Consistency, Conversational Implicatures And The Generality Of Critical Reasons
Consistency, Conversational Implicatures And The Generality Of Critical Reasons

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I examine whether critical reasons we give for evaluative aesthetic judgments must be generalizable in order to be adequate. In the first part of the paper, I introduce central concepts relevant for the problem of aesthetic evaluation (aesthetic value, evaluative judgments, critical reasons, aesthetic experience), as well as crucial distinctions in contemporary aesthetic and meta-aesthetic debates: aesthetic cognitivism/non-cognitivism and aesthetic particularism/generalism. After I point to some relations between these concepts, in the second part of the paper, using Frank Sibleyʼs view as an example, I examine in more detail what sort of consistency characterizes critical reasons, that is, what sort of consistency distinguishes the rationality of aesthetic evaluation. This paper offers an alternative view of the weak aesthetic generalism that rests on the concept of Griceian conversational implicatures. In the end, I argue for James Shelley’s critical compatibilism, which gives considerable merit to both sides in the debate.

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