Waltonian Perceptualism

Aesthetic perception and the puzzle of training

“…While this proposal is consistent with Walton's account, and draws on several aspects of the framework laid out in Walton (1970), it also goes beyond it in several respects. Therefore, I call this view 'Waltonian' perceptualism (see also Ransom, 2020b).…”

Categories of Literature

“…Madeleine Ransom (see Ransom ) denies that cognitive penetration is the mechanism that underpins Walton's psychological thesis; however, the alternative she proposes looks equally unsuited to literature. For Ransom, categorization has its effect through a process of “perceptual learning” (70–75), “an enduring change in the perceptual system due to practice or repeated exposure to a perceptual stimulus” (66–70).…”

“…Ransom rejects the cognitive penetration approach because it sits uneasily with a key feature of CA: that Walton's argument is restricted to perceptually distinguishable categories of art (Ransom , 62–66; see also Laetz , 291) . Walton's examples include “paintings, cubist paintings, Gothic architecture, classical sonatas, paintings in the style of Cézanne, and music in the style of late Beethoven,” but only “if they are interpreted in such a way that membership is determined solely by features that can be perceived in a work when it is experienced in the normal manner” (339).…”

“…However, such information merely prompts the appropriate gestalt ; it would fail to produce the right effect if we were not already familiar with works in the category. The guernica and Menard examples are misleading in this respect, since we have no background familiarity with purely hypothetical categories (Ransom ).…”

“…I am inclined to drop the qualification in the style of ; if we learn to distinguish categories via genuine instances, we are tracking genuine kinds (see Ransom ).…”