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Group Creativity
- Berys Gaut
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- Journal:
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements / Volume 92 / October 2022
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- 18 October 2022, pp. 5-26
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- October 2022
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Group creativity is vital in overcoming the numerous challenges that the world faces. Yet group creativity is deeply puzzling. It seems plausible that only agents can be creative, so group creativity requires group agency. But how could groups possess the mental states required to be agents, let alone the rich range of them required to be creative? It appears more reasonable to hold that group creativity is not a real phenomenon, but is merely the summed creativity of the individuals forming the group. There is also much empirical evidence that groups are no more creative than their members. In this paper I examine the conceptual and empirical challenges to group creativity, defend its existence, and offer an explanation of how it is possible.
Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
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- 05 August 2015
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- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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Mixed Motivations: Creativity as a Virtue
- Berys Gaut
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- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements / Volume 75 / October 2014
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- 03 October 2014, pp. 183-202
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- October 2014
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The thought that creativity is a kind of virtue is an attractive one. Virtues are valuable traits that are praised and admired, and creativity is a widely celebrated trait in our society. In philosophical ethics, epistemology, and increasingly aesthetics, virtue-theoretical approaches are influential, so an account of creativity as a virtue can draw on well-established theories. Several philosophers, including Linda Zagzebski, Christine Swanton and Matthew Kieran, have argued for the claim that creativity is a virtue, locating this claim within a broader picture of intellectual, ethical and aesthetic virtues respectively. Moreover, a prominent research programme in psychology, led by Teresa Amabile, holds that people have an intrinsic motivation when they are creative, and this seems seamlessly to fit with the view that creativity is a virtue, for it is often held that a requirement for a trait to be a virtue is that the virtuous agent acts from an intrinsic motivation.
Preface
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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Summary
In 1987 I was working towards my PhD at Princeton and was surprised to discover that the Department of Philosophy was offering a course on the philosophy of film. I had no idea that such a subject existed. I was interested in the philosophy of art and had a passing interest in film, so I decided to sit in on the lectures. The course was a revelation: one could actually do philosophy about film and moreover do it in a way that was both intellectually rigorous and also acutely sensitive to the aesthetic qualities of individual films. The visiting professor who taught that course was George Wilson, who has been a friend and something of a mentor ever since. My greatest intellectual debts in the philosophy of film are to him. Had he not taught that course, this book would probably never have been written.
Having been inspired by George's course, I attended several film courses run by P. Adams Sitney and Tony Pipolo at Princeton. I sat well back in a large lecture theatre, and I suspect that they never knew I was there. But their lectures showed me, along with George's wonderful interpretations of films, how powerful and interesting films could be and that films were capable of far greater depth than I had previously imagined. My debts to these two scholars are considerable.
List of illustrations
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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Index
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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Introduction
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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This book addresses some central issues in the philosophy of cinema: the role of expression, realism, authorship, theories of interpretation, the nature of narration, character identification and audiences' emotional responses. In developing theories of these phenomena, two broad themes emerge. The first is a concern with cinema as an art. The second is an argument that the cinematic medium plays a role in explaining and evaluating central features of cinematic works. In both respects, the book reveals a strong debt to classical film theory, which was concerned with the question of what makes film an art, and argued that the nature of the film medium plays a central role in understanding and evaluating films. Contemporary film theory lost interest in the question of whether film is an art and in some of its modes was little concerned with the nature of the film medium, assimilating it instead to semiotic phenomena. And some contemporary philosophers of film, notably Noël Carroll, have argued at length both that there is no role for medium-specific explanations in film and also that, partly as a result of this, we should abandon the attempt to construct grand film theory, and instead adopt piecemeal theorising. If the argument of this book is successful, the classical film theorists were much closer to the truth in holding that medium-specific explanations and evaluations, as well as a good degree of systematising theory about cinema, are possible.
The scope of the discussion of cinema in this book is broad.
2 - Language and realism
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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Summary
We saw in the previous chapter that it is in part the plasticity of the representational medium that gives film its expressive potential. This raises the question of how to characterise the representational capacities of film. There are two kinds of answers that have been given to this question. The first holds that film is a kind of language. This answer has been very influential in film studies, and will be criticised for traditional cinema in the first section below and for digital cinema in the second section. The second answer holds that film is a pictorial medium and that pictures are not language-like. This will be the answer returned in this chapter. It follows that we should pose the question of the nature of cinematic realism at least partly in pictorial terms. I consider seven kinds of realism in cinema, concentrating in particular on the view that pictorial images can be transparent.
FILM AS A LANGUAGE
Much in common thought about film supports the idea that film is a kind of language. We speak of the language of film, of film as text, of the development of new languages of film and of reading a film. The idea of film as a language has also received much (though not universal) support in film theory. The Soviet filmmakers and theorists Lev Kuleshov and Vsevelod Pudovkin held that the shot played the role of a word, and the edited sequence of shots the role of a sentence.
