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Maks del Mar: The Role and Value of the Imagination in Legal Thought

The Aesthetics Research Centre (ARC) invite you to a Research Seminar with:

Dr Maks del Mar, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

The Role and Value of the Imagination in Legal Thought

Wednesday 18th October, 5pm – 7pm, GLT3, University of Kent

This talk will offer an overview of four key abilities that demonstrate the role and value of the imagination in legal thought. The four abilities are: 1) supposing; 2) relating; 3) image-making; and 4) perspective-taking. The talk will first examine these abilities in general, and then apply them to four devices of legal thought. The four devices are: 1) fictions; 2) metaphors; 3) hypothetical narratives; and 4) perspectival tests. For a sneak preview with some examples, see: https://aeon.co/essays/why-judges-and-lawyers-need-imagination-as-much-as-rationality.

Maks Del Mar is Reader in Legal Theory at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, where he is also founding co-director of the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context. He is presently working on a monograph on Imagination and the Legal Mind (Hart / Bloomsbury) and co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities. One of his primary research interests is the aesthetics of legal thought.​

watch recording of this talk  (talk begins at 7:00)
do not cite without permission of the author

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Aesthetics Today

Marking the 10th anniversary of the Aesthetics Research Centre (ARC) at the University of Kent, Aesthetics Today will begin with a symposium on June 5 aiming to generate discussion concerning the most general principles and questions preoccupying philosophical aesthetics today. The symposium will be followed on June 6 by a postgraduate/early career workshop co-sponsored by Debates in Aesthetics (formerly the Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics). Both events are supported by the British Society of Aesthetics and the Analysis Trust.

Session 1: Film, Art, and the Third Culture Jerrold Levinson (Maryland), Catharine Abell (Manchester), Dominic Topp (Kent), Murray Smith (Kent).

Session 2: Conversations on Art and Aesthetics Michael Newall (Kent), Derek Matravers (OU), Dawn Wilson (Hull), Hans Maes (Kent).

Session 3: Roundtable – Aesthetics Today Jerrold Levinson (Maryland), Catherine Abell (Manchester), Dominic Topp (Kent), Murray Smith (Kent), Michael Newall (Kent), Derek Matravers (OU), Dawn Wilson (Hull), Hans Maes (Kent)

Aesthetics Today will take advantage of the publication this spring of two books by the co-directors of ARC: Hans Maes’ Conversations on Art and Aesthetics, and Murray Smith’s Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film (both published by Oxford). Both books are characterized by their broad scope. Maes’ volume is comprised of extended interviews with ten eminent aestheticians (Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton), in which Maes probes them on their own arguments as well as their views on aesthetics and the philosophy of art as a discipline, thereby engaging them in discussion of a wide range of specific debates in contemporary aesthetics. Smith’s monograph seeks to defend a naturalistic approach to aesthetics, principally through the exploration of film as a medium of art, but with a sustained comparative dimension incorporating discussion of literature, music, painting, and photography. In elaborating and defending a version of naturalized aesthetics, Smith inevitably addresses fundamental questions concerning the assumptions, methods, and boundaries of aesthetics. Both works connect fundamental principles with concrete cases in a wide range of artforms, and together we hope will form a strong platform for discussion of the general state of aesthetics today. The symposium on June 5 will bring together four invited speakers (Catharine Abell, Manchester; Jerrold Levinson, Maryland; Derek Matravers, OU; Dominic Topp, Kent; and Dawn Wilson, Hull) with ARC faculty, as well as postgraduate students working in aesthetics and related disciplines at Kent and beyond. The postgraduate/early career workshop taking place the following day, June 6, will feature research presentations by Ryan Doran (Antwerp/Sheffield), co-editor of the BSA journal Debates in Aesthetics and Alaina Schempp (Kent), editorial assistant of Film Studies(MUP). The workshop will conclude with a forum on publishing in aesthetics and related fields.   The postgraduate/early career workshop on June 6 is co-sponsored by Debates in Aesthetics (formerly the Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics). Both events are supported by the British Society of Aesthetics and the Analysis Trust. Debates in Aesthetics is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal for articles, interviews and book reviews. Published by the British Society of Aesthetics, the journal’s principal aim is to provide the philosophical community with a dedicated venue for debate in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. The British Society of Aesthetics (BSA) aims to promote study, research and discussion of the fine arts and related types of experience from a philosophical, psychological, sociological, historical, critical and educational standpoint. The Analysis Trust is committed to implementing and maintaining the BPA/SWIP Good Practice Scheme for learned societies and journal editors. Analysis is the most established and esteemed journal for short papers in philosophy.

