2023.09.1 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Jon Robson, Aesthetic Testimony: an Optimistic Approach, Oxford University Press, 2022, 176pp., $84.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780192862952.
Reviewed by Robert Hopkins, New York University
Recent decades have seen considerable growth in philosophical interest in testimony as a source of knowledge. While discussion has centered on explaining how testimony can play that role, lively debates have arisen in the wings about how widely testimony’s legitimacy ranges. Some have argued that testimony is not a legitimate source of moral, religious, or even mathematical belief; others that a similar prohibition applies in aesthetic matters. It is this last question to which this brisk and clearly written volume, the first book on the topic, is devoted.
Is it acceptable to form a belief about the excellence of a movie, the beauty of a vase, or the emotional power of a novel simply on the basis of someone else’s say-so? Those who say No,…
Originally appeared on Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // News Read More
