Abstract
One old assumption in aesthetics that has gone unchallenged for a long time is some form of universalism: no matter where and when you have grown up and what kind of perceptual and cognitive background you have, your aesthetic experience would be the same. This assumption is very much present in recent empirical work on aesthetics as well. My aim is to question this assumption and do so on the basis of empirical findings about a number of ways in which aesthetic experience depends on one’s cultural, perceptual and cognitive background. While most of my work on this topic has been on the visual arts, the aim of this talk is to try to extend these results to music.
Bio
Bence Nanay is Professor of Philosophy and BOF Research Professor at the University of Antwerp. He is the author of Between Perception and Action (Oxford University Press, 2013), Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception (Oxford University Press, 2016), Aesthetics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Global Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, under contract) as well as 6 other books published or forthcoming on aesthetics and the philosophy of mind.