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Art, Aesthetics and Beyond: 3rd BSA PG Conference

FRIDAY 27th JANUARY 2017

10:00 – 10:40
Kentaro Tanabe, Ritsumeikan (Japan)
Diana Raffman on Nuance Ineffability

10:40 – 11:20
Sasha Lawson-Frost, UCL (UK)
Art as a Process – Art and History in Hegel’s Aesthetics

11:20 – 11:35
Break: coffee/tea and biscuits 

11:35 – 12:15
Olli Aho, Jyvaskyla (Finland) 
Responding to the Movements of Others – Improvisation as a Form of Habituality

12:15 – 12:55
James Rimmer, Leeds (UK) 
Group Creativity, Skill, and Achievement

13:00 – 13:45
Lunch: provided for paying delegates 

14:00 – 14:20
*Reverse Presentation*
Stanisław Święcicki, Leeds (UK)
Improvisation and Creativity

14:20 – 14:40 
*Reverse Presentation *
Olimpia Cali, University of Kent (UK)
Considerations for a Cognitive Approach to Audience Studies

14:40 – 15:00
*Reverse Presentation *
Caterina Moruzzi, Nottingham (UK)
Intentionality, Artworks and, AI

15:00 – 15:20
*Reverse Presentation *
Sam Tornio, University of Kent (UK)
Toward a Poetics of Snapchat

15:20 – 15:35
Break: coffee/tea and biscuits 

15:35 – 16:15
Tomasz Szubart, Jagiellonian University (Poland) 
What Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience Could Bring Into the Problem of Musical Meaning?

16:15 – 16:55
Clotilde Torregrossa, St Andrews/Stirling (UK)
A Defence of Experimental Philosophy in Aesthetics

17:00 – 18:15
Keynote – Stacie Friend, Birbeck (UK)
Elucidating the Truth in Criticism 

19:30
Dinner at Cafe du Soleil
Reservation needed, see registration

SATURDAY 28th JANUARY 2017

Location: Keynes Lecture Theatre 1
Directions and accessibility information: here

09:30 – 10:45
Keynote – Jesse Prinz, CUNY (USA)
Art and Wonder

10:45 – 11:25
Jamie Cawthra, York (UK)
What are Fictional Worlds?

11:25 – 12:05
Jack Davis, UCL (UK)
The Appearances of Fictional Worlds

12:05 – 12:20
Break: coffee/tea and biscuits 

12:20 – 13:00
Rob Duffy, Fordham (USA)
Does Fiction Express Truth? Paul Ricoeur on Literary Meaning

13:00 – 13:40
Alexander Westenberg, Notre Dame (Australia)
The Elenctic Narrative

13:40 – 14:30
Lunch: provided for paying delegates 

14:30 – 15:10
Leen Verheyen, Antwerp (Belgium)
The Ethical and Aesthetic Value of the Novel. A Ricoeurian Approach

15:10 – 15:50
Dieter Declercq, University of Kent (UK)
Defining Satire (And why a Definition Matters)

15:50 – 16:05
Break: coffee/tea and biscuits 

16:05 – 16:45
Alessandro Cavazzana, Ca’Foscari (Italy)
What About Visual Metaphors?

16:45 – 17:25
Kris Goffin, Antwerp/Ghent (Belgium)
Rational Emotivism

17:25 – 18:00
Panel Discussion
With: Jesse Prinz, Stacie Friend, Tom Laver (Assistant Collections Curators at Towner Art Gallery), and members of the Aesthetics Research Centre