Counting Fragments, and Frenhofer's Paradox

Psychologism about Artistic Plans: A Response to Rohrbaugh

“…Friends of psychologism have options in that this characterization is really more of a family of related views than a fully specified view in itself. On one way of filling in the details, we might understand psychologism in terms of artists’ judgments (see, e.g., Livingston and Gover ). Even then, we might further divide into camps based on whether we take those judgments to be cognitive or noncognitive .…”

Psychologism and Completeness in the Arts

“…The case for psychologism begins by setting aside that talk about ‘completeness’ which is concerned with a particular set of valuable aesthetic qualities having broadly to do with unity. Livingston has dubbed this “aesthetic completeness,” and gives as examples considerations of “coherence, resolution, the right sort of denouement, [and] the possession of all the essential or characteristic elements of the genre” (, 14). Everyone grants that the possession of such qualities by an artwork is not a matter of the artist's psychology, but nor is this the kind of completeness at issue.…”

“…There remain active disputes over the details of this approach. Some, including Paisley Livingston (), Carol Archer (Livingston and Archer ), and K. E. Gover (), say that a work is finished when its author efficaciously judges it to be complete and so refrains from further intervention. Others, including Kelly Trogden and a later Livingston (, ), say that such an occurrent judgment is dispensable and that an author need only possess the right kind of disposition to refrain.…”

Psychologism about Artistic Plans: Reply to Cray

“…The considerations are normative, and I may do what I should not. Sometimes we cannot help fooling with what is already done.This “nothing left to do” sounds a bit like Beardsley's () position, one to which Hick () and Livingston () have objected for making it impossible to finish what one takes to be aesthetically wanting. To be clear, I say this “nothing left” thought need not be about the aesthetic completeness, unity, or merit of what I have made, but just that there is literally nothing I can do to make it satisfy a plan it already satisfies.…”