Society. The Society’s President is elected on the basis of lifelong, exemplary work in philosophy. The 114th Presidential Address was chaired by Bill Brewer (KCL), the 113th President of the Aristotelian Society. Robert Stern is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, where he has been since 1989. Prior to that he did his BA and PhD at Cambridge, and held a research fellowship at St John’s College Cambridge. His main research interests are in the history of philosophy – particularly Kant and Hegel, and also Kierkegaard, and more recently K. E. Løgstrup, Iris Murdoch, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Luther. He connects these historical inquires with more systematic questions in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, particularly topics such as realism vs idealism, the use of transcendental arguments, and the nature of moral obligation. His books include three works on Hegel; a collection of papers on Kant; a discussion of transcendental arguments; an investigation into Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard on obligation; and a study of Løgstrup. He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2019, and has served on the Executive Committee of the Aristotelian Society and as President of the British Philosophical Association, and is currently chair of the Philosophy sub-panel for REF2021. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Stern's address - 'The Objectivity of Perception' - at the Aristotelian Society on 5 October 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Julia Borcherding is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Before moving to Cambridge, she was a Bersoff Faculty Fellow at New York University. Julia specializes in early modern philosophy, focusing on moral, epistemological and metaphysical themes and their intriguing interconnections. She has published on the philosophy of Leibniz, Conway, Cavendish, Arnauld and Spinoza. Her current book project The Metaphysics of Emotion investigates the underappreciated metaphysical dimensions of early modern accounts of love. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr. Borcherding's talk - '“I wish my Speech were like a Loadstone”: Cavendish on Love and Self-Love' - at the Aristotelian Society on 28 June 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Michael Beaney (毕明安) is Regius Professor of Logic at the University of Aberdeen, Professor of the History of Analytic Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Recent books include The Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy (edited, OUP, 2013) and Analytic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2017). While the main focus of his work has been on the history of analytic philosophy (especially the writings of Frege, Wittgenstein, Stebbing, and Collingwood), his research interests include philosophical methodology (with particular reference to analysis and creativity throughout the history of philosophy), historiography, philosophical translation (he has just completed a new translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus for OUP), and Chinese philosophy (on which he has increasingly been working, especially ancient Chinese philosophy of language and logic). He was editor of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy from 2011 to 2020, and is general editor of a book series on the history of analytic philosophy (published by Palgrave Macmillan), and co-editor of a series entitled ‘BSHP New Texts in the History of Philosophy’ (published by OUP). This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Beaney's talk - 'Swimming Happily in Chinese Logic' - at the Aristotelian Society on 21 June 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Corine Besson is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. She did her undergraduate degree in Philosophy and French Literature at the University of Geneva. She went to Oxford for her postgraduate studies, to first do a B.Phil, and then write a D.Phil. on the relation of second-order logic to the theory of meaning. Her research interests are in the philosophy of logic, epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the history of analytic philosophy. Her current work focuses mostly on how logic relates to reasoning — from foundational, normative and epistemological perspectives. She has just finished writing a book for Oxford University Press on the relevance of Lewis Carroll’s regress argument (in his Mind 1895 paper ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’) to key debates in the philosophy of logic and reasoning. Its (working) title is: Logic, Reasoning and Regresses: A Defence of Logical Cognitivism. Corine also runs the Centre for Logic and Language (CeLL) at the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, London, and, together with Anandi Hattiangadi (Stockholm), she holds a three year grant from the Bank of Sweden on The Foundations of Epistemic Normativity. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Besson's talk - 'Knowing How to Reason Logically' - at the Aristotelian Society on 7 June 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.