Frontmatter
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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![](https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/22442/cover/9780521822442.jpg)
A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
- Berys Gaut
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- 01 March 2010
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- 14 January 2010
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A Philosophy of Cinematic Art is a systematic study of cinema as an art form, showing how the medium conditions fundamental features of cinematic artworks. It discusses the status of cinema as an art form, whether there is a language of film, realism in cinema, cinematic authorship, intentionalist and constructivist theories of interpretation, cinematic narration, the role of emotions in responses to films, the possibility of identification with characters, and the nature of the cinematic medium. Groundbreaking in its coverage of a wide range of contemporary cinematic media, it analyses not only traditional photographic films, but also digital cinema, and a variety of interactive cinematic works, including videogames. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book examines the work of leading film theorists and philosophers of film, and develops a powerful framework with which to think about cinema as an art.
Contents
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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Bibliography
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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4 - Understanding cinema
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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Summary
Having discussed cinematic authorship, the question arises of how one is to understand films, the products of authorial actions. I begin by discussing the most influential theory of interpretation, intentionalism, and criticise it particularly in respect of its account of collaborative arts, such as cinema. In Section 4.2 I discuss one of the best and most influential theories of interpretation developed by a film theorist, David Bordwell, and show that his global constructivist account should be rejected, but argue that there is a limited role for construction in some films. In Section 4.3 I defend my own account of interpretation, the patchwork theory, in the context of cinema and illustrate it with a discussion of Rashomon (1950). Finally, in Section 4.4 I argue that intentions are likely to be subject to some different defeaters in digital as compared to traditional cinema, and show how interactivity makes possible a new kind of constructivism in cinema.
INTENTIONALISM
I will argue that intentionalism as a theory of interpretation of collaborative art forms, such as cinema, is false. I will also briefly argue that intentionalism fails as a theory of interpretation of art in general. But I will focus mainly on the collaborative case and show that collaborative art forms, compared to solo (non-collaborative) forms, present extra hazards that undermine the artist's intentions and provide extra grounds for unintended but meaningful features of works.
A collaborative artwork I will understand as one in which two or more artists interact to produce the work.
5 - Cinematic narration
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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The nature of cinematic narration is a central topic in the philosophy of cinema, and in particular for the project of the present book. Almost all films have a narrative (story) and therefore have a narration (they convey a story). This is true not only of fiction films; most documentaries are also narrative films; and narrative is central to determining viewers' responses to films. Moreover, a central question of this book concerns how the nature of the cinematic medium conditions cinema as an art. So we will examine the similarities and differences between film's narrational capacities and those of other arts, and in so doing will shed light on the nature of cinema and on how it differs from the other arts. Narration is a trans-medium capacity: many works in media besides cinema narrate – narrative works include some dances, musical works and paintings, and almost all comic strips and literature. There has to be some degree of commonalty between these different media by virtue of the fact that they can all narrate, but there may also be interesting differences between them in respect of how they narrate, differences which throw light on their different capacities as media. I will argue that there are some salient differences between cinema and literature in respect of their narrational capacities, particularly in respect of the greater role for implicit narrators in the case of literature than of cinema; and I will trace this to differences between the different media.
6 - Emotion and identification
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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There is no doubt of the emotional impact that films can have on their audiences. The nature of that impact varies immensely, ranging from the gut-churning fear produced by an effective horror film to the nuanced emotional landscape of the best films within the European art-cinema tradition. The emotional power of cinema is central to its appeal and value as an art form, and the question arises of how it is achieved. I begin by examining how filmmakers employ aspects of the cinematic medium to foster emotional engagement. I then turn to defend the coherence and the role of identification, one of the most important devices of emotional engagement in cinema, and also show how it produces emotional learning. The discussion in the first four sections chiefly concerns emotion and identification in traditional films. In the last section I examine what difference digital cinema, in particular interactive digital cinema, makes to the ways that we can emotionally engage with films.
EMOTION AND CINEMA
In discussing the emotional power of cinema, I make two assumptions. The first is of the truth of the cognitive-evaluative theory of the emotions. This theory holds that emotions are not simply feelings, as are moods, but that they have an intentional object: I am afraid of something, I hope that something will relieve me from the danger, I pity that man.
7 - The role of the medium
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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At many points in this book I have invoked the notions of medium-specificity and of a medium; and the notion has structured our discussion of many of the artistic features of cinema. It is now time to examine these notions in greater detail and defend them from their critics. Medium-specificity is a concept that has figured in the discussion of many art forms besides cinema, and it helps to defend its application to film if we draw on examples from other media, to show that its use in cinema is not a mere product of the idiosyncrasies of the history of film theory. So this final chapter will range more widely than a discussion of cinema and deploy examples of how medium-specificity applies in other art forms too.
