Measuring metaaesthetics: Challenges and ways forward

Moss, David A.; Bush, Lance S.

doi:10.1016/j.newideapsych.2021.100866

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A challenge for empirical study into the psychology of objectivism and relativism is that prior work has raised serious concerns about the ability of folk respondents to comprehend items ostensibly expressing objectivist or relativist responses appropriately (Bush & Moss, 2020;Moss, 2017;Moss & Bush, 2021;Pölzler & Wright, 2019). However, even if participants lack the ability to understand such prompts as expressing specific metaethical commitments, this need not necessarily undermine research into how objectivists and relativists are perceived.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signaling (in)tolerance: the reputational implications of metaethical relativism and objectivism

Moss,

Montealegre,

Bush

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Prior work has established that lay people do not consistently treat moral questions as matters of objective truth or as merely being true relative to different perspectives, but rather these metaethical judgements vary dramatically depending on the moral issue in question and in response to different social influences. In the present research, we provide evidence for a novel account of the social function such metaethical judgements play in expressing tolerance or intolerance of disagreement. We propose that, in virtue of this, taking metaethical stances has distinct reputational implications in different contexts where the social implications of signaling tolerance or intolerance differ. Our account provides a more cohesive and unified explanation of existing findings than previous accounts. In Study 1, we find that, compared to objectivists, relativists are perceived as more tolerant, empathic, to have superior moral character, and to be more desirable as social partners. In Study 2, we replicate these findings with a within-participants design and also show that, despite these reputational costs, objectivists are perceived as more morally serious. In Study 3, using a novel pretested database of moral issues, we examine evaluations of people who expressed objectivism or relativism concerning concrete moral issues, in situations where the person either agreed or disagreed with the counterpart’s views about these issues. This study replicated our prior results and demonstrated that the effects sometimes differed substantially across conditions of agreement and disagreement and across different moral issues. These results suggest that there are important social implications to expressing different metaethical stances in different contexts, and that sensitivity to these implications may explain the observed variation in metaethical judgements.

show abstract

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signaling (in)tolerance: the reputational implications of metaethical relativism and objectivism

Moss,

Montealegre,

Bush

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Ultimately, I think the spirit of the concerns raised in this section -around intepreting studies using Cova-style questions -extend to the form of question used Rabb etal. But I don't have space to discuss the issue in depth here (for some extended critical discussion of Rabb et al, 2020's design and the bearing of their results on metaaesthetics, see; Moss & Bush, 2021). 12.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Further exploration of anti-realist intuitions about aesthetic judgment

Andow

2021

Philosophical Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Experimental philosophy of aesthetics has explored to what extent ordinary people are committed to aesthetic realism. Extant work has focused on attitudes to normativism -a key commitment of realist positions in aesthetics -the claim that aesthetic judgments/statements have correctness conditions, invariant between subjects, such that there is a fact of the matter in cases of aesthetic disagreement. The emerging picture is that ordinary people strongly and almost universally reject normativism and thus there is no strong realist tendency in ordinary people's thinking about the aesthetic. This has been taken to dissolve the traditional puzzle in aesthetics of how to best account for the fact that (a) aesthetic judgments seem intersubjectively valid, while (b) aesthetic experience seems subjective. This paper presents studies which further enrich our understanding of ordinary thinking about the aesthetic: ordinary thinking about the aesthetic may not be so vehement in its rejection of normativism; and where previous results suggested that, in many cultures, the dominant trend is to reject correctness conditions for aesthetic judgments, the current results suggest participants think aesthetic judgments have correctness conditions (albeit perhaps very finely relativized to specific circumstances of judgment).

show abstract

“…Indeed, when presented with two people making contradictory aesthetic judgments, most people consider either that "both people are right" or that "neither is right and neither is wrong", because it makes no sense to speak of being right or wrong about such things. (For a methodological criticism of these studies, see Moss & Bush, 2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

De gustibus est disputandum: An empirical investigation of the folk concept of aesthetic taste

Bonard¹,

Cova²,

Humbert-Droz³

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Past research on folk aesthetics has suggested that most people are subjectivists when it comes to aesthetic judgment. However, most people also make a distinction between good and bad aesthetic taste. To understand the extent to which these two observations conflict with one another, we need a better understanding of people's everyday concept of aesthetic taste. In this paper, we present the results of a study in which participants drawn from a representative sample of the US population were asked whether they usually distinguish between good and bad taste, how they define them, and whether aesthetic taste can be improved. Those who answered positively to the first question were asked to provide their definition of good and bad taste, while those who answered positively to the third question were asked to detail by what means taste can be improved. Our results suggest that most people distinguish between good and bad taste, and think taste can be improved. People's definitions of good and bad taste were varied, and were torn between very subjectivist conceptions of taste and others that lent themselves to a more objectivist interpretation. Overall, our results suggest that the tension Hume observed in conceptions of aesthetic taste is still present today.

show abstract

Measuring metaaesthetics: Challenges and ways forward

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

Signaling (in)tolerance: the reputational implications of metaethical relativism and objectivism

Signaling (in)tolerance: the reputational implications of metaethical relativism and objectivism

Further exploration of anti-realist intuitions about aesthetic judgment

De gustibus est disputandum: An empirical investigation of the folk concept of aesthetic taste

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About