Evaluating Emotional Responses to Works of Art and the Imagination

FAIN: FB-56993-13

Jonathan Gilmore
Yale University (New Haven, CT 06510-1703)

Many philosophical accounts of the emotions conceive of them as susceptible to assessments of rationality, fittingness, or some other notion of aptness. Analogous assumptions apply in cases of emotions directed at what are only fictional works of art or only works of the imagination. My study in the philosophy of art addresses whether the criteria invoked in evaluating the correctness or putative rationality of those emotions we have toward what we take to be real facts or states of affairs apply invariantly to those emotions we have toward what are only fictional or imagined. My question may be posed this way: Does our emotional engagement with work of arts follow and reflect our emotional engagement with the real world? Or do works of art draw on distinctive capacities and dispositions for emotional responses that reflect the special purposes for which we create such works and for which we engage in free imagining?

Media Coverage

Jonathan Gilmore, Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind (Review)
Author(s): James Harold
Publication: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Date: 3/12/2021
URL: https://academic.oup.com/jaac/article/79/2/272/6168967

Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind by Jonathan Gilmore (Review)
Author(s): Nicholas Wiltsher
Publication: Estetika
Date: 1/1/2021
URL: https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=972034

Jonathan Gilmore: Apt Imaginings (Review)
Author(s): David Grcki
Publication: Croatian Journal of Philosophy
Date: 1/1/2021
URL: https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/390505

Jonathan Gilmore," Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind (Review)
Author(s): Jovanovic, Iris Vidmar
Publication: Philosophy in Review
Date: 1/1/2021
Abstract: . "Jonathan Gilmore," Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind."." Philosophy in Review 41.3 (2021): 185-187.

Associated Products

That Obscure Object of Desire: Pleasure in Painful Art (Book Section)
Title: That Obscure Object of Desire: Pleasure in Painful Art
Author: Jonathan Gilmore
Editor: Jerrold Levinson
Abstract: A study of the psychological and philosophical question of why audiences seek out and take pleasure in aversive, painful, or otherwise unpleasant artistic experiences, such as horror films and tragic dramas.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: www.palgrave.com/page/detail/suffering-art-gladly-jerrold-levinson/?K=9780230349834
Primary URL Description: Palgrave publisher: Suffering Art Gladly
Publisher: Palgrae
Book Title: Suffering Art Gladly: The Paradox of Negative Emotion in Art
ISBN: 9780230349834

The Epistemology of Fiction and the Question of Invariant Norms (Article)
Title: The Epistemology of Fiction and the Question of Invariant Norms
Author: Jonathan Gilmore
Abstract: This study addresses the process by which which we discover what states of affairs, facts, and so on, hold within a fiction when that data is not supplied explicitly through a narrator's or author's descriptions. My question is whether the epistemic norms we observe in discovering what is true about our actual experience hold invariantly over the process by which we discover what is true within a fiction.
Year: 2014
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Philosophy: Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Imagination (Book Section)
Title: Imagination
Author: Jonathan Gilmore
Editor: John Gibson and Noel Carroll
Abstract: A study of the nature of the imagination and its role in our experience of narrative works of art. Questions addressed include: How do our imaginings interact with our beliefs in our understanding of a fictional story? How can fiction-directed emotions (emotions triggered by what is only fictional) be explained through appeal to the functions of the imagination? And, What is the connection between the theoretical and practical norms we observe in our mental responses to the real world and those norms we adopt in experiencing fictional worlds?
Year: 2014
Access Model: Subscription only
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Literature

Normative and Scientific Approaches to the Understanding of Art (Article)
Title: Normative and Scientific Approaches to the Understanding of Art
Author: Jonathan Gilmore
Abstract: A commentary on proposals to apply empirical psychology to the understanding of works of art.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=BBS
Primary URL Description: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Journal
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind (Book)
Title: Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind
Author: Jonathan Gilmore
Abstract: How do our engagements with fictions and other products of the imagination compare to our experiences of the real world? Are the feelings we have about a novel's characters modelled on our thoughts about actual people? If it is wrong to feel pleasure over certain situations in real life, can it nonetheless be right to take pleasure in analogous scenarios represented in a fantasy or film? Should the desires we have for what goes on in a make-believe story cohere with what we want to happen in the actual world? Such queries have animated philosophical and psychological theorizing about art and life from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to contemporary debates over freedom of expression, ethics and aesthetics, the cognitive value of thought experiments, and the effects on audiences of exposure to violent entertainment. In Apt Imaginings, Jonathan Gilmore develops a new framework to pursue these questions, marshalling a wide range of research in aesthetics, the science of the emotions, moral philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and film and literary theory. Gilmore argues that, while there is a substantial empirical continuity in our feelings across art and life, the norms that govern the appropriateness of those responses across the divide are discontinuous. In this view, the evaluative criteria that determine the fit, correctness, or rationality of our emotions and desires for what is internal to a fiction can be contrary to those that govern our affective attitudes toward analogous things in the real world. In short, it can be right to embrace within a story what one would condemn in real life. The theory Gilmore defends in this volume helps to explain our complex and sometimes conflicted attitudes toward works of the imagination; challenges the popular view that fictions serve to refine our moral sensibilities; and exposes a kind of autonomy of the imagination that can render our responses to art immune to standard real-world epistemic, practical
Year: 2020
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780190096342

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