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Plausibility and Aesthetic Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Denis Dutton
Denis Dutton*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Dearborn
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Extract

If a catalogue were made of terms commonly used to affirm the adequacy of critical interpretations of works of art, one word certain to be included would be “plausible.” Yet this term is one which has received precious little attention in the literature of aesthetics. This is odd, inasmuch as I find the notion of plausibility central to an understanding of the nature of criticism. “Plausible” is a perplexing term because it can have radically different meanings depending on the circumstances of its employment. ln the following discussion, I will make some observations about the logic of this concept in connection with its uses in two rather different contexts: the context of scientific inquiry on the one hand, and that of aesthetic interpretation on the other. In distinguishing separate senses of “plausible,” I shall provide reason to resist the temptation to imagine that because logical aspects of two different types of inquiry—science and criticism—happen to be designated by the same term, they may to that extent be considered to have similar logical structures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1977 , pp. 327 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1977

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References

1 Margolis, Joseph “The Logic of Interpretation,” in Philosophy Looks at the Arts, ed. Margolis, Joseph (New York, 1962), pp. 108–118.Google Scholar This is an early statement of Margolis's position. In later writings, particularly “Robust Relativism” (Journal of Aesthetics and, Art Criticism, 35 No. 1 (Fall1976), 37-46), he espouses a view closer to the one outlined here.

2 Obviously, I am closely adhering here to analyses of scientific method which can be identified as “empiricist,” as part of a tradition derived from Bacon and Mill and having among its outstanding modern exponents such figures as Ernest Nagel and Carl Hempel. At the same time,l recognize a competing perspective, represented by such writers as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and N. R. Hanson, which would doubtless resist relegating matters of plausibility so exclusively to the “context of discovery.” (If, for example, truth is a concept which can only be properly used in connection with hypotheses put forward within, what Kuhn calls a “paradigm,” it might well be argued that paradigms themselves can only be treated in terms of their ultimate plausibility.) Be that as it may, my attention here is limited to the differing logics of scientific and critical confirmation as they are reflected in the day-to-day practices and procedures of art critics and scientists. At this level the analysis given us by the empiricists is a valid and useful one to contrast with criticism.

3 Beardsley, Monroe C. The Possibility of Criticism, (Detroit, 1970), pp. 38–61.Google Scholar For another criticism of Margolis, see Barnes, Annette “Half An Hour Before Breakfast,” The journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 34 (1976), pp. 261–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See also Dutton, Denis “Criticism and Method,” British journal of Aesthetics, 13 (1973), pp. 232–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For a dissenting view based on Popperian fallibilism, see Rader, Ralph “Fact, Theory, and literary Explanation,” Critical Inquiry, 1 (1974), pp. 245–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The same volume of Critical inquiry, contains discussions by Stanley E. Fish and Jay Schleusener with a response from Rader, pp. 883–911.

6 Butler, Samuel The Authoress of the, Odyssey (New York, 1922), p. 170.Google Scholar

7 Versions of this paper were presented at a meeting of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, April 4, 1975, and at the Tenth Conference on Value Inquiry, held at the State University College at Geneseo, New York, April16, 1976. I am indebted to Edward Sayles, George Kerner, Joseph Margolis, and the ever diligent editors of this journal, for their thoughtful commentaries on it.