I begin by briefly examining some of the historical background to medium-specificity claims, particularly in the work of Gotthold Lessing. The second section distinguishes between three different versions of the medium-specificity claim. It also discusses and defends the notion of a medium and of differential properties, expanding on the brief discussion of these notions in earlier chapters of the book. The next three sections argue for the three versions of the medium-specificity claims, relating them back to the discussion in earlier chapters of the book. I conclude with a brief summary of the main claims of the book, highlighting how cinematic art is grounded on the features of the cinematic medium.
3 - Cinematic authorship
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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This book is about cinematic art. If there is an art form, there must, it seems, be artists working in that art form. If that is so, what can we learn about cinematic art by studying the cinematic artist, the so-called ‘cinematic author’? This chapter investigates that question, arguing that cinematic authors play a role in the understanding and evaluation of films and that all traditional films made by more than one person in the key production roles are multiply authored. I then argue that the multiple-authorship thesis also applies to digital cinema, and that the latter medium enhances possibilities for collaboration between different film artists. Finally, I show how multiple authorship is also true of interactive digital cinema, but argue that the audience are not among the authors of interactive works, though they do count as co-authors of interactive works' instances.
TWO PUZZLES
The notion that certain films are authored is one of the most powerful and pervasive views in current thinking about cinema. The enthusiast who looks forward to the film she thinks of as the new ‘Scorsese’, ‘Allen’, ‘Rohmer’, or ‘Tarantino’ is paying homage to the idea of the director-as-author. Rooted in the writings of Truffaut and other French critics in the 1950s, the view was transplanted to the United States by Andrew Sarris in the early 1960s, and dubbed by him ‘the auteur theory’.
1 - The challenges to cinema as an art
- Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
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- 01 March 2010
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- 14 January 2010, pp 21-50
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Filmmakers during the first two decades of the new medium's existence thought of themselves sometimes as scientists, sometimes as explorers, sometimes as entertainers, but hardly ever as artists, as pioneers of a new artistic medium. D. W. Griffith in his earliest Biograph films from 1908 did not dare put his name on the credits, lest his ambitions in the legitimate theatre be undermined by his low-life escapades with celluloid. Only gradually did he come to think of his films as works of art; and if Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) look now like deeply problematic achievements, they did at least represent the self-conscious striving to make films that are art. Though filmmakers took some time to think of their activity as a kind of art, theorists took longer. Hugo Munsterberg's pioneering The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916) represents the first sustained attempt to defend film as an art. But even in 1933 Rudolf Arnheim in his Film (revised as Film as Art in 1957) could think that the leading issue in film theory was whether film is an art. Indeed, Arnheim famously defended silent film as an art, but looked with some apprehension at the newly invented sound film, which he thought of as a threat to the artistic status of cinema. A great deal of classical film theory, as we noted in the Introduction, was concerned with arguing that cinema, despite its mechanical, photographic basis, is an art form.
Rag-bags, Disputes and Moral Pluralism
- Berys Gaut
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Moral pluralism of the kind associated with W. D. Ross is the doctrine that there is a plurality of moral principles, which in their application to particular cases can conflict, and that there is no further principle to determine which of these principles takes priority in cases of conflict. Two objections are commonly advanced against this kind of pluralism: that it proposes a rag-bag of moral principles lacking a unifying basis; and that it offers no way to adjudicate moral disputes when our intuitions about what to do conflict. The present paper replies to both of these objections, in particular by responding to versions of them advanced by Brad Hooker. The tying together and justification of different moral principles may be achieved by a general rational justification procedure, rather than by a further moral principle; and such a rational justification procedure can help to adjudicate moral disputes.
The Derivation without the Gap: Rethinking Groundwork I
- Berys Gaut, Samuel Kerstein
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- Journal:
- Kantian Review / Volume 3 / March 1999
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- 27 September 2011, pp. 18-40
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- March 1999
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At the core of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals lies his ‘derivation’ of the categorical imperative: his attempt to establish that, if there is a supreme principle of morality, then it is this imperative. Kant's argument for this claim is one of the most puzzling in his corpus. The received view, championed by Aune and Allison, is that there is a fundamental gap in the argument, which Kant elides by means of a simple but deadly confusion, thus robbing the argument of all validity. We will here contest the received view, as well as Korsgaard's alternative interpretation of the argument. In place of these positions we will offer a reconstruction of the derivation which reveals its coherence and force. We will show that it illuminates some interesting grounds for rejecting certain candidates, including a utilitarian principle, for status as the supreme principle of morality. While certainly not free of all defects, the argument will be shown to be far more powerful and interesting than it has commonly been held to be.
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